So DC comics announced a reboot that, it turned out, cut down on female characters headlining books and female creators making them.  Some fans complained about it in a public way.

Now DC is making an announcement that they’re going to hire more female creators.

To be honest, my first response is, “Nice!”

And that is likely to be my only response.  I’ve read quite a lot of posts on this subject now (Thanks, When Fangirls Attack.  You continue to be a fantastic linkblog.)  The responses range from people who believe that DC will not make the changes they promise in their announcement, to people who believe that DC was already making those changes and now will lose some of the credit they deserve.  The assessments of the incident at the San Diego Con range from people who believe that when Dan Didio asked for names of female creators he was sincerely rallying the crowd and trying to elicit suggestions from the people in the room, to people who believe he was brow-beating them into shutting up.

Sometimes I fear the crank is going out of me.  I’ve been writing for 4thletter and io9 for years, and editing Fantasy Magazine and Lightspeed Magazine (Nominated for a Hugo, Worldcon Attendees!  Vote for us!) for nearly a year.  Writing and editing are wonderful ways to have varied experiences, learn new things for a living, and make it so the universe you picture in your head actually exists in reality, if only on paper.  This is, I think, what the DC editors are doing in the reboot – on a much larger scale.

The work is also very difficult.  Constant deadlines, clashing schedules, tons of details to work out, and hours spent in ‘thought’ which sometimes produces nothing but a headache and growing anxiety.  Sometimes you have to roll out the very best thing you can at the moment, and work on improving it.

And sometimes that’s not good enough for the people who get what you have.  I’ve been kicked by commenters for everything from bias to proofreading to content to outright stupidity.  Sometimes the commenters were just being jerks.  Sometimes they were right on the money.  Neither time was a lot of fun for me.  But sometimes you can take a kick like that and use it to make things better.  Which is what DC seems to be doing.

It’s rare that I finish any internet drama hopeful, and sympathetic to all sides.  The women and men who asked the difficult questions at San Diego have my respect.  It’s hard to get up in front of people whose work you clearly adore and ask aggressive, awkward questions in a room full of people who can shout at you.  And then there’s that announcement.  I love feminism.  I love DC comics.  An explicit statement making a commitment to feminism on the part of DC Comics makes me happy.

Hurray for Cons.

-Esther and I saw Captain America
-We figured that spending an hour talking about and around the movie and the character would be neat
-Good movie, wasn’t it?
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-Here comes a new challenger!
-See you, space cowboy!

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Hello, neighbor! This week I’m accompanied by Was Taters and Space Jawa as I inch closer and closer to Week 100. Which is good because I finally came up with an idea of what to do with it.

I’ve been lax on the writing lately as I’ve been trying to finish watching every WWE Summerslam PPV for the countdown series, which will start up this week. I only have two left to sit through and I’m saving 1994 for last. That one features the Undertaker wrestling his evil twin while Leslie Nielson and George Kennedy try to get to the bottom of it. Wrestling is fucking weird.

Captain America and Bucky #620
Ed Brubaker, Marc Andreyko and Chris Samnee

Deadpool MAX #10
David Lapham and Kyle Baker

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It’s kind of a bad time for my writing. All my go-to articles have been running dry. Jeph Loeb stopped writing Ultimate Marvel comics, so no more of that. I’ve finished writing about Venom. I don’t have too many wrestling PPV shows to rank and review. Just as bad, Marvel has stopped releasing novelizations of their movies. I can no longer know the story of movies in the Avengers Saga a month or so before they’re released. Because of that, I can’t do any informative lists that show all the scenes that were taken out of the original version of the screenplay.

Or can I? While yes, it appears that there isn’t any novelization for Captain America: The First Avenger, that doesn’t mean I’m empty handed. I called in some favors and got to see the extended original cut of the movie. Oh, man. You won’t believe some of the stuff they got rid of! Mostly because it’s all lies.

