Fantastic Fangirls: Comics and Culture

by Sigrid

On Twitter this Tuesday I noticed a tweet from an online compatriot, Sarah Kuhn. “There’s *probably* a way to make this product descrip more insulting, but I can’t think of it. http://twurl.cc/25bj” I went to the site and found the Marvel “Girls Rule” t-shirt for sale, with the following marketing copy next to it:

“Made from 50% Cotton, 50% Polyester, this cream colored, woman’s T-Shirt features purposely faded images of your favorite female Marvel comic book characters! Well, they’re your favorite, but your girlfriend (or sister) will actually be wearing the tshirt! HUZZAH! Hmmm…Can’t decide which Marvel Super-heroine I wish to add to my fantasy harem first. Spiderwoman is DEFINITELY in there. Black Widow…maybe; she’s just a little too…used for me. HUZZAH! Hellcat? Absolutely. Scarlet Witch? Maybe not. She could unmake me if I forget to dry the dishes or something. Invisible Woman? YES! It’s the hot mom thing! And….Marvel Girl. NOPE! Too damn whiney, not enough character and she tends to die when things get rough! Now, this Marvel tee is EXTREMELY limited, so buy the shirt, tell your girlfriend which female Marvel character you wish them to emulate, get dumped, go back to the imaginary harem.”

I read this a couple of times, trying to figure out the intentions and assumptions behind the text. As far as I can tell, the intended audience is all men, and these men would rather spend time ogling soft-core porn than getting laid with a living human girlfriend. (It goes without saying that the only purpose of girlfriends in this context is sexual. No conversation, intellectual challenge, humor, or mutual support is conceivable.) In fact, the intended audience is invited to persuade their sisters, should they have any, to wear this shirt so that the intended audience can readily ogle attractive women on the breasts of their sister. Don’t think of your sister sexually, in other words, but use her as a prop to hold up your jerk-off material.

By Tuesday evening I had heard about ten or so remarks of outrage and disgust from various friends and acquaintances. My friend Kelly cc’d me the email she had sent to SuperHeroStuff.com expressing her anger and intention to encourage all her friends to never buy from the site. Around dinner time I sent the following email to SuperHeroStuff.com:

Dear Sir or Madame:

Hello, my name is Sigrid Ellis and I write for the comics blog Fantastic Fangirls. I’ve noticed today on Twitter that a number of people are offended by the copy accompanying this Marvel T-shirt:

[Edit: URL here]

I am writing an article for my website, to be published on this Thursday, regarding my views and the views of others who are offended by this text. Before I do that, I would appreciate it if you could answer a few questions and present your intentions for that copy.

Who are your customers? Who do you hope to attract with the text? What percentage of your customers are women? Have you received any feedback, positive or negative, about the texts you place with images? What sort of joke or humor is this intended to be? Are you concerned at all that women may find this offensive? Are you concerned at all that Disney may be offended by the explicit sexualizing of their property, since Disney bought Marvel?

If you could address any of these issues, or speak further on the subject, sometime tomorrow (February 3, 2010) I can incorporate your views into my article.

Thank you, I appreciate your attention to this.

Sincerely,

Sigrid Ellis

As of 8:00 Wednesday night, as I’m finishing this essay for tomorrow’s posting, I still haven’t heard from SuperHeroStuff.com. But Kelly did receive a response to her email of protest. The employee who replied apologized. More importantly, the marketing copy has been changed. If you go look at the T-shirt on their site now, you see this:

“Made from 50% Cotton, 50% Polyester, this cream colored, woman’s T-Shirt features purposely faded images of your favorite female Marvel comic book characters! There’s the Black Widow, spying on you! There’s the Invisible Woman, launching invisibility at you! There’s the Scarlet Witch, unmaking your reality, and there’s Hellcat…wait. Hellcat!!? Anyways, this tee is absolutely for you, female comic book fan! “

Well. Look at that. Moreover, much of the rest of the Women’s T-shirt line at SuperHeroStuff.com has been altered in the last twenty-four hours. Nearly every Women’s T-shirt I looked at now has copy marketed to women. To female customers, buying the Batman shirt because they love Batman, buying the Catwoman shirt because they like to feel sexy. In the interests of honesty, I still am not compelled by the marketing text — for instance, I don’t need my boyfriend to buy me my favorite Flash T-shirt. But that’s okay — SuperHerostuff.com is now trying to sell their Women’s T-shirts to women. To women as agents, or at least consumers with money, in their own right.

Thank you, SuperHeroStuff.com, for responding positively to customer feedback. I appreciate it.

Email: sigrid @ fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: sigridellis

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments. But this week we are making a very special announcement in lieu of the Q&A. The 82nd Academy Awards nominations were announced earlier this morning; now we have invited a special guest to announce the first ever Fantastic Comic Book Award nominations! From the pages of Spider-Man, the lovely model and actress, Mary Jane Watson!

Hi there, I am so excited to be here announcing the first ever Fantastic Comic Book Award nominees. There are four categories for individual characters and an ensemble award. The winners will be announced Tuesday March 9 after a month of open voting. The Fantastic Fangirls and I hope everyone will participate and come out to support our favorite characters! Now without further adieu, here are the nominees.

