Teen Themes

Teen Titans v. 1 #5

in issue #5 the Titans get into a seriously mismatched fight with a villain called The Ant. In theory the Ant doesn't stand a chance. All he has going for him is a level of acrobatic skill (like Robin) he inherited from his acrobat mother and the strength he inherited from his father who was a circus strongman (1) and some suckers on his boots that allow him to climb walls.

My knowledge of Herolix is barely above zero, but I'm guessing that if you set up a Heroclicky fight between the Ant and Robin it might be an even match: Robin is more experienced but Ant has the wall climbing thing. Pit Ant against Wonder Girl or Kid Flash solo and Ant doesn't stand a chance. So how come Ant gets to defeat the entire team twice (2) in this issue?


By this issue recurring themes are starting to become apparent. The Titans are summoned by some authority figure to save some teenagers from going bad. The teens are always good guys even though at some point they appear to be on the wrong side of the law. The teens are always virtually all male (3).

I wouldn't go so far to say Haney is misogynist (4) but he is sexist. It's almost painful the way he continuely attempts to obscure the fact that Wonder Girl is the most powerful member of the team. It's as bad as his efforts to hide how completely useless Aqualad is. Perhaps he assumed that only boys would be reading the comic, and they wouldn't want to look at pictures of teenage girls, and it certainly wouldn't do to have a girl who was more powerful than the boys, but if so, why add her to the team in the first place?

The one thing that really puzzles me this issue is the cover, which suggests some kind of personal grudge match between Robin and the Ant. Not only does the scene not occur in the story, but there is nothing personal between the two.

Notes

1. because in Haneyworld you can inherit learned skills and the results of exercise from your parents.

2. once when he's not even in costume.

3. Even when the teens in question are the entire teenage population of a town. What does smalltown America do with its girl children?

4. he doesn't have bad things happen particularly to female characters; he does his best not to have female characters appear in the comic at all.

Go go Gail!

The story so far: Kimiyo Hoshi, the good Doctor Light was last seen depowered and left for dead in Green Arrow over a year ago. Her subsequent appearances in Infinite Crisis, 52, and other comics required the shiny new post-IC continuity be twisted into a pretzel in order to place this event during week 2 of 52, even though the story concludes several issues later with an event that clearly occurs during Infinite Crisis, and fans are so confused that most lose the plot and assume that she must have got better and regained her powers off-camera.

One Year Later Kimiyo is considered for membership of the Justice League. The dialogue about her is open to wide interpretation, but it appears that she has recovered both her health and her powers.

Now: Birds of Prey issue #100, page one. Kimiyo is alive and well and back to being the bitchy scientist we know and love. She receives an invitation to join the Birds of Prey.

WE LOVE YOU, GAIL SIMONE!!

Now, if you can only tell us the story of how she got her powers back and kicked the ass of evil rapist Doctor Light into the next galaxy, I'll never be snarky about the Atom again.

I am a bunny in the headlights of Teen Titans

Teen Titans volume 1 #3

I've been reading the Teen Titans Showcase collection and one thing has been bugging me all week. How is it that I can cheerfully accept Wonder Woman flying a propellor driven airplane to Mars while fighting pteradactyls in space, or Lois Lane wearing a safe on her head because it's less embarassing than letting anyone see her face, and yet Bob Haney crosses some unseen line of stupid where I find myself rolling my eyes on almost every page?

After a lot of thought I've decided that the difference is that Bob Kanigher's Wonder Woman and a lot of the more peculiar 60's Superman and 50's Batman works because it is fairy tale fantasy; no effort is made to convince you it has any relation to the real world. You can take your brain out and just have fun, knowing that anything is possible. Conversely, Haney is forever attempting to ground his stories in realism and trying to tie it to the everyday world, and then doing something that flaunts his ignorance of his subject matter. That and Teen Titans tries so hard to be trendy that it's not only horribly dated, but it reads like your dad trying to sound cool.

I'd originally planned to just do one article on this collection but that would be a terrible waste of good snark, so I'm going to make it an occasional series. I may get back to earlier issues at some point but right now I'm going to focus on issue #3, as it's the one I just finished.

