Comic Book Queers

I exploded six-page panels, in my dreams I sweat Kirby crackles and fanboy diatribe rung in my ears. Overdosed on comics, I might as well have been lying on the candy store floor clutching my swollen belly.

Sometimes it is better to not peer behind the curtain. If truth is subjective then why bother? I remembered something, in this long dizzy spell where I didn’t know what had happened to my love for the medium.

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Its Tuesday, an improvement, right? Don’t hate me, January in Britain is like television static. With ice. I’d hate to disappoint the one person that reads this.

I would like to add some geek points to my resumé please. I work in a Lego Store. It is a fantastic job and I have a lot of fun, as sad as I am about Batman Lego no longer existing.

The biggest and best selling theme we have is Star Wars. It practically saved Lego from the brink of financial ruin not so long ago. I wouldn’t call myself an intense Star Wars fan, but I’m a fan nonethless. Give me X-Men, and I can talk to you like they’re family. Things like Star Trek and Star Wars I can dip into here and there, but I never full-on got crazy over them.

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Too much. Too, too much. You walk off for a few months, you come back, and they’ve bred all over the living room floor.

I’m talking about my comic universes, held in the cosmos of my heart since I was about eight years old. I can understand all this multiplication in the capitalistic terms it deserves…but is the writing suffering? Is the art down? Are we venturing towards yet another era of Youngblood? I shudder.

Consider the facts. Comic books are doing very, very well. I don’t think there’s been a better time to be into comic books than perhaps the Golden Age. While issues might not be selling by the millions, they are definitely more readily available than once upon a time. Digital comics, bookstores offering graphic novels. Marvel was bought by Disney. The Dark Knight did very, very well indeed. Iron Man was a surprise hit, prompting studio bigwigs to get excited about the fact a best-selling idea can come from just about anywhere. Read the rest of this entry →

“People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don’t need to see sweat patches under Superman”s arms. I want to see him fly.” – Frank Miller

Ah, good old crazy, brilliant Frank. Interesting quote, considering he’s pretty much responsible for bringing “gritty realism” to comics. Once upon a time, Batman had a Bat-Mite, lest we forget.

So what’s the deal? I think these things are somewhat cyclical too. Batman would originally carry a gun and kill his villains, until Bob Kane or Bill Finger or whoever realised characters like The Joker were far too delicious to just lay to waste.

The 50′s camp came from a need to step away from the idea that comics were a negative influence on children, so they were given some form of totally far-out kid’s cartoon feel. Because you know, flying men are not enough.

There’s a point here, stay with me. Other than the fact both Wertham and Miller have a lot to answer for, each in their own way.

I think realism in comics is a pretty good thing. It’s what makes us empathise with the characters, and keeps us coming back for more. Which in turn means the characters have to become less real, because the more we want, the less they can’t age or die (at least forever). What a paradox eh. We all come to watch Scott and Jean’s love go up and down because we feel we can relate to it, and then of course the characters can never move on from that for very long because otherwise we start to moan or something.

I watched Kick-Ass the other day and realised Millar took realism to it’s ultimate peak, and as such came up with the fact that it’s actually a pretty silly idea. I mean, there’s not one character in Kick-Ass that isn’t pathetic, and that’s not what I go to my superheroes for. Of course I want them to have complicated love lives and to wrestle with eternal questions about morality and friendship. What I don’t want them doing is getting stabbed and then run over by a car, and having to be sent to the emergency room for a three month hospital stay.

I don’t want them to have neuroses the size of uzis, or appalling sex lives. This is the reason Watchmen works so well as a self-contained book, we can’t go back there without delving into humour. Would you constantly keep going back to a character who can’t have sex without his costume? It starts to delve into The Boys territory, and I for one can live without seeing Ozymandias with a hamster up his rectum.

Lee, Kirby and Ditko brought a realism to comics that hadn’t been seen before. DC Comics heroes have always been more of a Greek pantheon, whereas Marvel decided to start from the street level looking up at the gods. Yet what we forget is that the supposed realism was completely drawn from soap operas, not particularly real life itself.

