The X-Men and identity politics #4: Reconsidering Wolverine

A decade ago, I wrote a paper about the X-Men. It's been, amazingly, by at least a few thousand people, which is why I'm now turning it into a book. And which is why I'm not re-evaluating a lot of the things that I said 10 years ago. For instance:

Wolverine’s super-power also serves to essentialize his biological male-ness: he is in peak physical condition, a natural hunter with heightened physical senses and instincts (improved senses being another super-power), must constantly train to be patient and keep his temper in check, and – thanks especially to the recent X-Men movies – projects an animal magnetism that renders him irresistible to the opposite sex. In other words, his very powers reinscribe the singular, biological, and essential notion of traditional white maleness – a muscled, animalistic body that, in addition to his moral code, serves to appeal directly to the desires of adolescent male readers.

First, my apologies for the over-writing of an aspiring grad student.

Second, I over-generalized. Sure, Wolverine is John Wayne given superhero form. He's morally righteous, quick to anger, and a brute. He also sleeps with nearly absolutely every woman who's ever been associated with the X-Men. (Except for the girls who are 16ish and younger. For whom he is a father-figure. For nearly absolutely every girl who's ever been associated with the X-Men.) But that hasn't always been true.

In Geoff Klock's excellent book about Matt Fraction's Casanova, he argues that Casanova Quinn skewers, deconstructs, and refutes the need for the sort of superhero masculinity that Wolverine embodies. Klock writes, for instance, that "death surrounds Casanova, and invades him, and the resulting nihilism is what needs to be conquered when the temptation is to embrace it as part of badass masculine posturing." And if it can't be conquered? Then "why shouldn't we all escape from it?"

These are good questions: questions that need to be asked and answered, over and over, because norms of masculinity are stubborn and enduring things that aren't easily undermined or overturned. But y'know what? Wolverine had already asked them. (Or to paraphrase Jason Powell, whose own book on the X-Men is coming out later this year: Claremont did it first.)

But don't take my word for it. Here are a few examples from the Australia Era, which I've previously described as the most progressive and creative era of the comic.


Uncanny X-Men 233-234

Wolverine is implanted with a Brood egg and is transformed into a hideous alien monster. It isn't the first time - he was also implanted with a Brood egg in UXM 162 - but this time is different. It's also the first indication that something is wrong with the nigh-invincible Wolverine, who had recently and ridiculously been restored to life from a single drop of blood in UXN Annual 10. (Because healing factor.)

Unlike the previous infection, Wolverine appears to lose this one - he transforms into a Brood, even losing control of his mind. (The Brood announces "Behold, human, the shape of your world to come!" It's pretty explicit.) Of course, this is Wolverine we're talking about and as quickly as he loses the battle with the Brood, he miraculously recovers. Wolverine thinks it's his healing factor, but Claremont implies that it's actually the work of a preacher, who may or may not be a mutant himself. "I bring peace and comfort to all those out there," the preacher explains as he holds his wife's arthritic hands, as if to suggest that "comfort" is not just a euphemism. "They say I help them." It's probably not a coincidence, then, that Brood Wolverine reverts to regular Wolverine at the moment the preacher touches him.

So, Wolverine is, basically, killed by the Brood egg - an attack that he had previously survived. More importantly, though, this storyline kicks off a much longernarrative about Wolverine's mortality, which will run for at least the next two years: a series of near-death experiences that push his healing factor to its breaking point. And then break it.


Uncanny X-Men 235-237

Wolverine (and Rogue) are kidnapped and taken to Genosha, where his powers are suppressed and his healing factor ceases to work. Unlike previous power-loss narratives, though, which seemed indifferent to problems like 'doesn't it hurt to use your claws?' or 'is all that metal on your skeleton a good thing?', this one devotes a lot of time to Wolverine stumbling and coughing while Rogue - whose mind is under the control of Carol Danvers' personality - carries him and comments on his impending death.

A particularly vivid scene involves Wolverine popping a claw to pick a lock, which causes his hand to bleed profusely. And then just continue to bleed. Cue Wolverine's cool as ever gift for understatement: "No power, no healin' factor." Later, as Storm holds him and he believes his death is imminent, Wolverine still projects a Klingon-like acceptance of his impending death: "Them's the breaks, darlin'. I had a good run. If this is where it ends... ain't such a bad way to go."

So, two quick things to point out:

• Wolverine is saved, again at the last minute, through someone else's action. Carol/Rogue puts a gun to the head of Wipeout, who can remove and restore powers, and asks Psylocke to compel Wipeout to save Wolverine. So, again, Wolverine's healing factor fails him. And, again, Wolverine is granted a last-minute reprieve through the intercession of a third party.
• I may be overstating, but the pathology of Wolverine's non-mutant state - coughing, sweaty, hunched, generally sickly looking, prone to bleeding, and unable to heal - looks an awful lot like an AIDS stereotype. Applied to the most masculine, virile X-Man, no less. This is not to imply that masculine, virile men don't get AIDS, of course. But it does undercut Wolverine's own masculinity and undercut heroic masculinity more generally, yes.

Uncanny X-Men 246

Wolverine takes a leave of absence. What's important here, though, is not the what but the how.

In this brief scene with Storm, Wolverine announces that he's taking a break. And he should, because he looks like absolute hell. This is notable precisely because - outside of stories where Wolverine is getting pummeled, set on fire, blown up, nearly killed, etc. - Wolverine never looks tired. (Fun Fact: in a much later story, a major clue that Wolverine had been replaced by a Skrull was that he said he was tired. Because Wolverine doesn't tire.)

When Wolverine stares into the mirror, his hair - usually standing straight up, like the ears of a wolf - droops sadly to the sides. Normally erect and fearsome, his hair looks weak and flaccid. Sure, it's partly a joke about the Wolverine and Havok miniseries. But if this isn't also a dick joke, I don't know what is.

(Note: This style of hair reappears in Alex Ross's Earth X comics, where Wolverine has become alcoholic and obese - but denies that either is even possible - and it is painfully clear that, yes, the limp hair is a really obvious dick joke.)


Uncanny X-Men 251-253

Wolverine is beaten, crucified on a giant wooden X, hallucinates, and left for dead. It's overkill, but let's unpack the symbolism anyway. This makes sense within Claremont's larger arc for the character - every near-death experience has been more traumatic, more harrowing than the last - and also within the larger X-Men narrative, where the team has gradually become isolated and fractured, to the point that it effectively no longer exists. Basically, Wolverine is the last member of a superhero team that no longer exists.

This might seem like a win for Wolverine's masculinity - last mutant standing! crucified like some sort of mutant Christ! - but Claremont subverts that expectation in several ways. For one, Wolverine is beaten and captured by Donald Pearce and the Reavers with embarrassing ease. For another, he's saved by a 13 year old girl.

Most importantly, though, is the contrast between his outward demeanor and his interior dialogues. While Pearce is enraged by Wolverine's smugness and aloof response to his own torture, Wolverine's true torture is psychological and self-inflicted, as he sees visions of everyone he has disappointed, now dead and blaming him. He's the last one standing, sure, but only because he abandoned everyone else to die.