In the category Best Character in a Supporting Role, Male the nominees are:

Colonel Kane in Detective Comics
Ken Hale/Gorilla Man in Agents of Atlas
Luke Cage in New Avengers
Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Ms. Marvel
Ragdoll in Secret Six

Well, I know who I’m rooting for, but good luck, fellas! In the category Best Character in a Supporting Role, Female we had a tie so there are six nominees. The lovely supporting ladies are:

Barbara Gordon/Oracle in Batgirl
Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel in New Avengers
Jessica Jones/Jewel in New Avengers
Karla Sofen/Ms. Marvel in Dark Avengers
Layla Miller in X-Factor
Pepper Potts in Invincible Iron Man

That’ll be tough! Next, in the category Best Character in a Leading Role, Male the nominees are:

Conner Kent/Kon-El/Superboy in Adventure Comics
James Barnes/Captain America in Captain America
Jimmy Woo in Agents of Atlas
Norman Osborn/Iron Patriot in Dark Avengers
Tony Stark/Iron Man in Invincible Iron Man

Wow, what a year, huh? Okay the last list of individuals, Best Character in a Leading Role, Female. The nominees are:

Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird in New Avengers: Reunion
Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman in Spider-Woman
Kate Kane/Batwoman in Detective Comics
Rikki Barnes/Nomad in Nomad: Girl Without a World
Stephanie Brown/Batgirl in Batgirl

Okay! We at the Fantastic Comic Book Awards want to give a round of applause for all of those performances. The final category honors ensembles and we have eight top vote getters. In the category of Best Ensemble, the nominees are:

Agents of Atlas
Dark Avengers
Green Lantern Corps
Invincible Iron Man
New Avengers
New Mutants
Secret Six
X-Factor

That’s it! Thanks for coming. Make sure you vote and come back March 9 for the announcement! Have a great day!

For this entirely made up Award, a total of 91 individuals and 18 teams were nominated by and voted on by a committee consisting of the four Fantastic Fangirls and six guests. Everyone is invited to vote for the final winners. To vote send an email to anika@fantasticfangirls.org with the Subject Line Comic Book Award Ballot. Vote for ONE individual character or team in each category. You may vote in any combination of categories but only one ballot per person will be counted so please do not email until you are ready and please send only one email. You will receive a confirmation email when your vote is counted. Please be patient and give me 2 days before emailing that you have not received the confirmation. Votes will be accepted through Sunday March 7. We will post reminders!

Anyone and everyone is encouraged to vote; invite your friends and readers and feel free to campaign on your own blog (remember to link back) and Twitter. Do not feel you have to have read all these comics in order to participate, though we encourage everyone to pick up the books. This is a popularity contest, a fun way to honor some of our favorite characters. Please remember it is all for fun and save the drama for the movies! Comment or email with any questions. Thank you!

Posted by Anika

This week Marvel Comics released a promotional image of their upcoming return to the Heroic Age.

It is, in my opinion, a highly marketed image. Meaning I bet it has less to do with the actual line-up of the New New Avengers Throwback Team, and a lot to do with getting us all talking about What Might Happen in May. My practical side believes this. My in-love-with-the-current-New-Avengers side doesn’t like that picture at all. Of nine characters only two are on MY team.

I don’t make Heroclix teams with winning in mind. For instance, in a game I recently played, the parameters were simple: 6 characters, 600 points, my team made up of Marvel characters only — my husband Christian would counter with DC. I build teams with characters I like best so mine was made up of Ms. Marvel, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones … and I had 49 points left over. Well, Veteran Havok from the Mutant Mayhem set is 44 points so Alex Summers got to hang out with the Avengers for a bit. We decided on a scenario where all but one of the team was imprisoned and needed to be released before joining the fray, so I gave Havok that job. Which made me imagine it as a comic:

The Avengers are imprisoned on an alien space station and only Captain of the Starjammers HAVOK can save them! Don’t miss this one-shot crossover event written by Jeff Parker with art by Paul Pelletier! AVENGERS: LOCKDOWN available February.

Okay, it’s funny to me. I bet my other Fangirls would be all over that! Actually, it is a space story even I could get excited about (Dear Marvel — let’s get on this!). And that is why Heroclix is so fun, win or lose.

But I do win sometimes. In the above scenario I not only won, all but one of my team (you guessed it, Havok) was still standing at the end. Now, my Ms. Marvel is widely regarded as the second-best figure in play (first place goes to Skrull Ms. Marvel, but I would never choose to play a Skrull over the real thing) so, in theory, I had the advantage. Coupled with Iron Man, they are a deadly duo and with Spidey and Jess backing them up with Perplex (+1 to attack, damage, defense or movement) they made short work of Christian’s (in this particular case admittedly thrown together) team.

So he wanted a rematch, except upping the ante. He’d play a themed team, too, and chose the Dark JLA (like the Dark Avengers but in the DCU). DC characters generally have higher point values than Marvel characters and especially to build a team made up of the Dark cousins of Superman or Wonder Woman required more points. So, 1000 points, no character limit, I’m still Marvel and he’s still DC. His Dark JLA was led by Lex Luthor (Batman), Mary Marvel (Wonder Woman), and Black Adam (Superman). I kept my winning team and added Polaris (Havok appreciated it) and all five Stepford Cuckoos. My reasoning was I love the Cuckoos and I hardly ever get to play all five together because I hardly ever get to play a game with such a high point value. But if you know anything about Heroclix you know that five Cuckoos, in theory, is another big advantage.

