Lots of chatter on several weblogs , in which he drops the ball in his appeal for a female audience for Supergirl. I’ll pinpoint a few of his nosedives:

When Joe Kelly took over fully with issue #9, we discussed the many paths we could take Kara in. Jeph Loeb with the incomparable Mike Turner had already created the buzz, and Greg Rucka kept your attention during his all too short run. What could Joe do? After a very serious conference call that involved Joe, our amazing penciller Ian Churchill, and my then Assistant Editor Jeanine Schaefer (she was pivotal in giving us a woman’s point of view on the character—like, can Supergirl gain some weight, please?), it was decided to have Kara just try to be a real teenager. No standard hero on patrol bit here. We were gonna make Kara a typical teenager, which meant she wouldn’t listen to the grownups (in her case a guy named Kal) and wouldn’t appreciate being given chores (killing Kal for her dad, Zor-El). She’d just be a girl trying to find her place in the world.

Oh ho, did you see that? He sugarcoated an embarrassing suggestion Rucka initially made when he wrote the book that the editors actually wanted to steer away from, that Kara was sent to earth to terminate cousin Kal for her begrudging dad! Pure trash talk. Berganza’s citation is insulting and offensive, since it not only villifies and desecrates the memory of Zor-El, it also puts an embarrassing stain on Kara’s own being. And, if they’re intention is to make Supergirl a fun or at least a thought-provoking book, on the contrary, it’s just another example of how today’s comics are making their subjects less heroic and effective, even if they’re anti-heroes like Spider-Man.

Sure, some of you may not be keen that we didn’t go straight into America’s Sweetheart mode with her, but, hey, we know that’s what she will eventually become. For us, it’s the hero’s journey that’s interesting. I compare this to what’s being done with Clark on SMALLVILLE. Already, we’ve seen Kara try to be normal, whether partying or in a disastrous attempt at a secret identity.

Unless they give her a more appealingly bright personality, I doubt we’ll see her go into America’s Sweetheart mode. As for the secret ID, that they didn’t even make it a regular feature for her is what’s damaged the book.

In fact, why haven’t they even given her a regular cast of some sort to match that of her cousin’s? She could live in Smallville and attend a local school, and besides the Kents, her cast could include a schoolteacher or a principal along the lines of Perry White, a boyfriend for Kara in answer to Lois Lane’s being girlfriend/wife for Clark Kent, and even a female pal to Jimmy Olsen’s male pal to Clark.

Regarding Kara’s bare midriff costume, that in and of itself is not a problem. But when you see that Stargirl, who wears an almost similar costume, gets more focus on her personality whereas Supergirl gets very little development, you know something’s wrong. If the book is going to be focused far more on Kara as a sexual object than on her persona or social skills, not to mention a solid direction like what I suggested above, then that’s where detractors have a point (not counting any whom I caught with their pants down praising Identity Crisis).

And here’s where Berganza hits the lunacy factor full steam ahead:

Now, she has a new love interest in Power Boy, a “hero” that Ian designed, keeping in mind the great attributes that are usually associated with female characters…and the reason most women don’t like the super-hero genre. Like the chest window of his costume? His constant posing? Yes, he’s a mimbo, but he’ll be a lot worse to Kara when issue #15 hits.

I’m not waiting up, and wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of female readers are discouraged too. This sounds like some of the worst costume designs Mike Grell thought up when he was artist of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the Bronze Age for the male cast members. Maybe if they’d thought of a design similar to what Hawkman has, that is, macho-shirtless save for his special badge-belts, probably the best way to feature a male superhero who can appeal to women, and employed that description in their press statements, then they’d be getting somewhere. Instead, what we have is a case of equal opportunity sexism against males as well as females. Reminds me of a few years ago, when I posted on a now defunct website, and the webmaster asked people for examples of males who’d been assaulted in as bad a way as females had. Not realizing that he was looking for morally equivalent way to justify the use of assault against females in comics, or equal opportunity sexism, I offered up one example, that being when Barry Allen, towards the end of his Flash run, had his face badly injured by Big Sir. The webmaster’s intentions apparently had what to do with the release of Identity Crisis, and he wrote an absurd and insulting column that didn’t even mention any of the examples he was given (he expected anyone reading to actually look at the message board, which required login and registration to view?). Nevertheless, when I realized that he’d taken advantage of me and others for the sake of his idiotic little bias, I was offended. I subsequently had a fallout with him and fled. I needed to find the time to forge my own path in my beliefs anyway.