He's being too hard on himself, sure, but it also turns out that he's wrong. We can read this self-torture can also be read as a manifestation of his masochistic nature - he always runs through bullets, after all, when he could easily avoid them - and the masculine hero's compulsory martyr complex, since he seems to want to die as some act of penance, not because it's truly hopeless. It also reads as a meta-joke about his prominence and popularity, even in 1989: of course it's Wolverine's fault that they're dead because Wolverine is the most important X-Man ever. Of course.


Uncanny X-Men 257-260ish

This is the 'something is still not quite right' storyline that, sadly, goes nowhere. Because that Christ-like imagery from the last storyline? It didn't come with a resurrection. Wolverine continues to hallucinate - though mostly only about his old war buddies, Nick Fury and Carol Danvers - and is demonstrably slower and weaker than he should be, if he's fully healed. In a battle with the Mandarin, Jubilee's blast knocks Wolverine out even though Psylocke and the Mandarin appear merely dazed. Wolverine even collapses in mid-conversation at one point, and thereafter begins to bleed for no discernible reason. It's shocking and unsettling - Jubilee comments that "You'll be dead, you keep this up! You go an' drag me all across the world, mister-- You better make sure you survive to bring me home!"- but... nothing really comes of it. Eventually, he's back to normal. He got better.

I should add that the decision to saddle Wolverine with hallucinatory ghosts of Nick Fury and Carol Danvers is a weird but suggestive one. On the face of it, this is a sort of nostalgic gimmick (that John Wayne, thing again) that merely gestures toward the military and historical elements of Wolverine's masculinity, and there is something very old-fashioned about how Wolverine talks to his ghosts. On the other hand, these ghosts and their conversations are made to seem awfully ridiculous, especially when the hallucinations try to fight the real bad guys. Also, Jubilee thinks that Wolverine is going insane - he probably is - and the only moment in which the ghosts appear to actually do something is when Psylocke, who is tapped into Wolverine's mind and sees their bullets, psychically kills their targets. The scenes are absurd and so to, by extension, are the things that Fury and Danvers represent.

Had Claremont been allowed to follow this storyline through, it was meant to culminate in Wolverine's actual death and resurrection as a bad guy - an idea that was later used not once but twice, for The Twelve storyline and by Mark Millar. (Claremont's only plan is teased at in the scene where he's captured by The Hand, whose brainwashing of Wolverine appears to be working until it suddenly is not. Since Claremont has said The Hand would resurrect him, I'm guessing this would've been revisited.)


In closing

In Geoff Klock's book, he writes that "comic books are often cyclical, stuck in pointless repetitions of, among other things, violence, homoantagonism, misogyny, cheap and easy juvenile bullshit, and the twentieth return of Magneto, and this is what needs to be broken at the end of Avaritia, [the third Casanova miniseries] so we can get something new."

It's worth recalling, again, Magneto was reformed under Claremont, becoming the headmaster of Xavier's and fighting alongside the X-Men before concluding that death follows him everywhere and choosing a life of solitude. Throughout the late 80s, Claremont repeatedly broke with cycles and repetitions - and broke the format of the team itself. So, too, did he systematically undermine the sexy cool masculinity of Wolverine, and start to give us something new. Before the cyclical, pointless repetitions and cheap, easy juvenile bullshit got in the way.

Amazing Spider-Man 2: Yes, You Can Reasonably Make an Electric Boogaloo Joke

1. Some quick reflections on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 following...
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

But TL;DR? ASM2 wasn't very good. Looked pretty, though.

And that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are so good on screen together? They should hook up in real life, or something. And that's all the good, right there.

2. There's a vague 'hope' theme in Amazing Spider-Man 2, which could've been subtitled ASM2: Unrelentingly Hopeless.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Seriously, this is an unerringly dank and depressingly film. And in the moments where it's not? It's just wrong. Having Peter bound up to the stage, with all this attitude and swagger, and then kiss Gwen in front of everyone? You can call that guy Peter Parker, but that's not Peter Parker.

3. I say "vague theme" of hope because it's hilariously forced. Gwen uses it in speech, Peter muses about it, Harry uses it mockingly.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

I mean, it's also about responsibility and doing the right thing because you're screwed either way. Or, at least, that's what it's about when Peter Parker is recognizably Peter Parker. Which he wasn't. So it really wasn't about those things. It was about "hope". Except, like I said in that tweet, it wasn't really about that, either. Even though it claimed to be.

4. But Harry's right. There's nothing hopeful about this movie. It opens with a death & there are two deaths in the climax. Sooo much dying.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Arrgh. Sooooo miserable. Who did they make this for? People who thought that The Dark Knight was too much fun? Who wished that Spider-Man's battles should probably be as needlessly destructive as Superman's in Man of Steel?

5. And where's the redemption angle? Spider-man baddies are tragic, bad guys by circumstance who can be redeemed. No hope for that, here.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

6. Electro's heel-turn happens instantly & without a clear reason. Harry's is rushed & has no impact, since we met him just 20 minutes ago
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Electro is up there with Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face for Absolute Worst Super-Villain in a Film. Remember this?:

Electro is a clownish, unbelievable character (is he some kind of thinly veiled shot at Spider-man fanboys? could it actually be any more mean-spirited?) with an equally unlikely transformation into Spider-man's biggest enemy.

And Harry? The less said, the better. There's just nothing there. He gets an intro, a meeting, a conversation with Peter, a conversation with Spider-man, and then he turns evil. And that sounds like a lot, but it's pretty much 5 minutes in total. And do we even have the chance to care? No, no we don't. Because the Peter and Harry relationship is built on their memories of stuff that we never saw and comes as a complete surprise. But we're still supposed to feel something when Peter refuses to help him and Harry gets really, really, unreasonably angry?

7. On the bright side, Aunt May and Gwen supply great characters & performances. Strong (Gwen leaving), subtle (May knows!) & sympathetic.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Who's the real star of this franchise? Sally Field. I mean, Garfield and Stone are good when they're given very little to work with - the story is awful, and Peter is just awful, so it works best when they aren't trying to advance the story - but Sally Field is great and Aunt May is great.

8. Naturally, then - spoilers! - one of them has to die. Because the male hero needs motivation & they exist for him. Sigh.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Sigh.

AMC's The Walking Dead and the many ways in which it *ahem* bites

With the return of AMC's The Walking Dead, this week, here are my much-delayed but eagerly-awaited (or not!) reflections on why the show is terrible, and how it manages to screw up everything that the the comic does right. (Be warned! I will probably end up spoiling stuff.)

[A quick note: This is not to suggest that the comic is perfect, by any means. The prison arc drags and, more recently, characters have a habit of monologue-ing in such a way that I have to think Robert Kirkman is hoping to make some sort of serious social commentary that's well beyond his ability. But still, it's much better]

1) The Walking Dead are supposed to be the people, not the zombies

The show's biggest failing is that it thinks the zombies are the stars. It can't go an episode without a zombie sneak-attack, and it makes a zombie encounter part of every story. To pull some examples from this season:

• The story about the flu, while ostensibly serving as some sort of banal contrast and reminder of the dangers of the everyday, devolved into just another surprise zombie rampage.
• The visit to the grocery store was interrupted by bunches of zombies falling inexplicably from the ceiling. (I say 'inexplicably' not because it doesn't make sense that the roof is sagging, but because it appears they had been there for months, and somehow none of them had previously managed to fall through the roof)
• Though it was understated, even Rick and Carol's half-decent foraging episode was interrupted by  zombies who carried away and ate the new people. (But even I'll admit that this was done with impressive restraint.)
• In the latest episode, Carl is nearly bitten not just once but twice by zombies who either snuck up or sprang out from behind a door, both of which are lazy tropes that the show relies on with alarming regularity.