Let me explain. At the end of the day you can build the winningest team possible and still lose because of a few bad dice rolls. Which makes characters with the Probability Control ability (re-roll one die roll each turn) very attractive. My husband runs the Scarlet Witch whenever he plays a Marvel or mixed team because she is his favorite Marvel heroine and she has Probability Control. So do the Cuckoos. So properly positioned, my team could get to re-roll bad rolls four times each turn (my fifth Cuckoo, Esme, does not have Probability Control; she is more of a Mini-Emma Frost, powers wise, and actually didn’t do much more than follow Iron Man around just in case he needed someone to take a hit for him). My Cuckoos could also force my husband to re-roll good (for him!) rolls four times each turn. So, yes, that’s an advantage.

This time, Christian went after Ms. Marvel with a vengeance and even her Leap Climbing boyfriend (Peter Parker) couldn’t save her from being knocked out. But it all came down to the rolls of the dice and my Cuckoos helped the team fight back without her and again I was victorious. But this post isn’t meant to be about how I win (and for the record, I get beat 2/3 of the time). It is about how I play.

I play the characters over the abilities. My Havok will always, always jump in front of Polaris if she is set up to be hit, regardless of how many clicks of life either has. My Spider-Man loves to run (swing!) into danger. My Iron Man and Ms. Marvel are aggressive (Avengers Assemble!) while my Magneto hangs back (to pontificate on Mutant Rights and Moral Superiority). And my Batman is constantly leaving teammates behind to take a hit for him, believing, usually rightly, that he is the more valuable piece. But he’s a real jerk about it.

And my in-character moments are not limited to actions I can control. Mystique has the ability to Shapechange, which allows her player a roll whenever she is targeted; on a 5 or 6 the attack cannot be made. In one memorable encounter my Luke Cage moved in to attack Mystique, Christian cried out that she transformed into Jessica Jones — but he missed the roll and Luke saw through the disguise declaring he knows his woman, woman!. My next attack came from Carol, but she has Severe Mystique Issues and this time Christian made the roll, saying she transformed into whoever Carol is in love with. I told him she could stay Jessica and ran Carol off to attack someone else.

The end result of all this is no matter who wins or how the game plays out, it makes for a fun story and that makes for a fun game. And sometimes the story is so fun it turns into a Comic I Wish I Could Read, like the above idea starring the Starjammers and the Avengers. Imagine if our favorite industry creators played a game and based the plot of their next comic on the outcome. I mean, sometimes I read an issue and think that is the only explanation! But it wouldn’t bother me if it was true; it would make me happy. Everyone’s creative process is different. People, professional or not, are inspired by music, art, hair styles, news feeds, rain clouds, toddlers’ mispronunciations, Twitter feeds, LOLcats, boots, condensation on a glass, celebrities, neighbors, movies, quotes, umbrellas, bus stops, reality, fantasy, comic books and board games. And everything in between. My interaction with comic books is not limited to the solicitations from Diamond each month — comic book culture is much broader and more interactive than one traditionally thinks. So whatever the final line-up of the New New Avengers Throwback Team actually is, I can play my own line-up of the characters I love best, and I can make up their stories. And just as Peter Parker is now a mainstay on my Avengers team (thank you, Brian Bendis), and sometimes gets to date Carol Danvers (thank you, Brian Reed), I expect the New Heroic Age, no matter how it enfolds, will inspire me, too.

Posted by Anika
email: anika@fantasticfangirls.org
twitter: magnetgirl

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

What legacy character would you invent, if given the chance?

Anika

I want Wonder Woman to be a Sorority Girl.

No, really. Keep reading. Wonder Woman is a great symbol but as a character she falters. Mostly because to actually falter, to show humanity (as opposed to being told how wonderfully human she is), would take away from her symbolism as the premiere female superhero (let’s be honest, Marvel has been trying to “get a Wonder Woman” for years). When she does show it, people cry OOC. Wonder Woman is, quite literally, a goddess. This is not limited, even, to Diana — all the Wonders are steeped in Greek Mythology. And I love Greek Mythology and I love Wonder Woman, but that pedestal she’s on does make it difficult to identify with her.

Now, the stereotypical sorority is an exclusive clique with university funding. But even if that was true, it’s still more welcoming than Themyscira. And the stereotypical Sorority Girl is pretty, vapid, ditzy, silly — a throwback to the society girls that drove Sylvia Plath mad because she was one and wanted more. But the reality is, in order to be accepted to a sorority a young woman must be accomplished in multiple fields. Academics and athletics and social standing. She lives on a pedestal but she’s a real girl. And that would be a great new spin on Wonder Woman.

Caroline

I want Hope, the costar of the current Cable comic, to be the new Phoenix. Now, I’m totally cheating here, because (a) I’m not inventing the character and (b) it looks likely that she will turn out to be some kind of Phoenix host. But there are a lot of ways that could play out, and the prevailing rumor is that she’ll turn out, in some way that makes sense by the relative definition of “sense” that prevails in X-Men comics, to actually be the (sort of) deceased original X-Men team member Jean Grey.