The story jumps right into the action with a bank in Gotham being robbed by a wacky looking custom car, (1). It's tough being a villain (2) in Gotham. Not only do you get chased by Batman, but the banks are equipped with machine guns.



The police are nowhere to be seen, but the batmobile is soon on the tail the hot rod. It attempts to lose the pursuit by driving into a river where it becomes a hovercraft (3). But the Batmobile continues the chase as a hydrofoil. Unfortunately in Haneyworld hovercraft are faster than hydrofoils. Even this one which has no skirt to trap the air shooting out of its undercarriage and no apparent means of forward propulsion.



The villains (4) get away. Where could they have got that fancy car from, muses Batman, as Robin receives a message that will conincidentally take him to the very place Batman is wondering about.

The Teen Titans are summoned to Washington to do a job for the President's Commission of Education. (5) The PCoE is running a campaign to stop kids dropping out of school (6) and it's just occured to them they don't have any actual teenagers associated with it so they want to bring the Titans in to help, because costumed vigilantes make the best role models.

So do they want the Titans to:
A) go on chat shows encouraging kids to stay in school?
B) investigate the high drop-out rate of some small town nobody has ever heard of?

Obviously it's B because government departments don't have staff to look into stuff like that, and it's not a ludicrous waste of resources.

Arriving in Nowheresville they talk to the school principal (7) who is particularly puzzled about one high achiever who dropped out. It's a shame he's not concerned enough to make the effort to find out that the boy left because he needed to earn money to keep his family after his father died, but it suggests that part of the problem here might be down to the way the school is run.

In fact this student and every other kid who reaches drop-out age has gone to work at Ding-Dong Daddy's Hot-Rod Hive. (8) Rather than hire skilled mechanics, Ding-Dong employs children who haven't finished high school to build custom cars. And it's not some kind of cheap wages scam either, as we are informed that he pays well. The Titans visit Ding-Dong and Kid Flash finds some kids tricking out an ice cream tricycle with a machine gun (9).

The Titans pretend to leave but in fact keep the building under surveilence from their helicopter, somehow assuming that Ding-Dong won't notice it. Three vehicles leave the chop shop at the same time, and Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, and Aqualad each follow one. It's just as well one of them takes the beach road or Aqualad would have been stuffed. Several examples of improbable physics later (10) all three Titans are out for the count, but Robin doesn't know because instead of backing up his chums he takes the opportunity to sneak in to the workshop and find the car he and Batman had chased in Gotham.

A brief scuffle later (11) and Robin is tied to a motorcycle with the brakes cut and the throttle wedged open and sent hurtling away to his doom (12). It's here we find that Robin may be the brains of the team but he knows nothing about motorcycles. If you woke up to find yourself tied to a runaway mororcycle with no brakes would you:

A) Slow the vehicle using the gears for engine braking?
B) switch off the fuel tank?
C) Pull out the spark plug cable?
D) Jump the cycle off a conveniently placed ramp into a conveniently placed mound of sand?
E) Drop the stupid bike and risk a few bruises because it can only have been doing about 20 miles an hour maximum?

So our heroes regroup and a convenient subplot occurs to help them on their way, as Ding-Dong attempting to murder Robin isn't good enough evidence to take to the authorities. It seems that the kids who work at Ding-Dong's have rivals who ride motorcycles and are armed with spanners, and are prone to random acts of violence. Forgetting that they have access to armour-plated hovercraft equipped with machine guns, they quake with fear until the Titans turn up in disguise and beat up the bikers for them. The kids are so happy that they cheerfully recommend the disguised heroes for work at Ding-Dong's.

A rare good point occurs when Ding Dong asks Wonder Girl if she is a mechanic, rather than assuming she is a bubble headed bimbo who intends to dance to music all day to "encourage" the workers like some kind of workshop cheerleader (13). She then takes him into his office and jiggles for him so the boys can get on with the real work while he is distracted.

Robin then uses a gizmo to broadcast what is being said in the "secret" room where someone is conveniently explaining the plot. The kids are shocked, shocked, I tell you, to find that all the bullet-proof, machine gun armed hovercraft they are building are intended to be sold to villains. Ding-Dong unleashes a robot gas pump but is quickly defeated by someone other than a Titan. The kids all decide to go back to school (14) and everyone is happy.

