Fangirl Fridays: The Knitty Gritty of Comics Today

Hi there,

This is just going to be a jumble of thoughts and links that have come up while surfing this fine Internet-thing --


Bring Out Your Dead?
A commentary on all the DC comic books that have been canceled as of late, plus speculation as to whether the end is near for Jonah Hex and Simon Dark.
This brings me back to what I have posted earlier about how many comics in the future might be put out in mini-series or "volumes" rather than be ongoing. After having the read the last three months worth of Amazing Spider-Man, I definitely see that dynamic in play, though within the banner of one title.
Jonah Hex is a perfectly good title with consistent quality. I think, however, its biggest strength lies in the collected editions.

Did you ever want a list of all the female comic book characters who have *not* been raped?
If roughly 80% of female characters have not been raped, does this debunk the "rape myth" of comics that says female characters are often raped?
I think it's not a question of bean-counting but of how the rapes that do occur are presented in the comic books.
Of course, these sorts of posts run the danger of discounting all concern over the rape of women in comics, since it is "only 20%."


I'm noticing more and more blogs are posting entire old stories that are in public domain, assumed to be in public domain, or that nobody really cares anyway what domain they're in.
I'm enjoying these stories immensely, here are two I've read recently:
"The Head Of The Family"
"The Cadmus Seed"
both by Jack Kirby, whose ability to draw really freaky disturbing shit should not be under-estimated.


I found this Comics Reporter post, "I Can't Even Bring Myself To Open This," rather amusing. It refers to an issue of DC/Wildstorm's X-Files. Having opened up the issue in the comic store, I did note the standard static art resembling various photo stills. This phenomena of so heavily using photo reference reminds me, of all things, of the work of Henry Darger. Darger's story is long and sad, but basically all you have no know for now is that part of his art consisted using the same source material as tracing templates over and over again. So when you look at Darger's art, you keep recognizing the same figures & faces. This is what a lot of comic book TV and movie adaptations look like to me, especially the ones with either uninspired art and/or ultra-strict approval requirements from the studios.

As a contrast, check out Charlie Adlard's work on X-Files for Topps. I think I heard something like his lack of on-model photo-referency art drove 20th Century Fox crazy. But at any rate, what Adlard did was how I think you really should adapt TV to comics. By realizing it ain't TV, it's comics.


Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't highlight John Rogers' thoughts the cancellation of Blue Beetle:

"Wow. It's almost as if basing your entire business model around a series of must-buy big event crossovers in a market with limited purchasing resources hurts your midlist."

and

"Let's put it this way -- stripping out distribution costs and our share of the rent for those nice DC offices in Mahattan, Blue Beetle could have cost fifty cents an issue at its worst sales level, and still paid Rafael and myself more than we made on the run of the book."

At this point, I can't see why any high-level person within the comics industry wouldn't be encouraging the development of their company's digital comics program. Webcomics may not a replacement for paper (well, in about 20 year they might be, at least for mass consumption), but they are going to play a bigger and bigger role in a publisher's total output.

The trends regarding this and other things are all around us. We can spend day after day ignoring them, thinking the clock will turn back. Or we could do our research and prepare, and get ahead of the curve. Even in a recession, those who diligently take the latter approach will find themselves not only better off -- but in a vastly better place once things improve.

And on that note, enjoy the start of your weekend, all!

To Well-Meaning Male Comic Writers Who Put The Rape And Abuse Of Females In Their Books

Anyway...

So we have this periodic Net debate about portraying the victimization of women in comics, etc...

Is it exploitation? Is it a cop-out by bad writers? What?

So I'm writing this comic script and it's basically about my OWN victimization as a child.

No, not writing, wrote, I'm done writing it now, it's finished...

So I'm laying out, panel-by-panel, my own comic book action of getting abused.

I'm giving my artist directions on how to draw my own abuse.

And at some point, during the script, I just make the unprofessional move of writing to the artist,

"Dad beats me really hard for the next several panels. I can't psychologically map the action out; sort of follow the captions."

I didn't really think that sitting down to write this would effect like it did, but it did.

But I'm not sorry about it, because it is important.

But for male writers who put things like this and rape in their scripts,

Please understand just how f**king painful it is from the perspective of the person who lived through it.

I mean, really think it through carefully.

And I'm actually picturing Jack Kirby taking on my script right now, and it sort of makes me laugh...

