Chiang's Angels

These are Awesome.

Yes, they are.

Rob

Mawwage...

Rachelle at Living Between Wednesdays is getting married. And to celebrate, she's posted 30 Lois Lane covers about that very thing.



Best wishes to the happy couple!

Rob

Zowie!

One hell of a good night last night.

Kathy and I headed downtown to Lucky Cheng’s Fortune Cookie Cabaret to see Starshine Burlesque’s tribute to the New York Comic Con, which involved lovely ladies dressed as superheroes, takin’ it off. And having a wicked time doing it.

But first, we stopped for dinner at a French bistro on Orchard Street where we dined outside in the temperate night air. We’re a week away from our 5-year anniversary, and since we honeymooned in Paris, this was like taking a little micro-honeymoon. Kathy enjoyed some steak frites, I had some delicious boeuf bourguignonne over fettuccinni, and we shared a goat cheese tart that makes me think that chèvre might be the queen of all cheeses. (Why not the king? No idea... I just get a sense of femininity about it. I imagine there’s a king and a prince and a jack and a jester as well.. there’s room for a great deal of cheese royalty in my court.)

Then, off to Lucky Cheng's, where we had a drink at the bar served by the lovely Lila (who stresses politeness), but we soon headed back to the Fortune Cookie Caberet, where Plum Manchego was setting forth with the pre-show go-go, in a green and white outfit that had me saying “My God... She’s full of stars...” So I already had my geek on, but for a while I was so deliriously happy that I had totally forgotten what the theme of the night was. I was just happy to be there. I told Kathy: “If I die, and all of this isn’t going on around me... I’ll know I’m in hell.”

And then... the main event. The World Famous *BOB*, dressed as “Wonderful Woman,” acted as our mistress of ceremonies. Warm and witty, she threatened to use her lasso of truth on the audience, and at one point harangued an audience member whose cell phone rang: “Is it your mother?” she asked. “Is it your dealer?”

The dancers were a blast, of course. Weirdee Girl started out the night in a spectacular 60s-era Catwoman costume. Spurned by the handsome Adam West Batman, she contemplated (and committed) suicide, dispatching several of her nine lives before deciding he wasn’t worth it. Fem Appeal followed up as “The Incredible Cook”: Imagine the Hulk (her style was more Hulk than She-Hulk) doing the angriest cooking show in the world, ripping her clothes off as she went. This woman was painted green, head to toe. Ninety-five percent of her was green, pals and gals. I once dyed less than a third of me yellow for a Homer Simpson Halloween costume, so I can tell you this: That grief takes commitment. Rounding off the first act was Leyla Rose, visiting from the UK as a wolf girl (maybe Li’l Abner’s Wolf Gal?), revealing a fur bikini and a really funny sight gag.

In the middle of the first act was Ravi the Scorpion Mystic. While everyone else was having a great night of dress-up, this guy had genuine superpowers. Billed as “The Elastic Boy,” he contorted and twisted himself into stomach-churning shapes, and even managed to slip his body through the hoop of a tennis racket. Throughout it all, I was agog. (Later on, we saw him in the subway. He looked like a regular dude with a tennis racket. Secret identity, indeed.)

The second act had even more fun -- beginning with Nasty Canasta’s Poison Ivy routine (to Alice Cooper’s “Posion.”). This was followed by the comic highlight of the show, as Little Brooklyn danced out in a massive foam-rubber Thing costume -- to the Commodores’ “Brick House,” of course. Shedding bricks right and left, she was eventually left with just a rocky orange bikini... and a Kirbyesque surprise underneath. Throughout it all, she kept her big rocky Thing head on. Surreal? Hilarious? Awesome.

Finally, Creamy Stevens showed us the importance of remembering to put your costume on under your clothes before you leave the house, in case a quick change is needed to fight crime. Some kryptonite-induced stripping later made her Superwoman routine an extra treat.

And then, if all that wasn’t enough, just to emphasize the point that the show could have been narrowcasted to the pleasure centers of my brain -- World Famous Bob encouraged us all to get up out of our seats and do the Robot... as the Fresh Prince of Darkness played Styx’s “Mr. Roboto.”

Domo Arigoto, ladies.

Rob

Before I Get to Vegas

I'd like to welcome a couple of new folks to to the sidebar. My pal Don has just started blogging with Sci-Fi Pie, and he's starting strong with reviews and musings on Solaris (both versions), Planet of the Apes, The Handmaid's Tale, and other stuff. Meanwhile, in the comics-oriented section of the sidebar, I'm (finally) linking to Shayna Marchese's webcomic Voids. So now you can read it, too, and be as perplexed by the mysterious little coincidences as I am. As an added bonus, now I have to search for it on Google every time I want to read the updates.

Rob

The Bootylicious Gwen Stacy

It started out with foreign comics...

I'd seen posts in a couple of places linking to Brian Hughes' Again with the Comics. Hughes has displayed a bunch of Mexican Spider-Man comics from the sixties and early seventies, called El Sorprendente Hombre-Araña (The Surprising Spider-Man). Originally reprinting American Spider-Man comics, the weekly series eventually overtook the American publication, and new stories were commissioned for the Mexican book only. This also included new covers.

And boy, did those cover artists like Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy!

A lot.

Especially her butt.

It must've been a real kick in the pants when she died.

Anyway, one of the blogs discussing these comics is Occasional Superheroine -- and a commenter named Valen linked to a news story about how much people love butts. Valen offered it as evidence of Latin America's fixation with cheeks -- I see it as much more universal. The thing is, the story was in Spanish, so I ran it through a translator in order to attempt to read it. (Just copy the url into the box and select Spanish to English; I couldn't arrange a direct link.) Among other fun things, it coins the word culocracia -- a rough translation of which would be buttocracy, or, as it defines, "the government of the ass."

The translation is awkward and quirky, but it offers reasons why butts are so popular:

Unlike the mammary silicones, that are acquired and they are enjoyed the operating room when coming out, the beautiful ass demands intense and permanent work. Just now, which it is so easy to become of a prodigious advantage, desire moves towards another objective: most indefinite of the sexual symbols, the only one which nobody lacks. The obsession by those young, fibrous and hard tails also expresses to one more a more permeable society to the sexual ambiguity, in which travesti is the new queen of the conchero.

This just flat-out kills me. Wonky translations are fun. Wonky translations of pseudoscientific justification for instinctual desire? Awesome.

I also notice that while the story itself pays homage to both male and female butts, the accompanying art only shows the ladies. I can think of a couple reasons for this:

1) The photo editor is a guy who really knows what he likes.

2) I have some cookie in my browser that lets their website know the sort of butts I, personally, would like to see,

or

3) I got so distracted by all the ladybutt that I totally missed all the man-rump on the page.

Because if the editor thinks women don't like a nice butt, I can think of someone who'd strenuously disagree.

But(t) anyway, please raise a glass with me in celebration of "young, fibrous and hard tails." Ain't nothin' sexier than fibrosity.*

Rob
*I'm guessing "fibrous and hard" is a poor translation of "muscular and firm."

Honestly, I Just Got Tired of Looking At Mitt Romney's Smarmy Mug

There have been some comments over at the feminist comic blogs I read about this upcoming Playboy cover,


but not nearly the firestorm I expected to see when it was first brought to my attention. The objections seem to be more nuanced than to many similar things -- in some cases, the issue isn't about comparing the model to Wonder Woman as much as it it comparing her to Lynda Carter (as some interior copy does). The way I figure it, the image is appropriate for the venue, and I've got no real problem with it on those grounds.

But DC and Time Warner? They should have a problem with it. Playboy is making money off of their trademark, almost certainly without authorization. Yes, it could be considered a parody, and likely will be permitted under the First Amendment. But DC is obligated to protect its trademarks, and it really should act in this case. (There's a nice long discussion about this in the Beat's comment section.)

Anyway, Romney's gone, so mission accomplished.

UPDATE: As always, Val brings up some interesting points.

Rob

Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door?

Somehow I missed this: Part five of Vicsage.com's Greg Rucka Question interview.

Linking now, so I can read later.

Rob

I'm Trying To Care, But I'm Afraid I Might Sprain Something

So earlier this week a Mildly Amusing Dinosaur of a Comics Magazine has announced (via cover blurb) that it will now be a Mildly Amusing Dinosaur of a "Pop Culture" Magazine for Men. And some fine folks who don't need that blurb to tell them what they already know--that, blurb or no blurb, it has the sense of humor of a dim Starfleet Academy fratboy--are jawing on and on about it. And I've tried to join the conversation a couple of times, but really just can't get into it.