I don’t want that to happen. Don’t get me wrong, Jean is my favorite character in all of comics and I would like to see her back in action as soon as possible. But I also like Hope. She’s an interesting girl. Over the past twenty-something issues of Cable, we’ve watched her grow up into an interesting, unique person. I’d hate for the fallout of the impending Second Coming event to be that she is “really” someone else. How is that even possible? Who we are is in large part the sum of our experiences, and Hope’s experiences so far have been a lot different than Jean Grey’s were. If the writers arbitrarily tell us that Hope is Jean, that doesn’t mean anything without Jean’s experiences. And if Jean’s memories are eventually used to overwrite Hope’s, then this new and interesting and lively character will basically be destroyed. Sounds counterproductive.

Instead, I’d like to see the Phoenix force be used in a way that has often been flirted with in the past (especially with Rachel Summers/Grey, Jean’s alternate dimension daughter), as a way to pass on a legacy-based identity. I’d love to see Rachel and Jean back in the mix, too, but I hope Marvel takes advantage of the opportunity to use a brand new character to approach the Phoenix idea in a different way. Without the baggage of trauma and insanity that’s inevitably been involved when the Grey women approach the cosmic power, I’d like to see Hope discover a new, positive way to channel that power. Then she can use it to help her predecessors.

Jennifer

I love Tony Stark. I do. But let’s face it: a rich white dude who becomes an electrical engineering expert and later uses his massive wealth to fund the production of superhero robot suits is… not exactly an underdog. Sure, he’s naturally smart, but his intelligence and interests were encouraged from an early age largely because of those factors of his birth — his wealth, his race, and his gender. Even if he wasn’t a genius, he’d have had a pretty good chance of becoming who he became.

So what I want in a legacy character is a new Iron Man — or, more specifically, a new Iron Woman. As we’ve discussed on Fantastic Fangirls before, women in comics are rarely celebrated for their intelligence, and even more rarely for their intelligence in the sciences. So I want a woman who is every bit as intelligent as Tony Stark, and is able to build her own suit with her own brain and hands — not take a suit as a gift from Tony, as the women who’ve held the role before (Bethany Cabe and Pepper Potts) have. I want this woman to have succeeded despite the pressure placed on girls to avoid the sciences and remain in the more “feminine” disciplines of the liberal arts. And while we’re at it, I want her to be Hispanic, or black, from a working class background. I want a girl for whom all the societal odds were against her, who somehow managed nonetheless to get a top college education and craft a superhero identity and powers with her knowledge and brilliance alone. I also want this girl to be absolutely altruistic — not secretly evil, as most “as smart as Tony Stark” characters have been portrayed over the years. I want her to be a hero, an equal of Tony’s in all ways — and NOT a love interest. They could team up, or she could succeed him in the role. Either way, that’s the kind of story I’d love to read.

Oh, and her suit of armor wouldn’t have breast-shaped cones on its chest. She’d be way too practical for that.

Sigrid

My new legacy character is Karla Nilsson. Adopted as an infant by a pair of college professors in Austin, Texas, Karla had a happy childhood. She did well in school, excelled in junior rodeo, and competed in gymnastics and archery. As a teenager, Karla set about trying to find her birth parents in Mexico. She found that her mother had been killed trying to cross the border. Karla became a crusader for the rights and protections of illegal entrants to the United States. By the time she was eighteen she had managed to offend a local human trafficker, who threatened her. Karla got the man arrested. After his arrest she was attacked by his men and badly beaten. As she healed, Karla resolved to continue her fight. Using her skills as an archer, gymnast, and equestrian, Karla began harassing local criminals. She began calling herself The Huntress.

Karla’s efforts brought her into contact with The Question. Renee sized her up and called Helena Bertinelli to tell her about this girl using the Huntress name. Helena, with an assist from Oracle, flew to Austin and met up with Karla. After an initial acrimonious and somewhat hostile series of interactions Helena agreed to help Karla — she and the other Birds of Prey would provide some training and equipment if Karla agreed to call herself something else. Karla settled on Cazadora — “Huntress” in Spanish.

So what about you? What legacy character would you invent, if given the chance?

Posted by Jennifer

I blame Adam Lambert.

Ok, that’s not entirely fair. The openly gay American Idol runner-up isn’t actually responsible for my current predicament. In fact, he honestly has nothing to do with the subject at hand. But in a strange way, Adam Lambert is responsible for my newfound appreciation for a character I never thought I’d enjoy: Wolverine’s sociopathic son Daken, current member of the Dark Avengers.

When Daken debuted in the pages of Wolverine Origins, my eyes just about rolled out of my head. He was Wolverine, but taller and crazier and actually Japanese! He had a mohawk and tattoos all over his body and black-painted fingernails! He hated his dad! But instead of fronting an emo band, he was starring in a comic book every month and contributing absolutely nothing new or interesting to it. He existed only to give Logan even more unnecessary angst, as he coped with the knowledge that his son, who he’d presumed dead with the death of his pregnant Japanese wife, was alive and had been trained since childhood to be a psychotic amoral killer. He was Damian Wayne and the Ultimate Red Skull rolled into one, and I can’t think of a character type that’s less interesting to me.

