Its interesting, as "groundbreaking" as DC came off by making a Bat-family member (granted a very fringe member) & "Green Lantern" gay, they won't actually do something groundbreaking.
What strikes me is that the conditions he speaks of -- that of eleven o'clock changes on material that had been approved months earlier -- remind me of the fiasco that got Rick Veitch to suddenly walk away from a great run on Swamp Thing almost 25 years ago now.
A shame. While I was getting the book in trade, and may continue to do so depending on who moves into the seat next, Williams and co. made this one of the few New52 books I was really enjoying.
I'm sure this opinion will be in the minority, but I have to say the writing on that book was ponderous man, ponderous. The art was beautiful but after a couple issues of it even that started tolose its impact. The relationship stuff between batwoman and the police lady from Gotham central was nice, but the plot just always dragged. I guarantee you that wedding would have taken three issues and 36 splash pages, and the croc origin oofa. My recommendation is to get the trades before the new 52, when dick was batman, and read that batwoman. 5 stars. When rucks was writing it, not Williams.
The one and only comic my wife has ever been interested in, all because of JH Williams...and now he's gone....I'm starting to think that the "D" is DC stand for dumbass.
I'm sure this opinion will be in the minority, but I have to say the writing on that book was ponderous man, ponderous. The art was beautiful but after a couple issues of it even that started tolose its impact. The relationship stuff between batwoman and the police lady from Gotham central was nice, but the plot just always dragged. I guarantee you that wedding would have taken three issues and 36 splash pages, and the croc origin oofa. My recommendation is to get the trades before the new 52, when dick was batman, and read that batwoman. 5 stars. When rucks was writing it, not Williams.
No, I'd thought the same thing, and that was one of the reasons I'd dropped it months ago, during one of the art fill-ins.
Those of you that support the arts or are artists themselves, how can you in good conscience support DC comics at this point? They're treating talent like garbage and now you can add bigotry to their list of crimes. Vote with your dollar, do not support DC Comics until changes have been made.
Nobody could deny that there are problems at DC upper management, but I don't think bigotry enters into it. I imagine the only color or persuasion they see is the green kind. If sales are lagging they probably feel the need to step in and take more control over the book to guide the book to more sales. I don't know if that is the best way to do things, but I also don't know if the creatives should be given full control. I think the press from a wedding issue might have been good or ruled the day, but ultimately the decision was made that it wouldn't have sold well. I have problems with DC right now. I wish they would get their !@#$ under control. I also have problems with the people that say they are never going to read another DC or Marvel comic once a creative gets ticked off at management.
It just seems like a complete mess over there now, something really needs to be sorted out soon. Im down to reading just 2 DC books and they are digital ones not set in the DCnU.
Yeah, I'm pretty much down to just a couple of digital firsts as well... though I'm still getting Earth 2, All-Star Western and Worlds' Finest. And Astro City.
Considering this is a character, book, and creative team combo that has prominently won GLAAD awards, this is a stupid PR move. How much bad press will it take before someone at Warner Brothers takes notice and does something, or are they still generating just enough income and IP recognition that no one cares?
Those of you that support the arts or are artists themselves, how can you in good conscience support DC comics at this point? They're treating talent like garbage and now you can add bigotry to their list of crimes. Vote with your dollar, do not support DC Comics until changes have been made.
To support art or artists is to buy creator-owned books, where the artists own the means of production.
Buying or not buying a corporate book can be an up or down vote on management, or where a book is heading, I get that. But it is actually not an act of direct advocacy for the artists involved. At the end of the day, whether you are buying a corporate book they work on, or boycotting a corporate book that they used to work on, it is not actually a direct support.
Everyone needs to spend their money the way they see fit, but personally I think if your main priority is supporting artists then it is not about how you use your dollars to communicate with the middle man that sometimes employs them to try to get them to be a better employer. It is a pretty indirect bit of dollars as speech. It is instead to buy the work they do own.
As for my relationship with DCs product, and my own conscience, I there is a book I want from them I buy it. There are very few of those these day. And if I am not interested I don't buy it. These are my entertainment dollars. My political or advocacy dollars are different ones, spent in different places (usually on non-profits).