An entire hour was cut. Removed scenes include:

– A scene where pre-experiment Steve Rogers gets sand kicked in his face at the beach. He meant to gamble a stamp and send a couple bucks to Charles Atlas to make him a man, but got distracted by news of Pearl Harbor.

– When playing hangman with Bucky, he had only one turn left and only the first letter revealed. After biting on his pencil for a moment, he asked if that letter stood for France. Lucky guess.

– When talking with Erskine, the two of them had a long, hearty laugh about how Disney had released a cartoon where Donald Duck was a Nazi. Steve kept insisting, “This is a thing that actually exists! Look it up! Donald is saluting Hitler and everything!” He later had this same conversation with Colonel Phillips, Peggy and even Red Skull. I’m not sure exactly why Marvel would remove this reference.

– When Red Skull steals the first Cosmic Cube and shatters it on the ground for being a forgery, he then curses a blue streak and realizes that he just busted up the real thing after all. Much of his villain plot is based on him trying to find glue and tape, which was scarce in Nazi Germany.

– Much like Arnim Zola was introduced via his face reflected off a monitor, the character of Helmut Zemo was there too. He was introduced by putting his hands behind his back and his shoeless feet on the table while the shot lingered on his purple socks.

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Trying to recover from San Diego still, so I haven’t gotten a chance to crank out the big finale. I did want to do this quick hit-type post, though, because as much as I love Frank Miller’s Batman, there’s a whole lot wrong with All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. It boils down to pretty much “Miller’s reach exceeded his grasp.” ASBAR, as it currently stands, is too much spread over too many comics. If it were a little tighter, maybe five or six issues, it would be fantastic. At ten issues… well, it’s a little long and maybe too much to love.

-Wonder Woman–I’m not a particularly huge Wonder Woman fan or anything, but she feels wrong in this book. Miller cranked up the man-hate for some reason, and it poisons the character. It’s surprising to me, because I feel like he did so well with her in Dark Knight Strikes Again:

She’s royalty, the next best thing to being a god, and knows it. It makes sense for her to be above the regular folk and a little more willing to get down and dirty when it comes to fighting. She’s a warrior princess, right? She’s not just a regular old superhero. I like that idea, but in ASBAR, it barely even comes across. She seems mean-spirited, rather than pragmatic.

Man, on reading this after finishing the post, do you know what it is? She has no regal poise in ASBAR like she does in DKSA. She’s super-human in DKSA, but still clearly loves people and her friends. She’s too raw in ASBAR. She’s abrasive, and not in an enthralling, Batman/Wolverine sorta way.

-The first arc is way too long. Issues 1 through 9 serve as the first arc of the book, charting the arrival of Dick Grayson, introduction of Robin, and the initial softening of Batman via grief. And as much as I love the grotesque nature of the series (Geoff Klock’s writing on that subject is essential) with all of its insane foldouts and incredible spectacle, it takes too long to get to the point. It isn’t a strong enough work to pull you along for nine issues, unless (like me) you grew up on both these creators. It’s all stick and very little carrot, all the way up until Batman and Robin cry in the graveyard.

Miller tries to fit in too much. The Justice League stuff is entirely too long for its place in the story. The JL are there to establish Batman as a threat and then decide to do something about it. Shoulda happened off panel, I think, with Green Lantern telling us that the JL is worried. Later, because you know it’s coming, the JL could show up as a surprise or something at the end of an issue. A real “oh snap” moment for the series, rather than the meandering introduction of the League that we got.

-The car chase is great, but again: too long. I love its grotesque nature, but hate how it screws with the pace of the book.

-If the first arc had been–I dunno–five or six issues with a lot of the fat trimmed off, it would’ve been much, much stronger. It wasn’t, though, and while I enjoy it, I enjoy it in a way that’s specifically about my trust for Miller and Lee’s work, rather than anything purely rational. Sabes?

-Miller’s Joker is brilliant. A Joker who doesn’t tell jokes early in his career revitalized the character for me at a point where about all I had for the idea was scorn. It made him evil and creepy in a way I could appreciate. Miller does good crazy/evil, too–“I love her only when she cries” is SO good, and when Joker switches from “her” to “it” is chilling. His Joker is good, and probably the best up until the point that Morrison introduced Joker as Oberon Sexton. I like it a lot.

