Batman is one of the most popular comic book characters for good reason. He has a tragic backstory and pathos which is often compelling, but plays well against a rogues gallery so iconic that its hard to imagine Batman without characters like the Joker, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, or Poison Ivy. He exists in an expansive universe solely within Gotham. On top of that, he's been given to so many possible interpretations over the history of comics that just about anyone can find one and latch onto it. I'm one of the rare people whom the Bruce Wayne Batman character has not enchanted, so I'm gonna write a series of blogs detailing the reasons for my dislike of the character.
I'll preface this by saying that there have been a number of amazing writers on the Batman books and that the characters and concepts related to him I do enjoy in some cases. I like the Dick!Batman, the Gordons are great characters, Tim Drake & Cass Cain were two of my first crushes in comics when I started reading when I was a teenager, the number of incredible a number of Batman's rogues are great (though the ones I really like aren't that great in numbers) and there have been great stories told with the character at their core, even those which heavily rely on the character's complex comic book backstory. Still, I hate Bruce!Batman in concept and as a particular character.
Why the hate? The first reason is the issue of mental illness surrounding the Batman comics. If there has been a work of fiction which has done more to trivialize and vilify the mentally ill, I would love to see it. One of the best descriptions I've heard about Batman is that he's a rich man who beats up the poor and mentally ill. We'll come back to the rich/poor dichotomy later, fellow members of the 99%, but let's stay on the mentally ill problem.
Arkham Asylum is, by the very fact of its depiction in any Batman related media, one of the deepest and most entrenched problems in comics. Look, there were mental asylums like Arkham back in the day. That would have been a real place. The problem is, we don't have asylums any longer for very good reasons. People with mental problems, you see, are human beings. The mad are not an epidemic to be placed in a leper's asylum. I've spent time in mental hospitals as a patient. There are still massive problems with the system from a patient perspective, but the depiction of Arkham harkens back to a society where, by the very virtue of the fact I have hallucinations, I would have been cut off from normal society. Not that this still doesn't exist, but Batman is the encoding of this into our cultural mythology.
There are still many problems with the mental health system, not unrelated to the mental hospital and the concepts surrounding it, but its not anywhere near as bad as its depicted in the Batman comics and related media. This continues even in the best writers. The Joker is described as a psychotic. Even in the medical literature, he would be a psychopath, the difference is extreme. I'm a psychotic, I'm not a psychopath. Still, Batman's rogues need a Freudian reason for being evil, they need to be diagnosed.
The diagnosing of Batman's villains is horrible and it relates back to the problem of Arkham. As long as Arkham is seen as the go to place for his Rogues, they'll need to be psychopathologized. When a place is so ubiquitous in comics that Brad Meltzer in his series of shout-outs tailored into a loosely fitting story of misogyny and plot holes that could swallow a Hummer had to send Jean Lorring there. You know, because its where crazy people go.
I'm not saying that there isn't a place for psychopaths and sociopaths in comics. I'm not saying that we cannot depict these problems. But, let's be serious, this is how mental health is treated though out comics Batman is just the microcosm of every problem in the depiction and over-diagnosing of evil as mental illness. His villains are almost universally the criminally insane, and I could make this a much longer essay if I were to get into the idea of the "criminally insane," and the construction of the world around him has at its most important foundation Arkham Asylum.
There are other problems with Batman's villains. Psychiatry is used by Hugo Strange for his nefarious evil (as a psychotic himself, because, again, psychotics are horrible) and Harley Quinn is a psychologist who was infected with the psychopathy of the Joker, because mental problems work that way. Harley's one of the most problematic things in my opinion in Batman comics, but we'll get back to that later (Hint: Battered woman as fetish object in fandom). So, even if Arkham were a place of healing in some respect, mental illness infected it and turned it all evil, at least in Harley's case.
Now, some of you may be outraged. Batman's got mental problems to, some may say. Yes. Yes he does. In the most trite fashion possible. I ask you this simple question: When have we ever seen Batman treated as having a mental health which he seeks to understand, which is not an excuse for him to be Batman? In the Batman I've read, which is admittedly not terribly expansive and so I'll be glad if anyone can correct me, I've only seen the character Batman in therapy once. In the Flashpoint universe. Where Thomas Wayne said "Fuck you, I'm not goin' through your stupid therapy!" in fewer words.
Yes, Batman would be diagnosed with PTSD in our society, he witnessed his parents' deaths. And, to their credit, in the comics he is still treated as someone who can function. He's disciplined himself to the extent that he can deal with his traumas. Except no. Take a story like Tower of Babel. Batman's mental issues place him as having betrayed the team. That is to say, when he succumbs to it, he's evil. Really, that evil comes from him being a complete and utter fascist without equivocation, but we'll get to that.
Mental health SHOULD be treated in comics, but it should not be treated as something leading to evil. Take, by contrast to Batman, Spider-man. We can argue the relative traumas of both characters, but its less questionable that Spider-man has a real trauma which pushes him along. Yet, of the two, Spider-man's mental problems are realistic where Batman's aren't. This isn't a problem of DC v. Marvel, mind, if someone were able to actually tell a good story around it, Superman has a great amount of psychical trauma which ought to be explored but isn't. The difference is, Spider-man's problems aren't the character, only an aspect. Batman is every negative of mental health and the depiction of mental health as fixation and root off our concept of evil.
There is a place for Batman in comics, there's a place for that type of character who's dealing with his traumas in the fashion of a paranoid individual. But he's the ONLY consistent depiction of mental health in comics and as such there is a need for responsibility in the depiction. There is a problem with mental health in comics at large. Our heroes are treated as "sane" while villains are "insane." This is a problem, though, since sanity can still be evil and insanity can still be good.
Batman is the flashpoint of this problem as the earliest progenitor in comics. Hopefully, our American macro-society will get past the super-psycholization of our so-called criminal class, but Batman is the mythology encoding that problem. This is the first of my problems with Batman.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Who is Wonder Woman?
While I, myself, am putting off reviewing books for issue 2s of the DC Comics relaunch, I do want to talk about one of my favorite books out of it: Wonder Woman.
I was honestly worried about this book. Extremely so. Azzarello is a good writer, but he's confusing to me when it comes to women. His recent Batman: Knight of Vengeance tie in for Flashpoint, while very good, made Martha Wayne the Joker to the Thomas Wayne Batman. Doctor 13, an amazing series with Cliff Chiang, didn't break ground with Traci 13's portrayal, even if she wasn't horrible in it. For me, this comic assuaged that fear. I'm all for it. The problem is, though, what do we make of the voice of Wonder Woman in the book?
Over on the Robot 6 blog, Caleb Mozzocco bemoans the first issue's portrayal of Wonder Woman for not being a compassionate figure. She is a warrior. She hacks off the arm of a centaur and has an aloofness to her entire character. Caleb, like so many others, is in favor of this book. I can only think of one review I've read off hand which was negative of the book while seeming to understand the mythology involved (I did read one which didn't get that its Apollo in the beginning and thus didn't understand that portion of the plot). But Caleb brings up a very good question of what we're to make of who Wonder Woman is.
We all know who Batman is post-Frank Miller. Somewhere between hero and anti-hero who fights crime while crying out for the love of mommy and daddy, unable to hear back. Whether Morrison or Snyder, he is a fairly univocal character. He doesn't kill. He broods while knowing he needs other people. He's pathologically a crime fighter. Its easy to notice when he's written out-of-character.
Superman is less defined than Batman. He's always optimistic and positive, he doesn't kill, he's extremely compassionate and loves humanity. There have been problems in the DCnU portrayal with whether he's too cocky in Justice League (and why he attacks GL and Batman at all) and then in Action Comics where he is confrontational and fights the rats with guns. But, even then, I do think that Morrison gets a young Superman's voice right. He smiles when he runs, he evacuates a building even if it hurts him, he seems to enjoy himself. Those are Superman to me. There are a lot of people who don't get him, so he's less univocal than Batman, but he's still identifiable.
Wonder Woman struggles here. She's compassionate, yes, but how much of a warrior is she? Really, why doesn't she kill? How does she relate to humanity when she's not as identifiably alien as Martian Manhunter nor as human as the other two in the trinity?
In the Odyssey storyline, which I couldn't stomach for more than four issues, she was portrayed as violent. She broke a counter to strong-arm a pawn shop clerk into purchasing an Amazonian artifact. She was doing it to get money someone who needed it, but the overall tone of the character was naive, young, and she lacked true composure.
During Gail Simone's run on the title prior, the goodness of Wonder Woman was emphasized. Coming off of one of the worst things to happen to the character with Amazons Attack as well as, Simone tried to humanize Wonder Woman and emphasize her genuine love even as an outsider to Man's World. Honestly, my only real problem with Simone's run was the alien quality of Diana. There was an exchange I recall between her and Black Canary where she didn't understand her popularity as a fetish object, which just felt a bit tinny to me. Add to that Diana not really getting courtship rituals in the modern era with Nemesis, it just seemed off to me in that regard. Still a great run and one of the first times I really fell in love with the character.
In the Golden Age, Diana was a sexual character who sought liberation from the puritanical Nazi oppressors. She did this through the qualities Marston saw as most feminine. Submission, tenderness, and peace-loving. Two of the three carry through in most portrayal of the character. I'd argue she's a bit too submissive most of the time, but that's another issue since I think Wonder Woman is, of all of the major characters in either company, the best to explore sexuality with due to her origins as a character and I'd like to see her as a sexual dominant as well as pansexual, that's another essay.