Others may want to spend their entertainment dollars in a political way, and that's fine. They are your dollars. You can decide that you are not buying a thing or not buying a thing, you are instead supporting or not supporting the publisher as a larger entity.
But it seems that "vote with your wallet" only seems to come up around not buying things. If DC got its act together, and suddenly there were creators talking about how much more respect they are getting, how the benefits have improved, etc., should I start buying more books from them, even ones I didn't want, as a way of voting with my wallet for their improved behavior as an employer?
So, I guess this is where my conscience is at. These are entertainment decisions for my entertainment dollar. Unless I find out that DC is actually running a sweatshop with illegal practices and unsafe conditions, then it doesn't cross over into politics for me. They are making bad decisions, and are losing good people. As a result, I am making the entertainment decision to barely buy anything from them anyway. But I don't feel the political need to stop buying the last books from them that I do enjoy every month, Batman and Wonder Woman, just because as an institution they have been making poor decisions. Somehow those books are still good, despite the culture there. So, you know what, I will buy them.
Nobody could deny that there are problems at DC upper management, but I don't think bigotry enters into it. I imagine the only color or persuasion they see is the green kind. If sales are lagging they probably feel the need to step in and take more control over the book to guide the book to more sales. I don't know if that is the best way to do things, but I also don't know if the creatives should be given full control. I think the press from a wedding issue might have been good or ruled the day, but ultimately the decision was made that it wouldn't have sold well. I have problems with DC right now. I wish they would get their !@#$ under control. I also have problems with the people that say they are never going to read another DC or Marvel comic once a creative gets ticked off at management.
I'll concede my use of the term bigot was premature. However after all the headlines today, that's what most are going to think. This is on Buzzfeed where plenty of people will have no context for the story. The headline is no gay wedding at DC Comics and they're gonna have to do better than 2 tweets today to fix that impression
The hiring of liefeld has to be where all this evil began. It's like the curse of the liefeldino. When you hire him you invite the evil in. Didio needs to hire a shaman to expel that evil. This goes way beyond burning sage. You may need to find a hobbit and toss liefelds wedding ring in a volcano.
That looks like a pretty complete and accurate list of the DC Mess thus far. One of the commenters adds the controversy of Orson Scott Card writing Adventures Of Superman.
The story made the front page of The Drudge Report. Despite what you might think of Matt Drudge his site gets 2 million unique hits a day. Not good PR for DC at all.
I'm sure this opinion will be in the minority, but I have to say the writing on that book was ponderous man, ponderous. The art was beautiful but after a couple issues of it even that started tolose its impact. The relationship stuff between batwoman and the police lady from Gotham central was nice, but the plot just always dragged. I guarantee you that wedding would have taken three issues and 36 splash pages, and the croc origin oofa. My recommendation is to get the trades before the new 52, when dick was batman, and read that batwoman. 5 stars. When rucks was writing it, not Williams.
Well, I think the writing took a tremendous nosedive around issue 6 of the New 52 series. It improved when JH returned to art duties for the following arc, with Wonder Woman. But even that got stale in a hurry. I think that maybe DC's editorial needs to learn how to edit in terms of actual storytelling content, because that's what a lot of their books need. Seriously, open up issues 6-16 of Batwoman and tell me they don't scream "I need an editor!", because they obviously do. Nothing against Williams and Blackman, but they're not exactly experienced writers. It's unfortunate that their editors seem to think that "editing" means changing storylines once they're approved. Remarkably, however, I think that the most recent 4-5 issues of Batwoman, once McCarthy came back on as the main artist, were GREAT. The writing really improved again. I had been thinking that the series was better now than it ever had been . . . and now this.
Overall, yeah, "ponderous" is a good word for how Kate Kane's story has unfolded. Even when Rucka was writing the character, it just seemed like it took soooo loooooong for anything to unfold. I remember when Rucka left DC a few years ago, saying that he wished he had more time to really do the character proper justice. I sat there thinking, "Dude, I like your writing and I liked what you did with Batwoman overall . . . but you had a damn YEAR on the book, and you spent multiple issues here and there on tangential werewolf characters and cliche serial killers who liked to cut up women." I like Kate Kane as a character, but it just seems like the creators who have worked on her so far have just always taken their sweet time doing anything with her.
