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beccatoriaI'M NOT DEAD!
I do need to find more time to post here. So to start with, I was just inspired to write something reasonably lengthy over on tumblr, so I'm actually going to copy it here because god but I loathe tumblr as a space for complex human interaction or discussion. And this is my place of Archiving Thoughts.
Also I think we all just have to accept that a large percentage of this blog will be Comic Books for the forseeable future. I'm genuinely sorry. <3
So the setup:
There was a text post as follows:
To which there was then a response effectively composed of animated .gifs of DC's television/film output from the last decade, but unusually including all the stuff Warner Brothers makes based on DC properties that aren't part of DC's main superhero universe but were published under various imprints (primarily Vertigo).
I sort of wasn’t going to reblog it because it was a little petty? But then I saw the “makes Black Widow movie” and got bitter because what the hell, if you're going to do that, I'm going to pretend there's obviously an upcoming Wonder Woman film and that they're casting Dwayne Johnson as Shazam and SCREW IT I SUCCUMBED TO PETTY BITTERNESS!
But I also reblogged it because I really liked that it included DC's Vertigo output in there, but...I've been wondering for a while now how that stuff should figure into the conversations we have about these companies and/or about their shared superhero universes.
This is a genuine question to which I have no good answer. Because DC and Marvel generally ship a comparable number of titles; DC more often ship slightly more but that includes all their Vertigo stuff (as well as, I think, more licensed comics, though particularly with Star Wars, that may be shifting).
And on the one hand, it’s only fair to compare like with like - superheroes with superheroes. That’s a specific genre with representational problems, and it’s a specific type of story we all love (or well, us superhero fans do, I mean). Vertigo publishing a 70s gangster comic, a revenge-thriller, a creepy supernatural book and a retold set of fairytales, all starring women, doesn’t fix my problem if what I want is a woman in spandex punching a volcano. It really doesn’t. The Losers’ majority poc team doesn’t fix the whiteness of superhero universes.
"Go somewhere else," isn’t a useful response.
"We do that stuff, but in our Vertigo line," sends a message of ghettoisation.
But at the same time, Vertigo forms part of DC’s output and almost never figures into conversations about what DC is doing, media-wise. They put time and resources into maintaining an imprint that specifically exists to publish original “indie” style comic books, even though they could almost certainly make more by putting out another Bat-related title.
I mean, a certain amount of this is nostalgia. I’m probably a comic book fan at ALL because of Vertigo in the 90s, and I think that’s likely true of a lot of women my age. Karen Berger probably did more than anyone else in the industry to normalise the graphic novel and its place on the shelves of our bookstores. (And I guess I also think it’s cool that Vertigo has only ever been headed up by women; Shelly Bond succeeded Karen Berger).
But…okay, knowing Watchmen is somehow a DC property is probably not that unusual, but I honestly wonder how many people know that movies like Red, the Losers, Road to Perdition and Stardust are all also based on graphic novels and comic series originally published by DC?
Probably not many?
And like I said, I think you can use these points to dodge the issue. Agent Carter is a big deal because a woman is anchoring a TV series - they are making superhero-related media starring a women. Pointing out that DC (well, it’s parent company) are putting out iZombie, which also stars a woman, isn’t a cleanly relevant parallel.
But it also seems sort of shitty to pretend iZombie isn’t there.
Also amusingly nowhere in that gifset did I see the 2004 Catwoman movie. There are just some things no one can bring themselves to mention voluntarily... (Lol, except me: SKIN LIKE LIVING MARBLE!)
Anyway, yeah. There is my unanswered question. I hope you've all had a nice month while I've been in posting limbo. :)
I do need to find more time to post here. So to start with, I was just inspired to write something reasonably lengthy over on tumblr, so I'm actually going to copy it here because god but I loathe tumblr as a space for complex human interaction or discussion. And this is my place of Archiving Thoughts.
Also I think we all just have to accept that a large percentage of this blog will be Comic Books for the forseeable future. I'm genuinely sorry. <3
So the setup:
There was a text post as follows:
MARVEL: *makes Avengers*
MARVEL: *makes Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Captain America sagas*
MARVEL: *makes Agents of Shield*
MARVEL: *makes Guardians of the Galaxy*
MARVEL: *makes Black Widow movie*
DC: hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...... MORE BATMAN.
