Change Is A Sound

It’s difficult to think of a place to start with something like this. Simple is good, my brain reasons, so let’s start simple.

I’m a dude.

Just a random dude living somewhere in the Midwest with three cats, a totally rad girlfriend, a significant amount of fabric for quilting, somewhere in the neighborhood of half a ton of comic books, a lot of video games, and even more old records and CDs.

No, you probably don’t know me and it’s unlikely you’d know or be even vaguely familiar with anything I’ve done. If you paid really close attention to punk rock for something like the last 25 years, you might have seen my name pop up in a zine or being thanked for something in the liner notes of a record, but really, at the end of the day, I’m just a dude, getting through the hours as best as I know how.

Along the way, I stumbled into the life of a child who was just a baby when I met her. Her mom and I split up years ago, but I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to remain in the kid’s life.

She’s 11 now. And I worry.

dcwomenkickingass:

The CBS show The Big Bang Theory drew some criticism this week when the promo for this week’s episode featured the women of the show entering a comic shop with the voice over saying “the girls go where no woman has gone before”.

The promo is suggesting that women don’t go into comic shops, or read comics reinforcing yet another set of stereotypes about geek culture.

The idea that women don’t go into comics shops or read comics is a fallacy, of course. You only need to flip through the three years of the Women Read Comics in Public if you need convincing (which if you do WHY ARE HERE?)

So when a show like TBBT helps to spread a frustrating stereotype that I spend like a lot of time fighting it really pisses me off.

But I decided to watch the episode because just as in comics sometimes the teasers don’t exactly adhere to what they are teasing. So how was the actual show in depicting the reception of the women? I took a look at some stereotypes about women and comics and comic shops and rated the episode.

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I read this blog entry from DC Women Kicking Ass before watching last week’s episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” and after the episode aired, I talked about it with my girlfriend, who also reads comics and is a huge Plasticman and Wonder Woman fan.

I’m writing about it here because I have a nagging worry that the column and show suggest I might have some form of gender bias at work when I recommend books to people.

I have spent a fair bit of time at my LCS, and as part of that, it’s not uncommon for me to end up talking to an adult looking for an age-appropriate book for a kid or talking with someone who is looking for something new to read.

And I have recommended “Fables” to at least a couple of women who were looking to dip their toes into the comic world.

Now, I never thought of “Fables” as a comic targeting women. I read it, a few male friends of mine read it, and we talk about it, which might sound hilarious - dudes sitting around, talking about fairy tales in comics (this is the sort of thing that happens when you have an English literature degree).

When I’ve recommended it in the past, it’s always after talking to someone who is curious about comics or looking for something new and trying to get a feel for what they like. It’s usually part of a list of a couple of other books, even if I do think the person might like “Fables” best.

And here are a few reasons why:

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1. Ease Of Entry

“Fables” doesn’t have decades of continuity behind it. It doesn’t require knowing about alternate universe depictions of a character or different types of that character’s fatal weakness, etc. You pick up the first trade and you’re off to the races.

2. Familiarity

Pretty much everyone knows at least some of the characters in “Fables.” Snow White. The Big Bad Wolf. Beauty And The Beast. Old King Cole. And so on. And dovetailing with the first point, knowing some of the characters makes it a bit easier to dive in. Readers spend less time wondering who this person or that person is, because there’s prior knowledge of a character.

3. Cost

The first trade collection of “Fables” usually hovers around $10. That’s a much easier risk to take than a $20 book for a new or returning comic reader.

4. Writing

The writing in “Fables” is pretty damn good. The characters are fleshed out and flawed. The stories are actually mature, rather than graphic sex and violence trying to seem like content for adults. And as the comic store owner in “Big Bang Theory” mentioned, the women aren’t just eye candy or plot devices.

5. Depiction Of Women

As briefly noted in the above paragraph, the women in “Fables” aren’t helpless. They are just as capable and smart and resourceful and tough as the guys. They fight in wars, engage in covert ops, plot and scheme, and raise hell at least as well as - if not better than - any of the guys. To me, seeing a positive reflection of yourself in a book is important to a reader, and it’s something that I’m tremendously conscious of when it comes to my little girl, and something I was made painfully aware of when DC restored Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk.

