-What were the hardest parts of adjusting to being "public", rather than operating with a secret identity? Relatedly, unlike some public Heroes, you weren't given a choice in the matter; how do you feel about that?
-Back in the day, did you interact with other sidekicks much?
-Are there any things about the way "superhero culture", for lack of a better word, has changed from the Golden Age that you find particularly gratifying, or alternatively, that bother you?
-Have you ever felt awkward when interacting with German or Japanese or Italian people in the 21st Century?
-Speaking of social awkwardness, is it difficult interacting with people from your native era who, uh, got here the old fashioned way, so to speak?
-What was the biggest adjustment in your, uh, let's say fighting style, upon finding yourself a superpowered adult, rather than a unpowered teen?
-So, what were you doing when you heard about Pearl Harbor?
-Are there any there any Legacy villains who's existence particularly irks you?
-Some Golden Age Heroes have mentioned that both at the time and even today, feeling guilt about not being on the front lines. Did you have similar feelings?
-Pretty much everyone in your age group read superhero comics, of both the real ones and fictional. How awkward was it when discussions came up? Especially the inevitable arguments about who would win in a fight?
-Speaking of, did you ever interact with any of the people who wrote the comics about you and Mr. Dodds?
-Speaking of stuff written about your mentor; have you read Sandman Mystery Theatre, and have any thoughts about it?
-It's been reported that, while many were intellectually aware of the Nazis and Imperial Japanese attitudes towards they considered inferior, they did not actually grasp the depth of their depravity, even those who were reading perorts reports about the Camps, Unit 731, etc. Until confronted with the irrefutable evidence, many just could not believe that modern people were capable of such monstrosity. Do you have any thoughts on this?
-I can understand if you want to skip this last one, but do you sometimes feel resentful of some of the JSAers who made it to today, when Mr. Didds didn't?
Thank you!
Sandy: *Looking down at the paper print out of the questions in front of us* ...This is the guy you warned me about, isn't it?
Me: My best customer. Let's get to it! (This is a long one. Re-edit for readability)
S: Let me answer that question with a question. Could you describe what I look like in specific terms without the mask and the coat?
M: (Several seconds past) You are...a blonde man, somewhere between your mid 20s and your late 30s and um...no, no I guess I can't.
S: Exactly. I'm not what you would call a movie star. If I go out without my costume on, nobody who doesn't know me personally knows me from Adam anyway.
M: What about things that are tied more directly to you. This giant mansion right off Battery Park is in your name.
S: Well yes but what would be the point of a big, intimidating mansion if I couldn't ignore people at the front door?
M: So what do you think about having your identity being public then?
S: Honestly its for the best. Having my name out there while I'm still among the living means that I get to tell my story, Wes' story, my Aunt Dian's story straight from the horse's mouth. I have no idea how you'd do an interview like this with a person whose ID isn't out there.
M: I've given some thought to it but I agree with you in large part
S: Besides, like most JSA members or All Stars I probably would have dropped the pretense when we came back in the modern day anyhow. We're not young men anymore with occupations and families to protect, not in the same way at least.
S: Oh of course, we were always getting up to mischief. It was me, Wing, Stuff, Danny and Pinky. We were *hellions* I tell ya.
M: By Danny you mean Daniel Dunbar, AKA Dan the Dyna-Mite
S: That's the one, he was always the most mature of us though we all looked up to Sylvester. The Star Spangled Kid. From our perspective it looked like he was the kid who got to sit at the grown ups table, call the shots.
M: Looked like?
S: Obviously our mentors were doing their best to do right by us back then. I was a teenager, I loved Wes like a father but that didn't mean I didn't rankle under him and mouth off sometimes, we all did.
M: So you bonded with each other.
S: 100%. A lot of it was just as complaining about the grown ups in the back of Squadron meetings. When the Young All Stars got formed it only made us that much more insufferable.
M: How so?