I feel kinda the same about JH Williams and Blackman leaving the book now. They had over 20 issues in which they didn't have to play in a shared universe, participate in any crossovers, or even have their character be a part of Batman Incorporated. I know that editorial still screwed with them, but they more or less got to write Kate Kane in isolation. And what did they do? An opening 5-issue storyline about some short of ghost woman who was kidnapping kids for some reason that was barely ever made clear -- it was a decent story with GREAT art, but still, FIVE issues? Then a six-issue story arc that was extremely choppy, with over a dozen pointless flashbacks and fast-forwards in every issue, for NO reason. Then the 6- or 7-issue storyarc with Wonder Woman and the monsters, which at times was good but was more often than not really ponderous, plodding, and self-indulgent. Like JH would just draw a beautiful double-page spread, and then they had to think of a TON of words to decorate it. Didn't work then nearly as well as it did on Promethea, when Alan Moore was providing the words and helping with the visual concepts. Then the arc ended with Kate proposing to Maggie out of nowhere -- their relationship definitely wasn't reliable or healthy. Just kind of odd for that development to happen when and how it did.
I do think it's awful of editorial, though, to say that the marriage can't happen. They already okay'd the relationship and the proposal and engagement . . . so stepping in now and saying that the marriage is a no-go seems ridiculous. If it's what Williams and Blackman have been building toward, then let them do it. A wedding would obviously get the series more press, and it does kinda need a shot in the arm sales-wise.
The sad thing is that this series really WAS getting good. I thought the timing of the proposal was bad because the characterization all of a sudden seemed very rushed to get the characters to that point. But in the issues since then, the writing had been awesome. I really did feel like I was getting to know these characters more than ever. And now this.
Actually on the drudge report this might be considered good pr for dc.
I wouldn't say that. Sure, it's run by a conservative but a lot of people from all political walks of life visit the site.
Yeah, I agree. I look at the Drudge Report often, wouldn't call myself a conservative, and don't always agree with the implicit tone of the site and headlines . . . but I have a pretty good feel for the site, and the link to this Batwoman story wasn't run in the tone of "Right on, DC!" I mean, the "gay marriage" aspect of this is what's going to get people's attention, but in terms of the actual content of this news, it's actually about a publisher jerking around writers and changing things that were approved beforehand. In the mainstream articles I've read about this, they mention how DC isn't allowing Superman and Lois Lane to be married anymore either. But of course it's natural for people to assume at first that DC didn't want a gay wedding because it was a gay wedding. That's natural and DC has to realize that this angle of things is going to prime people to be upset at them. But these days it's like DC always has a way of making situations seem as bad as possible for them. They always end up looking like even bigger jerks than they (probably) are.
While DC deserves some of the negativity it is getting for being timid (which is to say, going ahead with something, and then backtracking, perhaps when someone further up the chain balked) I do think there is a piece of context here that is getting glossed over by those that see this entirely in terms of DC being homophobic:
If Kathy Kane got married, I think she would become the only other DC character with a book to actually be married. So maybe it was homophobia. . . or maybe it was marriage phobia. And that is not exclusive to DC. Outside of Reed & Sue, long running superhero serials hate marriage. Or, more to the point, they seem to fear or distrust marriage as a status quo. There seems to be a belief (which I disagree with) that it limits story potential.
I am not reading a lot of the books, and maybe I am forgetting someone, but my mental count, the only DC New 52 superhero who is married is Animal Man. It is actually something I have long liked about him, and that is so rare about him, that he is that superhero that is also married with a family.
Is there anyone I am forgetting?
The New 52 even undid one of the few marriages (Clark & Lois). And reset the clock on some of the romances that could have been heading to marriage back in the day, like Barbara & Dick.
And, again, this is not just a DC thing, look at Marvel's Brand New Day.
So, again, I see Williams and Blackman's public departure as another example of losing talent to story meddling. And the optics of the publisher prohibiting the marriage are not good, especially in the current political climate where wind is at the backs of marriage equality in the real world. And especially as it sounds like the characters did get engaged in an issue that was already published, so that expectation has been set up. So to back out once the engagement happens seems even more timid.