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It isn’t that I only recommend “Fables” to women; it’s usually one of a few books I mention that I think the potential reader might find appealing after finding out what they like. “The Unwritten” is quickly becoming a go-to book to recommend to new or returning readers, and I’m happy to suggest “Lucifer” to “Sandman” fans who aren’t aware that book exists.

But the point remains that if someone doesn’t express an interest in capes, quite a few books in a comic shop (I’d hazard a guess of 75-80%) instantly become poor recommendations. And of the books that remain, is there a better place to start? “Preacher” or “Transmetropolitan,” perhaps? “The Invisibles,” if that isn’t too close to being superhero fare? “DMZ”? If “Local” is in stock, I’ll put that in someone’s hands without a second thought, but for me, “Fables” is an outstanding choice for a variety of reasons, including positive gender representation and depiction, comparatively low cost, lack of continuity, familiarity with characters and so on, not because I think of it as a comic for girls.

Yet I’m still left with this troubling feeling that recommending “Fables” might be a reflection of some ghostly gender bias drifting around in the back of my brain.

And that bothers me, because when I’m in that situation, all I want to do is put a book in someone’s hands because I think they’ll fall in love with it, the same way I fell in love with “Local” and “Fables” and “Demo” and “Preacher” and “Transmet” and “Ex Machina” and “Planetary” and “The Unwritten” and … well, you get the idea.

There’s too much amazing news out of Image Comic Expo tonight for my groggy little sleepy head to fully process. I mean, we already knew about Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ “Saga.” We had already heard about “The Manhattan Projects” and “Secret.”

And tonight, we get the news that there’s another volume of “Phonogram” coming, that we have another chance to visit the world of phonomancery and maybe, JUST MAYBE, buy enough copies of it to make a fourth volume seem financially reasonable for the creators.

Then there’s “Mara,” a book coming from Brian Wood and Ming Doyle. “Chin Music,” from Steve Niles and Tony Harris. “Jupiter’s Children” from Mark Millar and Frank Quitely.

I mean, that’s four stunning announcements in one night.

…

Oh, and then there’s Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson working together on “HAPPY!” That might be a thing. Hell, I don’t care for a lot of Morrison’s books and I’ll probably pick that up for at least an issue or two, just to see what’s going on.

Although I have some grumbling about perceptions of disability in comics coming up, right now, I’m just enjoying being a fan and seeing really interesting ideas announced. Right now, I have hope and excitement and enthusiasm and the prospect of utterly amazing books coming very soon.

I gotta say it was a good day.

As I get older, I don’t find myself as outraged by corporations’ behavior as I once did. When I was young, all of the appalling behavior was new, or had been recently discovered (or recently discovered by me), and I couldn’t believe that the corporations engaged in such activity - and the people employed by them - weren’t broken up and thrown in jail in less time than it took a Walter Johnson fastball to cross home plate.

To this day, I still won’t buy gasoline from a Shell station. I’ve added BP to my list of companies that will never get another dime from me.

In the wake of the recent Gary Friedrich mess, I’m torn about comics.

Here’s the thing. I love comics. I think I love them more now than I did when I was a kid. I picked up a complete run of “Captain Carrot And The Amazing Zoo Crew” last year. I’m working on a complete run of “Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Next on my list is starting to pick up old comics with the Creature Commandos in them.

It took me a while to understand it, but I love Alan Moore’s “Promethea” so much that I want to pick up the Absolute editions. And that’s where the trouble starts.

We all know about the utter mess “Watchmen” has been for DC and Moore. While DC may have behaved legally and fulfilled its contractual obligations, DC doesn’t seem to place any particular value on its relationship with a legendary creator who inarguably helped to transform the entire medium.

But that has ripples - Moore stopped working with DC and founded his own imprint, America’s Best Comics, under Wildstorm, which was in turn an imprint published by Image until Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC.

So where does that leave “Promethea,” a creator-owned series from a creator-owned imprint published by another creator-owned imprint which was subsequently sold to DC? Does Alan Moore receive payments for it? If he does, does he accept them? Does the revenue that “Absolute Promethea” generates (however much it may actually be) go to Moore and J.H. Williams III, or does it line DC’s wallet like newspaper in a birdcage?

I really could care less about “Before Watchmen.” Some of the creative teams look interesting, but overall, I’m simply not interested in it. I understand why DC is publishing those comics; they’re pretty much a license to print money and that’s what a corporation is in business to do - make money. In the same way that we aren’t surprised when wild animals kept in domestic situations maul people, we should not be surprised when corporations behave in ways that are exactly consistent with their primary goal, which is to make as much money as possible as fast as it can with the greatest profit possible. DC is behaving in keeping with a corporation’s nature - fairness is not part of that equation.

