Ponder Point: Controversy and Comics

A big question going on with comics right now is whether or not comics should be politicized and if Social Issues should be discussed in comics. This is mostly seen in Marvel as issues like Thor being a woman, Iceman being made gay, Asian Hulk, Ms. Marvel, sexism, and so on. More prominently, Marvel is also showcasing Steve Rogers as a HYDRA sleeper agent and with the reveal of Magneto possibly  joining him, people are now starting to accuse the writer of hating Jews. DC has also faced some criticism of things such as the Batgirl Cover Controversy, The Killing Joke movie, Wonder Woman being bisexual, and Green Arrow becoming a Social Justice Warrior according to the writer. Fans have been responding to this with their wallets and their criticism of things and honestly I've just now started to care. Today I want to talk about some of the issues that have come up since I've started reading comics again and say whether or not these issues are problems on either side and if they warrant any attention. 

Wonder Woman is Bisexual

Greg Rucka announced early in his new run on Wonder Woman that Diana herself would be bisexual and this was met with more mild backlash than anything else. It honestly would make sense that Diana would be bisexual, especially opposed to just being gay as in most stories concerning her origin she had never even seen a man before Steve Trevor. Fans I think were more upset that the implication would be that this was not done to flesh her character out as opposed to appeal to a demographic but Rucka did make that announcement to flesh out Diana's character as well as to give credence to what he called "queer culture" or something along those lines in an interview. Diana and the Amazons are portrayed as people living in Paradise but they have their own struggles as well and we see that in how Diana isn't really able to keep a lasting romantic relationship and that is even furthered by her telling Steve that she's good at love, but not romance. This is honestly a harmless change that I think was blown out of proportion by the internet on both ends with one sides saying it was pandering while the other saying those that complained were homophobic or just sexualizing Diana.

Iceman is Gay

So during the events of All-New X-Men young Jean Grey and Bobby have a rather awkward talk about about Bobby coming to terms with him being gay. The fan out cry for this was met with a bit of animosity as it was essentially a retcon of a well loved character and I honestly didn't get it until I read the scene myself. It is pretty much Jean telling Bobby he's gay and then the justification of it. There is a lot to be said for what Bobby is dealing with as he sees his future self dating Kitty Pryde but according to Jean, his future self has trouble maintaining relationships with women. It's a constant denial of it until Bobby rationalizes that at some point in his future, he will convince himself that he's not gay because he will not be able to deal with being gay AND a Mutant. The fans I think were upset (outside of homophobic people) was that both this change felt like they did it for the sake of doing it, that it is only settled in a page and it is more Jean  telling Bobby because she's reading his mind. It's also weird because Jean says Bobby was thinking about it the whole time. It makes little sense. Most fans were upset because not only was it a change they didn't want, but it felt a bit insulting to Iceman's history as a character to come to this realization in such a forced way. In the DC book Earth 2, Alan Scott was revamped as gay but that was on a different Earth, the same Earth where everything was designed to be different and that Alan was different yet just as interesting a character.

Sam Wilson Cap and Jane Foster Thor

I was relatively new to Marvel when I heard these announcements and was rather neutral to the idea until I thought about it. Let's ignore the facts that came later and look at it on the surface: Steve Rogers and Thor Odinson are no longer Captain America and Thor and are being replaced. Replacing characters is an odd practice that I think DC does a bit better with things like the mantle of the Flash and Green Lantern, especially with the latter as there is no one Green Lantern. Marvel wants to be inclusive and respond to it's growing market so a change to their lineup would make sense but replacing well loved and established characters is just a wrong way to do it. Readers invest time in the stories of those characters, getting to know and even relate to them so to just think they are gone really turns fans away. This happened with Amadeus Cho as Hulk, a lot of Banner fans left the title, comic fans are always hesitant to change let alone change they don't even care for.

In regards to Sam Wilson and Jane Fsoter, both tried tried to have these things make sense with Steve's super serum breaking down and Thor becoming unworthy to lift his hammer. While Stevephysically being unable to be Captain America made sense and was part of a bigger story, the issue with Thor losing his name over someone else picking up the hammer was questioned heavily and even more so with Jane Foster calling herself "Thor" as Jason Aaron changed the origin a bit. Fans have mostly settled down on these and others with fans either reading the books or not reading them, it also didn't hurt that the original characters were not forgotten with Steve now playing a big role in Marvel's big event Secret Empire and Odinson just got off a really great five issue mini series that we talked about on this blog. The fans fear/hatred at the idea of there favorite characters leaving was mostly unfounded but it did serve as a major talking point. 