In other media, he portrayal in the recent DTV animated movie was off to me because of the gendered violence and that she was a bit too precious. The way she killed Ares in the film also just struck me wrong because of the whole fact Wonder Woman's killing one of her own Gods (this is another issue, though, because I think the Justice League should be battling Ares in addition to just Wonder Woman). In the Justice League TV show, she was kind of bland, honestly. In the face of strong personalities from Hawkgirl, John Stewart, Martian Manhunter and the Flash, she didn't have a great voice of her own. She was a cipher. A necessary pretty face for Batman to leer at from the shadows.
So, who is Wonder Woman in Azzarello's hands? A warrior, first and foremost, but someone who is willing to get out of bed and go to war if someone comes to her and they are under threat. I like this Wonder Woman. She feels, to me, like someone who knows she can kick your ass while, at the same time, being truly willing to do anything for someone who comes to her for help. This panel is, in my opinion, one of the best places where we get her voice under Azzarello:
She will make certain you are safe. Absolutely. She is a warrior, yet she is infinitely compassionate to those who seek her help.
There's still at least one more issue before I'm certain, but Azzarello's Wonder Woman is new yet familiar. She is a violent warrior but she loves life and seeks to protect those who need it. She's a hero.
Honestly, the more I work on this the more I think the person who I'm more worried about seeing an extended take on the character is Geoff Johns. Who she will be in the Justice League series is still up in the air. But here she's a fierce warrior who, the second Zola asks if she's going to kill her, Diana puts her down and realizes she must protect her.
Its nice to see a positive portrayal of women in comics with a week like this. I look forward to this second issue more than any other so far, if only to see how Azzarello and Chiang continue to develop her.
I was honestly worried about this book. Extremely so. Azzarello is a good writer, but he's confusing to me when it comes to women. His recent Batman: Knight of Vengeance tie in for Flashpoint, while very good, made Martha Wayne the Joker to the Thomas Wayne Batman. Doctor 13, an amazing series with Cliff Chiang, didn't break ground with Traci 13's portrayal, even if she wasn't horrible in it. For me, this comic assuaged that fear. I'm all for it. The problem is, though, what do we make of the voice of Wonder Woman in the book?
Over on the Robot 6 blog, Caleb Mozzocco bemoans the first issue's portrayal of Wonder Woman for not being a compassionate figure. She is a warrior. She hacks off the arm of a centaur and has an aloofness to her entire character. Caleb, like so many others, is in favor of this book. I can only think of one review I've read off hand which was negative of the book while seeming to understand the mythology involved (I did read one which didn't get that its Apollo in the beginning and thus didn't understand that portion of the plot). But Caleb brings up a very good question of what we're to make of who Wonder Woman is.
We all know who Batman is post-Frank Miller. Somewhere between hero and anti-hero who fights crime while crying out for the love of mommy and daddy, unable to hear back. Whether Morrison or Snyder, he is a fairly univocal character. He doesn't kill. He broods while knowing he needs other people. He's pathologically a crime fighter. Its easy to notice when he's written out-of-character.
Superman is less defined than Batman. He's always optimistic and positive, he doesn't kill, he's extremely compassionate and loves humanity. There have been problems in the DCnU portrayal with whether he's too cocky in Justice League (and why he attacks GL and Batman at all) and then in Action Comics where he is confrontational and fights the rats with guns. But, even then, I do think that Morrison gets a young Superman's voice right. He smiles when he runs, he evacuates a building even if it hurts him, he seems to enjoy himself. Those are Superman to me. There are a lot of people who don't get him, so he's less univocal than Batman, but he's still identifiable.
Wonder Woman struggles here. She's compassionate, yes, but how much of a warrior is she? Really, why doesn't she kill? How does she relate to humanity when she's not as identifiably alien as Martian Manhunter nor as human as the other two in the trinity?
In the Odyssey storyline, which I couldn't stomach for more than four issues, she was portrayed as violent. She broke a counter to strong-arm a pawn shop clerk into purchasing an Amazonian artifact. She was doing it to get money someone who needed it, but the overall tone of the character was naive, young, and she lacked true composure.
During Gail Simone's run on the title prior, the goodness of Wonder Woman was emphasized. Coming off of one of the worst things to happen to the character with Amazons Attack as well as, Simone tried to humanize Wonder Woman and emphasize her genuine love even as an outsider to Man's World. Honestly, my only real problem with Simone's run was the alien quality of Diana. There was an exchange I recall between her and Black Canary where she didn't understand her popularity as a fetish object, which just felt a bit tinny to me. Add to that Diana not really getting courtship rituals in the modern era with Nemesis, it just seemed off to me in that regard. Still a great run and one of the first times I really fell in love with the character.
In the Golden Age, Diana was a sexual character who sought liberation from the puritanical Nazi oppressors. She did this through the qualities Marston saw as most feminine. Submission, tenderness, and peace-loving. Two of the three carry through in most portrayal of the character. I'd argue she's a bit too submissive most of the time, but that's another issue since I think Wonder Woman is, of all of the major characters in either company, the best to explore sexuality with due to her origins as a character and I'd like to see her as a sexual dominant as well as pansexual, that's another essay.