This is part of how we know that corporations are not, in fact, people. When people behave as corporations do, it’s not uncommon for them to get punched in the face, not be invited to social gatherings and so forth. Generally, people want to be treated fairly and with respect; people who do not behave in such ways are typically ostracized and find themselves associating with people who are, as the O’Jays put it, backstabbers.

And that’s just a recent, simple example.

The matter of Gary Friedrich is more troubling.

Again, we’re beginning with the idea that a corporation is more akin to an animal than a person; its nature does not lie in fairness, it lies in revenues and profits. Just as animals kill other animals for food, corporations eat ideas to sustain themselves. They depend entirely on ideas, on the work done by people working for the organization, and whose work belongs to that organization. Some companies take the matter farther - there are examples of corporations which claim ownership of all creative ideas generated during an individual’s employment, arguing the creative atmosphere is so pervasive that it effectively infects an individual like a virus, which means that the process so indoctrinates people that anything they create while exposed to that environment is a direct result of that process and therefore owned by the employer. For more commentary on that idea, there’s interesting discussion at OnStartups.com covering a number of these topics.

And that’s the best way to consider how Marvel is approaching Gary Friedrich in barring him from claiming that he created a character who, by most accounts, he at the very least had a hand in creating and earning any revenue from convention appearances which depend on that claim. If that were the extent of it, it would be bad but perhaps somewhat manageable.

But that isn’t the end.

Marvel wants Friedrich, a 68-year-old man who turns 69 in a few months, someone with stated medical issues, to pay them $17,000.

Again, considering corporations as we consider animals, this is understandable in the context of a corporation’s motivating factors - revenue and profit. Attempting to ruin an elderly man in poor health for a paltry sum of money (and $17,000 is a paltry sum for a corporation of Marvel’s size, particularly since Disney bought Marvel) is, sadly, entirely in keeping with a corporation’s drivers. This is how corporations act. This is what they do. Profit and revenue neither know nor understand mercy or compassion. They simply don’t translate to any language a corporation speaks.

And this? This is why corporations are not people. People may be jerks, but most of us operate with something resembling an understanding of mercy and compassion, of fairness and justice. If we were millionaires, most of us wouldn’t pursue a $17,000 judgment against someone who is clearly in no position to pay, especially if the pursuit of that judgment would leave them homeless.

But Marvel is a corporation, not a person, and that judgment has been entered. Instead of Marvel publicly stating that it will not pursue the matter further and that it will not attempt to collect on that judgment, Marvel has remained silent on the matter.

And just to add salt to the wounds, a new Ghost Rider movie comes out on Friday. Not that Gary Friedrich can afford to go see it.

And this is where I’m torn. Like many other comics readers who pay attention to the industry, I think the way corporations treat creators is unconscionable. It’s appalling. It’s unjust and unfair. It may be legal, but if corporations are people, then they also meet key components of the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy.

But I also like the stories. I like the characters. I like seeing how talented and skilled writers and artists play with the toys in the sandbox.

And therein lies the conflict.

For a long time, I’ve known that convictions are not convenient. Having an actual conviction, a belief, means accepting inconvenience to adhere to it and remain true to one’s core values and ethics. A conviction isn’t something that people only pay attention to when it doesn’t matter - such a paltry little idea is like a drowned worm, a wretched and soggy little thing swept away by a trivial amount of rain.

A conviction, on the other hand, would withstand a Category 5 hurricane or an F5 tornado or an earthquake which couldn’t be measured on the Richter scale. Convictions abide, regardless of the forces deployed against them.

I believe that the way Gary Friedrich is being treated is wrong. I believe the way Alan Moore was treated is wrong.

And while a significant majority of my pull list consists of indie comics and creator-owned titles (somewhere around 65-70%), I’m not quite at the point where that belief has become a conviction so strong that I’m willing to sacrifice the stories I love. I’m struggling with it.

I’m a work in progress. We all are.

Except for corporations. In the absence of evolution, corporations will remain exactly what they are - greedy, rapacious little things, gluttonous and ever-hungry, feeding on ideas that they’re too mentally impoverished to create and the creators who gave them those ideas. And Gary Friedrich is just their latest snack.