S: Most of the Young All Stars were older than us, 16-18 rather than us who were between 13-16 or closer to it. But we had been there first, we were personal proteges of the best heroes in the world. We got to look down are noses at the scrappy kids down the hall.
M: A little bit of a rivalry?
S: Yea, but schoolyard stuff. Sidekicks vs Young All Stars, it was mostly just mouthing off in the halls. When it was mission time we had each others' backs.
S: I read your piece about the Ingersoll Amendment
M: I'm flattered
S: It's good stuff, I think you're right on the money about the way the culture itself has changed.
M: In what way?
S: Superheroes are right in the public eye now. We don't show up, beat down the thugs and then melt back into the shadows. We can talk to the press, we can work with the cops to a certain extent. We've become publically accountable in a way we never were before. I think its why this heroic age is here to stay.
M: And you don't miss the way things used to be done?
S: God no. I mean I'm nostalgic about Wes and I slinking about in the dark, all noir and whatnot but its so much easier when the evidence room will actually take my phone calls.
S: You mean have I ever accidentally called someone a N*p?
M: That's not what I said
S: No but you could probably patent the shade of red you just turned. In all seriousness, no. It never sat right with us how the propaganda department spun things, especially with the Japanese.
M: You must have hated them
S: Of course I hated them. Tojo and Hirohito and his whole murderous crew but I hated them the same way I hated Hitler and Goering and Himmler. It was never a race a thing with us, maybe a little in our absolute darkest moods but not really.
M: You come out ahead of most of the planet in that sense.
S: If you say so, honestly if anything I'm just glad those nations have moved forward the way they have. Would have felt like a pipe dream what Tokyo looks like now and I celebrate them for it.
S: Yessir it is. Also the...crustiness that a lot of folks "my age" have. That backward looking attitude.
M: Speaking about the general public rather than your JSA teammates.
S: Eh, Alan and Ted have their grumpy moods. Jay was always a ray of sunshine.
M: How do they interact with you about the...*gestures*
S: Some of them are jealous of my permanent 25 years old disease, honestly if they wanted it they could have it. All they'd have to do is get turned into a big sand monster for 70 years.
M: Not worth it then?
S: I wouldn't recommend its anti aging properties no.
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S: Having superpowers just changes your options.
M: How so?
S: Wes and I usually had to treat guys with superhuman toughness as a mulligan. Do what we can, try not to get flattened, pass it off to one of the big hitters. Now when I give Captain Nazi a right hook to his Aryan nose I can put the force of an industrial sandblaster behind it.
M: Your fighting style in the modern day is a lot like your mentor's
S: Always will be, really the biggest coup of my powers is investigative. Being able to enter and exit places without being seen or sensed, being able to sense vibrations into the next room. When it comes to the scrapping it just means I can take more hits and give harder ones.
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S: You gotta think, nobody knew what was happening in Pearl Harbor until it was over. And that's without the 6 hour time difference. The attack started at around...
M: 8 AM Hawaiian time, would have been about 2 PM here in New York
S: Exactly. Wes was at home, I was at school. The official declarations didn't come down until the next day.
M: A moment which will live on in infamy.
S: The entire Society was standing around the radio with death on their faces. Death, and sadness, and fear. But no surprise.
M: Why not?
S: The Society had been assembled by FDR with the foresight that America was GOING to end up in the war one way or the other. We just didn't know when or how.
M: It must have been shocking anyway.
S: What I remember was...that Wes wouldn't take his hand off my shoulder. Every so often he'd look down at me and when I looked up at him he'd face forward. Back then it was comforting. Now I don't know if he was trying to console me or trying to hold himself on his feet. I don't think he knew either.
S: Wasn't my call, but it was something I was constantly kind of stewing about.
M: Not being able to fight?
S: I wasn't old enough to fight when the war started anyway. Didn't mean I didn't want to. I wanted to fly over to Berlin and break Hitler's nose with my bare hands. I was a punk kid and I thought if they'd just let me attem I could take em down with my own two hands.