My point being, a certain amount of realism is great. It keeps us coming back to see whether Rogue and Gambit are ever going to get back together. It helps us understand Magneto as not just some evil force but as a conflicted man in a sick world. But there’s a certain moment in comics where I also want to leave the world behind, and I don’t want to see Batman stop leaping over rooftops to spend half an hour taking off his costume so he can go to the toilet. I don’t need to see Catwoman miss a step and fall nose first from a fourth story. I particularly don’t want to see Captain America farting when he thinks no-one is around.

The concept of reality in comics is a glossed-over one. When done to perfection, it means we can see emotional moments that will bring us that much closer to our beloved heroes (and villains, and the ones inbetween). The rest of it should just stay in the gutters.

There’s a story about Joni Mitchell I’d like to believe is true, not just because it serves it’s purpose so well as an opening for this article. So the tale goes, a journalist once asked her how she felt about being one of the best female singer/songwriters of all time. Joni got very worked up, and walked out of the interview. Her reason? She didn’t see why she had to be set apart from the male songwriters.

We see it all the time, and for some reason it’s perfectly acceptable. Women’s sports leagues, women’s fiction, women’s television channels. It always irks me when I go and pick up my copies of Vogue and Vanity Fair, they’re listed above “Women’s Magazines”. Apparently I should be reading Top Gear, FHM and Nuts. Yes really, there’s a magazine called Nuts. For men. See what they did there? (I am aggravated further that the comic books in my newsagents are under the children’s section, but that’s a whole other story).

So yes, well done to Marvel for trying to give their female characters a little boost, but let’s be serious, it’s not particularly empowering, and it’s not at all pretty. It screams of one word. Token.

Marvel Divas and Models Inc were interesting, but surely fluffy books should not be the tone set for every single female book now. Kathryn Immomen has a particular comedic style and good for her. It worked wonderfully on Hellcat, and the idea was followed on Aguirre-Sacassa’s Marvel Divas and Models Inc.

I respect Models Inc to a degree, as it was an homage to the model comics of the fifties and sixties, but where are the serious books? As fun as these books are, there’s very little repercussion and consequence within them as far as the universe as a whole goes. By the time we’re being exposed to, ugh, “X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back”, which sounds like it should have the additional subtitle of “Electric Boogaloo”, I for one am pretty fatigued.

I don’t think anything needs to be distinctive by gender, race or sexuality. It was a point of contention I ad with Milestone Comics. Did we really need that sort of self-segregation? Then Girl Comics rolls around, with it’s appalling title, an anthology created by women writers and artists. Whatever happened to Marvel Comics Presents? Can women and men not work together? What’s the problem with handing a title like X-Men or Avengers over to a writer like? It’s about time, really. The little pink sandbox stinks of head patting.

Then Heralds was announced, and I thought it was a step in the right direction, until I realised what the title implied. And the story, oh god. Yet another bunch of random female superheroes banding together for no particular reason. Are these comics even selling?

Black Widow And The Marvel Girls, please! What the hell is that? Lest we forget, Devin Grayson and JG Jones produced a beautiful miniseries that revitalised the character in an awesome way. Paul Cornell’s miniseries is nothing short of spectactular, and not getting the fanfare it deserves.

Here’s the thing, the women of Marvel are fine, and I don’t think they need women at the helm to prove anything. Bendis has done a fine job of producing and rebirthing strong females. From his very own Alias to re-shaping Spider-Woman and Ms. Marvel. Matt Fraction has done wonders on the X-Books, continuing Morrison’s fine work with Emma Frost and raising Psylocke and Dazzler back to new heights.

They keep trying to find a new Kitty Pryde in Pixie, without realising that Joss Whedon did a beautiful job crafting Armor into a strong, young female X-Man with plenty of potential. The difference being the marketing push was minimal, it relied simply on genuinely talented storytelling, the gender of the writer is not and should not be an issue.

Jodi Picoult on Wonder Woman? Ouch. Gail Simone? Genius. Yet so was George Perez. So gender has very little to do with anything, and is without validation. Greg Rucka has a particular talent for strong female leads, he’s managed to get his beloved Batwoman gracing the covers of Detective Comics, and as a lesbian character that’s a hell of a feat. The difference being he allowed all the ruckus (pardon the pun) to die down, and eventually concentrated on telling a powerful story. It’s worked out.

Of course it would be wonderful to see female writers get better writing and art gigs, and it would be fantastic if one day an all-female team came along, but there’s a million and one team names to choose from, and they don’t have to point out the characters within all have boobies.