Ah, rainy Saturday morning, making my bones and connective tissue ache like a wistful glance in “The Notebook” …

So. Anything interesting happen recently? I wasn’t paying attention.

Oh, right. “Before Watchmen.” I thought I missed something.

So after boiling the entire kerfuffle down to core elements, my thoughts on it are pretty simple.

• I don’t particularly care to read more stories in the Watchmen universe, regardless of who is involved.
• That apathy is not derived from any particular allegiance or ideology; it’s a simple lack of interest.
• While the characters in Watchmen may have been derived from Charlton characters, they are clearly not those characters. Even if the Quantum Superman in Final Crisis looked a LOT like Dr. Manhattan.
• As the Gaiman / McFarlane legal brouhaha has shown us, derivative characters can be considered original creations.
• Alan Moore’s contract for “Watchmen” ensured the characters would be his after the work was out of print; the subsequent problems were the result of a phenomenal and entirely unprecedented success. Alan Moore created something so good that people kept buying it and DC kept printing collections, something that hadn’t happened before. Since the book never went out of print, Moore never had the rights revert to him.
• DC did nothing illegal, even if it seems remarkably unfair and incredibly shortsighted to piss off someone who gave DC what amounted to a license to print money.
• Claiming Alan Moore did the same thing that DC is doing with “Lost Girls” and “League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen” misses at least two key points.

1. Moore was using works in the public domain, which exists at least in part to allow and, in fact, encourage the sort of transformative (i.e. inspired by but different than the source material) stories he was telling. Bill Willingham is doing much the same thing with “Fables.”
2. The authors who created the characters Moore used owned the rights to their works and were compensated for it. Copyright exists to ensure that creators can profit from their ideas for a reasonable amount of time, then allow those ideas to be used by the public. Moore never received the rights to his creation.

A lot of excellent commentary about the issue has hit the Web lately. While this is by no means a comprehensive round-up, here are the pieces I found most compelling:

Eric Stephenson on contractual issues and creator rights

David Brothers on people cheering for “Before Watchmen” and mocking Alan Moore

CBR’s Chris Mautner on creators’ rights

And since both pieces appear to still be quite relevant …

Tom Spurgeon on creator’s rights

Adi Tantimedh interviews Alan Moore

Complaining about comics crossovers, tie-ins and events on the Internet is a bit like muttering about the price of gas or politicians - everyone does it, things get worse and the cycle repeats.

“But why?” cry the comics fans doing the complaining. “We tell DC and Marvel that we don’t like these things, that we don’t even want them! Why do they keep doing it?”

Why? Why?

This tweet at Midtown Comics nicely summarizes it.

DC and Marvel wouldn’t do these things if they didn’t sell. It seems deceptively simple, but it’s true - business either stop doing things that don’t make money or they don’t stay in business, because continuing to do things that lose money will eventually result in a business not having any, which it turn means it can’t really do much of anything except turn out the lights and lock the door.

So. Don’t like crossovers? Don’t buy them. Don’t like tie-ins? Don’t buy them. Don’t like the idea of “Before Watchmen”? Think it insults Alan Moore? Then don’t buy it.

The solution to all this nonsense is simple and saves you money. Just. Don’t. Buy. It.

In reading a post on Comics Bulletin today, I stumbled across something that reminded me of a subject percolating pretty far back in the recesses of my dusty cerebral cortex. Yeah, it’s not the sort of place to let a pot of coffee sit - it could start a fire and what not, and it’s dangerous, but perhaps something lighting a fire in my brain isn’t a terrible thing.

At any rate, Kyrax2, the Batgirl of San Diego, wrote a piece about sexuality, disability and the public’s perception of both.

It seems like I’ve talked more lately about disabilities and being disabled than I have in a very long time; the subject keeps popping up and apparently this morning is no different.

And I need to preface these comments by noting that this is my own musing and my own thoughts and that I am in no way criticizing Kyrax2 for her thoughtful column.

My problem is with the PWD acronym.

PWD is an acronym for People With Disabilities. It’s a shorthand for an idea which emphasizes humanity first and disability second, instead of using a term like disabled people, which emphasizes the condition and not the person.