Because--as Kalinara notes--this book is a Dinosaur. All of its primary functions have gone by the wayside, either through humor and opinion blogs, internet news sites or auction sites like eBay (who needs a price guide?). So it's left to grope around blindly in the jungle as more specialized mammals scamper out of reach of its tiny, useless arms.

It's a Dinosaur. It's closer to being oil than being relevant.

So it's hard to see what all the fuss is about.*

ETA: Here's a Wizard cover from last year:
Ship? Sailed. The only reason "men's magazine" is in this month's topline at all is because they didn't have a photo of a babe to tell us so herself.

Rob

*It's even harder to see how this change/rebranding is going to save their bacon. I love comics, but even I can see that the world at large is not clamoring for a comic-oriented Maxim. FHM's dead, Stuff became a subsection of Maxim -- and yet there's a market for Maxim with drawings of She-Hulk? Sure...hitch your wagon to that star, why don't you?

Man, everybody else gets all the good crack.

Tip o' the Little Red Hat

Congratulations to Valerie D'Orazio for becoming president of Friends of Lulu, a 13-year-old non-profit that encourages female readership and participation in the comics field.

I'm looking forward to seeing what she and the rest of the new crew has planned.

Rob

One Face, Two-Face, Blue Face, No-Face

Eric Newsome presents part four of his Question interview with Greg Rucka -- this time focusing on Renee Montoya, the Gotham City detective who's taken up the mantle of the Question.

Rob

More Thoughts About JLA #14

It came out today.

I didn’t buy it.

I did, however, look through it. And looking through it, I realized I made a couple of incorrect assumptions in my original post.

The first is that the spread in question doesn’t lead off the issue. Luthor shows Superman and Black Lightning the video a bit further into the issue. It makes the scene seem a little less prominent than it did in the preview, where it was front-and-center.

Second, a quick read of the issue shows that Luthor was showing Superman those images to really piss him off. He wanted him good and angry; the story explicitly says so. So, whether it was in the panel description or not (I’m still guessing not), I could see how Ed Benes’s reading of the full script would lead him to pose that panel in that way—because Luthor might see it as a good way to press Superman’s buttons.

I still think it’s a bad idea.

Not that it’s ineffective. I mean, clearly it works. I was pretty damn mad.

But I think, even in a world where Luthor is a bad, bad guy, he should refrain from sexually exploiting Justice Leaguers. It devalues Wonder Woman and the others to build up Luthor, which is, frankly, a bad trade. Luthor is already pretty much the worst guy in the DCU—he’s already made his rep. Victimizing Wonder Woman does nothing for him that capturing her wouldn’t do, and it makes her...well, a victim.

But never mind that. What does it make the audience?

Looking at the Newsarama boards after the preview. the argument for the scene’s inclusion predominantly wasn’t “It’s exactly what Luthor would do to make them angry and easier to defeat” (although a few perceptive souls did point this out), but instead that comics aren’t just for kids, and that grownups like the jiggle, that complainers shouldn't be so prudish because there’s more T&A on any TV show and, of course, “HAWT.” With a lot -- I mean a LOT -- of boob jokes thrown in for good measure.

I wonder how all those appreciative fans feel now that they know that the scene they were getting off to was supposed to piss them off?

And that’s my problem with the entire episode. I’ve read a lot of heroic fiction where protagonists or sidekicks were tied up, and have never given it a second thought. If the plot called for it, it called for it, and that was that. But prompts the audience to react in the exact opposite way that the viewpoint character (Superman) is reacting, and the dissonance works against the story.

What the scene in JLA looks like is not that they were tied up for the villains. They look like they were tied up for me. As, I dunno, a present. A gift. Fan service, is what they call it.

No thanks. I'd rather have cash.

Rob

(On the plus side, I used that very cash to buy the first issue of The Umbrella Academy instead. So it’s not a complete loss.)

EXTRA LINKY GOODNESS: Val at Occasional Superheroine presents a similar argument (but with HAWT pix!) and Cheryl Lynne at Digital Femme offers a simple rule to publish by, days before the tempest touched down in the Justice League's teapot. Both are good reading.