But here's the context: it may have just been as much the usual push back against these characters getting married at all, gay or straight. In fact, it seems like the gay characters are the only ones getting married or even engaged anymore.
I could be wrong, but someone help me out: how many superhero marriages in the Big 2 can you think of in the last 10 years? And how many of those have not already been undone (like T'Challa and Ororo)?
So this might be a gay marriage thing. Or it might just be a marriage thing.
Yeah, I'm pretty much down to just a couple of digital firsts as well... though I'm still getting Earth 2, All-Star Western and Worlds' Finest. And Astro City.
Stunt Cover Month made it easy for me to jump off most of my remainders.
Down to WW & A-SW. (I don't count Astro City, it's not DCU)
While DC deserves some of the negativity it is getting for being timid (which is to say, going ahead with something, and then backtracking, perhaps when someone further up the chain balked) I do think there is a piece of context here that is getting glossed over by those that see this entirely in terms of DC being homophobic:
If Kathy Kane got married, I think she would become the only other DC character with a book to actually be married. So maybe it was homophobia. . . or maybe it was marriage phobia. And that is not exclusive to DC. Outside of Reed & Sue, long running superhero serials hate marriage. Or, more to the point, they seem to fear or distrust marriage as a status quo. There seems to be a belief (which I disagree with) that it limits story potential.
I am not reading a lot of the books, and maybe I am forgetting someone, but my mental count, the only DC New 52 superhero who is married is Animal Man. It is actually something I have long liked about him, and that is so rare about him, that he is that superhero that is also married with a family.
Is there anyone I am forgetting?
The New 52 even undid one of the few marriages (Clark & Lois). And reset the clock on some of the romances that could have been heading to marriage back in the day, like Barbara & Dick.
And, again, this is not just a DC thing, look at Marvel's Brand New Day.
So, again, I see Williams and Blackman's public departure as another example of losing talent to story meddling. And the optics of the publisher prohibiting the marriage are not good, especially in the current political climate where wind is at the backs of marriage equality in the real world. And especially as it sounds like the characters did get engaged in an issue that was already published, so that expectation has been set up. So to back out once the engagement happens seems even more timid.
But here's the context: it may have just been as much the usual push back against these characters getting married at all, gay or straight. In fact, it seems like the gay characters are the only ones getting married or even engaged anymore.
I could be wrong, but someone help me out: how many superhero marriages in the Big 2 can you think of in the last 10 years? And how many of those have not already been undone (like T'Challa and Ororo)?
So this might be a gay marriage thing. Or it might just be a marriage thing.
Aquaman and Mera. They were first married back in the Silver Age and even had a child together. The marriage fell apart during the seventies after the child's murder, and was an on-again, off-again thing for many years, but they appear to be back together again currently.
The Silver Age also had Hawkman and Hawkgirl who were actually introduced as a married couple from Thanagar and remained so until they were retconned after the Crisis.
There was also the Elongated Man and Sue Dibny, who did fine for decades until Identity Crisis killed her off.
Flash (Barry Allen) was happily married to Iris West for a couple of decades until she was murdered. She was resurrected, but then he was killed during the Crisis. Now, they just ignore the whole thing altogether, not to mention Iris.
Post-Crisis, we had the husband and wife team of Dr Fate, Kent and Inza Nelson, but they got rid of both of them as fast as they could.
And there was also Adam Strange and Alanna -- they killed her off for a while, but she got better. I'll bet that, now that he's going to be a Canadian, they won't still be married.
You know, regardless of their actual intents, the real underlying message in trying to keep the heroes single seems to be that marriage as an institution is futile, that either one of you is going to die, or else the marriage will fall apart -- so why bother? Or that romance isn't achievable after you're married. That's all rather depressing.
I could be wrong, but someone help me out: how many superhero marriages in the Big 2 can you think of in the last 10 years? And how many of those have not already been undone (like T'Challa and Ororo)?
The "big" one especially given this topic is Northstar's marriage a year or two ago. So gay marriage has already been done by Marvel at least.