In the comic, the zombies have been largely reduced to background pieces that do little to move the plot forward. When they gather en masse, it's to serve some sort of symbolic purpose.

• The zombies flood the prison as an after-effect of the battle with The Governor, not because he deploys them as a weapon. 
• When a zombie herd pushes through the walls that surround Alexandria, it follows a gun-fight with outside bandits and parallels an internal struggle for the right to lead the town. When Rick is finally installed as leader, the town finally learns how to keep the zombies out.

It's not that the zombies disappear or are rendered harmless, but nor are they aggressors or malevolent. Rather, the zombies of the comic appear as a consequence of human folly - the wrath of god, a force of nature, a critique of social relations given undead form, or however you choose to explain it. And so there's a subtle moral element to it, too, at least in the past few years. Not that any particularly person deserves to be attacked by a zombie, mind you, but that we, more generally, have brought this upon our selves - and we're running out of chances.

2) Pacing

A friend of mine defended the story arc in the first half of this season by way of claiming that it was about the difficulty of re-establishing society. Which, if it were true, would've been great. Instead, having only just established the prison community in the previous year's season finale, this year's season premiere immediately introduced a mystery illness to destroy it. Number of full episodes spent showing that it's not all about the zombie attacks: 0

By contrast, the comic book spent dozens of issues in the prison and plenty of time showing that inter-personal conflict and power struggles were far more deadly than anything outside the walls. What my friend claimed/hoped the show was doing? That's what the comic book actually did. If you're going to make a show about humanity after the apocalypse, it probably behooves you to slow down and establish that they can still interact with other human beings.

3) Choreography that would make a pro wrestler blush

Again, the lazy tropes. There's a difference between the effective use of horror conventions and the poor use of them. While I expect the disorienting close-up or extreme that shields our view from a surprise, I expect what follows to be an actual surprise. When Hershel stepped slowly past a body in a dark prison corridor, I knew it would bite him. When, in the second season, Lori went after Rick in a car, I was reasonably sure that she would crash. When she held up a map and took her eyes off the road, I knew there would be a zombie in the way when she looked up. And that she would swerve. And that she would crash.

And when, earlier this season, Rick was outside the prison and got pinned against the fence, the camera angle suggested that someone was going to sneak up, unseen, from behind to save him. So, Daryl did just that:

It's one thing to anticipate a surprise, but to know exactly what that surprise will be? That's not a surprise at all. It reduces the anticipation to an expectation, and robs the scene of tension or excitement entirely.

4) The physics of sound

When they're off-screen, the zombies are remarkably quiet. Like, sooo quiet. But when they're on screen, they're incredibly noisy - gnashing and moaning and gurgling and growling.

But, you're saying, it's just that they're quiet when there are no humans around - obviously, they get noisy when there's meat in their presence.

Except, that's not what I'm saying at all. I literally mean that it's a matter of whether the camera can see them or not.

• When, in the season premiere, the group arrives at a grocery store, the scene is totally silent. But, as the camera pans up, we see and hear dozens of zombies on the roof. (Which puts that whole 'the zombies are normally quiet' theory to bed.) Now, I'm not at all certain whether the humans would've heard the zombies, but it's pretty silly that the zombies fail to hear the humans approach - especially since their hearing is acute enough to hear a crash from within the building.
• When Meghan is attacked in the Governor's RV camp, it is doubly ridiculous. Not only is it shot from directly in front, which immediately gives away the eventual zombie attack, but the zombie that she finds is standing totally stationary behind a bed sheet, of all things. A bed sheet that could, ostensibly, block both the sound of the zombie from ours and Meghan's ears, as well as the sound of the community from the zombie, who was turned in the wrong direction and thus oblivious to their presence. Dumb.
• And the most egregious example, from the end of the second season, is when Dale is standing in an empty field - which we know to be empty because the establishing shot was from a distance. Yet, somehow, a zombie swiftly and totally silently sneaks up from behind him. Which is even more impressive because the field is, itself, totally silent. Until, of course, Dale turns around and the zombie appears on camera, its mouth all frothy and gurgling. Because, of course.

5) Rick

In AMC's version, everyone hates Rick. He's a reluctant leader who's largely incapable of making decisions, wracked by self-doubt and guilt. This might be a fine archetype to employ in literary fiction, but in the hands of lesser writers, Rick is simply annoying.

The problem is, the TV version of Rick is only a small fraction of a full character. Like AMC's Rick, the comic book version of Rick also has a period of self-doubt where he's paralyzed by guilt. But that's not how he begins, and that's not where he's been for a long time.

In the first few years of stories, Rick is instead characterized by a survive-at-all-costs ethos, an angry-at-the-world recklessness, and is intensely protective of his family. Just like TV's Shane. (The comic's Shane died after only a few issues - killed by Carl, rather than Rick.) And, in the comic, he finds some solace in rejecting his responsibility to others and disappearing for days at a time, setting out alone on his motorcycle like some sort of post-apocalyptic cowboy. Like TV's Daryl. (The comic has no Daryl.)

6) Didn't we see all this before? This is what passes for character development?

When the previous season ended, The Governor wanted the prison and was willing to destroy it if he couldn't have it, bringing with him a small army to demand its surrender and knocking its gates down. When The Governor returned at the midpoint of his season, he wanted the prison and was willing to destroy it if he couldn't have it, bringing with him a small army to demand its surrender and knocking its gates down.

Ugh.

In between, we were given two episodes that demonstrated how a shattered Governor rebuilt himself in order to become the exact same person he had been before, with a more or less identical purpose - he replaced his old community with a new one, regained his leadership role, even managed to find a new daughter. And this all served what point, exactly?

7) How gender influences your chances of surviving a zombie apocalypse

I haven't fully developed this point in my head, and it deserves a longer, fuller discussion. But regardless, it's something that needs to be covered. (That I've put it number last on my list isn't an indication of priority. Instead, it's an indication that it's the least rigorously formulated.)

One of the interesting tropes in The Walking Dead comic is the clash of male egos and its catastrophic consequences. Shane nearly kills Rick before the first story arc is complete; Rick and Tyreese nearly kill each other; Rick and The Governor destroy one another's homes; a group of cannibals become a particularly unsubtle metaphor for the direction that this is all heading in. The group's most brazen and direct actions also tend toward disaster: Shane pulls a gun on Rick and Carl shoots Shane in the neck; Rick's first confrontation with the Governor is memorable for Rick getting his hand chopped off; Tyreese's pre-emptive strike against Woodbury results in his capture and execution; Rick's first encounter with Negan ends with Glenn's murder.