There’s a reason for this, and the Whorfian hypothesis (which I spent a lot of time studying back when I was aiming for a minor in linguistics) sums it up nicely. Briefly summarized, the language people use shapes how they see the world. Linguists have supported and tried to discredit this idea, but even now, it appears that some form of the Whorfian hypothesis is still true to some degree.

Viewed through the Whorfian hypothesis, the term disabled people emphasizes the disability since it’s the first concept in the phrase. People with disabilities emphasizes humanity since that is the first concept in the phrase.

There’s a brief history of the Whorfian hypothesis and the idea of people-first language, but there’s a virtually endless amount of reading you can do on the subject.

I spent a long time doing communications of one sort of another. I did journalism. I did advertising. I did marketing. I did corporate communications and all sorts of things in between and beyond. I started writing professionally - meaning I was getting paid for it - before I started high school.

My frustration with the PWD acronym and the idea it represents is that it’s terribly awkward wording. I am not a person with a disability. That’s a lot of words and awkward phrasing to describe a very simple concept - I’m disabled. I use a cane. I don’t get around well.

I may be disabled, but goddammit, I will not be pandered to by some linguistically prescriptive asshats who think that calling me a person with a disability somehow humanizes me in some way, because that implies that I am somehow NOT HUMAN RIGHT NOW.

William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White gave us “The Elements Of Style,” a fantastic book which leads to exceptionally clear communication from people who have read and apply it (remember: theory minus practice or application equals bullshit). Although I can’t remember the exact wording at the moment, one of the most useful rules in Strunk and White’s guide was either “Omit needless words” or “Omit unnecessary words.” I forget which was in the middle, and I can’t find my copy at the moment, but the concept is the same. Use as few words as possible to convey the idea.

Paul Fussell later wrote a book called “Bad,” a brilliant collection of brief essays which assaulted culture for dozens of bad ideas. Fussell’s definition of bad language did not include words like fuck or shit, because - as he put it - they didn’t try to deceive people by using big words and bad phrasing to make something seem more significant than it is.

Strunk and White would likely object to the PWD idea because it’s wordy and awkward. Fussell would likely object to it because - even as the idea behind it is to emphasize a person’s humanity - it effectively conceals a truth.

If you read the criticism section of Wikipedia’s People-First Language entry, you’ll see that others have the same or similar concerns. That section quotes the U.S. National Federation Of The Blind as saying “it is overly defensive, implies shame instead of true equality, and portrays the blind as touchy and belligerent” in rejecting people-first language.

And yet I know that the people who use such terms mean well; they’re obviously trying to be respectful. It’s just that such respect all too often feels worse than rudeness. It feels like, as John Steinbeck once wrote (in “Travels With Charley,” I think), “everyone was protecting me and it was horrible.”

That level of sensitivity - to me - is more offensive than adults staring or asking questions or making assumptions about me or anything else (kids always get a pass; they’re kids and if a kid asking me about my cane helps them be less afraid or worried or more understanding of differences, I’ll happily spend 10 or 15 minutes talking with them as long as their parents don’t mind). It doesn’t matter that people mean well; good intentions don’t always result in good outcomes.

What matters here is that I’m a self-identified old-ass cripple. I call myself that. I own it. I use that language and say such things to strip these words of any power they may have. I’m not reclaiming them. I’m eviscerating them. I’m cutting their throats and letting them bleed out onto the slaughterhouse floor.

My friends - and they know who they are - can say any damn thing they want about my conditions. They’ve earned that right by being my friend, and a lot of them have driven me to doctors, hospitals, other cities for examinations and so on. If they want to call me a cranky old cripple, they’ve earned that right and they’d be telling the truth. I have a lot of gray hair and I’ve earned every last one of them.

Anyone else calling me that will find out exactly how cranky I am. To people who aren’t my friends, I’m a disabled person. And calling me a person with a disability and couching my conditions in such half-assed awkward and deceptive language will REALLY piss me off.

I’m trying to organize my books right now since I was getting tired of collected editions simply being stacked on the industrial strength shelves that now seem required to support their mass, and realized something …

Under the letter A, my collection proceeds from Kurt Busiek’s extraordinary “Astro City,” directly through Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener’s “Atomic Robo” to Warren Ellis’ run on “The Authority.” There are no interruptions, there’s nothing between them that I’m leaving out. That’s what occupies that section of the shelf in sequence.

And upon thinking about it for all of half a second or so, I realized how perfectly it sums up my love of comics; that what those books contain and represent and embody is nearly everything I adore and admire about the form.

