This is a comics-focused blog looking at social, political, and cultural issues as explored within their comics and non-print comic media, exploring multiple companies, sources, mediums, and issues. This blog was originally a joint Honors Project run by three people and is currently being maintained by Bri.
Haleigh Foutch breaks down why War Machine is Captain America: Civil War's secret weapon, thanks to Don Cheadle's performance and a clever spin on the character.
In an odd turn, it’s the MCU’s most crowded film that finally gives Rhodey the chance to come into his own — even more odd for the fact that he doesn’t ultimately have that much screentime. However, the time he does have carries a lot of weight because, in the context of a very earth-bound political dispute, Rhodey is given a powerful voice that resonates not just for his eloquence, but for his inherent investment in infrastructure and systems of authority. Unlike most of the MCU’s other Avengers, Rhodey isn’t just a warrior; he’s a soldier. It almost seems given that Rhodey would be on Tony’s side, considering his long-running status as confidante and right-hand man, but when you consider how often the two have come to blows over opposing points of view in the past, that’s not necessarily the case. If anything, it’s Tony who comes closer to Rhodey’s way of seeing things after the years he’s spent in combat with the Avengers.
In fact, Rhodey’s investment in the Sokovia Accords sells even better than Tony’s. For Tony, the motivation to acquiesce to the Accords is rooted in guilt (and arguably a pretty significant case of PTSD). Conversely, Rhodey is the voice of a stalwart soldier who believes in regiment and regulation. Along with Vision’s well-wrought calculations, Rhodey is the best counterpoint to Cap’s “dangerously arrogant” investment in unregulated affairs. What’s more, Rhodey stands up to Cap, the MCU’s great all-American hero, uncowed — a circumstance that one must imagine doesn’t come lightly to a man with such reverence for the American military. Even so, Rhodey stands tall and proud in what he believes, not just a hanger-on to Tony’s philosophy, but a convincing proponent for the deeper issues at hand.
While watching Rhodey finally come into his own alongside his fellow Avengers is rewarding, it’s the way his arc reflects the ideological dispute at the heart of Civil War that makes him the film’s secret weapon. Through Rhodey’s devastating fall at the end of the airport battle, we see the exact human repercussions Rhodey was fighting to prevent. Heroism has consequences, often dire ones. Heroes fail, and when they do people get hurt, maimed, and killed. When Vision makes his dreadful error — an error made all the more tragic because it’s born out of learning human affection for the first time — Rhodey ends up paralyzed thanks to a little old-fashioned friendly fire. And try as they might, neither Tony nor the warring Falcon, can save him.
It’s a hit that brings the ruinous potential of our heroes’ high stakes battles closer to home than ever before. Sure, we lost Agent Coulson in Avengers, but he was always a minimal and expository, if loveable, character who never fought alongside the big guns. We lost Quicksilver in Age of Ultron, but he was new to the team and his impact was felt mostly `through the effect it had on Wanda. And perhaps most importantly, when these heroes fell, they were done and gone (well, gone from the cinematic MCU, in Coulson’s case); their suffering only momentary. Rhodey’s loss is one that will have to be lived with on a daily basis (though no doubt partially alleviated by Tony’s technical assistance). As future Marvel films roll out, Rhodey will continue to feel the cost, not just in a sense of grief, which lessens with time, but in the sense of disability, which is a day-to-day, moment-to-moment struggle. What’s more, War Machine’s fall has an even greater impact for the way that it mirror’s the real life adversity that often befalls military veterans. Acts of war bear human consequence, and while the MCU may tend to keep a lighter tone, Rhodey’s injury is a firm reminder of the human fragility at the heart of the superhero action.
Can Rhodey still be a hero? Of course he will be. We know that Tony is actively working to aid him in his new-found lifestyle, but beyond that there’s the fact that James Rhodes is one of the most heroic men in the MCU; down to the bone. He was fighting his good fight long before superheroes entered the picture, and he’ll continue to do so even with his newfound incapacitation. Perhaps most exciting, Rhodey’s fate in Civil War has opened up the opportunity to tell the story of the physically challenged in a landscape dominated by the physically extraordinary. Regardless of where his story goes from here, Rhodey emerged as one of Civil War‘s highlights, delivering one of the film’s most cogent points of view and impactful supporting arcs.
Guide to Marvel’s Black Panther: comics, interviews & podcasts.
A lot of people seem interested in Black Panther after seeing Civil War, so I thought I’d put together a list of links to make it easier to start reading his comics etc!
Comics
Good news: you’re living in a golden age for Black Panther comics. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze’s new series launched to universal acclaim in April, and a new issue comes out each month.
I STRONGLY recommend this comic. The art is gorgeous, it’s incredibly well written, and it’s a really thoughtful and complex portrayal of T'Challa and Wakanda. (Also, most of the main characters are women!)
Here’s a guide to previous Black Panther comics, from his origins in the 1960s through each of his solo arcs, plus the more important crossovers. [One book was turned into a motion comic in 2010. The animation is NOT GOOD, but the voice cast includes Djimon Hounsou and Kerry Washington.]
That guide includes recs for shorter story arcs if you just want a taster, and also describes the general tone/genre of each period in BP comics. For example, which books are adventure stories vs ones that focus more heavily on character and politics. You can read most of them digitally on Comixology or Marvel, or in collected volumes.
Blogs, articles & podcasts
Ta-Nehisi Coates has been writing a series of blog posts about his work on Black Panther, covering a variety of topics from the geography of Wakanda to feminism in superhero comics.
The Black Panther tag on the We Are Wakanda fan blog.
The Politics of Black Panther by Evan Narcisse at Kotaku.
The Women of Marvel podcast had a great interview with Coates last month, as did the Black Girl Nerds podcast.
I also recorded a Black Panther episode on my podcast, Overinvested. (Hopefully this doesn’t come across as too self-promotional – I think it serves as a decent intro to BP from a fandom perspective, and we also discuss the upcoming movie.)
If you prefer print interviews, I recommend this one with Coates and this one with artist Brian Stelfreeze. Also, you can follow both on Twitter.
Okay, plz reblog with more recommendations if you think I’ve forgotten something essential!! Hopefully this post will be of use to new fans.
I’d also recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates’ intro to the series, and his own personal history with comics, from The Atlantic: “Indeed, aside from hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons, comics were my earliest influences. In the way that past writers had been shaped by the canon of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton, I was formed by the canon of Claremont, DeFalco, and Simonson. “
Grayson is a controversial comic. The general consensus about the comic is that you either love it or you hate it. Centering on Dick Grayson, the first Robin and later Nightwing, Grayson explores a storyline where Dick fakes his death and joins Spyral, a shady espionage organization, working as an undercover inside agent for Batman to uncover their plans. Touted as a “fun, sexy, super-spy” book, the comic goes for a sort of James Bond style as it weaves its narrative. Since the beginning, however, the comic has come under fire for its portrayal of its protagonist, who is one of the oldest mainstream comic characters at DC.
Analyses have already been done on both the sexual objectification in Grayson and various aspects of the comic as a whole. However, I wanted to do my own analysis and interpretation as well as a discussion about my feelings on the topic. Just to provide the basic reasoning that people generally use to advocate in favor of the comic, I’m including the links to two “defense” articles. The first article has actually been refuted directly by @comic-commentary here. So...with that out of the way, let’s get started.
A Short Analysis
In the first few issues of the series, Dick has several “fanservice” panels that include him lounging around in his room, shirtless. I largely disregarded these, as they were not necessarily distracting from the story and a little fanservice now and then is nice. However, as I continued reading, I became aware that this sexualization and objectification was not going to be an occasional inside joke but rather a centerpiece of the whole comic. Being a fan of Dick Grayson, this made me deeply uncomfortable. I was already not digging the overall premise of the comic and the writing thus far had struck me as flat and mediocre, but I continued reading anyway, because Dick is my favorite male superhero and I genuinely hoped that his portrayal would get better. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
“I’m talkin’ about some prime Hollywood beefcake. Nice bahookie on ‘im too. Couldn’t get a good shot of his face, but what good’s that anyway?”...”I suggest we mount a ‘manty-raid.’” Issue #4/5
This is a series of panels from Issue #4. Dick is undercover at Spyral and staying at an elite all-girl’s assassin-training school during this timeframe, and a group of girls is shown ogling over pictures of Dick that one of the girls (the blue-haired one) took without his knowledge or consent. Dick has no idea these pictures exist; he was completely under the impression that he was alone and that there were no surveillance cameras present. This panel not only shows a huge violation of boundaries, but also blatant and unrepentant sexualization and objectification: “Couldn’t get a good shot of his face, but what good’s that anyway?” one of the girls says. These panels show behavior that is quite literally reducing Dick to an object to be looked at. He is not a person with a personality or face; he is simply a body to be the focus of a girl’s sexual attention. This kind of behavior is wrong and gross, and yet it is being portrayed as acceptable and even cute.
Further complicating matters is that these girls have absolutely no personality outside of their continual lusting over Dick. They literally exist to sexualize and objectify Dick, which creates an entirely new problem...one where not only is a character being sexually objectifed and degraded, but a group of female characters exists simply to further that objectification. It’s problematic and unfair for every character involved.
I’m going to skip ahead a bit, because I want to keep the focus on these schoolgirls for a little while longer:
“Nah, not Gym. Jim. That’s what I named the right cheek. The left one’s “Juan.” -Issue #8
So these girls (who are, once again, only around to comment on how physically attractive Dick is), are standing around naming parts of Dick’s body like they are an entity unto themselves. This is...unsettling at best; more realistically, it is an example of blatant and gross objectification. Once again, Dick is portrayed as simply an object for the schoolgirl’s to ogle at and project sexual fantasies onto. It continues the really upsetting pattern of behavior and writing that trails through Grayson. I wish I could say that teenage girl’s naming a man’s buttcheeks is the worst this comic has to offer. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Also Issue #8, a little later on
I feel like I have said everything I need to say about these schoolgirls and their treatment of Dick, so I’ll let this one pass without comment except to say that this is simply one more example of the continual objectification of Dick within the comic.
Issue #9
Dick’s referring to his tie, but it’s situated and phrased in a way that is deliberately misleading. It’s straight up queerbaiting, as Dick Grayson is straight and has been portrayed as straight for 75 years. This is not just a mistake on the part of the writers, either; they’ve shown that they have no reservations stating that that’s what this is intended to be. This topic is discussed in more-depth in posts by various other bloggers, as this is not the topic of this post. However, I think it is worth mentioning that this sort of teasing is occurring within the context of this constant sexualization, objectification, and the mis-characterization of Dick as a flirty sexy type character, as it furthers a lot of stereotypes about bisexual people.
“With the most beautiful butt I have ever seen...and an unusually well-developed penchant for duplicity.” -Issue #10
This woman spent the entire night dancing with him and looking at his face, and the only thing she has a comment about his his butt. Okay, we get it. He has a nice butt. Move on, Seeley. Please.
“...consistent with the muscle-strength locked into Agent 37′s lovely arms.” Issue #10
The older woman in white is Dr. Netz, and this is not the first time she’s made inappropriate comments about Dick’s body. Honestly, I wouldn’t have a problem with this if this was a one-off comment, Netz didn’t have a history of making these comments, and these comments were actually being portrayed as creepy. But they’re not. And within the greater context of Grayson, a comic that feels the need to constantly make comments about Dick’s physical attractiveness, it’s just one more frustration added to the very long list.
