Change Is A Sound

Purely out of curiosity, in the wake of the Flashpoint variant cover which features Wonder Woman holding Mera’s severed head, I posed a question to any comics fan who cared to answer:

Have you or has anyone you know ever said, “What I really need is more graphic violence in my comics”?

Just for the record, I can’t recall ever saying that or anything like it, even in passing to a friend, much less at a comic store or one of the very few conventions I’ve been to (seriously, I went to SDCC once and only because I got in free, back when it was possible to do such a thing - it was the year “Mallrats” came out if you want to figure out when that was).

And yet it seems that comics are getting increasingly graphically violent.

So let’s begin with the boilerplate disclaimers.

1. I have a little girl, but I’m not suggesting that everything should be sanitized to a level that’s appropriate for children. I loved “The Shield” and while I wouldn’t let my little girl watch it until she’s older, I don’t think I - as an adult - should have to miss out on compelling drama and stories because some people can’t or won’t parent and can’t or won’t pay attention to what their kids are doing. I do not think less violent content is or should be a substitute for parenting and parental involvement.
2. I’m not advocating censorship, nor am I arguing that the Comics Code should be reinstated. I don’t think the Comics Code was particularly effective when it was in place and it seemed to arbitrarily decide content was offensive or objectionable without any regard to context.
3. It is not my intention to actually argue anything in this post - I’m asking questions. I’m asking questions I would like to see answered, preferably by people in the editorial departments of DC and Marvel, considering that Archie comics aren’t typically violent, and that my main concern is the level of extreme violence in mainstream comics stories - Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Green Lantern, etc.

So let’s get started.

First off, I understand that some stories occur in violent times. Perhaps it’s unfair of me, but I’m vastly more tolerant of historical tales set among Vikings or in the Old West which feature violence. If you make a humorous comic about Vikings, you get Hagar The Horrible and I don’t know many comics fans who want that. If you do a serious story about Vikings, it’s likely to be violent and bloody. That’s what happens in a sword fight or when two people try to hack each other to pieces with axes. It’s inevitable. I wouldn’t really want to read a story about Vikings which pretended otherwise because it isn’t historically accurate. That doesn’t mean I want gore covering every page - it simply means that, if violence occurs in the story, I understand that it won’t be pretty (even if it is beautifully rendered in an artistic way).

Second, I think there should absolutely be a place for comics which are violent, and that it doesn’t need to be a back room of the comic shop, nor does it necessarily need to be an 18+ section. I love “The Authority” - even the volumes after Ellis / Hitch and Millar / Quitely - and there’s no reason to hide this stuff and treat it like it’s something shameful.

My question is why mainstream superhero comics - the stuff that, traditionally, has made lifelong comics readers - are so violent and whether they should be.

Need some examples? Glad you asked.

1. That “Flashpoint” variant cover of Wonder Woman holding Mera’s severed head. If you’re a comics fan, you’ve probably seen it or at least heard about it.
2. The Sentry tearing Ares in half in “Siege.” It’s a two-page spread.
3. The splatterpunk violence in “Green Lantern.” While I absolutely love the series and the writing, the violence can be completely over the top.
4. “Blackest Night.” Just flip it open. If you don’t see violence that’s inappropriate for kids, turn backward or forward a few pages.
5. “Identity Crisis.”
6. The Iron Man “Five Nightmares” collection. Ezekiel Stane burning people’s skin off in the only title for the starring character in two recent blockbuster movies. Just for the record, this is the same volume which featured photographs of Robert Downey, Jr., and Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover.

If that isn’t a sufficient number of examples, go flip through some Marvel or DC titles at the local shop. I’m sure you’ll find more without too much effort.

Now, some people might be asking why I’m so focused on Marvel and DC, and the answer to that is simple. They publish comics featuring ubiquitous characters. It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t heard of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man or Captain America, even if they only know the name.

People who read comics as kids - like myself - may remember the content then and think that not much has changed. And while I freely admit that I read stuff that was absolutely inappropriate for my age (no kid should have been reading Savage Tales or Dreadstar or a lot of the other books I was getting), the stuff on the spinner at the local pharmacy was usually relatively okay.