Then something happened. Daken, previously confined to Wolverine Origins, was recruited by Norman Osborn to join the Dark Avengers as his mock Wolverine. His induction into that team lead to his debut as the star of the core Wolverine book, now retitled Dark Wolverine. Author Marjorie Liu joined Daken’s creator Daniel Way as the new book’s co-writer. And Daken transformed from a sociopathic brat with claws and daddy issues to a refined Machiavellian schemer who used pheromones to sexually manipulate everyone around him.

Daken had been portrayed as a sexual manipulator once before, in Wolverine Origins #11. There, he manipulated a girl he was dating into catching him flirting with a man in a coffeeshop, a chain of events that allowed him to murder both conquests. But it wasn’t until Dark Wolverine and Liu’s entrance that Daken’s sexual manipulation became his default tactic. Suddenly, he was propositioning men and women both to get secret codes and enter restricted areas, and he was playing his game on his teammates as well, flirting with just about everyone and simultaneously seducing both Karla Sofen (Moonstone/Ms. Marvel) and Bullseye.

On the one hand, this is problematic. The idea of the depraved bisexual is a long-standing trope in fiction that paints actual bisexual people unfairly as selfish, promiscuous manipulators. I would not call Daken a triumph for LGBT representation; if anything, he’s a step backward. His sexuality is practical rather than physical or emotional; he manipulates people of both genders because he can, not because he’s actually attracted to anyone. As a sociopath, he can’t be said to have any real sexuality to speak of.

However, Marvel comics — and X-Men comics in particular — have a long, inglorious history with the depraved bisexual trope. One of the clearest signs that a character has gone evil in an old Claremont X-Men comic is their tendency to wear BDSM costumes and throw innuendo at adversaries of both genders. Mystique is perhaps the queen of this trope, but everyone from Madelyne Pryor to Illyana Rasputin has been affected at some point or another. In fact, Claremont is still writing this story, as demonstrated by Illyana’s recent X-Men Forever appearance as a “Black Magik” version of herself who attempts to seduce and convert Kitty Pryde to her evil cause. But in all of these cases, the character in question is a woman, and her seductions, as portrayed on the page, are intended to titillate the presumably straight male reader.

Daken is not a woman. And Bullseye, the character most frequently threatened with seduction and controlled like a puppet by pheromones throughout Dark Wolverine, is not a woman, either. He is, in fact, a violent sociopath himself, and a very masculine one. I don’t ever condone sexual violence in comics, but I can’t deny that the manipulation of a character like Bullseye is a fascinating and much-needed subversion of the usual trope of female victimization.

All this brings me back to Adam Lambert. At the last American Music Awards, Lambert shocked the audience by performing a risque dance routine to his song “For Your Entertainment,” an explicit celebration of BDSM. During the performance, he led male dancers on leashes, pushed another male dancer’s face to his groin in a simulation of oral sex, and passionately kissed his male keyboardist — all while being groped by other dancers of both genders. A storm of controversy followed, with the conservative media crying out about the inappropriateness of the performance, and when clips were shown, the “objectionable” segments of the dance, including the keyboardist kiss, were blurred out.

Some smartly pointed out that the same-sex awards show kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna of several years ago had been aired on these same networks without blurring, highlighting a double standard in the media reaction. In fact, I’d hazard to say that if Britney Spears had given the exact same performance, the controversy would have been greatly reduced, if not utterly nonexistent — because Britney’s version would have titillated the all-powerful straight male audience. But Adam Lambert made those people uncomfortable. And it’s through this kind of uncomfortable confrontation that progress is made.

My new appreciation for Daken stems directly from my realization that he is the Adam Lambert of comics. Though maybe not always progressive, or always appropriate (or, frankly, always deserving of attention), Daken challenges fans’ expectations and makes them uncomfortable in a good way. In their quest to buy everything X-Men-related, or Dark Reign-related, or Wolverine-related, conservative fanboys have been confronted with a book starring a man who is actively seducing Bullseye, flirting with male H.A.M.M.E.R. employees, and accusing Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm of a gay affair. And this man is the son of Wolverine, Marvel’s very portrait of gruff hyper-masculinity. Daken has gone from cliched to subversive, and I largely credit Marjorie Liu — author of X-Men tie-in novel Dark Mirror, which is subversive itself in its use of a gender-swapping plot device — with the transition.

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m excited to see what happens with Daken next.

By Jennifer Smith
E-mail: Jennifer@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: throughthebrush

by Sigrid

A meme went around LiveJournal recently, one that is deserving of wider attention. It started out as “Chromatic Marvel,” but in the nature of these things, it expanded and grew.

Some of you might not be familiar with LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, and the way things spread in those corners of the internet. It’s like Mafia Wars on Facebook, only spreading ideas and conversations and debates instead of a game app. In this case, bloggers re-cast first the Marvel Universe, and then other fictional universes, using only people of color.

I’ll let the results speak for themselves. (Note: Many of these journals will have a warning for adult content. None of these posts have specifically adult content, unless guys in swimsuits posing as Namor count.)