Consciously or not, there is a clear and obvious indictment of hegemonic masculine aggression, ambition, and hubris. But this is also a violent story with characteristically violent consequences, so all of this might seem rather unconvincing and lazy - characters die all time, most of those characters are men, and it's easy to link any one death to any one man's reckless actions.

So, let's try this, instead: apart from the characters who were introduced in the current storyline of the comic, only one man who claimed any kind of leadership role is still alive: Rick.

• Shane, who led the RV group before Rick arrived, is dead.
• So is Tyreese, Rick's other early competition for leadership of the original group. 
• And Hershel, who stepped up when Rick and Tyreese were trying to kill each other.
• Glenn was also among the group that tried to replace Rick. Also dead.
• Douglas, who preceded Rick as leader of Alexandria. 
• Spencer, Douglas' son who plotted to replace Rick, is murdered by Negan. 
• Gregory, who leads The Hilltop, is also killed by Negan.
• And the bad guys, too, like The Governor and whoever led The Hunters. It's only a matter of time until Negan dies.

Now, it's not like women don't take risks or don't die. The comic book version of Carol kills herself. (Carol is the one major exception to the general rule that the comic does everything better. But even though it seems inevitable that she'll return to the show, the way they wrote her out was awful. And just reinforces the fact that Rick is a dick.) Lori and Judith are killed in the Governor's attack, which ultimately reduces them to a story function - the cost of Rick's pride.

[Quick aside, though. The female characters on the TV show? Some great steps have been taken to build them up into strong, independent people. But there's a reason that half of the early TWD memes relished in point out how annoying they were.]

But Andrea and Michonne have survived capture and physical abuse, and have grown into leadership roles rather than having taken them by force. Necessity plays a role, too: when Gregory gives his allegiance to Negan, a disgusted Maggie effectively takes command of The Hilltop.

And this is hardly an argument for some wildly different form of feminine leadership. Michonne is no less hot-headed and independent in the comic than she is on the TV show, and Andrea is remarkable for her level-headedness and killer instinct. Maggie probably most closely resembles a recognizable feminine trope, having become something of a mother bear to Carol's daughter.

Rather, it seems to be an argument for leaders who don't aspire to hold power but earn it and will take it when they must; fighters who don't seek fights but will fight when they're backed into a corner. As it happens, these sorts of characters are all women.

Women who, I should again add, have taken very different paths and achieved very different outcomes. It's not as if the book recommends one particular way of surviving the zombie apocalypse, even if it seems to suggest that, yes, that one other particular way leads unavoidably to death.

Andrew Garfield on Spider-man, me on Garfield's portrayal of Spider-man

This is what Andrew Garfield recently said about Spider-man and how he needs to be updated in order to remain relevant. Good points, all of them:

"...what I believe about Spider-Man is that he does stand for everybody: black, white, Chinese, Malaysian, gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. He will put himself in harm’s way for anyone. He is colorblind. He’s blind to sexual orientation, and that is what he has always represented to me. He represents the everyman, but he represents the underdog and those marginalized who come up against great prejudice which I, as a middle-class straight, white man, don’t really understand so much. And when Stan Lee first wrote and created this character, the outcast was the computer nerd, was the science nerd, was the guy that couldn’t get the girl. Those guys now run the world. So how much of an outcast is that version of Peter Parker anymore? That’s my question."

 
If you've read my blog at any length, you'll know that I'm in complete agreement with a lot of this. The superhero-as-outsider metaphor has always been a bit of a stretch, given that most of the heroes are themselves white men, and that the outsider who identifies with Spider-man or the X-Men is often still white, male, middle-class. But it's become additionally problematic recently, what with the mainstreaming of super-hero culture and the generally increasing economic and political clout of geeks.

In short, Spider-man's ability to represent the underdog or the marginalized, while always a bit suspect, has become pretty much an impossibility.

The irony in these comments, of course, is that Garfield's Spider-man is probably cooler and less marginalized than any other version we've seen in the comics or movies. This is a Spider-man who skateboards, who is snarky rather than awkward, and who just oozes hipster cool. If he's an outsider, it seems like he's an outsider by choice. So even if Garfield's words ring true, his performance seems to be moving in the total opposite direction.

The X-Men don't represent what you think they represent

I'm very late to the game with this one, but I wanted to get some thoughts down on paper. (Or on keyboard. On the screen. Online? Whichever.)


The X-Men, we've been told many times, are less a team of superhero than they are a metaphor. Their creator, Stan Lee, wanted a group of heroes that would engender fear for the simple fact that they are different. "People fear things that are different," writes Lee, and it's hard to think that Lee, a Jewish-American, wasn't thinking of Jews and Roma during the Holocaust.

So, I was a bit disturbed when I saw this scene in an issue of Uncanny Avengers. The character speaking in the panels below is Havok, one of the X-Men. He's never been a particularly vocal advocate for mutant rights - he was briefly involved with a mutant terrorist group, but that was revealed to be an undercover job - but that's probably beside the point. Here's the leader of the Avengers' Unity team - a joint X-Men/Avengers effort to improve the standing of the mutant community - effectively telling everyone that he advocates a post-mutant (or, I guess, mutation-blind) society. And it left me cold:

In a subsequent panel, a reporter asks Havok what they should call him if not "mutant". He replies "Alex."

Now, the problem is not that Havok's speech is unrealistic or unconvincing. Havok has never shown himself to be the most dedicated X-Man - he's quit a couple of times, and for the first couple decades of the comic he preferred to be completely uninvolved in mutant politics or superheroics - and it might be compelling to situate him as a conservative voice for a post-mutant America. The rhetoric is certainly familiar: he doesn't want people to see his powers, just as the post-race bunch pretend that they don't see race; he sees himself as the product of his choices, ignoring the systemic realities that restrict those choices, just as many conservatives do.

It might not be an ideology that I value, but it could make for a compelling read. How would mutants with a more progressive take on human-mutant politics react to the choice of Havok for such a prominent role? Would they perceive some agenda on the part of Captain America, who selected him? And what kind of mutant politics erases the "mutant" from its own politics? I imagine that Havok would face a lot of the same criticisms that were lobbed at Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell when the post-race Bush Administration came to power.

Alas, Marvel and writer Rick Remender weren't planning on taking it in that direction. For them, Havok's rhetoric was not political or even controversial. Funny, the sorts of nonsense you can sell yourself when you're able to write about - and enjoy - oppression from a position of privilege.

Mind you, this isn't new. Marvel has always used the X-Men to encourage people of privilege to experience - and derive some enjoyment from - oppression at a distance, vicariously. But I've never seen them do this, at least not so explicitly. Marvel is using the X-Men to violently undermine the relevance and reality of identity politics, to reduce social categories, from which people derive their sense of self and worth, to dirty words and systems of social inequality to "choices".

That kind of thing is going to make people angry, especially the fans who have been told that the X-Men are a minority like they are. As Ladies Making Comics so aptly put it on Twitter, "Telling people whose rights have been trampled for decades 'But we're all people! Let's get along!': guaranteed to piss them off." Yep, them and everyone else who gets it.

