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?”

I’ve moved past my denial about them killing Alura and the (soon to be) entire population of New Krypton and into a kind of numb acceptance. With that comes a profound disinterest in the disappointing resolution to what promised to be a bold, exciting new chapter in Superman and Supergirl comics. I started buying SUPERGIRL again when Sterling Gates came on board at the same time as New Krypton, and I am depressed at the thought of returning to pre-New Krypton Supergirl after being given a taste of something so much bigger. I even bought a comic starring Superman for a whole year, and the comic version of Superman generally bores me (they then proceeded to make WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON all about Supes and Zod’s manly pissing contest, so look who’s the sucker!).

My guess is that anyone created for New Krypton will be killed or returned to status quo by the end of WAR OF THE SUPERMAN #4. Zod and Ursa will live (Non might die for angst). Luthor not only lives, but will get a starring role in the Superman comics, because that’s something fresh and interesting that people want to see *sarcasm* Brainiac is spirited off to R.E.B.E.L.S. General Lane will live. DC villains are sacred and can never be killed off if they’ve been around since the Silver Age, no matter how overused they’ve become or implausible it is that they’re still around. I doubt Lucy will be killed, but she probably won’t remain Superwoman much longer. Nightwing, it’s hard to say, given that he showed up earlier. If they don’t kill after Thara sacrificed herself, it’ll look bad politically. But if they do, there’s that whole child-killing problem again. Then again, they never addressed the hugely problematic and creepy situation of Thara having a physically romantic relationship with a child so that won’t come up.

In the weekly Newsarama interviews with James Robinson and Sterling Gates (Week 1, Week 2, Week 3) Gates stated that

I’ve heard from people who are really upset that New Krypton was destroyed, that a planet with such potential was blown up, its inhabitants killed. I agree; it’s a traumatizing and polarizing event.

But that’s what we’re saying with it: Death and destruction don’t care about potential.

Comparing the waste of storytelling potential to the wasted potential of human life in actual war is a bit out of proportion. Fans have a legitimate beef here. DC publishes serialized stories that go on forever, generally of uneven quality and at a price not conducive to impulse buying. New Krypton was their meal ticket to years of potentially rich stories to mine and they threw it all away for nothing. That’s the potential of the planet they blew up. After the underwhelming stories that did get told in SUPERMAN, ACTION COMICS, and WoNK, I’m even more angry about wasted potential.

The completely awful waste of Mon-El this past year (I dropped the book after they outright told us *in the book* that his year-long run would be all for naught). The thing with the evil gorilla scientist was completely unnecessary and unwanted. The Flamebird and Nightwing book went places it shouldn’t have with their own run-in with an evil scientist, and they never addressed the child-in-a-man’s body issue. Add to that the resolution of the Project 7734 backup in SUPERMAN (I think?), and there was too much torture going on.

I don’t want to think about the years of great storylines that could have come from New Krypton. I don’t want to think about how grateful I was that Alura was finally a relevant and vital character who had an important, complex relationship with her daughter. I don’t want to think about how happy I was that Alura and Kara appeared to have healed their relationship, and my mistake in thinking that the two of them were about to take charge of the war and turn it all around in a rare example of intergenerational female butt-kicking. I don’t want to think about how Alura’s legacy is using her daughter to get to Reactron to torture him. I don’t want to think about how I won’t get to experience a new era of Supergirl comics where she learns and grows through her relationships on new Kandor, trying to fit into their wacky caste-based society, with her mother as their leader.

The return of Krypton and Kara’s renewed relationship with her mother were the best thing to happen to Supergirl. But I don’t for a second think that most of the men at DC grasp the importance of Alura. They don’t live in a world where adventure stories about fathers and sons just don’t exist. They had to kill off Zor-El to do it, but for a brief time they actually gave us a story where a mother was the powerful leader of an entire goddamned planet of superbeings and her daughter was a superhero. That’s too fucking awesome to be tossed aside for some lame-o story called “War of the SuperMEN”.

“War” seldom makes for an interesting story in superhero comics, which have long since pumped that well dry. Shock and awe aren’t actually all that interesting once the shock wears off, so “crisis” stories are seldom worth revisiting. I won’t be doing individual reviews of these issues because I can’t come up with anything interesting to say about a series of fight scenes beyond, “Lots of people die. I’m sad.”

I’d much rather be able to talk about New Krypton in the future as a backdrop to the super books, one which added to the richness of the mythos without overwhelming it. I never expected New Krypton to remain the focus in all four books, but it gave them something different (if not entirely original) to work with which they really needed. Instead they chose to return to the status quo, again.

I haven’t read WotS #4 yet, so no spoilers in the comments please!