Handyhunter’s Chromatic Marvel.

Michelle Rodriguez as Elektra

Bossymarmalade’s Chromatic Marvel.

Vanessa Williams as Emma Frost

Liviapenn’s Chromatic Marvel.

Vertigo’s Lucifer, re-cast by Nextian.

Grace Park as Mazikeen

And, Second Batgirl’s Chromatic X-Men.

Moving out of comics:

Entwashian’s Chromatic Buffy.

Rosario Dawson as Faith

And, spreading and changing as these things do, Trascendenza re-imagined Star Trek with an all-female, all people of color cast, as well as select DC Comics characters.

Wanda Sykes as McCoy

So, just to review, a handful of geeks with access to IMDb have come up with non-white casts for at least three different Marvel Universe movie franchises, plus some DC, Buffy, and Star Trek. The next time someone says that people of color aren’t cast in geek franchises because there aren’t enough qualified actors for the roles, feel free to link them to any of these.

ETA: Since posting, we’ve been alerted to two more Chromatic Castings.

Katarin has a DCU re-casting, here.

And Poisonivory has another DCU re-cast, here.

Email: sigrid @ fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: sigridellis

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

In light of S.W.O.R.D. being cancelled after 5 issues and Birds of Prey being relaunched, we want to know: What cancelled series would you like to have back?

Anika

Brian Reed’s Ms. Marvel is set to end with an “over-sized final issue” at the end of February. If you pay any attention to my posts, my blog or my Twitter, you already know what I think about that. Ms. Marvel is my favorite super hero and Ms. Marvel is my favorite super hero comic. I know Carol Danvers’ story won’t end with that over-sized issue. I don’t believe her solo series career will end with that over-sized issue. But whatever happens to Carol post Reed’s Ms. Marvel, I will still miss it as it is.

The series is hardly perfect, but in my own little contrary way, that’s almost why I love it. It’s very Carol Danvers to be a bumpy road of a series. And in those not-so-perfect, not-quite-50 issues, Reed has given me a bumpy road and a Carol who rides it. Starting just after The House of M, Ms. Marvel’s Carol goes through Civil War, The Initiative, Secret Invasion, and Dark Reign, and into Siege (I’m kinda tired just reading that, Marvel). She fights, she flirts, she dates, she dies, she drinks, she gains a cat, she gains a sidekick, she gains a boyfriend, she loses her boyfriend, she loses her sidekick, she loses her cat, she loses her home, she loses her friends, she loses herself, she finds herself, she finds her cat, she dates some more, she fights some more, and every time she’s knocked down she stands up ready to start all over. And that’s barely half of all that happened.

I started reading Ms. Marvel because I was already a Carol Danvers fan. But as Ms. Marvel winds down, I already miss it, because now I am a Carol Danvers fanatic.

Caroline

If you ask me what single comic book title is most responsible for my falling in love with the Marvel Universe, I could tell you lots of lies, or I could name Fabian Nicieza’s Cable & Deadpool. This series about a supersoldier with Messianic delusions and the brain damaged mercenary to whom, for incomprehensible reasons, he is deeply emotionally attached, was my first (and, in many ways, still best) exposure to the full depth, breadth, and deep-rooted insanity of the Marvel U.* The Civil War tie-in issues (with a “registered” Deadpool signing up for an officially sanctioned team, while Cable explained the disadvantages of registration, via the use of pie charts), were just about the only ones to do for that ‘event’ what it sorely needed: sending it up and taking its implications seriously at the same time.

I miss this series badly. I miss this series every damn day, especially when I look over in the X-Men books and see Cyclops trying to create a Utopia on a floating metal island. I think, “Cable already did that, man. And it was awesome.”

*If they ever publish a C&D omnibus, I would like for this quotation to appear on the cover.

Jennifer

Most cancelled books at least have time to tell a couple of stories before they’re unceremoniously placed on the chopping block. Sometimes, though, as in the case of the newest casualty, S.W.O.R.D., the books only last a handful of issues, a single story arc at most, before cancellation, leaving miles of untapped potential behind. That’s why my most-missed book is Jeff Parker’s 5-issue Exiles.

Caroline already wrote eloquently about that book’s cancellation, but for me the absence still stings. The book took an old concept — different versions of popular characters from various universes become a team to save alternate realities — and made it sparkle by showcasing his abundant skill at characterization and dialogue. I fell in love with the book’s versions of Beast, the (Scarlet) Witch, Polaris, Forge, Blink, and Black Panther, and I loved seeing them interact with other characters as they skipped through realities. I long to read more about these characters’ adventures (particularly the girls, by far the most powerful and competent members of the team), and while the final issue of the series did tie up some loose ends and give context to the characters’ actions and histories, I wish Parker had had more time to spread out, and flesh out, that information.

Sigrid

Matt Fraction and Barry Kitson’s The Order.

Kitson and Fraction took the concept of the Fifty States Initiative — a superhero team for every state, regulated and supported by your state government — and built a team of new characters that fit seamlessly into the Marvel U. Beautifully rendered by Kitson, The Order remarked on the nature of celebrity, on the nature of heroism, and on the purpose of government in an age of hyper-scrutiny. It had one of my favorite new characters, publicist Kate Kildare. Kate’s job was to make sure that The Order was perceived to be doing good — actual do-gooding was not her problem.