But, wait! said Marvel and Remender. That's not happening at all, because the X-Men aren't actually a metaphor. They're just a fictional category of superheroes, and YOU are reading too much into it. Cue Remender's response to Ladies Making Comics: "Mutants come from all races and sexual orientation. It's not an apt analogy you're making." And fellow X-Men writer Jason Aaron: "It's not the story of what it means to be black or gay in today's society."

In a sense, Aaron is right - the X-Men don't tell us what it's like to black or gay, because the people writing the X-Men are almost always straight white guys who can only guess. But that doesn't mean that they don't pretend that they can. To claim otherwise, as Remender and Aaron (and I can only guess who else) do, is disingenuous, if not dishonest. (Indeed, Racialicious has a huge piece on this story, which includes other writers - and Remender himself - contradicting these comments from Remender and Aaron. You should probably read it.)

But don't take my word for it:

• "What's fascinating about these two characters [Magneto and Professor X] is that they're really the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King of comic mythology." -Bryan Singer, director of X-Men, X2, and X-Men: Days of Future Past
• “I know, speaking to Marvel Comics, that it’s not just gay people who identify with mutants – it’s other minorities, too, religious minorities, racial minorities” -Ian McKellan, Magneto in the X-Men films
• "Every time I would hear one of these ideas, I would always ask myself, 'What's the point of being so specific? A gay mutant? An African American mutant? An HIV-positive mutant? Oxymorons, all of them.' To my mind, mutants are all those thing simultaneously. They're every oppressed minority and disenfranchised subculture, all rolled up into one metaphor." -Joe Casey, former Uncanny X-Men writer

When people are gushing about the property and it's inclusivity, they're quick on the draw to brag about how the comic was always meant to accommodate all these identifications and readings. It speaks to the real world, it allegorizes real people and situations.

But when people start to critique it? When they begin to disagree with the message that Marvel is selling, that it's effectively putting into the mouths of disempowered peoples? Then, the creators deny that it was ever supposed to reflect reality, that it was ever intended to be more than escapist fantasy.

And that's probably the most infuriating part of this whole thing. It's not that they simply deny responsibility for or awareness of the metaphorical reading that everyone is familiar with, it's that they forsake it in one breath but accept any and all kudos in the next. Marvel wants to have it both ways, and they shouldn't get away with it. But they do.

Super Hero Squad: Marvel doesn't think that girls like superheroes?

Penelope, my four year-old, loves superheroes. Sure, she loves them in the way that most four year-olds love anything - alternating obsession and indifference - but who am I to deny her the opportunity to read age-appropriate superhero comics? (And why would I want to, anyway?)

Problem, the first: it is really hard to find age-appropriate superhero comics. I don't mean that in terms of violence, even, so much as I do accessibility. Even the Bruce Timm-styled DC Adventure stories, while generally tame and invitingly cartoony, feature storytelling that's as complex and dialogue bubbles that are as dense as most adult comics. That leaves us with relatively few options, in terms of superhero stories that are pitched at a pre-schooler's level - only DC's Tiny Titans and Marvel's Super Hero Squad, really.

I bought Penelope a Tiny Titans book a few months ago. She liked it, but aside from Batgirl she doesn't really know the characters. I can remember being personally impressed with the wide range of faces that were included - not much in terms of volume, mind you, but it's something - but she'd be much more impressed with stories that included Spider-man, Captain America, and/or Iron Man. So, as you can imagine, I was pretty thrilled when I found a used Super Hero Squad book. And then, a day later, I found three more.

Problem, the second: here's a list of all the characters who appear in those four Super Hero Squad books:

Heroes (16): 
General Ross, Iron Man, Captain America, Mr. Fantastic, Spider-man, Hawkeye, Thor, Falcon, Iceman, Wolverine, Hulk, Silver Surfer, Odin, Human Torch, Thing, Cyclops (the faces of Sunspot and the movie version of Nick Fury appear on a view-screen, but I don't really think that "counts")
Villains (9): 
Loki, Magneto, Abomination, Doctor Octopus, Mole Man, Mystique, Doctor Doom, Sentinels, Super Skrull

For the record, here are the characters that aren't white men:

Hero (1): 
Falcon
Villain (1):
Mystique

Now, I suppose we should at least exclude the Sentinel, who is clearly inhuman, and at least some of the other inhuman or monstrous characters. But regardless - of the remaining 20 or so characters, there's a single blue woman and a single black man. If we want to expand our range to look at the victims and various other background characters, each of those numbers double - Iron Man saves a white woman from a burning building, while a black man appears to be escaping the same building in the background. And that's it. Ugh.

One of the things that I address with my students when we talk about pop culture and representation is the feeling that's created when you can't see yourself - your gender, your race - in the stories that are being told to you. (And conversely, of course, the privilege that comes from being able to see yourself in everything.) This stuff? This is exactly the sort of stuff that I would talk about with them.

I want my daughter to read superhero stories. But I also want her to read stories that allow her to see herself in the characters. In these four Super Hero Squad stories, that would seem to restrict her to either a shape-changing villain or a damsel-in-distress. At a minimum, that's sad. And, of course, it could always be worse - if she weren't white, she wouldn't see any representations of herself at all.


Update: On a somewhat related note, here's an example of how Marvel genders superhero shirts for kids. I am not impressed.

Movies I've watched in the last month: Chronicle, Ted, Amazing Spider-man, Moonrise Kingdom

When I finished watching Chronicle on a flight to Newfoundland, I was seriously wondering whether it was the best superhero movie I've ever seen. (In retrospect, I was just really surprised by how good it was and this probably isn't true. Also, it's not quite the compliment that it sounds like, because I'm a grumpy old man when it comes to superhero movies.) A massive amount of credit for its quality has to go to Dane DeHaan, who played Andrew. In the hands of a worse actor, his character could have easily slipped into cliché and felt laughably pathetic. As it is, though, his transformation into a supervillain - especially since it's not initially clear whether his 'origin story' maps more easily on to that of a good guy or bad guy - is probably the most impressive and convincing in the short history of the film genre.

While Ted isn't technically a Frat Pack/Apatow Mafia movie, it feels an awful lot like one. The main character is a 30-something in arrested development, pot-head, dead-end job, hot girlfriend, fart jokes. With one important difference, mind you, as pointed out by my friend Noa: in the end, his girlfriend accepts that he'll never change and he isn't forced to grow up. There's an added wrinkle, of course - this isn't Seth Rogen or Steve Carrell, it's Mark Wahlberg, and every woman in the movie delivers at least one line about how he's really hot and charming. (As opposed to the usual protagonist in the man-child genre, who is average-looking, at best, out-of-shape, and funny in a self-deprecating or depressing way. If he's funny at all.) So, the lesson seems to be that you don't have to be the big wheel so long as you look like one. Okay, then.