"Insert Cosmic Crackle here"

The Most Powerful Email I Have Ever Received

The Most Powerful Email I Have Ever Received

Since writing "Goodbye To Comics," I have received hundreds of emails. The most powerful one was short and sort along the lines of this:

"I have gotten sexual enjoyment out of viewing rape and other such scenes in comics and entertainment. Your blog made me stop and think why this is so. And I realized that it is because I hate myself."

I don't hate this person or think less of him. I think it was very brave of him to write. It made me emotional reading it. Sometimes life bends you in different ways and this is how you cope. And I deeply wish this man finds peace and a place in his life where he doesn't hate himself anymore.

But as my blog made him think, his email made me think.

This world -- so many people coping and such a tapestry of lives and stories.

Should this man be my "enemy" -- or do we build bridges? How do we build these bridges? How can we understand the Other's viewpoint and move on?

When does forgiveness happen?

My father's grave -- I've never visited it. When do I forgive him for the past?

You know, it's funny. There is a recent blockbuster movie that I have never watched. Everybody and their mother has seen it but me. I refuse to see it. In essence, there is nothing wrong with the movie and I would probably like it. But its very subject matter brings up too much drama for me.

At what age do I move on and see this film? At what age do I visit my father's grave?

And is it a decision that I make on my own, or does time work its own magic, dulling my memory, mellowing my soul?

Goodbye To Comics: Well Yeah, Sometimes Abuse DOES Create The Superheroine

Goodbye To Comics:
Well Yeah, Sometimes Abuse DOES Create The Superheroine

There is a lot of debate in the comics blogosphere regarding the depiction/retconning of an abusive interlude in the lives of one superpowered female character or another. The objection is usually about how an abusive past shouldn't be used as the "reason" why a woman became a superhero.

Well then what the fuck else is that abusive past good for?

Sometimes it comes down to:
1) Go down the path of self-loathing and self-destruction
or
2) Become the Black Cat, or Catwoman, or Black Canary, or whomever

If you've been following the posts, you'll remember the scene where I'm in the ambulance, theoretically bleeding to death from the most sensitive part of my body, the hapless Donovan Paul in tow.

Donovan tries to "cheer me up" by offering suggestions as to how this accident, which will eventually bankrupt me and leave me deathly afraid of sex, has a "silver lining."

Was Donovan trying too hard?

Yes.

But without the belief and motivation that this shitty event, like a number of shitty events sprinkled throughout my life, could be used as an impetus to create positive and, dare I say, "superheroic" things, I fucking would have went batty. And I don't mean "batty" like Batman.

So these narratives regarding the female superheroine with abuse and trauma in her past actually INSPIRE me.

So you mean Catwoman became strong and a fighter and took control of her life?

Super.

Now.

Does that mean that there isn't a section of the male reading audience that gets off sexually by viewing the rape and torture of superheroines in these very comics?

Ah, there's the rub.

Goodbye To Comics: Judith Regan And Why I Don't Apologize For "Sleeping With The Enemy"

Goodbye To Comics:
Judith Regan And Why I Don't Apologize For "Sleeping With The Enemy"

Judith Regan is the publisher of "How To Marry A Porn Star," "OJ: If I Did It," and a good friend of Howard Stern. It might be assumed that Ms. Regan is not exactly a sterling feminist, considering the types of people she publishes & promotes.

Which is why I found her long, candid personal statement released today regarding the OJ book so on-point with my own situation.

The statement answers charges that she is a heartless slime for publishing OJ's book--that she of all people, a woman, could profit off a wife-batterer and probable murder.

And so Regan recounts her own harrowing story of abuse by her ex-husband, and that she is the last person in the world to be insensitive to women's issues.

To have a "power person" like Regan get vulnerable and tell such a story of brutality & humiliation...

I was moved, honestly.

But then the question would be asked,
Why does Regan support projects & entertainers that are perceived as so anti-woman???

It is assumed by some that abuse and harrassment is the fire by which the future mega-feminists are created.

But really, wouldn't victims of abuse by the "patriarchy" know, more intimately than anyone, the sheer power of that patriarchy?

The power of that patriarchy to savage, to wreck careers, to intimidate?

And is our first reaction to fight that patriarchy?

Or to ingratiate ourselves to it as to not get hurt again??

Wouldn't the woman who was brutalized by her husband feel a degree of control, a degree of safety by having an "icon of misogyny" like Howard Stern on her side?

I'm not saying it's right.

It's just when I hear "you should know better than..."

Yeah, maybe I should know better. Maybe I should get a brain transplant or have my memories removed or dope myself up until I've got that "Laura Bush Smile" as well.

I listened to Howard Stern since I was 12 years old. The content of his show blended well with how I saw women treated around me, far more than any feminist treatise that I read.

