Gain A Little, Lose A Little

via Kirk in the Box, who can always be counted on to point and mark the crazy, freaky, mind blowing and other glee-I-snarfed-your-brain:

Devil's Due Publishing: BARACK THE BARBARIAN

And based on these scans over at Kirk's, I want this comic. It's not just the fantasy spin on something we all saw playing live last year and it's not the chance to get in on the ground floor on a Conan type myth-arc (though unless they offer digital downloads at a reasonable price, my ground will be a trade eta: Pullboxonline.com!) - it's that I had a hell of a lot more hope Pre March 2009. This could help me hold on to that feeling again.

I'm black, and gay, disappointed in America's seeming continued regime of torture, the lack of transparency as promised, several full of BS statements and acts by the Obama Administration towards non Americans and smaller or destabilized foreign governments - the list goes on. And I've been comforting myself with thoughts of The West Wing and hoping someone writes down on a napkin: Let Barack Be Barack.

I didn't think Obama was the Messiah, but I desperately wanted change and he seemed like he would definitely be a change. Moreover he seemed to understand the need for change. He seemed to understand the respect for leadership and government that was missing and why it was important and how it fit into the fabric of the US.

But lately I've ended up feeling like he is simply a better brand of liar - better because he doesn't deny reality while lying about it, making the behind the scene wheeling and dealing more obvious.

Barak the Barbarian? Doesn't have to hold to or be responsible for non-Fiction Barack's actions. He can rekindle my dying hope, while kicking monster ass and being as amazing a hero as the writers can imagine.

My one hesitation, is Manny The Fixer, described by Kirk as a 'sneaky sidekick'. I'm hoping those are his words and not actually in the comic since it makes me twitch as anti-semetic.

But Hilaria of the Amazons? After all the strife and ugly of the nomination process - Hilaria of the Amazons is, well, the same kind of fictional second chance, but one I didn't realize would make me feel so much better.

And with Larry Hama as the writer, I have to wonder if Red Sarah's (why is she called that if her hair's dark? I'm hoping this is a reference to her sword being red with blood. eta: Red Sonja has/d red hair ) resemblance to The Baroness is on purpose.

PoC writer, PoC main character and hopefully many PoC supporting characters to come.

And now for the loss

Cover art for, and snips of the 'Post Racial Commentary' accompanying Dwayne Mcduffie's last JSA issue. Warning the commentary is Stupid White Comic Fans being Ugly White Comic Fans.

Glory Be! The World Is Not All Fail

Click to go see some beautiful sneak previews of GLORIUS. She's brown, and she kicks butt to save the world!

It is in fact an entire POC saving the world cast.

I look forward to hearing about when I can buy this adventure. In the meantime, here, have some more art

Thank You Torchbearers.

Random Update (also Webcomics)

I've been messing with my links, trying to group things clearer and also make as neatly as possible some neon signs about what my space here is. Added some links yesterday to The Painted World; which lists some webcomics I follow.

And I'm thinking of doing a general review of Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire. Because I not only enjoy the comic, but slow me, it's just hit me that, because of the Orcs in the storyline, it'd be kind of topical now. :)

If you've got webcomics reccs of your own to share with me, please do. It's a nice way to recharge in the midst of Racefail-09. And I'm discovering that the world of webcomics is breathlessly broad. People tackle all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. I've been sucked into a couple slice of life types that if I'd seen them in a store, I'd never have picked them up at all.

I still want more digitally available comics. And I'd near stab someone for a full colour digital comics portable reader (I am not impressed with Kindle 2.0). But I could see myself spending the $20+ on webcomic trades quite easily. I'd know what I was getting for one thing, and these are stories I'd enjoy re-reading tremendously. I'm currently thinking of going back to 'First Page' for GOBLINS, just for the comfort rush.

ETA: My interests clarified

[PS: Thanks, Lurkerwithout, looking at your recc now. Two pages in and I'm very intrigued.]

Ok Comic Peoples

Why did no one tell me about SISTA SAMURAI!. It's Batman! As a girl! Who's MIXED!!!!!