In other media, he portrayal in the recent DTV animated movie was off to me because of the gendered violence and that she was a bit too precious. The way she killed Ares in the film also just struck me wrong because of the whole fact Wonder Woman's killing one of her own Gods (this is another issue, though, because I think the Justice League should be battling Ares in addition to just Wonder Woman). In the Justice League TV show, she was kind of bland, honestly. In the face of strong personalities from Hawkgirl, John Stewart, Martian Manhunter and the Flash, she didn't have a great voice of her own. She was a cipher. A necessary pretty face for Batman to leer at from the shadows.
So, who is Wonder Woman in Azzarello's hands? A warrior, first and foremost, but someone who is willing to get out of bed and go to war if someone comes to her and they are under threat. I like this Wonder Woman. She feels, to me, like someone who knows she can kick your ass while, at the same time, being truly willing to do anything for someone who comes to her for help. This panel is, in my opinion, one of the best places where we get her voice under Azzarello:
She will make certain you are safe. Absolutely. She is a warrior, yet she is infinitely compassionate to those who seek her help.
There's still at least one more issue before I'm certain, but Azzarello's Wonder Woman is new yet familiar. She is a violent warrior but she loves life and seeks to protect those who need it. She's a hero.
Honestly, the more I work on this the more I think the person who I'm more worried about seeing an extended take on the character is Geoff Johns. Who she will be in the Justice League series is still up in the air. But here she's a fierce warrior who, the second Zola asks if she's going to kill her, Diana puts her down and realizes she must protect her.
Its nice to see a positive portrayal of women in comics with a week like this. I look forward to this second issue more than any other so far, if only to see how Azzarello and Chiang continue to develop her.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Auteurs and Comic books
I'm pretentious. Extremely so. Due to that, I figured I'd use this blog to spitball an idea I've had for awhile, an auteur look at comic books. Auteur theory is a part of film aesthetics which holds that certain films and filmmakers are remarkable for their completeness of a singular vision, ignoring the other people involved. A classical filmmaker in the analysis is Hitchcock, he's seen as someone who has exerted an absolute and complete control over his work and everything we see on celluloid is essentially Hitchcock. A good contrast would be Green Lantern from this summer where the multiple writer and the lack of vision made the film a bit of a mess, though not necessarily unwatchable (I thought the movie was just oppressively masculine more than anything).
How could this apply to comics? I mean, no matter what, mainstream comics rarely ever are a single vision. Sure, there are indie titles like Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley to pick something shallowly indie (which is to say a very easy reference) and then you have mainstream writer/artists like Rob Liefeld and Tony Daniel, but the way that I'm going to look at this isn't to suggest that there's something particular to the work actually being done by single person. In fact, I'd like to suggest that we can look at comics with multiple writers for their singular vision. This is not an analysis of the indies. It would be easy to make this argument with comics if we looked at indies or webcomics or early Image. Its also not an analysis of writer's biographies. I don't know them so, while this does apply to auteur theory in film, I can't do it here without just looking at people like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Likewise, this won't be a look at the similarities between comics and movies, that's cliche enough to be trite (see, pretentious!). Also, its not a formal or edited essay. I'm just writing as I think it.
The main people I think we should look at, though, are people like Geoff Johns, Brian Bendis and, well, Grant Morrison as far as actual writer, but then someone like Dan Didio (but not his Marvel counterparts) would count under the analysis I'm about to give. Its necessary that anyone I include in this is working in a universe with other writers involved. I want to be able to argue from the perspective of the auteur as controlling story beats.
This actually gives us a fairly firm time to talk about the beginning of the true auteurism in comic books: the crossover. While, certainly, something like Crisis on Infinite Earths is an editorial mandate, it provides the idea of something that's driven by a single vision. In the case of the original Crisis, it was two creators with Len Wein and Marv Wolfman the most responsible, but the germ is planted nonetheless. Truthfully, something like Crisis is far too big to be contained by a single vision. That's one of the main difficulties about building this theory: There are some stories that are too big to be contained to a single artists' vision. But not all of them.
One of the best examples of an auteur storyline, I would argue, is the recent War of the Green Lanterns, indeed the entire Green Lantern corner of DC, that's helmed by Geoff Johns. I do want to acknowledge, first, the difficulty of this analogy in that we saw earlier plot threads hinted at by Johns completely dropped, but bear with me. Also, there will be spoilers. The thing about this plot line that makes it a perfect example of the theory I'm trying to build is that its pure Geoff Johns, even if he has his interpreters. Yes, when Guy Gardner shouts "I love the Corps and hate anyone who wants to destroy it!" we clearly see Tomasi peaking through, and some of the characterization of Kyle in particular is very Bedard, but the overall vision, even in there books, reads as Johns.
