Bond as Moneypenny

Velvet, a spy thriller comic from Ed Brubaker. [Link]

In the opening issue of the comic book Velvet, the secretary to the director of an elite British spy agency decides to go digging into the mysterious death of a secret agent. This, she learns, is a mistake, and soon enough she finds herself standing over a dead body, and framed for murder. “This is as bad as it gets, secretary,” says one of the armed men who bursts in to arrest her. “No,” she answers, “it isn’t.” Seconds later, every secret agent in the room is writhing on the floor, and she’s leaping out the window in a stealth suit.

Turns out this isn’t a story about Moneypenny, the secretary waiting for James Bond behind a desk at MI6. It’s a story that asks, what if a 40-something secretary was secretly James Bond all along?

And this on casting:

“I loved the idea of flipping the typical male-oriented spy story, and doing one about a woman who was also a mature, middle-aged woman,” says Brubaker. He saw the character’s age as fundamental to the story; it helped cement her as mature, seasoned rather than a vulnerable young woman-in-danger, and it allowed her to have a deeper, richer history as a spy. “In the espionage field, it totally makes sense that someone could have a secret history; they could have a job for 20 years that turns out to be a front, basically,” says Brubaker. “But it has to be someone who’s lived a real life.”

When he started pitching the concept as a TV pilot, however, Velvet’s age turned out to be more controversial than expected. “The notes that we got from everybody were that she needed to be 25, and an agent-in-training learning from the cool male secret agent. I was just like ‘OK, this is… just appalling to me,’” Rather than a character that had lived a real life, they wanted a woman 20 years younger, stripped of Velvet’s expertise and maturity. “Imagine Taken, if Liam Neeson’s character were 30,” he adds. “It’s just not the same movie.”

Brubaker recalls one of his favorite actors, Diane Lane, talking about how all the good roles seemed to evaporate after she turned 40, leaving nothing but moms or jilted wives left for younger women. “How is it possible that nobody wants to write an amazing part for a woman that’s not basically a kid? Most of the [male] actors we see in the world are in their 40s, or late 30s,” he says. “You don’t see the person who chose to be James Bond but also happens to be a woman.”

A great piece on David Goyer and his disdain for comics

Good stuff. [Link]

Goyer’s remarks were recorded in front of a live audience and it seems clear that the writer made them to be playful, but nevertheless there’s a certain level of contempt in his language, something that’s been present in most of his film work but hasn’t really gotten unbearable until recently, and it just keeps coming as the conversation goes on.

To wit, when Goyer starts talking about the Martian Manhunter, he defies anyone who’s heard of the character to have also “been laid”.

“Well, he hasn’t been rebooted but he’s a mainstay in the Justice League. He can’t be f**king called the Martian Manhunter because that’s goofy. He can be called Manhunter… The whole deal with Martian Manhunter is he’s an alien living amongst us… So he comes down to Earth and decides, unlike Superman who already exists in the world now, that he’s just going to be a homicide detective… So instead of using super-powers and mind-reading and like, oh, I could figure out if the President’s lying or whatever, he just decides to disguise himself as a human homicide detective. Dare to dream!”

[...]

“I would set it up like The Day After Tomorrow. We discover one of those Earth-like planets… So maybe like… we get the DNA code from that planet and then grow him in a petri dish here… He’s like in Area 51 or something and we’re just basically… doing biopsies on him. Then he gets out and he’s really angry and he f**ks She-Hulk.”

Look. I’m not here to defend the Martian Manhunter. I just recorded a video for ComicsAlliance three days ago where I talked about the Martian Manhunter being a B-Lister who never really caught on as a solo hero, and I can understand if you’ve got some issues with the character.

But at the same time, there are a couple of things that really get me here, and the first one is Goyer’s snorting dismissing of how the Martian Manhunter can’t be the “Martian Manhunter” because that’s a silly name. This guy wrote three movies about a dude named “Batman.” If there is a planet where the words “Martian Manhunter” are inherently less silly than the word “Batman,” then it is not the one we are living on.

(Incidentally, DC already has a character named Manhunter who, in her latest incarnation, is a derivative of a pre-existing male superhero who is an attorney in her civilian identity. Presumably, Goyer thinks she was created so Deathstroke the Terminator would have someone to make out with.)

It’s also really telling that Goyer thinks Martian Manhunter is shooting low by becoming a homicide detective in his civilian identity — you know, literally fighting crime all the time on both large and small scales. This is the man who wrote a superhero movie where Superman had to be prompted into becoming a superhero at all by two dead fathers, and who could probably go listen to the President’s heartbeat just to be sure everything’s going all right in the time that it takes him to pretend to ride a bike to his job at a newspaper. Dare to dream!

Finally, there’s his line about all these virgins who have hunched over their basement long boxes for so many years that they’ve actually heard of the Martian Manhunter, the character who was on Justice League and Brave and the Bold and Smallville, DC’s most prominent television shows over the past decade. The ones with millions of viewers?