You are all fired. All of you. The entire lot. I had to find out about this from other sources. What good are you people if you don't tell me about this? How was I supposed to know Kevin Grevioux was doing comics? I read UNDERWORLD for that man. UNDERWORLD, because I liked what he did with the words of an admittedly crap story. Seriously, Romeo & Juliet Redux In 'Transylvania!' + Redux 2 - The Beginning.

Aside: Do you think Transylvanians get upset that the name of their homeland is used as shorthand for Vampire & Werewolves Go To Town? I need to research that.

VIGILANTE! GIRL! BROODING PAIN ON THE INSIDE! ASS KICKING ON THE OUTSIDE!

Where have you people been?

White People Can't Understand Police Corruption

This post is about Genius and my fear it won't get enough votes to get made into a proper series. Right now I'm seriously considering cobbling together something in photoshop and photocopying it at my local library and putting some flyers up and hope people see it. All the kids in my old neighbourhood were big on Myspace and this is a storyline they can understand. It's a storyline I understand.

'Cause like I said in my title; White People Can't Understand Police Corruption.

This thread and this one here on a different livejournal community show people going - "But the author hasn't shown these cops as bad. There's just rampant killing of the police! The police are the good guys! There's not even any racial slurs!!!! WTF??!! They just gunned down officers for no reason!!"


No reason?

NO REASON???!!

"Yeah" Someone else says, '"It's not like this is North Korea or China or something."

So apparently it's only understandable that the police can be fundamentally corrupt; can think of human beings as disposable, if said police are part of a communist government. And it's only understandable automatically that the police are blinded by their own prejudices when said police are Gestapo and the people oppressed are Jews (not even homosexuals and Roma because most people don't know or don't care about that if they pay attention to the Holocaust at all).

GENIUS is a a storyline about a tactical/military genius in the form of a 17 year old girl from South Central LA who plain as hell knows who the enemy is and is organizing her people against said enemy.

Just because you don't see a cop say n*gger doesn't mean they haven't done anything wrong. It's just privilege sure as hell showing because whites can afford to think of the police as their friends and the system as being for them- or at least they could if they weren't involved in protesting the war and getting beat the crap down in St. Paul for the RNC. And even that's not the same, the police there need to come up with some kind of excuse (however flimsy) to buss those asses. To bust a black ass?

1 - Driving while black.

2 - Driving in a 'too expensive car' while black (expensive being relative to the officer in question and his, sometimes her, perception).

3 - Walking while black.

4 - Standing on a street corner with age peers, while black (from ages 13 and up).

5 - Being black and requesting rights and equality.

6 - Being black and a sex worker.

7 - Being black and female and dressed up for clubbing.

8 - Being black and running away from gunshots.

9 -

• 
  "The subject was a black male."



• "We believe the perpertrator was a black male."



• "She said she was held at gunpoint and her car and children were taken from her by a black male."



• "Be on the lookout for a black male, between twenty and forty years of age...."



• "But this was just another incidence of black on black crime."



• "An all time rise in black on black crime."



• "The main police suspect in the case is a black male."

Just because this is the United States of America doesn't mean there's not a whole lot of similarity between here and now in the present and what happened in South Africa before the end of Aparthied. Just because we no longer have to go in through back doors and sit in the back of the bus and we get to apply for jobs alongside whites doesn't mean anything more than how much things all got shifted to the shadows instead of being bold in sin and sunlight.

Now to quote some stupidity from people who refuse to see that the cops have been in a war with blacks (specifically from the ghetto) for a long, long, time.

Goattoucher:
Are they oppressed by the police like the Nazis conquering Europe? Are they oppressed by the police like the British squeesing the lively hood out of the colonials and imprisoning those that speak against them?

I don't live in wonderland, but can you tell me the way to Exaggerationville?

________________


proteus_lives:
Oppression? HAHAHAHAHA. Ever heard of North Korea? China? Burma or take your pick of shitty African countries, Russia, the Middle East and the list goes on. These people oppress themselves, try living in a place like the list and tell us about opression. Her tragic flaw is that she hasn't signed up with the police and is working on taking out the drug dealers and pimps and thugs that make her neighorhood a horrible place.

This is just about misdirected anger.

People only hear about bad cops on tv and the media but the majority of them are good men and women who do their jobs, put their lives on the line and people shit on them.

________________

gwynethfar:
Stupid people aside, I don't think I'd back a comic that showed graphic depictions of law officers being killed. Especially when the comic doesn't make the motive of the main character clear. It's just one big, long "Fuck da police" sequence.

If it had been set up differently, like the cops she was after were all part of a corrupt, underground unit controlled by an evil DA who was targeting the young men of the neighborhood to help keep the drug trade going or something like that, then it would be a good story. Right now it's just, "I am the only black person to ever understand military tactics! Tremble in fear!"


Special Note: Clearly no one's ever told Gwynethfar that Hannibal was black. And she's also convinced the only white villains are mustache twirlers.

________________


suitablyemoname:

1. LOL @ "women in poor communities are allowed to do Women's Work, and therefore men would totally take orders from them".

Sure, the woman might handle all the money, do all of the cooking, and might be the only person in the house with a real job, but if you ask the husband who the Head of Household was, especially if said husband is a gang member with access to all the fun tools that implies, you'd get a very different answer.

2. In which case the mother or alpha woman being the head of household is even more unremarkable if we're trying to assess whether gang members raised in these surroundings would take orders from a 17-year-old girl

Special Note: Cause we all _know_ that shit could only happen to a half white made up character portrayed as real life Margeret Seltzer's Appropriating Memoirs

________________

Over and over and OVER again the black community says - "We do not live in the same world!", We do not. live. in the same world!"

Whoopi Goldberg: " No, no, I, I want you to. But what I need you to understand is the frustration that goes along when you say we live in the same world. It isn’t balanced. And we would like it to be. But you have to understand, you have to listen to the fact that we’re telling you, there are issues, there are huge problems that still affect us. And you’ve got to know this if you want to know us."

And some whites have pointed this out as well. "Black and whites live in two different worlds." They say. "It is different!" they say.

GENIUS seems poised to be yet another voice declaiming this. It's not even out yet, but whites? Still not listening.

ETA: One can vote for GENIUS here on myspace; look for the inset poll. Or here on TopCow's front page, again look for the inset poll at the bottom of the page.

What Makes A Comic Book Artist?

The Merlin asked me earlier today, if I love comics and animation so much, why don't I learn to draw. Apparently one of my younger brothers is teaching himself to draw precisely because of his similar love.

My reply was something along the lines that I consider myself to paint using my words and I hadn't really thought of taking time and energy to learn a new skill from scratch - such as with drawing. But then I came online and stumbled into this post about Greg Land. It led me to this defense of Land. In it Rich of Comic by Comic uses this phrase:

I appreciate what Land can do, even if half of it is from some kind of collage.

That phrase has momentarily rocked my world. While reading the previous admonishment of Land's recycling, reusing and swiping, I'd found myself thinking that he must spend an awful amount of time collecting poses from magazines and tv-stills. I had the thought that if he used that time actually drawing, his skills and speed might improve to the point he wouldn't need to keep doing what he has been doing. But then I realized that given how long he's been allowed to pass with his lightboxing, he probably has a fair enough build up images with which to make collages.

So why aren't more people tracing off collages and creating their own comics? And is that an avenue I'd want to take in order to tell a story? Or is it better to find an artist to collaborate with if I ever decide/want my love of comics to go from appreciation to creation.

Does one need some artistic talent to trace? What if you have a good eye, as Land is thought to do via his composition? Is that enough? Does anyone have any ideas on how long it'd take to become proficient at tracing? Does it count as drawing? Could an entire comic actually be done that way? Should I get a digital camera and go out and take as many pictures of city-life as I can? Should I save interiors from a magazine? Is someone out there besides Land already doing precisely that?

What makes an artist? What constitutes vision?

I don't think I've actively thought about this in terms of drawing/visual representation before.

What's the difference, in technical terms even, between the stills that Land draws (I see them as movie stills/ movie storyboarding) and panels that speak of action. I know when I look at comics I often see the characters moving in my head. Realistically I know they're standing still, but as I read and involve myself in the story, there's movement - I read it from the panels. Where does that sense of movement come from and is that the only really important thing when it comes to drawing comics? Is it one of the most important things?

For example, with Land, I've often found myself bored with the story, because the pacing seems slow. Is that impression a result of the lack of movement?

Does it matter to most readers what the quality of art is? The defense of Land also mentioned the 'too plastic' sensation I've gotten with a lot of Land's drawings. I've mentioned before that I find photorealistic artwork staid - more slideshow than living breathing tale. But is that something that can be ignored in favour of good storytelling? Or is it not just the writing, but also the artwork that makes or breaks the tale?

I know for me, some of my absolutely favourite animated stories, are my favourites because of the combination of artwork and writing/dialogue. One of the reasons that I know I'm unlikely to appreciate certain classics of Japanese animation is because the artwork's often too blocky for me to enjoy watching it. I can't really define it at the moment but the art, background and foreground has to be all of a piece to me, and living; the creation of a world. In some animation it feels to my eyes as if the buildings and characters and rubble and sky are all different pieces instead of one whole. It's not just a flipbook level of animation with jerky movements, it's as if a different person drew the buildings, or the buildings were stock drawings added in against the cel.

Hmm, I've rambled a bit. But I think I'm asking: What makes a comic book artist an artist? Should we be thanking the inkers and colourists for making Land's compositions seem alive to some? I know when I've found a story I want to read that involves Land's artwork, I check the colourist first. The beauty of their creations may sway me.

Figuring Out What Universal Means

In the midst of 'rarrrr' over Wowio, I scrambled to check out Shadowgirls and was happily surprised to search and find that it's a web comic.

Shadowgirls reminds me strongly of Hack/Slash (Devil's Due Publishing). I want to talk about that resemblance and the fact that I like these stories / these comics, with their strong, white, female protagonists.

There are times, like I mentioned in Flipsides last night, where it doesn't take much at all to imagine most of the main cast of a given comic or book as being PoC. But there are other times when who the character is and what their experiences are and how they've been formed and how they react to any given stimuli is very informed by what they look like, what their skin colour is, what their life experience is - as white; Hack/Slash and Shadowgirls are such two comics for me.

I've spoken of Cassie before; daughter of a school lunch lady who then becomes a serial killer and then an immortal horror film serial killer. Being so close to being able to conform but internally - mentally and emotionally - being so far away from 'normal' is part of what makes Cassie dynamic to me. Her mother's status as being border-line and having things push her over the edge is another part. And on top of all of that - being percieved as 'poor white trash' - I've found the themes universal. Shadowgirls really made me think about why I think of such themes as universal while at the same time acknowledging the fact I don't think the storylines could work with PoC.

Be warned, I have no idea if I'm going to be able to explain myself properly.

Shadowgirls involves a woman, Charon, who goes missing / is deemed a runaway when she's in 10th grade (that's around 14/15 in the US I think). She's found again some months later, but she's pregnant and apparently suffering through a psychotic episode. Years later the plot kicks it up when her daughter, Beka, is now a teenager.

The plot's set in a small town, Innsmouth. Small town politics and social mores are all over everything. How a small town reacts when a teenager shows up pregnant; how they teach their children to respond to the 'bastard child'; how they treat the unwed mother; how they think about themselves. The undercurrents that bind a small town together from family power plays to highschool dynamics that never mature - it's all there. And I found myself nodding with comprehension as I read.

Now maybe it's a case that PoC in the US (and elsewhere) have to understand white life and white dynamics because it's everywhere and we have to learn to navigate it (from whence comes the code switching). So maybe what I think I'm seeing as universal, isn't and is really only universal in so far that if you're white or have been deemed white in the last fifty years, it's something you could relate to.

Yet I don't think that's it - I hope that's not it. The suffocation of a small town seems similar to the possible suffocation in a small village or any other small self supporting population area. The weight of traditions and social maneuverings seems universal to me. I mean, a girl goes missing and the only one who cares what happens to her when she comes back is her grandmother. To everyone else she's a slut who got what's coming to her...