Now? I can’t buy mainstream DC or Marvel continuity books in good conscience for my little girl, because I don’t know what will happen from issue to issue. I’ve already had to abruptly stop buying her a comic once when a recent Age Of Reptiles mini-series went from a tender story that nearly made me cry and was appropriate for all ages to extreme graphic violence in the very next issue (which, in fairness, was appropriate for the series considering the setting, even if it was a jarring narrative transition - I should note that I don’t fault the creator for that, although a bit more warning would have been nice).

Consider this - I’m a parent who actively wants to buy comics for my little girl, who wants to share the stories with her, who wants her to be exposed to the incredible imaginative and mythic power of these stories, but I can’t buy a Wonder Woman comic for her because I don’t know when Wonder Woman is going to break someone’s neck. I can’t buy my little girl the comic that stars the world’s most well-known female superhero because I don’t have any faith that DC will publish stories that are appropriate for her age.

This should be simple. Any parent should be able to walk into any comic shop and buy Wonder Woman or Supergirl comics for their daughter of almost any age (presuming she’s learned to read) and not worry about whether Wonder Woman is going to kill something in that issue. They shouldn’t have to look for the kids’ line or a non-continuity line like Marvel does with its Adventures comics. They should be able to walk in, say “Do you have any copies of Wonder Woman?”, buy a few copies off the rack and walk out with their kid reading about Wonder Woman punching Gorgons or saving the world or whatever and not have to worry about whether Diana just decapitated anyone.

I know that comics became more mature to remain interesting and relevant to a readership that continued reading comics as it aged. I have no problem with that. My little girl knows that people sometimes do bad things and that they need to be stopped. I have no concerns over her seeing the Batman punch The Joker or Superman incapacitate Lex Luthor. She understands that sometimes, people who do the right thing don’t survive the experience. I’m not suggesting that comics companies even refrain from killing a hero - Barry Allen and Supergirl died during Crisis On Infinite Earth and I would be okay with her reading that. People die, even heroes, and heroes are far more prone to it because generally, saving people’s lives doesn’t come without mortal danger.

However, violence does not confer or equal maturity. It is a last resort, something to be used only when every other option has failed. That’s what my little girl’s martial arts instructor teaches her. It’s one of the most brilliant parts of Grant Morrison’s “All-Star Superman” - look at how often Superman avoids violence in that series. It’s an astonishingly gentle, kind book, especially considering that it’s from the creators of “We3.” Morrison and Frank Quitely proved in those issues that it’s not only possible to do a mature book that appeals to all ages, but that such a book can be really good. This is the same Grant Morrison who did “The Invisibles,” who did “The New X-Men.” This is the same Grant Morrison who is no stranger to violence and horror as narrative tools and he created one of the most moving and emotionally compelling versions of Superman ever written.

As a narrative tool, violence is frequently, if not usually, a cheap shock tactic, something to be used when a writer can’t think of a better idea. I don’t mind my little girl reading about Peter Parker and Mary Jane struggling with their marriage and her concern that he won’t come home one day, that he’ll die trying to save someone he doesn’t even know, and her fear about what her life will be like in the wake of such a thing. That level of maturity is something I’m perfectly okay with. She sees that level of maturity in films like “Finding Nemo,” which deals with the loss of a parent. She sees that level of maturity in “The Hobbit,” when Bilbo has to summon the courage to do something he knows his friends will consider a betrayal to prevent a greater tragedy. The stuff we - as a culture - have generally considered appropriate for kids has always dealt with content like death, fear, what happens when people do bad things, having to make difficult and unpopular choices because it’s the right thing to do, and so on.

The difference is that while literature we’ve traditionally (and by traditionally, I mean over the past several decades) considered appropriate for kids deals with those issues, it doesn’t contain the level of graphic violence we see in mainstream comics - not even the original Grimm’s fairy tales which were significantly darker than what we like to remember (unless we consider parents sending their kids into the forest to die of exposure because they can’t feed them to be comedy).