Again, I'm not saying it's right.

I remember a woman I used to know who had been raped as a teenager and said she proceeded to fuck as many men as she could after that so the initial rape wouldn't bother her.

So when I find that my blog gets the most hits from keyword phrases like "superheroine rape" and "superheroine kill" and "superheroine torture" and "superheroine defeated," I have to laugh it off.

But deep down it makes me want to vomit and never stop. Because the idea of a "Superheroine" apparently motivates so many people to contemplate nasty things.

Then again, perhaps most of those hits are from feminist bloggers looking for material to discuss.

But actually, I know they're from angry sexually frustrated males. I know because I've run with that crowd in several different permutations.

And yes, it's well-known that the rape and torture scenes of women in comics have a big fan following. And that a few editors and writers know this and "play it up."

I get many, many hits based on those keywords, by the way. I was getting good Google AdSense revenue from it, too.

Goodbye To Comics #8: "We Need A Rape" Part Two

Goodbye To Comics #8:
"We Need A Rape" Part Two

If you have been following this memoir at all then you realize that I theoretically have a mended broken vagina, a ton of hangups, and am “too nice.” You were also introduced to the deceased comic character Vicki Victim, who was raped, burned, and was also “too nice.” About three years a before I sustained a broken vagina I was involved in a special moment in time called a “syzygy.” That’s a time where the planets are aligned “just so” as to produce something along the lines of “shit happens.”

Vicki Victim was unwittingly the catalyst of this syzygy -- certainly not by her own fault.

“The rape pages are in!”

The Rape Pages. There is something almost festive about the way the phrase rolls off your tongue.

In the Rape Pages Vicki Victim, who was chosen as the theoretical sacrificial lamb for the theoretical Gilgongo! Comics’s sea change from “too nice” to “badass," was being raped by a supervillain. The artist would later tell me that drawing those pages made him feel ill.

Honestly, I felt ill looking at them that day. I felt like my head was swaying, light. Hmph, I was too weak, not badass, just like a “girl.” Why couldn’t I be more like my female co-worker -- stoic and no-nonense? She read saw the pages, she read the scripts, and she had no problem with them.

Actually, she did have a problem with them. But she never told anybody who could make a difference. And she didn’t tell anybody because she was smart. And so was I. Right up to the point where the syzygy happened.

So I make an excuse to leave my boss’s office and I get on the computer to read the latest on the comics gossip-mill. An item immediately grabbed my attention. It concerned more theoretical people I’m probably not supposed to talk about.

So this female in the industry accused this really big-time male in the industry of a Really Bad Thing. And now the big-time male, who, using my handy-dandy random name generator, I will call “Ned Hasley,” died and this woman was being savaged in the blogosphere for “sullying his good name.”

By an incredible coincidence, my latest assignment, freshly written-out on my yellow legal pad, was a huge tribute to...Ned Hasely!

Now, I knew Ned. Everybody did. He was company royalty. But I never heard of anything like what this accuser said. But for some strange reason, I kind of believed the accuser anyway. Maybe recently viewing Vicki Victim getting raped from behind by a man in a circus outfit sort of pushed my mind in that direction.

I felt the old familiar surge of my blood-pressure. I looked down at my hand and it was shaking. Why was I so affected by this gossip item?!

Before I knew it, I marched into the office of my other boss, the “sensitive” one, and closed the door.

“Is it true?!” I blurted out, the angry tone of my voice surprising me.

“Is what true?”

“Ned.”

There were pictures of Ned covering my boss’s desk -- a grandfatherly fellow with wise old eyes and an unassuming grin.

“What about Ned?”

“The thing about him groping Melia Bratton.”

My boss flinched for a second, then took a breath and said,

“Melia...she’s a nice woman, but very confused. Sexually confused.”

“But is there any truth to her story?”

“Yes and no.”

“I mean...did he touch her or not?”

“I’m sure Melia misinterpreted things. And Ned...it’s like OJ.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows what really happened?”

“Well...I have to say that working on this tribute for Ned has kind made me uncomfortable now. Because I kind of believe Melia. Because of what’s happening with (BLEEEEEP!!!!).”

“Is he still bothering you?”

“Yeah...” I raked my fingers through my bangs and looked up at the celing. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know how much more I can take of it. It’s really stressing me out. And now we just got these pages of...rape art. And...I don’t know, this whole place is really making me uncomfortable right now. I don’t know why this is all happening now like this. At the same time.”