Issue #11
Lex Luthor, for whatever reason, decides to show he has control of Dick’s body...by forcing him to touch a woman’s butt. Okay...because that makes sense. Honestly, this whole sequence makes very little sense plot-wise and appeared to be inserted into the comic for the sole purpose of providing “comedy” in the form of nearly forcing Dick to sexually harass a young woman. It’s...bizarre to say the least.
“I think I just assumed you’d have your shirt off.” -Issue #12
Here, in the Batfamily reunion issue, we have Agent Zero introducing herself to Dick by saying “This is not at all how I imagined you. I think I just assumed you’d have your shirt off. Oh well; my loss really.” Like what? This woman is a professional, and instead she comments about Dick’s body and what he’s wearing? This is simply ridiculous. I don’t understand the absolute need Seeley and King have to write people constantly reiterating Dick’s physical attractiveness. It seriously detracts from the seriousness of the situations he finds himself in and just pulls me out of the story at this point.
Issue #12
Because of course Dick, who is supposedly a master of disguise, can be recognized by his butt. Look, I joke about Dick’s butt every once in awhile too, but that’s all it ever is: just an inside joke that I bring up occasionally. Dick being sexually objectified to the point where at least two characters have canonically recognized him by his butt is gross and completely unacceptable.
These are not the only instances of Dick being sexualized and objectified within Grayson. There are several more panels that I could easily talk about. However, this post is already getting a bit too long for comfort, so let’s move on, shall we?
The Controversy over Issue #13
Tim Seeley, the writer of Grayson, wrote a scene in Grayson #13 where Dick is strip-searched (by the same creepy female doctor from before). In another comic or text, this would be treated as at least something uncomfortable, especially since he is being examined by a doctor who has made inappropriate comments about him on multiple occasions and with another woman in the room. While Dick is portrayed as visibly uncomfortable about the situation, the act is not actually portrayed as wrong. Note before I go on: the discomfort that I and other readers experienced while reading this scene has very little to do with the fact that Dick is forced to undergo a “medical” strip-search and more with how the art and writing depicts that search. We are shown a nearly full-body image of a naked Dick, which instantly sexualizes the act instead of portraying it as a visually uncomfotable and invasive experience. Combined with the comments (“Please. You may call me Elisabeth.”) and things implied in the scene, it can easily be misconstrued as sexual harassment.
Essays popped up about why the situation in Issue #13 was extremely uncomfortable and indicative of sexualization and sexual harassment. The situation blew up when Shelly told Seeley on Twitter that the scene made her uncomfortable. Seeley proceeded to dismiss both her and her claims by saying that “he doesn’t find it problematic,” that “she needs to get help,” and “the vast majority of our readers enjoy the subversion of spy tropes.” Several people (including Luka) took to Twitter and Tumblr to express their outrage at the situation, both within the comic and how Shelly was treated. This article, while it does not include the majority of the Twitter conversation or a lot of the conversation sparked from the controversy, provides at least a basic overview of the situation. The twitter conversation itself can be found here.
It’s not that Dick was naked in a medical setting. It’s that a) he was being looked at by a creepy doctor who has made gross, sexual, and unprofessional comments about him every time we see her, b) the art does not treat the exam as a breach of privacy, nor does it depict Dick looking uncomfortable in such a setting (which he would be), and c) Seeley brushed off the concerns of actual sexual assault victims with a “don’t like it, don’t read it” when they commented on how they felt like he was treating female-on-male sexual harassment as a joke and how they felt like a serious issue was being mishandled, sexualized, and used for laughs. Is Dick being abused in this scene? No. But the way the scene is written can easily be misconstrued as a “positive” portrayal of sexual harassment, especially in light of how Dr. Netz has interacted with Dick in the past.
The actual problem is that the shown panels from #13 are not an isolated thing; something similar happens in every single issue of the series. It’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back in a disturbingly common trend of Grayson objectifying Dick and putting him in uncomfortable sexual situations for laugh value. One of the Twitter comments noted that “once these situations stop being funny, they start being uncomfortable.” And that is sort of the crux of the problem. The first couple of times, the 'he’s sexy’ jokes were funny. But as time went on and the jokes kept being made, a saturation point was reached, and the “jokes” are no longer a “lighthearted, subversive thing.” They simply become uncomfortable and remind people, especially female readers, of objectification and harassment they have either gone through themselves or watched other people they know experience.
The Attempts at Justification
Some people try to justify Dick’s Grayson treatment by saying that he was always sexualized and objectified like this. However, this is simply not true. Dick being sexualized pre-Grayson definitely existed (and probably on a higher level than the average male superhero), but it existed sparingly. Instead of multiple times an issue, the moments happened across hundreds of comic issues. You’d see it happen maybe once every 50-75 comics or so depending on creative team, so it wasn’t nearly as saturated and therefore it wasn’t ‘really’ a problem because it was seen as occasional fanservice instead of a staple of a Dick Grayson book. Grayson took it several steps further and is doing so intentionally whereas the other instances were either bad writing/ignorance or sparing fun moments.
@theflyingwonder (Shelly) has a brilliant post on Dick Grayson and fanservice called “How much fanservice is too much?” that explores this topic and ends with the question “how much is too much? When are we finally going to decide that we’ve crossed the line?” It’s a good question.
Another excuse I’ve seen for Dick’s characterization in Grayson (specifically in regards to how he interacts with women--and how women interact with him--within the series) is the idea that Dick is perfectly in-character and is being his usual charming and womanizing self. Several bloggers (most notably Shelly) have written metas refuting that statement and explaining why the stereotype of Dick Grayson as a womanizer makes no sense within the context of canon (including myself, on my personal). I’ve included three notable discussions of the topic for interested readers, as that is neither the point nor focus of this post.
Another justification that is often presented (and one that is most often presented by the writers, Tim Seeley and Tom King) is the statement that they are "telling a feminist story to a massive, multi-gendered fanbase, from a publishing company that gets a lot of hate for not telling diverse stories.” According to Seeley and King, this treatment of Dick is “subversive” and “feminist.” However, I fail to see what is feminist and subversive about sticking a man in the same position we often see women in (half-naked, dumbed down, objectified, and sexually harassed), especially when the writing makes light of serious topics that affect both women and men, such as sexual harassment. That is not “feminism” anymore then FEMEN is; degrading and dumbing down male characters is not feminist, no matter what Tumblr might tell you.
I have failed to see the “gender-inverted tropes” that defenders talk about in regards to this. “The bodies of female characters have been exploited in the past, so now let's mercilessly exploit a male character's body, for no story-related reason, for cheap jokes.” — Is this really the thinking? How superficial. If the reason they are claiming “subversive” is the objectification, that’s not being subversive. That’s just perpetuating harmful ideas and stereotypes that men can’t be raped and that they’re always asking for sexual attention. Not to mention it just comes off as immature and crude.
It’s also wrong to say that Grayson is a “diverse story,” since it stars a straight, white man going undercover as a spy. It hits literally every “sexy super-spy” trope in the book, which is why I really struggle to understand the supposed subversiveness of the story.
On a related note, this brilliant essay written by @were-friends-now-that-ive discusses the double standard that exists when writing male and female objectification and sexualization, and about how we would treat this comic differently if nothing changed except Dick was a woman.
Why This is a Problem
Summing up some of the things I pointed out in my analysis as well as things I didn’t mention, Dick spends at least two full pages shirtless for at least four consecutive issues, and there are only 2 out of the 13 issues I read in which he does not appear shirtless. In issues 4 and 8 we have the group of teenage girls whose literal only purpose is to prop up the idea that Dick is “sexy”: they take (shirtless) pictures of him (that he doesn’t know about) from every angle, oogle them, conduct a “manty-raid,” chase him around, name his butt-cheeks, and generally have no other purpose other than to ogle him. They’ve been in three issues and only one of them has a name. One of them literally says “Sexy Tarzan-man. Me Jane.” During a school evac, they go instead to save, not Dick, but his butt (objectification at its finest). They serve no other function than to run around giggling about how sexy Dick Grayson is.
We have an openly gay man (Midnighter) who is shown to be gay by commenting on Dick’s butt (“I’d know that ass anywhere”). In Issue 10, the way Seeley decided to have Lex Luthor prove that he had control over Dick’s body by trying to force him to slap a female server’s butt. We have at least one or two comments about Dick’s butt every single issue. In Issue 9, we have “Dick Grayson, take your clothes off” and the infamous “am I straight” panel. In Issue 10, the woman Dick steals a jewel from says “I wouldn’t have been so taken with a common thief…with the most beautiful butt I have ever seen...”. What was the purpose of the butt comment there? There was none; it was completely unnecessary.
We have the cover for Issue 13 (seen here) where Dick is in kink bondage. And we have the creepy doctor that has said she’s going to write “sexy stories” about Dick, has commented on his “lovely arms” twice, talked about his “beautifully sculpted body,” and has said something sexual about Dick’s body every single time we see her. And yet, despite knowing this and being present for at least three of the comments, Helena allowed her to do the strip search/medical exam, knowing that she was going to be unprofessional, make sexual comments, and generally leer at Dick’s body. That’s called sexual harassment in most circles.
Note that all of this has happened in 13 issues and a single annual (as of the writing of this post, 16 issues and 2 annuals are out), and that’s without discussing the poor overall characterization of Dick and the other characters and the just plain bad writing involved. These examples showcase a very disturbing trend of Grayson objectifying and sexualizing Dick to an excessive degree and not knowing the line between sex positivity and sexual objectification and/or harassment. And even more than that, there are clear indications that Tim Seeley trivialized and dismissed real victims of sexual assault by saying “well that’s just your interpretation” and “don’t read if you don’t like it” when they told him their concerns.
The debate has never been “you shouldn’t have this in your comic because I feel triggered by it.” People feel uncomfortable and angry because they feel as though the issues portrayed in the comic are being terribly mishandled and used for laughs when they are very serious issues, and they’re tired of Seeley and King sexualizing and making light of serious issues like sexual harassment and assault. The argument is not “sexual objectification shouldn’t exist in comics ever” either. The argument is that this comic has an overwhelmingly excessive amount of fanservice, sexual objectification, and instances of sexual harassment that have gone un-commented on and even portrayed in a positive manner, especially for the relatively low number of comics that have been released.
This assertion does not center around the argument that Pre-52 Dick Grayson never had any of these problems with his writers ever. The debate focuses on the fact that the situations in which Dick was portrayed and treated in this way pre-reboot are few and far between, and are largely detested and condemned by the fandom at large, while Grayson’s bad treatment of Dick occurs every single issue, is written badly, and is released to a largely receptive audience.
The way Seeley and King are handling sexuality in Grayson is completely off-balance and they don’t seem to understand the difference between expressing sexuality and showing sexual objectification, harassment, and assault in a positive light. Tim Seeley in particular has no clue how to actually portray the difference between sex positivity (what he thinks he’s writing) and sexual objectification and harassment (what’s he’s actually writing), and his writing seems to condone these things (or at least act like they should be taken as a joke).
Occasional objectification and sexualization is okay. Occasional butt shots, “sexy” poses, or ‘wow he’s/she’s sexy’ is fine. Good art that shows off a person’s assets is perfectly fine, and so is in-universe appreciation of those assets. Sex is fine. Sexuality and the expression of sexuality and sexiness is perfectly normal and fine. Excessive and unnecessary objectification, gross comments, sexual harassment, and uncomfortable sexual comments and situations being treated as a joke and something to laugh at is not okay.