So. I know the violence came about as part of the grim and gritty era of comics and emerged as a direct result of less talented writers taking only the most superficial aspects of what Alan Moore and Frank Miller were doing in their attempts to write for a more mature audience. They saw the violence but missed the psychological and larger philosophical questions embodied in those stories - do the ends actually justify the means? What number of people would we tolerate killing to achieve world peace and prevent the destruction of both our species and planet? What if we didn’t know? And what kind of person could actually make that decision and carry it out? What if Batman had to contend with villains who are every bit as ruthless, if not more so, than he is? How would he respond?

Moore and Miller’s fascinating examinations of the extreme end-points of heroism - deciding to kill roughly 6 million people to save about 6 billion in the case of Adrian Veidt, revealing a perversion in his sense of heroism in that he regarded it as an acceptable loss - reveal logical flaws in heroes, in the lengths they’re willing to go to and that may actually be necessary to save us. The violence was not the point - the violence was a symptom of a larger condition, and that condition was what happens when a hero hits the end of the road and finds him or herself in unknown territory with no map but their own moral compass. It’s not to difficult to argue that Wonder Woman killing Max Lord is a reflection of this approach. Wonder Woman is a warrior and comes from a warrior society - in such a culture, killing may be regarded as necessary, even if it isn’t desirable.

However, what we forget is that “Watchmen” was not part of the DCU at the time. Even now, Earth-4, home of the Quantum Superman (an analogue for Doctor Manhattan) and a version of The Question (see: Rorschach), falls well outside mainstream DC continuity on New Earth / Earth-0. (Note: here’s a list of Earths in the DC multiverse including continuity changes from events.) Likewise, “The Dark Knight Returns” used Batman, but occurred in a mini-series outside DC continuity, not unlike a precursor to the Elseworlds stories.

And even more to the point, while those series were considered inappropriate for children at the time and likely still are, the violence in them was significantly less graphic than the violence in recent Green Lantern stories which are likely to receive a sales boost from the upcoming film. As a perfect example of a potential problem for parents, Art Baltazar recently worked on a series of books called Super-Pets involving various animals from the DCU. Take a look at Super Hero Splash Down:

That would be Dex-Starr on the cover, cutely rendered and appropriate for kids of all ages (like, y’know, me - I love Baltazar’s work).

Contrast that with Dex-Starr’s appearance in the Green Lantern books:

It’s an interesting contrast, isn’t it? Take careful note of the fatal cranial injury in the last image.

I have no problem with my little girl reading Art Baltazar’s comics. She absolutely adores Tiny Titans. My problem is that a fair number of kids will see the Green Lantern movie, want to start reading the comics and that parents will realize, too late, that the comics which provided the source for the movie contain content like the images above.

As an adult, I love Dex-Starr. The little blue rage kitty is one of my favorite characters in comics ever. I’m sure my little girl would love that character as well, but there’s no way I can let her read Green Lantern yet - or in the foreseeable future for that matter - because of pages like the ones above. It doesn’t matter if she likes the movie - she can’t start reading the comics because of the gore.

So I ask again: have you or has anyone you know ever said, “What I really need is more graphic violence in my comics”?

Because I haven’t. And I can’t imagine that DC and Marvel would have added this stuff if someone, somewhere, hadn’t specifically requested it. I’d like to know which consumer did, because in the absence of a paying customer specifically requesting graphically violent content which excludes a broad range of ages due to the grisly images, it seems like one of the dumbest business decisions ever made.

First things first: Barbara Gordon is one of the only disabled people in comics. Not only is she disabled, she is a bad-ass, not just in her hacking skills and as Oracle, but a certifiable ass-kicking heroine who could, from her wheelchair, open up a can on some punks. Although Alan Moore’s decision to cripple her in 1988’s “The Killing Joke” was a questionable plot device, it’s one of the very few things that hasn’t been retconned in the last 23 years.

Moreover, Barbara Gordon is a visibly disabled person in a world where disabled people don’t seem to exist in any positions of agency (i.e. they’re always the subject - people help them, save them, etc.). She has not only saved herself, she has saved others as well, despite her disability or, arguably, because of it. If she hadn’t been put in a wheelchair, would we have had Oracle? When you consider Oracle’s impact on the DCU, it seems much more significant and far-reaching than anything Batgirl could have done.