I find myself feeling a little bit nostalgic, after buying some old comics on Ebay and seeing adverts for Ultraverse. Remember that?

Once upon a time Marvel acquired Malibu Comics (god knows why, they were doing pretty badly as it was), and with it came a whole host of new and interesting characters within Malibu’s Ultraverse.

The whole premise was, I suppose, a little bit like a cross between traditional superheroes and Marvel’s New Universe. It wasn’t too throwaway either, you had talent like James Robinson, Warren Ellis, George Perez and Mike W Barr working on the books, to name but a few.

Marvel did a whole lot of promotion for some bizarre reason, giving the marketing a big push. They cancelled every Malibu title and had an event called Black September. The titles were then relaunched under a joint Malibu/Marvel imprint. Believe it or not, there was even a short-lived animated TV show based on Ultraforce (which I adored) and a live-action tv show based on Night Man, created by Steve Englehart, that lasted for two years.

Lest we forget, I’m coming to my point. I suppose there’s two points actually. The first one is brief and juicy. I love drama.

Any little story about a feud or something that never came to be, and I am totally there. Alan Davis suddenly leaving ClanDestine? I want to know why! Bust-ups between Louise Simonson and Liefeld? Byrne and Claremont? Claremont and Morrison? Morrison and Miller? Gimme, gimme gimme bitchy comments please!

I hope one day there will be a documentary or book produced about what it take to make X-Men, and what kind of fight Bryan Singer had with the studio. Juicy, juicy. Malibu Comics seems to be more of the same. Apparently Joe Quesada would love to bring the characters back, but he legally can’t, and he can’t say why! Ah, it drives me crazy!

There’s even a Facebook group dedicated to people who used to work for Malibu. It is here and contains such excitable quotes as “So Disney has acquired Marvel. I think it’s a day for all Malibu alumni to pause and reflect. And may Disney treat Marvel as graciously, wisely and magnanimously as Marvel treated us!”. Girlfriend!

My second point. It always interests me to see how comic companies try and incorporate characters into their universe that they’ve bought elsewhere. I believe Captain Marvel is probably the first example of this? I might be wrong, but I can’t think of any others. Dc sued Fawcett because Captain Marvel looked a whole lot like Superman (*cough* they’d have a field day if Rob Liefeld had been born in that era) and then when the company went bust due to all the legal trouble, DC bought up Fawcett and started using Captain Marvel. (And were later sued by Marvel and told they couldn’t use the name Marvel on any titles, hence the title always having been called Shazam!)

I suppose Marvel incorporated their own superheroes into their Silver Age, by bringing Captain America back in a cube of ice. Even DC tried to amend their Golden and Modern ages by ret-conning and weaving things together. It doesn’t always make logical sense, but you just have to look at it as another universe with it’s own set of rules. (I just watched an episode of The Simpsons that retconned Marge and Homer’s single life into the 90′s. Major headache).

DC’s Crisis was an excellent way of bringing Charlton characters into the DC Universe, and in my opinion the most successful incorporation I have ever seen. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that Giffen used characters such as Blue Beetle in his run on Justice League.

So what went wrong with Malibu? Maybe Marvel tried too hard? There were crossovers aplenty, with a ton of talent. Ellis and Perez on Ultraforce/Avengers for example. They shook things up a little and moved Black Knight, Juggernaut and Sienna Blaze (don’t ask) into the Ultraverse, and had a crossover featuring Phoenix resurrected into the Ultraverse too. In hindsight, maybe not a good idea.

I think Marvel tried too hard, and they also kept the two universes separate. Bad move. It makes me sad, because it would be so interesting to see a character like Prime (who is essentially a Superman/Captain Marvel hybrid) interacting in the normal Marvel Universe.

When it comes to blending characters, I truly believe subtle is the way to go. A slow build-up and you don’t feel like these characters have just been stuck-on. I don’t think the Milestone characters working into the JLA came across too well for that reason. For people who haven’t been reading comics for 15 years, they feel a bit jolted. Who are these characters, and why are they suddenly Justice League members? Hopefully the Archie superheroes will work a bit better, they’ve been making cameos in other books as a means to bringing about curiosity, and I think that works pretty well too.

