Sometimes “We Need a 2nd Season” Isn’t a Plan (or, How Jupiter’s Legacy Ruined a Good Thing)
According to the Internet, Kirk Douglas once said that “in order to achieve anything, you must be brave enough to fail.” I don’t know if he actually said that, but it seems plausible enough, and it helps me get to my amendment: “in order to achieve anything, you can’t do some lazy bullshit.” Jupiter’s Legacy is, well, lazy bullshit. Likely the victim of the Netflix model – which sometimes seems to treat single seasons as pilots for continuations rather than contained narratives – Jupiter’s Legacy falls painfully short on nearly every measure despite having, I’d argue, one of the most compelling “quest” stories outside of traditional epic fantasy. Jupiter’s Legacy is split into two major narratives: the first explores what happens when the values of a Justice League-esque union of graying superheroes are challenged by a younger order of supers and a violent conspiracy plot which takes the lives of several supers; the second takes us back to the Great Depression and the journey the original supers had to complete in order to gain their powers (and, thus, pass them on to their children). There are numerous side plots, most of which center on the children of the original supers dealing with what amounts to a series of problems with one’s parents. Most of this doesn’t really matter to the story, but it’s there to distract you…
Comics Are the Cure for the Common Cold (Or, I’m Reading Things)
Grading is done, and I’ve got a dissertation to complete so I can defend it and get a real person job. And, as with Christmas tradition, I am catching some sort of cold or flu monstrosity. This seems to be the norm for me. It wouldn’t be so terrible if the only illnesses I got around Christmas were colds, but as I’ve mentioned before, I also spent one whole Christmas on my first cycle of chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, so there’s sort of this added hatred of being ill around the holidays. So, instead of finishing a glorious blog post on why the Galactic Empire from Star Wars has always been about fascism and Nazis, I’m going to read some comic books. Currently, I’m reading the following: Champions (Marvel) This series is actually fantastic. It features Ms. Marvel as the sort-of leader of a group of young superheroes, including Miles Morales’ Spiderman, Nova, Viv (Vision’s daughter), a young Cyclops (it’s a long story), and some new version of the Hulk that is oddly super charming. Unlike the other superhero groups, they are guided by a non-destructive, non-lethal ethos, which makes sense given that Ms. Marvel is at the helm. You should definitely check it out! Jessica Jones (Marvel) I Hate Fairyland (Image) This comic is just batshit crazy. There are about a dozen others on the list, but those are the main ones. I also tried reading the first issue of the latest Ultimates, but I couldn’t stand the art; that’s one that will go on the “don’t pull anymore” list. So, I’m going to take a nap and wake up tomorrow fresh eyed and weird. In the meantime, a question: What comics are you all reading?
2016 WISB Awards Long List
It’s that time of year: time for me to release some kind of list of things I loved in 2015. This year is different, though. This year, I’m releasing a long list for the WISB Awards, and it is from this list that I’ll select the winners of my annual WISB awards, the jury-less, vote-less monstrosity of an award that is only of value to myself. Since I cannot include my own work on the following long list, I’ll include those works here: Best Fancast: The Skiffy and Fanty Show (Shaun Duke, Julia Rios, Paul Weimer, Mike Underwood, Rachael Acks, David Annandale, and Jen Zink); Totally Pretentious (Shaun Duke and David Annandale) Best Non-Fiction Work: Speculative Fiction 2014: The Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays, and Commentary edited by Renee Williams and Shaun Duke (Book Smugglers Publishing) If you feel there’s a glaring ommission, let me know in the comments. I haven’t read everything there is to read (obviously), and it’s likely I’ve missed a lot of really great work. Now here’s the official 2016 WISB Awards Long List:
Talking About Wonder Woman and Her “Problems”…Again