To which there was then a response effectively composed of animated .gifs of DC's television/film output from the last decade, but unusually including all the stuff Warner Brothers makes based on DC properties that aren't part of DC's main superhero universe but were published under various imprints (primarily Vertigo).
I sort of wasn’t going to reblog it because it was a little petty? But then I saw the “makes Black Widow movie” and got bitter because what the hell, if you're going to do that, I'm going to pretend there's obviously an upcoming Wonder Woman film and that they're casting Dwayne Johnson as Shazam and SCREW IT I SUCCUMBED TO PETTY BITTERNESS!
But I also reblogged it because I really liked that it included DC's Vertigo output in there, but...I've been wondering for a while now how that stuff should figure into the conversations we have about these companies and/or about their shared superhero universes.
This is a genuine question to which I have no good answer. Because DC and Marvel generally ship a comparable number of titles; DC more often ship slightly more but that includes all their Vertigo stuff (as well as, I think, more licensed comics, though particularly with Star Wars, that may be shifting).
And on the one hand, it’s only fair to compare like with like - superheroes with superheroes. That’s a specific genre with representational problems, and it’s a specific type of story we all love (or well, us superhero fans do, I mean). Vertigo publishing a 70s gangster comic, a revenge-thriller, a creepy supernatural book and a retold set of fairytales, all starring women, doesn’t fix my problem if what I want is a woman in spandex punching a volcano. It really doesn’t. The Losers’ majority poc team doesn’t fix the whiteness of superhero universes.
"Go somewhere else," isn’t a useful response.
"We do that stuff, but in our Vertigo line," sends a message of ghettoisation.
But at the same time, Vertigo forms part of DC’s output and almost never figures into conversations about what DC is doing, media-wise. They put time and resources into maintaining an imprint that specifically exists to publish original “indie” style comic books, even though they could almost certainly make more by putting out another Bat-related title.
I mean, a certain amount of this is nostalgia. I’m probably a comic book fan at ALL because of Vertigo in the 90s, and I think that’s likely true of a lot of women my age. Karen Berger probably did more than anyone else in the industry to normalise the graphic novel and its place on the shelves of our bookstores. (And I guess I also think it’s cool that Vertigo has only ever been headed up by women; Shelly Bond succeeded Karen Berger).
But…okay, knowing Watchmen is somehow a DC property is probably not that unusual, but I honestly wonder how many people know that movies like Red, the Losers, Road to Perdition and Stardust are all also based on graphic novels and comic series originally published by DC?
Probably not many?
And like I said, I think you can use these points to dodge the issue. Agent Carter is a big deal because a woman is anchoring a TV series - they are making superhero-related media starring a women. Pointing out that DC (well, it’s parent company) are putting out iZombie, which also stars a woman, isn’t a cleanly relevant parallel.
But it also seems sort of shitty to pretend iZombie isn’t there.
Also amusingly nowhere in that gifset did I see the 2004 Catwoman movie. There are just some things no one can bring themselves to mention voluntarily... (Lol, except me: SKIN LIKE LIVING MARBLE!)
Anyway, yeah. There is my unanswered question. I hope you've all had a nice month while I've been in posting limbo. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-08-05 01:34 am (UTC)Some of the Marvel series I have really loved, like The Incredible Hercules, and Journey into Mystery, I have loved because they felt like 90s Vertigo comics. I remember when I first read The Incredible Hercules, and feeling like I'd been cheated all these years. Because Marvel was publishing fantasy comics and I'd never realised. Obviously The Incredible Hercules is part of the superhero universe in a way that, say, Books of Magic wasn't – but it still fills the fantasy niche for me, rather than the 'superheroes punching things' niche.