If DC is, in fact, restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk and removing her from her wheelchair (never mind the storylines which explained why Babs couldn’t be healed even by Purple Ray technology), that is counter-evidence for their claim that the new DCU will be more diverse. Why? And even more to the point, why does it matter? Because something on the order of 40 million Americans - around 10% of the current population, possibly slightly more - have some form of disability. Representing that isn’t just reflecting diversity, it’s reflecting reality. For those who would argue that only physically fit people can be heroes in comics, I’d point to the last 23 years of Babs Gordon’s life. Nearly everyone’s favorite hero or heroine in the DCU has had their ass saved by Babs, probably more than once.

Alan Moore is an amazing writer, arguably the best comics writer to date, but the decision to cripple Barbara Gordon to make Batman angry was one of his low points. However, that tragic plot resulted in an amazing new character who became a crucial part of the DCU. Removing that character won’t make things more accessible to new readers - at this point, the only people who remember Barbara Gordon being able to walk are 35 or older and have had nearly a quarter-century of her being in a wheelchair.

Just for sake of comparison, Geoff Johns was born in 1973 and was roughly 15 years old when The Joker shot Babs. Jim Lee was born in 1964 and was about 24. Dan DiDio was born in 1959 and was about 29. When that plot has been reality for roughly half of the lives of the key architects of the new DCU, it’s something that might as well be set in stone. Heroes don’t need to replace most of their body parts with machinery to be heroic. They can be just as heroic from a wheelchair because being able to stand up has never been a necessary component of being able to stand up for what you believe in or deciding to do the right thing.

Popgun Chao$ has an interesting piece about the reboot which approaches the possible changes with reason and logic, generally two alien concepts when it comes to comic fandom. Why, there’s barely any frothing or foaming at the mouth!

The site makes several reasonable points:

• Comics must change to remain fresh and gain new readers.
• The changes could result in something better - we simply don’t have enough information at this point to make any judgments.
• This gives new readers a clear, recent starting point. It isn’t a matter of picking up with an issue numbered in the 600s, 800s or 900s, it’s a matter of grabbing the first four issues.
• It may result in consolidating titles - I don’t think many people would argue that the number of monthly Bat-books (whether minis, one-shots or ongoing) is a little out of control.
• The DCU can move forward with uniform purpose.

I’d suggest reading that piece before continuing here. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

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You’re back? Great.

One specific, meaningful concern that readers justifiably have is that a character may be written out of continuity or changed so that they are no longer recognizable. When Barry Allen returned, I heard comics fans expressing frustration because Barry Allen’s death meant something and he had remained dead - they had about 200 issues (or, in linear time, about 17 years) of Wally West as The Flash and didn’t see a need for the change. Now it seems clear that DC has been laying groundwork for this change for some time. Barry Allen returns, appears in The Flash regularly after a 17-odd-year absence, Flashpoint begins and then there’s this.

It’s hard not to look at this and see some level of causality.

With that said, look at the list of characters that Popgun Chao$ mentions: Tim Drake, Connor Kent, Wally West, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, specifically. That’s Red Robin, Superboy, the old Flash, an older but still much-loved Batgirl and the current and apparently increasingly-loved Batgirl.

If the purpose of this is giving people a jumping-on point, Batgirl is sufficiently new that readers can jump on now and not miss much. If the purpose is boosting sales, I’m not sure that changing Batgirls will do much. As an exercise in masochism, I looked up Batgirl’s sales on ICv2 for the last six months. Here they are:

April 2011: 24,310

March 2011: 24,821

February 2011: 24,390

January 2011: 25,189

December 2010: 25,225

November 2010: 25,827

Month to month, the sales hover between 24k and 26k, with a general, slight downward trend. Batgirl, over the past six months, generally appears to lose a percent or two of its readership with each month. Some titles which aren’t doing as well? Legion Of Super Heroes for one. Adventure Comics, Supergirl, Titans, Secret Six, Power Girl and Booster Gold for a few more.

There’s only so much DC can do to revamp those titles. Legion Of Super Heroes is already relatively new, with only a dozen or so issues in the current volume. The same is true for Adventure Comics, although a recent renumbering makes it look like there’s significantly more history in this volume than there actually is.