Not This Again

Newsarama just put up a preview of the new issue of Justice League of America, continuing what’s been a hell of a good story so far, pitting the Justice League against the Injustice Gang. Written by Dwayne McDuffie, it’s really got everything you want in a JLA story – superpowered action, snappy dialogue, suspense. Great stuff, all around. The first issue of the story was drawn by Mike McKone. He’s a terrific artist, and he made the book a joy to look at.

The second chapter, issue 13, was drawn by Joe Benitez. He’s nowhere near as good as McKone, but still drew a decent comic story. By the end of it, much of the JLA was captured by the bad guys.

Now, regular series artist Ed Benes is back. Which is why issue 14 picks up with this opening spread:
Seriously?

Are you fucking kidding me?

A half dozen JLAers are incapacitated, and the three that just happen to be displayed for the screen as a goddamn two-motherfucking-page spread are the three hotties, all trussed up and bent over like porn models? Come on.

I mean, come on.

Who approves this shit?

How much disdain for the casual buyer, or a reader with any—any—level of maturity does this show? This is the Justice League. The book is in no stretch of the imagination about sex appeal. For the first time in a year, they put a writer on who finally gets the book, who not only knows how to write a good action scene, but realizes they’re essential in a book like this—and this is how they treat his script?
You’re goddamn right it is, Luthor.

I don’t know what McDuffie wrote in his panel description for that page. Maybe he did describe the women, front and center, spread eagle, bent over, and thong riding up. But I really, really doubt it. The man has class. He probably briefly described what sort of devices were sapping their superpowers, and left it to Ed Benes to stage the scene.

Look, I don’t give a crap whether this is degrading to Wonder Woman, Black Canary and Vixen. They’re lines on paper, nothing more. And honestly, I barely care if it’s offensive to women. Because some’ll be offended, and some won’t, and probably most will just scratch their heads and say, “Aren’t all comics like that?” But whatever their reaction, it’s their own lookout.

But this… Let me be clear. It’s not offensive to me. It’s just lines on paper, and all that. But it’s the intention behind the lines. It’s the absolute lack of respect for the reader. Not because children might read it, but because adults read it. Grownups who don’t need Black Canary, Wonder Woman and Vixen to be their…ahem… "date” for fifteen minutes. Awkward fifteen year olds will love this. Stunted man-boys will, too. But that’s not a club I wanna be in, because the members all sweat and stammer and the seats are all sticky.

This isn’t porn. But I have no doubt – none whatsofuckingever – that the artist and the editor (Eddie Berganza) expect this issue to be used as porn, and that it’s that market they’re catering to by drawing this shot, and by including it in the preview. And no matter how much I’ve liked the story up till this point, and no matter how good the story itself may continue to be, despite the art, I’m not going to line up on Wednesday with a bunch of arrested adolescents who rush home and hide this issue under their mattresses.

If they can’t sell the Justice League without relying on crotch shots and bondage fantasies, DC should get out of the Justice League-selling business.

I wish—hell, how I wish—that I could read McDuffie’s story without this. But until Benes is off of Justice League and replaced by someone who wouldn’t be better suited to the Shanna The She-Devil Shower Spectacular, I just can’t read this anymore.

This is a cynical, vile marketing ploy, appealing to the lowest common denominator. I’ve held my nose and picked up other books like this, but not this time.

I’m not in that fucking club.

Rob

UPDATE: More thoughts here, now that I've seen the issue.

Good-bye, Mary Jane, Though We Never Knew You At All

In the wake of Marvel's hints that the Peter Parker/Mary Jane marriage will be ended/retconned/cosmically annulled, Andy Khouri at Comics Should Be Good! has posted a satirical poll: How Would You Prefer Mary Jane To Die? He forgot one option, however:


Clubbed to death with a statue, like the original Nite-Owl in Watchmen.

Rob

Credit Where It's Due

Spent an enjoyable commute listening to the Big Monkey Comics Podcast the other day. It's a fun time, sounding as much like a bunch of friends sitting around, jawing about comics as possible. But one thing bugged me about their discussion of Black Canary, and since the same misconception comes up nearly every time her history is brought up, I thought I'd take a moment to make the point. (I didn't realize that moment would be 1:30 in the morning, but so be it.)

(To my family: Yes, he's geeking out again. Scroll down, nuthin' to see here...)