The most stunning example of this, to me, is the death of Mogo. Its gratuitous and it continues his recent trend of fucking with things Alan Moore created or was significantly involved in. For other examples of that, look at something like Brightest Day, or even the Sinestro Corps War. The way its done is particular Johns, since its John Stewart harnessing the Black Lantern power as a sniper. It also has a major trademark of Johns, the call back to old stories in a clumsy way. The only story Johns wants to tell with John Stewart would be titled "John Stewart: Planet Killer!" While the Morrison method is to make the references plot significant, Johns is a writer with a mallet who will beat the similarities between his plots and those he liked into you.
The Johns of Green Lantern is the most obvious example of this because Johns, for as fun of a writer as he can be, has a clumsy stumbling over some tropes that he'll bring up obsessively. Its jarring to see Pete Tomasi and Tony Bedard use Johns' voice, but that's what ends up happening. Johns is able to speak through them, though. His story points are his voice on the page. Where Brightest Day, co-written with Tomasi, has a Johns feel, I'd argue against it being an auteur work because he has that writer credit and one cannot say, with utter certainty, Johns begins here and Tomasi here. Something like War of the Green Lanterns has specific parts written by not-Geoff-Johns, and yet he still is in the voice of Tomasi and Bedard.
In contrast, Grant Morrison has the ability to write whatever he wants, and yet he cannot hold up another writer as a hand puppet without every word being garbled. Morrison has auteur qualities, no where is that clearer than his Batman run of the past few years. Yet, the problem becomes that he doesn't give other writers story beats. Nothing Snyder's done with Dick has been because of Morrison except him having Dick as Batman. But again, there's also the problem that its not easy to find characters and concepts that other writers don't kind of have problems with. It only really works when he gives a rough concept, like the Ryan Choi Atom Gail Simone wrote, but in general, with the exception of Damien Wayne, characters like the Doom Patrol and Animal Man end up fairly abandoned or revised once Morrison's gone. Morrison, try as he might, is only an Auteur in the same way Arthur Conan Doyle is. He doesn't exert influence, he's jumbled in metatext and the rule of weird so he becomes inapproachable, or his concepts end up in low level books only a few people read. (Hi, S.H.A.D.E.! Nice to not see you in anything but Freedom Fighters and now Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E., both concepts of Morrison). Morrison's simply too weird for anyone to follow up on him and for it to really work. It becomes campy or goes too far. There are exceptions, I am being very broad, but what happened to Zatanna's assistant from Seven Soldiers, Paul Dini?
What am I saying? There are certain comic book writers who exert and influence, usually simply over a corner of their universe, where they provide a thread through all of the associated books in a given crossover, or even an overall metaplot (this is especially the case in the Lantern-verse). This is not to say we could see this in any work by any writer. Seriously, we're dealing with writers and thus to say that one Gail Simone book reads like Gail Simone is a simple statement. Instead, its about level of influence and that, through the influence, we can see the writer's work even when they are only looming in the background. Bendis and Johns are the best examples, though I'd argue Johns is a better example because Bendis tends to writer all of the Avengers books, his particular region of Marvel.
Johns has such a powerful signature over the Green Lantern universe that you can only call it auteurism. Morrison shakes things up, but we only see remnants of that under other writers. Johns truly has a mark in every book he has a finger in. The last time he didn't when he has enough influence over a single given pocket, was Superman, where he abandoned it for New Krypton and that story felt... jumbled. Tomasi and Bedard must account for Johns' influence on their books, and so we see two signatures at play when Tomasi is holding Guy up as a golden god, but still doing the characteristic Johns violence and sense of nostalgia. GL:EW read very differently prior to War of the Green Lanterns, I may point out. So did GLC. But that's what happens when someone else is writing through other writers.
Are auteurs good for comics? Bad? Well, they aren't common enough to be either. We usually end up without the signature of the other writer except for affiliation and a "universe" (Morrison's Batman) or an individual jealously guards their section (Bendis's Avengers and D'n'A's cosmic stuff). Johns on GL is the clearest, but it makes me wonder what would have happened if DC went through with Sterling Gates's Kid Flash or a Flash Family book while Johns wrote Barry in the main title. I would have been interested in seeing if my theory held water with that. Anyone want to read a book about Mera or the Jackson Hyde Aquaman? Eh? Auteur Aquaman?
How could this apply to comics? I mean, no matter what, mainstream comics rarely ever are a single vision. Sure, there are indie titles like Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley to pick something shallowly indie (which is to say a very easy reference) and then you have mainstream writer/artists like Rob Liefeld and Tony Daniel, but the way that I'm going to look at this isn't to suggest that there's something particular to the work actually being done by single person. In fact, I'd like to suggest that we can look at comics with multiple writers for their singular vision. This is not an analysis of the indies. It would be easy to make this argument with comics if we looked at indies or webcomics or early Image. Its also not an analysis of writer's biographies. I don't know them so, while this does apply to auteur theory in film, I can't do it here without just looking at people like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Likewise, this won't be a look at the similarities between comics and movies, that's cliche enough to be trite (see, pretentious!). Also, its not a formal or edited essay. I'm just writing as I think it.