Sister Claire’s Oscar, and the Importance of Family
Hi there, Mod M speaking! My fellow mods have pretty much summed up our blog’s purpose in that we’re creating this space to shine light on when and how comics provide representation of various identities, and when the media made from those comics - tv, movies, merch, etc. - doesn’t quite add up to the diversity in the original comics. Personally, I’ll be placing most of my focus on various webcomics, and for this post in particular, I’ll be doing a character examination of Oscar from the gorgeous webcomic, Sister Claire.
In Sister Claire, Oscar is a trans woman whose major concern always centers around the many types of families that she has, and how her loyalty to them impacts her life. During Oscar’s early childhood, she receives care from Sister Geneviève, a nun from a local abbey. However, the nun forces Oscar into a harsh situation by claiming that the little girl no longer deserves to live in the abbey. Shocked and upset, Oscar takes this to heart and runs away to live on the streets while still younger than nine. Oscar’s loss of Geneviève’s support places an undue responsibility on the little girl’s shoulders. Because of this, Oscar’s first experience with family forces her to assume that care and a place to call home are entirely conditional on her ability to conform to her guardian’s wishes - which reflects a sad reality for many trans people.
After two months of struggling to survive, Oscar finds a fresh start and a roof over her head via a new caretaker, Sabine. Also known as Maman, she is a compassionate trans woman who welcomes Oscar by reassuring the little girl that “(she) deserved to stay at the abbey, and (she deserves) to stay” in her home. Contrary to Geneviève, Sabine’s unconditional acceptance leads to a healthy and reciprocated familial relationship with Oscar, characterized by mutual care and support.
As Oscar grows up, her ability to foster new relationships grows stronger as well. For example, a nun known as Sister Olga confronts Oscar late one night; Olga, who kisses another woman in secret, fears how Oscar might use that information as potential blackmail. Recognizing the fear of punishment Olga is festering in, Oscar reveals the sight of her own partner asleep in her bed and reassures Olga that “Love is no sin” to her. The complete transparency from Oscar displays how capable she is at finding common ground and establishing trust with other people, especially compared to the struggle that she went through as a little girl to find others to relate to. Oscar’s ability to forge strong bonds via her openness also represents how trans women can create their own group of loved ones, despite the lack of such complex representation in the majority of media.
Despite her role as a side character in Sister Claire, Oscar is extremely well written and a highly sympathetic character. With so few examples of trans women in the large majority of media, a character like her provides a breath of fresh air.
Okay, so this was a shirt Disney was selling from Friday June 26, 2015 to Tuesday June 30, 2015. It features Kamala Khan, Jennifer Drew, Cindy Moon, and Gwen Stacy on the cover in their superhero costumes. A nice lineup of women from Marvel comics and a cool piece of merchandise, for the most part.
Until one rather obvious detail is noted.
As pointed out by several comments at the Disney store link provided by OP, Kamala’s appearance has been lightened via paler skin color. For comparison, here’s the cover art that the shirt references, from the variant cover of Ms. Marvel #1 Volume 1 by Arthur Adams.
Furthermore, here’s the official cover of Volume 1, by Sara Pichelli.
In both covers, Kamala’s skin color is a clearly visible brown tone, and her story as a superhero is largely informed by how she deals with growing up as a Pakistani-American. In fact, one of the most blunt reminders about how conflicted she is about her identity arrives in the very first issue. Kamala literally wishes to look like the blond, blue-eyed Carol Danvers to feel less like an outsider in her own peer group. As she grows more comfortable with her own appearance, her portrayal as a girl growing prouder of her roots makes an even greater impression with her image.
To note that the t shirt offered from OP looks this pale in comparison - whether due to a reduction in shadows or anything else - here’s a closeup of Kamala on the design:
However, it’s also interesting to note the Disney store’s progress since this shirt’s limited release occurred. At this point (May 2016), they offer several shirts, jackets, and other merchandise on their online store for female characters like Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, and groups with women like Black Cat, Spiderwoman, and others.
They also have a number of merch pieces with Kamala Khan as the primary figure. And this time, the skin tone is noticeably more accurate.
With these steps forward, the merchandise as a whole reflects Marvel’s overall system when it comes to marketing and publicity. Just on the Disney site alone, there is a greater emphasis on the lineup of characters who have the most mainstream focus, especially the male members of the Avengers (and each get their own sections), Ant-Man, and Spider Man. The huge number of male characters outnumbers the existing female characters in the merchandise, and highlights the lack of mainstream attention to the stories of both longstanding and newer female members of Marvel’s comics.
First off, these cosplayers look amazing. The skill needed for cosplay is extremely specialized. Even for relatively low-maintenance costumes, like the Supergirl look featured in the second photo, it requires someone to search for pieces that coordinate well with existing costume designs. In addition, creating costumes can take up an immense amount of time and resources, such as the 2 month timeline shown on Fev Studio’s page for the Nordic Skyrim armor displayed in the final photo from the original post. The reason these people look so good in their costumes is because of that diligence and commitment to detail.
Second off, many of these talented cosplayers portray characters who are a different ethnicity in the canon material, and as a result, cosplay a “racebent” version of that character. Racebending a character is often a way of increasing the diversity of media where the majority of characters are shown or assumed to be white in the canon material. For example, the first pair of cosplayers in the original post are two black people, Dario Thorington and Irock Ny-Ny, photographed at the 2013 Animekon in Barbados. Their photo, with the two of them dressed up as Robin and Batman - two canonically white characters - highlights how cosplayers who create a look inspired by a character can also show greater representation. These cosplayers dedicate time to fashioning their own costume and connecting with other fans, and as such, cosplayers who racebend generate their own performative art that contributes to a conversation about representation in the canon material. Individual cosplayers, after all, never need to go through some bureaucratic vetting process like canon artists, and their personal approval is the only necessity for creating beautiful costumes.
Racebending and cosplaying canon people of color also highlight how exclusionary American fandom communities can be towards fans who are people of color. One common claim is that fans should not cosplay characters “outside of their race”, even to the extent of shaming a fan publicly. However, while there are plenty of fans who are people color, there is not a large variety of poc characters in mainstream American media. This combination of a lack of characters and racist targeting is a frightening mixture, especially for fans who want to find other people to discuss their favorite stories and characters.
Additionally, the onus to only seek out characters who match a cosplayer’s real life appearance is also an illogical claim because many characters have unrealistic appearances by default. In the original post, the fourth photo displays cosplayers who portray cartoon characters from the tv show, Adventure Time, where the majority of characters have fantastic color palettes, such as pink, purple, or gray skin, which the cosplayers copy via face paint over their entire bodies. Enjoying the appearance of characters, therefore, has more to do with celebrating and connecting with fellow fans than it does with complete accuracy.
Therefore, the fact that these fans put in so much effort to look so amazing with their cosplay while knowing that they might not be welcomed into a fan community is significant. Conventions and fan communities are supposed to be an escape, a refuge where people revel in a story with other fans. People of color who cosplay deserve the simple joy of a great costume and fan communities just as much as anyone else.
Mother, Monster, Murderer: The Character Assassination of Talia Al Ghul
Alternate Title: Why Grant Morrison Should Not Be Allowed to Touch Batman’s Love Interests with a Ten-Foot Pole
Grant Morrison has been one of the staple writers at DC Comics for the past fifteen years. He is especially famous for his revitalization of the JLA comic, writing the Eisner Award-winning All-Star Superman, and for the creation of Batman’s son, assassin-turned-hero Damian Wayne. His prolific bibliography, which includes several acclaimed works, serves as a testament to his longtime presence in the realm of comics. The importance of his works within the Batman mythos in particular cannot be understated, as he essentially completely revamped and guided the Batfamily comics from the mid-2000s to the present day.
However, not everything Grant Morrison has written can be praised. There have been several storylines and characterizations over the years that have provoked outrage, been contested by fans, and seen as questionable decisions. I’ve become increasingly irked at the treatment of Talia al Ghul under Grant Morrison’s pen, beginning with the 2006 comic Batman and Son and continuing all the way through her characterization in the 2013 comic Batman Inc, so this post is focused on Talia and how Grant Morrison performed one of the worst character assassinations I’ve ever seen in modern comics (barring Cassandra Cain’s disastrous One Year Later storyline).
Talia Al Ghul has been a complicated character from her inception. The eldest (and for a long time, only) daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, the “Demon’s Head” and leader of the League of Assassins, by all rights she should have grown up to be cunning, ruthless, and merciless. And in many ways, she is. She’s sort of the epitome of “burn the world but spare my loved ones”: she has no problem with Ra’s destroying the world and wiping out humanity so long as the people she likes such as Batman and her father are alive afterwards. However, we are also presented with a smart, capable, cunning, and extremely sympathetic woman who stays by her father’s side out of love even when she doesn’t agree with his actions.
Talia is often depicted as being torn between devotion for her father and love for Batman.
The core of her character has always been about the tension between loyalty and love. Her heart is pulled like a tug-of-rope between her love for her father and her love for Bruce. She fulfills the role of the loving and dutiful daughter but is in love with a Crusader for Justice, which comes into conflict when her romantic interest and father stand on opposite sides of the board. This conflict of loyalties resulted in situations where she would occasionally help Batman escape from her father’s lairs or assist him in his time of need, but would ultimately always return to her father’s side.
Unfortunately, this dynamic usually ended with her pushed to the side: while she was smart, impressive, and attractive, she was typically overshadowed by the dominant male personalities in her life. As Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter, she could be his right hand woman but would forever be secondary to the Demon’s Head. As Batman’s love interest, she would always be that “sexy bad girl” that he could never truly have. She was stuck in a “will she, won’t she” limbo that portrayed her as a kind of audience stand-in, loving the hero while also rooting for the villain.
She began the shift towards her modern characterization after breaking away from her father to become the new CEO of LexCorp, where she secretly works to undermine Lex Luthor and ultimately sells all of his assets to the Wayne Foundation. This tale, told in both Secret Files and Origins and in in Superman/Batman, establishes a Talia that has finally become disillusioned to her father’s ideals and goals and wants to strike out on her own. She wants nothing to do with either Ra’s or Bruce, and instead wants to stand on her own merits.
“Will I never be more than a tool in my father’s hand?”
The turning point for Talia comes with the Greg Rucka-written story Death and the Maidens in 2003. After being repeatedly tortured, killed, and resurrected via Lazarus Pit by her younger half-sister Nyssa, Talia is broken from the trauma. She disavows Bruce’s love and adopts Nyssa’s plan to take over the world in order to bring about world peace and equality. This event would form the basis of the drastic change in mentality, mindset, and methods of Morrison’s Talia.
Grant Morrison’s now-famous run on the Batman comics radically transformed her. In many ways, Morrison appeared to be taking Talia in a positive direction: she became a much more dominant and aggressive personality, acted outside of her father’s will, became the head of the League of Assassins, and was a figure of guidance for characters like the newly revived Jason Todd. Instead of an intelligent but ultimately passive character standing by her father’s side willingly, we see a complex woman who was indoctrinated and manipulated from the time she was born into becoming just as merciless and manipulative as her father. He added depth and complexity to her character while also allowing her to partially break away from being completely bound to the character arcs of either Bruce or Ra’s. However, Morrison also completely misinterpreted or changed aspects of Talia’s characterization and mentality to the point where it warped her into an unrecognizable character.
