The Four Color Media Monitor

I looked at this recent interview with Gail Simone from Newsarama. Towards the end, this is what she says:

NRAMA: Starting to wrap this up, as with any long-term character, changing the individual under the mask is rarely met with open arms. Do you feel as if you've cleared a hump with Atom in that regard...and there is a growing acceptance, or are you more like Ron Marz, and Ryan is your Kyle Rayner?

GS: I think Ron did a brilliant job with Kyle, to the point where even huge Hal fans felt at least some affection for the character. Ryan’s a little different, in that he himself feels a little bit like a placeholder.

Did I happen to mention the title for the arc starting in issue twelve?

No?

Okay. It’s called, “The Hunt For Ray Palmer.”

See? Slogging through these long interviews does have its rewards!

Well I should hope that whatever she's script-writing does too, and will be about Ray, if he turns up, searching to prove his ex-wife's innocence. Otherwise, I have no interest in this, even in trade paperbacks, since I'm not one to be led around by the nose and laughed at these days. (But Marz did not do a good job as a writer with Kyle, as has been pretty apparent for years now).

That said, if anyone's not sure how Ray was insulted in Identity Crisis, then let me tell you that the defamation of his ex-wife is one of the ways in which they spat upon the Mighty Mite. By implying that she is/was a one-dimensional, lying creep, they make it seem as though he were a dummy all those years, who let himself be taken advantage of by a harpy. How can anyone take the old material seriously if they're under the impression that Jean was a dishonest witch?

So has DC finally realized that they screwed up, and are they taking steps to apologize for their actions since Identity Crisis? It's certainly to be hoped that they are, because if they think that no one is going to object, they are mistaken, as I for one should show. I disapproved of this for three years already, and I'm not about to back down now.

With that said, I'm going to look over some more of this interview now, because in all due honesty, Gail has said a thing or two here that really irks me. But first, a look at what Matt Brady said at the start:

The series kicked off with Ryan Choi filling Ray Palmer’s former faculty position at Ivy University. Ray Palmer’s the previous Atom, by the by – hasn’t been seen since the end of Identity Crisis. Don’t know why he went missing? For this article’s sake (and the sake of the discussion derailing into one about Identity Crisis) it really doesn’t matter.

Oh, but maybe it does matter, since I'm not one to be taken for granted by the higher-up executives. I don't keel over that easy, bud.

Choi’s a physics prodigy and colleague/fan of Palmer’s. Once in Ivy Town, he quickly found Palmer’s shrinking belt that the former Atom had (presumably) left for him, got a back-up brain trust to help him figure out how to use it, and found himself caught in the middle of a war between reason and chaos, as Palmer’s shrinking had caused reality around Ivy Town to warp to a near untenable degree.

While it may be that the university dean lied to Choi, the way Brady puts it over not only ignores that, it's insulting too, and reeks of trash-talking. No wonder I don't approve of Newsarama - they just don't know when to quit with the cheap sensationalism!

Now, here's where Gail Simone, sorry to say, dropped the ball:

NRAMA: Just answer the question…we’re only two interviews in…annoying each other now could make this a very, very long thing…

GS: Alright - Dan DiDio was the original guy who asked me about Atom, in a telephone conversation a long time ago. To be honest, I was pretty skeptical. The Atom had never really had a breakthrough series, and I felt using Ray so soon after the events of Identity Crisis would make for a tough book to slog through, even though I like the character. But you know, boo hoo, my wife cheated on me and left me and came back and oh, yes, I forgot, she murdered a good friend’s wife with my own technology. It made for a powerful story, but would have been a rough ongoing, from the Atom’s point of view, I think.

Okay, stop right there, Gail, that's far enough.

I cannot see why she should have to speak good of IC, just so that she can maintain good relations with the company. That's exactly the problem, that she's going out of her way to "please the boss". If I were in her position, I would rather resign than sell my soul and beliefs for the sake of this.

At least she's being truthful about Jean being the one to leave Ray, as she did more or less in 1984.

GS: If you look at my work, you will see a bit of a progression, in that when I started, I went to any length imaginable to make the layouts and pacing of the story as gimmick-free as possible. The guys who are great at those stylistic leaps, like Grant and Alan Moore, they can make all that stuff compelling, but in the hands of a lesser writer, it’s just annoying to me. I hated even using a full page spread, for example, let alone trying to tell a Deadpool story from the point of view of a goldfish on lsd, or whatever. It all felt too gimmicky to me.

But as time has gone on, I’ve really begun to see the value of rethinking how a reader takes a page in. With the right artist, it’s a sort of poetry, and can change how the story is processed. So yes, I completely am a hypocrite. But in any case, I wanted Atom to have a style, a feeling of its own. I bought the Atom collected hardbacks of the silver age stuff, and it’s gorgeously drawn, but very much of its time, a little guy punching men in suits and hats. It’s not that I was against homage to the past, it’s more that there really wasn’t an Atom style, not in the same way that there was for Flash and Green Lantern, say.

What's interesting about this is that she's summing up a major problem with comics today, that I once cited myself - that there's either too many stories involving supervillains, or, there's too few stories involving bank robberies and jewelry heists. What's wrong with writing stories like that? Personally, I think it could a welcome break from all the almost constant plots involving costumed supervillains whose motives may be more personal than anything else.

And then, this certainly requires a modicum of scrutiny:

NRAMA: Speaking of him – as you said, you came into this book when, arguably, a lot of people were looking/hoping for Ray Palmer's return. Did that bother or affect you at all, or was that something you had to put out of your head?

How do you put something like that out of your head, anyway?

GS: As I said, it would have been a tough time to do a Ray Palmer book. It could be done, but it couldn’t be a fun, light-hearted book, not and be honest with the continuity of recent events, and the fact that Ray was so indelibly and deeply involved in Identity Crisis. There are great Ray stories to be told, but it’s going to likely be a little span of time before any Ray stories are going to be fun romps. Not if we’re truthful with his recent history.

So we instead honor Ray, his actions, his history, and his sense of fun. I, too, get irked when a perfectly valid character is pushed aside so a teen goof can take his spot, if the whole thing is dismissive. If you have to pee on the original, you shouldn’t write the legacy.

If it weren't for what she says towards the end, I'd probably be a lot more critical in my response here. Nevertheless, this certainly is troubling. I trust that she realizes that you cannot honor Ray and his actions, history and fun if you're going to go to such lengths as to villify his wife, and even to imply that his own experiments caused Ivy Town to become Time-Warp Town? If DC thinks that they can fool me with the old "he didn't really mean it" line, they are woefully mistaken. So, can I trust that Ray will be exonerated of that too?

Some redemption & repair for both Ray and Jean is what's needed if they expect anyone to back off from at least half the criticism they've launched, even me, otherwise, I personally see even less reason to take to their product. This is very serious, what DC did with those two, and with Ralph and Sue Dibny to boot, and unless they're willing to start making amends for their errors, I'm not going to just forgive, and certainly not forget.

Labels: Atom, dc comics, Green Lantern, misogyny and racism, violence, women of dc