Did I miss a page?
Must be a big Bat Book crossover coming out in early 2012.
DC's New 52: Reviews and Discussion (Spoilers welcolme and likely)
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Must be a big Bat Book crossover coming out in early 2012.
Maybe they were stuck together. BAM!Did I miss a page?
Yeah. That bothered me in Batwoman (not a typo this timetheenglish said:
) too. Bette Kane is suiting up without a bra of any kind. Huh? Support matters, dudes.From what I've seen of the Catwoman issue, it really just looks like a failure of craft. All this narration (visual medium, Judd), and the sex looks weird. At best, it's like they're in a transition between that pseudo-scissor position you see in porn but that I personally hate because it's awkward and hurty,* and the far-easier-to-describe cowgirl. Bad moment to capture.
This is actually one of those times tracing from a porno might have improved a comic. Greg Land would've nailed this shit.
It's not too bad, I guess. The "hey, boobs!" on the first couple of pages (and the cover) annoys me much more.
*Is there a name for this position? Surely if there's a name for pile driver, which is the worst sexual position ever, there must be. You know, looks sort of like:
o--<>-8o
|
ouch, my penis!
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^^^^
Oh yeah, and Batman does not use a condom, he uses a batphylactic.
Oh yeah, and Batman does not use a condom, he uses a batphylactic.
Tony Daniels interview on "Detective Comics#1"
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=34536
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=34536
One of the bloggers I read, in criticism of the Batwoman/Catwoman sex thing wondered if Batman used a condom, and if so, if it had a Bat-symbol on it.
Which led me to some fine images. Parallax tells it how it is, about HIV:
Fine message. Not so fine images. Joe Staton was really losing it. What, did Rob Liefeld ink him or something?
IMAO it's becoming clear (duh) that the shift to the nuDC is designed to include more explicitly sexual narrative and more graphic violence in many titles than was previously editorial policy. What remains to be seen is who among the creative staff are up to handling it particularly well.
And I guess there are three potential cheesy puns in that last sentence, none of which were intentional - but fuck it.
And I guess there are three potential cheesy puns in that last sentence, none of which were intentional - but fuck it.
This. The whole putting "pants on the women" thing seems... oddly not happening. If anything, the pants are flying off at a faster rate than before.
Let's wire up his corpse and see if we can generate some electrical power.
Yeah I agree...I think this was addressed during one of their many 52 panels and someone brought up what about marketing to kids, I can't remember what the answer was to this question. I'm guessing their attempt to bring in new readers means older readers or teenagers at the very least.
The big problem here is that so few comic book writers seem to be able to actually write women characters very well. That and the blatant sexism and subjugation still present in stories and (especially) art is embarrassing to say the least.
If they want new readers, get some real stories for and about women that are respectful and have depth!
If they want new readers, get some real stories for and about women that are respectful and have depth!
Well, that'll happen when your work environment is something like 95% male, and your editorial staff has little to no interest in or capability of providing a framework to interpret your own work, at least more deeply than a facile rating system that is more reasoning from a conclusion than an actual rubric. Animal Man is M so that means it must be more offensive than Red Hood, right?
Let's wire up his corpse and see if we can generate some electrical power.
Conduction of the Ignorant.
Of course. That's the way Hollywood does it, right?
Besides that, though, we're talking about essentially the same kind of "blatant sexism" that drives storytelling and casting in most hughly successful summer blockbusters, action movies and a good chunk of television - not excluding most science fiction fare. So the notion that DC embracing this kind of thing represents some kind of retrograde movement against the tide of progress in popular art would be a hard sell - the question is whether these people are so clumsy in the process that they make themselves ridiculous.
Good one.
I dunno. People got upset over Transformers (and, contrawise, Twilight is a joke too, but at least has less baggage attached). And Star Trek, God. Least sexy sex appeal ever. So people give 'em shit when filmed work is clumsy, too, even when it's successful.
And yeah, I don't think they're actively evil, just clumsy. Real clumsy.
I think comics get less of a pass too because at least when films objectify someone, there's still the fundamental advantage that it's a real person being filmed, a person with their own agency who contracted to be objectified; this knowledge, and the constraints of physicality, mitigate how bad a movie can be.
