We're almost in the half way point from Comic con and when the new DC 52 comes to be in September, it's time to check out a few of the stuff that has happened from Comic Con till now.
First let's start with comic con. Here's the 52 new comics panel
Some tidbits from it were:
-Demon Knight will feature Vandal Savage, and Cornell wants it to be like Game of Thrones and Dragon Age
-Stormwatch will be 9 members strong
-Stormwatch will fight the moon
-in addition to Action Comics, Justice League will also be set about 5 years before the present, while GL is the present
-no plans for Wally West
-not starting with an origin story for Wonder Woman
-Thunder Agents will be back in November (still written by Nick Spencer)
Of all that, I still find it the most troubling that Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again. Mainly because of the logic behind it. If it really is a case of Barbara being the most recognizable Batgirl and that's why she gets to be Batgirl again, then what's the deal with Wally West? He has got to be the most recognizable Flash for most fans, specifically those fans who watched Justice League cartoons. But here they're saying that he's out of the picture?
And I guess I can sort of understand Batgirl because from a purely visual basis, Batgirl has striking characteristics in the red hair that her successors who now never happened lacked. Where as the only difference between Barry and Wally was the way the belt sort of pointed down to his crotch. They really might as well have been the same guy based on their costume alone.
But a lot of that visual impact is a result of residual nostalgia creating a vicious cycle. One version of the character gets a lot of play on merchandise and TV shows and cartoons, so a generation grows up with nostalgia for that version, which leads them to want to use that when they get the reins - which influences another generation. As a result, any new incarnations have almost no chance of gaining any traction.
It was a joke earlier, much like the "Drawing the line at $2.99", but DC really can't claim "These ain't your daddy's comics!" because in every sense they really are.
Wally West has been the only Flash in almost all non-comics media. Smallville, JLU, even the animated movies, it's always been Wally. If the concern is about alienating new comic readers, wouldn't it make more sense to use the character who they're more likely to have had exposure to?
By this logic Dick Grayson should be Robin again. And seeing how Batman's been around at most a little over five or six years in modern DCnU, that's even more logical unless he's cranking them out like some sort of degree mill college. But sure enough, Dan Didio said it himself.
"I think we could do that with all the characters" He ended the conversation by saying "I think we'll be sticking with Barry for awhile."Oh goody, the Flash that no one is asking for gets to stay! I'm pretty sure that if you got rid of Barry Allen tomorrow, not a single person person would be clamoring for the comeback. So when they say that there's no plans for Wally it's them really saying that there's people out there who have tons of pitches lined up to use him, but they aren't having it cause they want their Pre-Crisis Barry Allen back.
This is just part of why it's pretty clear that DC is out of touch with their fans and the attempts to make things "their way" just come across as forcing people to accept it by half-assed reboots that no one was asking for but are being justified as bringing new readers on-board.
What really confuses me is that Johns wrote a really good Flash run with Wally surpassing Barry and building up what was basically a Flash Corps and now he can't be bothered to give a fuck about Wally. He's giving Wally the finger and saying that Barry's the only Flash worth writing even if it's a bland as hell character.
And that's not even the biggest issues that I have with the reboot. For example, I'm excited to read Morrison's run of Superman. At least I can pretend it's an alternate universe version of superman. But when you compare the two Superman books, it does sound like Morrison and Perez will be writing completely different characters. It just makes you wonder how long Morrison's run is expected to last because that's about all the time I can give to the man of steel.
Then you get to Firestorm. Hee, I got a mouthful from Ethan the last time I talked badly about the potential of his book and his really radical beliefs. But I still don't have a fucking clue as to why you would remove one of Firestorm's biggest defining and most interesting gimmicks in favor of two identically-named superheroes. How does that make things more accessible and any less confusing?
Then they released the variant cover for Justice League #1 with art by David Finch....
My god, that's got to be one of the ugliest covers possible. Not to mention that Cyborg is missing. Way to promote your super hero team by leaving out the minority character. Then you have Wonder Woman going back to shorts again. And if you notice in the pictures higher above, then you'll see that they modified the original cover to also be pantless as well.
Before anyone claims that she's not wearing pants because this Justice League arc is set five years in the past, I'm pretty sure that pants existed five years ago. Maybe five years ago Cyborg was also not injured yet so thus you wont see him?
Maybe they should just come out and say that all the people complaining at the conventions last year won and that the pants were just a bad idea after all. And what is with the silver metal on Wonder Woman? It attracts your attention but doesn't look good at all on her upper cleavage.
Which I guess leads to another thing. Wonder Woman looks way too much like a stripper or a dominatrix than she ever did in the old DCU. Wasn't part of this whole reboot to make sure that women were less objectified? Because if that's the case, I really have to ask what is up with Voodoo?
I mean, if you're going to reboot a female character and try to make her one of your viewpoint characters, keeping her as a stripper is probably something you may want to change about the character. Especially when the preview pages are like the above.
It's bad enough that comic nerds are generally stereotyped as being sex deprived nerds. But let's not act as if sex workers are ever portrayed in a positive light when it comes to comics. Why did DC need to highlight this as the thing to focus on when reintroducing the character? Perhaps their preview pages could have shown off an action scene or something else about Voodoo other than a scene that was filled with nothing but male gaze?
It's really dumb to talk about how you're adding diversity to your universe and then have one of the only non-spinoff female super heroines with their own book introduced to the modern public with a page like this.
Those Voodoo pages seriously look like they're out of a coloring book...
A really weird coloring book that I wouldn't show my mother when I'm finished coloring it in.
But really, the fact is that DC is trying very hard to push themselves as diverse and less pandering entirely to a male audience. Pushing it as a "sexy" series, in their own words, about a female bisexual stripper with cheesecake art is probably the sort of thing they should be avoiding, especially as their only book with a non-white female lead.
DC should honestly try to avoid even the impression of coming across as the creepy dudes you don't want to see in a comic shop in that sectioned off adult book area. They shouldn't be pushing Catwoman as a "dirty dirty book" or having their initial impression of Voodoo be cheesecake stripper or joking about retractable pants. That just makes them look exactly like the image they're trying to shed.
Taking money from perverts and selling a book with a little gratuitous T&A is a huge issue with comics these days. "Hey guys, why don't we turn Mr. Terrfic into a big-lipped, dumb caricature and have him just sit around eating watermelon while all the white superheroes save the day, it's okay, though, think of all the money DC will make off all those idiot racists!"
If they're rewriting the whole universe, they should take this chance to do it right.. either that or they should just have more strippers. Circuses are pretty much a thing of the past and don't relate with the modern reader, perhaps Dick Greyson would be the first on the list to be turned into a stripper. Newspapers are also a bit of an artifact these days, Clark Kent should also be written as a stripper with a blog.
Let's be honest, that's the way we're going to get and hold new readers.
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