The Four Color Media Monitor

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner comments on DC's turning Batwoman, Kathy Kane, into a lesbian protagonist, a step that all too obviously has shock value and sales-via-controversy written all over it, and makes some good points that I have to agree with:

I haven’t been a regular comic book reader in a decade and stopped collecting seriously almost twenty years ago. Still, I find this kind of thing annoying.

I enjoyed the post-Crisis revamping of the D.C. universe in the late 1980s, where Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, and other characters who had been around since the late 1930s/early 1940s were updated. In that case, though, they all remained true to their original conception.

Conversely, I hate radical redesigns of established characters. For example, I almost invariably dislike movie adaptations of television series because they tend to tarnish the originals. While it was a good action flick, “Mission Impossible’s” turning Jim Phelps into a villain for shock effect was an insult to fans of the series. They even do it with comedies. The “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Dukes of Hazzard” movies turned the Clampetts and Dukes into caricatures.

If DC thinks they need more gay superheroes, then invent some. Don’t take a 60-year-old character and reinvent her as something she wasn’t.

And that pretty much sums up what the problem is with the big two, DC and Marvel, today: they've been tampering with an alarming lack of shame with long established characters, apparently because it's easier than to just create some new ones who can fill the roles of those who get the tinker-treatment. It's easier to turn Doctor Light into a rapist and ruin him in retrospect than it is to just come up with a new villain who can fill that role, even from a more realistic viewpoint. When Denny O'Neil wrote Green Lantern/Green Arrow in the early 1970s, what made it work well was that he refrained from using costumed villains in human interest stories where they didn't belong, and instead used more rank-and-file street villains, which made the stories more believable.

There's also the problem with trying much too hard to appeal to a more "diverse" audience. From the AP story:

The “52″ series is a collaboration of four acclaimed writers, with one episode per week for one year. The comics will introduce other diverse characters as the story plays out. “This is not just about having a gay character,” DiDio said. “We’re trying for overall diversity in the DC universe. We have strong African-American, Hispanic and Asian characters. We’re trying to get a better cross-section of our readership and the world.”

Yep, I figured as much. Since they cannot or will not bring in writers who can conjure up an appealing, well-written story, they choose instead to resort to coming up with minority group characters, in hopes that that alone will get them an audience. But minority group characters does not equal good storytelling, and few are actually calling out for more minorities to be intro'd in comics, a gimmick that's grown old by now, and that's also become an excercise in PC lunacy. It's not story-driven, it's, ideology-driven.

As for the tampering that's been done with Kathy Kane by turning her lesbian, close attention should also be paid to the fact that a]this is probably the third or fourth time DC's been pulling a ridiculous stunt like this, and b]it's a story like this that's getting the MSM's attention. I'm guessing that, if Kathy Kane were reintroduced as a Maronite Lebanese Christian, that the AP, CNN and the NYT wouldn't say anything, because, you know, religious backgrounds like that just aren't worth promoting. So DC, in all their desperate attempts to go the low denominator route, felt that they had to put out something this panderingly dumb, because, you know, any publicity can sell comics en masse. At least, that's what it seems like.

That said, I'm glad to see that more bloggers of Joyner's standing are paying attention to this. If they can keep it up, then hopefully, that could bring more public awareness to how comics have been forced into the gutter of sleaze these days, and maybe some debate about it could be brought up on TV!

Update: A Canadian radio website writes a disgusting puff piece about Superman "emerging as a gay icon." Absolute filth.

Update 2: some more reax to this news from various other sources. For example, here's what Media Research Center's Brent Bozell had to say:

Today’s comic books have undergone a Starbucks transformation. They are now called “graphic novels” and are bound on fancier paper, selling at Borders or Barnes & Noble for $2.50. Even more striking is the business formula: the comic book industry is making the big bucks not on paper, but on the silver screen. Marvel Comics has had an amazing run at the movies, with massive box-office results for the “Spider-Man” films and now a monster third sequel in the “X-Men” movie series. On the other hand, Marvel isn’t making much money in the old-fashioned publishing way. One recent estimate had them making only 22 percent of their revenues on the printed page.

