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Final Crisis and also how to fix DC Comics
Posts
Does he have a website we can look at?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
StrangerFictions.com
The picture at the bottom is all blurry and stuff most likely because he doesn't want the entire world to know he is the scrawniest boy.
I think it got botp'ed last time.
Yes, we get it, it's become an overused plot point that sucks and is just a button that says "DEPTH AND CONTROVERSY" for some writers.
Although it's far superior to whining about the costumes.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I will be buying her Cloak and Dagger series though, just to see how her writing is in comic format.
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This is a simplification, but lets be honest, I think angry vagina lady has a point.
The most recent female death in comics I can think of is the Wasp, and even though how she died wasn't to heroic, she did go down fighting and was sufficently mourned by not only the heroes but the general public. She for sure didn't get raped or thrown in a fridge.
But crying wolf at every perceived slight only makes it harder to be taken seriously when some real stupid shit goes down.
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I really can't rationalize that at all.
But at the same time, this is a trend we're all aware of and that every one of us has pointed out at one point or another, so it's not really her point so much as it's something the fandom as a whole understands, acknowledges, and to one extent or another has been resisting for years.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
What did you expect them to do? Not have a teenage girl in bondage gear try to face rape somebody?
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Oh yeah? Check her Ultimate counterpart.
I agree with the crying wolf part... I imagine though that getting ignored every time you point out the real shit might make you kind of shrill and over-the-top.
Yes, comics are pretty sexist, a lot of terrible things happen to female characters, but the hyper-machisimo aspects of them could probably be inferred as just as sexist and offensive to men if you're really going to have a rod up your ass about it.
(Obviously cases like Identity Crisis are worthy of extra attention, though.)
As for sexist portrayals of men, what exactly are you thinking of, zero? Is it just that all the men are in perfect shape and rarely show any kind of emotional vulnerability?
Because I'd call that limited, but by no means offensive.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
completely true. And I'm sure if you ever take a feminist perspective class on comic books that will be discussed... but typically comments on sexism in comics is very superficial and begins and ends with female characterization. Frankly, Wolverine can't have done men any good from that perspective.
we all got raped.
Possibly. Though when Supes and Bats have costumes with cleavage holes on them, you'll have a stronger argument. Just sayin', is all.
Yeah, while male heroes are undoubtedly given equally impossible physiques, the fact remains that the writer doesn't expect the reader to get a hard-on when Ra's Al Ghul cuts off Batman's shirt, and so the very reason why gratuitous nudity of female characters is bad (the overriding sexual element) is absent.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I don't really buy that argument. Every male comic book character is unrealistically ripped to Hell and look at how Alex Ross draws packages:
:P
but
but it's okay if we do, right?
right, guys???
Regarding sexism in comics: the common portrayal of male characters in comics just isn't offensive to men. At least not any man, gay or straight, that I have ever met (or even heard of). The portrayal of women, however, is apparently offensive to many of them. I think that's enough of a reason for writers to step back and make an honest assessment of how they deal with female characters in their stories - instead of dismissing critics, usually forcefully, as I have often seen them do on the Internet. Well, maybe "forcefully" is the wrong word. Vehemently.
And then I remembered that terrible movie.
Damn you Durandal. Damn you.
it is a-ok
keith it is okay for you
Well, Alex Ross does have a, how shall I say, hard-on for Golden and Silver Age Comic Book characters, if you catch my drift. So he's an exceptional case.
Yeah. A lot of them, when talking about it, really come off like the "nice guys" that D&D and H/A so rightly hold in contempt. "How could I hate women? My Mum's one!" The comics equivalent is "but I write strong women!" Which more often than not means "well, they may wear fuck-me boots, but they sure kick ass in them!"
Which isn't to say that I think comics is a den of raging misogyny, but you've got a lot of undersocialized dudes working in an insular, clubhouse atmosphere, and they're selling by and large to an audience that's a lot like them. I think it just doesn't occur to them that anyone could be offended by depictions of rape and fridge-stuffing - and when it does occur to them, they have an echo chamber of colleagues ready to reassure them that it's just the crazy wimmins having their time of month again. It's not lost on me that the creators that have noticed this stuff, and commented on it, are the ones who came to comics having worked in other industries, where the gender disparity isn't as great and this stuff gets called out.
And yeah, D'Orazio says a lot of weird or stupid stuff in her blog, but that doesn't invalidate her points about IC or the harassment of female employees at DC - which were corroborated by other sources - and she's not the avatar of her gender. And it's not an isolated experience. Creators like Jim Owsley/Christopher Priest and Larry Hama have shared some interesting stories about the minority experience at Marvel and DC.
Ooh, I wanna read that.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I believe a lot of her complaints were just about the usual problems writers have with editors. I know she got dicked around on Deadpool and Agent-X, constantly told to re-write a line of dialogue several times, having plot points dictated to her, and then summarily changed for no reason, and so on.
I do remember her mentioning that Marvel's a bit of a boy's club, but I never got the impression that was why she left.
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1. Of course it's a boy's club. How can anyone even be surprised by this? It's an industry that has primarily targeted young boys (and now men) since it's conception. It's composed almost exclusively of men in every level.
2. The industry is beyond incestuous. There are a handful (metaphorically) of employees that constitute a largely unchanging body of staff. This is just a function of the size of the industry, apparently.
3. I disagree entirely with the assertion that a half-naked male in comics is somehow less of a sexual ploy than a half-naked female. This suggests a rather naive conception of how sexuality works. Heterosexuals employ same-sex nudity as a means of validating and reaffirming their models of gender and sex. When men share images of nude and near-nude males in peak form, e.g. comics, they are reasserting "this is our standard, this is what we all aspire to". It is no different from the beauty magazines for women that are filled with unachievable female bodies.
4. There's such a thing as sour grapes, even in a crappy situation. The Broken Vagina blog is obsessed wit the idea that any insult to a woman is an insult to all women. Even as she complains of people who demand female solidarity, etc., she interprets every such gesture as an attack on all women.
We talked a bit about the whole "crying wolf" thing, but honestly, that doesn't invalidate the notion that sometimes it's true. And like I said, I think if I kept trying to draw the industries attention to the blatant ones and got ignored, it would likely make me more shrill about the subject.
In fact, if you compared the number of beauty magazine readers who are currently on diets or spend a more than usual amount of money on beauty products to the number of comic fans who do the same, you'd probably end up with far more of the former. Most men who go out of their way to pursue their own difficult to achieve model of gender and sex are probably reading body builder magazines, male fashion magazines, and other men's magazines, not comic books.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
However, I can identify with characters like Yorick Brown, who are more realistic (though still sensational in some respects), on an intellectual level. So I guess I must have a man crush on Brian K. Vaughan.
The Sheeda were introduced? I thought like, oh, apparently evil fairy people are a big part of DC now who knew? And why in the hell would you collect 1-6? Are they planning on releasing 7 stand-alone or something?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Yeah, I just recently heard about this too. You can find the JLA Classified stuff in JLA: Ultramarine Corps. The summary doesn't mention the Sheeda, but apparently that's where they first appear, including Neh-Buh-Loh.