Fuck you Geoff Johns and all your racist pals at DC who spit out shit like this:

Black Manta, White Power Rings, replacing heroes of colour with dead white guys, and vilifying Somali pirates as white child slavers/rapists*

(* Which is NOT accurate and blithely ignores the real world context of years of western imperialist countries illegally fishing Somalian tuna, shrimp and lobster to near extinction while simultaneously DUMPING NUCLEAR AND MEDICAL WASTE into Somalian waters and slowly killing the population in horrible ways. To this day. But nooo, it’s the scary black men who are the bad guys here.)

Stop doing this. Just stop it. Now.

God. I need to write an actual letter to these jokers.

Addendum: DC Comics and the Specter of Race Issues addresses the point in Chris Sims’ recent article The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling in which he notes that he is “[not] suggesting that creators like Geoff Johns are racist, or that their stories are consciously motivated by racism in any way”. No, really. Racism is the problem here and it’s not right to dance around that point in order to protect people’s self-identity as “not a racist”. They are being racist and their stories are motivated by racism. That they’re not conscious of this is the problem itself. People do not fall neatly into “racist” and “not racist” categories. Racism, like misogyny, is the default worldview.

ETA: When Fangirls Attack! provides an admirable round-up of related posts

Per DCU Blog and elsewhere on When Fangirls Attack (scroll waaaay down).

What’s the point in buying it any more? Writer changes rarely go well for me, no matter how enthusiastic the outgoing writer is (they’re ALWAYS enthusiastic unless they’re really bitter – and look how well Sean McKeever worked out for Birds of Prey). It is a fundamental failing of superhero comics that management doesn’t understand the value of a consistent devoted writer (when they’re good).

I can’t even be that excited about Simone restarting Birds of Prey (which I only started getting into near the end) because Ed-fucking-Benes is back (stop giving him work!). And he’s already up to his old tricks: the second cover of the new run puts Huntress back into the Jim Lee-designed “Hush” suit with the stupid belly hole, long after Simone got rid of that! (edit: in Birds of Prey #84). Man should be shot. In the stomach. And made to wear that suit.

J. Michael Stracynski is taking over WW and Superman. Not impressed. I’m not one of those people who think he’s god’s gift. Babylon 5 was way overrated.

After Cry For Justice (glad to see the outrage is enormous) I’m happy for James Robinson to be off anything, but this just frees him up to screw up JLA and co-pen the next DC crossover from hell, War of the Supermen, which I am NOT looking forward to. Can these manchildren just grow up already?

I think I was talking about Wonder Woman? Yeah. I’m disheartened. It feels like she just started. I thought it would last forever so much longer! (Although a new Welcome to Tranquility installment is excellent news, you really should check out the first two TPBs!) I was so damn excited when Gail got this gig. It symbolized so much for her to be writing Wonder Woman. Now we’re back to an overrated male writer penning the WW.

I wouldn’t be nearly this upset when a favourite writer leaves one title if most of DC/Marvel writers and editorial weren’t crap. What can you say about an industry where the writers feel so comfortable airing their ignorance in public?

While Igle says he’s heard some complaints, fans opposed to the change have a…unique viewpoint.

“There is one guy out there on the message boards who calls them ‘the diapers of shame,’ and comes at it from the idea that I’m patriarchical and draw her like an overprotective father, and that this is part of DC’s double standard when it comes to male and female characters, because female characters should be sexy, and we’re afraid to show Supergirl in that light.”

(Newsarama: The Supergirl Shorts Story: Talking to Jamal Igle)

This is one of those insulting, convoluted, ass-backwards ideas that just makes your head explode in frustration. The stupid, it burns. What’s extra frustrating is that this guy has taken the language of feminist theory and twisted it to his own, misogynist ends. “Patriarchal” and “double standard” do not mean what he thinks they mean. The reasoning because these kinds of inane patriarchal statements is two-fold: projection, and a deliberate attempt to obfuscate and distract.

First is the accusation that Jamal Igle is “patriarchical and draw[ing] her like an overprotective father.” If the guy had paid any attention to what Igle has said on his blog before his first SUPERGIRL issue came out and since, he would know that this is patently false. But that’s beside the point: it’s a bizarre thing to say, and he’s really overreacting to very small changes. This is just a distracting tactic. The second half clearly reveals that this unknown jackass is projecting onto Igle his own very misogynistic, patriarchal view of women. He wants us to get so distracted by defending ourselves that we accept his implicit lie about women.

There’s a rather awesome analysis of male projection in this review of the James Bond novel Dr. No, regarding the scene which describes Bond’s reaction to Honeychile Rider (played by Ursula Andress in the movie – think white bikini rising out of the sea) as she meets him for the first time – naked.

