The Four Color Media Monitor

In an interview with Comicosity (via Breitbart), Rucka's let know he's going to depict Wonder Woman as lesbian, basically making Grant Morrison's recent vision canon, and insults the past history with Steve Trevor. First, let's take a look at how the interviewer himself predictably goes out of his way to justify the practice while lacking interest in genuinely talented writing:

On the one hand, there is an audience growing in size every year that is desperate to have the same benefit afforded them as their straight, white, cis male predecessors: the ability to see themselves explicitly mirrored on the page, not just with an occasional background character, but with book and series leads. This is not a desire exclusive to the queer reader, but one felt deeply by all manner of marginalized audiences, from female to Black, Asian to Latinx, Muslim, disabled, gender nonbinary, and every intersection you can imagine.

What about Armenians, Danish, Thai, Chileans, and even Basque? If he doesn't mention them, then I don't think he's particularly interested in helping them get any of these "benefits" which don't include good writing, just politics. So, the audience grows in size every year? Yeah, judging by the below average sales receipts, I guess they are! These apologists for failure sure do like turning blind eyes at the facts, don't they?

Ah, and seeing that he thought to cite Islam as a bunch to pander to, how fascinating that a homophile wants to promote a religion built upon violence against gays and lesbians, no matter what double-standards it can have. Coming just a few months after the bloodbath at the gay nightclub The Pulse in Orlando, which was committed by a Muslim, that sure is pretty tacky and raises questions just how truly devoted he is to his ideals. He also said:

In fact, if you’ve followed me or my work for any appreciable amount of time, you’ll know I am a strong advocate for explicit representation for LGBT (or “queer”) individuals in comics media. [...]

But I'm sure he's not a strong advocate for a scriptwriter's right to question the lifestyle's healthiness and such. In fact, if memory serves, this was one of the same phonies who attacked Greg Smallwood for protesting censorship. Which just proves what SJWs really want, or don't. He even used the following ludicrous comment as justification for his own positions:

Yet, there can be difficulties, from a queer audience perspective, with demanding explicitness in representation, particularly in the case of Diana of Themyscira. Said best by Robert Jones, Jr., the queer cultural critic also known as Son of Baldwin, “the heterosexist gaze that denies any queerness that isn’t spelled out by an oral declaration or visible sexual intercourse” is a dangerous trap for readers, queer and not queer alike. It sets terms that denies the possibility of any understanding of queerness not juxtaposed to heterosexual patriarchy.

Let's see, the heterosexual gaze is inherently "sexist"? A true SJW alright. Since when does anybody deny that homosexuality exists or can occur? Not since it happened in the biblical story of Noah's Ark. As for explicitness, gee, as of today, it can be portrayed quite explicitly all the time. So what's his point? I don't see any. Now, let's take a look at the interview itself with Rucka, where the following comes up:

Matt Santori-Griffith: I’m going to start off simple and to the point. The Wonder Woman that you and Nicola have introduced to us in “Year One” — is she queer?

Greg Rucka: How are we defining “queer?”

You’re applying a term specifically and talking to an ostensibly cis male (and white to boot), so “queer” to me may not be the same as it is to an out gay man. So, tell me what queer is.

MSG: Fair enough. For the purposes of this conversation, I would define “queer” as involving, although not necessarily exclusively, romantic and/or sexual interest toward persons of the same gender. It’s not the full definition, but it’s the part I’m narrowing in on here.

GR: Then, yes.

I think it’s more complicated though. This is inherently the problem with Diana: we’ve had a long history of people — for a variety of reasons, including sometimes pure titillation, which I think is the worst reason — say, “Ooo. Look. It’s the Amazons. They’re gay!”

And when you start to think about giving the concept of Themyscira its due, the answer is, “How can they not all be in same sex relationships?” Right? It makes no logical sense otherwise.

It’s supposed to be paradise. You’re supposed to be able to live happily. You’re supposed to be able — in a context where one can live happily, and part of what an individual needs for that happiness is to have a partner — to have a fulfilling, romantic and sexual relationship. And the only options are women.

But an Amazon doesn’t look at another Amazon and say, “You’re gay.” They don’t. The concept doesn’t exist.

Seriously? Even after some of the past portrayals where Heracles served as the reason for their all but shunning the opposite sex after he and his army drugged the Amazons and raped them? (This was the setup in the 1987 reboot.) It sounds like he's ignoring all past setups for the sake of a more ambiguous direction. Then again, that's no shock judging from how recent writers have plied their trade. He can't even consider the likelihood past writers characterized the DCU's Amazons as asexual. And it gets worse:

Now, are we saying Diana has been in love and had relationships with other women? As Nicola and I approach it, the answer is obviously yes.

And it needs to be yes for a number of reasons. But perhaps foremost among them is, if no, then she leaves paradise only because of a potential romantic relationship with Steve [Trevor]. And that diminishes her character. It would hurt the character and take away her heroism.

When we talk about agency of characters in 2016, Diana deciding to leave her home forever — which is what she believes she’s doing — if she does that because she’s fallen for a guy, I believe that diminishes her heroism.

Being heterosexual is unheroic? Wow, is that one most insulting, distasteful view. Never mind that the relations with Steve Trevor were downplayed in 1987, what Rucka's doing is disrespecting William Marston's whole premise and slapping the WW creator in the face. I guess that means WW's journey to the mortal world to combat the Nazis in WW2 was unheroic to boot? One could easily come away with that impression after reading this mind-boggling interview. Just how is a girl falling in love with a guy not agency of character in this era, let alone acceptable? He does a serious disfavor to everyone.