In addition to examining the sorts of problems a state-sponsored superhero team might have in the world of today’s paparazzi, Fraction also asked the age-old question of why the heck a person would ever sign up to be a hero. The Order’s powers were temporary, given to them for a year by science. People had to choose this life, and the reasons they bring are a microcosm of the origin stories from sixty years of comic books. The heroes of The Order are deeply flawed people whose heroism is most evident in the fact that they managed to get to where they are in life.

The Order was cancelled after ten issues, but the characters scattered to fit into the Marvel Universe. I would love to see them back in their own title. The lineup could be slightly altered as long as the premise stayed in place — that heroing is hard, but being seen to be heroing is harder. That your worst enemy is the press who can turn the voters against you. I’d also insist on Henry Hellrung and Kate Kildare to be part of the book, with guest appearances from Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Namor.

So what about you? What cancelled series would you like to have back?

Posted by Jennifer

It’s no secret that I’m a Captain America fan. But while my love for Captain America was kindled by Ed Brubaker’s run on the title, coupled with Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers, I don’t think I truly appreciated the character until I discovered J.M. DeMatteis’ work from the early 1980s. Brubaker and Bendis may have taught me to love Cap, but in issues 267 through 300 DeMatteis taught me to love Steve Rogers as well. The run, which is frequently overlooked and not currently collected in trade, featured a Steve Rogers who was, for the first time in his history, truly living a civilian life in his private identity in addition to his work as Captain America. Steve had a civilian apartment, a civilian job as a commercial artist, civilian friends, and his first real civilian girlfriend, fabulous Brooklyn glassblower Bernie Rosenthal. Steve still had his fair share of superheroic adventures, but the scenes of his private life helped to give them weight, and give readers a sense of the man behind the mask.

So when I heard that J.M. DeMatteis was going to write a comic for IDW based partially on a scrapped idea from his Captain America run, I was more than a little intrigued. The Life and Times of Savior 28 promised to tell a story of a Captain America figure who suddenly turns to pacifism and is assassinated for those newfound beliefs. That had been DeMatteis’ plan, originally – to have Steve Rogers realize that violence isn’t always the answer, and to have him assassinated as a result. Marvel, put off by such a drastic storytelling turn, nixed the idea, and DeMatteis left the book.

But now, over twenty years later, the world is all the better for it, because Savior 28 is the story Captain America could never have been. When DC denied Alan Moore the rights to the Charlton characters for Watchmen, Moore came back with a masterpiece that never would have worked had he been restrained by the limitations of licensed characters. Likewise, DeMatteis never could have told a story like Savior 28 with Captain America, a character whose long history and presence within the Marvel Universe wouldn’t have allowed for a complete conversion to pacifism. The Marvel U is, to be blunt, founded on the idea that beating up supervillains is the ultimate expression of heroism. If that universe’s moral center, the character all others look up to, were to question that foundation, the universe would fall apart. Either all superheroes would have to become pacifists, effectively destroying the genre, or they’d continue to fight and be branded as anti-heroes or outright villains as a result.

Or, as is the case in Savior 28, the fictional universe would have to rise up to oppose pacifism as an option – raising incredibly sticky moral questions for the audience.

It’s this moral question from which Savior 28 begins. The assassination is telegraphed on the cover of issue one, and the hero is dead by page 6. This is not a story about a man grappling with the idea of pacifism after a lifetime of violence, culminating in his tragic demise. It is, rather, the story of that man’s attempt to spread the peace he suddenly believes in, and the ways in which a society used to superheroic protection would react to such a message. Told largely in flashback by the narrator – who also happens to be Savior 28’s conflicted former sidekick – the 5-issue story paints a picture of a universe much like Marvel’s or DC’s, but without a status quo that needs to be preserved indefinitely. As a result, all bets are off, and the inevitable questions the scenario raises are explored with all due complexity.

Savior 28 also benefits from having a completely original character as its hero. While the idea may have come from a Captain America story, and the patriotic costume and World War II origin remain, Savior 28’s alter ego James Smith is an altogether different man than Steve Rogers. He’s an alcoholic and an egotist, savoring the spotlight more than he’d ever admit – in many ways, the complete opposite of Steve. But that makes his transformation to pacifism all the more interesting, because he was never a paragon of virtue to begin with. When he starts to preach peace, his motives are as questionable as his ideals – does he believe what he says, or does he simply crave the attention it brings? It’s an important question, and one that never would have worked had DeMatteis not labored to craft the brilliantly layered characterization that drew me to his writing in the first place.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Mike Cavallaro’s gorgeous art. DeMatteis has said that he believes the story languished on the backburner of his mind for so long because it was waiting for the right artist to come along, and I can’t imagine a better fit than Cavallaro. His work, with its clean lines and exaggerated expressions, creates a Jack Kirby-esque look that fits perfectly with the series’ tone and sense of historic resonance. The backgrounds are detailed, the layouts dynamic, the storytelling clear, and the crowd scenes full of expressive individuals. And perhaps most impressively, Cavallaro manages to include images of real political figures in the story which look neither traced nor cartoony; the politicians are all instantly recognizable, but they look absolutely natural standing next to the book’s fictional characters. (A quick look at Cavallaro’s website further demonstrates the artist’s incredible talent and versatility; I hope to see him on many more titles in the future.)