Take for example, the circumstances of Damian Wayne’s birth. Damian’s conception is based on a child conceived in a DC Elseworlds story called Son of the Demon. In Son of the Demon, the conception of Bruce and Talia’s child was 100% consensual sex. Bruce and Talia were newlyweds and it was a happy wedding night thing:
In ‘Batman and Son,’ the first story containing Damian Wayne, Grant Morrison took that story and twisted it:
“I remember being drugged senseless and refusing to cooperate in some depraved eugenics experiment. That night, maybe?”
“We chose you, the perfect man, to breed the perfect heir to the empire of Ra’s Al Ghul. And believe me, you cooperated...magnificently.” -Batman and Son
Later Morrison claimed that he ‘misremembered’ their interaction in SotD, which led to this odd and completely unneeded change. Talia’s characterization only deteriorated from there. A lot of her modern characterization (and awful traits) is just stuff that Grant Morrison changed drastically and arbitrarily. Other writers such as Judd Winnick and Peter Tomasi have tried to soften and flesh out Morrison’s two-dimensional characterization of Talia by showing a more nuanced Talia, but Morrison’s interpretation of the character has dominated since the mid-2000s.
This is not to say that Morrison’s interpretation is all bad. There are certainly shining moments:
“Sometimes I forget what Bruce ever saw in her. And then there are times like this...” -Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul (2007)
In the early Morrison days, for example, she was still fiercely protective of her son. She fought tooth and nail to protect him form anyone who wanted to harm him, including her own father. And she wielded her power with grace and authority.
Batman and Robin (2009) brought Morrison’s characterization of Talia to a head. Blatantly two-dimensional, power-hungry, and cruel, she no longer showed any emotional response to ensuring Damian’s wellbeing. Indeed, she even forcibly takes control over Damian’s body in order to force him to do things:
“So this is what it’s like to have a son who does what a want him to do.” -Batman & Robin (2009) #11
Her entire characterization by this point revolves around her desire for absolute control over everyone and everything around her. She rejects and disowns Damian, claiming him as an enemy of the House of Al Ghul, then attempts to control him forcibly when her son doesn’t behave exactly how she wants him to. It is a far cry from the Talia Al Ghul of the pre-2003 DC Universe, and a large jump even from the Talia Al Ghul of two years prior. Morrison had cemented her transformation from sympathetic and morally ambiguous to straight up morally reprehensible.
Her last appearance before DC’s New 52 universe reboot brought back Talia’s softer side and established her importance in the backstory of another vital Batfamily character: Jason Todd. Judd Winnick’s Red Hood: The Lost Days (2010) describes how Talia is responsible for finding the newly resurrected but mentally traumatized Jason Todd, dumping him in a Lazarus Pit to restore his mind, and caring for him during the immediate aftereffects of this restoration:
Unlike Morrison’s Talia, Winnick’s Lost Days establishes Talia as a genuinely caring but extremely manipulative character who pushes Jason further and further until he accepts killing as a reality and good way to deal with crime in Gotham:
Red Hood: The Lost Days #6
Both of them are very obviously mentally damaged by this point in canon, but Talia is caring for Jason and teaching him in the only way she knows how--by pushing him to the breaking point, showing him the way she perceives the world, and convincing him to “dross the line” and begin killing people. This was one of the last comics in which she was portrayed in such a morally ambiguous light for nearly five years.
The New 52: A Tale of Two Talias
The New 52 did not service Talia any more than the previous five years had: she continued to be characterized by Morrison as an unsympathetic, two-dimensional villain who wants to take over the world and doesn’t care who she has to kill to achieve that goal. Peter Tomasi provided a more nuanced portrayal within the pages of Batman and Robin, providing a harsh but ultimately loving Talia as a mother:
Unfortunately, Tomasi’s reinterpretation was largely disregarded in favor of Morrison’s as time went on. Several depictions of Damian’s backstory portray a Talia that walks a fragile balancing act between being loving but aloof and being borderline abusive to her child. The severity of Talia’s upbringing varies depending on depiction and author, but her parenting unquestionably leaves Damian spoiled, scarred, and dysfunctional.
And then she ordered and orchestrated Damian’s death.
Outrage swept the Internet when Damian died at the hands of his clone Heretic in Batman Inc. #8:
This is Morrison!Talia’s lowest point: she explicitly orders the death of her own child. She is shown shedding a single tear for her son before returning to her plots, and the reasoning she gives?
Any compassion and complexity given to Reboot!Talia by Tomasi has vanished. Any shred of pre-Death and the Maidens Talia is gone. Even Grant Morrison’s initial characterization of Talia from Batman and Son is gone. The entire foundation of her character, the woman split between familial and romantic love, is completely obliterated, and in its place lies an empty shell of the character Talia Al Ghul once was.
Several other bloggers and journalists have written articles on both Morrison’s Talia and the devolution of Talia’s characterization, many of them much better than mine. onlytalia has several excellent analyses on both Talia as a character and how Grant Morrison has changed her for the worse. These links go much more in-depth about various aspects of Talia’s character and characterization than I could ever hope to achieve, so I will leave them here for perusal.
Nathan Harmon argues that “Talia has become a pivotal character in the Bat-Family titles” and that "the work of Grant Morrison, Judd Winick, and Peter J. Tomasi have enhanced the character of Talia Al Ghul to a level that has been reserved for the classic comic book villains such as the Joker, Lex Luthor, and her very own father Ra’s Al Ghul.” This is arguably true. However, he leaves out the fact that with the enhancement of Talia’s involvement in the Batman mythos comes the utter destruction of everything she once was.
Without Morrison's changes, you have a character who is a perpetual puppet for her father and a prize for the world's most dangerous men to fight over. But with Morrison's changes, you get a mostly two dimensional villain so cliche it hurts. She doesn't really evolve beyond being a plot device. If anything, she actually devolves into more of one: she's the by-the-numbers world conqueror (without any resonating motive), callous parent in a metaphorical "divorce" that claims her son's life (in which she shows less emotion than her previous incarnations), and a plot device to oppose Batman Inc. and her former “Beloved.”
Unfortunately, Talia’s characterization under Morrison cannot just be retconned and thrown away. Her characterization and actions are so intricately intertwined with Damian’s backstory, characterization, and motivations that it is nearly impossible to separate the two. Damian’s character development has come at the expense of Talia. His personality and backstory are defined by Talia’s treatment of him as a child and her ultimate order for his murder, and his future characterization is currently being shaped by his death and resurrection. There is no going back for Talia. There is only forward.
So where are we left now? Talia was recently featured in Damian’s solo comic “Robin: Son of Batman” by Patrick Gleason, where she is shown in the beginnings of a redemption arc:
“Why did you kill me?”
“I will...forever ask myself the same question, my son. Madness? Desperation? Self-deception? All I know is that I lost myself in the vision of another. I believed the lie that I no longer wanted you. But when that lie was removed, it ceased to be a part of who I am. I am free. All ask is for the chance to prove I can be who I once was. A Mother to her son.” -Robin: Son of Batman, #5
Her path forward is difficult. Morrison has largely destroyed any chance she had of continuing to walk the fine line between good and evil, and it’s going to be nearly impossible to pull a redemption arc for a woman who (at the time) remorselessly ordered the murder of her eleven-year-old child. But Gleason is obviously trying very hard to salvage what he can of Talia’s character and drive her forward. Her presence in Gleason’s iteration of Damian’s backstory is one of a jaded but terribly practical woman who had little experience dealing with or doling out comfort. Damian and Talia part in R:SOB #6 on uneasy terms, with Talia being neither forgiven nor condemned. It will take quite a bit more soul searching and respectful writing to pull Talia Al Ghul out of the pit that Morrison’s writing has left her in. Gleason is does what he can in Son of Batman to begin her redemption arc, but it’s gonna be a long, hard road to try and salvage the pieces left behind by Grant Morrison, and I’m not completely sure it can be done. The jury’s still out it seems, on Talia’s fate, so it looks like we’ll have to take it as most comic fans must: with hope for the best, and one step at a time.
Bruce Wayne could do a lot more to fight crime in Gotham City by funding youth programs with his immense wealth instead of dressing up like a bat and dishing out vigilante justice. (just-shower-thoughts)
And thought it would be a cool to research Bruce as a philanthropist and Wayne Enterprises as a business. You know, instead of applying to jobs or cleaning.
Basically all Bruce does all night and day is give to charity and help people.
The main organization he uses is the Wayne Foundation, an umbrella company for the Thomas Wayne Foundation and the Martha Wayne Foundation. TWF is for medicine/science and gives awards/money to research/researches, funds the Memorial Clinic in Park Row (ie Crime Alley) where Leslie Thompkins treats anyone and everyone who comes through her door (villains included), and dozens of other clinics around Gotham. The MWF is for the arts/urban revitalization of Gotham, families, and education. It runs orphanages (and built its own orphanage), creates and funds schools, preps teachers for learning disabilities, gives grants to artists, and sponsors Family Finders, which exists to reunite families. Also soo many soup kitchens. It is also the organization that gives money/scholarships to Gotham Academy. It maintains museums in Gotham, exhibits art and film festivals, as well as being a big sponsor of the theater scene.
The Wayne Foundation also funded Victims Inc, which aimed to help victims of violent crimes. Then there’s Neon Knights, which is started by Tamara Fox/Tim Drake and is funded by the Wayne Foundation. The organization basically is geared toward helping at-risk youth and.. former gang members/teenagers likely to join gangs/something about gangs, it’s been a while since I’ve read Red Robin. He also helps Selina Kyle get her own community center in the East End part of Gotham (ie Catwoman territory) using money she stole from Black Mask/a crime boss of Gotham.
And he rebuilt Gotham essentially through Wayne Enterprises after No Man’s Land, pushing Lex Luthor out of Gotham. After a huge earthquake demolishes the city, the Federal government declares Gotham a “no man’s land.” Gotham has a reputation for being a wasteland so they were mostly thinking “eh better off without it, let’s get all the good people out first tho” but a lot of people were left behind, including mostly minorities, homeless, orphaned, disabled, injured, poor, and convicted felons. They gov’t destroyed all the bridges/tunnels/roads that lead into Gotham and set up military blockades to ensure no one/no medical supplies/no food goes in or out (i always thought that was absurd until I saw the federal fumbles post-Katrina but I digress). During No Man’s Land, he worked together with Poison Ivy to feed the city and shelter various orphans.
Bruce lobbied Congress to end the No Man’s Land mandate and helped it eventually pass the Billion Dollar Build-up Federal Works Project which used the Wayne Enterprises, the Wayne Foundation, the US Army Engineers, LexCorp, and STAR Labs to rebuild. It also employs thousands of people in Gotham. Wayne Enterprises also started buying up buildings and forcing architects/engineers to “Earthquake proof” new builds so that they can survive an 8.5 Earthquake. Even before NML, all Wayne buildings (like Oracle’s watchtower) were Earthquake-proof. IN ADDITION, HE MADE SURE EVERY NEW BUILDING/REPAIRED OLD BUILDING WOULD BE MADE HANDICAP ACCESSIBLE (I bolded that because it gives me so many Oracle/Batman family friendship feels).