Comments
M
Those of you that support the arts or are artists themselves, how can you in good conscience support DC comics at this point? They're treating talent like garbage and now you can add bigotry to their list of crimes. Vote with your dollar, do not support DC Comics until changes have been made.
Considering this is a character, book, and creative team combo that has prominently won GLAAD awards, this is a stupid PR move. How much bad press will it take before someone at Warner Brothers takes notice and does something, or are they still generating just enough income and IP recognition that no one cares?
Buying or not buying a corporate book can be an up or down vote on management, or where a book is heading, I get that. But it is actually not an act of direct advocacy for the artists involved. At the end of the day, whether you are buying a corporate book they work on, or boycotting a corporate book that they used to work on, it is not actually a direct support.
Everyone needs to spend their money the way they see fit, but personally I think if your main priority is supporting artists then it is not about how you use your dollars to communicate with the middle man that sometimes employs them to try to get them to be a better employer. It is a pretty indirect bit of dollars as speech. It is instead to buy the work they do own.
As for my relationship with DCs product, and my own conscience, I there is a book I want from them I buy it. There are very few of those these day. And if I am not interested I don't buy it. These are my entertainment dollars. My political or advocacy dollars are different ones, spent in different places (usually on non-profits).
Others may want to spend their entertainment dollars in a political way, and that's fine. They are your dollars. You can decide that you are not buying a thing or not buying a thing, you are instead supporting or not supporting the publisher as a larger entity.
But it seems that "vote with your wallet" only seems to come up around not buying things. If DC got its act together, and suddenly there were creators talking about how much more respect they are getting, how the benefits have improved, etc., should I start buying more books from them, even ones I didn't want, as a way of voting with my wallet for their improved behavior as an employer?
So, I guess this is where my conscience is at. These are entertainment decisions for my entertainment dollar. Unless I find out that DC is actually running a sweatshop with illegal practices and unsafe conditions, then it doesn't cross over into politics for me. They are making bad decisions, and are losing good people. As a result, I am making the entertainment decision to barely buy anything from them anyway. But I don't feel the political need to stop buying the last books from them that I do enjoy every month, Batman and Wonder Woman, just because as an institution they have been making poor decisions. Somehow those books are still good, despite the culture there. So, you know what, I will buy them.
guttersandpanels.com/gutters-and-panels/2013/3/23/the-new-52-timeline-of-departures
Overall, yeah, "ponderous" is a good word for how Kate Kane's story has unfolded. Even when Rucka was writing the character, it just seemed like it took soooo loooooong for anything to unfold. I remember when Rucka left DC a few years ago, saying that he wished he had more time to really do the character proper justice. I sat there thinking, "Dude, I like your writing and I liked what you did with Batwoman overall . . . but you had a damn YEAR on the book, and you spent multiple issues here and there on tangential werewolf characters and cliche serial killers who liked to cut up women." I like Kate Kane as a character, but it just seems like the creators who have worked on her so far have just always taken their sweet time doing anything with her.
I feel kinda the same about JH Williams and Blackman leaving the book now. They had over 20 issues in which they didn't have to play in a shared universe, participate in any crossovers, or even have their character be a part of Batman Incorporated. I know that editorial still screwed with them, but they more or less got to write Kate Kane in isolation. And what did they do? An opening 5-issue storyline about some short of ghost woman who was kidnapping kids for some reason that was barely ever made clear -- it was a decent story with GREAT art, but still, FIVE issues? Then a six-issue story arc that was extremely choppy, with over a dozen pointless flashbacks and fast-forwards in every issue, for NO reason. Then the 6- or 7-issue storyarc with Wonder Woman and the monsters, which at times was good but was more often than not really ponderous, plodding, and self-indulgent. Like JH would just draw a beautiful double-page spread, and then they had to think of a TON of words to decorate it. Didn't work then nearly as well as it did on Promethea, when Alan Moore was providing the words and helping with the visual concepts. Then the arc ended with Kate proposing to Maggie out of nowhere -- their relationship definitely wasn't reliable or healthy. Just kind of odd for that development to happen when and how it did.