The main people I think we should look at, though, are people like Geoff Johns, Brian Bendis and, well, Grant Morrison as far as actual writer, but then someone like Dan Didio (but not his Marvel counterparts) would count under the analysis I'm about to give. Its necessary that anyone I include in this is working in a universe with other writers involved. I want to be able to argue from the perspective of the auteur as controlling story beats.
This actually gives us a fairly firm time to talk about the beginning of the true auteurism in comic books: the crossover. While, certainly, something like Crisis on Infinite Earths is an editorial mandate, it provides the idea of something that's driven by a single vision. In the case of the original Crisis, it was two creators with Len Wein and Marv Wolfman the most responsible, but the germ is planted nonetheless. Truthfully, something like Crisis is far too big to be contained by a single vision. That's one of the main difficulties about building this theory: There are some stories that are too big to be contained to a single artists' vision. But not all of them.
One of the best examples of an auteur storyline, I would argue, is the recent War of the Green Lanterns, indeed the entire Green Lantern corner of DC, that's helmed by Geoff Johns. I do want to acknowledge, first, the difficulty of this analogy in that we saw earlier plot threads hinted at by Johns completely dropped, but bear with me. Also, there will be spoilers. The thing about this plot line that makes it a perfect example of the theory I'm trying to build is that its pure Geoff Johns, even if he has his interpreters. Yes, when Guy Gardner shouts "I love the Corps and hate anyone who wants to destroy it!" we clearly see Tomasi peaking through, and some of the characterization of Kyle in particular is very Bedard, but the overall vision, even in there books, reads as Johns.
The most stunning example of this, to me, is the death of Mogo. Its gratuitous and it continues his recent trend of fucking with things Alan Moore created or was significantly involved in. For other examples of that, look at something like Brightest Day, or even the Sinestro Corps War. The way its done is particular Johns, since its John Stewart harnessing the Black Lantern power as a sniper. It also has a major trademark of Johns, the call back to old stories in a clumsy way. The only story Johns wants to tell with John Stewart would be titled "John Stewart: Planet Killer!" While the Morrison method is to make the references plot significant, Johns is a writer with a mallet who will beat the similarities between his plots and those he liked into you.
The Johns of Green Lantern is the most obvious example of this because Johns, for as fun of a writer as he can be, has a clumsy stumbling over some tropes that he'll bring up obsessively. Its jarring to see Pete Tomasi and Tony Bedard use Johns' voice, but that's what ends up happening. Johns is able to speak through them, though. His story points are his voice on the page. Where Brightest Day, co-written with Tomasi, has a Johns feel, I'd argue against it being an auteur work because he has that writer credit and one cannot say, with utter certainty, Johns begins here and Tomasi here. Something like War of the Green Lanterns has specific parts written by not-Geoff-Johns, and yet he still is in the voice of Tomasi and Bedard.
In contrast, Grant Morrison has the ability to write whatever he wants, and yet he cannot hold up another writer as a hand puppet without every word being garbled. Morrison has auteur qualities, no where is that clearer than his Batman run of the past few years. Yet, the problem becomes that he doesn't give other writers story beats. Nothing Snyder's done with Dick has been because of Morrison except him having Dick as Batman. But again, there's also the problem that its not easy to find characters and concepts that other writers don't kind of have problems with. It only really works when he gives a rough concept, like the Ryan Choi Atom Gail Simone wrote, but in general, with the exception of Damien Wayne, characters like the Doom Patrol and Animal Man end up fairly abandoned or revised once Morrison's gone. Morrison, try as he might, is only an Auteur in the same way Arthur Conan Doyle is. He doesn't exert influence, he's jumbled in metatext and the rule of weird so he becomes inapproachable, or his concepts end up in low level books only a few people read. (Hi, S.H.A.D.E.! Nice to not see you in anything but Freedom Fighters and now Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E., both concepts of Morrison). Morrison's simply too weird for anyone to follow up on him and for it to really work. It becomes campy or goes too far. There are exceptions, I am being very broad, but what happened to Zatanna's assistant from Seven Soldiers, Paul Dini?
What am I saying? There are certain comic book writers who exert and influence, usually simply over a corner of their universe, where they provide a thread through all of the associated books in a given crossover, or even an overall metaplot (this is especially the case in the Lantern-verse). This is not to say we could see this in any work by any writer. Seriously, we're dealing with writers and thus to say that one Gail Simone book reads like Gail Simone is a simple statement. Instead, its about level of influence and that, through the influence, we can see the writer's work even when they are only looming in the background. Bendis and Johns are the best examples, though I'd argue Johns is a better example because Bendis tends to writer all of the Avengers books, his particular region of Marvel.