If I’m not in the business of defending the Martian Manhunter as a character, I’m certainly not in the business of defending comic book fans — everyone involved in comics has some sweeping generalizations about their fellow readers to gripe about, I assure you — so I’ll just say this. Goyer’s got a point. Martian Manhunter is a relatively obscure character. Despite being featured in almost every incarnation of the Justice League, despite multiple attempts to brand him as a solo hero, he’s never caught on. He’s always a supporting character in someone else’s book, taking a back seat to more iconic characters, and I have my doubts that there’s a way to do a movie that could really make him stand out in his own right.

You know, sort of like Blade.

But it’s not Martian Manhunter’s status as the D-lister of the Justice League that’s really the point here. The point, made abundantly clear by Goyer in his remarks, is that he doesn’t really understand why anyone would come to Earth from a dead planet and decide to devote their life to helping others, which is a pretty terrible quality for a person writing multiple films about Superman to have. A super-powered alien who helps people, you see, is silly. It should be a revenge-fueled rampage culminating in a sex joke at the expense of a female character, because that’s smart and mature. This is the thought process that leads to a movie where Superman’s response to a genocidal villain claiming the hero can only win by breaking his code against killing is to do just that, and then smile cheerfully while a woman stands in the background talking about how sexy he is.

Spoiler warning in case you haven’t seen it: That’s exactly how Man of Steel ends.

I don’t think that it’s necessary to be a die hard fan of something to write well about it, and I’m even of the mind that if you’re not a fan, you can see points that someone who is might miss. Regardless of the spirit in which his remarks may have been made, Goyer’s language goes beyond just not liking a couple of characters. There’s a palpable disdain there, one that’s not present in other live-action expressions of DC heroes on television and in animation, and one that’s mitigated by Nolan’s dominant influence on the later Dark Knight films, but one that comes through in every frame of Man of Steel. Goyer is embarrassed by the very idea of superheroes. They’re for “little kids who get the sh*t kicked out of them every day”. Goyer’s heroes are uncomfortable with the idea of altruism. Everyone’s out for revenge, everyone has to be pushed and prodded and dragged to do the right thing — that is, if they ever get around to doing it at all.

That’s not what superheroes — particularly DC’s heroes — are about, and yet, here’s the guy in charge of bringing them to the widest possible audience, in films soaked with shame and contempt, where a character like Superman can’t exist in a world with anything brighter than a medium grey. Goyer’s pushing against what the characters are about instead of embracing them for what they are, because he’s too afraid of making something that might be considered silly.

In other words, to use his own famous Blade catchphrase, David Goyer’s always trying to ice skate uphill.

Good isn't boring

Why we don't need to darken heroic characters to make them interesting. [Link]

“Captain America is only interesting if he’s a prick,” declared a recent article on Vulture.com, inspiring so many angry Marvel fan rebuttals that it probably qualified as outright click bait.

Of course, the idea of Captain America as “boring” has already been debunked by the $580 million his new movie just made at the box office. What we’re really talking about here isn’t Captain America as a character, but the way we react to blockbuster movie protagonists who aren’t morally ambiguous antiheroes.

In the 21st century, this kind of pure-hearted, optimistic hero is too often seen as childish and shallow, hence why so many people perceive Cap to be a stodgy do-gooder. The assumption is that in order to modernize an old-fashioned hero into a “serious” character, he needs to get darker. In other words, the infamous gritty reboot.

No matter how much time the Captain America films spend on real-world topics like PTSD and surveillance culture, in many people’s eyes they will never be truly respectable until the lead character starts acting like an asshole.

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is the ultimate example of the gritty superhero reboot. By hiring a respected director of psychological thrillers, Warner Brothers made it very clear that they were steering clear of the cartoonishness that drove the Batman franchise into the ground with the widely derided Batman & Robin. But despite Nolan’s lack of affection for the cheesier aspects of the superhero genre, the Dark Knight trilogy is really no less comic book-ish than its more brightly colored counterparts.

Nolan’s Batmobile might be a military all-terrain vehicle instead of a sports car with fins, but that doesn’t make the Joker or the Scarecrow any more plausible as real-world villains. All three Dark Knightmovies still require the same suspension of disbelief as any other movie about a guy who fights crime in an ankle-length cape and bat mask. However, with their storylines focusing on police corruption and urban terrorism, they were seen as being far more “serious” than other superhero movies, and therefore, they must be better. Critics agreed that finally, here were some superhero movies that non-geeky, non-frivolous adults could enjoy.

This false connection between gritty realism and literary quality is a common theme in the way we interpret popular fiction, but it’s particularly noticeable in the superhero genre, where “realism” is always going to be a matter of opinion.

And

At the most basic level, a “dark” or “gritty” narrative is about putting the hero in a place where they have to make a difficult choice. In the recent Batman and Superman movies, that  “hard choice” has generally been to do something bad, which is then interpreted as being more mature and realistic because real life is about compromise. Meanwhile in Marvel Studios movies, the opposite is almost always the case.

