And in Music News...


I saw these guys live last night.

I can't say much except...

Wow.

Just...wow.

Oh, Willow, Willow, Willow, Don't You KNOW....???

I just read this post from Avalon's Willow, in which she took issue with Vixen's skin pigmentation in the above panel. Here is my favorite excerpt from that post:

There are only a handful of minority characters, in your universe DC. And while yes, said characters totally kick ass, that is no excuse for you to be cavalier. There's no reason for this not to have been caught.

And then in the comments she goes on to post this:

I want my superheroes to be precious. I want the same concern over features and skin tone as happened over Citizen's Steel's crotch.

When I read commentary like the examples above, I just have to laugh*.

(* "Laugh" meaning "totally fucking agree with you".)

Oh, Willow, Willow, Willow.

Do you really think the job of DC editors is to maintain character consistency and quality control???

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAA!

Of course not!

The job of DC editors is to pitch and mandate inane companywide crossovers to their writers!!

I mean, come on, these are the same people who couldn't keep the gender of Tempest's baby consistent!

Oh, Willow.

You are so prehistoric**.

(** "Prehistoric" meaning "Dead-on balls accurate".)

Show Me, Don't Tell Me: The Trouble With Patriot

Recently there have been a string of interesting articles regarding minority, and particularly African-American, characters in comics. Since I've started blogging, I've read some thought-provoking posts of other bloggers like David Brothers and Cheryl Lynn about minority heroes and heroines and their treatment in comics. But I've noticed that, for the most part, one voice has been conspicuously absent from the debate.

Mine.

There have been a couple reasons for this:

1. My creative muse is kind of sporadic to begin with, since I have very busy work and social lives. I'm not a daily blogger. I generally post whenever I get the time and the inspiration, which is not always frequent. I've even toyed with calling myself "the Fred Thompson of Comic Bloggers".

2. My view on solving problems with minority characters is pretty simplistic. It's the Perezian view: The more, the merrier. More minority characters, more artists, more writers, more editors, etc.

3. I've generally felt that bloggers like the ones I cited above made their points more eloquently than I felt I could, not only because they were more eloquent but because they were closer to the subject matter than I. Being a straight white male, I often didn't feel I had a sufficiently informed perspective, and didn't always have the time and inclination for extensive research. In short, I didn't want to come off like an idiot. ( I blame this reluctance purely on myself and no one else.)

However, it's time to get over it. As of today, that reluctant streak ends, thanks to this excerpt by Mad Thinker Scott Anderson:

I do think that the characters created by well-meaning liberals might tend to be more boring if those writers try to remove anything that might be considered offensive from the character. For instance, there were people who were really bugged that Patriot was using mutant growth hormone to get his powers. I understand why people wouldn’t want the black character to be the one using drugs; however, I have to admit that that origin of his powers and the conflicts it created for his ethics (i.e. do the ends justify the means?) and his teammates (i.e. is our teammate a hero, a villain, an addict, or some combination of the three?) was inherently more interesting than what was assumed to be his origin (i.e. he inherited his powers.)

For those unfamiliar readers, Patriot (Eli Bradley) began as the leader of the Young Avengers. He claimed to gain his "super-soldier" powers via a blood transfusion from his grandfather, the original "Black Captain America", but in truth his powers were derived from the continuous use of MGH (Mutant Growth Hormone), a Marvel street drug. When the truth was discovered, Patriot resigned from the group. He later rejoined the team in the next (and final) arc before YOUNG AVENGERS was cancelled.

One of those critics Scott mentioned above was the aforementioned Mr. Brothers, who wrote in full detail about the reasons for his dislike of Patriot's handling in YOUNG AVENGERS. It was a well-written article that made some valid points (why did it have to be the black hero who fell prey to drug use?) , but I remember not fully agreeing with David that the initial drug use ruined the character. This was, after all, the Marvel Universe, which was all about initially-flawed people redeeming themselves. Their flagship character was a guy who started out his career by refusing to stop a bad guy who later went on to kill his uncle. And how many Avengers and X-Men started out as villains before switching sides? By this standard, Patriot had ample chance to redeem himself.

Except that it never quite happened that way.

Sure, he later returned to lead the Young Avengers and is now a member of the Initiative. But he never fully redeemed himself, at least in my eyes.

Here's why:

After Eli's resignation, the rest of the group tries to contact him to reconsider. They, particularly Kate "Hawkeye" Bishop, try to convince him that he's a valuable team leader and capable hero, even without his powers. Eli proves all of this during their conflict with the Super-Skrull by being taken hostage. After he is rescued by the others, he suits back up for the rest of the adventure, which concludes in a face-off between the Young Avengers, the original Avengers, and the Skrulls, at which point Patriot is critically wounded after taking a blast meant for Captain America. The good Captain saves Eli's life with a Super-Soldier Serum-enhanced blood transfusion and then - BANG ZOOM! - Eli's got powers again.

And this is where it all went wrong. They gave him his powers back too soon. Even if the cause was a combination of writer Allen Heinberg's chronic lateness and the book's impending demise, this felt like a cheat. A shortcut. Like an important step in Patriot's evolution as a hero was skipped.

Why did he have to regain his Super-Soldier powers in the next story arc? We could have seen Eli over several issues working to improve himself to compensate for the lack of powers. We could have seen him strive to become a great non-powered hero in the tradition of Batman or Nightwing or the original Hawkeye Clint Barton. Or even his fellow non-powered teammate, Kate. (Kate's origin is not without its own problems, particularly the hackneyed rape-as-motivation angle.) Even if he eventually regained his powers, we could have watched him grow, whether in YOUNG AVENGERS or elsewhere.

But that never happened.

And that's the heart of the problem: Heinberg, and Marvel, went to great effort to tell us how Patriot was a great leader, with or without his powers.

But they never really showed us.

A Special Valentine's Day Tip

Beware of True Romance.

In Response to Kalinara.....

....here's my favorite Superman-in-a-phone-booth scene in honor of her latest column.

Top that, Mad Thinker Scott!

This Nick Cardy cover comes from the classic Jimmy Olsen#162 (January 1974), featuring the lead story "1 By 1 My Brothers Die", written by Leo Dorfman and drawn by the great Kurt Schaffenberger. The plot involved Lex Luthor masterminding a series of robberies using mind-controlled Jimmy Olsen clones created from skin cells Luthor obtained by blackmailing Olsen's dentist.

No, I am not making this up.

And by the way, the scene above sort of appears in the book, except there's no super-speed involved; "Supes" just walks into a booth and changes into "Olsen" while the real Jimmy secretly spies on him. And, as a bonus, the editor's notes gave us the origin of the word "cloning".

Plus, there was a great backup story, "The Savage Who Stalked Mr. Action", also by Dorfman and Schaffenberger, in which our red-haired hero found himself hunted on the streets of Metropolis by a hitman named Savage, who dressed up in jungle gear and used Kravenesque traps to attempt to snare Jimmy. Savage's facial features were concealed by shadow up until the moment our intrepid reporter finally turned the tables and the trapped assassin was revealed to be...gasp!!... a woman named Diane Savage. (Let's hear it for early 70's comics feminism!) I enjoyed how she taunted him that he wouldn't have captured her without Superman's help, only for Jimmy to reveal that he hadn't called for Superman until after she was captured.

I was always disappointed that Diane Savage never returned to plague Jimmy as a recurring foe. Who knows, maybe some future Superman writer will use her in the new continuity.

One can always hope.

Approves:

Can you guess what Lois is thinking here?

"Uh, hello? I'm still holding the shrinking ray, dumbass!"