Or, a couple of years back Marvel put out a bunch of short series that to me seemed like 'series designed to appeal for teenage girls' (although I think it was actually 'series based off old Wildstorm properties'). They did this under their main imprint. And I thought it was interesting to compare that approach with what DC had done a few years earlier with Minx. Though, obviously these were happening against different backgrounds – DC's felt like 'oh wow teenage girls are reading all this manga, how can we get in on that?' and in that context a separate imprint makes more sense. At the time, I thought it was cool that Marvel just threw them in under their main imprint – although in retrospect, I wonder if they would have done better if Marvel hadn't. Vertigo is visible in a way that Marvel's non-superhero comics aren't. And Vertigo is read outside of the population of superhero fans in a way that Marvel comics are not.
Um, so I think it's one thing if we're just discussing superheroes, but if we're discussing Marvel as a publisher then the comparison should be to DC and its imprints, not just what's branded DC.
Also, I would quite like to pretend iZombie isn't there, but I'm bitter because it sounds like it won't really have much to do with the comics :P I'm too over-invested. I am too invested in Hellblazer as well, which is why I don't think I'll be watching Constantine. Apparently DC's media strategy fails for me because they're adapting stuff I care too much about ...
no subject
Date: 2014-08-05 03:28 pm (UTC)Like, in the last few years there've been fantasy comics, westerns, war stories, wacky cosmic scifi, gothic horror, spy thrillers and um, China Mieville writing surrealist absurdity, all within the shared superhero universe, though how much they actually overlap varies enormously. They actually made a movie of Jonah Hex (the Western comic), but apparently it's appalling...
And I think that's like...another discussion, too? Because something I feel strongly about is that shared superhero universes SHOULD have space for this sort of genrebending experimentation. It shouldn't just be punching things in spandex (though it should include that, obviously). And then there's the question of diminishing sales and whether there IS space for this sort of stuff any more and I get sad.
I remember being put off by Minx because I felt it was ghettoising in a way that Vertigo or Paradox Press weren't? But I don't remember the Marvel comics you're talking about. Unless you're talking about the "Girl Comics" mini series and one shots, in which case, again I felt aliennated by them, although I think I'd be mellower about it today, because at the time I didn't realise the title was riffing of one of their old time 60s titles and was a kind of kitschy homage. I mean, I think what this really shows is that it's a no-win situation in some ways. What's gonna make me feel aliennated is whether I feel it's condescending, more than how they choose to present it to me.
If Marvel had done them in an imprint they might have attracted people put off by Superhero Comics' douchey reputation, but they might also have lost regular superhero comic readers.
(And I'm still not sure which series of Marvel series we're talking about because the ones I remember were definitely their mainstream characters, but I think you're talking about something different. I don't think it'd be Wildstorm characters, though? That universe ultimately got bought by DC and characters like Midnighter and Voodoo and Grifter are wandering around the DCU now...)
Um, so I think it's one thing if we're just discussing superheroes, but if we're discussing Marvel as a publisher then the comparison should be to DC and its imprints, not just what's branded DC.
Yeah. I think I agree with that statement. Although I guess the difficulty is that those conversations very often overlap.
Also I'm sorry to hear that about iZombie. I have a friend who's an enormous fan of the comics, but never read them myself, and yeah. I've...had bad reactions to media adaptations that don't do well with something I love. It hurts. *over-investment empathy* Try to think of it as an unrelated AU and then ignore it?
no subject
Date: 2014-08-05 08:16 pm (UTC)It occurs to me now that my perspective is very coloured by Vertigo doing better in NZ than DC proper. (The direct market here is expensive and has a limited distribution here. Vertigo does better in the book trade than superhero comics, so they're actually more accessible. She says, without any sales figures whatsoever. But even in my local comic store, Vertigo comics are placed more prominently than superhero comics.)
I don't think it'd be Wildstorm characters, though?
You're right, that was me misremembering. It was CrossGen, I don't know why I thought it was Wildstorm :-/ There was Sigil, and Mystic, and Ruse. I'd thought there were others I didn't get but now I check I did apparently buy them all *hollow laughter*.
but they might also have lost regular superhero comic readers
Probably this is my tendency to underestimate the value of superhero comic readers in other parts of the world!
I remember being put off by Minx because I felt it was ghettoising in a way that Vertigo or Paradox Press weren't?