Batgirl Cover Controversy

DC and Marvel have an interesting history with it's characters and their legacies and some things leave a large impact and for DC there was nothing really as negatively received as the paralyzing of Barbara Gordon in the Killing Joke. When the cover came out, people were in uproar or rather let's be honest; feminists were in uproar over this variant cover to the point where the cover was ultimately pulled. This was a low point on the list of issues, the argument that Barbara and all other females in comics exist to be victimized and have no real agency. This was the first controversy in comics I was in the middle of primarily and honestly this was stupid. First, the crippling of Barbara Gordon was a big deal and while it hasn't really been addressed since the event Death of the Family, it was clear it would be something Barbara would always deal with. It isn't even the worst thing the Joker has done, he totally killed Jason Todd and honestly, most fans will tell you Barbara being shot was the best thing for her. Fans of Batgirl came out in defense of the cover so the whole thing did feel like the issue was people who hadn't read comics were complaining more than comic readers.

Not Getting the Point

Recently the book Mockingbird was pulled and it stirred some controversy as claims about sexism and need for more female superheroes and writers came out as a reason to keep the book going. This erupted into an argument between fans over the idea that the comic industry was rampant with sexism and that male readers won't read books written by women. Now I actually read the first issue of Mockingbird and I honestly wasn't that won over by it and what it was trying to tell, added to that the price of reading it monthly I just didn't feel it was worth the effort. This isn't the first time I've felt that way but Mockingbird wasn't the problem, the argument seemed to be that people didn't like the book because it was about a female and written by a female, which from what I saw wasn't true. Let's not act like every reader cares who writes any book (they should) because they don't, they see titles first mostly. The same thing is happening with the book America which seems to think it can ride the idea of just having a "queer woman of color" be all the book needs when even after reading it twice I have no idea what it was trying to do. The Unstoppable Wasp also seems to have an issue with trying to prove that sexism is what keeps women from being acknowledged how smart they are as the list of intelligent people S.H.I.E.L.D. made hasn't been updated to include women. Ultimately there was nothing of merit to these books to warrant further reading. The problem is that these books seem to favor the diversity over the story itself, an example of this done right would be Ms. Marvel, a rather fun story that I've been enjoying greatly in my off time and the same could be said of Scarlet Witch and Jane Foster's Mighty Thor. People read those and are enjoying them because for the most part, they are telling a story over the diversity, with the diversity just coming off as an afterthought, especially over the character themselves.

This has become even more of a problem when Marvel recently came out and said that the numbers revealed that readers don't care about diversity and female leads in comics and this isn't true. Readers are tired of diversity over story, of identity politics over characters. America Chavez was a popular character in Young Avengers so there was a market for her but it doesn't seem that the book reflects what the readers wanted. Even after I read the book twice I found all I really learned about Chavez was that she was gay and that she was close to her mom.This is especially true with DC introducing their first trans character and Batwoman getting her own book along with Vixen essentially co leading the JLA.

Batwoman and Marriage

Waaaaaaay back in the early days of the New 52, Batwoman fans were in an outrage over the editorial staff saying that Kate would not be marrying Maggie Sawyer under the claim that they did not want their character to be married. This was of course met with claims of hypocrisy as both Aquaman and Animal Man were married and a few years later we saw Clark Kent and Lois Lane being married so the claim was that DC was homophobic. I honestly disagreed as out of the three marriages mentioned, the writers didn't even know it was a thing, Arthur just proposed to Mera in Rebirth and Animal Man's character is a family man. Also, and this is just my experience, why would anyone writing a Bat Family book let characters get married? Logic would dictate that it would end with either divorce or death, it seems that is going to happen now with Nightwing in his book with his girlfriend being pregnant. Few books ever have characters with spouses, unless they were married from the start like Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four. The issue was understandable from both sides honestly.

Green Arrow: The Social Justice Warrior

I was six issues into Green Arrow when I realized the SJW thing was a bit too much for me. For those of you that don't know an SJW (Social Justice Warrior) is a negative term for someone who complains about the social problems of society on a multitude of levels, and direct them more at who they believe are the aggressors who are normally straight cis gendered white males. Oliver Queen has always been a lefty in that he feels that the government should exist to serve the people but here it seems he's become everything bad about SJW's in current years. There is a scene where he flat out calls a guy a "White Fascist" and the whole time I'm thinking: what's the point of calling him white?! This is a problem the book has in that it really makes Ollie feel more pretentious and using words like "mansplaining" and the idea of privilege just got me to roll my eyes in disintrest. Maybe the book is trying to mock Ollie for being that and him reinventing himself but a lot of times it seems even Black Canary is telling him to check his privilege. It's a book that seems to at times apologize for existing. This isn't to say that this idea couldn't work, social issues are a good topic for comics, the Batman Annual last year put in some good effort in the police brutality argument.

Steve Rogers, Agent of HYDRA

Rounding out the list is the reveal of Steve Rogers being revealed to be a secret agent of HYDRA as part of Nick Spencer's run on Captain America: Steve Rogers that leads into Secret Empire. The reveal was met with a lot of negativity, and Spencer received numerous death threats from fans because the idea that someone who fought the Nazis would be a member of a group that people assumed were Nazis Even today readers have ignored the fact that Steve has had his reality altered by Red Skull using the human Cosmic Cube Kobik so as far as he knows he has always been a member of HYDRA. People stopped reading the book as a whole and missed the brilliance of it, that Steve is moving many different pieces and was one of only two good things about Civil War 2 when we see what he's been doing. There was also a great deal of nuance just within the first issue they show exactly how people join groups like HYDRA and the evil of political correctness, it's a book that makes you agree with what Red Skull is saying but you still don't agree with his actions. There is a great deal if irony to what Steve plans to do, the killing of Red Skull to restore HYDRA to it's glory, the group that helped his mother. It's a really good story that deserves another read through for those that stopped reading it.

Killing Joke Sex Scene

I found it weird that the idea of Barbara Gordon having sex with Batman felt like a bigger deal than her getting shot by the Joker. The Killing Joke is again a controversial comic but the animated movie directed by our lord and savior Bruce Timm added an extra story to flesh out Batgirl more as in a story before she was shot by Joker she had sex with Batman on a rooftop. The end result wasn't well received by fans and it felt like she was being reduced to a sex object. Bruce Timm was no stranger to fleshing out or creating the romance between Barbara and Bruce, having started in the animated series and fleshed out more in the comics so it was never that big a stretch. Bruce Timm did it because it was inappropriate, that they were two imperfect people making a bad decision and Barbara wasn't as ready as she thought she was for any of it; for serious crime fighting, to psychos, and even conflicting feelings. I myself found the story a good but like I said in my Killing Joke review, the voice acting wasn't right for it as it used the standard that Timm set to tell a story of characters not meeting that standard as people. Barbara was crushing on Bruce in the animated series but she was also his partner when Dick Grayson had left, the relationship they would later have had in the comics pertaining to the animated series made sense and was darker but here it felt more as a way to show that the two of them aren't as ready to work together and that Barbara may not be as cut out for this as she thinks. It serves more as a piece for Alan Moore's world than Bruce Timm's.

Ultimately, What Does it Mean?

Comic books have always brought drama, from the Kryptonite that turned Superman gay, to the porno he did, to Hank Pym beating his wife, and even now with an artist coming under fire for anti-Jewish and anti-Christian meanings. Comics are like art, music, television, always in one form or another reflect life and the society we live in and this is even more common when the medium is a business model. Do these controversies have merit? Well some of them don't really have any real leg to stand on and are honestly just bumps on the road like Wonder Woman being bisexual and Batwoman's married life, they are either not big deals or an example of no clear thinking on the part of New 52. Some however I think needed to be talked about earnestly like Marvel's diversity over story and character as well as Green Arrow being an SJW. What really does need to happen is that we all have to not get so hyped up and give questionable books a chance and not writing them off just because they have something we don't like but at the same time remain vocal about what we don't like seeing in books.