More DC Race Fail

[goggle_kid]

Dave Brothers Beat Me To This One

More of Ian Sattler at the the Heroes Con DC Nation panel.

"A serious topic came up about how characters who are minorities who happened to be legacy characters like Ryan Choi are killed off so their caucasian counterparts can return and how they feel like they are being cheated or sidelined out of their roles. Sattler took a more serious tone. "It's so hard for me to be on the other side because it's not our intention. There is a reason behind it all. We don't see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters. We have the Great Ten out there and I have counter statistics, but I won't get into that. It's not how we perceived it. We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters."

Comments

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

The dude at 4th letter is named David Brothers. David Brooks is a conservative pundit.

I get the feeling Ian Sattler was hired to deflect some ire from Didio, and for no other reason.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Also, as a hopeless Marvel fanboy, watching DC dig themselves deeper like this gives me a big old unfortunate grin. It is terrible but I cannot help it.

[theanswer]

Dig deeper? Blackest Night is making them beat Marvel.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Oh, sure, the sales are what they are. I didn't know Blackest Night was quite that popular, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me.

That said, they've been pissing more vocal comic book fans off every week for the last month or longer, and they just keep doing it. It's entertaining to me, because I have no emotional investment in the quality of DC's output.

[theanswer]

And Marvel's not guilty of doing that?

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Quesada has a very different, arguably stupid idea of what Spider-Man should be (although OMD has produced some truly fine comics, particularly recently), and Bendis's loose grasp on continuity has aggrieved many nerds.

Marvel in general doesn't do two important things that DC is fucking up right now, though. One is that the characters, while predominantly white, aren't becoming more so as time goes on; the other is that they aren't giving the Silver Age a big sloppy blow job at the expense of everything else.

Marvel has a entire basket full of issues, but DC just seems so utterly clueless right now that it's hilarious. "Let's put out a five-issue miniseries where Roy Harper beats junkies to death with a dead cat! That's awesome!"

[theanswer]

Utterly clueless? I think their sales seem to indicate otherwise.

The Internet's outcry doesn't always match the consensus amongst fans. Sales often contradict what you read on the Internet.

[theanswer]

Also, you're delusional if you think Marvel isn't guilty of poorly representing a people. They pretty much suck when it comes to writing women most of the time.

[q99]

I like DC's world more. I like DC's characters more.

I buy more Marvel because I like their books more.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

There was a period of time, around when Morrison was writing JLA, when I genuinely did like the DC universe more. The fact that most of their A-list heroes were legacy guys, and that the ones who weren't had clear successors lined up, was interesting to me, and gave the universe a sense of forward momentum that late-nineties Marvel just couldn't match. They've been systematically dismantling that ever since.

I don't actually think people who prefer DC are wrong. I just have a weird image of DC and Marvel as bitter sports rivals or something, and I'm a Marvel guy. When DC screws up well beyond the bounds of reason or sense, I get a little touch of schadenfreude.

[q99]

I'm purely in the "more good books, the better" camp because I need reading material. Right now, neither's doing enough for my appetite.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Well, it's not like there will ever be enough good books.

[q99]

Yea, but past a certain point it's "which of these good books should I follow?" rather than "is it worth going to the comic store this week at all?"

[theanswer]

You realize now they have more legacy characters they know what to do with... surely.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Connor's an amnesiac, Kyle's irrelevant, Wally got his book taken away, and Ollie, Hal, and Barry all came back to life. The forward momentum I was interested in was abruptly halted and reversed.

I should clarify: it wasn't the existence of legacy characters itself that interested me. It was those specific legacy characters and their impact on the universe.

[goggle_kid]

Hastily corrected...

My bad.

[lea_hazel]

Wouldn't it be hilarious if pundits started opining on comics?

[suzene]

Oh please, no. Steve "I Hate Diversity" Blair has already given me my quota for "Do you not think before you open your mouth?!" for the year.

[skalja]

At least the backlash against him has gotten huge -- the rest of the local government is repudiating him as well, last I heard.

[suzene]

I appreciate that he's getting a spanking, but the circumstances and the original targets -- the mural and the kids working on it -- combined with all of the other race and gay-rights fail we've had the last few years down here kind of has me in a "Nuke us from orbit...please!" state of mind.

[skalja]

That's completely fair and totally understandable.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

I've actually been expecting somebody at Fox to blow a gasket over something or another in a mainstream comic book - Billy and Teddy's relationship, Ares's gory dismembering in Siege, Batwoman's ongoing, etc. - for quite some time now. The teabagger rally in Captain America came close, but didn't quite go over the edge.

[lea_hazel]

I was expecting it to be something in Civil War. I mean. WWII vet Captain America as an outlaw?

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

Steve's always been pretty liberal, though. He dated a Jewish girl, hangs out with black people, beats up racists, tends to wind up fighting the government during Republican administrations, and refuses to carry a gun. They also made sure that immediately after 9/11, Steve spent a few months explicitly going after terrorists.

[neuhallidae]

Oh, did you see where Yahoo news was whining that movie!Cap wasn't a true American because a movie based in the European Theater is being ::gasp:: filmed in Europe, taking away precious economic boosts to LA? I was hoping that would puff up into something, just because it was so hilariously absurd.