Tony Stark realises the impact of being a weapons manufacturer, and faces up to the consequences. Thor only regains his powers after performing an act of pure self-sacrifice. Captain America spurs on a Snowden-esque leak that trusts the public to pass judgement on corruption within his own intelligence agency—the polar opposite of Bruce Wayne’s attitude toward civilians in The Dark Knight Rises, in which the citizens of Gotham are infantilized to the point of being completely helpless until Batman shows up to save the day. In fact, the surveillance system Bruce Wayne uses to search for criminals in Gotham City is not so very different from the one Captain America just destroyed in The Winter Soldier.

This Marvel/DC division is even more evident when you compare the final battle scenes in Avengers and Man of Steel. Both involve an alien attack on a U.S. city, but Superman and the Avengers react in very different ways. Superman spends 20 minutes beating Zod to a pulp and razing various skyscrapers in the process, culminating in the infamous scene where he snaps Zod’s neck. The Avengers, on the other hand, prioritize civilian survival above the ultimate goal of defeating Loki, with half the battle focusing on getting pedestrians to safety and restricting the battle to a few city blocks. Both scenes involve making a difficult moral and tactical choice in the heat of battle, but Superman goes for the “dark” option while the Avengers focus on minimizing civilian casualties.

Pitching a Wonder Woman movie

Why can't we have one? [Link]

My ideal plot — and I’ve thought a lot about this dream project Wonder Woman run I’ve wanted to do over the past decade — is that you start by taking Paradise Island away from Earth. It shouldn’t be a place you can just go to, there’s no crashed planes landing there in World War II and introducing all the Amazons to “Man’s World.” It’s a myth. It’s something like Mount Olympus — or, to stick with the cinematic comparisons, something like Asgard. This forgotten place full of immortal warriors, far from the concerns of what we’re doing down here on Earth. But, like Asgard, it’s a place where they’re aware of Earth, where they can look down and shake their heads and this world we’ve got here and how bad we’re screwing up.

But one of them doesn’t think about how much we’re screwing up. She looks at Earth, and she sees something she can help. She sees people who need a champion, people who need someone to show them how to rise up, people who need to be defended and inspired and rescued, someone who has trained all her life to fight, but who has nothing to do with those skills because there’s no war in Paradise. She wants to make a difference, and she knows where she has to go to do it.

No prizes for guessing who she is.

I’ll admit that it’s a pretty basic setup (1 part Thor, one part Little Mermaid, mix and season with sets from Xena: Warrior Princess to taste), but I think it works, and you can go in a few different ways with it. The traditional origin story has the tournament, but my preference has always been to see Diana earning her abilities in a series of those classic Greek Mythological labors, like Hercules, Theseus or the Argonauts. A big journey to get what she needs before she finally goes to Earth.

But more importantly than that, it sets her origin apart from the other two heroes that she’s always going to be stood beside: It gives her a choice. Superman chooses to use his powers to help people, and that’s great, but when you get right down to it, he can’t stay on Krypton. That life is gone, and so he’s sent to Earth. Batman can’t un-shoot his parents, his life is changed by something beyond his control. They’re both heroes that are reactive at heart, they have situations forced upon them. For Wonder Woman, the one thing I’ve always loved about her character is that she doesn’t have to be a superhero. She could just stay right there on her magical island. But she knows there are people who would be better off if she was out there, so she goes. She makes the choice to be a hero. For me, that’s what sets her apart, what makes her so inspiring, that she has no personal stake in what’s going on, but she still chooses to do the right thing. If you start at a core of that kind of altruism and determination, then everything else, the moral strength, the intelligence, the kindness, it all falls into place.

Getting back to comparing it to movies, I think there’s a lot there that’s appealing in the same way as the character work in Captain America — you just get a lot more out of the wartime roots with Cap than you do with Wonder Woman, where they’re this weird vestigial toe.

So the first movie would be all about Wonder Woman’s journey to Earth, an adventure that she has where she leaves Paradise Island behind, in a way that she can never really get back to it, but she knows we need her more. So there’s this grand, mythological adventure, a villain (Ares) barring her progress, but it ends with her arrival on Earth. And yeah, I said first movie, because the third thing I’d do is commit to that jazz. Superman has had one good movie out of six, Batman’s fared slightly better with two and a half out of seven, and they still keep cranking those things out no matter how badly I want them to stop. There’s no reason to go into Wonder Woman not thinking of it as a franchise. Make the effort. Have the cameras rolling on the second one before the first one opens. Put everything you can into making her the star that you say you want her to be.

See, that’s the thing: You talk about people saying it’s hard to do a Wonder Woman movie. It ain’t that hard, folks, and I know that because they have already mapped out how you do it. The character work of Captain America, the sweeping mythology of Thor, the all-ages appeal of The Incredibles, the engaging personalities of stuff like Tangled. It’s all out there already, and you’re starting with a character who’s already on t-shirts, who people already know and want to like. If that’s hard, then how the hell did we get a movie about Green Lantern?