[ Remind me at some other point in time to discuss/'think out loud' the conflict in the anti-choice argument where a child is both precious and to be protected while simultaneously being a punishment to women and an anchor meant to hold her down. It might explain why they tend not to give a damn about the child once it's born. Because when s/he can breathe on their own, they're now the albatross to be hung around the neck of the mother; who shouldn't get any help because THIS IS WHAT SHE DESERVES!]

Where was I? Oh yeah. Small town shunning. Charon and Becka have managed to carve out an existence for themselves, or rather Charon has carved out an existence for her daughter - even while she seems to teeter on a self destructive edge. And mothers putting one foot in front of the other purely for their children; mothers who refuse to have their mistakes or perceived mistakes reflect on their children? I can understand that. I think that's universal. The fact that there are supernatural influences in everything that's happened so far, with a touch of small town conspiracy (public and possibly also private) only adds to that.

Hack/Slash has Cassie's origins as similar. A small town. The school lunch lady. A disappearing father. A picked on daughter. And then things get weird and bloody.

I suppose Cassie and Charon are similar to me in that Cassie is trying not to let who her mother was define her, even as it so obviously does - but at least she's dealing with it in an active manner. Whereas Charon doesn't care anymore if the town tries to define her but she refuses to let them define her daughter because of who her mother is and what they think she's done and what they think that says about her (Charon) and thus consequently Becka.

But I haven't gotten into the whole 'But why did you bring up race in the first place, Willow?'.

I also read Scar Tissue last night. And it was meh - ok, I guess. Maybe a 4 on a scale of 1-10. Not horrible, but it had enough things that distracted me that it didn't get a higher score. And what distracted me? The fact that there was nothing in the story as it was laid out, that meant the characters had to be white.

If Cassie or Charon were WoC, the undercurrent (in a well done comic at least) of racism and how that played into how people treated them; how that gave people the mental impression that they had some sort of right to treat them as inferior or only worthy of mockery and bullying; that would change the story and change the tone. Cassie and Charon would already be set up as OTHER and any supernatural entanglement in their lives would only make them even more OTHER. And people would still feel they had the right to have treated them the way they did because see - there's the proof of the other.

Scar Tissue on the other hand is a story about a sickly boy who gets a needed heart transplant. But his organ donor is a bad guy; a super powered bad guy. And the powers begin to seep into his body and possibly take over his life.

All the while reading it, I was very aware of the fact that the group of brothers, could have been Black or Chinese or Japanese or Latino. They could have been African immigrants or from the Caribbean or from South East Asia. They could have been second generation or third of East Indian parentage. They could have been NDN/First Nations. Changing the race of the characters wouldn't change the story at all. There would still be a protective older brother, a bit of a wastrel, if well meaning middle brother and the younger brother they're determined to protect. And then there's a girlfriend involved in the storyline and she could have been any number of backgrounds as well and it also wouldn't have changed a thing to the storyline. She'd still want to protect this family of brothers because they're part of her chosen family.

The only reason they're white, is because white is so often the default.

Now I'm well aware that Cassie and Charon (and Becka) are more than likely white because it's considered the default as well. It's possible in Shadowgirls that despite a moment where one individual is picked on because she's half Japanese (I believe) the concept of Charon and Becka as anything but white didn't cross their minds. But there is the fact that changing the race of those characters would change the path of the story.

Now I feel like I'm repeating myself and not saying anything.

But I guess I did make part of my point last night. The fact that it's so easy for me to see the characters in Scar Tissue as characters who could have been PoC says something about how I view the world. And the fact that white is the default for so many creators says something about their world view. Because I don't want to pick on the creators of Scar Tissue. I'm not calling them racist. I'm not even calling them blind. They had a vision and in their vision - everyone looked just like them; except for the token WoC in the superhero team that shows up near the end - y'know, for the traditional diversity.

But there is something going on when a creator's story could be universal - three brothers trying to look out for one another - and they're white, the people they interact with are white, the doctors are white, the people in the street are white, the police and FBI are white.....

Maybe it's not that these stories aren't universal the way Shadowgirls and Hack/Slash are. Maybe it's that the universal themes are muddied by privilege. Maybe the two comics that move me so much, move me because I can't imagine the heroines as being anything else but what they are. And since I can't, I can pay attention to the universal themes. Whereas most of the time I read a comic and I'm just very, painfully aware of a void.