Sure, that may sound like a sweeping generalization, but it really isn’t. Allow me the luxury of explaining.

When I started reading comics again, I found my way back in through “Preacher” and “The Invisibles” and “Transmetropolitan” - incredible works which played with the form and expanded its possibilities. I wasn’t interested in superhero comics per se; I wanted to read graphic novels (yeah, I admit that I was an ass about it) and could care less about capes because I wanted something that spoke to me, that talked directly to me as a reader and said “I’m going to change how you see something.”

And then I read Kurt Busiek’s “Astro City,” which not only told me it was going to change how I saw something, it was going to change how I felt about traditional superhero comics. Almost like a magic trick, the book told me what it was going to do. It even told me how it was going to do it. I scoffed a bit, and the book performed the trick right in front of me and I couldn’t believe what I had just seen.

In the years since, I’ve occasionally described “Astro City” to people as the stuff that goes on in between the panels of other comics; that’s not entirely fair, but when I run into someone who had the same sort of objection to capes that I did, it generally convinces them to pick up a copy of “Astro City” and give it a shot. And if I see them again, they often thank me for pushing them to try it because they also fell in love with it (sometimes, they politely disagree with my assessment; so far, no one has kicked me or thrown a punch).

And that, almost in a nutshell, is the key - “Astro City” is a superhero book that people who don’t like superhero books can fall in love with. Yes, some of it is the stuff that would occur off-panel in other books, but it’s basically concentrated joy and love of the medium; it’s telling stories that we may have been familiar with or thought about, but it presents those stories from a different perspective. It tells them in a different way and by taking a comic archetype and assigning it a new name, “Astro City” allows us to see those stories in new ways. By using Samaritan, Busiek strips away any baggage we might have associated with other heroes, allowing the reader to come to the story with fresh eyes and a clean slate. As a direct result, when we read about Samaritan’s love of flight, we can then see Superman or Captain Marvel with equally fresh eyes and it reveals new dimensions for those (or equivalent) characters.

I’m not so pretentious or academic to argue that “Astro City” is a meta-comic or that it’s somehow a simulacra, but in some ways, it performs the function of being a comic about comics, as well as feeling like an iteration of an iteration, which itself was an iteration. In placing archetypes in a new context, “Astro City” can tell stories that feel familiar, yet have no parallel, and can simultaneously be a story about stories, a genre within a genre if you will.

Proceeding across the shelf to “Atomic Robo,” I realized the other day that “Robo” can treat genre and story in similar ways as Ellis’ landmark “Planetary”; “Robo,” in using a protagonist who has been alive for nearly a century, can explore the history of the 20th century in similar ways as Elijah Snow, leader of the Planetary Organization. And like “Planetary,” “Atomic Robo” will occasionally play with story forms and conventions, as it did in Volume 5 when it toyed with the pulps.

However, “Planetary” typically mined fiction for its smelter; “Atomic Robo” usually mines history. It’s weird and often imagined history to be sure, but it’s still grounded in the reality of World War II and the Cold War, in the science of exploration and discovery, and the practical and ethical conflict many scientists have had with the potential for their work to benefit or destroy humanity.

In “Planetary,” Elijah Snow was grumpy and with good reason; those with fantastic abilities fed on the world like leeches. In “Atomic Robo,” Robo seems more weary with the conflict between trying to raise the world up by its bootstraps and trying to prevent people from using science as a means to control or tyrannize others. While “Atomic Robo” is often comical (and “Planetary” had its moments as well, usually from Elijah yelling at The Drummer), that conflict still exists as a near-constant undercurrent. And like Elijah, Robo often seems to find himself called on to save people … even by the people who want to use his work for less noble purposes.

And from there, we move to “The Authority,” a team born from the ashes of a United Nations-sponsored security effort to protect the world from the weird. And left with the bitter aftertaste of having their hands tied, of being prevented from prevention, of enduring people intervening in their interventions, of having to watch as people murdered cities and ideas as politicians and diplomats sat on their hands, and also given the perspective of the previous century through Jenny Sparks, “The Authority” represented a seismic shift in comics - the team didn’t defend any particular ideology or country. Instead, it defended people, regardless of where they were. The team deposed tyrants but didn’t bring them to trial - instead, as often as not, they simply killed them, reasoning that their crimes were sufficiently apparent and that justice - if enacted through courts - would never be done due to technicalities and manipulations.

