You can't try to please everybody if you're to succeed
Published by Avi Green on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 6:44 AM.
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby
Cos said it right when he made that point years ago, that you cannot try to please everybody if you're to find success. You just have to know what the right crowd is to please.
I found a commentor on this topic at The Beat blog who pointed out that, "part of comics’ whole problem stems from this desire to force books and characters to appeal to everybody..." And that sums up a point even I once tried to make about how one of the big mistakes DC is making is that it's going out of its way to try and please not just everybody, but anybody, by forcibly adding minority group members at the expense of everycharacters. But even if they didn't do it that way, it doesn't mean that minorities are asking for them to, and I'm certainly not. And even if DC hadn't done it all at the expense of their everypersons, another problem is that they're being very superficial in their POV of what minorities are: they're introducing members of races we're already familiar with (black, Latino, Asian), yet they don't even think to come up with characters who're members of nationalities. How many clearly defined characters are there in comics of Armenian, Estonian, Cameroonian, Chilean, and Danish backgrounds are there who're regular cast members in any major comic book or universe today? Even I can't think, and don't know, of any.
So really, what are DC and their defenders trying to prove anyway?
The topic, by the way, is about this argument that came up about the Mary Jane statuette Adam Hughes designed where she's doing Peter Parker's laundry. I really don't have anything to say, because it has been overdone, except one little thing better: of course the NY Post would rather talk about that than about misogyny in comics that involves violence. Where were they when Sue Dibny was violated by Dr. Light, Jean Loring was villified, and Spoiler was bashed up by Black Mask? The NY Post used to be a fairly decent newspaper years ago, now, it's just a tabloid, as is the NY Daily News.
When I see the NY Post doing a story on controversies that arise over gratuitous violence in comics, then I can credit them. But this was really just a waste of space for them, and us.
Update: Ragnell thinks it's been overdone too.
Labels: dc comics