Gomez Addams : Herman Munster :: Bruce Wayne : Clark Kent

This is awesome. [Link]

Basically it's a class distinction thing, I think. Bruce and Gomez both have inherited wealth and upper class habits; they could very well have visited each other's ancestral mansions as boys. But Clark and Herman are both working blokes—and Clark started out back in the days when "reporter" still was a fairly working class occupation, before it morphed into a profession. I think it was Jules Feiffer who wrote about Superman as the ultimate assimilated immigrant, and Herman could fit that pattern as well—I always imagined his last name used to have an umlaut, as the other likely option is Irish, which really doesn't seem to fit. Gomez, on the other hand, never bothered to assimilate; he's too rich to need to.

It's a minor point that Hermann is physically strong and tough, possibly superhumanly so, whereas Gomez's most important superpower is money.

But also, it just strikes me that "I'm going to dress up like a bat and fight crime!" is absolutely the sort of scheme Gomez would come up with, without a moment's worry about whether it was eccentric. He's got a faithful butler to help him (a conversation between Alfred and Lurch would be worth spying on!); he's got an erotically charged relationship with Morticia, as Bruce has with Selina; he's got a mansion that probably has hidden rooms and cellars and secret passages. Though I think if he had a kid sidekick Wednesday would be likelier than Pugsley; she's the one who had the karate lessons.

What makes some men do this?

When does this stop being the standard for online disagreement with women? [Link]

“I think this woman is wrong about something on the Internet. Clearly my best course of action is to threaten her with rape.”

That’s crazy talk, right? So why does it happen all the time?

Honest question, dudes.

That women are harassed online is not news. That women in comics and the broader fandom cultures are harassed online is not news. That these women are routinely transmitted anonymous messages describing graphic sexual violence perpetrated upon them for transgressions as grave as not liking a thing… that is actually news to me, and it’s probably news to a lot of you guys reading this.

But it’s not news to a lot of women I know, and to women whose work you’ve read here and around the Web. I know it’s not news to them because of the way they write about it. They describe the latest rape threat as plainly as a man like you or I might complain about a late train. It’s just a another lousy thing that happens. You know, life in the big city.

“I will find you. I will hurt you. I will physically violate you… for being wrong about Spider-Man.”

Can you imagine, gentlemen, receiving that threat from a potentially dangerous man whose identity you have no hope of discovering but who knows your name, what city you live in, what you look like and where you work?

Now imagine receiving messages like that from men so frequently that you’re no longer bothered by it.

Now understand how f*cked up it is that you’re no longer bothered by it; that you’re no longer bothered by men’s anonymous threats of brutal sexual violence, because they’ve become just as common as a train not arriving on time.

If you’re like me, you’re now beginning to understand the depressingly huge scope of this problem.

The Internet is a boon to humanity. It is also terrible. That is its special nature. Every cogent thought put forth has a dark, mindless twin — sometimes these twins are legion — ready to feed on a person’s idea and process it into the toxic waste found at the bottom of virtually any website you care to visit. We call them trolls, and anyone reading this site or others like it knows that popular art and its surrounding fandom attract a particularly nasty strain of them.

I’m not just talking about the trolls. I’m not just talking about the mischief makers, the haters, the contrarians or the pedants. What I’m also talking about is something much worse and heretofore all but invisible to me and many other men like me. I’m talking about this:

Women in comics are the deviation, the invading body, the cancer. We are the cure, the norm, the natural order. All you are is a pair of halfway decent tits, a c*nt and a loud mouth. But see, it doesn’t matter how loud you get. It doesn’t matter how many of your lezbo tumblr and twitter fangirl friends agree with you and reinforce your views. You can be all “I’m not going to be silent about misogyny so f*ck you!” all you want. In the end all you are is a pathetic little girl trying to effect change and failing to make a dent. You might as well try to drain the ocean of fish. That’s the kind of battle you face with people like me. We won’t quit. We won’t stop attacking. We won’t give up. Ever.

I’ve encountered such sentiments before, but it’s only recently that I’ve learned how common they are.

Those remarks were sent to Janelle Asselin, a ComicsAlliance contributor, professional comic book editor, and academic researcher. She posted them on her Facebook page, to which she’s restricted public access for obvious reasons. I’ve republished the message here with her permission.

Ironically, the missive was transmitted anonymously via an online survey Janelle created to gather data on the prevalence of sexual harassment in the American comic book industry.

The man who wrote those words doubtlessly discovered Janelle’s survey by way of the misogynistic response to an article she wrote for another website critiquing the appeal of a superhero comic book cover. In her characteristically straightforward fashion, Janelle justified her opinion — that the cover was bad and spoke to a systemic badness with respect to marketing and audience — with reason and persuasive creative insight honed over years of professional experience. She pointed out, among other things, that the anatomy and costume of a teenage girl on the cover seemed off from both a biological and marketing perspective and suggested this might have a part to play in narrowing the book’s potential readership.