As much as she's done with the character, Gail Simone isn't the one who changed her from a supporting character to Green Arrow into a successful headliner; Chuck Dixon did that. (Yes, she also had a solo series in 1993 written by Sarah Byam. I haven't read it, so I don't know how good it was, but I doubt it was successful, or else it would have lasted longer than 12 issues.) Dixon originated the Birds of Prey concept and nursed it from a series of miniseries into the series that's still around today (rare for a concept launched in the 90s). His work shouldn't be ignored, and it seems like people who say that she went from being a damsel in distress in Green Arrow (a description that sells her earlier appearances short) to the capable solo operative she works as in Birds of Prey are giving Simone all the credit for the change. In numerous interviews about the title (like this one), Simone gives Dixon (and original editor Jordan Gorfinkle) props for the book's strong foundation, and Canary's strength is an essential ingredient in that. But perhaps because of Simone's deserved popularity, Dixon often gets sold short.

The early years of Birds of Prey had some fantastic stories, always exciting and action-packed, and featuring some gorgeous art by Greg Land (yes, Greg Land), Butch Guice and Gary Frank (who drew this image). I missed a lot of Simone's run (Ed Benes' art drove me away), and plan to pick it up in trades. But if you've missed Dixon's run, you should definitely check it out. It's a really nice blend of superheroics and espionage, and well worth reading.

Rob

Devil May Care

My Justice League Unlimited post will have to wait. Last night and today, I’ve been keeping tabs on a couple of conversations that have hit a nerve.

Some people are up in arms about the preview of the upcoming Daredevil issue in which Daredevil’s wife Milla is attacked in their apartment by an enraged supervillain, the Gladiator.

Here’s the relevant portion of the text. You can see the preview here.

Karen Page. Elektra. All the women Matt Murdock has loved have been violently taken from him, victims of unspeakable tragedies and in Daredevil #98, his wife Milla Donovan may be next! The Gladiator has returned, more enraged and brutal than ever, with one purpose in mind: making Matt Murdock suffer! With the defender of Hell’s Kitchen in police custody and the Gladiator alone with a terrified Milla, things aren’t looking good for the wife of Daredevil…and history isn’t on her side either. The penultimate chapter of “To The Devil, His Due” will have huge ramifications for Daredevil as he races towards the milestone Daredevil #100.

...

With his wife’s life in peril and seemingly no way to reach her, Daredevil may be headed for the worst day in life. One thing’s for sure—by the end of this issue, no one’s going to be the same!

People are upset about this for two reasons:

1) The marketing is playing up on the old “this woman might die!” trope.
2) The preview shows that Milla is in her underwear while being stalked. (What’s probably the most relevant page of the preview is at right.)

All well and good. The marketing copy’s not particularly original, and a bit smug about the way it dangles Milla’s potential death in front of the customer. And, well, she is in her underwear. (Although I don’t think Michael Lark’s art is salacious in the least. It’s possibly a bit lurid… but if there’s a comic out there where a guy who dresses up like a devil fights a guy with buzzsaws on his wrists in the big bad city that isn’t lurid, I don’t want to see it. Lurid’s part of the show, and it belongs in Daredevil, just like it has no business in Superman.)

But what gets my goat – or as Ed Anger would say, what gets me pig-biting mad – is when people get angry that she’s put in that sort of jeopardy in the first place.

She’s a supporting character. That’s what she’s there for.

We know Daredevil can’t be that vulnerable. It’s his book, and he’s a Marvel franchise. Captain America, currently dead, isn’t that vulnerable. He’ll be back in one form or another, and it’s not just because Marvel needs to keep the trademark alive. It’s because he’s a hero, and if he’s dead for part of the story, that’s only because the story isn’t over yet. So it’s no use threatening Daredevil in the solicitation – he can’t die. He can only change, and even that doesn’t happen very often.

Which is why supporting characters exist. They’re the ones to threaten if you want to sell more issues. They can be killed, because their death doesn’t end the story, but if done well it could change the hero, and give the readers something new for a while. It’s not their only job – a good supporting character also brings exposition, story springboards, complications and character development to the table. But a heightened sense of danger is one of their most important functions, and here Brubaker and Lark are doing a top-notch job with her.

Here’s what Brubaker had to say on the Newsarama thread about the underwear choice.

Also, when I wrote the script, she was in a nightgown. But Michael thought, and rightly so, that being in her underwear was both more vulnerable, and reminisent of the scene where she first met Bullseye.