Berganza’s press item is stupid, and I think that call should be made that he and Dan Didio, should resign. There have been those who’d be glad if Joe Quesada would resign as Marvel EIC, and make way for someone not so hell bent to force his politicized views upon Marvel Comics. Now they can sounds the drums for Berganza’s and DiDio’s resignation as well. Because they have sabotaged DC Comics, and there have been quite a few series that backfired on them by now (I’ll have to look for an analysis of their sales soon), and the chickens have come home to roost.

So take this advice, dear visitor, and sound the call for DiDio’s departure. He’s mainly part of the problem; it certainly can’t be overlooked, and the time has come for him to step down.

On another note…

I mentioned Stargirl. I’m going to have to note that there’s problems surrounding - not her, but rather, her own writer, Geoff Johns. When he first introduced her in 1998, he dedicated her to the memory of his late sister, who died in a plane crash. That could explain why he’s been respectable of her, but what about some of the other women he’s written in comics all this time? Linda Park West, when he was writing the Flash, took a beating from the now-departed neo-Zoom, that was circled back on during the latter part of his run. Hawkgirl may not have fared much better either, recalling that in JSA: Fair Play, she was not a player in Roulette’s little death game, just a pawn. And in Teen Titans, his handling of Raven getting a tattoo(!) seemed like shock value, since I thought she was more respectable than that.

The point of this is to note that, while Johns may not be guilty of sexualizing the women under his pen, he is guilty of BRUTALIZING at least one of them, and even defaming another one in his desecration of Captain Carrot’s Zoo Crew (don’t ask).

does its bad bit to sensationalize and certainly to sugarcoat the news about Civil War, here being about Spider-Man:

Boy, Peter Parker (aka: Spider-Man … but you knew that) just can’t catch a break. First, just as he gets a little respect and security by joining up with the Avengers, he gets himself in a heap of trouble by becoming the poster boy for the government’s Superhero Registration Act. As such, he’s talked into revealing his secret identity to the public at a special pro-registration press conference. “Amazing Spider-Man No. 537,” Marvel Comics; $2.99. Needless to say, this grand gesture, designed to inspire the undecided to come and join the team, results in Peter’s personal life to be thrown into chaos. Forget about his day job as a high school teacher. No parent wants their child to attend a class where a vengeance-seeking super villain might break in and audit at any time. As for his Aunt May and his wife, M.J.? Let’s just say that they’re extremely cautious about opening the door to their home nowadays.

Still and all, it was for the greater good, right?

The answer to that is NO.

of Frank Miller’s newest commentary on (Hat tip: ). And I’m glad to have bought the first of three trade compilations of his work on Daredevil from the early 1980s.

has some more thoughts on Miller.

Fantastic Four #541 is J. Michael Straczynski’s last issue on the series, and having taken the time to read up about the story setup (and even to obtain a couple of panels), I hate to say, but, anyone who thinks that JMS has shown any real affection for the French is sadly mistaken. First though, let’s take a look at the following couple of panels:

What we have here is a case of Ben being confronted by the IRS, acting on behalf of the government over Ben’s opposition to the hero registration act in Civil War by confiscating the fortune he made several issues earlier, but which, while explored in the recent, short-lived solo book he had, was never given much attention in the FF afterwards. And while Ben may have said that he was against this policy which was written as an attack on US government policy in real life, they cannot freeze his assets unless he actually did commit a crime. Nice going there, JMS, trying to paint a picture of the US government as an evil entity that acts dictatorially.

Then, there’s this next scene, which appears to be an attack on security steps that were taken following the very serious case of when :
It appears that Straczynski is either a]attacking the precaution against potential liquid bombs or other forms of flammable/chemical weapons being brought aboard planes, b]portraying airport security as incompetant and lenient, or c]both. Simply disgraceful. Also, while we may know that this is the ever lovin’ blue-eyed Thing, the airport security staff does not, and no matter who’s getting on board, the fact is that everybody, innocent and guilty alike, have to be checked to make sure they’re not carrying anything dangerous. It could be Clark Kent getting on board, and even he’d still have to be checked. How can JMS be so disrespectful to the people trying to guard us against potential terrorist threats?

, here’s a synopsis that tells a bit about what’s wrong with it in text:

The Thing thinks how nice it is to be in a town where it is peaceful and no one is looking over their shoulders for super heroes fighting and buildings falling down and bombs going off. (Huh, what? This is the same place that was full of riots by Muslim immigrants over a period of a couple of weeks, right? Dude, if the Thing wanted quiet he should have gone to Nova Scotia.)