If I had never watched another superhero movie, or if The Amazing Spider-man had been released in 1999, I'm certain that I would have loved it and thought it was the greatest thing ever. As it is, I thought it was good. (Better than I expected. But I saw it a month after it was released, and I expected it to be terrible.) It also shamelessly borrows, steals, and simply rips-off every superhero movie that came before it - it feels more like a mash-up or a Greatest Hits compilation than a film in its own right. It looks like the director was trying to do a Dark Knight version of Spidey; the villain's masterplan is basically Magneto's from X-Men, and visually resembles Loki's from Avengers; the Lizard's face looks like Voldemort's, and he sounds like him, too, (Seriously: compare Rhys Ifans' "pEEtuh pAHkuh" to Ralph Fiennes' "hAIRee pAHtuh". Eerie.) and the way that Peter's origin has been tied to his parents also feels very Potter-ish. Also, James Garfield has Edward Cullen hair. I could also complain about the curious way that, aside from Gwen, the film is both patently unfunny and completely sidelines every female supporting character, including, unforgivably, Aunt May. But I'd rather say one nice thing: Andrew Garfield is a better Spider-man than Tobey Maguire.

I recently applied for a job where I was asked to name my favorite movie. I never know how to answer this question - I don't have a "favorite" - so I went with The Royal Tenenbaums. But I think that Moonrise Kingdom might actually be Wes Anderson's best movie. Watching it, you get the feeling that Anderson actually gets what it's like to be 12. It is, strangely, his most serious film, but only because he takes the characters so seriously. So, while it might be absurd in places - each adult is reduced to a caricature (most notably, the character known only as Social Services) as they might be imagined by a 12 year old - it's a very respectful kind of absurdity. There's one particularly memorable moment for me, when an enraged Bill Murray effortlessly tears away the tent that the two 12 year olds are cowering inside of. None of them say anything, but Murray stands there silently for just a moment, as if realizing that his reaction was needlessly destructive and totally ridiculous. But he doesn't admit it, and it lasts only for that moment, because grown-ups are like that.

More backlash politics: fanboys and the "triumph" of Superheroes

I can't believe I missed the whole backlash against AO Scott in The New York Times, because he deigned to criticize The Avengers film, but it seems additionally relevant now - because of the controversy with hardcore gamers that I wrote about last week, but probably also because of what happened in Colorado.

Hawkeye, Captain American, and the Black Widow in Joss Whedon's Avengers.
Zade Rosenthal/Walt Disney Pictures.

Actually, Scott's snarky review was probably meaner to the film's fans that it was to the movie itself. Writes Scott,

this movie revels in the individuality of its mighty, mythical characters, pinpointing insecurities that are amplified by superhuman power and catching sparks that fly when big, rough-edged egos (and alter egos) collide. The best scenes are not the overblown, skull-assaulting action sequences — which add remarkably little that will be fresh or surprising to devotees of the Transformers franchise — but the moments in between, when the assembled heroes have the opportunity to brag, banter, flirt and bicker. 

So, there is a not-flattering comparison to Transformers, though this isn't as nasty as it might first seem - if Transformers did anything competently, if not creatively, it was show things exploding. But there is a certain nastiness in the review, and it's aimed squarely at the fans. For instance:

the true guiding spirit of their movie is Loki, who promises to set the human race free from freedom and who can be counted on for a big show wherever he goes. In Germany he compels a crowd to kneel before him in mute, terrified awe, and “The Avengers,” which recently opened there to huge box office returns, expects a similarly submissive audience here at home. The price of entertainment is obedience.

Yikes. It's not terribly surprising, then, that Scott was flamed over Twitter by fanboys with demands that he be fired. (Having not read them, I can't be certain whether these were people who were responding to ostensible insult of the film or the more real insult to themselves. If it's the former, that's an unfortunate irony, because it proves that Scott's joke, above, isn't just a joke.)

Anyway, I bring this up now, and call it newly relevant, because the insecurity that those fans appear to be speaking from is a lot like the insecurity of hardcore gamers. There's a reason, after all, that fans of Marvel comics, in particular, are called Marvel Zombies. (I doubt that Scott knew this. And, yet, he clearly knew it.)

Painting for the Marvel Zombies comic book, by Arthur Suydam.
Yes, the title is a joke. But everyone loves zombies, so it's win-win.

In the blog about hardcore gamers, I wrote that

every man is made to feel like they're lacking in some way. But not every man is conscious of that lack. Geeks aren't only conscious of it, but they're often reminded of it. And this is a problem for them because [the game] may be the only access that they have to a sense of masculine adequacy. To take that away, then, is to threaten their very sense of themselves as men.

To attack the Avengers film or Avengers fanboys, then, produces a similar effect. But it is also similarly problematic. Because, like most hardcore gamers, fanboys tend to be straight, middle-class white men who enjoy an incredible amount of privilege.

There's an additional layer to the comic book issue, though, one that was recently raised by Freddie deBoer. To pick from the very first line in deBoer's blog, over the past decade fanboys have learned that "our particular geeky obsessions no longer seemed special. Everyone knew about them." That's still not entirely true of gamer culture, I think. I'd wager that few people outside of the gaming community would recognize the N7 insignia that Commander Shepard wears if you slapped it on your coat (in fact, I'm not sure that they would know it has any significance at all); I'm fairly certain that a large minority or small majority of people under 40 would be familiar with Captain American's shield or the X-Men's X.

Because I'm filling this blog with quotes, I'll add another one, this time from Andrew O'Heir at Salon:

at what point is the triumph of comic-book culture sufficient? Those one-time comic-book pariahs are now the dominant force in pop-culture entertainment, and their works are deemed to be not just big but also relevant and important.

The hardcore gamers may feel as if they're under assault by hostile forces, but they remain the gatekeepers of their own online kingdom and firmly in control of their own culture. Not so, for the fanboys, who lost whatever control they once had (if they ever had it) long ago to interests in Hollywood and boardrooms, filled with people who want to diversify and grow the audience, not cater to the base. It's like the fans of the Avengers used to speak a secret language that only they understood, and now everyone and their dad uses it in casual conversation. You might call it "triumph"; one could also plausibly call it "devastating".

O'Heir concludes with the remark that "I think these fans are looking to the stars, for some sort of recognition or respect that simply doesn’t exist, for any of us." But I think that the critical misunderstanding is this - these fans aren't happy with success because they were never looking for and never wanted success. (Kurt Cobain, anyone?) They're defined by the things they appreciate that others never will, and so, in a sense, they're looking for a new defeat to rally around. (As evinced by the response to Scott.) Triumph will never be sufficient, and will never be particularly desirable, because it's difficult to feel special - and it's always been about feeling special, unique, and even superior - when everyone else loves and appreciates the same thing that you do.

Some quick hits...

The Cabin in the Woods
It's really kind of impossible to talk about The Cabin in the Woods without spoiling it. I mean, the film's opening scene can't even really be discussed without ruining some element of the surprise - I don't know how reviewers could even write about it. (Note: I'm not normally a person who cares about spoilers, really. If a story is well told, you can't actually "spoil" it. Except when it's kind of the point.) All I'll say is that it is so damned clever-clever, the film actually supplies an explanation for the very existence of the horror film genre. I've heard some disappointment that it's not particularly scary, but that's also not the point - it's smart, and it's unpredictable right until the very last shot.