She doesn’t leave because of Steve. She leaves because she wants to see the world and somebody must go and do this thing. And she has resolved it must be her to make this sacrifice.

Why do I get the feeling that, in Rucka's vision, she doesn't leave to fight evil, save for what Rucka considers evil from a leftist viewpoint?

MSG: As you’ve alluded to, there definitely is a desire from a corner of readers for definitive proclamations of sexuality that can’t be whitewashed. Tell me a little about how you think about that as a writer in terms of crafting the story in Wonder Woman.

GR: Ah. We’re talking about the “Northstar Problem.” The character has to stand up and say, “I’M GAY!” in all bold caps for it to be evident.

For my purposes, that’s bad writing. That’s a character stating something that’s not impacting the story. I get nothing for my narrative out of that in almost any case. When a character is being asked point blank, if it’s germane to the story, then you get the answer. But for me, and I think for Nicola as well, for any story we tell — be it Black Magick, be it Wonder Woman, be it a Batman story — we want to show you these characters and their lives, and what they are doing.

If he thinks his approach can't result in bad writing, that's ridiculous. I've read some of his take on WW from the past decade, and he became particularly atrocious when he willingly took part in the Infinite Crisis crossover, at which time he came up with that story where WW broke Max Lord's neck to stop him from mind-controlling Superman into potentially committing murder, and what thanks does she get for that? Supes, Batman and quite a few others suddenly detest her for trying to prevent disaster. I don't think Rucka ever apologized for that mess, and if he could write that poorly then, there's every chance he will now. He even tries to defend his planned approach by telling everybody:

[...] We wanted to honor what we thought was the Marston vision of the Amazons, in that they live in a utopian society.

Oh yeah, what he and the staff at DC think is Marston's vision, regardless of whether Marston would want it that way or not. Point: there have only so many claims like this made in more than a decade, yet all of them turn out to be quite the opposite.

A little bit further down, Rucka even jokes:

[...] I mean, Batman doesn’t have an issue, but he doesn’t spend his days thinking about how best can he understand his fellow man. [laughs]

It's not too hard to guess he's alluding to all the galling jokes made about Batman's own sexuality, which are no longer funny.

I’ve said elsewhere that I feel like this has been asked and answered. If Grant Morrison writes an Earth One book where Diana is calling Mala her lover, I don’t think one can get more definitive than that. Now, for those of us who are comics-savvy, we go, “Well, Earth One is not the New 52 or Rebirth.” But all the Earth One books thrive on a distillation of the fundamental truths of these characters.

I don't think one can get more pretentious and self-serving than that. At least one ingredient Morrison put into his book was particularly loathsome and nasty to the version of Steve Trevor he featured there.

And I really don’t like the idea that there are people out there who might think DC is being mealy-mouthed about this. They’re not. No one wants to be taken out of context by ignorant people, but nobody at DC has ever said, “She’s gotta be straight.” Nobody. Ever. They’ve never blinked at this.

Of course not. Who could possibly expect the higher echelons since the turn of the century, if anytime, to say that? And indeed no, such ultra-libs can't be counted on to protect the better interests of the properties they're in charge of. Which brings us to an important point from a modern perspective: corporate owned products tend to be the biggest victims of political correctness and SJW yammering, because the bigwigs running the show from above don't have the courage to just stand firm. If creator-owned properties don't suffer like mainstream do, that's because the owners, whatever their politics, own their properties and know why it pays to keep what makes them work in place. That's why SJWs may not usually pursue creator-owned products as they do corporate.

As for "ignorant" people, Rucka might want to take a look at himself in a mirror, because he's one of the biggest leftist ignoramuses of all. Just as the higher echelons in charge of DC are pretty mealy-mouthed.

[...] I think every publisher can be lit up for moments of negligence and mistakes they made, but it matters a great deal to me that DC be given their due here.

Look who's talking. Their negligence is just what's enabling him to shove his PC visions down every saner person's throat.

MSG: Looking over the narrative in Wonder Woman, the landscape of representation, and your role in both, any other thoughts on the big picture here?

GR: Our job — myself, Nicola, and Liam — is to serve the character. To tell the best stories that we can possibly tell for her, and to the best of our abilities. That is always the eye on the prize for us. If, on the way, we manage to step on bases that expand a larger understanding of Diana’s importance culturally and that answer questions people have, great! And I know this is going to frustrate some people, but that’s not my first order of business.

It can’t be. Because otherwise, I end up writing a polemic, not a story. A polemic is bad narrative.

Yup, the same man who's written polemics before, ones that disrespected conservatives and such. And certainly WW, recalling the Max Lord mishmash. On which note, he disrespected that character too. Now that I think of it, that embarrassing tale was quite a polemic. Towards the end, he says:

My personal politics are absolutely always going to influence how I write what I write. But at the end of the day, what I believe doesn’t matter. What matters is what you leave the book with.

What I left his past work with was the vibe that he doesn't really like the creations he's been put in charge of. So why should I expect any different? At this point, it's clear his politics and beliefs are bound to influence his work in pretty bad ways, which, for all we know, do matter. And the chances he'll deal with more serious topics are very slim.

It's clear that whether or not DC let go of what they established during Identity Crisis, many of the most degrading ideas they came up with since are still bound to affect the DCU very badly, as will politics, and that only explains why there's still just no point in buying their current products.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, islam and jihad, moonbat writers, politics, Wonder Woman