He also shows up too early. We get five strong pages of him as an introduction, but if he’d been pushed to a second arc, it would’ve been stronger and not interfered with the story quite so much.

-Black Canary gets half of the third issue to herself. This is story bloat. We don’t need to know that much about her, but I guess Miller wanted to establish this version as being his own or whatever whatever. I wasn’t particularly fond of it, though I like his Canary, but this just feels like padding. She’s incidental, I assume, and while her hijinx are interesting and violent, that’s just not enough to justify the expense.

-Vicki Vale? I don’t care. I get it, but I don’t care. The Jimmy Olsen bit was cute, but I don’t care. I keep forgetting that she wasn’t just in the Michael Keaton movie, even. Who cares?

-Jim Lee is both the perfect choice and an odd choice of artist. He’s the definitive superhero artist in our post-Kirby world, doubly so now that he’s top dawg at DC, and as a result, this story is lent a level of seriousness (and… not grandeur. I’m tired and blanking, so let’s just roll with seriousness) that it doesn’t exactly require. That seriousness makes the story and art work against each other. You expect one story due to the art, but you’re getting a different one. I would’ve loved to see Miller draw this, because he can draw gleeful superheroics like most people can’t, but that would’ve marginalized the book as being off in Miller’s little world. It’s a tough row to hoe, and I don’t honestly know whether or not they should’ve gone with Miller instead of Lee. It definitely screwed with the perception of the book, and I’m saying that as a guy who likes both artists.

-A little editing would have really gone a long way. Again: he’s trying to do too much and the series suffers. Stronger editing was definitely needed. Drop some scenes, compress others and it would have been better, at least in terms of technique. I like the grotesque, sprawling, hot mess of a comic that it is as published, but man. I hate liking a book and having caveats, you know?

-With all that said, All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #9 is about as fun of a cape comic as you’ll ever see, and probably my favorite single issue of a DC Comic. Top five, at the very least. Maybe top three. The way it takes on the absurdity of superheroes, Batman’s respect for the cowl, Batman’s insults, “Care for a glass of lemonade?”, “we have to be criminals,” “What a rube,” Robin reading Yellow Kid, and that moment where everything flips upside down… it’s good.

It’s what the series should have been the whole time. It’s got the comedy, action, and melancholy sadness that I expect from cape comics. It makes Hal Jordan look stupid, but who cares about that guy. Miller is a funny guy. He could do (has done) some real mean and funny comics. Ever read Tales to Offend? I like that comic. Some of that same sense of humor bleeds through to ASBAR #9.

But yeah. We’re gonna get to that issue. Please believe it.

I was out of the news loop while I was in San Diego. No, that’s both true and untrue (Schroedinger’s Anecdote I guess). I was clued into the Image and Marvel news, as I was covering their panels (as seen on ComicsAlliance!), but DC and Fantagraphics and everyone else? I got their news via Twitter or word of mouth, if I got the news at all. At some point, I checked in on the DC blog and saw this post, which had the art for all of their Edge titles. The standout is easily Travel Foreman’s work on Animal Man, with the I, Vampire pages by Andrea Sorrentino being the surprise “whoa, that actually looks cool” of the day. (It looks very Jae Lee.) There were also these two pages by Sami Basri, artist of Voodoo:

And you know, the pages are aight or whatever. Basri’s style is very clean, but not particularly… spectacular, right? He can do the pinup, cheesecakey stuff fine, but he’s never really done anything that made me go “whoa.” DC uses him to make sexy girl comics, which is apparently what Voodoo is going to be. And I dig Voodoo, I love the whole Wildstorm Universe (or I did, anyway), but man, talk about a pitch that fails to grab you.