By contrast, comics present representations completely sprung out of a writer and artist's imagination, and too often they come right out of the id without getting mediated by anything remotely resembling an ego, let alone a super-ego, or even something as basic to craft as anatomical accuracy, panel-to-panel continuity, or true aesthetic appeal. Thus Ed Benes and the cracked spines of a thousand fictional women. Thus Greg Land and a pattern of serious copyright violation. Thus Gillem March and a comic that is essentially a Viewmaster programmed for the male gaze.
The freedom to pose and block characters given to the comic creator is also a responsibility.
Oh, God, I sound like a libertarian.
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Yes - but to be blunt, who's going to give a fuck if people "give 'em shit" as long as they're successful? In popular media, commercial success - today - trumps everything else. The question is, can they be successful at this?
Yeah, there's the rub - although I'd turn that around a bit. The problem for comics is that they have fewer tools with which to evoke - or exploit - sexuality...or, on a slightly less crass but similarly banal level, fewer tools with which to draw the audience into an ongoing love story. They don't have actors, they don't have editors or musicians or directors. They have still pictures, and words - and really, if movies and TV were dependent upon screenwriters and art directors/production designers to create romance and arousal they'd be screwed. There's nothing terribly sexy about Megan Fox's Transformers character on the page (whether script or storyboards), I can guarantee it - if you find her sexy in the movie it's because of the actor herself and all the folks on set who contribute to creating an illusion based on her performance.
Art/anatomical issues aside, I like the Catwoman sequence - and I like them making it narratively explicit that Lois Lane's got a sex life irrespective of Superman, that Clark is apparently capable of lust and jealousy where she's concerned, and frankly it wouldn't hurt the characters of Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris to see some real heat between them. But just how successfully this can be done, reliably, by creators who (however talented) have built their careers and honed their skills on what one of their own once described as "page after page of fight scenes and bad dialogue" remains to be seen.
At three bucks a pop, or more, why would they market to kids? Kids either a. can't afford them or b. are saving to buy a video game that will give them HOURS and HOURS of entertainment, much more than a comic book.
Older readers are the only ones worth getting.
Yes, what they seem to have decided to do here is to recognize and commit to a marketing strategy that the business has been evolving fitfully toward for a quarter of a century. When I was a kid, most comic book readers were grade school children and most of us abandoned comics as a major entertainment expenditure at a pretty young age. Stuff like Miller's Dark Knight or Moore's Watchmen, however, was not directed at such an audience. My sense is that Marvel's "X" titles are at the least aimed at a somewhat older adolescent audience with concerns somewhat more involved than obsessing over whether the Hulk can beat up the Thing. The most durably successful and lauded superhero movies in the current era are Nolan's and to a less reliable degree the aforementioned "angsty PG-13" X-Men series.
So, to some degree DC's just acknowledging that it's time to stop pretending that the success of these sorts of stories is or should be considered as outliers or exceptions. While there may be something unavoidably naive at the core of superhero narratives, the industry is not going to be made or broken by the devotion of nine year-old boys, but by intriguing - and yeah, sometimes titillating - a core audience that has grown older and can be appealed to by material that's more sophisticated in presentation and subject matter if not actually more mature in content.
So, to some degree DC's just acknowledging that it's time to stop pretending that the success of these sorts of stories is or should be considered as outliers or exceptions. While there may be something unavoidably naive at the core of superhero narratives, the industry is not going to be made or broken by the devotion of nine year-old boys, but by intriguing - and yeah, sometimes titillating - a core audience that has grown older and can be appealed to by material that's more sophisticated in presentation and subject matter if not actually more mature in content.
agreed. I wonder if they should make it even MORE adult--not in the sense of more boobs, butts and penis's, but just more adult stories. More complex characters. More "reality". More gritty thrillers. More... adult. I'm not sure how I want to describe it. Other than more for grown ups than for the man-child.
Well here's what I got going now:
Subscribed to Action Comics, Detective Comics, Superman and Batman, all of which I should get the #1's for (AC1 I have in-hand. The others I subscribed to during the time where DC "gaurnties" the #1 issues, if I end up not getting them I will just seek them out in other places.)
I'll probably get Supergirl, Catwoman and Wonder Woman #1s as those all look interesting, probably get them at a store or on Amazon.
Subscribed to Action Comics, Detective Comics, Superman and Batman, all of which I should get the #1's for (AC1 I have in-hand. The others I subscribed to during the time where DC "gaurnties" the #1 issues, if I end up not getting them I will just seek them out in other places.)
I'll probably get Supergirl, Catwoman and Wonder Woman #1s as those all look interesting, probably get them at a store or on Amazon.
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