she's dead and she's going to stay dead

m | comics, especially the x-men

[spidey-webs]

There seem to be a lot of people who don’t understand why Lobo was in the movie, so I’m just gonna say it: Lobo is who Kara is at risk of becoming.

Kara is at a crossroads, and one road leads towards Clark and one leads to Lobo. Or rather, one path leads to embracing the responsibility of the life and powers her parents gave her, and the other is continuing to drink her life away, not caring about anything or anyone but her and hers.

Lobo is immensely powerful, and the last of his planet. Just like Kara. And when we meet him, he’s passed out drunk in a bar, oblivious and uncaring of violence and exploitation around him. Just like Kara was trying to be when she first met Ruthye.

Lobo is Kara’s future if she gives up on trying to be good. Drunkenly stumbling through the galaxy not helping anyone or anything and only caring about herself. Maybe not mindlessly cruel, but not kind or good or caring of the pain of the people around her.

It’s why they both get Ruthye’s spiel, it’s why Lobo’s whole introduction mirrors what Kara was just doing demanding to know about the Brigands, it’s why they’re both “the ditz from the bar”, it’s why they both have the gag with the space suit collar.

It’s why Lobo crops up each time Ruthye and Kara are faced with choices, sometimes acting as a devil on their shoulders, sometimes just a big lurking ominous warning of their bleak future if they make the wrong choices. It’s why Lobo says “let Ruthye have her revenge”, uncaring of how the violence might haunt Ruthye for the rest of her life. He’s a big constant reminder why Kara cannot let this thirteen year old girl be consumed by violence, and of who her parents didn’t want her to be.

Lobo is Kara’s foil and shadow.

I don’t think the movie always executed this well, it could have been done better, but I don’t think it was subtle either. The parallels between Kara and Lobo are right there in every scene and always highlight the choices Kara makes to be kind, and I do wish people would take the time to actually think about them before writing Lobo’s presence off.

[roguestorm]

Went to trivia last week and we were doing pretty bad and then one round had TWO separate comic questions in it so we came in third

[linusbenjamin]

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 — dir. Marc Webb

[roguestorm]

This is also related to my like. frustration that they never give Storm a movie or game like. If you want to establish a character as iconic, you have to do the work. We’re on our ninth live-action Spider-Man movie of the century. Deadpool got three whole movies! So did Iron Man. Fucking Iron Man!!! There’s always the budget and the interest in investing in characters when they’re white men, huh. They wave it off with “It won’t sell” or “Nobody wants that” and it’s true that sexism and racism exist but also. You are teaching your audience what to want. You are teaching them that it’s normal to want another stupid Ryan Reynolds movie but God forbid they want to see Storm in a starring role.

[roguestorm]

Duke presents a problem for the DC writers. It’s 2016, DC’s launching Rebirth, and you’ve got this character who has taken up the Robin mantle in a different way. If you don’t tie Duke to the Batfamily, he disappears. DC isn’t interested in preserving him as his own thing (which would have been the most narratively satisfying thing for him). Instead, he gets put into the Batman and All Star Batman titles. But as soon as you put him into those titles, you’ve lost what makes him unique. You’re left with yet another smart, dedicated kid who wants to do what’s best for Gotham and is going to pursue that by working with Batman. He’s got a different name and costume, sure, but he’s essentially fulfilling the same role as, for example, Tim Drake’s Robin.

The Cursed Wheel, the backup story for the first arc of ASB, is directly about how Duke fits into the Batfam and what his role will be. That’s written by Snyder, who created Duke in the Batman: Zero Year story, and who I think is really interested in moving the character forward and keeping him around. Ultimately, DC (whether that’s Snyder or Tony Patrick or someone else) lands on something that, from a publishing perspective, makes sense, which is giving Duke powers. That’s an easy point of differentiation that opens up new possibilities. They also go with a daytime vigilante angle that’s a little silly (IMO) but works well thematically.

But they haven’t actually solved the problem. They haven’t given Duke a story or character trait or role that successfully differentiates him. And part of the problem goes back to my initial point — what made him unique (his disconnect from the Batfamily) was also what made him (in DC’a opinion) totally unmarketable. They didn’t want to pursue a genuinely new story because the entire comic book industry is kept alive by simply writing the same story over and over again. Another part of the problem, though, is lack of follow-through. They made Duke the daytime vigilante with light-based powers, didn’t give him a solo, and have shuffled him around various books. Rebirth was a decade ago! By the time Tim Drake was ten years into existence, we were on issue 60 of his solo series.

To sum up, I’m not saying Duke hasn’t had good writing. I’m saying that DC doesn’t seem to have a good vision for the character, and every time someone does have a good vision for the character, DC changes direction. We’re left trying to assemble a character out of short stories, which is never going to let Duke be a character as well-defined as Cass or Damian or Dick or any of the others.

[roguestorm]

There are more than NINETY (90) issues of RHatO, you can give Duke a solo. Or a team he leads. Or a duo book where he and another character work as foils. SOMETHING!!!