Now let’s fast forward to my unlucky first fuck with comic guy Donovan Paul. I kick him off of me. There’s blood everywhere.

“W-what’s wrong?!”

“T-the bluh....the bluh....”

“Are you sure you’re not still a virgin?”

And let’s zip back, back, back in our theoretical wayback machine, back to my dad ripping my Wonder Woman and Batman posters off my wall in a rage.

“You ungreatful bitch!”

Now to when my old boss at the comic shop propositioned me sexually when I was 16.

“You arouse me...you make me hard...”

Now to the Gilgongo! Comics “New Direction” meeting.

“We need to get the ‘happy’ out of comics...”

Now to my lawyer.

“They said they are lining up to testify against you.”

Think the last five minutes of “Requiem For A Dream.”

I say: “goodbye, Comics.”

And Comics says: "shit, girl! aren't you gone yet?"

When I've written the last chapter of this memoir, I will go. I will go, relatively safe in my obscure niche, and I will not look back. And Comics can have Comics.

Goodbye To Comics #7: “We Need A Rape”

Goodbye To Comics #7:
“We Need A Rape”

My theoretical comic company, which, for the theoretical purposes of my theoretical memoir, I’ll call Gilgongo! Comix, was tired of being “pushed around” in the sales wars and in the court of fanboy opinion (such as it was). So with all the red-nosed gumption and determination of Ralphie from “A Christmas Story” Gilgongo! Comix decided to go badass.

They needed a rape. Because there’s nothing quite so badass as rape, lets face it. And the victim couldn’t been from the usual suspects: “The Black Raven” (done that already plus ovaries ripped out), “Bondage Queen” (wasn’t she raped like every issue--at least mentally?), “Demon-Girl” (she was already paralyzed from the last pseudo-raping and that provided all sorts of logistical nightmares for the artist).

No, they had to find the most innocent, virginal, good-natured “nice” character they could find and ravage her not once but twice.

Theoretically, this character’s name was Vicki Victim.

A whole groundbreaking limited series would be built around Vicki Victim’s rape and murder.

This made me nervous. In the office, I was known as being innocent, virginal, good-natured, and “nice”. I was kidded on it on a regular basis, as well as being told it was exactly those qualities that were “holding me back.”

Of course, it was silly to identify with a dumb old comic character.

Vicki Victim’s fate was sealed in a Gilgongo! Comics confab in which we explored how we could change our comics to be more “badass.” It was decided that the reason we were trailing in sales was because we were “too good-natured and nice.” This would have to stop. Our books needed a grittier edge. We needed a grittier edge.

So our books changed. There was rape, and murder, torture, death, and mutiliation. Superheroes did amoral or outright evil things and the line between good and bad was blurred.

And you know what?

Our sales improved. And this is a fact.

But it all started with Vicki Victim, and she has to be given credit.

To be fair to the ultimate writer that was assigned to the Vicki Victim Story, he was specifically told to include sensationalistic “adult” themes in the story. But when we got the scripts in I was still kind of shocked. Perhaps I was so affected not simply because of my fannish defense of Vicki Victim’s “purity” as a beloved character. Perhaps I was dealing with my own issues.

Let’s back up.

Do you know what a syzygy is?

That’s when all the planets align in such a manner that crazy shit happens.

In my time at Gilgongo! Comics I experienced several of what can only be described as “syzygies.”

One was an incident where one of my bosses set out to rid me of my “niceness” once and for all. It involved a freelancer who had a habit of delaying handing in his work because he was such a damned perfectionist. I was told to go into my office, close the door, and scream at this freelancer until he cried. I wasn’t told to simply “be firm.” I was told to scream at him until he cried and scare the living shit out of him. And believe me, he would have cried. And he did. I screeched like a maniac at the poor devil, threatening and berating. Right beyond my nearly closed door, I could see my boss listening with glee.

Tears rolled down my cheeks -- not out of pity for my prey, but because the sheer shock to my system turned me bright red and sent my blood pressure through the roof. I thought I was going to have a heart-attack. On the other end of the line, the freelancer was stuttering, crying, freaking out.

I couldn’t stop shaking, even minutes after I hung up. What had just happened was so unnatural to me, so vile. And it served no purpose anyway. Because soon after the lights flickered and my computer began to whine like a little baby, and soon all the power was out. Everywhere.

Syzygy.

But this wasn’t the crucial syzygy that began the chain of events that ended my career. That particular incident had to do with your dead friend and mine, Vicki Victim.

It started with my associate editor running gleefully into our boss’s office, several boards of art in his hand.

“The rape pages are in!”