Janelle’s points deserved to be considered given her background not just as a professional editor and researcher who backs up her ideas with experience and logic, but also because she’s a woman. Agree or disagree with her conclusions; the fact remains that in 2014 it’s still relatively rare for women’s views on such topics to be represented in the comics media, and Janelle’s thoughtful and honest piece adds to the comics discourse.

Part of discourse is of course good faith disagreement, and that avenue is always open to anyone who wishes to take issue with the published opinions of anyone of any gender.

The Death of Archie

Coming soon to "Life with Archie". The Alex Ross variant cover is creepy. [Link]

What is assuredly the weirdest sentence I’ll have written in all my years at this website: Archie Andrews will heroically sacrifice his life to save that of a deae friend in the penultimate issue of Life With Archie in July. 

Written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Pat & Tim Kennedy and Fernando Ruiz, Life With Archie #36 will depict the title character’s death and come with a plethora of variant covers by some of our favorite artists like Francesco Francavilla, Fiona Staples, Ramón Pérez, Walt Simonson, Jill Thompson, Mike Allred, Cliff Chiang, Adam Hughes, Tommy Lee Edwards and Alex Ross.

The series has explored the lives of the Riverdale characters as they extend into a possible future, with notable storylines including Archie marrying Veronica Lodge, an alternate timeline in which Archie marries Betty Cooper, the marriage of U.S. soldier Kevin Keller to a male partner, and Cheryl Blossom suffering from breast cancer.

“We’ve been building up to this moment since we launched Life With Archie five years ago, and knew that any book that was telling the story of Archie’s life as an adult had to also show his final moment,” said Archie Comics Publisher/Co-CEO Jon Goldwater in a press release. “Archie has and always will represent the best in all of us—he’s a hero, good-hearted, humble and inherently honorable. This story is going to inspire a wide range of reactions because we all feel so close to Archie. Fans will laugh, cry, jump off the edge of their seats and hopefully understand why this comic will go down as one of the most important moments in Archie’s entire history. It’s the biggest story we’ve ever done, and we’re supremely proud of it.”

Issue #37 will take place a year hence, with the surviving Riverdale gang dealing with the loss of their friend and honoring his legacy.

Missing the point about superheroes

Claims that they are fascist. [Link]

I was reminded of this by Jor-El’s speech in “Man of Steel”:

You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.

How, though? Those watching him can’t fly, topple buildings or fire heat rays from their eyes. What else does Superman do other than these purely physical feats? The 1978 version of Jor-El warned: “It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history. Rather let your leadership stir others to.” Can you really inspire others with steel? At this point it’s interesting to reflect on the real-life leader who chose a name meaning “Man Of Steel”: Stalin.

Rebutted. [Link]

This reading of superheroes is common but wrong, a symptom of trying to impose political ideology on a universal, fictional myth. Superheroes do say something about the real world, but it’s something pretty uncontroversial: We want to see good triumph over evil, and “good” in this case means more than just defeating the bad guy—it means handling power responsibly.

The “fascism” metaphor breaks down pretty quickly when you think about it. Most superheroes defeat an evil power but do not retain any power for themselves. They ensure others’ freedom. They rarely deal with the government, and when they do it is with wariness, as in the Iron Man films, where Tony Stark refuses to hand over control of his inventions.

Indeed, superhero tales are full of subplots about how heroes limit their own power: hibernating once the big bad guy has been defeated, wearing disguises to live ordinary lives, choosing not to give into the temptation to ally with the villain or use their powers for profit or even civilizational progress. That’s because the creators of some of the most foundational superhero tales weren’t writing solely out of a power fantasy. They were writing out of a fantasy that a truly good people who find themselves with power might use that power only for good—and only in the face of extreme evil.

Consider the conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises where Batman refuses to show his real identity to take credit for saving Gotham City. Batman is regularly willing to trust others for help and does not see himself as the sole hero; the hero, the story seems to say, could be anyone. Like many others, Batman works to be an example of helping others while respecting the autonomy of society and individuals.Perhaps the optimism that an uberpowerful being like Superman would not overreach is unrealistic. Maybe it’s the same optimism that has helped certain world dictators to rise to power. But superhero myths themselves come from a good place. The belief that people are capable of real altruism is inescapable, human, and the farthest thing from inherently fascistic.

When superheroes do appear to flirt with fascism, it's as part of a subversions of the genre, as with Alan Moore's gritty, dystopian Watchmen. Similarly, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns reimagined Superman as a government lackey who gets in Batman's way. Both graphic novels comment on the dangers posed by superheroes with less-clear moral orientations than, say, Captain America—who, by the way, was originally created with the explicit intention of fighting fascists—but they don't damn the self-limiting superheroes that America has come to love. 

