Thursday, September 17, 2009

And speaking of shitstorms, I wonder why this didn't cause more of one...


I picked up JLA: Cry For Justice last week and noticed one little scene. Prometheus explained how he'd been staking his claim in Europe the last few years, killing off various Global Guardians. And he comments on the "bearskin" rug in his living room.


Which turns out to be the late Tasmanian Devil. Prometheus goes on to add: "Idiot named himself after an endangered animal anyway. " Ha ha. You can view it here on Dorian's site.


The whole Cry For Justice mini has had a few questionable moments, from Hal's whining to the Huntress/Lady Blackhawk throwaway line to Ray Palmer being reinvented as "the Incredible Shrinking Jack Bauer". And, oh yes, "Justice!" - WE GET IT!!! I loved James Robinson's work on Starman, and I think he's killin' it on Superman, even without the lead character in the book. But here, he seems to be....how can I put it nicely?.....letting his "hack flag" fly.


While many people may have viewed Tasmanian Devil as just another third-stringer (I last saw him in JLA CLASSIFIED 3) , I can see how it could be a much bigger hit from Dorian's perspective. You see, Tazmanian Devil was gay.


It's a huge understatement to say I have more superheroes who are in my demographic than Dorian does.


Think of all the heroes who are straight males like me. I could list them all one by one and run out of character space before I even got started.


Now expand the criteria to only straight white males like me. Still an enormous list.


Now expand it even further to include only straight white males with brown hair like me. The list is still considerable. There's Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Richard Rider, Hal Jordan, Jay Garrick... hell, I can name several members of the Legion of Superheroes alone in that group.


Now imagine being a gay comic reader, and look at how few gay superheroes there are, and you can see how killing off even one gay male character, especially for the sole purpose of a cheap laugh, can sting.

7 Comments:

At 7:28 AM , Blogger snell said...

I'll be honest--I didn't even know Taz was gay (or if I did, it got buried in the unreachable nerd archives of my brain). So maybe Robinson didn't know either? Then again, lately he seems to thrive on DC trivia and obscurity, so you'd think that he would have known...

 
At 7:59 AM , Blogger notintheface said...

I didn't mean to convey that I thought Robinson did so on purpose because he had an anti-gay bias. I don't. Even Dorian didn't neccesarily think so. I was keying on the effect, on Dorian and other gay readers, rather than the cause. I may have to edit this piece later to clarify.

 
At 12:04 PM , Blogger Sea-of-Green said...

See, for me, the whole series is such a glorious, glorious train wreck that the incredibly tacky Taz death didn't even phase me. Heck, no one had even SEEN Taz since that Global Guardians fiasco in Green Lantern from two or three years ago -- when Taz threw Hal Jordan (whom he supposedly had a crush on) through a tree ...

 
At 2:44 PM , Blogger SallyP said...

Everyone has a crush on Hal, it seems.

Yes, the whole Cry For Justice thing has been gloriously, hilariously bad.

 
At 3:01 PM , Blogger Saranga said...

I didn't realise Taz was gay either. But I did found it oh so tacky. So, fits in well with the rest of the comic then.

 
At 10:48 AM , Blogger Scott (The Mad Thinker) Anderson said...

I don't need to imagine being a gay reader because I am one, and I gotta tell you, this did not sting. Lots of third string characters are killed and some of them are bound to be gay.

I was a little disappointed because I like the character (but not a lot) and wrote some fan fic with him in them, but he was never a great character if you ask me.

Over in the Gay League there was some discussion of this death, but no shit storm.

 
At 8:16 PM , Blogger notintheface said...

"Imagine you're a gay reader" --D'OH!!! Especially since one of my current regulars is bisexual and one of my former regulars (come back, Ami!) is transgender. I've gotta watch that.

Yeah, Taz wasn't the best character in the DC stable, but I did love the scene where he decked Guy Gardner back in Giffen's JLA after Guy told him to go kiss a koala's butt.

 

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