Both of those are good reasons to dress her that way. It can go horribly wrong. Her state of undress can distract from the telling and reading of the story, rather than heightening it. If she were drawn like Jim Lee’s Vicki Vale in All-Star Batman & Robin #1 (at left), it certainly would have detracted from the story. But Lark’s too good for that. His depiction of Milla doesn’t excite a male reader – it worries them. Her vulnerability comes across on the page, whereas Vicki just looks like a lingerie model. Yes, this sort of thing has been done poorly many times before – but that’s no reason to jump on someone who’s doing it well.

For the record, I don’t think Milla is going to die. She’s too good a supporting character to throw away like that, and Brubaker’s smart enough to know it. Daredevil has a small enough supporting cast as it is, and she pulls her weight. Here's how:

She’s a love interest, but interestingly, she’s not the love of Daredevil’s life. That distinction belongs to the deceased Karen Page, who Matt keeps getting reminded of despite his marriage. Brubaker clearly likes playing with that idea – so why would he throw that away when he can do more with it. There’s great guilt potential here.

She’s blind. Daredevil is also blind, but he uses his superpowers to “see,” which is something of a cheat. So Milla’s presence reminds us of Matt’s blindness – allowing for that crucial bit of exposition for new readers – as well as grounding his disability in reality. (This could be a plus or a minus, depending on how well it's handled, but I see it as a plus.)

We don’t know a whole lot about her, since they married in a year that former writer Brian Bendis fast-forwarded through. There’s a load of storytelling possibilities there waiting to be dreamed up.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. (I don’t even know what happened in the last few issues, since I read the book in trade paperback collections.) But I think a smart writer would consider the story possibilities in Milla. He’d weigh them against writing her death (which, as the solicitation notes, has been done before with other characters) and a Daredevil’s Revenge story (again, done before. Ho hum.) and go with the outcome that excited him most. I know which one I’d choose. And I'm confident a writer as good as Brubaker is has little interest in treading over the same old paths when there's new ground to be broken.

Have a little faith in the Devil.

Rob

Statue Week: The End

The incredibly talented cartoonist J. Bone gets the last word on the Mary Jane statue brouhaha. It's been posted everywhere I go, but maybe not everywhere you go. So here you go:



And with that, statue week is over.

Have a great weekend.

Rob

Before Statue Week Concludes

I want to take the opportunity to link to a dumbass. I love this trainwreck of a blog: It’s like going to the monkey house and watching a chimp throw his own shit.

But the main reason for that link (and don’t bother reading to far, just get a general idea of the guy and move on) is so I can link to Ami Angelwings’ absolutely brilliant satire of the guy. (And be sure to check out Kalinka’s comment, below. It’s gold.)

If your child ever asks you, “Mom, Dad, why did God make morons?” now you know the answer: “So we can ridicule them, dear. Nighty-nite.”

Truly, we are blessed.

Rob

Knee-Deep in the Suds

Now that I've jumped into the washing machine, I might as well stick around for the spin cycle. I'm not the only one.

Like practically everyone else in the blogosphere (honestly, I’m surprised Atrios hasn’t weighed in by now), Heidi at the BEAT has more to say about the MJ Laundry statue:

Having worked at Disney for nearly a decade, I can assure you that there is a rich fantasy market for pictures of Disney characters doing very very naughty things. In fact, I used to get some of them in the mail. The Marvel statue of Mary Jane isn’t quite as bad as Disney suddenly leeching coin off this crowd by making statues of naked Pocahontas and Mulan getting it on, but it’s definitely playing to the same kind of mindset. I mean, yeah, Disney WOULD do such a thing to make money if they could get away with it, but theirimage and their branding is too strong to allow it.

Marvel and DC don’t have brands that strong. Batman and Spider-Man appeal to young boysbut that doesn’t stop them from doing appalling things in various muti-verse or variant takes.

I think Heidi puts her finger on the undercurrent of a lot of the arguments against this statue. Above the fold, most anti-statue arguments lead with how the depiction, pose and activity are demeaning to women, and they turn off Spider-Man’s many female fans (most gained via the movies). Which is all well and good, and I think has at least the element of truth to it. Undoubtedly, a lot of fans don’t like the statue, and a percentage of them might look askance at other Spidey projects in the future. The only thing questionable in my mind is the quantity of those female fans – and the quantity of fans (male and female) whose buying habits would change because of this statue. And I don’t think there are many people in the conversation qualified to answer more than “Who knows?” to that question. And in terms of sheer dollars and cents, that’s probably not enough information to actupon.