I do think it's awful of editorial, though, to say that the marriage can't happen. They already okay'd the relationship and the proposal and engagement . . . so stepping in now and saying that the marriage is a no-go seems ridiculous. If it's what Williams and Blackman have been building toward, then let them do it. A wedding would obviously get the series more press, and it does kinda need a shot in the arm sales-wise.
The sad thing is that this series really WAS getting good. I thought the timing of the proposal was bad because the characterization all of a sudden seemed very rushed to get the characters to that point. But in the issues since then, the writing had been awesome. I really did feel like I was getting to know these characters more than ever. And now this. Yeah, I agree. I look at the Drudge Report often, wouldn't call myself a conservative, and don't always agree with the implicit tone of the site and headlines . . . but I have a pretty good feel for the site, and the link to this Batwoman story wasn't run in the tone of "Right on, DC!" I mean, the "gay marriage" aspect of this is what's going to get people's attention, but in terms of the actual content of this news, it's actually about a publisher jerking around writers and changing things that were approved beforehand. In the mainstream articles I've read about this, they mention how DC isn't allowing Superman and Lois Lane to be married anymore either. But of course it's natural for people to assume at first that DC didn't want a gay wedding because it was a gay wedding. That's natural and DC has to realize that this angle of things is going to prime people to be upset at them. But these days it's like DC always has a way of making situations seem as bad as possible for them. They always end up looking like even bigger jerks than they (probably) are.
If Kathy Kane got married, I think she would become the only other DC character with a book to actually be married. So maybe it was homophobia. . . or maybe it was marriage phobia. And that is not exclusive to DC. Outside of Reed & Sue, long running superhero serials hate marriage. Or, more to the point, they seem to fear or distrust marriage as a status quo. There seems to be a belief (which I disagree with) that it limits story potential.
I am not reading a lot of the books, and maybe I am forgetting someone, but my mental count, the only DC New 52 superhero who is married is Animal Man. It is actually something I have long liked about him, and that is so rare about him, that he is that superhero that is also married with a family.
Is there anyone I am forgetting?
The New 52 even undid one of the few marriages (Clark & Lois). And reset the clock on some of the romances that could have been heading to marriage back in the day, like Barbara & Dick.
And, again, this is not just a DC thing, look at Marvel's Brand New Day.
So, again, I see Williams and Blackman's public departure as another example of losing talent to story meddling. And the optics of the publisher prohibiting the marriage are not good, especially in the current political climate where wind is at the backs of marriage equality in the real world. And especially as it sounds like the characters did get engaged in an issue that was already published, so that expectation has been set up. So to back out once the engagement happens seems even more timid.
But here's the context: it may have just been as much the usual push back against these characters getting married at all, gay or straight. In fact, it seems like the gay characters are the only ones getting married or even engaged anymore.
I could be wrong, but someone help me out: how many superhero marriages in the Big 2 can you think of in the last 10 years? And how many of those have not already been undone (like T'Challa and Ororo)?
So this might be a gay marriage thing. Or it might just be a marriage thing.
Down to WW & A-SW. (I don't count Astro City, it's not DCU)
Though I would add it is not only a DC thing.
The Silver Age also had Hawkman and Hawkgirl who were actually introduced as a married couple from Thanagar and remained so until they were retconned after the Crisis.
There was also the Elongated Man and Sue Dibny, who did fine for decades until Identity Crisis killed her off.
Flash (Barry Allen) was happily married to Iris West for a couple of decades until she was murdered. She was resurrected, but then he was killed during the Crisis. Now, they just ignore the whole thing altogether, not to mention Iris.
Post-Crisis, we had the husband and wife team of Dr Fate, Kent and Inza Nelson, but they got rid of both of them as fast as they could.
And there was also Adam Strange and Alanna -- they killed her off for a while, but she got better. I'll bet that, now that he's going to be a Canadian, they won't still be married.
You know, regardless of their actual intents, the real underlying message in trying to keep the heroes single seems to be that marriage as an institution is futile, that either one of you is going to die, or else the marriage will fall apart -- so why bother? Or that romance isn't achievable after you're married. That's all rather depressing.