I was put off by the implication that it was something new, that they and other publishers weren't already publishing comics that appealed to teenage girls – but then, I was a teenage girl who already went to comic stores, and they were really trying to get Minx picked up in the book trade. So the approach makes sense to me in that regard. And it's not as if I didn't read them anyway :-/
It's a shame that the quality of the Minx comics they put out was so variable. Like, I am an Andi Watson fan, but I would not recommend his Minx comic to anybody.
Although I guess the difficulty is that those conversations very often overlap.
Yeah – I can't really dig into my Vertigo stack and say, 'look, here is My Faith in Frankie, a charming comic by a big-name author, which resolves its love triangle with canon poly – except that it ditches the "bad boy" and lets the heroine reciprocate her best (girl) friend's feelings instead!' – not when people are talking about superheroes. But it is still a thing that DC published! A thing that people say they want! (I am delighted to discover it is actually available digitally now, so maybe I should start pushing it on people after all.)
I don't care about female Thor, why won't anyone talk to me about the time there was a teenage lesbian John Constantine? ('Because it was three issues of a series that never got a complete release in trade and you were the only one who liked it, Cara.' ;_;)
/now I am just rambling and I will stop.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-06 11:56 am (UTC)And aha! Those weren't the Marvel books I was thinking of! I think I missed them entirely, actually, which is kind of sad, but I suppose another offshoot of the Marvel/DC divide problems. It's harder to get into the universe you don't know as well because things are confusing and then...a lot of what they offer is similar enough it's easier to just run back to your comfort zone.
(Also WildStorm, CrossGen, you could totally rig up a 90s Comic Line Name Generator. YoungStrike? BloodSlash? FreeBlade? :P)
I actually didn't read much Minx stuff because I think it came out right after I left college which was a confluence of relative poverty and slipping out of comics for a while, but yeah, I heard very mixed things. :(
Yeah – I can't really dig into my Vertigo stack and say, 'look, here is My Faith in Frankie, a charming comic by a big-name author, which resolves its love triangle with canon poly – except that it ditches the "bad boy" and lets the heroine reciprocate her best (girl) friend's feelings instead!' – not when people are talking about superheroes. But it is still a thing that DC published! A thing that people say they want! (I am delighted to discover it is actually available digitally now, so maybe I should start pushing it on people after all.)
I HAD NO IDEA THAT EXISTED!
Which makes me circle back to your point about overestimating superhero readers and how enormously different that is in the bookstore market vs the direct single-issue-comic-shop market where superhero stuff is 90% of everything.
I don't care about female Thor, why won't anyone talk to me about the time there was a teenage lesbian John Constantine? ('Because it was three issues of a series that never got a complete release in trade and you were the only one who liked it, Cara.' ;_;)
...I also did not know that. ;)
/now I am just rambling and I will stop.
*eyes original post dubiously*
I think all I've been doing here is rambling...? :p
no subject
Date: 2014-08-05 03:41 am (UTC)lulz WHAT. The whole DC vs. Marvel thing has always seemed so strange to me, except then I fell in love with Diana and saw that in discussions of women in comics, people totally forget she exists, and THEN I GOT TRIBAL. And it's totally not rational, but when people are like THOR WILL BE A LADY WARRIOR, HOW GROUNDBREAKING, I do kind of lose my mind. And I honestly do not know how to counter that, or stop filtering comics/movie discussions through that lens.
It would make more sense to me if more of the conversation focused on what the companies ACTUALLY DO, instead of cherry picking stuff that you like about your particular preferred publisher/studio? And in that regard, it seems like Vertigo ought to at least be part of the discussion, if only to illustrate how sometimes the simplistic comparison of Blockbuster Superhero Movies to Blockbuster Superhero Movies is incomplete. Like iZombie shouldn't be an argument to dodge the issue of the lack of female leads in superhero-related properties, or an an "answer" to Agent Carter, but neither is it totally irrelevant. It's just not a simple comparison all the time, sorry if that makes Tumblr's life harder!
no subject
Date: 2014-08-05 04:56 pm (UTC)My only defence is: Diana? I mean, that was worth it, right?