All of this combines to create a truly original deconstruction of the superhero genre, at a time when it seems every angle of analysis has been done ten times before. Though squeezed by economic necessity from a planned 6 issues to 5, The Life and Times of Savior 28 is a complete story worthy of any comic reader’s shelf, and it’s now available in trade. Pick it up, check it out, and see for yourself the story that had me bursting with excitement for the better part of last year.

By Jennifer Smith
E-mail: Jennifer@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: throughthebrush

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

If you could own one piece of original comic-related art, what would it be? Price is no object.

Anika

During the opening credits of Spider-Man 2 the whole story of Spider-Man is told via paintings by Alex Ross. No voiceovers, no word bubbles, just the swelling music of Danny Elfman and art. It’s beautiful. Stunning. The very best recap ever. I remember watching that credit sequence for the first time in the theater and being more moved by Peter’s story told in those images than I had been watching the first film. Particularly this one, the one I would choose to own:

I love this picture so much that when I first read “With a miserable gesture, Harry got up, turned his back on Ginny and Dumbledore’s tomb, and walked away around the lake.” (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Chapter 30; J.K. Rowling) I thought of it. To me, this picture represents something much grander than ink on paper and has come to mean much more than the scene or story it depicts. It represents an idea and that is a piece of art worth having.

Caroline

I don’t really buy comic-book art, not because I don’t like the stuff but because if I started, I’m afraid I’d never stop. I would happily wallpaper my living room with Gabriel Hardman’s Agents of Atlas pages, but I’m not sure I could pick out one piece with special meaning to me.

Although. . .I can tell you the only time I bought two copies of a comic book, just so I could have one to put on the wall above my workspace. It’s the last page of a certain issue of John Cassady and Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men (I list the artist first there, but I list the writer as well, because the story has as much to do with why I love the page as the art does.) It involves a certain X-Man who is holding a weapon and is not wearing his trademark eyewear. And if you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t — I’m not gonna ruin the reveal.

Jennifer

I had a few answers in mind for this, but most of the pages I love most either depend heavily on the story being told — which necessitates the presence of word balloons — or are only my favorite because of a single panel or two, like this gorgeous Paolo Rivera page of the original 5 X-Men fromMythos: X-Men. (It’s the first art print I ever bought from an artist.) But, ultimately, I think my answer is this page, from the first issue of Young Avengers:

First of all, Jim Cheung’s art is simply gorgeous. But more than that, I love how this page encompasses so much of what I love about the Marvel U. There’s Captain America and Iron Man, so close and intimate that Steve is willing to trust his life to Tony’s boot thrusters. I came into comics around the time of Civil War, but it was comics like this that showed what Steve and Tony’s friendship had been like before that gave that storyline meaning. Then there’s Jessica Jones, perhaps Brian Michael Bendis’ best creation, being asked to take part in a conversation that she doesn’t feel worthy of — a situation symptomatic of her entire life and her low self esteem in the face of others’ admiration. All of this is conveyed in the image without the help of the speech bubbles, and it’s the perfect combination of pinup and story to hang on any wall. If it was available and within my price range, I’d grab it in an instant.

Sigrid

I’m stuck between the things that have emotional meaning for me and the comic art that is the prettiest. I don’t want to give up the photocopy I have of the original two-page story Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson, and Todd Klein made up in two hours at the CBLDF Fiddler’s Green convention in 2004. I have that framed and hanging in my room. I was there in the panel when they made it up and I do not want to be parted from it. On the other hand, I would . . . . do a lot, I suspect, give a lot, to have any page of J.H. Williams’s Detective Comics. I’d give more for a page with Batwoman on it, but I’d take any page. I also tried to get a page of John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men, any page with Kitty on it, but that . . . didn’t come through.

At the moment, I think the piece of original comic-related art I am happiest to have in my possession is from Barry Kitson, though. While at Baltimore Comic-Con he offered to let me and Anika look through his sketchbook. In the sketchbook he had a small drawing of a female figure I have decided is Red Riding Hood. Mr. Kitson was extremely generous and that sketch is now in my room, framed. This makes me the happiest not only because it is good art, and not only because it is of Red Riding Hood, but because the entire experience reminds me of the generosity and friendliness I’ve encountered from comics professionals.

So what about you? If you could own one piece of original comic-related art, what would it be? Price is no object.

by Sigrid

There’s a knack to telling universal stories through specific characters. A knack to capturing a common set of emotions or perceptions within a concrete frame. If a writer missteps too far in the general direction the story is a bland re-treading of utterly familiar ground. Get too specific and the reader is shut out of the tale. Or worse yet — and commonly in indie comics — the reader is made a voyeur of the writer’s life. Mercury falls squarely in the sweet middle of those extremes — it’s a fable, a fairy tale, a myth of community and family and trust told in extremely specific times and places.

Spoilers for Hope Larson’s graphic novel, Mercury, follow.

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