Mad Men
I wrote elsewhere (or elsewhen, rather) that Mad Men started poorly this season before improving about a third of the way in - and it maintained that momentum right until the end of the season. In the same way that Weiner has typically ended each year, the season finale seemed to be deliberately anti-climactic - it was gently bringing the season's stories and tensions to a close and teasing at what was in store for the next one. And it was particularly ambiguous about what was going to happen with Don and Megan - the final scenes were playfully overdetermined with an absurd load of contradictory and polysemic dialogue and symbolism. No, there was no answer hidden in there - just such an embarrassment of sly, winking material that you could support any answer. And that kind of playfulness betrays an ambivalence and uncertainty, I think. Because I get the sense that Weiner and Co. themselves must not be terribly sure of how it will play out.

Ultimate Avengers, Books 1 to 3
When Mark Millar wrote the first two volumes of Ultimates, it was a pretty incredible ride. (He had difficulty closing - the resolution to Ultimates 2 was particularly weak - but there's a reason that the Avengers film borrowed so heavily from it.) Jeph Loeb's Ultimates 3, on the other hand, was a hideous mess - my hate for it is actually recorded in its Wikipedia entry. So, needless to say, I was excited to read what Millar had produced since returning. And what he produced was... um, underwhelming? Tedious? Just plain bad? The first volume seemed decent enough, until it collapsed into a total rehash of the Evil Doctor story that Millar wrote for The Authority, right down to a pop song being amplified and used as a weapon in both final battles. And it just got worse (and worse) with the subsequent books.

Game of Thrones, Season 2
It's pretty awesome that the lead character is, inarguably, Peter Dinklage's Tyrion. And that the next most interesting character, and moral-center of the show since Ned was executed, is the tomboy, Arya. It's still a predictably and stereotypically racist and sexist world that the characters inhabit, but these two make it worth visiting.

Jem and the Holograms, Season 1
My 3 year-old daughter is suddenly really into Jem. (Probably because her mom said it was her favorite show as a little girl.) And the thing that confuses me most? (Yes, "most", because there are many things about the show that don't make sense. But anyway...) The Misfits nearly murder Jem and the Holograms in every episode - and, amazingly, there's usually some sort of proof, like video or eyewitnesses. But there are absolutely no repercussions, ever. They're never arrested, never made to pay for trying to kill people every week. There should be some sort of moral imperative to these cartoons, right? Some sense that bad guys get their comeuppance? Well, not on this show.

Comic books and the impossible woman: people still don't get it

So, in the past few days, this picture of Catwoman has sparked a veritable shit-storm on the internet:

Catwoman #0, cover by Guillem March.

There's a lot to dislike, here, if you care even a bit about anatomy. (And since Catwoman's abilities do not involve the reshaping of her body to fit her whim, the "it's fantasy!" argument really doesn't hold water.) Her breast plate appears to be angled outward and upward(?!), which, given the position of her tailbone, would mean that her spine is bending at something like a 50 degree angle. And bending in the wrong place. And her abdomen is about 3 feet long. (Let's not even talk about how it's being simultaneously twisted, though.) I suppose that's theoretically do-able - gymnasts can certainly bend backward - but not under these circumstances. Catwoman's legs, arms, and neck are moving against the curve of her spine, whereas the gymnasts entire body needs to contributing to make it work. The movement of her jump doesn't make sense, either - she's leaping forward into space, but her body would have to be arcing backward for this to be even slightly plausible. And to make matters worse, if you were to map out the structure of her shoulders and collar bone, you'd need to conclude that her neck is actually popping out of left shoulder. (Well, either that or her head has been dislocated from her neck. Which is possible, because the angle of her face looks wrong, too.)

But perhaps surprisingly, the frothy-mouthed barking has not come from people who hate the cover. It's come, instead, from the people defending it.

Let me back up a bit, though. There have been critics of the cover, of course. But, y'see, one only has so much energy and disbelief to devote to these things when this is probably only one of a dozen gratuitous and impossible T&A comic book covers that will grace shelves this month. Which is why most of the responses - and this has been true of most comic art since Escher Girls was created, at least - have involved gently, and hilariously, mocking and parodying the image. And, in some cases, even correcting it. (Click those links. They're pretty great.)

But about the anger - this reaction, written by Jason Kerouac, to the re-draws and critiques appeared yesterday. And he's not at all happy that people are criticizing the cover. (He begins with "Grow the fuck up", so you know he means business.)

He suggests that the pose is plausible, but he's wrong and his photo comparisons aren't even close. He also suggests that it doesn't matter because it's art - money quote: "Y’know who else exaggerated anatomy? Picasso" - but ignores the fact that this artist is actually a realist, and some basic rules do apply. And he makes the classic recourse to reverse-sexism, arguing that men are exaggerated and sexualized, too. Except that they're not, really - idealized, yes, but there's no male equivalent to the fetishization of double-D breasts, peeking through rubber-catsuit cleavage. (Centuries of sexism and the resulting imbalance of representational power will do that.) So, he provides a lot of arguments, but they don't work so well together - he plays both the realism and surrealism cards, which is weird - and none of them work separately, either.

Part of the problem, I think, is that he doesn't seem to really understand why people dislike the cover. He thinks that the response has to do with anatomy, with Catwoman being a poor role-model, and with being a "cool kid" who can poke fun. And it might have something to do with each these. But what these reactions are really responding to misogyny - to a comics industry that still can't see why a female superhero or supervillain is worth reading unless her tits and ass are magically detaching from her body and flinging themselves at you - the 90% male readership of super-hero comics - while you read about them.

Did I say "them"? Sorry, I meant "read about her".

Counter-campaign, anyone? One Million Moms and their anti-gay superhero backlash

One Million Moms is a hilariously hyperbolic right-wing organization that is "against the immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity the entertainment media is throwing at your children." Of course, by "against...immorality" they actually mean "we hate gays", and by "hyperbolic right-wing organization" I actually mean "surprisingly polite, albeit hate-spewing, homophobes".

But there's a lot of these groups, right? And I don't typically waste time on this crap, unless they're digging their claws into something that's near and dear to me.

Unsurprisingly, then, I'm posting this because One Million Moms have decided to go after gay superheroes. Helpfully, they explain that both Marvel and DC have some major events planned that revolve around gay characters - an upcoming issue of Marvel's Astonishing X-Men will feature the wedding of Northstar and his boyfriend, and at some point next month (maybe?) DC will reveal that one of their major characters has been in the closet. DC's VP of Sales, Bob Wayne, invokes Obama in referring to the decision as an "evolution", and he's right. Even if the execution is bad - and given the mainstream comic companies' track-record, here, that's probably more likely than not - this is a good thing.

Progress! Also, how cool is it that Doop - the Cold War nuclear military
experiment who is also a green floating blob - is front-and-center?

Unless you're One Million Moms, that is. Here's a quick sampling of what they have to say. (Coupled, of course, with my own brief responses.)

Children mimic superhero actions and even dress up in costumes to resemble these characters as much as possible. Can you imagine little boys saying, "I want a boyfriend or husband like X-Men?"

I love that their fake quote is so awkwardly written. Because no one who reads an X-Men comic would ever say "like X-Men". (Also? I can imagine this, and think it's pretty great.)

Why do adult gay men need comic superheroes as role models? They don't but do want to indoctrate impressionable young minds by placing these gay characters on pedestals in a positive light.