And part of the genius in that series was, as Kurt Busiek did, playing with archetypes. What if Batman met The Joker and, instead of refusing to kill that serial killer and mass murderer (because The Joker is both), simply flew an immense spaceship (a ship larger than most cities) through his headquarters, turning him into a nearly invisible splatter on the hull? What if Batman and Superman were not only gay, but in a relationship with each other? Anyone familiar with the two characters and their bickering over the years could suddenly see all of that history as sexual tension and a precursor to both of the characters realizing that they were gay and in love with each other.

By now, a few themes should have emerged - a long perspective, whether due to characters in the work having extended lifespans or examining the genre from a new lens. Playing with the form and seeing what new things it can do. Exploring stories told before - or perhaps the idea of stories told before - and asking how they might end if the circumstances were different.

And perhaps more importantly, these books are fun. They aren’t academic exercises - they’re filled with big science and crazy action and poignant moments and love and respect for the form and the archetypes and the ideas and everything that came before. They treat the genre as if it were a sandbox filled with toys that were free for anyone to use, and so Tonka trucks became spaceships, and shovels turned into robots and pails transformed into elaborate headquarters and so on.

And yet they also represent a lot of the changes that occurred in comics that made people regard them more seriously. They can deal with mundane occurrences - going on a date or buying groceries, for example, and how such simple things might be complicated for a superhero.

But they also provide a practical examination of how enhanciles and meta-humans and those with a long view of history would come to regard governmental inaction in the face of atrocity and genocide, how people with extraordinary abilities might respond to, say, a tribe trying to murder another by hacking them to pieces with machetes.

They deal with noble intentions being twisted to serve darker purposes, and the bitterness that can result. They deal with the recognition that the world is a better place without some people in it, and that acting like trained ponies and leaping through hoops simply allows evil to harm more people while those who could stop it are stuck in a three-ring circus. They deal with the world as it is, while also looking toward a world that could be.

They are fundamentally hopeful books - regardless of how difficult the world described in their pages may be, they all believe in a better tomorrow, that a finer world is not only possible, but that they can be instrumental in building it and hasten its arrival.

And those aren’t bad ideas to fill a few inches of shelf space with.

According to DCWKA, DC is canceling Tiny Titans.

To elaborate, DC is canceling one of the only truly all-ages comics in the business and one that used its intellectual property broadly, introducing readers of all ages to characters taken from the entire DC universe, often represented in canonical forms but also making sure to include more recent characters like Cassandra Cain.

Without checking the pull list that I share with my little girl, I’m pretty sure it’s the only DC comic that she reads right now.

Assuming for the purposes of this post that DCWKA is correct and it is, in fact, DC canceling the book and not Art Baltazar deciding not to continue, that means that the last non-licensed property in the Johnny DC line is gone. The remaining comics are all based on cartoons which do not feature DC heroes.

Tiny Titans is one of the few comics which, as a parent, I knew I could rely on every month to offer fun, entertaining content which was also age-appropriate and awesome. Seriously - comics fans of any age who don’t like Tiny Titans likely hate fun and life, probably in that order.

More importantly for DC, it was a gateway book - a book that parents could buy their kids and hand to them without reading it or being concerned about whether Starfire is dressed like an especially immodest stripper or if it contains graphic violence (depicted in, for example, Green Lantern books). It introduced kids to DC characters across a broad spectrum of titles, helping them learn who the characters are so that when they began buying titles in the DCU proper, they knew who Cyborg and Starfire and Cassandra Cain are, as well as Robin and Batgirl and other, more widely-known characters.

While Tiny Titans was an awesome comic on its own, the larger business idea behind it was getting kids accustomed to the DCU and how it works and who’s who. It was, from a business perspective, a brand-building tool. With something like that, it doesn’t matter if it makes money as long as it doesn’t hemorrhage cash. It is, in the parlance of business, a loss leader - it is a product or sale or price strategy which exists to draw people in and get them to buy other stuff, or to build the business.

Back in college, one of the jobs I held was working at Office Depot making copies. Office Depot did cheap copies - 100 double-sided copies on 8 1/2 x 11 paper ran $3.50 plus tax at the time. We did church programs, flyers, whatever. If someone needed a copy or two, there were the self-serve machines. Anything bigger, we ran on the monster Xerox POS 9000s (note: not an actual Xerox model) that were forever breaking down and making us jerry-rig solutions that would hold until we could get the non-weekend service call rate on Monday morning.