I saw the pages at… I don’t know, waking up o’clock in the morning and tweeted about it a little bit, with the intent of leaving it at these quick hits:

’cause I mean, I don’t have to tell everyone every single one of my opinions. There are hundreds of comics I’ve never mentioned here that I don’t care about, right?

buuuuuuuuut there was this:

which immediately brought to mind one of my favorite Jadakiss bars: “Fuck boys do fuck shit” and probably a whole bunch of unfair (psyche) ad hominems. It’s not even a foot-in-mouth thing, it’s just a dude turning into a defensive jerk in an attempt to head off a controversy that, near as I can tell, didn’t actually happen anywhere. This guy is all, “Heh, look at all these dummies jumping to conclusions from the preview images released to sell my comic to them.” and there’s not even anybody on Twitter, the ultimate in personality spamming technology, talking about it beyond me and one person I know with locked tweets. As far as freakouts go, this is on the same level as taking a swig from a soda bottle and going, “Hm, is this a little flat? Maybe not.”

Anyway, it’s midnight-something, and I gotta be up in the morning, but I really don’t like how this guy is assigning all types of bad faith arguing on the part of readers who (probably) have very reasonable questions about Voodoo. So: let’s freak out.

“Waiting for the inevitable ‘she’s half-naked!’ freakouts over Voodoo pages.”

Thought about writing a rebuttal to this, but it’s late and this isn’t really the part I want to focus on because it’s stupid. The meat is in the second sentence. But I mean, congrats on being defensive without someone even challenging you. He sounds like the little kid who tells his mom that nobody ate any cookies while she was out and the dog broke the vase not me, I promise when she comes home and just says “Hello.”

“There couldn’t POSSIBLY be a story reason for that, right?”

There’s a story reason for everything. Dizzy Cordova from 100 Bullets is hands-down my favorite lady in comics and her introduction to the world featured a chick forcing a kiss on her in prison. Elektra wears a stupid looking costume. Blah blah blah, there’s a reason for everything.

There’s probably a great reason. She stripped in Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.s, too. That’s reason enough, I’m sure. “It’s faithful to her origin!” We’ll find out the reason later on, when we get to read the actual comic. The reason doesn’t matter, though. Months before the books hit the shelves, the only thing that matters is the perception that the PR tour DC is currently on creates in the minds of readers.

This interview with Marz at CBR and this interview with Dan Didio at The Advocate are the most substantial sources of info on the new series.

The CBR interview begins with this:

Ron Marz: Well, obviously, we’re trying to stay away from giving out a whole lot of detail on any of the stories. I think there’s unfortunately a great desire to have spoilers in this business, period. And frankly, I do think it takes away from the experience of the story. So even if I could tell you what we’re going to do, I probably wouldn’t anyway. I feel like people should approach these books — or any books, really — not knowing what they’re really getting into.

and as a result, here is a list of things we know about Voodoo in the New DC Universe:
1. She’s a point of view character for the new universe
2. She takes her clothes off for dudes
3. She likes kissing boys AND girls

The first point is a bit bunk, because every single character will serve as a tour through the new universe, and the second is expected. I’m from Georgia–we might as well have invented strip clubs down south, so that’s fine, I don’t have some bias against strippers. The third is new, to my knowledge, and to the knowledge of a couple of my other Wildstorm Fan Club Crew. It’s not a big deal–kissing girls is fun, I know girls who kiss girls, it’s 2011, I live in San Francisco, whatever whatever–but it is a surprise.

Taken all together, though, it’s crap.

Voodoo is now (inexplicably) one of the highest profile black characters in the DC Universe. (She’s specifically Louisiana Creole, I believe, which was maybe/probably finally established in Alan Moore’s Dancing in the Dark? [as opposed to “generically ethnic” i mean]) It’s her, Mr Terrific, and Cyborg. Voodoo and Terrific have their own solo series, which I would argue puts them a notch above Cyborg, who is just a member of the JLA. Arguable point, to be sure.

(morningtime edit: I forgot about Static, whose series I want to buy, and Batwing. John Stewart’s going to be in a series, and Jason Rusch is costarring in another, too. My point stands, though: Voodoo is top dog when it comes to DC’s black ladies.)