Flipsides

I need to find some minority super hero characters to read. Or maybe I should phrase that as - I need to take the time to organize my reading lists so that I have CoC to hand. Because it's getting ridiculous how many times I open a story and find myself counting / find myself realizing there's no reason the main characters (not the bad guys) couldn't be black or some other non white ethnicity. It's that the writers never thought of it, because to be not white is to be OTHER. And they're writing what they know in a genre they know and that genre's never showed them anything different.

But it's a bit energy draining to realize how little effort it takes for me to shift a group of brothers - black, the cop girlfriend - latina, the doctor - south asian (South Asian?).

I think the draining part comes from realizing how differently I see the world compared to these creators.

The odd flipside to this slightly sapping situation (ooh, alliteration) is that there are some things I read where I never for a second feel a need to switch races. Shadowgirls, a comic that I've discovered is a webcomic is one such property. The small town set up with its built in biases wouldn't work if I switched the races of the main characters around. The undercurrent would become something different.

On the other hand my simpatico for lack of another term, with the protagonists in that web comic is seriously strong.

Web comic reviews coming up sometime next week then? Or something else?

Analysis takes my mind off physical pain and I'm having a serious flare right now.

Open Letter: To The Occasional Superheroine

Dear Valerie D’Orazio,

I thought I could not say something. But it turns out I can't stay quiet. Whether we really want to or not, Fans of Colour, Fans of Cloak & Dagger are watching you.

I know you don't stop talking about the issues of agency for female heroines in the big two and the issues of agency for female writers, artists, inkers and colourists. But you are not someone who immediately comes to my mind when I think of Ally to People of Colour. And all the hype surrounding your love of Tyrone quite frankly scares me.

Tyrone already is a quiet, mysterious, dangerously powerful, black man, attached forever to a petite blonde, white woman. The opportunities for you to trip and fall flat on your face in a pile of privilege and unintentional but still incredibly painful racism is HUGE.

This is Marvel, the company that's done missteps with Misty Knight / Heroes for Hire / getting Black Hair right and/or bothering to give a damn. I don't see you getting any help or caring from that direction not to fall on your face.

And while it's true, comics being what they are and have been becoming, a Cloak & Dagger mini series can be ignored and attempted to be forgotten far easier than if you were writing the sequel to a book long since gone out of print - it doesn't make the stakes any less big.

Please don't screw up.

Yeah, I actually said please.

The Romans brought devastation, but they called it peace

Following links surrounding the "BUT YOU CAN'T PUBLISH MY RACIST REJECTION LETTER!", I came across a beautiful gem from Betty Candy on The Hathor Legacy.

The essay is entitled; Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test. Wikipedia 'Bechdel Test' with 'Dykes to Watch Out For' if you need a definition. This essay is simply beautiful, simply brilliant but not for the obvious reason. You see this essay exemplifies to me the mentality of dominant comic book industry powers. And it's summed up beautifully in this part of the final paragraph.

There was no way Hollywood really believed what it was saying about boys who’d grown up with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor as action heroes, and so there was no way to change the system from within. I concluded Hollywood was was dominated by perpetual pre-adolescent boys making the movies they wanted to see, and using the “target audience” - a construct based on partial truths and twisted math - to perpetuate their own desires. Having never grown up, they still saw women the way Peter Pan saw Wendy: a fascinating Other to be captured, treasured and stuffed into a gilded cage. Where we didn’t talk. To each other. About anything other than men.

Why does Dust's niqāb and modest dress, incorrectly referred to in panels as a burqa, have to tug at her body to show the round fullness of her breasts against the black cloth, or pull against the curve of her ass or drape tightly near her waist?

Because Dust is an exotic female other.

Why do female superheroines wear bathing suits without even a modest skirt flap, or not wear pants, or like Misty Knight are portrayed as bra-less with ample bosoms drawn bouncing (despite her level of physical activity, her having been a former cop, or the pull against the flesh her bionic arm would have on her pectoral muscles)?

Because they might be heroes but they're secondary and they should be a bit of decoration and titillation while the real heroes, the white male heroes are getting things done.

