I realized, my friends, that while I know much about Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, and Cassandra Cain, my knowledge of Bette Kane, the first Batgirl, is almost nonexistent.
And so I’m asking for Bette Kane stories, sites, and trade recs and resources. Got anything worth saying about Bette Kane? Say it here.
So, it appears that because of slow initial sales of the Wonder WomanDVD made Warner Brothers rethink their plans to make a Batgirl animated movie. And what’s more, it caused them to rethink making a Batgirl: Year One animated movie.
This saddens me.
In fact, it caused them to rethink making any movie with female leads. This angers me, a little.
Let’s focus, for now, on the saddening part, and what we can do to fix it. For starters, there is an internet petition already started to restart the Batgirl: Year Oneproject. I know, I know, internet petitions suck. However, I’m very much of a ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks’ mentality these days, and so I signed it and hope you will, too. I also hope you will blog, will ask questions at conventions, and will, if you’re old fashioned, drop DC a letter talking about how much you’d like a Batgirl:Year One movie. That is, if you do. And if you don’t, well, you’re a fool. Below I will list the reasons why I think that even if Wonder Woman had sold badly entirely, and not just initially, it would be a good idea to make a Batgirl: Year One movie.
The Fourcast wields the power of the gods. The very gods, themselves!
Anyone who has picked up a DC book in the last few weeks has seen the preview for the upcoming Green Arrow series. It’s technically perfect.
A woman runs alone at night through a moodily-lit, nearly-deserted city. A gang of men follow her. They’re wearing outfits that wouldn’t mark them as especially threatening in real life, but in comics are basically thug suits – black leather jackets and boots, with patches of their hair shaved. This type has been causing trouble for women in moodily-lit cities since the thirties, and will probably continue causing trouble for them in the twenty-second century.
The woman keeps running, coming to a wooded area. The men behind her shout crude, insinuating, but PG-rated threats, their intent unmistakable. Eventually one of them catches her. Escape is impossible. All is lost.
Suddenly, something knocks him off of her! A voice calls out in the darkness. Enter the hero.
Like I said, the technical perfection of the sequence is obvious. There is even some subtle detail work that clues the reader in on the state of things in the city. For example, the woman being chased runs right past a police station without even trying to go in. Clearly, the law isn’t being enforced in that city.
Don’t even pretend that that sequence, older by far than comic books, doesn’t draw in readers. It hasn’t stuck around because it’s useless. It’s a situation that is recognizable, horrible, and yet comforting, because any reader knows that it’s a set up for the hero’s entrance. There isn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind that the hero will make an entrance. It’s a set up for an iconic hero, and DC does well with iconic heroes.
The trouble is, it’s the set up for any hero. Any hero at all. You could paint over Green Arrow on the first splash page and no one would be the wiser. As previews go, this one is giving us a hero, but it isn’t giving us any hero in particular.
Some readers will have noticed that I’ve been struggling with the Green Arrow book for the past . . . ever. I think that if I could just accept that the book isn’t ever going to go in the direction I hoped it had, Robin Hood and his Merry C0-Heroes, I might just enjoy the solitary Oliver Queen in his urban forest. At the same time, throwing away every other Arrow in for this guy, who is interchangeable with any other hero in the DCU, it seems like a bad trade.
During the last DC panel of Wondercon, the talk turned to illegal downloads, their ethics, popularity, and effect on the comic book industry.
My take is that they’re not ethical, they’re very popular, and their overall effect is bad. That being said, I can’t really lord morality over anyone. I don’t get permission for the panels I use to illustrated stuff on this site, so to the extent I can steal, I suppose I do.
To the extent that I can. To be honest, a part of what’s keeping me back from at least sneaking a few downloads to get the flavor of a particular book, is that I honestly can’t do it. At all. I’m a half-wit when it comes to know-how. I don’t really know where to look for anything that I can’t look up in a book. I’m also a half-wit when it comes to technology. I tend toward the user-friendly programs and everything else is ‘magic’. Half times half leaves me with a quarter wit to navigate my way through torrent sites, and I’m not up to the challenge. I’ll pay the three dollars, thank you.
Another part of what keeps me shelling out money for books I know are going to frustrate me, is the overall atmosphere. To me, going to a comic book store is like going to a bar. Specifically, my well-loved, local bar. I see people every week. I catch up with them. I talk comics with them. I drift away and read when they talk sports. I come back and we talk about what’s on TV, and eventually they close up and I head home.
Downloading comics has its appeal, especially to the broke and cheap, both of which kind of describe me, but at the same time – come on. That’s like saying, “Why go down and meet my friends for a beer when I can make gin in my bathtub and get drunk alone?” Sure, you can. But why would you?
Except that, thanks to 4thletter, and Comics Alliance and Io9 and Comic Book Resources and LJ and Dreamwidth and Twitter and hundreds of message boards, that’s not true. Hell, half of why I got into comics was the vast amount of resources, and company, online.
So I wonder, is this part of why people download comics? I know, I know, less human connection, less local communities pulling together, standards. I’m not frowning on it. Like I said, I wouldn’t be into comics if I couldn’t talk about them whenever I have the time, and if I couldn’t get the number of angles on them that the internet provides. Supplanting local with global might not be picturesque, but it gives a lot of opportunities for connection, and for variety. At the same time, when you can get comics online for the same price that you can get conversation about comics online, maybe that’s competition too tough for vendors and creators. And given that they’re who we need for our fix, maybe that’s going to be a problem pretty soon.
Go ahead and look at the post on Comics Alliance.
And please do let me know who the villain at the end is.
There is a lot riding on my trip to the comic book shop today. I have not one, but two highly anticipated comic books coming out on the same freaking day. That’s almost unfair, and I know everyone at the place I visit is bracing themselves for the despairing wails of a disappointed comic book fan if the two don’t go well.
So, let me distract myself. What’s the last comic that you were so excited about that you almost didn’t want it to come out, in case it didn’t live up to your hopes?
And how did that turn out?