M: And then the Spear
S: And then the cowardly god forsaken spear that rat bastard pulled out of his back pocket. Meant a lot of good men had to go over the top and pay the price to pry it from his goosestepping little claw. Yea, I got guilt. I got guilt for a few million guys who didn't get to come home again because we had our hands tied behind our backs.
M: Wasn't your fault.
S: The whole damn thing was the little bastard's fault, what else is new.
S: We didn't read the comics at the time, none of us could get through 'em
M: The inaccuracy was too much?
S: For the two of us especially. They drew Wes as some cleft chin He-Man with pecs you could crush marbles between. Wesley Dodds was a mousy clerk of a man who wore coke bottle glasses until the day he died.
M: And about who would win?
S: No superhero on the planet worries about that. Generally we prefer to aim our punches at the bad guys.
S: ...People...knew about the camps. In an absolute sense.
M: Sure, the Red Cross knew about the camps in the absolute sense.
S: It wasn't...possible. It wasn't feasible. It wasn't SANE. I mean the entire idea of concentration camps is insane. We all knew people would be starving, diseased, dropping dead by the dozens. Camps like that kill people, always have.
M: But not like...
S: Not like that. Hitler's screed wasn't new, every Jew or Roma on the planet knew it by heart from birth...no one outside of Germany knew until the Reds started knocking over the camps.
M: You and your allies had no better idea?
S: No, the War Department didn't share jack shit with us. We didn't get more than the reports that were needed for us to do what we needed to do. We saw...we saw the photos at the same time as everyone else.
S: I don't begrudge those who have made it this far one inch and Wes wouldn't have either.
M: How so?
S: We were family. Comrades. We stuck to each other shoulder to shoulder whether it was gangsters, or supervillains, or nazis, or the HUAC. None of us expected, thought we especially "deserve" to live through the next 100 days let alone 100 years.
M: You don't wish he was still here with you?
S: I miss my Uncle Wes every hour of every day. But that's who I miss, my Uncle Wes. MY Uncle Wes. Not the Sandman, not any version of the man I could possibly express to the rest of the world. But MY Uncle. I wish he was here to guide me, to explain things to me, some days I feel like he'd have this all figured out...
M: But?
S: But he was in my exact same position back in the day. He did what he could. He found for what he knew to be right and when they called his number he sold every drop of blood dearly. Every single one of us is gonna have a time. Guys like me, guys like Wes, we hope to live with what we've got, to always stand up when we're called, and to die with our boots on watching the look on the other guy's face when he knows he lost.
[ID: Fanart of Hank King Jr and Sandy Hawkins from DC Comics. There are three sets of them on the picture. In the first they're relaxing in casual clothes against a pile of pillows. In the second, they're in casual clothes again, they are sitting and Hank is hugging Sandy's back and kissing his cheek. To the side is a chibi of them in costume as Sand and Brainwave Jr. End ID]
treat for FallofFall from the dcu-rarepair exchange. hank and sandy cuddling!
tbh I feel like almost all problems with "civilian girlfriend" superhero characters would be resolved by simply having the civilian girlfriend become an active part of the superhero's superheroing, ala Dian Belmont.
She's been an independent detective who's perspective on cases leads to their resolution as often as anybody else's, she's been Sandman's get-away driver and in-the-field assistant, she's been an informant using her access to places he can't reach ie. the district attorney's office, and she even uses Wesley's kit to investigate independently of him toward the end of Sandman Mystery Theatre.
Sandman Mystery Theatre #62
To be totally real with you, I dislike maybe 90% of fem superhero love interest stories (while liking most of these characters, let me be clear) pre-2005 or so, because they so often use women to present a conflict between the comfortable domestic life the male superhero could have, and the call to superheroism. But that conflict feels suuuper arbitrary to me when you remember that women can like
do stuff lol.
