Wanted: new editors for DC Comics
Lots of chatter on several weblogs over this press release by Eddie Berganza, in which he drops the ball in his appeal for a female audience for Supergirl. I'll pinpoint a few of his nosedives:
In fact, why haven't they even given her a regular cast of some sort to match that of her cousin's? She could live in Smallville and attend a local school, and besides the Kents, her cast could include a schoolteacher or a principal along the lines of Perry White, a boyfriend for Kara in answer to Lois Lane's being girlfriend/wife for Clark Kent, and even a female pal to Jimmy Olsen's male pal to Clark.
Regarding Kara's bare midriff costume, that in and of itself is not a problem. But when you see that Stargirl, who wears an almost similar costume, gets more focus on her personality whereas Supergirl gets very little development, you know something's wrong. If the book is going to be focused far more on Kara as a sexual object than on her persona or social skills, not to mention a solid direction like what I suggested above, then that's where detractors have a point (not counting any whom I caught with their pants down praising Identity Crisis).
And here's where Berganza hits the lunacy factor full steam ahead:
Berganza's press item is stupid, and I think that call should be made that he and Dan Didio, should resign. There have been those who'd be glad if Joe Quesada would resign as Marvel EIC, and make way for someone not so hell bent to force his politicized views upon Marvel Comics. Now they can sounds the drums for Berganza's and DiDio's resignation as well. Because they have sabotaged DC Comics, and there have been quite a few series that backfired on them by now (I'll have to look for an analysis of their sales soon), and the chickens have come home to roost.
So take this advice, dear visitor, and sound the call for DiDio's departure. He's mainly part of the problem; it certainly can't be overlooked, and the time has come for him to step down.
On another note...
I mentioned Stargirl. I'm going to have to note that there's problems surrounding - not her, but rather, her own writer, Geoff Johns. When he first introduced her in 1998, he dedicated her to the memory of his late sister, who died in a plane crash. That could explain why he's been pretty respectable of her in his writing, but what about some of the other women he's written in comics all this time? Linda Park West, when he was writing the Flash, took a beating from the now-departed neo-Zoom, that was circled back on during the latter part of his run. Hawkgirl may not have fared much better either, recalling that in JSA: Fair Play, she was not a player in Roulette's little death game, just a pawn (the other kidnapees are either combatting each other, even with chesspieces, while she on the other hand was drugged and chained to a wall in a makeshift jungle where Hawkman and Sand could rescue her from. So much for enabling her to put her own chess-playing skills to the test against either Dr. Mid-Nite or Mr. Terrific; I'm sure she could prove masterful enough). And in Teen Titans, his handling of Raven getting a tattoo(!) seemed like shock value, since I thought she was more respectable than that.
The point of this is to note that, while Johns may not be guilty of over-sexualizing the women under his pen, he is guilty of over-BRUTALIZING at least one of them, and even defaming another one in his desecration of Captain Carrot's Zoo Crew (don't ask).
Update: this blog, PlanetX, brings up the lack of a secret identity:
When Joe Kelly took over fully with issue #9, we discussed the many paths we could take Kara in. Jeph Loeb with the incomparable Mike Turner had already created the buzz, and Greg Rucka kept your attention during his all too short run. What could Joe do? After a very serious conference call that involved Joe, our amazing penciller Ian Churchill, and my then Assistant Editor Jeanine Schaefer (she was pivotal in giving us a woman's point of view on the character—like, can Supergirl gain some weight, please?), it was decided to have Kara just try to be a real teenager. No standard hero on patrol bit here. We were gonna make Kara a typical teenager, which meant she wouldn't listen to the grownups (in her case a guy named Kal) and wouldn't appreciate being given chores (killing Kal for her dad, Zor-El). She'd just be a girl trying to find her place in the world.Oh ho, did you see that? He sugarcoated an embarrassing suggestion Rucka initially made when he wrote the book that the editors actually wanted to steer away from, that Kara was sent to earth to terminate cousin Kal for her begrudging dad! Pure trash talk. Berganza's citation is insulting and offensive, since it not only villifies and desecrates the memory of Zor-El, it also puts an embarrassing stain on Kara's own being. And, if they're intention is to make Supergirl a fun or at least a thought-provoking book, on the contrary, it's just another example of how today's comics are making their subjects less heroic and effective, even if they're anti-heroes like Spider-Man.
Sure, some of you may not be keen that we didn't go straight into America's Sweetheart mode with her, but, hey, we know that's what she will eventually become. For us, it's the hero's journey that's interesting. I compare this to what's being done with Clark on SMALLVILLE. Already, we've seen Kara try to be normal, whether partying or in a disastrous attempt at a secret identity.Unless they give her a more appealingly bright personality, I doubt we'll see her go into America's Sweetheart mode. As for the secret ID, that they didn't even make it a regular feature for her is what's damaged the book.
In fact, why haven't they even given her a regular cast of some sort to match that of her cousin's? She could live in Smallville and attend a local school, and besides the Kents, her cast could include a schoolteacher or a principal along the lines of Perry White, a boyfriend for Kara in answer to Lois Lane's being girlfriend/wife for Clark Kent, and even a female pal to Jimmy Olsen's male pal to Clark.