Bruce also always pays for property damage, especially to individual victims. Catwoman v2 #82 (2008):
He funds troops and the police force. During and after Dick Grayson’s stint as a Bludhaven Police Officer, the department—which was MASSIVELY underfunded—received huge amounts of top-of-the-line equipment, like high tech bullet proof vests and body armor to soldiers abroad. Also, in Black Mirror, the Foundation builds a high-tech, multimillion dollar forensic lab and donates it to the police force.
(sidenote, look how cute— Dick keeps pictures of Bruce, Alfred, and Babs in his locker!!!!)
Red Robin #04:
He also buys the Daily Planet, ie the pulitzer-prize winning newspaper that Lois Lane and Clark Kent work for. I can’t remember all the details but basically, the Planet is one of the few papers in Metropolis not owned by Lex Luthor and thus the only paper that’s printing critical stories of LexCorp and evil Lex/the guy who owns Metropolis. Lois negotiates ownership over to Perry and then Bruce buys it, working to keep the newspaper out of Luthor’s control/keep free press.
Wayne Foundation also funds superhero groups and superheroes like Young Justice, Teen Titans, Outsiders, the Birds of Prey (although Babs does some other things to secure funding too), and the Justice League. He bought much of the equipment Doctor Mid-Nite uses in the Justice Society of America. Then there’s Batman Incorporated, which runs all over the world, and Wayne Enterprises owns Holt Inc ie Michael Holt/Mister Terrific’s business (although you could argue that Holt Inc helps WE out, since the patents on Holt inventions like T-Spheres are extremely lucrative). He does a lot to take care of the families of superheroes, like setting up a college fund for Irey and Jai West (kids of the Flash, Wally West, and Linda Park-West), pays for Supergirl/Kara’s school/apartment/everything, sets up a trust fund for Stephanie Brown’s child which she gives away for adoption and Stephanie Brown’s whole operation as Batgirl/college tuition, arranges for the adoption of Helena Kyle (Selina’s daughter) as well as a trust fund, pays for Tim Drake’s stepmother’s medical care as well as funeral costs for his dad, gave Clark Kent/Lois Lane the apartment they live in as a wedding gift, and covers the medical expenses of various heroes, like Barbara Gordon/Oracle and Wendy Harris/Proxy. Not to mention he adopts/provides for Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Cassandra Cain. Bruce asked Lucius Fox to invest the money Dick Grayson’s parents left him upon their deaths. He turns it into a small fortune and Dick uses it to fund his life/operation as Nightwing initially.
(sidenote: Diana/Wonder Woman sent Wally’s twins ceremonial bracelets and a sword, omg)
He helps people to the point where it’s almost comical how much money he gives out and how readily he employs people, sometimes criticized for being over-simplistic and naive. He invests in random gang bangers, prostitutes, homeless communities, and low level criminals as well as high level criminals who are mostly just victims of their circumstances or show genuine desire to go straight. He carries a whole stack of Wayne Enterprise business cards in his Utility Belt and when he stumbles upon someone he can help, he gives them a card and a job. Most entry-level positions are given to people through Community Outreach programs and they don’t discriminate against ex-cons. Like, Ellie, who goes on to be a receptionist:
and here she is later, in Batman Incorporated, not only employed as a receptionist but being heroic herself:
Not to mention, it certainly PAYS to work for Wayne Enterprises. There’s a corporate scholarship program that covers full tuition for any employee of Wayne Enterprises. Any employee, meaning also entry-level mail room people, which is the specific instance from the comics I can think of.
He also sits on the Arkham Parole board, giving criminals like Harley Quinn a chance to be rehabilitated. In the new 52, he even moves Arkham into Wayne Manor (Arkham Academy— it’s actually a totally bananas concept but I haven’t read the issues yet to really know more).
Then there are the divisions of Wayne Enterprises, which include a healthcare system for Gotham citizens. Wayne Biotech is cutting edge in training people and developing vaccinations and cures for different diseases, like the fight against AIDS and HIV and reconstructive plastic surgery. Wayne Foods focuses on ethical food production, getting rid of additives. Wayne Steel develops technology for the US Navy and WayneYards does the same. Wayne Aerospace builds for NASA and the US military. Wayne Chemicals includes Wayne Oil and Wayne Botanical and search for petrochemicals and alternative fuel sources. They came up with a way to run power generators on algae. Wayne Industries, the main R&D branch, are looking for cleaner energy among many other things. Wayne Medical is more focused on treating illnesses as opposed to researching illnesses (which is what Wayne Biotech does) and maintains/runs hospitals in Gotham through the Thomas Wayne Foundation. Wayne Institute is a thinktank and recruits up-and-coming professionals to plan future development. Wayne Research Institute basically just does research on everything. Wayne Construction built a free railway system around Gotham in the midst of government corruption. Throughout all his business endeavors, Wayne Enterprises aims to practice business ethically, cutting ties with LexCorp when they did some weird robot killer thing and Dr. Pamela Isley (later Poison Ivy) when she wanted to create some toxin that would mind-control people.
I mean, even when Bruce Wayne was being impersonated (long story, read Heart of Hush), the most sinister thing Tommy Elliot did as Bruce Wayne was give away buttloads more money to charity.
sources: my own memory and comic book collection (Batman: Hush is a good one, uhh, Superman, Superman Wedding issue, Catwoman volume 2, Red Robin 04, Nightwing, Son of Batman, Detective Comics, Batman Incorporated, Robin, Batgirl, the Outsiders, Birds of Prey, Supergirl, Flash under Wally West.. okay, there are too many to list), x, x, x, x, x
Disabilities and Dividing Lines: Barbara Gordon and Oracle vs Burnside
So today I thought I’d talk about Barbara Gordon and about how her character was portrayed pre-reboot vs in the New 52, and specifically how she has been portrayed in the recent ‘Batgirl of Burnside’ soft reboot.
A lot of the readers reading Batgirl of Burnside and defending the creators’ treatment of Babs don’t truly understand what an icon Barbara Gordon is or why other fans might be disappointed or upset with how she is currently being portrayed. Which is fine, but it really sows a lot of discord between new fans who don’t know any different and older fans who loved Babs and what she stood for pre-reboot.
Barbara Gordon was introduced in Detective Comics #359, the 1966 story “The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl,” and the 1966 Batman series episode “Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin.” She’s celebrating her 50th anniversary as a character this year, and what a fifty years it has been.
Barbara Gordon is probably the most recognizable DC female superhero outside of Wonder Woman. She has had the most media attention of any female superhero in the DCU besides Diana as well; she’s been in two live action tv shows and twelve animated ones, made appearances in two live-action and several animated movies, been in several video games (including being a principal character in the Arkham series), had her own merchandising line, and Yvonne Craig, the original Batgirl, starred in two commercials promoting women’s rights back in the 60s and early 70s.
Inside comics, she was practically a legend. After being paralyzed by the Joker in the pages of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke in 1988, she was re-invented as the tech wizard and information broker Oracle by John Ostrander and Kim Yale in the pages of Suicide Squad:
As Oracle, she was one of the most well-connected heroes on the planet. Despite being paralyzed from the waist down, she still maintained excellent physical health and continued training extensively (specifically with eskrima sticks, batarangs, firearms, and upper-body strength training). She was also extremely intelligent, qualified, and educated: she had a genius-level intellect and graduated with her Ph.D summa cum laude, later acquired an online J.D. and then an LL.M. from Harvard, had a masters in library science and was a former librarian, served a term as a congresswoman, was an expert hacker and information broker, and was canonically considered to be Batman’s intellectual equal (much in the same way Dinah Lance/Black Canary was considered Batman’s physical equal in the realm of martial arts).
Bruce considers her, as Oracle, to be an invaluable asset:
“…she cannot give it up. Even without the use of her legs. She is invaluable to me in her role as Oracle…” -Batman: Hush
More importantly for her readership, though, was the fact that she built herself back up. “Oracle” was Barbara taking control over her own life again, her healing mechanism. The Oracle mantle was shaped and molded by Barbara on her journey of recovery. Barbara Gordon is one of the few comic characters whose PTSD and recovery arc were actually handled well and treated with respect in comics (except maybe Jessica Jones), in the early 90s Suicide Squad and then in the Birds of Prey comics. She dealt explicitly and on-panel with both her physical disability and mental illness: with PTSD, with depression, and with control and trust issues related to the trauma. Barbara’s experience was unique among superheroes and media in general because it showed a previously healthy, active woman go through an event that disabled her physically and traumatized her emotionally and then pick herself back up, learn how to function, and then proceed to become an invaluable aspect of the superhero community afterwards.
There are whole scenes dedicated to Babs discussing how she handles her trauma, how she misses being able to walk, and how she’s learned to move on:
“...Yeah, I was asleep. But it’s okay. I was having my favorite dream. I have it all the time. I was dancing. I was beautiful. I was dancing.”
Her condition is never sugar coated; she misses being able to walk. And make no mistake: she is incredibly angry at the Joker, bitter about her situation, and struggles with moving on. But, in time and with a lot of help and support from her friends and family, she does:
“When I was in physical therapy, there was a sign on the gym wall. It read, “No matter how dark the night gets, the sun still rises in the morning.” Every day, I’d wake up two hours before dawn. Back then it’d take me that long to get into my chair, clean up, and go outside to watch the sun rise. But I did it. And I still do. I love life, Dad. I love every single day.”
“...but those days are gone. Miss them? Sure. But you don’t have to be able to walk to stand on your own. I do more good for people now as Oracle than I ever did before.”
Through Ostrander and Yale’s revitalization of Barbara and later Gail Simone’s patient and respectful treatment in Birds of Prey, Barbara was treated as a well-rounded, complex character who was allowed to be angry and frustrated about her disability, actively deal with being paralyzed, and move on. She was also allowed to be both disabled and independent/self-sufficent, something even rarer than realistic portrayals of disability:
“Imagine--a coldhearted witch like you thinking of me as handicapped. I wouldn’t trade places with you for a second.”
Barbara is a powerful symbol, because she represents the ideal of being “handicapped” but refusing to let that handicap define her as a person. She is a person who happens to be paralyzed from the waist down, and that is one of the least interesting things about her. She is just as witty and intelligent and vibrant as she was before she was paralyzed. Her trauma defines her past, but only she gets to define her future.
There’s also a tremendously incredible arc where she confronts the Joker and tells him, “You took nothing from me.”
“The ol’ man must die inside every time he sees you. I took your legs…your future…and now I’ll take your–”
“Joker…”
“But you, sweet thing…you’re in my Hall of Fame. Commissioner Gordon’s baby girl. We had some fun that night, didn’t we?”
“…you took nothing from me.”
-Birds of Prey, #124
“You took nothing from me.” What an incredible statement. The Joker may have taken her ability to walk, but he never took away her determination, her intelligence, or her desire to help people. There’s also another thing he never took from her: the ability to live her life. Barbara Gordon was allowed to live and even thrive after the events of The Killing Joke, something not afforded to many female comic characters in her position. In Oracle: Year One, Babs says, “I was tired of being a victim. I had skills and abilities long before I became Batgirl. It’s time for me to make them work for me again.” She never lets her disability or her previous status as Batgirl define her; she will be whatever she wants to be, regardless of how the people around her her feel about it.
Red Robin #15
She was allowed to form and lead a superhero team. She was a mentor and friend to countless other heroes, two of them girls who took up the mantle she created in her first attempt at making a difference in the world. She became a mother figure and mentor to Cassandra Cain and Charlie Gage-Radcliffe, a mentor to Stephanie Brown and Wendy Harris, best friends with the rest of the “Core Four” of the Birds of Prey, and managed a romantic relationship with a couple of different men, most notably Jason Bard and Dick Grayson. However rocky any of those relationships may have started or gotten at various points in time, the point is that she had them and that they were incredibly important to her. She was allowed to deal with her trauma and heal from it and live her life, even though she would always be affected by it.