Good points:

Ding-Dong is visually based on artist Big Daddy Roth, famous for drawing weird vehicles.

It's very rare for the period to get a story that focusses on something like where villains get their fancy gear from.

The surfboard firing van and the robot gas pump.

Ding-Dong is an equal opportunities employer.

Bad points:

Everything else.


Notes.

1. because obviously if you are committing armed robbery you'd want a getaway car that was strange enough looking that you could spot it from orbit rather than one that would blend into a traffic jam.

2. or indeed a bank customer.

3. Artist Nick Cardy has no idea what a hovercraft looks like.

4. we never find out who they are.

5. Doesn't this conflict with their membership of the Peace Corps?

6. I know nothing about the american education system, but it seems to me it might be an idea to have the final exam while school is compulsory, rather than after a lot of people have left.

7. the town is so small it only has the one school.

8. Well, the male ones at least. We never see any female teenagers. Or adults. In fact the only female in the whole comic is Wonder Girl.

9. There is an effort made later to explain that the kids are all nice really and hadn't known about the illegal side of the business. The only way I can see this working is if the kids are too dumb to realise that the gun emplacements, robot arms, and bullet-proof armour are in any way unusual components. Though this could explain why Ding-Dong is training kids instead of hiring proper mechanics.

10. the van that fires surfboards is best.

11. Do the Titans ever win a fight without help?

12. rather than immediately stalling the second it was put in gear or falling over sideways.

13. which, sadly, is her actual plan.

14. including the one who only dropped out because his family needed the income to survive.

Spot the difference

Cyberman


Cyberwoman

Discuss.

The greatest crossover in history

Batman meets the Freedom Fighters.

Why? Because it will mean that the comic will feature a Dark and Stormy Knight.

Challengers of the Bleeding Obvious

One thing you notice when reading a lot of Challengers of the Unknown at one time is a peculiar style to the covers. On almost every cover you get a speech balloon where one of the Challs feels the need to comment on whatever dramatic predicament they are in.

See if you can match up the covers with the comments.

Secret Sex

Secret Six #5

Okay, it turns out I was mistaken. The scene at the end of Secret Six #4 was entirely consensual. But it was written to make the reader infer that it wasn't, so I'm not going to apologise for it. But then it also depends entirely on Knockout being either very ignorant, very stupid, or a bad liar.

It is claimed that Knockout has sex with Deadshot because she doesn't realise that sex is assumed to be exclusive when you are in a relationship with someone, because it wasn't that way back on Apokolips. I don't know how long Knockout is supposed to have been on Earth post-IC but she's been appearing in comics since 1994. She seems well acclimated to Earth culture but has somehow failed to notice the most overwhelmingly popular image of romantic relationships that pervades that culture.

But then in pre-IC comics Knockout is seen as something of a sexual predator, and even has a similar scene when Superboy catches her seducing Victor Volcanum.

So if Knockout is the same person she was pre-IC, then she's a big fat liar and sexually manipulative, or she is new retconned Knockout, so fresh off the Boom Tube from Apokolips that she hasn't spotted that people in stable relationships screwing around is the plot of half the dramas available in any medium. Possibly three quarters.

Which leads me to wonder what anti-heroes do in their spare time if they never crack open a novel, go to a movie, catch any daytime TV, or ever have a conversation that might include any references to relationships.

Beef or cheese?

Here's a late entry for Ragnall and Kalinara's Beef/Cheesecake Week I just ran across.

I'm not entirely sure which category it falls into.

Lacking Authority

The Authority #1

What's this? Two reviews of new comics in one week? Surely not.

I haven't read any Authority in a long time. I loved the original Warren Ellis Authority, but by the time the second series started I could barely recognise the characters. When I saw Grant Morrison was having a bash, I thought I'd give it another try, but since they don't appear in the comic, it's hard to make a comparison.