On a slow day, we could turn around 100 copies for someone in about 5-10 minutes, assuming nothing went wrong. We encouraged them to browse for a bit while we ran their job, and let them know when it was done over the intercom. Generally, when they returned, they had a basket. Pens, Post-It notes, a notebook, etc. Simple things, small things, but things they remembered they needed to buy while their copies were being run - or that they picked up as an impulse purchase.

On busier days, that turnaround time could increase to 20 minutes or so - not long enough to go elsewhere, but too long to stand at the counter.

None of this was some calculated plot on our part as people making copies - that’s just how long it took to get a job done and throw the next one in. I think everyone who worked there eventually timed the machines to figure out how long each one took to make a copy, and most of us timed how long it took for single and double-sided copies at every paper size we offered so we could tell people how long it would take with a fair degree of accuracy, assuming nothing broke down and all we had to do was add paper.

But the fact of the matter was that making copies took time and it got people into the store for something that wouldn’t take too long, but would take enough time that picking it up later wasn’t sensible.

And they bought stuff.

Presto. Office Depot lost money on the copies, but was able to sell higher-margin items.

And that’s the point of a loss leader.

Even the regulars would buy stuff - people who came in every Saturday night to do their church programs would buy things. People who came in to get fliers done needed rubber bands or time cards or whatever.

And that is the same way you think of a comic like Tiny Titans from a business perspective. You don’t consider it as a revenue stream - any revenue it generates, any costs it offsets are incidental. You chalk it up as a business development expense because you aren’t selling a comic like Tiny Titans, you’re creating a customer. Anything else is gravy. It’s a good comic? That’s awesome. It pays for itself? Fantastic.

But at the end of the day, the point isn’t the comic, it’s the customer that the comic is developing.

In a sensible business analysis, everything else - costs included - comes second to that, particularly when it’s creating a customer at such a young age and the potential lifetime revenue from that customer is so significant.

And canceling a title like that? Cuts off every single one of the revenue streams it was creating.

Here’s what my little girl will take away from DC’s decision: BOOM! publishes kids’ comics and obviously wants her as a customer. Image, of all publishers, is making kids’ comics and obviously wants her as a customer. Indie publishers creating titles like “Scratch 9” and “Princeless” obviously want her as a customer.

But DC? DC is canceling one of her favorite books. Why should she care about the larger DCU? It’s too “mature” (read: violent and sexualized to pander to some men) for her to read right now.

I don’t know whether she’ll still read comics in five years, much less ten, but I do know that it’s unlikely that she’ll be reading a DC book at any point in the next few years because the content simply isn’t appropriate.

But I also know that she’ll be conditioned by the market, and that in those few years when she can’t read DC titles due to their “adult” nature, a number of other comics publishers will clearly say that they want her to read their books, and that they want her business and value her as a customer as she is.

They won’t ask her to overlook costumes or characterization or stereotyping. They’ll tell her good stories that she enjoys and that don’t rely on objectifying a gender. She’ll get used to publishers telling her that she is important to them because they will tell her stories that don’t depend on sex or violence to make a point.

And by the time she’s old enough to read a DC comic again? I don’t know if she’ll care about the stories that DC is telling, particularly if those stories are the ones we’re getting right now.

fullofwhoa:

(This is to accompany this. Since apparently text-cuts don’t work in photo posts! Uhg, tumblr, why?!)

For a larger version of this image, go here.

About halfway through drawing this, I realized what I had created was effectively a Bingo Card, but perhaps a slightly more emotive one. So I’ll explain a bit of what’s behind it.

I first got into comics through feminist criticism of comics. I’m a feminist. And I love comics. The two things for me are inseparable, and I make no apologies for it. Both are a part of who I am. I’m also a fan of superheroes and superhero comics.

When it comes to discussions about women in comics, sexism in superhero comics, and so forth, I’m always reading, sometimes linking, and commenting a bit here and there. If you pay attention for a while as a female (and possibly feminist) comics reader, and/or superhero fan, you start to hear the same things over and over again. It becomes predictable and repetitive pretty quickly.

Below I’ve expanded on what I’m talking about. It’s lengthy, so it’s behind a text cut.

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