Each of the Batfamily members after Bruce himself, and especially the women, are all game changers, stereotype breakers, and diverse in their own ways: Dick Grayson is a literal circus kid. Jason Todd is a poor homeless orphan who grew up on the streets. Cassandra Cain is Asian, was functionally mute and illiterate for her first several appearances, and then had learning disabilities and a speech impediment afterwards. Stephanie Brown was not only working class but also a teenage single mother (who was the subject of a high-profile teen pregnancy storyline in the 90s) and a sexual assault victim; she was also the first mainverse female Robin. Damian Wayne is biracial and dealt with a seriously toxic upbringing. Helena Bertinelli is Italian and fits the “morally ambiguous hero with questionable methods” role comics usually only lets males occupy. Kate Kane is both Jewish and a lesbian. Renee Montoya is a Hispanic lesbian police woman. Selina Kyle is bisexual and an abuse survivor. The Fox family (Lucius, Tam, and Luke) are all black. Kate Spencer is a highly competent lawyer and a divorcee. The only Batfamily characters to come from a life of privilege besides Bruce himself are Tim Drake and Bette Kane, and Tim has dealt with trauma-induced depression at least three times (after he thought he killed someone, after the deaths of his father, Steph, and Conner Kent happened within the same couple of months, and after Bruce died).
Barbara Gordon is no different: she was an educated, confident woman with a career in the 1960s when she was introduced, an icon of the feminist movement as much as Wonder Woman herself. She’s been a congresswoman, head librarian, an assistant professor, an information broker, a lawyer, a detective, a master hacker, a team leader and head of operations, a teacher, a mentor, a mother figure, a friend, and love interest.
More than that, Barbara Gordon was and still remains the highest profile disabled superhero to ever grace the pages of superhero comics. Daredevil? Professor X? Neither can even begin to compare to the profound impact that Barbara Gordon as a character has had on comics, both in-universe and in the real world. She was an incredible symbol for both disability and female empowerment long before DC attempted to reinvent her. Simply put, Barbara Gordon is a cultural icon, just as much as Wonder Woman is. Like it or not, Barbara Gordon is a character that comes with a history, and with that history come certain expectations of how her character should be handled and written.
Enter the Reboot
Now. Fast forward to the reboot, and more specifically Burnside. People have found a variety of different issues to discuss in regards to New 52!Babs, but I personally have have four fundamental issues the Barbara Gordon of the New 52/Burnside: the age regression and infantalization, intelligence regression, her changed personality, and her connections with the superhero community (or rather, the lack of them).
I’m not going to touch the editorial decision and politics involved in de-ageing Babs, giving her back the use of her legs, and putting her back in the Batgirl cowl (a role she had long since outgrown), because that would require more time and energy than I have to give in this post and is frankly irrelevant to discussing Reboot and Burnside!Babs except in the contexts of her reactions to certain events. I will, however, link to several excellent articles and analyses on the subject. We’re here to talk about how Babs is characterized and treated within comics, not the complex politics surrounding the decision.
Gail Simone was allowed to continue writing Barbara Gordon, as she had for the past twenty years, for the first 34 issues of the New 52 Batgirl solo series. Within this comic, Barbara’s struggle after being paralyzed was treated with respect, but was ultimately used as a plot device rather than an opportunity for realistic and positive representation for disabled people; I place the blame for that squarely on Editorial, not Simone. Barbara’s character and struggles were further minimized by Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher when they took over from Simone to begin the ‘Bagirl of Burnside’ arc.
Armed with a smartphone, Doc Martens, and a new look, Babs moves from Gotham to the ‘hip’ new suburb of Burnside because she feels like she needs a break from Gotham and the Batboys. Her book became lighthearted in tone, and instead of dealing with the Big Leagues of the likes of the Calculator or any of her other pre-reboot villains, Barbara tackles rather lowkey villains, such as an impersonator who steals her name and instigates a character assassintation of Batgirl.
Barbara has not only been deaged (from her mid-30s to an 18-21 year old), but her characterization has regressed in a multitude of ways as well. Her life now revolves around being Batgirl, and Stewart and Fletcher have made distinct efforts to essentially erase everything Barbara was before the reboot (and even everything she was before their Burnside arc) during their tenure writing the character. She now takes casual selfies and wages online Twitter wars to battle bad publicity, in direct contrast to her pre-reboot iteration (who literally faked her death after deciding that she was getting too well-known in the community).
Her intelligence has been greatly reduced as well: while she is still a prodigy in many ways, her educational skills are sorely lacking as is her common sense at various points in time. According to BusinessWeek, Oracle is listed as one of the top ten most intelligent fictional superheroes appearing in American comics and is the only female character to appear on the list. This no longer appears to be the case as of Burnside. At its core, a beloved female character (who happens to be one of the most well-known and iconic disabled superheroes in comic history) was de-aged nearly twenty years, had her disability trivialized and erased, and is now acting vastly out of character in a role she outgrew long ago.
“I’m still Batgirl. Always have been. Always will be.”
Reboot and more specifically Burnside!Babs often defines herself by her role as Batgirl, where pre-reboot Barbara had very definitively moved on:
"Y'know, a lot of the time, it's like you batguys want me to hold on to the past because YOU can't get over it. Understand... I have. I have a new life now. One I like -- One that fulfills me. It's not the same one I had before, but it's good. Maybe even better." -Barbara to Dick Grayson
One of the most egregious oversights, however, is Burnside!Babs’ utter lack of connection to the larger superhero community. She is largely disconnected from the superheroing community as a whole and is functioning as a solo operative, which would be fine if it weren’t a complete reversal from both her pre-reboot days and her early New 52 days. She appears to really only talk to the Batfamily on a regular basis, and then sometimes hangs out with Dinah (whose characterization with the DCYou reboot has its own laundry list of issues), a complete reversal of her pre-reboot days where she was probably considered one of the most well-connected heroes in the entire DC Universe.
Her role pre-reboot as opposed to in the current Burnside book is also completely different: pre-reboot, she was indispensable. Now? She’s just another character in a costume, no more important to the superhero community than any of the other b-list superheroes. Her role is negligible: should she be removed from the heroing world (whether that be retiring of her own volition, dying, some other trauma, just taking a break, etc), that removal would affect at most the Batfamily and possibly Dinah Lance.
The close comradery depicted in Birds of Prey is gone; she is largely disconnected from the heroing community. She has few of the connections or friends in the superheroing community that provided such a solid foundation for her pre-reboot. There is no Jason Bard here, no Helena Bertinelli or Zinda Blake, no Adam Cray, Richard Dragon, Barda Free, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Wendy Harris, or Charlie Gage-Radcliffe. Her relationships with characters like Dick Grayson and Dinah Lance are surface level at best, and her friendships with many heroes have been wiped off the map (the more notable ones I can think of are Zatanna and Selina Kyle). Yes, she is gaining a strong civilian support base, but this is not necessarily a substitute for the relationships that have been lost.
Additionally, the core of her character is gone. Barbara was always a more lighthearted alternative to Batman and Robin’s tortured backstories. Barbara was always a character whose fundamental motivations for being a hero were completely altruistic. In her original adventures during the Silver Age of Comics, Batgirl was depicted as a librarian by day, and a spirited crime-fighter by night. If you want the original spirit of what Barbara was supposed to be, look no further than her original introduction in the ‘66 Batman series. Burnside!Babs is not some sort of novel concept; there have been multiple lighthearted stories featuring Barbara. Batgirl: Year One, for example.
The ultimate argument surrounding Burnside is not the fact that it is a lighter, fairly angst-free book with college life shenanigans. The problem surrounding Burnside!Babs is that fundamentally, Barbara Gordon is no longer Barbara Gordon. She is a character that shares the same name, red hair, and vaguely the same backstory, but that’s about it. In terms of personality, skillset, education, friend group, and personal interests, Burnside!Barbara is a completely new person, both from pre-reboot Babs and New 52!Barbara. It is completely acceptable and okay for people to have problems with the current direction of the book and the way the creative team (and DC as a whole) is handling Babs. Like it or not, the DC universe existed before the reboot, and it will exist after the next (inevitable) reboot. Barbara Gordon will continue to exist after the Batgirl of Burnside arc is completed and DC hands her over to another creative team. Batgirl of Burnside does not exist in a vacuum or separate from her previous history.
Bitterness and anger are not unexpected or wrong responses when you are dealing with a character who has a decades-long history as both one of the most prominent female comic characters and one of the most prominent disabled comic characters. Barbara Gordon has a very long and established legacy as a trailblazer in comics: for female characters, for disabled characters, for women in technology, and for her status as the highly respected leader of the Birds of Prey, as well as a host of other reasons. She is a character that has a very long history and legacy. Those things don’t disappear because of a reboot, a new book direction, and the introduction of a new character.
This sort of underscores the entire conversation: existing fans of the character feel betrayed because New 52!Barbara is a fundamentally different character than the one they know and love, while newer fans introduced to Barbara through the Burnside arc adore it and see nothing wrong with what’s going on. It is a tension between different ideas of legacy, memory, and history. Does the Burnside arc honor the spirit and foundation of what Barbara Gordon has stood for for the last twenty five years? Personally, I think not. She has become DC’s appeal to younger, female readers in the form of selfies, shopping sprees, and college troubles instead of an incredibly complex and intelligent adult whose stories explored complicated, morally grey issues. However, this does not mean I can’t see the appeal of the new direction in which Fletcher and Stewart took Babs; it’s a tempting call to say “oh finally! A lighthearted female superhero book!” But I believe the new direction does a grave disservice to Barbara as a character, especially a character that has such a long history of breaking barriers, stereotypes, and expectations, and I eagerly look forward to the day when DC and the world can move on from “Burnside” and see a well-written, in-character Barbara Gordon again.
Hi, everyone! This is my last blog post -- our project (and the semester) is ending. Because this is the last post I’ll be making, I want to synthesize some of the things I’ve learned this semester through this project as well as some other sources of analysis I’d like to see tackled in the future.
This semester, I’ve looked deep into the void of poorly-written female characters. Through doing so, I have learned so much about where certain movie empires (especially Marvel) could head in the future, as well as problems of what they’re doing now. They have some pretty cool female characters -- Black Widow is a personal favorite -- but through negating her character development by putting her into a contrived and completely unrealistic romance with the Hulk, she has become yet another trope of what Avengers was trying to avoid. She may not be the damsel in distress, but she is still not enough on her own. I’ve also learned that a lot of the Marvel women who make it to the MCU are total buzzkills. Gamora, for example, seems completely humorless throughout Guardians of the Galaxy, particularly in comparison to Starlord. There’s Pepper Potts, too, who became Iron Man (briefly) in Iron Man 2, yet is still left to be Tony’s girlfriend and workplace proximity associate. Also, she is reduced to Damsel In Distress many times.
I’ve also learned a lot about Batman, one of my favorite superheroes, pretty much exclusively for my work on this blog. There’s so much to his history, and so much of it is symbolically and culturally significant. I really enjoyed looking at comparisons in story arcs and character development between the Arkham games and the larger Batman canon.