I’ll have to hand it to the blogmaster there, he got that right. JMS sure isn’t painting a very honest or realistic picture of what it’s like in real life, where many Parisians live in fear of Muslim vandals. Now me, I’ve been to Paris, France, at least three times myself, in 1989, 1992, and 2000, and the third time certainly felt dangerous, especially when seeing how at least one town square was dead as a doornail with no nightlife that Paris was famous for years ago, because there’d been thugs coming around harrassing, assaulting and mugging people. And then, there was that , thanks to Jacques Chirac’s efforts to allow it to continue, , and other properties and causing millions in damages and . And JMS has the gall now to depict things as utterly peaceful and quiet?

In France, Ben meets up with a groups of superheroes who all turn out to be DC Comics knockoffs, right down to the “Blue Light”, who derives from Green Lantern. But the way Stracynzki writes them is so silly, and he certainly isn’t doing favors for either Americans or French with the following:

During the battle the Phantom Detective calls the Thing a bourgeois capitalist. The Thing calls the Phantom Detective a socialist layabout.

Funny that JMS should do that, considering his own personal politics, which would suggest that he’s a socialist layabout himself. But now, here’s where JMS deals the death knell to any credibility the story could have, when confronting the villain of the story - a Mole Man ripoff at that - and his army of underground creatures:

The Thing then comes face to face with the Emperor of the underground world. The Emperor tells the Thing that he can’t hurt him. The Emperor said that the city of Paris and her citizens have already hurt him so much that he can never be hurt again. The Emperor says that Paris deserves to fall and be destroyed. The Thing says that a girl turned him down for a date, right? The Emperor answers “Maybe.”

The Heroes of Paris totally understand that in the name of love that the Emperor would attack Paris. They heroes think it is very noble and touching. The Thing destroys the Emperor’s machine that he was going to use to destroy Paris. The Thing and the heroes return to the surface along with the Emperor. There, the Emperor is greeted by his ex-girlfriend who broke his heart. His girlfriend is impressed that the Emperor would try and destroy Paris all in the name of his love for her. His girlfriend tells the Emperor that she wants to marry him.

Let me get this straight. The Emperor planned to do things that could injure/murder thousands, maybe even millions of people, and they consider noble and worthy of respect and honor? (As you’ll notice in the picture, the Batman-knockoff certainly seems to think that.) What is going on here? I doubt that many French will be charmed by the super-doers featured here if that’s what they think of someone who was going to use deadly force against them. I additionally doubt they would want them guarding their homeland with those kind of opinions and forgiving attitude. The worst part is how it’s all dealt with in superficial, juvenile terms, without making any serious consideration of consequences of what this Emperor was planning to do.

But what’s really ludicrous here are the likely allegories - the Emperor’s claim that the Parisians have hurt him is probably JMS’ subtle way of implying that the victims are to blame for hurting the “innocent” Muslim immigrants in the banlieues of Paris, and the ex-girlfriend could be an allegory to the two Muslim delinquents who were electrocuted by a power substation in Clichy Sous-Bois. If my estimates are correct, that would suggest that Straczynski is on the side of the violent rioters. Shudder. The way the French - or the heroes - are depicted here isn’t very flattering either.

And worst of all, it’s dealt with in the weakest, superficial of fairy-tale terms, providing no better lessons than any of yesterday’s stories. One of the dumbest things I have ever seen. Notice how in the final panel, the Emperor is shown simply talking to a policeman (and policewoman?) on the street, and they’re not even slapping the cuffs on him? That is just plain stupid. Let’s be clear, it makes no difference how loosely the concept of madness is used in comics; this is a character who threatened to level the city, and for that, he should be thrown in the slammer! (Also, don’t French police officers usually wear these straight-and-round-shaped caps, and not the kind of wide-rimmed ones that officers in the US usually wear? Didn’t Mike McKone do his homework? Considering that he’s from the UK and across the Channel himself, if I’m correct, you’d surely think he’d know what kind uniforms are worn around those parts.) If there was ever a time when the medium was dumbed down, this could be it.

I won’t be missing Straczynski on this book, or on Spider-Man either, if all he could do was keep shoving his personal biases down the readers’ throats. His departure as far as I’m concerned is for the best.

Open trackbacks: , , , , , , .

I think we can all do ourselved a favor and not waste time upon this , because that’s what I intend to do:

Tomasi and Siglain further indicated that World War III would be a “continuity-changing event for a lot of characters,” and that it will have a life-changing effect on one major DC character in particular. They couldn’t reveal which major character’s life would undergo such monumental changes other than that it would not be Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. They did say, though, that fans should expect many characters to kick the bucket during World War III.

Sorry, but if that’s all they can think of doing, then no sale.

In the now cancelled series featuring the “new” Firestorm, the writer, Stuart Moore, injected an anti-war advertisement in the 30th issue. :

When my father was young, they had a saying: “Never trust anyone over thirty.” It sounds silly – but it was a very serious response to the times. Back then, a group of older men had a stranglehold on the federal government…

Today, a new group of men controls all the branches of the federal government. Men of power … They lie to us about weapons of mass destruction. They ruin crucial government agencies with shameless cronyism, then watch as our cities flood and die. They preach morality while they steal our jobs and bankrupt our future, little by little – all the while grabbing more and more money for themselves.

Sigh. Again, another anti-war clown who won’t look at any of the . It’s been at least four years now, and still, we have writers who live in astounding states of self-denial.

It’s also a far cry from back in the Bronze/Iron Age, when Firestorm, while there were stories involving political themes, was far from being as anti-war as this tommyrot is. I guess you could say this is another reason for the current series’ undoing.

by an attendant of the NY Jewish Museum’s Masters of American Comics exhibition, which runs until next week.

a fourth/fifth grade teacher who runs a class on writing and crafting stories about comic book heroes.

Man, I almost missed this news, but now that I have it available, I feel quite relieved. (link via ):

I’ve seen reports that the latest Wizard magazine mentioned that you’re leaving Amazing Spider-Man this coming year. Is that true?

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and what I’ve enjoyed writing the most for Marvel have been the special projects, like Bullet Points, the new one I’m writing, and I’m most especially happy with how Thor is going. So I finally felt that the best thing I could do would be to devote myself almost entirely to those projects…come up with really cool 6, 12 or 18 issue special projects, in or out of ongoing titles, or reviving titles, and keep Thor my own monthly mainstream Marvel book, so I can give all of those the proper amount of attention.

The cool thing about this is that I get to play anywhere I want in the Marvel universe, I can tell whatever stories I want without worrying about continuity for the most part, and best of all the process calls for the books to be fully written and drawn THEN solicited, so there are no delays. So right now, on the new project, I’m 4 scripts in out of 12, pencils are now coming in on issue 3, and we should have the whole thing done before the first issue hits the stands. That, for me, is the more satisfying way of doing things.

So, your coming projects don’t have nothing to do with the remnants of continuity? That’s okay, since I’m not interested in any more of what you have to write, JMS. I stayed away from JMS’ writing completely ever since that now notorious storyline “Sins Past” whose only real interest seemed to be in tarnishing innocent Gwen Stacy’s image. And, as it turned out, that wasn’t even half of the problems to follow, what with Spidey being dragged artificially into the Avengers, who since then haven’t even resembled the original concept, and is now beginning to look more like the Defenders. In that case, why launch a new series for the team first led by Dr. Strange in the Bronze Age and have Spidey be a guest member there?

JMS’s run was anything but memorable, filled with a couple of parts where it would seem as though he’s confronting some hard questions, but then backed away from them. Or, he was dragging Spidey too far into the realm of the supernatural, one where Dr. Strange is more at home, and straying too far from the urban setting where Spidey works best. Or, as seen more recently, . Phooey, who needs it. Morlun was a weak villain, who only seemed to be there for the purpose of getting from point A to point B. The familiar faces in Spidey’s cast (Flash Thompson, Betty Brant, Gloria Grant, Robbie and Randy Robertson, Liz Allen Osborn, and of course, J. Jonah Jameson) were largely absent, and there didn’t seem to be any new ones with potential introduced, and JMS made very little use of the rogues’ gallery either, if at all. After awhile, I couldn’t care less, and when that awful Gwen-defaming story came around, I knew it was a good thing that I’d stayed away.

I realize of course that there’s still a long way to go for the redemption of Spidey and the rest of the MCU. But for now, JMS’ departure is something I can’t help but feel relieved by. Now, the challenge is in getting Marvel to actually assign a writer who understands what made Spidey work in years past, and how to best translate those aspects for today. Come to think of it, we can’t let Joe Quesada off the hook even now, and there still needs to made calls for his departure as well.

The battle to save Spidey’s legacy still must go on, and come to think of it, to save Mary Jane’s too. Let’s not let up, let’s keep on going to fix the problems at hand!

predicts that in the future, mainline Marvel and DC could end up resembling the weekly 52 series more than anything else, replete with gratutious storytelling. He’s right to be concerned; I’m wondering if there could be a superfluous amount of crossovers that’ll be hitting the audience. There certainly are more than a few “event” comics being hurled at us, most of which aren’t worth the paper they were printed on, and which decidedly need to be avoided as well. Otherwise, the road to redeption will be made longer.