Inconvenient and useless peepholes to the navel or chest? Fighting THONGS despite the factual reality of gravity and ride ups? Apparently male heroes think ahead enough to wear a cup to protect themselves in battle. But Wonder Woman, among others, has to stop mid-fight to pick her thong out of her genital cracks or misplace a kicking blow because something just pulled very uncomfortably around her nether lips.

More distasteful and painful for me, within this beautifully rounded theory is the realization that when these men were growing up, there WERE NO minority characters in prominence. So their continued fantasies don't include PoC, or homosexuals, transexuals or the disabled and certainly not anyone over a certain age. These are the fantasies of youth!

Batman Beyond was more ground breaking than I realized when I was watching it on Saturday mornings. Bruce was old but still extremely vital. As was Barbara Gordon! Max was black and female and a genius! Even if she was underused. Dana was Japanese. And even if I couldn't stand her - interracial relationship right there! And Epilogue shows she stayed with Terry to the end (quite possibly life became easier once he told/or she learned of the truth).

So it's not all of this old guard filled with perpetual Peter Pans. But it is enough. Enough that Vixen can't be dark skinned because dark skinned women were never in the youthful sexual fantasies of those now in power. And there's no need for them to pay attention to the message they're sending of "All black men look alike", when they make all the black male heroes bald and only discernible via their costume/colours. Because only politics is forcing them to include black male characters into their power fantasies as other than comic relief and lackeys. So black heroes get stuck in the background as scenery so they don't intrude into the fantasy any more than is absolutely necessary.

Gays? Nonexistent. They never fantasied about queers.

The disabled? Matt Murdock can see via other senses and Barbara Gordon used to be a librarian so she's used to sitting on her ass all day. Do note too that Barbara in a wheel chair didn't come alive as a three dimensional character until Gail Simone ¹ because her childhood fantasies sure as hell included a whip-smart woman and a whip smart woman wouldn't let her still functioning brain go to waste.

Transexuals? Please. They're only good for odd bodyswitching arcs for a good laugh. Cause 'eeewh'.

Polynesians? uhmmm What?

East Asians? Hey, we have kungfu masters! Ok, kung fu master who teach white guys! But they're there doing their job, giving the Western world a mystical edge!

South Asians? ...? What's a South Asian?

Middle Easterners? Aren't they always the enemy? We've got plenty of bad sheiks.

North Africans? Say what? Huh, Egypt's in Africa?? Well I guess we have a couple mystical Egyptian powers somewhere, granted to white folk. But that's all mummy's and crap. Oh, Morocco is in North Africa? They have all those women in the mysterious sexy clothing. Total scene background.

South Africans? This isn't a political comic.

Over at K-Box in the Box, Kirk's been keeping track of the sales of Brand New Day. They're not good. And there's talk pooled in corners of the blogsphere about the division growing in Spidey fans because one man got the chance to re-create from scratch his adolescent fantasy about his hero.

In a follow up essay, Betty Candy goes on in another brilliant piece of layered out thinking to discuss the perpetuation of biases and promotion of pro Anglo Westernism and how laziness and stubbornness prevents industry from mining profit from disenfranchised groups.

Laziness and stubbornness .... put them in a pot, stir them around what do you get? Fear of change.

I had someone anonymously comment to one of my recent posts that 'being PC is thought control and changes language by cutting out and forgetting words and phrases'. I'm summarizing, mind you because they sure as hell aren't getting a direct c/p for such tripe. Tripe, because languages change! English wouldn't exist if German and Latin hadn't changed, if Greek hadn't changed. Dutch wouldn't exist if German hadn't changed. The languages that don't change, DIE. Languages also die, because the people who speak it were ignored or killed. A living language often means a living people, non-stagnant, a growing, evolving civilization.

The language of film is stagnant at the core, around the edges, in independents and minority supported festivals it's changed and so lives and grows.

The language of comics is also stagnant at the core. Around its edges are small supported projects, trickles, where there's growth and diverging pathways, where new words are discovered and shared and with it new ways of seeing the world.