And finally, you have to critique what you love -- and what I love is Buffy. Through reading, watching, and analyzing, I can easily conclude that Buffy is iconic for its portrayal and respect for women and subversion of gender roles. However, there is still a significant lack of racial diversity within the canon, which is rather unrealistic for the Slayer. It was also interesting to chart the comic and the show’s approach to diversity after switching first networks, from WB to UPN, and then mediums from television to comics. LGBT and other sexualities flourished under the comics while their start was in the TV show.
Further research I would like to see in these areas is the development of comics as a literary genre; while the early days of comics were entirely based on pulp fiction without much literary merit, Watchmen changed this a great deal; now, comics can have literary merit along more traditional print mediums.
I am also interested in the culture surrounding sci-fi and comics; entire gatherings of people dressed like their favorite character, standing in hours-long lines to get an autograph from actors who played their favorite characters. People get angry about this, live their whole lives devoted to this, and drop a whole bunch of money for the Comic Cons. These cons have also recently become cool, which I find fascinating.
This segues into my last suggestion: when did being a nerd become cool? I am interested in seeing the cultural shift associated with both the word and the mediums surrounding it.
“There’s a lack of diversity in comics!” comic-lovers and social justice bloggers alike proclaim.
“So? This was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them!” shouts another, very different group of people.
Who’s right? It’s a matter of perspective.
In “That Oxymoron, The Asian Comic Book Superhero,” Umapagan Ampikaipakan argues that it doesn’t matter how many failed tokenized superheroes DC and Marvel churn out: people, especially kids, like the heroes who are good. They like Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman, even though they’re white, because they represent a deep wanting of the human psyche — to be more than human, to be able to vanquish our foes with a single weapon, to be strong and powerful and always get the bad guy. While Ampikaipakan’s perspective is more that heroes need to be well-written and fleshed out, with Kamala Khan as the best example of having a character of color who is a superhero, it also comes down to the fact that American writers don’t know how to write outside of their own experience. This struggle to understand others’ perspectives is deep-seated, pervasive not only in comic books but through TV, movies, and any other sort of media. When writers stop making their characters dark-skinned for the sake of having dark-skinned characters, Amikaipakan says, they will be able to finally have successful characters of color.
In an argument to this, Joshua Adams writes an article titled “NYT Article on Comic Diversity is Incredibly Problematic,” where he writes that Ampikaipakan’s argument is intrinsically flawed: universality, which is argued in the above article comes from such heroes as Batman and Superman, does not equal the perspective of a white, heterosexual male. Most people do not fit nicely into this box of expectations, so a large proportion of Americans are not represented even remotely through traditional comic media. While saying that comics represent so much of American society, what we strive for and hope for, he argues that including these often left-out identities into new comics creates a world where anybody can be a superhero and they know that because people who look, think, talk, and feel like them are on the front page of a Marvel comic book.
Janelle Asselin (et. all) argue in “Strides and Backslides: How to tackle diversity in comics” that women have had a tough go of it in comics while being at best ignored or sexualized and at worst “raped, disabled, or turned evil” simply for the sake of having a character be raped, disabled, or turn evil because that’s What Women Do. While Ampikaipakan writes that people find themselves in superheroes even if they don’t look alike, Asselin et. all find it difficult to believe that any little girl could believe she could be a superhero if the only characters she has to look up to are Wonder Woman or derivatives of male characters, who are often raped, disabled, or turned evil. These are not great examples of what it means to be a woman, and when women are written this way, it brings up a question of why comics are marketed so exclusively to men. It’s not because women don’t like comics — women like comics and comic movies just as much as men do. Teenage girls, middle-aged women, young girls. Everyone likes a good superhero. So why is a woman’s only option to be raped, disabled, turn evil, or become Wonder Woman? There’s only so much space in the world for Wonder Women, and young girls learn that pretty quickly.
In “Why The New Approach to Diversity in Comics Sucks,” Byron Johnson writes that while diversity in comics as an endeavor is not a bad thing — in fact, far from it — the way companies such as DC and Marvel are doing so creates more issues than it solves. He takes particular issue with female Thor — not because she’s a woman, but because she’s so hastily pasted over a character we know and have experienced. It’s pulling the rug out from under the reader, he argues. We understand Thor the same way we understand Superman, Batman, Iron Man, The Hulk. These are all well-defined characters who have existed in their own spaces for decades; to change a crucial element on them for reasons no more eloquent than shunted diversity is a disrespect to the readers, the characters, and even the very underused other characters in the Marvel Universe that get little to no screen time. He lists several female characters and characters of color that could have been featured instead of repurposing an existing character.
Diversity in comics is a touchy subject because it’s so familiar and so comforting; in some ways, we want things to stay the same. We want Batman to get the bad guy the same way we want Joker to keep trying to take over Gotham — it has always happened, so we feel it must always happen. This is part of our cultural psyche. However, is our cultural psyche so important that we leave out large groups of other people in order to achieve it?
Why the Winter Soldier is Less an Embodiment of Soviet Russia Than I Thought, or: Bucky Barnes, American Cold War Anxieties, and You
As you might imagine, I walked into Captain America 2 ready to get my Soviet Russia on. The Winter Soldier run is one of my favorites in—well, in any comic, really, and from what I’d seen in the trailers and whatnot, it looked like we were going to get a heaping dose of what makes that series so special and so sobering: the bloodstained underbelly of Soviet international politics, a glimpse at the way men and women were fed into the meat grinder of the State, pulped for the greater glory of their nation. In Bucky we’d see a drafted soldier kidnapped, brainwashed, and streamlined into the perfect machine. Not an ideal Soviet man, far from it; but a tool, utilitarian and dispassionate, with the five-pointed martial star on his shoulder; the awful triumph of the State over so-called human frailty.
And we did, we got all of that—insofar that you can’t have a Winter Soldier without those things. But as I watched, it became increasingly clear that this movie wasn’t looking to talk about the Soviet Union. There is a reason Bucky only speaks Russian once in the entire film. There’s a reason he’s never addressed in it. There’s a reason his code name is drawn from an investigation into one of the ugliest chapters of American history. And there is a reason that the movie takes this snarling, mechanized, indiscriminate killing machine and explicitly sets him up as Captain America’s other half.
I’ve seen some reviews going after the film for pulling its punches, of holding up the Greatest Generation as America’s past, and a polluted security branch as its future, absolving it of responsibility for its actions in both cases. It’s HYDRA now and “sacrifices for freedom” then; why aren’t we interrogating ourselves a little harder?
My answer to that is: we did, and the movie is named after what we found.
The Winter Soldier is concerned with security and international supremacy, and the moral compromises America has made (and continues to make) in pursuit of both. It draws a straight line from WWII America to the modern day, where “we did some things we weren’t proud of” becomes drone warfare and Big Brother. Steve is at one end of this timeline, Nick Fury at the other. There’s a chasm of about fifty years between the two points. That’s where the Winter Soldier steps in.
This film is haunted by an American war, yes. But not the one Steve fought in. The Cold War was “a battle for the soul of mankind”, waged across millions of hearts and minds, and it’s a patched-over burn in the American psyche, barely healed and still tender to the touch. We emerged on the other side of forty-four years as the world’s one and only superpower. And it fucking cost us.
McCarthyism saw Americans turning on one another, fueled by snarling, indiscriminate paranoia. Operation Paperclip recruited Nazi scientists to keep German technology out of Soviet hands. Vietnam, with its thousands dead, was fought to keep the dominoes of Communism from falling across Asia. America, augmented by an unimaginable weapon and ruthlessly militarized, spied, ordered assassinations, irradiated its own children, and dragged the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. All for the sake of security.
The Winter Soldier is that America.
Inhuman, bionic, unfeeling, unthinking, the perfect weapon: a creature of progress, powered by pure ideology. The mind wipes? Decades of propaganda in its purest, most undiluted form, administered directly to the brain. The arm? I know a nuclear metaphor when I see one.
If Cap is the potential of America, what we should never stop striving for, the Winter Soldier is what became of us when we fell desperately short. He is what we did to ourselves.
In many ways this film is a ghost story, and like all good ghost stories, it holds up the tragedy of our mistakes and begs us not to repeat them. What SHIELD proposes—Project Insight—is assured destruction, a level of control over a population not exercised since we were staring Russia down over a launch pad. And so the Winter Soldier appears, the long cold shadow of America’s past, and crashes into the hope for its future with the ring of a metal fist against a shield.
Cap can’t destroy him, what’s done is done. Bucky can’t be unwounded, or given back his stolen time; the blood on his hands won’t be scrubbed out. But they can walk slowly together, one helping the other stand.
Steve can’t progress without Bucky, just as, the film seems to say, America itself is doomed to fester unless it looks to its past and acknowledges what it has done; the things it has ground into dust in the name of a higher cause. In the MCU, the only way Captain America’s country will move forward is if it swears to never, ever go back.
In The Killing Joke, soon to be a feature-length animated film — check out the trailer below — Joker takes a particular victim in Jim Gordon in order to prove that one really bad day can bring even the strongest of men to his knees. This is remarkable for several reasons, but the one I’ll be focusing on is why Joker chooses Gordon, over even Bats himself.
Joker’s M. O. in this story is to show that insanity can take any man, even -- maybe especially -- the ones most set in reality. When wiping away reality, everything they know, what is left?
That’s what Joker’s aiming to find out.
He chooses Gordon because he, in ways that even Batman is not, is antithetical to himself. Gordon is a by-the-book cop -- he is alone against the deep-running corruption throughout Gotham city. He loves justice, his daughter, and equality.
Even disabling Barbara Gordon is not so much a move against her as it is a move against Jim. Watching his daughter shot, in cold blood, in his home is a clear psychological play.
The Killing Joke
Barbara becoming Batgirl was a move Gordon always opposed, and seeing his worst fears confirmed in an entirely domestic, supposedly safe environment. Even Joker’s getup here is, in some ways, mocking Jim’s clothing and demeanor. He looks like a tourist -- like a dad -- which is comfortable and familiar. He then whips out a gun and disables one of the Batfamily.
This move is deeply perverse and cuts Gordon deep. He’s powerless to help her. Barbara’s life is changed forever in this brief page of comic and Jim can do nothing to save her: he is not Batman, he is not as impossible as the Joker. He is a human, with the same limitations.
Joker strips Barbara, takes pictures of her writing in agony and naked, and then forces Jim to see them, to truly appreciate how much pain he is putting Barbara through.
While he is the chief of police, he is also a father. One of his greatest fears is seeing his daughter get hurt. Worse, he is seeing her hurt and violated, stripped down and photographed in her agony without a way to fix the problem. This is a problem he will never be able to soothe, nothing he can do to make his daughter’s life better from this point: Barbara becoming Oracle doesn’t take place for a while, and here everything is taken away from her.
Being a parent entails supporting a daughter and loving her unconditionally, cradling infinite human potential until the parent ultimately realizes that the child has his or her own dreams, which is either great or terrible for the parent.
Her potential, at least from Gordon’s perspective here, is robbed and crushed. Joker has taken so much of her -- for what? In Joker’s words, “To prove a point.”
Fortunately, Batman catches Joker as he always must. First, he tends to Jim: Joker’s hypothesis was false, Jim is still as committed to fairness and justice as he always has been.
“By the book.”
Nothing can tear Jim’s love of justice.