Voodoo is starring in a book that, judging by the choice of artist, is meant to be sexy. Now, all comics should be sexy, but this is a sexy first sort of thing. “We got a comic starring a lady and it’s gotta be sexy so the fanboys buy it” sexy. “Bad girls for fanboys” sexy. “We need hot girls falling out of their tops while serving drinks to dudes rocking ugly sunglasses, as seen on page two of our preview images” sexy. That’s what Basri does, and that’s fine. He did the job on Power Girl. The problem: all we’ve heard about the interior of Voodoo has to do with her sex life. With Power Girl, he was brought on to draw her boobs real big or whatever, but we still got story info, relationship teases, villains, and so on. Voodoo gets none of that because this guy is afraid of spoilers.

DC sucks at black people. They especially suck at black women. So for the first taste of the most important (and the only one to have any measure of press–I think Vixen is on the JLI, but hasn’t gotten any press focus?) black superheroine in their entire universe to be about how you get to see her boobies sometimes, and oh man, wait until you see her kiss a girl at the beginning of issue two (we taking bets on that?) and hey hey hey look at these awesome pages in a strip club bros is crap.

It’s worse than crap. What message is that sending? Mr Terrific has been described as the most eligible bachelor in the DCU in the run-up to his series, so obviously love and/or sex will play a major role in his series. You know what Eric Wallace and them haven’t done, though? They haven’t spent time subtly letting us know that he’s gonna be running through every white woman in the DCU with his big black mandingo johnson. They’ve said that he’s highly sought after, but also talked about the types of stories he’s going to be in (I believe he’ll be in outer space by issue four?), his supporting cast (of black people! of a variety of ages and skillsets! also at least one white dude, and probably a civilian version of Power Girl), his status quo (he’s rich!), and plenty of other bits intended to whet your whistle. What do we actually know about the series? Probably nothing that we won’t find out in the first eight pages. We don’t know details. We don’t know plot points. We know the barest hint of teases. We know the equivalent of an iMDB summary and cast page–that’s it. And it got my interest! It worked! Here DC Comics: have three (or two) dollars!

Here’s what we know about Voodoo, in case you forgot:
1. She’ll make out with a girl with her top off while making eye contact with you, brother, and let me tell you–whooo!–it is hot.

Great advertising, dudes. “Here’s a black lady–she might give you a chubby. ~diversity~”

So yeah, it’s nice that you have story reasons for Voodoo stripping. Alan Moore did, too, and so did Jim Lee and Grant Morrison and Joe Casey (well, post-stripping in that case) and everyone else who ever touched the character. But we aren’t reading the story. We’re I’m reading the advertisement for the story. I’m trying to decide if I want to test the series out or not. I’m doing exactly what all of this information, as unbelievably scant as it is, to meant to do: decide whether or not Voodoo is worth my three (or two, actually) dollars.

If my reaction to your preview material is “Oh, well, this looks like the same old garbage,” that’s not my bad. That’s your bad. That’s you not being able to sell water to a man who’s dying of thirst.

As a black dude who has been increasingly and pretty much unceasingly disappointed in how DC approaches colored folks over the past few years, Voodoo isn’t worth it for me. And with Ron Marz already on the defensive, throwing up stupid, mean-spirited snaps that anybody could take apart with five minutes thought about the portrayal of black men and women in comics, Voodoo isn’t even worth stealing.

DC needs to muzzle their boy and maybe start thinking outside of the fanboy box. Listen to “Black Girl Lost” or “Dear Mama” or “White Man’z World” or something, man. Read some dream hampton. Find some dumb college kid in a daishiki who’ll talk to you about “the black experience.”

Do something. Anything, really. ’cause I’m basically what should be the target audience for this book, being both a Wildstorm fan and black, and every word out of this guy’s mouth is making me less and less interested in the series. Wait, no, that bit’s a lie–it’s turning me from bored apathy toward actual scorn.