I remember reading somewhere about what a superhero's real power was:

Their morals. they are not heroes because they can beat you up or pick up a building, but because they do not abuse that power. They actually are better than us, more moral than us, they are not susceptible to corruption. They are there to inspire us to be better, and while yes, there is adolescent power fantasy there, it is all in the service of using power to do the right thing.

The filmmakers chose to go a different way.

I had high hopes for this movie. But the inspiring example of the original superhero is apparently naive. This was a movie about superhumans, not superheroes - and the horror and dread that former should instill in you. [Link]

Hope gets a mention. We're told the symbol on Superman's chest represents "hope," but I can't think of any moment in the movie that shows us that ideal. The characters standing in the wreckage at the end of the movie seem to represent grim endurance rather than hope. We do see a glimpse at the end of the movie of young Clark Kent playing outside with a cape around his neck. That seems hopeful. But as it's a moment from his past, before everything went to hell, it also suggests that hope is naive.

I think it's fair to ask what young Clark Kent was pretending to be when he put that cape around his neck. That's a game you play if you're pretending to be a superhero, but Superman is the first superhero. Is he being Aragorn? Hercules? The Phantom of the Opera? Do Marvel comics exist in this world, and he's playing at being Thor?

I raise the point not to be glib, but because I think the moment speaks to the filmmakers' incomplete conception of Superman as an inspirational figure. This Superman is not something to aspire to. At our screening, at the point at which Superman killed Zod, I heard a girl who was too young to be there say, "Why did the man's eyes stop? Why did he stop?"

It was a painful moment of instant, awkward context: this little girl is not going to put on a cape and pretend to be this version of Superman. Nor would I want any child to want to be this version of Superman. Snyder and Goyer don't appear to understand what inspires someone to put on a cape and run around the garden. In this universe, a person puts on a cape because someone gives them a cape.

Superman is not a hero in this movie; he's a liability. This is a movie where everyone would have been better off -- and thousands more people would be alive -- if Superman had never come to our planet. It's hard to see that as a message of hope. If the filmmakers had written it so that Zod had always meant to target Earth, and Jor-El sent his son to stop him, that would place an act of heroism at the story's core, rather than acts of desperation and revenge. It would make Superman a solution, not a problem. The rest of the story would play out largely the same way, but events would have moral weight. The filmmakers chose to go a different way.

One of the great pillars of Superman's moral universe is his adoptive father, Jonathan Kent. This movie removes him from that role. In most tellings, Clark Kent learns his values from his decent and upstanding parents. In this movie his father teaches him to lie. He teaches him to put self-preservation ahead of the lives of others. There is no truth and justice here. There is a sacrifice, but it's not heroic; Pa Kent dies because he's too stubborn to see that he's wrong. We know that he's wrong, because the premise of Superman depends on it. Pa Kent could have been a moral guide; the filmmakers chose to go a different way.

Because the Kents don't tell Clark to be a hero, it's not instilled in him as a value, and he has to take the counsel of his birth father, ghostly Microsoft Word paperclip Jor-El. In choosing to root Superman's virtue in Krypton and not Earth, the filmmakers stole Superman's formative reason for holding humanity up as worthy of salvation. This origin story does not at any point present the idea that mankind is fundamentally good. The filmmakers chose to go a different way.

And still, there were other opportunities to show Superman's innate moral core. At one point Clark walks out of the sea and needs to dress himself. He could have asked for clothes, or he could have taken them and left a note and a promise. That scene would then have serv ed to show us that he is a morally upstanding person, someone who goes out of his way to do the right thing. Instead he steals the clothes and sneaks away. The filmmakers chose to go a different way.

Every chance the filmmakers had to illustrate Clark Kent's fundamental goodness, they went the other way. They made him scheming and vengeful after he gets beer tipped over him. They made him petulant and harmful when he burns a concerned teacher's hand. They made him reject his own family during an argument, and reject his own humanity during a make-out session. "I hear it's all downhill from the first kiss." "I think that only applies to humans." (It's a joke, but the fact that it's a joke told while sucking face with a relative stranger on top of a smoldering charnel pit lends some weight to the idea that he's not one of us.)

You might say these are minor beats, small moments that shouldn't add up to much -- but what do we have in the other column, the "illustrations of virtue" column? You could argue that this is the sort of behavior we're all guilty of, and everyone has to start from somewhere and learn. That's true. Although Superman is as clear a paragon of virtue as any character in fiction, Clark is allowed a few missteps, a few flaws, especially before he dons the cape.

Yet at some point we need to see what his moral values are. We need to see a dramatic illustration of what he believes, what he chooses. This movie avoids that at every opportunity. Even when he walks away from a confrontation in a bar, it's not because he wants to avoid violence or revenge, but because he wants to avoid exposure. He follows through on the violence and revenge when he vandalizes the bully's property.