Some time back, I talked about the path I hope the studios will take for a film adaptation of the Justice. Since such an adaptation will naturally include popular characters like Wonder Woman and Flash, I felt compelled to talk about why the studios had to approach the whole venture carefully to avoid the pitfalls of camp that continue to plague the characters. Now, I feel compelled to talk a little bit more about Wonder Woman, and it’s all Tansy Rayner Roberts’ fault. Last month, Tansy Rayner Roberts took a stab at the reasons why people think Wonder Woman won’t work in film. I agree with Roberts that most, if not all, of the reasons are pretty dumb, especially the argument that movies with female superheroes are stupid. Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope. There are certainly bad movies which include female superheroes, but those movies suck because they are bad movies, not because you’re being asked to root for the ladies. Not surprisingly, people do actually go to movies involving female superheroes. Shocking, I know. I mean, how the frak is that even possible? It must be witchcraft…or a Kenyan government conspiracy involving the IRS. Anywhoodles. Roberts’ rightly points out, in agreement with Shoshana Kessock on Tor.com, that one of the major “problems” with Wonder Woman concerns her explicit feminist nature: I think Shoshanna at Tor is right on the money with her article – the “problem” with Wonder Woman is that most people don’t know how to deal with an unapologetically feminist character. Writers panic. Executives panic. The way that women in particular are written in Hollywood is so vastly different to the way that superheroes tend to be written, that when the two concepts are combined, fear and cosmetics companies and ice-cream tend to get thrown at the resulting mess until it goes away. I also agree with this premise, which is why I like the idea of Wonder Woman as a character, even though I think she frequently falls prey (in the public consciousness of her character) to a certain kind of campy optimism. Done right, she could make for a profitable and, well, qualitatively good franchise of films. I’d love to see some well-written Wonder Woman movies. Watch her battle to save the Earth and for equality. Of course, the character hasn’t always had this optimistic feminist view of things. I don’t know if Roberts has read the recent Flashpoint crossover event, but I would certainly like to hear her opinion on the portrayal of Wonder Woman and the Amazons in that particular set of comics. If any major event in the DC universe has been officially put in the studio’s list of “stuff we’re not going to put on the screen…ever,” it would be Flashpoint. Well, there are probably other things in there, and some sexist jackass is probably sitting in an office somewhere thinking about ways to kill (in the comic book definition of the word) Wonder Woman after turning her into a “misandrist” villain. Maybe not… I actually really liked her costume in Flashpoint… For those unfamiliar with the comics, I’ll briefly explain the main thrust of the Flashpoint event, though I won’t tell you how the event got started, as that would ruin the reveal at the end. Basically, something happens and the entire DC universe is rewritten, changing the entire power structure of the Earth. From the first few comics, we learn two crucial things: Wonder Woman and Aquaman had originally agreed to marry in order to unite their kingdoms, but an assassination plot led to the death of Wonder Woman’s mother (i.e., the Queen), followed by a massive war between the two kingdoms. Half of Europe is under water, the United Kingdom has been taken over by the Amazons, and all is chaos. In the middle of all of this, we learn that an entire faction of the Amazons (enough that Wonder Woman’s ignorance of their doings is rather difficult to believe) has been doing two things: 1) enslaving or killing men, and 2) subjecting women to genetic and psychological re-wiring to make them part of the Amazons, too. Can you see why this wouldn’t work all that well on film? Now, I’m not one to make grand Men’s Rights claims about misandry (these claims are, to put it bluntly, brainless). I don’t buy into the idea that feminism is the hatred of men. I’ve never met a feminist who hates me because I have a penis; I have met men who hate women because they have vaginas. But setting aside the motivations for the power games in Flashpoint, the simple fact remains that the Amazons are not portrayed as particularly positive feminists. If anything, I wouldn’t call them feminists at all in this alternate universe. They actively express their hate of men, engage in activities which involve the oppression of men, and manipulate, destroy, and/or augment women in an attempt to inject new blood into the ranks. They are, in effect, pretty much frakking evil (Wonder Woman, as I’ve noted, may not actually know what is going on under her nose; either that or she’s naive as hell)(truthfully, there aren’t that many “good people” in the Flashpoint universe). They’re kind of like a literal representation of what anti-feminists imagine actual feminists are like. You know the narrative: they run around trying to think about ways to oppress men, keep everything for themselves, ruin society, and so on and so forth. Basically, they’re an idiot’s wet dream. I bring all of this up because I think it’s important to recognize that Wonder Woman as a character can, as Roberts points out, ruffle feathers, in no small part because she is, largely speaking, an open feminist and advocate for women’s rights (in my experience, anyway). Flashpoint, however, is a terrible deviation from her positive narrative. And it’s canon. It’s part of her development in the modern age of comics. Studios will avoid it like the plague for what they think