I'm not sure what is so hard to understand, but I'll try to spell it out for any comic writers who are too clever for their own good: When I read issue #1 of Spider-Girl I expect to see Spider-Girl. When I read issue #1 of The Authority I expect to see The Authority. When I buy a superhero comic I expect to see a superhero doing superhero stuff. If I want a soap opera or a crime thriller I would not be reading a superhero comic*. I don't care if it's a big buildup to a story that is six issues long and will work great in the trade; if I buy a comic I expect more than a preview of the trade. And that goes x 10 for the first issue. Your first issue is your best chance to establish a readership. Producing a bad first issue is the fastest way to turn an ongoing into a miniseries. And having a first issue in which the title character(s) appear nowhere but the cover doesn't make for a spectacular start.

I'm sure a lot of people are going to say The Authority #1 is a great Grant Morrison comic, but personally I had been hoping for an Authority comic.

*Okay, you can do all kinds of genre stuff with superheroes in it. I just reckon that when there aren't any superheroes in it then it doesn't qualify as a superhero comic.

Showcase fails to present...

Showcase Presents has been going a while now, and I'm delighted to see that in January it moves up to giving us two chunky collections a month of silver age goodness. The schedule so far seems to bounce between the obvious DC standards - Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Justice League, Teen Titans, Aquaman, etc - and material so obscure you have to wonder what motivated them to dust it off and send it to the head of the queue - Haunted Tank, Unknown Soldier, House of Mystery, etc.

But even though I've been enjoying a lot of the stuff that's appeared in this line it feels like they are missing something somewhere. Perhaps it's just that from the lineup so far you might be forgiven for assuming that DC didn't publish any comics with female stars at all between 1950 and 1980.

Amazing?

Amazing Spider-Girl #1

Since fan pressure contributed to the survival of Spider-Girl and this new relaunch, it's not so unsurprising to see this comic open with some fan in-jokes and subtext. Amazing Spider-Girl is concrete proof that fan support makes a difference, and you don't have to look far in the online community to find the source for the opening scene which makes fun of the stereotype portrayl of comic superheroines.

But it couldn't possibly be anything to do with the ongoing feminist comics debate, could it? Because people keep trying to tell me how that has zero effect on the industry.

In fact the scene isn't nearly as funny as it could have been. The supposedly absurd version of Spider-Girl made up by Mayday's friends wouldn't stand out in an average Marvel comic, let alone be seen as extreme enough to be a joke. Her breasts are smaller than her head, her pose is stiff but not back-breaking, and she's not even wearing heels. The text defines her as "policewoman/supermodel Jennifer Justice". Now this may have been a poke at quantum physicist/supermodel Stormy Knight, but either way it falls flat because the non-parody version is funnier.

Costume-wise, the only difference is the smaller mask and long hair that makes her look a bit like Spider-Woman, but possibly the biggest reason it falls flat is that there's no image of the real Spider-Girl anywhere in the story to contrast it with. Maybe Tom De Falco just doesn't write humour very well.

Once we get into the story it moves along apace. I haven't read the previous 100 issues, so I was pleased to find that characters were introduced in a way that did not assume prior knowledge. I'm not sure how well it reads to someone who knows all the backstory, though. The story set up takes what is to be honest a fairly dull plot for a superhero story and makes it work by making the characters engaging so that you are interested in what is happening to them. Mayday gets to jump about a lot but still hasn't got into costume by the end of the issue.

Is there enough in this first issue to get new readers to come back for more? I'm not sure. If it was me I'd have gone for something a bit more flashy than a riff on The Maltese Falcon. Have they purposely gone for a non-superhero style to this story? Nobody uses super powers (apart from May doing an urban Tarzan), nobody wears a costume - and no, I don't count the guy in a suit and tie wearing a hobgoblin mask; that's only a costume in 1940's movie serial terms. Putting Spider-Girl on the cover is as misleading as any Emma Frost cheesecake art.

I kind of liked it, and I'll be back to see what happens next issue, but it's going to have to move up a gear or two to get me coming back for issue #3.

It's not plagarism, it's art

After poking fun at Greg Land so thoroughly I could hardly pass up the opportunity to comment on the god of swipemasters, Roy Lichtenstein. In fact the comparison is enough to make poor Greg cry (if he didn't have enough problems now he's not allowed to swipe from porn mags anymore). Lichtenstein not only sells individual swipes for upwards of a million dollars, but they are not even good copies.

