The Four Color Media Monitor

In this interview on the leftist Polygon, a writer talks about her new story highlighting the Female Furies of Apokalips and Darkseid, and how they're allegedly taking on sexism:

Castellucci cut her teeth at DC on the trippy Shade, the Changing Girl, a modern revamp of an old DC/Vertigo standby, Shade, the Changing Man. Her Shade filtered the anxiety and rebellion of teenager-hood through alien body-swapping and cosmic poets, and Female Furies is about another kind rebellion: A fight for gender equality in a system where everyone is subservient to the caprices of the DC Universe’s biggest villain.

Female Furies #1, out on Feb. 6, tells the story of Granny Goodness and the Female Furies, the greatest fighting force in the armies of the dread Darkseid — and how even they are underestimated and objectified by the men who outrank them.

Here's the challenging question: is this a political metaphor? And if it is, who for? Donald Trump, or Bill Clinton? If there's any political allegory in this, I get the feeling it won't be based on the latter, and probably won't be an allegory for Iran's regime either.

What threads did you want to pick up to bring into Female Furies?

Castellucci: When you’re reading Kirby’s version, you really see how the Female Furies are treated as second class citizens. Even though they are very important and vital and Granny is really important. I mean, there’s a reason why Barda leaves.

And I think for me that was the thing, looking at Barda and how she has an awakening, much like Scott [Free, aka Mister Miracle,] does, and following that thread. But then when you dig deeper and you start to piece together all the things with the Female Furies, you really see that Granny Goodness, while she’s in the inner circle, she’s on the outside. And she’s in charge of the orphanage, which is woman’s work. She has this female fighting force, but [when] you see a lot of the other guards or arrow troopers or whatever talk to Barda or Guillotina or Lashina, it’s very misogynist. And I don’t think that that’s Kirby being misogynist, that’s a reflection of the time and also of the brutality of that world, that everything is pushed to 100.

There's just one little thing: if the Furies are suddenly concerned about sexism, why are they even continuing to serve the cause of evil? Darkseid's autocratic world is built on crime and conquest, and the Furies are as devoted to his cause as he is, with the exception of Big Barda, who defected along with her husband, Mr. Miracle. Isn't that the reason why she left? What good does it do to protest a sexist system if it's all within a criminal one? Some women in autocracies are practically raised to believe everything they're taught, which makes it all the more difficult to fight the system from within. And many regimes built on evil are thus built on sexism too. If evil's not vanquished, how can sexism be stopped?

And that part about reflections of the times is fishy, since, as Iran's proven, it's still relevant today.

One could assume DC greenlighted a project like this to mend fences 15 years after their most notorious atrocity, Identity Crisis. But, if estimations are correct, this isn't such an altruistic venture at all. At least writer Castelucci's not trying to villify Kirby, as quite a few SJWs today are open to doing. Or is she? Because if she's trying to insinuate the wrong idea about a legend, it'll only say what she really thinks about his career.

Labels: dc comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics