This week's adventures climbing the cliffs of insanity include my thoughts on the nature of heroes, especially super ones, the announcement of a couple of very political comics from DC, and a glimpse inside Dreamworks Animation, which gave me a Best Job Ever moment.
My musings on superheroes was triggered by DC's announcement of two new series: The Movement and The Green Team. They're bookend titles, with one focusing on the one percent of the people with the money and the other, on the 99 percent of the people toiling for it. The titles intrigue me, not only because they're openly political, or because the talent involved is considerable, but because it promises new characters that perhaps can be used in this kind of environment without it seeming forced.
But it also sent me thinking about the nature of superheroes in general.
I grew up reading superheroes where the most important element of that name was "hero" rather than "super."
But, lately, a number of the books from the big two superhero publishers, DC and Marvel, seem to have forgotten the hero part of the name. Marvel has always had more flawed, more human superheroes but, as a whole, these people have still been heroes. The most perfect example is Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who has all sorts of problems. He can't pay the rent sometimes, he has romantic trouble, he wonders if his life as a hero is at all worth it.
But, at the end, he's a hero. He'll fight for those who can't fight for themselves and he will never quite cross that line into villainy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in last year's Avengers Vs. X-Men event from Marvel. Spider-Man comes through as a true hero. (His fellow "heroes" do not but I'll get to that later.)
The trend of viewing superheroes as only people with powers is often blamed/attributed to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen, which loosely based its protagonists on the Charlton comic superheroes and explored what would really happen in our world if people possessed these kind of world-changing powers. It's not pretty because, of course, people aren't pretty. It's an anti-hero story.
I think this is one of the reasons the movie flopped at the box office. Movie goers who were expecting a super "hero" tale received the exact opposite.
Watchmen wasn't meant to recreate the superhero ideal. It is, instead, a meta-commentary on the genre mixed with a theme on the use and abuse of power. Instead, however, it seems to have served as a template for what a regular superhero story should be. As the years after Watchmen passed by, comics became "grittier" and "more realistic" and darker in general. Marvel did these kinds of stories better especially since their less idealistic heroes were more suited to the style. X-Men is, after all, a metaphor for the outsiders among us and all of the mutants have differing and sometimes unlikable personalities.
At DC, the turning point that led down the road of people with powers instead of superheroes was Identity Crisis. Much internet angst, argument and praise has been heaped on the miniseries, written by Brad Meltzer and drawn by Rags Morales, in which the Justice League is splintered apart when Sue Dibny, the pregnant wife of Ralph (Elongated Man) Dibny, is murdered and charred to a crisp. The murder is used merely as a tool to kick off a tale about the dark side of our heroes, and that includes a mind wipe not only a a villain who once raped Sue. (Sue has the interesting distinction of being retroactively raped while being currently dead but ID Crisis' gender politics would be a whole nother article.)
The point where the story turns is that Batman opposes mind wiping Sue's rapist and the League then turns around and agrees to mind wipe Batman. Without his consent. So they deliberated screwed with his head to cover up their crime.
Not very heroic. And from that point on, the DC universe's tentpole event was a rape and a mind-wipe. Also not very heroic.
Yet Identity Crisis sold like hotcakes. Joss Whedon even wrote a forward praising the book. And because of the sales, the trend continued. Heroes had dark pasts! Heroes did bad things. Heroes lost fights all the time. About the only thing heroes didn't do anymore was, well, be heroic by doing the right thing even under the worst circumstances. A crazed Superboy from another dimension ripped the arms off other heroes in order to set things right in Infinite Crisis, a follow up. And so on.
There's a site devoted to Superman breaking Wheaton's Law called superdickery.com which showcases all the not-so-nice thing done by Silver Age Superman. These, though, were written at a kid's level, and meant at the time to be silly.
The superdickery showcased in current comics? Meant to be taken dead seriously. Take Marvel's Civil War, in which the heroes go to war with each other and one side is responsible for the death of the hero named Goliath, and cloned Thor without his consent, and sent good guys and bad guys to the Marvel equivalent of the Phantom Zone. Who in their right minds would root for these guys? Where are the heroes who do the right thing? That trend continued at Marvel in AvX where the mutants fought the other heroes and one side commits mass murder and the other suggests killing a teenage girl is the way to go.
Note: these are not villains. They are heroes. They're the good guys.
At the end of AvX, both side admit mistakes, lots of normal people are dead, and half the X-Men have committed genocide of sorts, at least it was under thought control. And nobody, with the possible exception of Spider-Man and a couple of others, have been at all heroic.
Meanwhile, at DC, their Amazons, once peaceful forward-thinking Amazons have been turned into murderers and baby slavers because it adds depth to Wonder Woman's story, apparently. (Though there is quite a plot disconnect to how Wonder Woman could have turned into such an idealistic hero under the tutelage of people who commit such acts. Where did she learn her ideals, anyway?)
What's the problem, you ask? Aren't stories allowed to explore dark sides?
The answer is, yes, stories are allowed to do anything they want. But superheroes are unique in our society, as they're often the ideal of heroism. Ask any kid what Superman does and you'll likely get "he helps people," "he fixes things if disaster happens," "he needs to fight the bad guys." Or, as Gordon says in the last Nolan Batman film says "they know who saved them. It was the Batman." Superheroes are a beacon of hope, in their worlds and ours.
Yet now we have a Superman who angsts about not having human connections (his marriage to Lois never happened now) and mopes around quite a bit. The Batman comics are more horror than hero and while they're great horror stories, it's not the same thing. Cyclops is more extreme than anti-hero Magneto in the X-Men comics. (I love Magneto but I don't want all the heroes to be like him or there's no point...) Fellow heroes mind-wipe Captain America for the greater good over in the Avengers titles. (I have to reserver judgement on that one as the story hasn't played out yet.) And so on. There are a few oasis for both companies but they're few and far between. That's because grim and gritty and depressing sell in the direct comic market.
It bums me out.
Superheroes are a power fantasy, yes, but they're a power fantasy about doing good in the world. We have thousands upon thousands of stories about people who go astray, do the wrong thing, or flawed people who make both good and lousy decisions. I'm a voracious reader. I love all kinds of stories.
But I don't understand why there is this need to pull down the ideal of heroism inherent in superheroes. We have noir. We have horror. We have so many other ways to tell the story of human corruption and fallacies. A superhero story is about hope, and good, and decency, even if the journey to get their is hard and sometimes horrific.
The world needs more of that kind of story, not less.
The Denny O'Neil/Neal AdamsTopical Award to The Green Team and The Movement
Over forty years ago, DC jumped headfirst into the discussion about race and the have and the have-nots with an issue of Green Lantern published in 1970, as illustrated in the comic's most famous panel above. O'Neil/Adams used that series to explore racism, drug abuse, and other issues of the day. On the Marvel side, the X-Men stood as an example of a mix of people from other countries, different ethnicities, and gender. Later, they would go on to become a metaphor for being gay in America. But, lately, aside from the mutant registration act that comes up again and again in Marvel, they haven't fully stepped into real world politics like O'Neil/Adams first did with Green Lantern and Green Arrow.
Until now, with these two new books. The Green Team is written by Art Baltazar, Franco and Ig Guara and The Movement is from Gail Simone and Freddie Williams II. The first is about rich kids who supposedly try to use their money to make the world a better place while the second is described as a "book about power" from the point of view of the disenfranchised. In other words, it's about the populist movement.
Other than that, details remain sketchy, including what original or current characters on DC's roster might be involved. I hope these are all-new characters for our modern times, rather than a warping of existing characters to fit modern sensibilities. Because this is a chance to create heroes who first exist in our time and that could be an exciting thing. O'Neil/Adams changed the dynamic by holding heroes to a standard other than punching bad guys all the time. This could do the same for new heroes. (And, yes, I do hope they're heroes in the end, not people with powers.)
GeekMom "Toto, I'm Not in Kansas Anymore" Moment
If anyone had watched my twitter or Facebook this week, they'd have noticed that I flew away from the very snowy confines of New England to California as part of a blogger summit put together by Dreamworks Animation as part of the promotion for the upcoming The Croods movie.
First, it would have been enough to simply hang out in California for a couple of days where the natives seem to consider 50 degrees cold. But this was so much more.
Second, it turns out The Croods is a great movie (more on that in the coming weeks) about a family fighting change and the world and encountering some of the most bizarre and fun fictional creatures I've ever seen, along with great action sequences and a moment that truly tugged at the heartstrings. It also had the best 3D effects I've seen since James Cameron's Avatar.
And the family? Well, they all turned out to be heroes of their own sort.
But the true joy of the summit was the tour of Dreamworks Animation in Glendale, California, which included workshops on the entire animation process, from storyboarding to creature creation, to lighting, sound, plotting and every thing you can think of that goes into it. (Did you know it takes a whole day to make one second of an animated movie?)
Oh, and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg showed up to answer questions at one of the workshops. For this work-from-home mom, the whole thing was a pinch-me moment. (And I was so relieved that after meeting all these incredible creators at Dreamworks that the movie was good!)
