feministhulk

11:00 AM Jun 20th: “HULK STOP FOR QUICK SNACK WHILE SMASHING GENDER BINARY. ACCIDENTALLY SPILL HUMMUS ON TINY PURPLE SHORTS.”

*dies*

June 5, 2010: DC Nation panel at Heroes Con 2010

Ian Settler, DC Senior Story Editor

A serious topic came up about how characters who are minorities who happened to be legacy characters like Ryan Choi are killed off so their caucasian counterparts can return and how they feel like they are being cheated or sidelined out of their roles. Sattler took a more serious tone. “It’s so hard for me to be on the other side because it’s not our intention. There is a reason behind it all. We don’t see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters. We have the Great Ten out there and I have counter statistics, but I won’t get into that. It’s not how we perceived it. We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters.”

Not kidding. He really mocked real people of colour by talking not about them but about non-existent green, pink, and blue people!!!!

And then cited the horrifically offensive Chinese superhero team “The Great Ten” to add insult to injury. Oh, and some hypothetical “counter statistics” that he “won’t get into”.

There is so much wrong going on here. You must read Brown Betty’s breakdown in DC Comics: eliminating non-buyer’s remorse:

But I am also boggling at using The Great Ten in their defence. Technically, it could be worse. He could have pointed out Egg Fu, but The Great Ten is not so great either. Here are some quotes by Morrison and Bedard, on one of the Great Ten, Mother of Champions: These quotes from this Newsarama article, emphasis mine:

“Mother of Champions is a rather hair-raising concept,” Bedard explained. “She can give birth to, as Grant Morrison put it, ‘a 25-strong litter of genetically-identical supermen, each with a lifespan of one week.”

The racism inherent in a Chinese character whose power is her terrifying fertility should be apparent, but litter makes me so mad I can’t even. Sows have litters. Dogs have litters. Women have BABIES, you unbelievable piece of shit.

And also Odditycollector’s post What the shit is this on my computer screen? which has some awesome comments over on livejournal and dreamwidth.

Vejiicakes:
Incidentally, I like how the spokesman used his dismissive Invoking Strangely Colored People tactic as a segue to wave off any of the icky shrill feminists in the audience/readerbase as well. “So this one thing you guys complain about? Nope. Just no. Also this other thing, that’s a no too. You’re wrong.”

Odditycollector:
Yeah… I’m still not sure how to read that. Is it “And as analogy, our comics are full of gender! Just for instance, look at all the men! Thus the feminists who complain about lack of gender inclusion are *dumb*!”

Or is it “You know who else whines about stuff? FEMINISTS. You people complaining about the CoC situation don’t want to be like FEMINISTS, do you?”

Related: this article on Escapist Magazine, Stealing from the Next Generation is a good takedown of the impulse to make comics and games, among other things, more “hardcore”:

It’s one thing, once one has reached the age of legality, to prefer to drink one’s Coca-Cola with a bit of rum. It’s another thing entirely to demand that Coke henceforth only sell its beverages with rum, on the basis that this is the preference of you, the mature, hardcore soda fan… [G]eek culture does this to itself day after day, from comics to movies to gaming and back again. “I loved this as a kid, and I’ll love it now, but only if you darken it up. Make it bleak. Make it angsty. Make it hardcore! Make it so there can be no question whatsoever that it’s appropriate for someone my age because, while I’m hardcore, I’m also surprisingly self-conscious.” And what of the young of today, who might’ve enjoyed it the old way like I did in the first place? Screw’em! It’s their own fault for taking so long to get born!

While the article doesn’t make it explicit, another article on Escapist makes the obvious connection between the coded term hardcore and maleness.

Related only in the fact that published superhero comics are corporate-controlled fanfic: I’m done explaining to people why fanfic is okay is a beautiful list of published (and famous, beloved, awarded, “classic”) works that are in fact fanfic.

Nope, not me!

The Value of Daughters, alt. title: Narrative Cop-outs I Am Sick Of

*More specifically James Robinson, the writer and Eddie Berganza and Adam Schlagman, the editors. I’m so glad I wrote off this series after the first issue.