More to the point, fans are invested in these characters and often identify with them. It’s instructive to remember that Robin was originally created specifically to have a character in the Batman books that young boys could identify with to increase readership. Yes, I’m citing Wikipedia, but only because I can’t find the actual source online.

So let’s put this bluntly and as directly as possible: DC has actively created characters to ensure that fans are emotionally attached to these books. Although I don’t know how many people today would be as honest about the reason for creating a character as Robin’s creators were, it is not only possible but likely that DC and other comics companies create some characters for precisely the same reason today, whether to draw in GLBT readers or people of color or women or disabled people or whomever.

DC - and, by proxy, other comics companies - cannot then be surprised when readers become upset because those characters are removed from continuity, killed, crippled, unceremoniously dumped or have their origins changed from “getting [their] powers from a transcendent scientist-mentor” to being “grown from the DNA of Aryan super-athletes and Hitler’s personal sex midgets” (quoted from Warren Ellis’ extraordinary “Planetary” series).

And companies want people to form emotional connections with their brands - it keeps them coming back for more and that’s what every marketer wants to achieve. The downside to it is that people expect the same with, at most, incremental change (i.e. 15% more cleaning power!) or, as is usually the case, only the illusion of change. Shake things up too much and that brand loyalty disappears because the fundamental components of that brand are gone.

And it’s important to note here that DC isn’t the brand - the brand is Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman or Power Girl or Supergirl or any other hero you choose to name or that you appreciate. Change too much about them and the loyal fans will eventually realize the hero they have is completely different from the hero they knew - witness the complaints about J. Michael Straczynski’s run on Superman and how he characterized Superman in his walk across America.

The brand isn’t the DC logo and Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. Superman existed before all three were born, as did Batman and Wonder Woman. While Geoff Johns is a talented writer and may draw people to read Green Lantern or The Flash or Aquaman based on his skills, he isn’t the brand. The brand is the characters and the shared universe they inhabit. It’s the stuff DC makes, not DC itself.

I could care less who publishes the comics I read as long as it isn’t some incredibly offensive organization which I can’t support in any sort of good conscience. I care about the characters and the stories. While talented creators typically develop more interesting stories and offer deeper insights into the characters and I freely admit that I’ll pick up a book simply because one of my favorite creators started working on it, what keeps me coming back are the stories, and no creator, no matter how good, can keep me coming back to a lousy book with uninspired characters and boring stories.

So shift the creative teams around. Mix them up. Have them draw names out of hats to find out who they’ll be working with and on what book(s). Play spin the bottle for all I care. Just remember that the characters and the stories are what keep comics fans coming back.

Remember that we’re emotionally invested in these characters, and any remotely competent brand manager would not only recognize but salivate over that loyalty.

Remember that these characters reflect who we are, as readers and as people.

Remember that comics may be fantasy, but at least some of us like to imagine ourselves in them and it’s easier to do that when we see people who look like us in these pages.

Remember that we love this stuff, and if you mess with it too much, you break our hearts.

Remember that this is a two-way street, not unlike a romantic relationship, and that if you play too many games with our hearts and stand us up for dates and treat us like dirt and take us for granted, eventually we’ll just walk away from it all because we’ve had enough.

dcwomenkickingass:

It’s all true kids. It’s a new DCU - From USA Today:

In September, more than 50 first issues will debut, introducing readers to stories that are grounded in each character’s specific legend but also reflect today’s real-world themes and events. Lee spearheaded the redesign of more than 50…

This drives me nuts.

Many years ago, I worked in the tech field doing research with some of the most brilliant and wildly inventive people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. I have my areas of expertise, but these people were straight-up geniuses, complete with garage / basement laboratories. I’m not kidding. They were one industrial accident or chemical spill away from being a super-hero or super-villain.

People who deal in science and engineering and mathematical truths often regard areas of study like sociology and marketing with an almost paternal sense of amusement, like watching a child pull a dog’s tail and then look around for approval. And really, I can’t fault them for that. When you’re dealing with people who can rewrite significant parts of a kernel before lunch and still have time to drop a Zerg rush, social sciences seem laughable because so little of it is empirical.