I honestly can't figure out why they think gay men (to say nothing of women) wouldn't want superheroes as role models. Why is that, exactly? Is it because THE GAYS spend all their time and energy distorting and recruiting "impressionable young minds", and thus they can only admire villains? (Sadly, I bet that my mocking guess is really close to their actual reasons.)

Children do not know what straight, homosexual, or coming out of the closet even means, but DC Comics and Marvel are using superheroes to confuse them on this topic to raise questions and awareness of an alternative lifestyle choice. These companies are prompting a premature discussion on sexual orientation.

Wowza. I'm not sure what I find most clueless, here - the suggestion that kids don't know what those words mean, at least implicitly, or that the discussion about sexual orientation isn't already happening. (Albeit a very limited discussion that privileges straight, Disney-romance love.) Regardless, this is just dumb.

But this is easily the best part of their diatribe:

Earlier this year One Million Moms emailed Toys 'R' Us concerning the "Life With Archie" No. 16 with two gay characters getting hitched. Toys 'R' Us had the audacity to display "Archie- Just Married" at the front of the store by the checkout counters.

Amazing. AMAZING. What a spectacular failure on OMM's part, and a fantastic way to send a message to these bullies. This should happen again. Someone, somewhere, needs to make sure that this happens again. 

Cover to Life with Archie #16

So, how do we do that? Well, there's a prompt to action at the bottom of the anti-gay superhero campaign page, where they give you a form letter to send to Marvel and DC. You could start by creatively misusing the form, deleting their hateful garbage and replacing it with words of support for the two companies. That would be pretty cool. [Note: if you do this, you're required to sign-up for their email updates.]

You could also try the other link on the campaign page, which is the One Million Moms complaint form, and tell OMM what you think of their plan. For my part, I took their own sentences from the Take Action blurb on the campaign page, rewriting and replacing words as necessary. So, if you'd like to help me build a counter-campaign by telling OMM that they're the ones that need to change, feel free to take my words and either copy-and-paste or rewrite them to suit yourself (the bold type is their original language, the rest what I've added or edited):

I am sending One Million Moms this email urging them to change and cancel all plans to continue spewing homophobic venom against homosexual superhero characters immediately. I ask them to do the right thing and reverse their decision to publicize this puerile and misguided campaign, which serves only to demonstrate that OMM is totally out of touch with contemporary social attitudes and scientific knowledge.

(Fyi, on the Complaint Form, I referred to the Name of Complaint as "Hate Speech", and the Network as "One Million Moms.com".)

Chocolate-covered Avengers (or, why i decided to stop worrying and love the Avengers)

One of the first things I did when I got home from seeing The Avengers on Friday was tweet about how it was both awesome fun and entirely superficial.

The Avengers: super-fun, but entirely vacuous. We're talking about Michael Bay levels of depth, here. (But with better dialogue, 'natch)
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 4, 2012

And that's still true. The film is utterly unrelenting in its action - most of the movie is one extended, real-time, multi-site battle - but absolutely lacking in subtext.

The battle direction is superb, and one continuous shot where the Avengers work together to kill the invading alien horde is surely the single greatest teamwork sequence that I've ever seen. The storytelling is sharp and every seemingly arbitrary storytelling choice - is there any particular reason that Loki's staff must pierce them through the heart? why yes, yes there is - has some sort of satisfying purpose behind it. And the dialogue is written by Joss Whedon, so it's hilarious and wonderful.

But, yeah, it still has all the substance of a marshmallow. There's a shadowy global security organization that wants to nuke New York, but that's what passes meaningful political dialogue. Certainly, there's nothing that approaches the thoughtful engagements with international terrorism, American neocolonialism, and realpolitik that made the source material, Mark Millar's The Ultimates, so compelling. There's no character-work here, either, save for Cap's intro (which they never build on in any meaningful way - that's for his solo sequel, I guess) and a few throwaway lines from Bruce Banner and the Black Widow. In fact, as my friend Noa noted, there's nothing relatable about any of the heroes, and they're all larger-than-life demigods. (I think, again, that Whedon recognized this and tried to make the Black Widow more accessible. But it totally didn't work.)

All that said... I'm starting to think that I missed the forest for the trees. To quote some guy who I saw re-Tweeted on the internets:

Avengers backlash is silly. You can't overpromote chocolate-covered orgasms rolled in happiness.
— Gladstone (@WGladstone) May 6, 2012

This.

Over on the facebook, Geoff Klock said that he "loved the Avengers as a tonic to the dread seriousness of Nolan's Batman". And he's right, because we do need movies like this - and that's especially clear when you see the trailers that precede the Avengers, which are for the next Dark Knight film and the new Spider-man movie. (Unfortunately, it looks like the new Spidey is taking its cues from the Nolan films rather than the Raimi Spider-man series. And I'm gonna make the call right now: that's a big mistake.) 

If every other super-hero film is aiming for overwrought, despair-inducing gravitas, then we should applaud Joss Whedon for going in the total opposite direction. It might "only" be "chocolate covered orgasms rolled in happiness", but if you're going to eat anyway, you can do a whole lot worse than chocolate covered orgasms.

Zombies and Infinite Shotguns

I love to complain about The Walking Dead TV show. I really want to love it - I've read the first 48 issues of the comic book (as conveniently collected in TWD: Compendium One) and I think it's fantastic* - but it drives me nuts, what with the stupidity of the characters and predictability of the plotting. (Clearly, the screenwriters have never met a horror cliché that they didn't like.) The season finale was just as groan-inducing as the rest of the episodes, though I want to write really quickly about one particular element - Hershel's shotgun.

[* this isn't just one of those knee-jerk "the comic book is always better" reactions, either. because i've gone on record, elsewhere on this blog, as saying that the Scott Pilgrim movie was a huge improvement over the comic. just so you know.]

The joke surrounding Hershel's shotgun is that, like the magical shotgun that you can acquire after beating a Resident Evil game, it's an Infinite Shotgun. Hershel blasts away with that thing for at least a minute, never once stopping to reload. And this is obviously annoying.

For some of us, anyway. The first comment I found online about the shotgun was actually in defense of it, and it went something like this: "It's a show about zombies. Why are you complaining about an Infinite Shotgun in a show about zombies?"

Well, because the only spectacular thing about this show - the only thing that requires you to suspend what you know to be true about the laws of science - is the fact that zombies exist. That's it. We're supposed to believe that everything that does not have to do with the zombie plague should behave just like it would in real life. Cars still need gas. People still need food. And shotguns still have to be reloaded. Just show Hershel reloading the damn thing - zombies are slow, he'd have the time. I didn't write these rules, I didn't decide that the world of The Walking Dead is just like the real world, but with the exception of the whole zombie-thing. The producers did. So just stick to your own rules.

And relatedly - would it kill them (the producers) to show that bullets sometimes (often!) miss their target? Not only have we been told that most of these characters are inexperienced shots, but they're using imprecise weapons - shotguns, especially, aren't particularly accurate - and managing to hit zombies in the head every time. And, in the season finale, they're hitting moving zombies while firing from moving vehicles. You know who's able to do that in real life? No one.