Month of Joy: “Mike’s Favorite Comics” by Mike Underwood @mikerunderwood
I have many favorite comics, like I have many favorite novels, and so on. But the great thing about loving lots of stuff is that it’s much harder to run out of things to talk about. So here are a few of my favorite comics/runs from across my reading history, and a little about my relationship to each. The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (Scott Lobdell and Gene Ha) This is the oldest of the entries on this list, but one that stood out in my mind. I’ve always been a Cyclops fan, probably largely because I spent a lot of my youth being a Good Kid ™. I followed the rules, wasn’t a rebel, and so on. Characters like Wolverine or Jubilee didn’t really resonate with me. But Cyclops, the long-suffering earnest leader of the X-Men, he stuck with me. And in this mini-series, where Cyclops and Jean get catapulted into the future to raise Scott’s son, Nate (who later becomes Cable), I think the thing that really stuck with me was seeing a functional couple having adventures together, as partners. I’m also endlessly interested by dystopian settings, and the challenges of growing up in harsh circumstances. Like in many things, my genre education was fairly non-standard, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix was part of it – teaching me about dystopias before I’d even heard of the term, let alone read foundational texts like Brave New World, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451. Planetary (Warren Ellis and John Cassaday) In the parallel world where I’m a recently-minted PhD, one of the classes I’d offer is “The Planetary Guide to 20th Century Pop Culture Genres.” The class would use the comic series Planetary as an interpretive lens for examining 20th century pop/pulp genres (pulp, western, supers, golden age sci-fi, super-spy, Hong Kong action, etc.). Because for me, that’s what this series is – a way of re-interpreting a wide swath of 20th C. pop culture. The series itself ran from 1999 to 2009, and I followed the series month-to-month almost that entire run. The central premise of Planetary is that the 20th Century pop culture genres – pulp, superheroes, atomic horror, kaiju, etc., are all real. And the job of the protagonists, members of Planetary, are “Archaeologists of the Impossible,” discovering the secret history of the 20th century and fighting to keep the world strange and wonderful. The full story is much larger and more magnificent, taking a knowing, deeply intertextual trip through 20th Century pop culture. Warren Ellis is one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and his partnership with John Cassaday on this series is simply incredible. I highly recommend this series to any pop culture fan, especially if you are fond of re-interpretations of cultural history like Red Son, Astro City, or Soon I Will Be Invincible. Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra) One of the best “change one thing” science fiction comics that I’ve ever read, I also love that Y: The Last Man had a complete 10-volume arc, then ended. The ending works, the character arcs are rich and fulfilling, and then it’s done. One of the criticisms of comics as a medium that I hear and acknowledge most keenly is the fact that its serial nature can make it very impenetrable for a new reader. Where do you start? Will this series ever end? And so on. Well, Y: The Last Man has been complete for five years now, and still stands out in my memory as one of the best whole comic book stories ever told. Yorick Brown, the titular last man, is a loser. He’s an amateur magician without much life direction, who is on the phone about to propose to his girlfriend (who is in Australia) when the phone goes dead. The phone goes dead because at that moment, across the world, every other male mammal in the world is dying grotesque death. Except for Yorick’s pet capuchin monkey. The story that follows spans across the world, and, by necessity, is full of amazing, complex, dynamic female characters, who largely drive the story. If you or someone you know is put off with the (abysmal) way that women are depicted or treated in comics, this series is a fine contrast to that trend. Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia (Greg Rucka and J.G. Jones) Wonder Woman is my favorite mis-used character in DC comics. She’s the least popular member of DC’s Trinity (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman), despite the fact that I think she’s an incredibly interesting character. The Hiketeia is one of my examples to people of how awesome Wonder Woman can be when handled well. The Hiketeia was the first time writer Greg Rucka worked with Wonder Woman, and his success with the story is a likely contributing factor to him landing the role as the series’ regular writer for an extended (and very well-received run). In The Hiketeia, Wonder Woman is honor-bound to protect a young woman who is executing a Greek ritual of vengeance known as the Hiketeia. This puts her in direct opposition with Batman, who is hunting the girl as a criminal and murderer. The Hiketeia shows the entire conflict from Diana’s perspective, highlights her conflict between honoring tradition and protecting life. It also features a fantastic fight between her and Batman, where she wipes the floor with the Dark Knight, because, well, she can go toe-to-toe with Superman, and WW doesn’t have a Kryptonite-analogue for Batman to use against her. But ultimately, it is the characterization of Wonder Woman as thoughtful, determined, and compassionate that makes this story a winner in my book. It’s one of the best Wonder Woman stories I’ve ever read, and is marvelously stand-alone, which makes it a good book to use when saying “No, really, Wonder Woman is awesome. Read this.” Marvels (Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross, Marcus McLaurin) Being a lifelong comics and supers fan, I am a total sucker for stories that let me re-examine
It Happened (or, Yeah, I’ve Given Up My Life to the Joy of Comic Books) #WeekofJoy
I officially have a pull list with my local comic book retailer. Stranger yet: the guy who owns the place now recognizes me when I walk through the door. Clearly I buy a lot of comics… And, well, this is actually kind of awesome. Most of my comics are coming from a local place called All Star Sportscards & Comics. It’s probably the best place in Gainesville to get comic books. Though it’s not as big as the other major comic shop in town — MegaComics — the prices are better, the staff seems friendlier and more helpful, and every time I go there, I spend money (which is great for the owner, but not always so good for my bank account — oh, hell, who am I kidding? I love comics). In a way, I’m fortunate to live in a town that even has a comic book shop. Short of buying hardback or trade paperback collections, without a shop, I’d have almost no way to rebirth my interest in the form. And that, I think, would be a horrible thing for me, as one of the things sustaining me through what is one of the toughest years I’ve had in a while (in terms of work and intellectual requirement) is this rediscovered passion for comics. I’m having those little kid moments again. You know the sort. You open a book, movie, comic, or pack of collectible cards and you experience some variation of the following: tingling skin, goose bumps, elevated heart rate, an uncontrollable desire to smile or jump up and down, and just an overall feeling of excited euphoria. I had those moments when I was a kid only a few times, really. Video games and movies were part of what helped me survive what I would describe as a relatively shitty childhood. Comics were part of that, too, though I certainly moved away from them when I hit my teens (RPGs and video games filled that gap). In a way, I’ve always been a geek, so there’s something nostalgic and generally pleasurable about rediscovering something that made you happy when you were younger. That’s what it’s been like the last few weeks. With all the things going on in my life at the moment — most of them stressful, but not necessarily “bad” — I need something to help me decompress. Comics are doing just that right now. And I’m loving every minute! Anywho. You may wonder what I put on my pull list. Well, here you go: Superman Unchained Superman & Batman Justice League of America Cable & X-Force Uncanny X-Force X-Men (Vol. 4) Nova Secret Avengers New Avengers Iron Man The Wake I also have subscriptions to Batman, Justice League of America (through a donation I made, which is cool), Uncanny X-Men and Uncanny Avengers. I may switch the last two to the regular pull list when the subscriptions are up; apparently the comics are not properly bagged and boarded when shipped, which means they get a little beat up through the mail. I’m a bit of a collector now, so I’m not a big fan of slightly-mangled comics. That list will probably change over time, depending on how the stories progress. Right now, I am pretty much obsessed with Batman, Uncanny X-Men, and Cable & X-Force, though I’m sure Superman Unchained will join the obsessions list soon (Scott Snyder is writing it, which means I am almost guaranteed to love it). Needless to say, comics are one of the many things I am grateful for right now. If ever there was something to discuss during my Week of Joy, comics would be it! What about you? What are you reading, watching, or just straight up loving right now? Let me know in the comments.