In the Boston Globe article on the subject, the executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation, Jack Cowart claims that Lichtenstein's works are not copies because they were "changed in scale, color, treatment, and in their implications". I had been planning to set up a Cafepress store selling swipes of Lichenstein's works with a little Photoshopping to fulfil these requirements but looking at the side by side comparisons of Lichenstein's versions and the originals, I noticed what bad copies they are and it put me off.

Rethinking "Rethinking Feminism"

Occaisonal Superheroine's article Rethinking Feminism in Comix has had me thinking a lot this week. It is thought provoking for all the wrong reasons and effectively demolished by Karen Healey in her response. In fact it's so bad that you tend to skim over a lot of the minor points because the major ones are so wrong-headed and stupid, but I feel like addressing them anyway.

Specifically, at one point in her argument she gives us what she calls her "Cassie Code"; a list of rules that could be imposed comics code style on all published comics. She's not seriously advocating this code of course, it's deliberately over the top and ludicrous in its demands to illustrate how stupid it would be to try and institute such a thing. Not that anyone has. But if the evil feministas tried to then wouldn't they look bad?

Anyway, here it is:

The Proposed Cassie Code
1. All women's breasts must be properly covered and realistically drawn and shall not exceed a C cup.
2. No thongs.
3. No high heels for superheroines.

See, when you look at it in detail you find that mixed in with the absurd crap there is the occasional bit of semi-sense that almost makes it look believable. Of course it would be absurd to limit the body shapes allowed to be portrayed - hell, this is just a gross exageration and inversion of the current situation where some have complained about the lack of range in body types currently seen in comics. We want greater diversity, not just a different set of limits.

As for the clothing, my personal opinion (and I am not suggesting it's anyone else's) is that female characters should be drawn in whatever costume the writers and artists wish, providing that clothing is treated realistically. Points 2 and 3 become irrelevent once half a dozen heroines have broken ankles and chafing.

4. All superheroines must die heroic deaths in battle in a manner deemed non-misogynistic by the Cassie Code Council.
5. Only two female characters are allowed to be killed from each comic company per year.

I don't see how killing off all superheroines would help the cause, however heroically they went... Oh wait, that's not what you meant, was it? Again, it's absurdity by isolation. There's no sense of equality, it's all "women must be treated in a special way", which is about as far from feminism as you can get.

6. No rape scenes.
7. Superheroines must not have rape or sexual abuse anywhere in their origin story.

I agree with 6. Not as the absolute presented here, of course, but I have been saying for months now that I would like to see a moratorium on sexual abuse used in comics in any form for a while as the current overuse has turned it into a nasty cliche. You can only repeat the same thing over and over so many times before it loses all meaning.

Superheroines having sexual abuse in their origin story? So how many male superheroes have sexual abuse in their origin story? How about we say no more abusive origins for females until the men have caught up? I could live with that.

8. Strong women cannot be depicted as villains.

This has to be one of the funniest. Most feminists I know would love to see more strong women as villains. There aren't nearly enough.

9. No women shall be depicted in chains, bound in rope, mentally enslaved by a devious psychic villain, suspended in a cage over a pit of steaming lava, or otherwise shown in any way that would make them seem vulnerable to men.

But that's no fun. Now I'd prefer it if when a heroine found herself in such a situation she were to get out of it herself, rather than being rescued by some guy. Especially if he then rushed after the villain to have a big fight, completely forgetting the heroine and leaving her to bleed to death on the floor. I'd also like to see equality with male characters. When was the last time Batman was tied up to a big penis substitute?

Rape of the Month - Tangential

Heroes is not a comic, it's a TV show. But it is a show about people with strange powers and has been deliberately associated with superhero comics. It also has a co-executive producer who is not only a popular comics writer but is associated with another TV show with superhero comic connections. He also wrote the third episode. The one in which one of the two super-powered female characters is sexually assaulted. The only reason she is not raped is because she suffers a fatal wound to the head during the struggle. The irony of being saved from rape by having her skull penetrated is not lost on me, but the grotesque things that happen to this girl are not negated because the physical scars heal up, however light her mutilation is treated.