This is why Joker chooses Jim -- of all the police commissioners in all the world -- because he is so unwavering in his morals. Batman is more lassiez-faire in his approach, except for the One Rule, which Joker is also taunting him to break. Jim, however, is steadfast on many levels and believes in justice in a way not even Batman does -- which would be a bigger success for Joker if he had succeeded in driving Jim insane.
Another point Joker makes here is that Bats is already halfway there, meeting Joker in his insanity. Batman wears a cape and fights crime in a cowl -- that does not speak to his mental stability.
Joker sees this more clearly than Batman himself does, which also doesn’t speak terribly well of Bruce. He is fairly lucid here, at the end of the comic: maybe he does realize the insanity of his actions. Does this make him a sane man? Does this excuse his psychopathy, his murder, his violation and disabling of Barbara?
Of course not.
There’s something deeply existential about the “suicide course,” as well as Arkham Asylum’s “revolving door.” Joker -- and the other Batman villains -- are in and out, breaking out before they’ve even had a chance to unpack.
Gordon isn’t part of this. He doesn’t need to be. The other members of the GCPD deal both sides of the streets and rarely see reprimand for it. Yet, he bears the brunt of Joker’s madness here because Joker sees himself, who he used to be, in Gordon: an everyman, with a family, people he loves. Batman is different, intentionally seclusive.
Gordon has weaknesses Batman never will, at least not ones Joker can see.
A Look at the History of Barbara Gordon and the Joker
DC’s newest Batbook crossover, Death of the Family, kicks off this week and the event has one premise - the Joker and his face, not necessarily together, come back to screw with all the Batfamily.
The Joker is Batman’s most famous and long running villain and through the years he caused quite a bit of pain for Batman and his family. Given the reboot we don’t quite know all of what he’s done but there is one of clear piece of Joker mayhem that is definitely still in continuity …
… the shooting of Barbara Gordon by the Joker in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. The panels above are the original. Here’s the replication (one of many, many, many that have appeared in DC Comics since then) from the current New 52 run of Batgirl.
That moment has tied the two characters together for two and half decades.
Prior to The Killing Joke the interaction between the Joker and Batgirl was fairly minimal despite their prophetical appearance in the infamous Super Dictionary from 1978:
Enemies indeed! Since the publication of the Killing Joke (TKJ) in 1988, DC has made confrontations between Barbara Gordon and the Joker fodder for many comics. In Death of the Family the two have their first post TKJ meeting in the new 52, and according to Gail Simone it will be “memorable.”
In USA Today today, Simone said "Her payback is long, long overdue …It was immensely cathartic. It’s a brutal story: The Joker is the guy who haunts your nightmares, and he nearly destroyed Barbara once already.“
Here’s a look back at some of the previous interactions of the Joker and Barbara Gordon.
When you take Batman and Joker down to their essences, what are the differences? The start with loss and end with donning a mask and partaking in justice, depending on a very subjective definition of the word. Batman could easily become just as psychotic and insane as the Joker; perhaps the Joker, in another world, could become a caped crusader himself and vie for justice and equality. Everyone deals with grief differently, but the grief that creates both of these characters is different in itself: in the generally accepted canon, Joker loses himself, Batman loses his family.
A critical difference between the two is the willingness or ability to take another’s life. Batman would be a very different person without the One Rule — thou shalt not kill — and Joker is the complete opposite, killing often at random and without motivation, while also taking the lives of people who are very close to Batman and his associates. But Joker will never kill The Bat: if there is one truth that holds throughout the Batman comics, their media, and their spinoffs, it is one of duality. There is a yin and a yang for every character, every situation; sometimes this is all wrapped up into one warped individual (see: Harvey Dent.)
Something particularly striking about the relationship between Batman and Joker is that Joker realizes their similarity more than Batman does; in Arkham City (2012) Joker calls to this directly: neither one of them can exist without the other, as they are a balance; they represent the forces of good and evil, and neither can exist without the other to give it contrast, a color, a difference. (Shetty)
Another point of interest is that Batman and Joker have similar aims: Gotham is incredibly corrupt and crime-ridden, and while Batman seeks to eliminate the crime through vigilante justice, Joker aims to expose said crime through his own sort of sadistic pleasure. He doesn’t care if other people die; people are expendable to him. (Shetty)
But is Batman so different? Batman lets people in Gotham die every day because of his refusal to kill Joker. Part of this is because the Bat can’t exist without the Joker, but part of it is all tied up in Batman’s One Rule. (White, Arp) If he killed the Joker, many other lives would be saved. I grew up watching Star Trek with my mom, and if I learned anything from it, “the good of the many outweighs the good of the one.” (Spock, Wrath of Khan, 1982.)
Why is Batman’s sense of morality more important than the lives of countless innocents? This seems as if Batman’s morality and ideals are more important than real, tangible lives that are lost by the Joker’s action and Batman’s inaction.
John Farrier argues that Batman cannot kill the Joker — “a perfect embodiment of anarchy” — because perhaps the Joker is right. What if anarchy, the Joker’s domain, is preferable to Batman’s idea of hyper-justice? This is something we, the readers, may never know, but the reason Batman can’t kill Joker is because they may not be so different after all, still looking for what is right for Gotham. This is a difference of ideals, I suppose; Joker believes in complete chaos — order comes from chaos, it’s a law of thermodynamics — and Batman is nearly fascist in his idea of blind, brutal justice.
Everything Joker does is for the attention of Batman. This is true of many Batman villains, but as the hallmark villain of the Bat-verse, Joker’s are perhaps the most significant. Joker can and does take the lives of people even close to him — also shown in Arkham City with Harley Quinn. While he doesn’t take her life, he’s willing to sacrifice her if that’s what it takes. He does this for people Batman cares about, too, taking up a particular beef with Commissioner Gordon. Joker critically wounds and ultimately confines his daughter to a wheelchair and kills Sarah, Gordon’s second wife, in a particularly brutal fashion. Joker doesn’t care about anyone, not even Harley. He’s a loose cannon and it’s easy to set off the Bat because he cares about other people, his relationships.
Joker knows that he and Batman are more similar than they are different. Batman knows this too, but it’s a thought that scares him so much he doesn’t let himself think much about it. There’s not much that separates the two of them. One bad day made them who they are: Batman becomes the vigilante, Joker becomes the villain. Any lesser man could have also been driven to madness by the loss of his parents, right in front of him — and in some instances, he is driven to madness during Arkham Asylum during his scenes with Scarecrow. It shows him what he could be if he had not become Batman, not had the fortune he had, not given a strong parental figure in Alfred.
Joker is definitely mentally ill — sent in the “revolving door” of Arkham Asylum instead of the (equally revolving) door of Blackgate — but is he more mentally ill than the Bat? Or is Batman’s mental illness ignored because he’s a crusader for justice instead of chaos? Surely Bruce totes around a hefty load of PTSD along with other issues, possibly related to control, yet he has never had a stay in Arkham.
For throwntotheair, who has a few questions about Talia. :) I’m grouping this under a few broad questions that should bleed into answering some of the others you mentioned.
The preface of this, of course, is that all of my answers are based in the character of Talia al Ghul prior to Grant Morrison writing her. So the 30+ years of content and development we had beforehand. Grant largely ignored the fundamental pieces of her character that were recurring themes over the years, turned her into an infanticidal rapist and, generally speaking, made her as 2-dimensional as possible. His interpretation also gave Talia wildly inconsistent motives, so he is not a good measure for delving into her character.
What are her motives?
Talia has always been motivated by one thing: love. Love for her father, love for Bruce, love for Damian. Even love for the planet (though less so than Ra’s). Each step of her journey has love somewhere in the why. The primary conflict for her, especially early on, was the tug-of-war between acting for good (because of her love for Bruce) or acting for evil (because of her love for her father).
The animated series still gives one of the best summaries of Talia’s goals, too: she says that she believes in her father’s vision for the world, but not in his means (namely mass genocide).
Even in dealing with Damian (Morrison, again, notwithstanding), I think she meant everything for love (I’ll explain more in the ‘why did she raise him this way’ section).
When she throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit in Lost Days, her letter to him says that she has done this “for love.”
Despite her badassery, Talia is actually a very loving, empathic person (though sometimes she denies it). Either way, love is at the core of what she does. For her father, that love spills over into loyalty…most of the time.
Why the loyalty to Ra’s (Why has she never stood against him?)
Wellllll this is two parts. The first question: love and indoctrination. The second question: she has.
First we have to understand that Talia is pretty much a psychological trainwreck. In Batman Chronicles #8, we see one of the only stories that’s specifically from Talia’s point-of-view. This and Lost Days are as close as we really get to such direct access to her thoughts.
Yeah. She’s messed up. We should note that Ra’s, despite his being just about Worst Dad Ever, does genuinely love Talia, in his own way.
Realize that Talia has been raised exclusively in Ra’s in environment (like Damian) and that the way she raised Damian was A LOT like she was raised. She’s in a place where he father is viewed as a deity, it’s this massive, powerful cult, and so there’s a level of indoctrination going on.
But that said…Even from the beginning, Talia was defying her father.
She thinks for herself and, growing through the years, she becomes increasingly agitated, worn down and plain ol’ fed up with her father. I would argue that in most cases, she betrays him for Bruce (or Jason, or Damian) because she knows he’s wrong.
(Prior this panel, Batman asks why Talia is betraying Ra’s, and if it’s because she loves him:)
Doesn’t she seem to be lacking independence?
Here’s where I think there was a massive missed opportunity. Talia, after being shot for betraying her father in Tower of Babel, nopes out and goes off on her own. She’s fed up with both Bruce AND Ra’s.
Ra’s shows up and has Talia kidnapped to bring her back. She winds up rescuing Bruce one more time before leaving BOTH of them and heading off to Hong Kong, where she becomes a successful businesswoman in her own right.
At the time, Lex Luthor is about to run for president. He shows up at her door:
Talia becomes CEO of LexCorp. I wish so much that more happened in this era for her. She butts heads with Superman a few times (and even teamed up once and it was awesome), but it was so under-utilized. In the end, though, she runs the long con on Luthor, willfully bankrupts LexCorp and sells off the assets to Wayne Enterprises. Mostly just to spite him.
She hates Lexcorp mostly because she’s an environmentalist. And because Luthor.
So she’s this awesome independent businesswoman who manages to trick one of the smartest men in the DCU.
Unfortunately, her half-sister shows up during this era in Death and the Maidens. She kidnaps and tortures Talia by murdering her over and over and bringing her back with her Lazarus Pit. This goes on until Talia’s psyche shatters.
Nyssa brainwashes Talia, first with intent to kill Ra’s. Ra’s eventually kills Talia.
When Nyssa kills Ra’s, she and Talia both continue with Ra’s mission (with Nyssa as the Demon’s Head until her death). Then Talia, still brainwashed, becomes the Demon’s Head and leads into the modern area (as with Villains United which ran pretty close up to the New 52).
Why did she raise Damian in that environment?
To put it short: because it was how she was raised and because she knows it’s the only way for him to survive. When Talia was 18 (her first appearance) she was kidnapped by an enemy of her father. Her entire life has been violence, danger and bloodshed. Her father is a powerful, dangerous man in a dangerous world.
If Damian had not been trained, in her mind, he would not have survived. I think she believes it was the best way for him to be able to protect himself. Some indoctrination bleeds through (as her raising him would be post-brainwashing, though the timeline is a bit wonky).
I hope that helps! I’ve got a lot more essays in on my blog, plus one that’s a comprehensive account of Talia’s history.