The point of this is that one of my old bosses, in dealing with the marketing people who thought they were helping develop a product by providing what they considered input and feedback, used to derisively comment on their contribution by noting, often in front of them, “Yeah, and if we add anti-gravity, it’ll fly!”

We were developing network hardware.

Generally, network hardware does not need to be airborne.

Sadly, we encountered a couple of marketing people who asked how feasible that was and what it would do to the product development cycle.

Insert your favorite facepalm.jpg picture here. I’m partial to Jean-Luc Picard or that awesome statue of Jesus.

THAT is how I feel about DC’s new renumbering plan.

Remember, Wonder Woman Vol. 3 only started … what, three years ago? Maybe four? And then there was that wonderful initiative to send DC postcards to restore Wonder Woman to its actual numbering with issue 600, if every issue had been sequential. Action Comics just hit 900, Detective is coming up on 900, and now DC is renumbering EVERYTHING.

Now, I’m not a purist. I think Superman giving up his American citizenship actually makes sense - Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight” suggested what could happen if such an incredibly powered person was identified as having an agenda remotely close to one shared by any single nation-state. A Muslim Batman? Why not?

I think comics can progress, can tell more mature stories in ways that adults can appreciate without alienating kids or making the content inappropriate for certain ages, and I think they can and should change.

But this change? This is, to borrow from Stephen Colbert, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenberg.

The idea of a company-wide reboot isn’t necessarily bad. When companies have been milking characters for 30+ years and much longer in some cases, every so often, some kind of update is necessary. Iron Man is a perfect example - the conflict has to be updated from time to time, just so we don’t have Hugh Hefner flying around in the red and gold armor and Tony Stark can remain in his 30s.

Even more to the point, if a company-wide reboot results in greater diversity and a more accurate depiction of the demographic realities in America and around the world, that could be a good thing by potentially opening books up to new readers because they can see themselves reflected in the pages.

However, this is really spectacularly bad timing, particularly after the debate about renumbering Wonder Woman to the original sequential numbering, and I can’t imagine that fans who were passionate enough to send in postcards will be happy about this, even if DC does try to fall back on the reasoning that it’s fair because it’s happening to every comic across the entire line. Fairness isn’t the issue with Wonder Woman - it’s that the comic was renumbered a handful of months ago based on reader feedback. DC’s CUSTOMERS wanted that for Wonder Woman. And now this.

And that’s completely ignoring the J. Michael Straczynski reboot which, to the best of my knowledge, is still going on and won’t be finished by September. Not that it’s unusual for a plot that JMS started to go unfinished (“The Twelve” as one example), but still.

A superficial change like new numbering won’t bring new readers in because they now have a good point to jump on. When has that worked in the past? It may bring in speculators who believe that these new #1s will appreciate dramatically in value (pro tip: they won’t - they’ll get dumped within 5 years or so and will likely sell for less than cover price, if recent reboots / restarts are any indication). And rebooting the stories as well? Reframing origins? What, Batman’s parents were killed after taking him to see “Monsters Inc.” or “Finding Nemo”?

I really hope that DC takes this moment and truly diversifies, in terms of content, characters and creators. I’d love nothing better than to be able to buy my little girl more DC stories and help her grow into a bigger comic fan than she is, but I can’t do it with the violence, with the way women are drawn and so forth, not in the current version of the DCU.

My little girl is only 9, after all, and she’s just starting to hit that certain age. I don’t want her thinking that women normally have broken spines or somehow manage to have anorexically thin waists while having ridiculously bulked up muscles in their torso and anatomically impossible breasts.

And that’s exactly where my appreciation for Ross Campbell’s art comes in - while the women he draws are stylized, he’s clearly seen a real woman in the flesh at some point, and draws women who actually look like real women. I won’t have to worry about my little girl getting body image issues from his comics - the only thing I need to watch for is making sure it’s age-appropriate.

So now I get to wait and watch to see what happens with the DCU, whether it truly becomes more diverse (including, for example, the long-awaited Batwoman comic with Kate Kane) or whether it goes right back to the same old stale loaf of Wonder bread that we’ve had.

On a somewhat related note, I wonder if this will also affect Tiny Titans …