Johns has such a powerful signature over the Green Lantern universe that you can only call it auteurism. Morrison shakes things up, but we only see remnants of that under other writers. Johns truly has a mark in every book he has a finger in. The last time he didn't when he has enough influence over a single given pocket, was Superman, where he abandoned it for New Krypton and that story felt... jumbled. Tomasi and Bedard must account for Johns' influence on their books, and so we see two signatures at play when Tomasi is holding Guy up as a golden god, but still doing the characteristic Johns violence and sense of nostalgia. GL:EW read very differently prior to War of the Green Lanterns, I may point out. So did GLC. But that's what happens when someone else is writing through other writers.
Are auteurs good for comics? Bad? Well, they aren't common enough to be either. We usually end up without the signature of the other writer except for affiliation and a "universe" (Morrison's Batman) or an individual jealously guards their section (Bendis's Avengers and D'n'A's cosmic stuff). Johns on GL is the clearest, but it makes me wonder what would have happened if DC went through with Sterling Gates's Kid Flash or a Flash Family book while Johns wrote Barry in the main title. I would have been interested in seeing if my theory held water with that. Anyone want to read a book about Mera or the Jackson Hyde Aquaman? Eh? Auteur Aquaman?
Saturday, June 11, 2011
My September Pull List
I'm not a Marvel guy. I'll read it, but I buy DC and I read Marvel. I just prefer the DC stable. So, due to that, I've been struggling with September. I started a blog earlier going through the 52 books, but it was long and boring, but I did want to think about my list. From 52, I've gotten it down to 30 to try or buy, due to budget. They're listed based upon my optimism toward the books.
Obviously, I'm not a Batman fan. The only one of the 4 titles Bruce will be in, only 1 made it for, after much debate between it and Damien in Batman and Robin. I'm trying Demon Knights based on "I loved Paul Cornell in Action and Knight and Squire," Teen Titans based on blind and foolish hope and I, Vampire based on... Well... I have no idea it looks like the most unusual book for DC to be putting out so, why not?
As to what I expect to be reading in a year or even a couple month? Much less, and then I'll experiment with other books. The books I'm most excited for are Action by Morrison and Morales and then JLD, I love supernatural teams.
That's it, something deep later.
1. Action Comics
2. Justice League Dark
3. Justice League
4. Justice League International
5. Wonder Woman
6. Batwoman
7. Green Lantern
8. Green Lantern Corps
9. Green Lanterns: New Guardians
10. Aquaman
11. Flash
12. DC Universe Presents
13. Blue Beetle
14. Static Shock
15. Stormwatch
16. Frankenstein: Agent Of SHADE
17. Animal Man
18. Batgirl
19. Red Lanterns
20. Swamp Thing
21. Superman
22. Resurrection Man
23. I, Vampire
24. Fury Of Firestorm
25. Mr Terrific
26. Batman
27. Green Arrow
28. Teen Titans
29. Suicide Squad
30. Demon Knights
Obviously, I'm not a Batman fan. The only one of the 4 titles Bruce will be in, only 1 made it for, after much debate between it and Damien in Batman and Robin. I'm trying Demon Knights based on "I loved Paul Cornell in Action and Knight and Squire," Teen Titans based on blind and foolish hope and I, Vampire based on... Well... I have no idea it looks like the most unusual book for DC to be putting out so, why not?
As to what I expect to be reading in a year or even a couple month? Much less, and then I'll experiment with other books. The books I'm most excited for are Action by Morrison and Morales and then JLD, I love supernatural teams.
That's it, something deep later.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
A first little bit of stuff about Wonder Woman and Sexuality
On the twitter, Gail Simone had a hashtag today which was "weirdthingsabouttherelaunch," and one of my responses (which Gail actually was kind enough to retweet) was
which wasn't something I said without thinking about it. And substantially editing it for the character limit. Still, its something that, since the initial tag Gail put out, has been a germ in my mind. Why couldn't there be a sex positive comic based around Wonder Woman?
Obviously, comic books have issues with diversity. In the whole relaunch, I could only find 7 books which are anchored to female characters, and of them 4 are Bat-related (girl, woman, Catwoman and Birds), then its Supergirl, Voodoo (which is a character I know nothing about but the cover of the book has me scared for the contents) and Wonder Woman herself. I don't include Hawk & Dove because its drawn by Rob Liefeld. Also, Hawk has first billing and Dove is defined in relation to Hawk, not autonomously. Bird gets to count because it is based upon being a female team. So, of the characters, only two aren't primarily the distaff counterparts to men, and while I am glad to see DC putting out a book, presumably as an on going, which stars a woman, again, the cover has issues to me.