This week the team of Was Taters and Space Jawa bombard me with so many panels that I almost feel like I didn’t read enough. Thanks to both of them. Also, I’m glad Jawa covered the Adam West book, as my shop didn’t get it this week. Though I notice he picked the same panel as I did in the Free Comic Book Day preview.

You’ll have to trust me on this Avengers Academy panel. It was a great character moment.

Avengers #15
Brian Michael Bendis and Chris Bachalo

Avengers Academy #16
Christos Gage and Tom Raney

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The penultimate chapter of Stephanie-as-Batgirl.

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Bought: Peter Milligan, Steve Dillon, and Brett Ewins’s Bad Company, Judge Dredd Mega-City Masters 2
Saw: a very nice Charlie Huston panel that I had to work through like a douchebag
Read: The Walking Dredd, and the rest of the Megazine that I bought.

Thursday at San Diego: overall success. Had a nice night out, too. Was planning to go to the hotel and crash at around 2000, ended up going to the CBLDF party (donations at the door) and caught up with a few friends, then dipped to karaoke, then found out there was an hour wait at karaoke so we bounced to the Hilton, and then made it to the hotel after 000. Life is pretty okay. Shouts to the lady at the karaoke bar who was so impressed I stepped aside for her or something that she gave me one of those awkwardly deep hugs.

Things I’m gonna do today: slowly grow to hate listening to people talk about corporate comix more and more, spend a grip on French comics against my better judgment, and showing up wild late to the iFanboy party. Why am I showing up on CPT? Because of this:

6:30-7:30 The Best and Worst Manga of the Year— There are a whole lot of Japanese manga, Korean manhwa, and manga-inspired comics out there — but what’s worth buying and reading, and what’s not? Manga/comics bloggers/pundits Christopher Butcher (Comics212.net and The Beguiling), David Brothers (4thletter!), Eva Volin (School Library Journal), Carlo Santos (Anime News Network), and Deb Aoki (About.com Manga) share their picks for the best new and continuing manga series for kids, teens, and grown-ups and jeer at the most annoying manga published in 2010-2011. Room 26AB

Come out, ’cause I got jokes, son.

One last thing (for this week at least) on Hisao Tamaki’s Lovely Angels:

This is about as perfect an encapsulation of the Dirty Pair as you’ll ever see on one page. You’ve got Mughi, wanton destruction… it looks good. I like how it almost looks like they’re standing on a globe, while things explode in their wake and Mughi vogues in the background.

There’s a difference in the attitudes of Kei and Yuri on these pages due to a story thing, and I like how that difference plays out. They’re both still unbelievably good at their jobs, but Kei’s moving and dodging while Yuri is bloodlusting/sleepwalking through the swarms. Both are still doing work. Very cool.

Yuri’s hair in this, and the her actions, are one of the coolest things in the whole book. The fast drop, Kei’s look of surprise, and then BAM. I seriously love the way Yuri’s hair spreads in panel three and falls in panel one. Hair isn’t something I notice a lot, barring Storm’s stupid hair in X-Men. It’s usually used to show simple motion–a jump, a whip-fast turn–but here it’s used to set the speed of the scene. It’s very elegant. Yuri is so mean in this scene.

Blood rains down. Dirty Pair is super bloody, but this is a rare instance of the blood showing up dark on the page, rather than white. I’m curious if that’s a ratings thing (we can only get SO explicit, so let’s save it for impact) or strictly a stylistic thing.

These are seriously fun comics, though. I’d love to see them translated. I’m not sure if the release of the Dirty Pair tv show was a success or not, but I’d like to think that if it was, this manga could pretty easily draft along in its wake. It’s got a modern style, but isn’t mired in modern conventions, so it’d be a nice alternative to a lot of stuff right now.

FRANK MILLER

HOLY TERROR

PREVIEW

i stripped out the images and posted them here, too, because i probably will have osmething to say when i get out of this snakepit of a napoleon dynamite panel

look at them chunky blacks, mmmmmm

boy do i hope this isn’t super racist when it drops