This Superman is never virtuous. He is never compassionate or conscientious. He never tries to steer the devastation of his fights away from populated areas; nor does he seem to connect with humanity at all. Rather than travel the world looking for people to save, he is a withdrawn recluse who saves people only when they're about to burn to death in front of him. He literally does the least one might expect from a person with his extraordinary advantages. He can't be a hero, because he's bound to the self-preservation code of Jonathan Kent, his other father in the sky, forever whirling overhead somewhere between Kansas and Oz

The writers should have watched Superman: The Animated Series. It seems quite obvious that they didn't like the character or what he stands for.

Indestructible Hulk #6

I've been enjoying Indestructible Hulk, where Bruce Banner is trying to make positive scientific progress to make up for the destructiveness of the Hulk and working with SHIELD, which is aiming him at problems that need Hulk sized solutions. I was not expecting this, however:

Sad Mountain Dew Batman

One beep for refreshment. [Link]

As you may already be aware, there's a movie about Batman called The Dark Knight Rises coming out this summer, and as is the case with any big-budget super-hero flick, that means we're going to get some product tie-ins. Who can forget how Dominos Pizza reflected the complex themes of morality and sacrifice in 2008's The Dark Knight by offering a pizza with double the pepperoni?! I assure you, my arteries will never forget.

This time around, it's Mountain Dew, and not only is there a new flavor that's allegedly inspired by Batman, there's also a website and, more importantly, an in-store display that looks like the Saddest Batman Ever.

When I see that, it makes me think of this:

Beep.

Avengers Lego

Avengers Lego. Neat. [Link]

"Marvel's The Avengers" soars into theaters on May 4, 2012, but thanks to LEGO, you'll be able to assemble the Avengers whenever you want.

Marvel's partnership with LEGO was first revealed at San Diego Comic-Con 2011 with a sneak peek at Hulk, and at Toy Fair NY 2012, Earth's Mightiest Heroes make their minifigure debut. We visited LEGO's New York showroom before the start of Toy Fair in order to bring you the first look at the models and minifigures LEGO has on the way!

I noticed this while reading:

Wow, in an 'Arial Battle' are they fighting against the evil Comic Sans?

Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover

Comic miniseries coming soon. [Link]

Bleeding Cool has squirrelled out news of an upcoming crossover that might send certain minds reeling. That in May, IDW are to publish a Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover series. Featuring The Doctor, Rory, Amy, Captain Picard, Worf, Data, Geordie LaForge, Deanna Troy, Will Riker and the rest. And that this art, featuring the Doctor, Rory and Amy on the bridge of the Enterprise is a cover that will be used in the series.
Doctor Who has never engaged in any such officially sanctioned crossover outside of the Doctor Who universe before. The closest was Dimensions In Time, a much derided charity telethon show which featured characters from the BBC soap operaEastenders. Then there was Death’s Head who kinda popped in and out. Star Trek has also seen comic book crossovers with X-Men and the Legion Of Superheroes. But this is the first time that two such major competing TV sci-fi franchises have been allowed to merge in any way before.

Before Watchmen

Oh, this will not end well. [Link]

This summer, DC Entertainment will publish all-new stories expanding on the acclaimed WATCHMEN universe. As highly anticipated as they are controversial, the seven inter-connected prequel mini-series will build on the foundation of the original WATCHMEN, the bestselling graphic novel of all time. BEFORE WATCHMEN will be the collective banner for all seven titles, from DC Comics.

“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. “After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”

Stepping up to the challenge is a group of the comic book industry’s most iconoclastic writers and artists – including Brian Azzarello (100 BULLETS), Lee Bermejo (JOKER), Amanda Conner (POWER GIRL), Darwyn Cooke (JUSTICE LEAGUE: NEW FRONTIER), John Higgins (WATCHMEN), Adam Hughes (CATWOMAN), J.G. Jones (FINAL CRISIS), Andy Kubert (FLASHPOINT), Joe Kubert (SGT. ROCK), Jae Lee (BATMAN: JEKYLL AND HYDE), J. Michael Straczynski (SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE) and Len Wein (SWAMP THING).

BEFORE WATCHMEN includes:

• RORSCHACH (4 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Lee Bermejo

• MINUTEMEN (6 issues) – Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke

• COMEDIAN (6 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J.G. Jones

• DR. MANHATTAN (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes

• NITE OWL (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert

• OZYMANDIAS (6 issues) – Writer: Len Wein. Artist: Jae Lee

• SILK SPECTRE (4 issues) – Writer: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner

Each week, a new issue will be released, and will feature a two-page back-up story called CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CORSAIR, written by original series editor Len Wein and with art by original series colorist John Higgins. There will also be a single issue, BEFORE WATCHMEN: EPILOGUE, featuring the work of various writers and artists, and a CRIMSON CORSAIR story by Wein and Higgins.

“The original series of WATCHMEN is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire,” said Dave Gibbons, WATCHMEN co-creator and original series artist.

