Exit Past Through Doors on Right, Part II

Last Monday, I started a blog with the intention of talking about the best things of 2011[1], but ended up waxing nostalgic about one of Earth’s few female specimens which had gained my attention and respect.

After the assertive, confident woman I'd come to expect act so demure in a new setting, uncertainty was all I had. To this day, it's all I have. This isn’t a story where an omnipresent point of view reveals the full depths of each person’s character and the audience comes away with a clean resolution and an appreciation behind the A-Type personalities they encounter every day. It’s a real story, and like most real stories, we can only read the tea leaves and divine our own meaning from it.

People aren’t constants; a person isn’t a static value impervious to other factors. It’s easy to see people that way:

Response to all those things: For Reals

My view on DC isn't that they shouldn't make sexy comics or that by doing so they're just terrible people. I think such a thing would be problematic in a shared universe, but blah blah I hate share universes anyway. Most entertainment does some sexual pandering, but I can accept that for things I like because I know it sells, these people have to make money, and I generally think that the upsides balance that out to "good."

But when DC hears this controversy and responds very specifically in a way that doesn't address the narrative, but instead calls-out how that narrative is executed (albeit with some merit), it doesn't give the impression of a company that's aware of the actual controversy. If "kids could read this!" was the complaint, they would've nailed it.

If they'd said "Scott Lobdell is one of our best writers and we trust the direction he'll be taking 'Red Hood and The Outtakes' over the next few months," that would've been in the ballpark. I'd be happy with that.

Incidentally, they told everyone who might be interested in getting their 12 year old a "T" comic that "T" means tits and talk about sex, which brings up an entirely new issue that immediately makes them look bad.

DC's made an impressive number of bold and boneheaded decisions this year. In my opinion, they were getting more "bold" hits than "boneheaded" ones until this moment. I don't even mind "Red Hood and The Ouroboros" so much; it's not meant for me and the people it is meant for probably don't care about how responsibly women are portrayed in the media. It's that if DC failed to address this, it would have merely backed up a lot of the sexist image they've accumulated lately--an image that's frustrating since they're in the midst of an effort to show more, and more different, people how awesome one of my hobbies is. It's even more maddening because that effort has come at the risk of losing at least some of their fan base that kept them afloat.

Instead, they replied with this tone-deaf WTF and I'm left wonder why any intelligent person would start looking into comics--the communities, the companies, and the actual product--and see something they'd want to spend time and money on.

It reflects badly one of my hobbies, and, in some small way, on me as well. Don't get me wrong; I'm still lined up to buy some "JLI" and "Stormwatch." However, if my money's going into the same pocket that makes and markets "Red Hood and The Outfielders," then "Schism" and the rest of my "Sandman" collection are going to carry a bit more weight than Booster Gold & friends or Travis Tritt & Friends.

Starfire

The newest DC kerfluffle centers around probably sexist portrayal of Starfire in “Red Hood and the Outlaws” #1. Since I don’t and won’t ever read a comic book whose hook is that they kill off their rogues gallery (More like, “Red Hood and the Ouroboros,” am I right?), all my info is secondhand.

Naturally, Laura Hudson from Comics Alliance had some stuff to say and a quick lap around the internet brought up a counterpoint by Mary Staggs at Panels on Pages.

The New DC

You know, two to three weeks ago, I talked about how I was going to talk about the DC Reboot instead of Innistrad, but then I rambled about politics for a week like I was on a bender and then did a whole Prisoner thing that was totally awesome, but didn't much mention Grant Morrison or The Justice League very much?

It's all part of my fully intentional air of enigmatic, unknown mystery where I—

...so...shiny...

Linkstorm: What It Is

I generally like No High Scores, even if I can disagree with them, and after playing Mass Effect, I find Brandon Cackowski's remarks on morality systems in video games to be highly disagreeable. He boils every variation on the theme down to a paradigm of good and evil and then proceeds to pick apart how invariably neither option is "good" or "evil."