“Hesitantly she [Rider] began [whistling] again. The whistle trembled and died. At the first note of Bond’s echo, the girl whirled round. She didn’t cover her body with the two classical gestures. One hand flew downward, but the other, instead of hiding her breasts, went up to her face, covering it below the eyes, now wide with fear. … The girl dropped her hand down from her face. It went to the knife at her belt. Bond watched the fingers curl round the hilt. He looked up at her face. Now he realized why her hand had instinctively gone to it. It was a beautiful face, with wide-apart deep blue eyes under lashes paled by the sun. The mouth was wide and when she stopped pursing the lips with tension they would be full. It was a serious face and the jawline was determined–the face of a girl who fends for herself. And once, reflected Bond, she had failed to fend. For the nose was badly broken, smashed crooked like a boxer’s. Bond stiffened with revolt at what had happened to this supremely beautiful girl. No wonder this was her shame and not the beautiful firm breasts that now jutted towards him without concealment.”

[...] Fleming doesn’t understand that the instinctive reaction to cover oneself isn’t shame (we aren’t Eve–another woman trapped in a patriarchal text), but fear. Defense. And a girl like this one, “a girl who fends for herself,” a girl who’s been raped once–she isn’t going to give a damn about her nose. She might reach to cover herself, but I think it’s much more likely she’d reach straight for her knife.
(Notes from the Labyrinth: UBC #4: Doctor No)

The guy who spoke to Igle assumed that Igle’s reason for altering the costume was because he thought Supergirl should be ashamed of displaying her body. Because he thinks women’s bodies, and their sexuality, are shameful. And the only way to “prove” that we aren’t ashamed of our bodies is to – conveniently for him – present ourselves for male approval in male-determined ways, regardless of how practical that is for us.

The second half of the quote is where things get really interesting. “because female characters should be sexy” reveals the speaker’s belief that women’s primary purpose is to be sexually appealing to straight men, the dominant group in patriarchy. There is a certain twisted logic here: if you truly believe that women’s primary – perhaps only – source of strength is sex appeal, then for an artist to take that away from any female character is in fact depowering and a very bad thing. And aren’t feminists in favour of women being portrayed as “strong”? This is the bait-and-switch.

Feminists get pretty darned sick and tired of having to defend ourselves against accusations of “prudery” when we ask for (what we consider) a little respect and self-determination. Why the accusation of prudery against any woman (or man) who criticizes female superheros’ costumes for being so much more revealing and/or sexualizing than males’? It’s about power, and who gets to set definitions.

“…we need to be savvy about patriarchal thinking and the messages used to confuse, placate, or intimidate women trying to bring about change. [...] Getting savvy itself has to do with paying close attention to proponents of patriarchy, keeping two things in mind: (1) since patriarchy is founded on a lie (the lie of women’s natural inferiority), patriarchal logic usually is the reverse of the truth, and we therefore can get at the truth by reversing patriarchal messages, and (2) when proponents of patriarchy get mad, we should get interested, not get afraid (for their anger indicates we’ve touched a hot button or in some way gotten too close to the truth for their comfort).

A common patriarchal tactic is to try to silence a woman who speaks up by calling her a man hater, a lesbian, or a feminist. To the patriarchal mind, these three names are interchangeable — all refer to women who are not dedicating their lives to the support of men.

Distraction, or the verbal bait-and-switch, is a common patriarchal maneuver. For instance, women who oppose pornography often are asked why they are so prudish. These sorts of accusations are based on implicit definitions unconnected in fact to the phenomenon defined. In this case, pornography is being implicitly defined as having to do with sex, when in fact it has to do with domination and violation. Ridicule of women who oppose patriarchal practices usually is based on this sort of false, concealed definition.”

(Loving to Survive, Dee L.R. Graham, 1994, p. 260. Emphasis mine.)

Calling the changes made to Supergirl’s costume “patriarchal” is a misleading tactic used to get us to agree that women and girls should always be drawn as “sexy” as possible, the assumption being that that’s the only thing we’re good for. And the definition of “sexy” seems to be very narrow, if Igle’s minor changes are any indication. What that anonymous fanboy really meant was “sexually appealing to (straight) men in a non-threatening (submissive) manner, as dictated by patriarchal standards” (See "But she’s from an alien culture with no nudity taboo!" and "So you want comics full of ugly fat chicks?".) If we’re not “sexy” – according to criteria set by men, not women, including gay women, then we’re of no interest to men – the only opinion which counts. Now that’s patriarchal.

(See above re: “when proponents of patriarchy get mad, we should get interested, not get afraid” for why such a small thing like shorts and a less uncovered torso could elicit the kind of angry responses see in the comments sections of Newsarama and elsewhere.)

On a related note: Batwoman review discussing how Guys love lesbians. Well, most lesbians. Well. Femmes.