From my recent blog post on the on-going reaction to DC’s reboot this autumn:
It’s quite hilarious really. DC says its reboot is about getting new readers for a shrinking market, and all it does is chase after the mythical boy reader that it’s been courting to years, which research has shown is increasingly disenchanted by what DC is offering.
This is the kind of uninspired strategy that comes out of the mouths of movie executives, which should point to the fact that DC is really at the beck and call of Warner Bros, and is part of a media conglomerate which has a track record of ignoring and marginalising women and minorities.
It’s the DC Mad Hatter tea party. They call for change and everyone moves around the table but nobody new is invited.
They’re feasting off the same stale crumbs and dank tea.
I think we should leave them to their empty banquet.
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: ‘No room! No room!’ they cried out when they saw Alice coming. ‘There’s plenty of room!’ said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
‘Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. ‘I don’t see any wine,’ she remarked.
‘There isn’t any,’ said the March Hare.
‘Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,’ said Alice angrily.
‘It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,’ said the March Hare.
‘I didn’t know it was your table,’ said Alice; ‘it’s laid for a great many more than three.’
Here’s a snippet from my blog post looking at the number of women creators on the forthcoming DC relaunch:
What’s shocking is the lack of women creators on the titles. Bleeding Cool has done the gendercrunching on the numbers. There are 160 credited creators on the 52 titles, of which 157 are male and 3 are female.
The three is actually two. Gail Simone is the writer on two projects (she’s co-writing one of them) and Jenny Frison is doing one of the covers. No female artists are being employed for interior art. There might yet be women colourists and letterers, but usually those names are not featured on the covers of comic books.
Last night Gail Simone tweeted: “DC, we need more female creators, stat. Really. Let’s make this happen.” (Bleeding Cool has put her tweeted conversation online).
It’s good for Gail to go to bat for women in comics – especially as she’s working for DC. I found it interesting that some people took umbrage at her remark. As if her statement was a call for an easy ride for women. Women are not absent in the industry, but they are incredibly scarce in DC (and Marvel doesn’t fare much better most of the time).
The statistics are frankly embarrassing for any industry in the 21st century.
Dynamic trio on Flickr.
This is a photo I took a few weeks back of three toys I picked up in Forbidden Planet in Dublin.
They are Wonder Woman, Catwoman and Hawkwoman.
I’m particularly fond of the grin on Hawkwoman’s face.
The first image is the cover for the Justice League Dark title that DC has announced.
It will feature the team-up of John Constantine, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man and Madame Xanadu. This is the first title in DC’s forthcoming reboot of its universe that has really caught my attention.
In fact, all of the ‘dark’ titles that DC is embracing have my attention, but those are the kind of titles I enjoy reading. A lot of people are wondering why they’re not in the Vertigo series, so I’ll assume that DC is planning more of a shiny, high concept team-up rather than the usual gritty settings of the Vertigo crowd.
My first thought was that John Constantine will be taking the piss out of his companions mercilessly. He does not play well with others.
There’s been a lot of fan reaction to the slew of news, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the angst.
At this point I’m taking a wait-and-see approach. There are plenty of fine writers and artists on board, and they could do something genuinely interesting now that they’re unshackled from the fetters of past continuity.
Change is good. It’s natural. In many ways it’s the hardest thing for people to accept in their lives.
I’m willing to give DC a chance to do something different.
Although, the ‘pants only’ policy for the female characters is not wowing me when an artist draws Catwoman sprinkling diamonds over her body as she does boob-popping Yoga on a ledge.
Of course, what woman doesn’t do that on the way back from a heist?
Costumes aren’t the problem all the time. It’s how the artists draw the women - the parade of up-shots and down-shots that subtly undermine even the most powerful of female characters.
Even the best writers with the best of intentions for their female characters can have much of their work undercut by this style of posing.