It also reminds me of the sheer mess that was DC Vs. Marvel and the ensuing “Amalgam” universe. Some of it was pretty fun, but on the whole, it was a bad move. Sometimes you don’t need a huge explanation, things just need to happen. Then again, that’s what they did for Star Trek/X-Men and look how that turned out.

Sometimes, maybe it’s just a case of oil and water. I really do wish Ultraforce would come back though.

I thought that for my first post it would be best to tackle the elephant in the room.  Watchmen is a bit like Paris Hilton’s sex tape. You can’t help but refer to it when talking about her erm…career, what with it being the most productive and maybe even critically acclaimed part of it. Then again, who talks about Paris Hilton anyway?

The point is, you can’t talk about comics and ignore Watchmen. Whether you like it or not. Sorry! Whether you think it’s the greatest piece of graphic literature ever produced, or not. Hell, it ranks up there in some people’s opinions as literature full stop, that’s how much impact it made.

Stevie’s been running a discussion on Facebook that’s definitely divided people. Why would it be in bad taste to make prequels and sequels to Watchmen?

In my opinion Watchmen should be left alone. The film adaptation was exciting, but in a way I was simply curious to see if they could pull the thing off. I think they did a pretty decent job, but it’s not the book.

It’s a little harder to fully understand what Watchmen brought to the table over twenty years later, because we’re so used to seeing it on the pages of modern comics. Without Watchmen there would be nothing we’ve had in the past decade. I think the noughties were the year of the writer, the time when the writer was for the most part left alone to his own devices and respected above and beyond editorial.

Granted, Watchmen had to create it’s own archetypes in order to fulfill this objective, it wasn’t even allowed to play with the Charlton characters. In all aspects, Watchmen shouldn’t have worked out, but like every major piece of art that resists the passing of time, Watchmen connected with an audience.

Alan Moore managed to brilliantly put his finger on the pulse of society, and not simply constrain himself to the 80′s. He created characters that built upon Stan Lee’s idea that there should be a basic human flaw within the superhero. He made his characters so human that many of them are pathetic, amoral, kinky, selfish and murderous. Comics had never seen anything like this.

I don’t think there is one character within Watchmen who is fully likeable, or someone you would want to aspire to, and isn’t that amazing? That’s what we are like. Instead of using comics to escape to a better world, Alan Moore gave us what we thought was a window and sneakily turned it into a mirror.

There’s no real hero or villain in the story, and that’s one of the things that has made Watchmen ripe for discussion, anatomy and argument for decades, and surely for decades to come. Every point of view has a character to lean on, and every opposing point of view has a character to deconstruct. The Comedian is not simply a trigger-happy racist. Ozymandias is not just the architect of mass genocide. Rorschach is not just a psychotic vigilante (and what a beautiful nod to Ditko’s controversial views!).

The cinema version made the book version even clearer, because it exposed it to an audience who didn’t fully understand everything Watchmen tried to convey, it is still light years beyond most people’s understanding. A lot of them walked in expecting Batman and big explosions, and couldn’t understand why there was a big blue penis dangling on screen and an awkward costumed sex scene.

It had to be explained that Dr. Manhattan is a man so detached from his own humanity he no longer has a need for clothes, he is everything Superman or any person fully above mere mortals should be, living on completely different rules. The public found the sex scene hard to understand because they failed to realise how much that was about superheroes hiding beneath their idealised identities, to the point where they didn’t even have a libido unless they were in them. It was pathetic, it was meant to be. This was not Wonder Woman we were watching, this could have been your next door neighbour.

Then there’s the art, the beautiful complex, deceptively simple panelled art that hides so much and blossoms a little more after every read. I think I’m halfway through my fifth read on the book and there’s still so much that escaped me. I think there will always be something waiting for me. After every major superhero symbol, has there been anything as iconic as Watchmen’s smiley badge covered in blood? I think not.

The work is essential, it even supposedly influenced the last half of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. Without Watchmen there would be no Authority, no Planetary, no Kick Ass or Grant Morrison’s X-Men, Animal Man or Doom Patrol.

Lasting themes. Social commentary. Beautiful art. Something new every time you read it. Plenty of humanity. Warmth. Humour. Epic scope. Intellectual. Well-developed characters. One hell of a twist.

Surely the question should be, why NOT Watchmen?