[roguestorm]

Duke presents a problem for the DC writers. It’s 2016, DC’s launching Rebirth, and you’ve got this character who has taken up the Robin mantle in a different way. If you don’t tie Duke to the Batfamily, he disappears. DC isn’t interested in preserving him as his own thing (which would have been the most narratively satisfying thing for him). Instead, he gets put into the Batman and All Star Batman titles. But as soon as you put him into those titles, you’ve lost what makes him unique. You’re left with yet another smart, dedicated kid who wants to do what’s best for Gotham and is going to pursue that by working with Batman. He’s got a different name and costume, sure, but he’s essentially fulfilling the same role as, for example, Tim Drake’s Robin.

The Cursed Wheel, the backup story for the first arc of ASB, is directly about how Duke fits into the Batfam and what his role will be. That’s written by Snyder, who created Duke in the Batman: Zero Year story, and who I think is really interested in moving the character forward and keeping him around. Ultimately, DC (whether that’s Snyder or Tony Patrick or someone else) lands on something that, from a publishing perspective, makes sense, which is giving Duke powers. That’s an easy point of differentiation that opens up new possibilities. They also go with a daytime vigilante angle that’s a little silly (IMO) but works well thematically.

But they haven’t actually solved the problem. They haven’t given Duke a story or character trait or role that successfully differentiates him. And part of the problem goes back to my initial point — what made him unique (his disconnect from the Batfamily) was also what made him (in DC’s opinion) totally unmarketable. They didn’t want to pursue a genuinely new story because the entire comic book industry is kept alive by simply writing the same story over and over again. Another part of the problem, though, is lack of follow-through. They made Duke the daytime vigilante with light-based powers, didn’t give him a solo, and have shuffled him around various books. Rebirth was a decade ago! By the time Tim Drake was ten years into existence, we were on issue 60 of his solo series.

To sum up, I’m not saying Duke hasn’t had good writing. I’m saying that DC doesn’t seem to have a good vision for the character, and every time someone does have a good vision for the character, DC changes direction. We’re left trying to assemble a character out of short stories, which is never going to let Duke be a character as well-defined as Cass or Damian or Dick or any of the others.

[starspilli]

everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me

[tiffycat]

everyone fighting for their lives in central park meanwhile Bobby's busy studying finances in LA

[xmenuniverse]

Ororo Munroe in X-Men Annual #3 (1994), art by Gene Ha.

[roguestorm]

What’s your opinion on Logan’s backstories?

Idk I feel like writers just stick whatever they want in there.

Obviously, the Weapon X stuff is very important to how we think about Logan and is kind of his definitive backstory. But everything else is like. Yeah. He might as well have been there and done that at some point. He fought with Captain America during World War II? Why not.

I think that Logan’s backstory works best when it’s largely a mystery, so even if you get these stories sprinkled in here and there, you have to fill in most of the picture yourself. The amnesia isn’t a necessary part of this, but it helps.

[roguestorm]

If current Lois and Clark are like the fused essences of New and Prime Earth Lois and Clark, does that mean that every time a writer introduces something that is a remix of something from pre-52 comics, Lois and Clark go “oh yeah, this guy”?

[roguestorm]

I’m a little obsessed with Dawn Golden, like what would it even be LIKE to be the bearer of a cursed amulet from the time you were BORN and for it to make you shallow and mean without you even knowing? But also to have been enough yourself sometimes that you were able to form meaningful relationships? And then to suddenly be free of the curse and to look back on your life and all the people you’ve hurt and know it wasn’t always your fault but also to feel the full weight of what you’ve done?

And how would you ever, in that context, learn to move forward? How many habits would you have to learn how to break because they were formed by a version of yourself you can no longer be but don’t know how not to be? What would it be like when you (without the amulet) hurt someone and then have to make amends for it?

She may be a minor Batman character in canon but she is a major character in my heart.

[roguestorm]

I think it’s super duper fun that they took the Dickensian backstory of “was a street thief in a gang of orphaned ragamuffins” and inserted it before the backstory of “was worshipped as a goddess in an isolated village,” I just love the contrast there.

[micshrewart]

The Last Will and Testament of Hal Jordan got me GOOD

[roguestorm]

I was gonna say “Jean and Bobby have the same taste in men” but outside of the other three members of the O5, who I feel don’t really count, my only other proof of this is Bishop. I think it’s less that Jean and Bobby have the same taste in men and more that Jean and Bobby know a lot of the same men.

[lenadraws]

Inktober Day 15: “Mysterious”

[roguestorm]

People tend to talk about “comics” as a medium when what they mean is long-running shared-universe comics. And I’m guilty of this myself because it’s a useful abbreviation.

But, just to tease it out a little bit, when we’re talking about comics, we’re talking about things that are:

in comic format — that is, a format that combines text and images

serialized — one story is told in multiple parts

shared-universe — two comics with different stories/different main characters can have stories that exist in the same fictional universe

long-running — not really a precise term, but it’s basically a way of pointing out that canon that’s written over multiple decades is not going to look or feel like a series that was all written at once

And then our “genre” is the superhero genre, which is itself a weird mishmash of other genres (spy stories, scifi stories, detective stories, etc.).

My point here is that while these things are historically connected, they don’t necessarily have to go together. For example, you can have things in comic format that are not serialized, such as an original graphic novel. Serialization, conversely, is not limited to comics: you can have serialized works of prose or television shows.

So when we talk about “comics” or “superhero comics,” we bundle all these separate ideas together. And like I said, that’s fine, I don’t have any problem with it, I think it’s useful. But I do think it’s interesting to try and unbundle these characteristics and figure out what exactly we mean by it.