Add to this, we only can confirm one LGBT book (Batwoman), though hopefully Apollo and Midnighter will maintain their fantastic relationship, and we're not going to expect anything positive coming from DC in terms of sexuality and women. Plus, Wonder Woman's written by Brian Azzarello, who, while a great writer, is not known for his positive and enlightened portrayal of women. I don't mean to throw him under the bus as a sexist, but he's just not know for being like Greg Rucka, who does write positive female characters. I don't know enough about Azzarello to tar him before reading his Wonder Woman, but I'm just nervous for one of my favorite characters after the JMS relaunch, which was weird and now seemingly completely inconsequential so I stopped picking it up to make room for other books.
Yet, that's the world that is, not the world that could be. To get to that, let's look at Wonder Woman's history. She was a sexual character from the start and her creator didn't really hide that. She was an exploration of kink and fetish on a grand scale. Her creator was known for being in a polyamorous relationship and William Moulton Marston, claimed she “satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them.” I'd argue with him on that one in his book, but I do need to read more classic Wonder woman, so feel free to correct me if that's accurate.
Compounding the bondage issue, if we look at Diana's love interests, there has always been a push and pull, they have to prove their greatness as warriors and they're at least her equal in terms of strength in that way. Then, the DCnU rumor is that she'll be hookin' up with Superman, which is to say that, even though Superman is definitely not the most dominating guy in the League (Hi, Batman!), he's more powerful than her and thus the one who can win her physically. Or she'll be with Batman (Justice League was a great cartoon), who, again, while her physical inferior is ridiculously domineering and wouldn't work in a D/s relationship for the essential problem of the importance of consent in them.
Still, let's take Marston's spirit into the modern era and mix it with some feminist philosophy. Due to who she is as a character, Wonder Woman is uniquely placed as a possible ambassador, not just from the Amazon's to man's world, but from the world of fetish to the vanilla. She could still be a great superheroine, but in her personal life she could have a relationship with a queer male, and it would be able to make sense based upon her history. Wonder Woman would be able to be an exploration of a positive sexually dominant female role. I can't honestly see any other existing character able to do this in a positive way.
I'll write more about this, this is a rough prologue to a larger idea. A prologomena, because I'm pretentious. Wonder Woman is one of the most complex and fascinating characters in comics. I want to write a series of posts exploring the issue. I also want to write more on this idea in particular, and why I think its important and why Wonder Woman would be perfect for it. I promise other posts will be more thought out than this one.
Obviously, comic books have issues with diversity. In the whole relaunch, I could only find 7 books which are anchored to female characters, and of them 4 are Bat-related (girl, woman, Catwoman and Birds), then its Supergirl, Voodoo (which is a character I know nothing about but the cover of the book has me scared for the contents) and Wonder Woman herself. I don't include Hawk & Dove because its drawn by Rob Liefeld. Also, Hawk has first billing and Dove is defined in relation to Hawk, not autonomously. Bird gets to count because it is based upon being a female team. So, of the characters, only two aren't primarily the distaff counterparts to men, and while I am glad to see DC putting out a book, presumably as an on going, which stars a woman, again, the cover has issues to me.
 |
| That face doesn't say "I'm a superhero, I'll kick your ass" as much as "Oh, please, strong man, help me figure this out while I pout" |
Yet, that's the world that is, not the world that could be. To get to that, let's look at Wonder Woman's history. She was a sexual character from the start and her creator didn't really hide that. She was an exploration of kink and fetish on a grand scale. Her creator was known for being in a polyamorous relationship and William Moulton Marston, claimed she “satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them.” I'd argue with him on that one in his book, but I do need to read more classic Wonder woman, so feel free to correct me if that's accurate.
 |
| Yeah... |
Compounding the bondage issue, if we look at Diana's love interests, there has always been a push and pull, they have to prove their greatness as warriors and they're at least her equal in terms of strength in that way. Then, the DCnU rumor is that she'll be hookin' up with Superman, which is to say that, even though Superman is definitely not the most dominating guy in the League (Hi, Batman!), he's more powerful than her and thus the one who can win her physically. Or she'll be with Batman (Justice League was a great cartoon), who, again, while her physical inferior is ridiculously domineering and wouldn't work in a D/s relationship for the essential problem of the importance of consent in them.
Still, let's take Marston's spirit into the modern era and mix it with some feminist philosophy. Due to who she is as a character, Wonder Woman is uniquely placed as a possible ambassador, not just from the Amazon's to man's world, but from the world of fetish to the vanilla. She could still be a great superheroine, but in her personal life she could have a relationship with a queer male, and it would be able to make sense based upon her history. Wonder Woman would be able to be an exploration of a positive sexually dominant female role. I can't honestly see any other existing character able to do this in a positive way.
I'll write more about this, this is a rough prologue to a larger idea. A prologomena, because I'm pretentious. Wonder Woman is one of the most complex and fascinating characters in comics. I want to write a series of posts exploring the issue. I also want to write more on this idea in particular, and why I think its important and why Wonder Woman would be perfect for it. I promise other posts will be more thought out than this one.
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