I think the reason is partly just because it always is configured so much as a competition it's hard to escape that mentality. If you know it'll always be set up against the other thing no matter how much you don't want it to be. So if you start to care about something on one side of the divide - if you start to love it, it becomes hard not to be defensive. Because praise of something totally different is so often an implicit criticism of the thing you love. I mean, it shouldn't have to be, but so often it is.
Plus I also think that Diana specifically occupies a uniquely complicated space in pop culture. So much of how people react to her is like a rorschach test and she represents some stuff that's...really emotionally important to us and so again, that makes distance difficult. She really does get dismissed and overcriticised so much and yet keeps being there I think it's hard not to be bitter when her contributions to like, STUFF, are overlooked.
tl;dr, I think at least to a degree you get tribal over Diana because she is your precious angel darling.
But also, yeah, I definitely kind of ruined you slightly and dragged you into the wider mess of DC vs Marvel and for that, um, welcome to the blanket fort? We have a badass poster on the door? :D?
Like iZombie shouldn't be an argument to dodge the issue of the lack of female leads in superhero-related properties, or an an "answer" to Agent Carter, but neither is it totally irrelevant.
Yes! Exactly! But I'm just not sure how to like...weight that, you know?
I think gennusshrike made a good point in that...are we comparing publishers or superhero fiction and those are different things. But...how the overlap works is... Feh. *throws up hands* *puts up more posters of Wonder Woman in the blanket fort*
no subject
Date: 2014-08-06 12:37 am (UTC)Yeah, totally, although I think--and I know you don't exactly mean it this way!--even trying to figure that out comes from this bizarre idea that you can add up what one is doing, and what the other is doing, and have one WIN, have one BE BETTER, particularly when it comes to things like diversity, or doing interesting things with the genre, or whatever. When really, it's just...well, the conversation really has to be broader than just stacking up things on each side? And pitting them against each other just makes one seem progressive, when they BOTH have so far to go, and totally changes the tenor of the conversation to a petty one instead of a substantive one? It's like we let them pit us against each other, so we forget how dismal they both can be.
I do wonder how much of this comes from comics being SO HUGE that fairly new or casual fans can only take in part of it at once. Like I tried a little Marvel and then kind of just didn't continue, b/c it was TOO MUCH, and I had to triage what I wanted to pay attention to. And DC has Diana, so I read Diana-related things, and there's very little of my money or attention left over for other stuff. And to newish fans, superheroes may LOOK like what the publishers do as a whole, and you actually have to be somewhat conversant in the structure of the industry and the output as a whole to even understand how Vertigo is related to DC, or what else Marvel is doing besides superheroes, and etc. And MCU has brought in a lot of people to the convo who may be fairly new to comics, or fairly casual comics fans.
So it feels easy and neat to line up superheroes vs. superheroes, talk about the ones a particular person is familiar with, and make a pronouncement damning the other publisher. And then fans of the other publisher, who are almost certainly MORE familiar with it than you are, have the same reaction to your dismissing those things. And in that simplistic context, even saying "well yeah but DC also has Vertigo" or something FEELS LIKE A DEFENSIVE MOVE, and sometimes it totally IS a defensive move. But sometimes it's just saying "well but here's a thing that exists too that should be part of the discussion of what exists and why it matters."
tl;dr the structure of the whole conversation can be really false, but even trying to point that out can reinforce it by making you feel like you're just defending your chosen publisher.
In conclusion, SENSATION COMICS.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-06 03:21 pm (UTC)Aaaand, the whole thing is complicated because it can be hard to shift the conversation to just include more indie-style stuff (cus Vertigo is DC, but functionally, in terms of content, it publishes "indie" comics) because - while this ISN'T true in bookstores - in the direct market, superheros are just so overwhelmingly dominant. It can become like the games industry. Pointing out the indie games that are doing fun, cool stuff is so far removed from the toxic reality of the gaming industry on a corporate level that it's...derailing to mention it. Even while it's simultaneously important that it get mentioned.
Yargh.
In conclusion: WHY IS SENSATION COMICS NOT UNTIL NEXT WEEK? BY THEN I WILL BE A WHOLE YEAR OLDER. I NEED IT, PRECIOUS! I NEED IT NOWWWWWWW.