I don’t know for sure whether Marvel’s publisher Dan Buckley or DC’s Paul Levitz really care about the depiction of women in their comics. Every interview I’ve ever read with Levitz (as well as his body of work writing Legion of Super-Heroes and other titles) leads me to believe he’s a decent, thoughtful man. I don’t think he makes decisions viscerally or impulsively; I get the impression he considers each move he makes. But I’m a complete outsider, and I could be 100 percent off-base about that. And I don’t really have a feeling for Buckley’s character at all.

But my guess is, whatever their personal feelings are, they probably have to swallow some of it to do their job effectively. Each man is under pressure to have their division perform, and sometimes that means going against their own personal grain. Levitz has mentioned in interviews that he didn’t enjoy Preacher, but he felt it was worthwhile for DC to publish it anyway, under its Vertigo imprint. For every one of these decisions he talks about to the press, there are probably dozens he keeps quiet.

And heck, I think I’m rambling. So let me cut to the chase. I think Levitz or Buckley could agree 100 percent with every critique of the statue (and to pull an example from DC, Michael Turner’s heinous cover of Justice League of America #10), and still not necessarily act on it. Because there’s not really an entrenched corporate mechanism to address these kinds of complaints.

But Heidi says it a different way: The MJ Statue dilutes the Spider-Man brand. The Power Girl cover dilutes the JLA brand. It’s the reason the DC and Marvel brands aren’t as strong as the Disney brand – because there’s not as stringent a control to make sure the characters look and act “on model.” This isn’t always bad – we’d almost surely never have gotten Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns with more stringent brand control. But at the same time, we wouldn’t be getting All-Star Batman and Robin now, so maybe it’s a wash. Too-strict brand control keeps characters frombeing able to offer true surprise to adult audience, and I’m part of the adult audience these companies cultivate. But without some sort of quality control, the products begin pandering to the lowest common denominator, and visiting that well too frequently can do lasting damage – not just among those who were initially offended, but among those who fail to get enjoyment out of the current, crasser content. Offense isn’t the only way to drive customers away.

It’s an argument that doesn’t try to appeal to their personal sensibilities; instead, it speaks to the nature of their jobs, as caretakers of these characters and brands. In that sense, the argument at least might be a more compelling tack.

Rob

Statuestory

So, for the past week, there’s been this big brouhaha over a statue. It’s Spider-Man’s girlfriend/wife (depending on which stories you’re following) Mary Jane washing his Spider-suit in a “sexy” pose. And man, has it caused an uproar. What started out as complaints in blog posts and livejournal entries made its way to Boing Boing, Pandagon, The New York Post and other outlets. People complained that the statue was sexist, and then others complained that the complainers have no sense of humor and no business telling people what they should and should not buy. I’m simplifying things quite a bit, but in this past week of reading comics blogs, I’ve spent a lot of time ducking as one side threw brickbats at the other. (What’s a brickbat, anyway? I doubt they’re MLB-regulation.)

And all I could think, looking at the statue, is:

Man, that thing is ugly.

And I couldn’t understand it. It’s based on a design by Adam Hughes. Hughes is a terrific artist, who’s talented enough to draw whatever he cares to. Whatever he wants you to see, you’ll see it. Granted, his art often tends toward cheesecake, but it’s the good kind of cheesecake. No empty calories, no porny expressions, none of that stuff. He’s the Vargas of comics.

And he designed this statue. So why is it so goddamned ugly?

I have to put it down to a sculptor who just doesn’t share Hughes’ talent. Because (thanks to That Slow Redheaded Kid) I’ve finally seen the drawing Hughes did as a concept:

It just has so much more personality and verve than the statue itself. MJ’s having fun here. She’s in on the joke. Hell, she’s making the joke. But as for the statue, it seems to me that she is the joke. In the drawing, she has a personality. In the statue, she's a prop.

I dunno. I see a difference here, and it really does come down to subtlety and talent. Maybe that’s just me.

Rob

Rhymes With Orange

Jon Hex is absolutely right: Sherin Nicole is awesome.

Rob