Regarding Kara's bare midriff costume, that in and of itself is not a problem. But when you see that Stargirl, who wears an almost similar costume, gets more focus on her personality whereas Supergirl gets very little development, you know something's wrong. If the book is going to be focused far more on Kara as a sexual object than on her persona or social skills, not to mention a solid direction like what I suggested above, then that's where detractors have a point (not counting any whom I caught with their pants down praising Identity Crisis).
And here's where Berganza hits the lunacy factor full steam ahead:
Now, she has a new love interest in Power Boy, a "hero" that Ian designed, keeping in mind the great attributes that are usually associated with female characters…and the reason most women don't like the super-hero genre. Like the chest window of his costume? His constant posing? Yes, he's a mimbo, but he'll be a lot worse to Kara when issue #15 hits.I'm not waiting up, and wouldn't be surprised if plenty of female readers are discouraged too. This sounds like some of the worst costume designs Mike Grell thought up when he was artist of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the Bronze Age for the male cast members. Maybe if they'd thought of a design similar to what Hawkman has, that is, macho-shirtless save for his special badge-belts, probably the best way to feature a male superhero who can appeal to women, and employed that description in their press statements, then they'd be getting somewhere. Instead, what we have is a case of equal opportunity sexism against males as well as females. Reminds me of a few years ago, when I posted on a now defunct website, and the webmaster asked people for examples of males who'd been assaulted in as bad a way as females had. Not realizing that he was looking for morally equivalent way to justify the use of assault against females in comics, or equal opportunity sexism, I offered up one example, that being when Barry Allen, towards the end of his Flash run, had his face badly injured by Big Sir. The webmaster's intentions apparently had what to do with the release of Identity Crisis, and he wrote an absurd and insulting column that didn't even mention any of the examples he was given (he expected anyone reading to actually look at the message board, which required login and registration to view?). Nevertheless, when I realized that he'd taken advantage of me and others for the sake of his idiotic little bias, I was offended. I subsequently had a fallout with him and fled. I needed to find the time to forge my own path in my beliefs anyway.
Berganza's press item is stupid, and I think that call should be made that he and Dan Didio, should resign. There have been those who'd be glad if Joe Quesada would resign as Marvel EIC, and make way for someone not so hell bent to force his politicized views upon Marvel Comics. Now they can sounds the drums for Berganza's and DiDio's resignation as well. Because they have sabotaged DC Comics, and there have been quite a few series that backfired on them by now (I'll have to look for an analysis of their sales soon), and the chickens have come home to roost.
So take this advice, dear visitor, and sound the call for DiDio's departure. He's mainly part of the problem; it certainly can't be overlooked, and the time has come for him to step down.
On another note...
I mentioned Stargirl. I'm going to have to note that there's problems surrounding - not her, but rather, her own writer, Geoff Johns. When he first introduced her in 1998, he dedicated her to the memory of his late sister, who died in a plane crash. That could explain why he's been pretty respectable of her in his writing, but what about some of the other women he's written in comics all this time? Linda Park West, when he was writing the Flash, took a beating from the now-departed neo-Zoom, that was circled back on during the latter part of his run. Hawkgirl may not have fared much better either, recalling that in JSA: Fair Play, she was not a player in Roulette's little death game, just a pawn (the other kidnapees are either combatting each other, even with chesspieces, while she on the other hand was drugged and chained to a wall in a makeshift jungle where Hawkman and Sand could rescue her from. So much for enabling her to put her own chess-playing skills to the test against either Dr. Mid-Nite or Mr. Terrific; I'm sure she could prove masterful enough). And in Teen Titans, his handling of Raven getting a tattoo(!) seemed like shock value, since I thought she was more respectable than that.
The point of this is to note that, while Johns may not be guilty of over-sexualizing the women under his pen, he is guilty of over-BRUTALIZING at least one of them, and even defaming another one in his desecration of Captain Carrot's Zoo Crew (don't ask).
Update: this blog, PlanetX, brings up the lack of a secret identity:
What’s most confusing is the creative team’s unwillingness to give Supergirl a secret identity, allowing her to be both a normal teenager and a super heroine at the same time. They did it once, in the best of Supergirl’s thirteen issues. In issue #10, Supergirl briefly attends highschool and manages to be both heroic and “normal.” Strangely, this concept was dropped the end of the issue, and we were back to a superpowered girl who managed to keep falling into situations of powerlessness. By focusing on the “girl” at the expense of the “super,” Berganza and Co. have denied female readers their power fantasy. So why then would a female [reader] want to read a book that goes so directly against why they like superheroes in the first place?I did find that odd that they abandoned the premise almost as quickly as it came. And while Supergirl has never been portrayed with the same worldly knowledge as her elder, they seem to be missing the opportunity to give her a chance to give a class arguement on life the way Superman does. Right now, Supergirl suffers from almost the opposite problems of the series first launched in the early 70s, when Kara, going through a heartbreak, can only think of sobbing quietly, and wasn't exactly portrayed as very confident in her personal relations. They may not have gone that route here, but they're still blowing it; I can see that.
Labels: bad editors, dc comics, Supergirl, women of dc