And the only other female character with powers? She got her sexual abuse in the previous episode. You think they'd leave something for the rest of the series. Now they are either going to have to introduce more super powered women or start in on the non-super supporting cast females.

I ♥ Wonderella

Best Wonder Woman parody ever ever.

oh no, not again

You know what it's like when you see this same guy wherever you look? When you first saw him you thought he looked kind of interesting, but then you find that he is shallow and unoriginal, and it's only that he's hanging with the cool kids that makes him look good, but everyone seems to be taken in by his hackneyed stories.

So you just try and avoid him but he has his hooks into someone you like and you can't give up on her simply because she's fallen in with the wrong crowd, so you're patient and you stick by her until the guy gets bored and moves onto his next victim, and when you finally think you've seen the last of him and you can breathe easy, you're just relaxing watching some cool TV show and there he is again.

And it's like you can't switch on the TV anymore without him showing up to haunt you and dragging every show you like down into the suck and I'm beginning to think I need to get a restraining order on Jeph Loeb.

No Nano

I wanted to do NaNoWriMo again this year but I don't think it's possible. I'm way busier than this time last year and it was hard enough then. I had this plan to do a big fantasy quest thing written like totally in, y'know, valleyspeak or whatever? But I guess it will have to wait until I have more free time.

But I would recommend it to anyone who has any desire to write. It's an incredible experience.

The wig room

Back in the early days when things weren't so frenetic, the Fantastic Four would have time to relax and unwind a bit between cosmic threats and internal strife in the superhero community. Mister Fantastic would tinker around with complicated machinery to refract tides, the Thing would read newspapers and smoke cigars while weightlifting double decker busses, Johnny would be throwing darts made of fire at a dartboard with a picture of Spider-Man on it, and Sue? Sue would be in the Wig Room.

Because a girl is a girl, even when she's a full-fledged partner of the Fantastic Four. And don't all girls while away the hours trying on different coloured wigs?

Buckets of Blüd

Infinite Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Blüdhaven

It's easy to spot examples of something when you are particularly sensitive to it, so I try not to overreact when I encounter what seems to be misogyny in comics without checking the context. Like Battle for Blüdhaven has a high bodycount, so it's inevitable that there will be female deaths as well as male deaths, so is it overreacting to see a big bias here?

I expect someone's annotated the whole thing on some corner of the web, but I can't be bothered to hunt it up. Lady Liberty is the only person to die in issue #1 depending on whether you count Silent Majority, who has multiple bodies. Is the Silent Majority who appears in #3 the same person or a different one? Unlike with Lady Liberty, it's impossible to tell.

The six Atomic Knights who appear at the end of #1 include one female member (as far as I can tell). She is the first to die. Only one other knight is defeated (I think). S.H.A.D.E. is introduced and of the eight members only two are female, including a new Lady Liberty. She will die later, in a way that echoes the death of the previous Phantom Lady in Infinite Crisis.

In issue #3 a bunch of Knights are blown up. One is saved for later torture. Guess what, it's the one female member of the group. The only other person tortured by the evil Face is Firebrand, who somehow escapes without a scratch. The female knight is battered and bleeding before the torturer starts on her. She is never seen again. In fact the Knights have a disturbing disregard for the lives of their comrades, but it is particularly noticeable here. Nobody is going to come rescue this damsel in distress.

It's true, male characters are killed. Major Force kills Major Victory on a whim. Many people of indeterminate sex are beaten up or exploded. But taken over all, given the starting ratio of males to females (about 6:1) it seems kind of odd that more women should be seen dying than men. I'm not even going to get into Black Baron's suicide love slaves.

Okay, on the odd occasion that Phantom Lady managed to get a line she did come across as the most sane person in the entire story, and I did enjoy the general chaotic lunacy, but Battle for Bludhaven has a real misogynistic streak, and underneath all the fireworks there is barely half a story.

How to draw comics the Greg Land way

Huntress

Oracle

She Hulk

Power Girl

Supergirl