“Comic books are perhaps the largest and longest running form of collaborative fiction,” said DiDio and Lee. “Collaborative storytelling is what keeps these fictional universes current and relevant.”

DC has the right to do this, but should they?

SyFy orders pilot script for Booster Gold

I always liked Booster. I read him in his original book in the 80's and his newer book that just ended. [Link]

The project, which hails from Greg Berlanti's Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Horizon Television, will count Berlanti (Brothers & Sisters, No Ordinary Family, Green Lantern) as an executive producer.Fringe's Andrew Kreisberg, who collaborated with Berlanti on ABC's Eli Stone, is on board to pen the script and executive produce.

The story will center on Booster Gold, a washed-up athlete from the future who travels back to the present in hopes of becoming the greatest super hero of all time. Instead of chasing criminals, however, his main priority is chasing fame and money. But Booster Gold discovers that being a hero takes more than just a megawatt smile, and that the future doesn’t happen without first protecting the present.

I hope Skeets is in it as well.

The Starfire controversy

This is just depressing and a really piss poor characterization of this character that just highlights the misogyny and juvenile antics of comic writers and artists. These people are still metaphorically living in their parent's basement, making Beavis and Butthead look like moral upstanding members of society. [Link]

[T]wo new comic books from the "New 52" relaunch of DC Comics provoked some online controversy: Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws. They were controversial in particular because of the way they depicted women, notably with the aggressively fanfictiony on-panel sex between Batman and Catwoman, and Starfire's transformation into a promiscuous tabula rasa who can't even remember the names of the men she sleeps with, and seeks out emotionless sex with both of the two male main characters while they essentially high five about it.

Since pointing out my issues with Starfire yesterday, I have received numerous e-mails -- from men -- accusing me of slut-shaming. Since there are a lot of people who don't understand the sexual dynamics that are in play here both creatively and culturally, I'd like to dissect this a little bit and explain why these scenes don't support sexually liberated women; they undermine them, and why after nearly 20 years of reading superhero books, these may finally have been the comics that broke me.

I would like to say first and in the strongest possible terms that I absolutely support the right of women to embrace and act upon their sexual desires in whatever way seems right to them, within consensual boundaries. My sense of justice is inflamed by the double standard that tells us that every person a man sleeps with makes them more of a stud, and every person a woman sleeps with makes them a little less valuable and less respectable. I know this in particular because unlike all the guys who sent me angry messages last night defending the sexual honor of an imaginary character, that double standard is something l have had to live with and be judged by for my entire adult life.

And that is why books like Catwoman and Red Hood make me so goddamn angry.

I liked the Teen Titans cartoon and this just leaves a bad taste. I'm not the only one.

And there is no indication DC comics or the writer or artist are at all embarrassed by this.

Now that's Captain America

From Fear Itself #6

Secret Six

This is the book I will miss most with the DC reboot. [Link]

But Secret Six for the last three years has been nothing short of wild entertainment. Simone and her excellent artists brought balance to a team book that focused its time and efforts inwho they were as much as what they were. I for one will miss them, and honestly, because she’s not attached to the newly minted Suicide Squad (a sister concept to this one) I have little plan to return. They say go out with a bang. Gail went out with a nuclear explosion to the nads. Until her name (or maybe Ostrander’s…) graces a villainous page again, I’ll nurse my new-found cancer left in its wake. Ain’t that a shot of Tabasco in the eye.

Please note… I don’t actually have cancer. But there’s a hole in my soul where this book dug its claws in. Knowing that it’s replacement is a book with Harley Quinn dressed as a psychoslut is such that I cry myself to sleep at night.

New Superman Picture

Henry Cavill as Superman. Not bad.

Salon tries to convince itself that it can like Captain America

Whose side would he be on. America's. He stands for the ideals of America, what we aspire to be and do. [Link]

In the early morning hours of Oct. 30, 2010, a guy in a Captain America suit staked out a spot on the National Mall as he waited for Jon Stewart's left-leaning Rally to Restore Sanity. "Hey, Steve Rogers," I called out the name of Captain America's secret identity. He turned around, flashed a big grin at my geekiness and then snapped a salute as I took his picture.

A few months later, in April 2011, a different man wearing a Captain America costume stood on the National Mall. Like the Cap from October, he was there for a rally, only 2011's Cap was a Tea Party patriotclamoring for a government shutdown while holding up a sign that read: "Shut it down/Save America."

After the July 22 release of the summer blockbuster "Captain America: the First Avenger," we'll probably see even more Captain Americas waving placards at protests for all parts of the political spectrum. The Red, White and Blue Avenger is and always has been a potent political image, but whose side would Captain America be on? Would he be a New Deal Democrat slinging his mighty shield for new public works programs or would he be rallying with the Tea Party to lower taxes on billionaires and gut Medicare? Whose Captain America is he anyway?

Captain America is not a jingoistic mascot. He stands for what we believe America can and should be.