This is really apparent when you consider that the majority of m/m and f/f love interests that began appearing in the mid-2000s make both characters extremely active, with most m/m pairings usually being superhero/superhero, while f/f pairings usually feature a more active feminist play on pre-existing m/f or queered familiar friend dynamics. Kate Kane's girlfriends are a hardboiled cop (kind of a Jim Gordon, do you see the vision?) and The Question respectivey, so we have superhero / action archetype and superhero / superhero. I don't think this is a queerness thing so much as modern writers realizing that characters are more interesting when they do stuff, instead of complaining about the characters who are allowed to do stuff doing that stuff, and because queerness was basically illegal until 2005 or so writers were allowed to innovate and introduce new characters instead of sticking with the old.
But a lot of historied m/f relationships in comics have the baggage of a sexist history weighing them down, imo, in this weird repetition of "I can't let Woman know about my secret life..." concept. It's hard to really innovate on that formula when the formula by design usually doesn't allow women to be pro-active in these stories, they need to be kept separate from the action or imperiled by the action for the superhero to both rescue and maintain his secret life status quo. I think that's why the Batman love interests we remember and care about are the supervillain femme fatales like Catwoman and Talia al Ghul, and not like... Shondra Kinsolving or, as much as I love her for being the actual progressive who calls out Bruce to his face lol, Vicki Vale - the villainesses are by design characters who are allowed to engage in the action of the genre.
I think 100% of the reason Lois Lane is such an iconic character and why she immediately transcended this, is that she was often presented as an extremely pro-active badass. She was a careerist at a time when careerist women were not portrayed (even Girl Investigators were usually written as getting their one big scoop and retiring to marry some dickhead at the office), she was an open humanist who often wasn't written as weak or stupid for having feelings, and most importantly, she was always right there in the shit. Sure yes okay, she'd be distressed into damselry a lot, especially in the 1930s - 1960s, but y'know,
Fleischer's Superman, 1941, one of the best Loises.
she was allowed to do things like run toward danger and shoot at aggressors at a time when most women in comics were kinda not at all that.
I think, and I mean this super politely, that's kinda why PS5 Spider-Man's Mary Jane (one of my fav characters in the genre actually) is sooort of just Lois Lane but on a more down-to-earth Marvel "we need to pay the goddamn bills Peter" scale, while Ultimate Spider-Man or Reimi Spider-Man's Mary Janes are, well, not that really lol (I also really like Reimi MJ, her whole arc with her struggling acting career is top).
And you can't even pull that Mary Jane was a kid in Ultimate and therefore entitled to be boring because Peter was dating Kitty Pryde at one point, because Bendis has a problem and needs to be stopped. So, it's not like more pro-active fem love interests weren't around. Those stories just weren't being given to 90% of the women and girls in that run and he had to borrow a girl who by design is always doing intersting shit because she's already a superhero.
Y'know what I mean?
I don't really like modern comics all that much but I gotta admit that women being written as "part of the team" and not "the obstruction I need to dodge so I can do superhero shit" is one of the best things modern comics have going on.
If you're not aware DC just cancelled Red Hood completely and entirely because of Gretchen Felker-Martin's posts about you know who. They've basically wiped the solicitations for the first three issues out of existence.
And if you're in any way celebrating that, just know that this has set a very, very nasty precedent. They're not cancelling this book because you didn't like her or because you thought it was bad. They're cancelling it because she's a trans woman who's already managed to garner an unfavorable reputation among fans. And because the book is currently still being review bombed, they're going to just try to bury it. Genuinely ridiculous. I hope this permanently stains Jason's character moving forward. Lobdell wrote for Jason for seven fucking years after admitting to sexual misconduct. Fucking embarrassing.
much love to ‘i love my blorbo but they did all that’ but there should be a new category of ‘i love my blorbo but they were written by someone with transparent but unspoken biases and you gotta understand that context’
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