I can't help thinking about the fact that Rome fell. It didn't fall in a day. But fall it did and now we have what's left after the ravages of the Dark Ages took their due. There are monuments and clues and hints as to this great civilization and the amazing thought they had at the time. But then they stagnated; they dismissed and tried to ignore others, the need to change, the fact that some words, some concepts would need to be put aside in order for new growth,like a plant that needs pruning, Change was smothered; and while it struggled for breath, it was maybe even laughed at.

The world is changing. The audiences are changing and becoming more global. Film should change. Publishing should change. Comics, should change. They should expand and incorporate. They should be more than the old glory dreams of a priviledged few, who fiddle while it all burns around them.

_____

1. I am corrected by LurkerWithout, who's been corrected by Elayne   Re: Simone & Ostrander / ie Kim Yale (Ostrander).

I <3 my readership! I<3 that I have readership.

A hideous thing was tainted by the rest

Ever notice how when you start talking to a friend, all the ire you have inside of you comes bubbling out and you go - whoa, I didn't know I felt that much about it.

Well more coming to you about what happens to Dazzler (and the rest of Excalibur) in issues 16-24. BUT FIRST...

ShadowLine imprint of Image Comics has a contest. Who Wants To Create a Superheroine

I am about to get frank, ugly, accusatory, bitchy and a whole lot of other unpleasantness right now. So, grab popcorn.

Have you looked at Franchesco's art?  I saw in his gallery a picture of a proud, gritty, Moon Knight. But all his images of female characters are the kind of things that immediately turn me off investigating a comic; overly large breasts, odd body compositions and unnecessary crotch shots.

And Franchesco, because he will be defining the character's look (with input from the writer) will own 50% of the creation. There went any idea, any thought, any possible urge I had of entering the contest. 

Can they be serious about wanting a strong heroine when the artist they choose for the project is one with that kind of style? The blurb mentions them wanting a strong heroine as a counter balance to Bomb Queen, their most popular title.

Bomb Queen by the way is a villianess who wears pants that barely cover her mons, thus showing off her thong; who has a reckless disregard for human life and who controls a town wherein apparently schoolchildren can buy guns and television hostess appear nude on camera. In fact there's quite a lot of  live live girls, nude nude! going on in the city with several touches of female paedophiliacs.

Frankly if there's an underlying equality for the sexes message in the whole thing, it's lost on me. I'm too busy being skeezed by the associations of wild out of control woman + crazy sexuality mesh child abuse. And there was a scene discussing their crazy version of survivor showing an afro-ed black woman, petting the hair of a bondaged blonde girl-child that just scratched nails down my metaphorical spine. If you don't know why that image might upset me, I suggest you find a website somewhere on the internet and get schooled about racism, and stereotypes. It might explain why I wasn't enjoying the weak black man as mayor either.

Now all this to do more than say that Bomb Queen is not my cup of tea. It's obvious I shan't be buying it.

But Bomb Queen's mention does leave me thinking if this contest is nothing but a PR stunt because they do realize some of the inadvertent messages in their most popular comic.

They've also stressed that the less dark the better. So they want a bright, upbeat, non-gritty super-heroine. But when I combine what they seem to want with the artist they chose, my first thought is fluff piece.

Now granted a character doesn't have to be (or stay if so originally created) a bit of fluff heroine. And sparkles and kindness and joy and modesty do not a fluffy heroine make - necessarily. Heck if I thought Franchesco could draw a black woman without making her look like an ape, I'd probably sit down and think more about possibilities.

But strong heroine and breasts bulging all over the fucking place aren't connected associations in my head. I've seen his art-up of Diana / Wonder Woman.  Waists smaller than a woman's head does not speak 'Strong ass kicking savior of the female persuasion' to me. Check out his art-piece labelled 'Frankie' I think that's Glactucus in the corner, but I'm too busy going 'What the fuck Bukkake ?' It's all part of why I think the man would draw  African Descendeds as a type of 'black face' while also not knowing what to do with actual booty - besides sticking a thong up in it.

I sigh - I really do like the fact that Image made Invincible available to the general public (more thoughts on why was it the Asian girl who's a sex fiend a bit later)

Oh and yes, my title is from a Cranberries song.

Got the name.