Why is this important? Because by branching itself into the movie business, the comic book industry is no longer focusing solely on the freckle-faced ten-year-old. It’s now big, big business, aiming to reach the 30-year-old audience with more adult messages, even though children will also be exposed to them.

So here we go with another delivery vehicle for children sacrificing innocence at the altar of controversy, in the hopes of gaining notoriety – and press attention. In 2003, Marvel went homosexual, trying to draw attention to itself by creating a gay superhero, the Rawhide Kid, but the “Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather” comic books never sold well, despite the initial raft of publicity.

Now DC Comics is trying to create its own gay shockwave by transforming Batwoman, a character killed off in 1979, into a lesbian socialite-turned-superhero in black and red latex. Spokesman Dan DiDio claims DC wants to strike a “more contemporary tone” and an openly lesbian character that still keeps her sexual preference hidden from certain family members has a lot of “strong emotional layers.”

That isn’t the only blow DC Comics is striking for diversity – and its search for a bigger audience. Others include the Blue Beetle, Firestorm, and The Atom -- now reinvented as Mexican, black, and Asian heroes, respectively. Then there’s the Great Ten, a government-sponsored team of Chinese superheroes. Some have joked that DC could really be groundbreaking by creating a superhero that’s ugly or fat, which would add quite a dash of diversity.

While there may be a few shortcomings here, Bozell does nail some points here perfectly. DC and Marvel are going out of their way to strike a blow for their own idea of "diversity". But really, what diversity is there, not just if what they're doing here's been done before, but also if that's all they're going to do? Why not some European immigrants to America, who're trying to adjust to their new residential locale, and even trying to do their bit for justice? Superheroes of Bulgarian, French, Swedish and Armenian descent? If they think they're breaking any ground, forget it.

There’s nothing wrong with heroes that appeal to a broader youth audience. But a lesbian superhero? There are two ways this Batwoman idea rankles. First, that DC Comics is earnestly trying to indoctrinate today’s young people and delight the homosexual lobby. After all, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation loves this new character, and has previously awarded DC Comics seven awards for “Outstanding Comic Book” for pro-gay themes.

Second, and perhaps more commercially plausible, DC Comics knows that about 90 percent of its audience are young men, who are likely to find a 5-foot-ten lipstick lesbian in a tight latex suit worth a voyeuristic peek at the other side of the tracks. Some of today’s comics-obsessed men find an online thrill in “hentai,” or cartoon-character pornography based on the Japanese manga comic strips, and there are certainly lesbians in that genre.

[...]

Gay activists and journalists are now trying to push the idea of an intersection between homosexuals and superheroes in tights. The new cover story in the gay The Advocate magazine asks “How Gay Is Superman?” and salutes what it sees as summer movies flaunting “a bold queer spirit.” In addition to digging deeply for hidden metaphors in the forthcoming “Superman Returns,” gay activists are finding parallels in the new “X-Men” movie -- that someone wants to cure the freakish mutant heroes, just like conservatives want to convert the homosexuals. As a gay activist, cast member Ian McKellen was very quick to emphasize this “cure” was the villain of the movie, as offensive as trying to change someone’s “inferior” race.

Children as young as age six or seven are still reading these comic books, and I suspect most parents haven’t a clue about the new messages emerging. Who would have predicted, ten years ago, that the comics would become a red-light neighborhood where sexually perverted superheroes would be packaged to elicit from children fascination and sympathy?

There may not be that many children reading comics today as in the yesteryear, but there are still some. And Bozell's got a point when you think about the situation this way: if a child can pick up a copy of Playboy that's been left lying around...yep. You can tell what else is possible.

And that gay and lesbian activists are trying to push and promote an intersection between themselves and superheroes in tights is absolutely insulting and sick. Let's not let them take advantage of some of the best literature and corrupt it as badly as they'd very much want to.

AgapePress reports that the director of the Culture and Family Institute has said that DC should be ashamed of themselves (Hat tip: WorshipingChristian.Org).

Yorkie Lady doesn't sound very happy either.

Labels: dc comics