James Robinson addresses one of the sorer points of "Cry for Justice"

[icon_uk]

Spoilers for the Starman/Congorilla team up one-shot

Readers of Cry for Justice were witness to many, many arbitrary fridgings, but one irked me more than a little.




Now I now Tasmanian Devil was a D-lister, I don't even particularly care that he was a happy, gay hero, many characters were fridged in CfJ regardless of orientation, so I genuinely didn't think it was homophobically motivated.

Readers of the Starman/Congorilla team up one-shot will be aware that the plot involved the blue skinned alien Starman, a Lazarus Pit and a certain dead Australian hero... who now isn't so dead any more, and has a new, blue boyfriend.

Robinson discusses this in an interview with Newsarama here

Here's an excerpt

Newsarama: James, now that the Starman/Congorilla special has been released, what motivated you to tell this story?

James Robinson: The Starman/Congorilla one-shot is one of those stories that I've been meaning to tell ever since Cry for Justice – well, actually, I knew this was coming even when I was writing Cry for Justice.
Plus it involves a hunt for the Lazarus Pit and the Fountain of Youth, and Rex the Wonder Dog, and all these different, interesting, bizarre aspects of the DC universe, which is something that I enjoy messing around with.
But it was always a story that was leading toward the return of Tasmanian Devil, who will be Starman's boyfriend.

Nrama: You were the one that killed off the Tasmanian Devil in Cry for Justice. Was it always your intent to bring him back?

Robinson: Absolutely. I was hoping to write it immediately. Because I killed Tasmanian Devil off rather cruelly in Cry for Justice.
I always intended for that to be the case, that Starman would eventually have Tasmanian Devil as his boyfriend. Congorilla finding his friend was going to be sub-plot that I was going to use, and tie it in with the apparent murder of Tasmanian Devil. I had to put it off for a while, but I found a way to fold it into the Omega storyline.
And I had always planed that it would lead toward Starman finding love with Tasmanian Devil. They're two of the main gay characters of DC Universe. So I wanted to bring them together.

Nrama: I think it's safe to say that nobody saw that coming.

Robinson: Not when I've apparently had one of them skinned! [laughs] And in a rug on the floor. No, not at all. But I didn't want to reveal anything.

Nrama: But didn't you get some flack for killing Tasmanian Devil?

Robinson: Yes. People online were like, "James Robinson hates gay people" and all of this. Which is utterly ridiculous, and it was a little bit hurtful, considering the gay friends I have here in San Francisco and other parts of the world.
It's ironic because in Starman – and I believe this to be true. And I’m willing to be called a liar. I’m not 100 percent sure of this. But I think within mainstream comics, be that Marvel and DC basically – I think in Starman, I had the first main, male gay kiss ever. So for me to be called a gay hater is ridiculous.
Comments? Opinions?

Comments

[bluefall]

Well, gosh, James, so sorry for hurting your feelings.

[turtlefu]

James Robinson being gay-friendly doesn't change the fact that he is now an absolutely shitty writer.

Also, I'd like to point out that because Robinson intended to make him Starman's boyfriend from the very beginning, his death WAS because of his orientation.

Just sayin'

[icon_uk]

That's kind of reaching for outrage, no?

It wasn't the result of his orientation per se, more it was because of his relationship potential. If Starman had been straight (or rather, into Earth women) it would probably have been a woman that was killed to tell the story.

[misterbug]

Aw...bring back Freedom Beast! Dude was awesome!

[euthanatos]

my comment is I have no opinion on the matter other than I hate when characters die and come back to life. It's as simple as that. It's become silly and kinda ruins a lot of comics for me.

[icon_uk]

Normally I agree, but there are always exceptions... see icon! :)

[neev]

I know these writers (not just Robinson, but just about anyone writing today who doesn't specifically do queer/gay-themed work) mean well and I really don't think they do mean to write things that are homophobic but at the same time, I really wish they would remember that /readers can't see into their heads/. We as an audience only get what they give us and if you give us A GAY GUY SKINNED AND USED AS A RUG it is right and good that people should stop and look at that and go HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE, WHAT IS THIS?

I think it's great that Robinson has been working on a longer character arch for Tasmanian Devil, but it's annoying that he's acting butthurt when people are reasonably upset over a fairly degrading death for a character. Sorry, but unless you have a fucking spotless track record for writing about gay characters, you have to accept as a writer that you don't get the benefit of the doubt because more often than not, giving the benefit of the doubt isn't warranted. Things are just as bad as they seem.

[zyriex]

Motto

[jlbarnett]

So, you kill and skin the guy, then you ressurect him, then you have him date one of the people responsible for his resurrection?

That just screams mentally healthy relationship, don't you all think?

[icon_uk]

If either of them were dating Prometheus, yes, that would be unhealthy, but considering the comicsverse approach to life and death, if you excluded relationships with people who'd been dead at one point or another, humankind would die out within a generation

[arbre_rieur]

My thoughts? Lots of fans could do well to remember that these writers are actual human beings and that there's no need to make things personal.

[bluefall]

There's no "making" things personal when readers get angry about ugly messages in their comics. Homophobia, in fact, starts personal for queer readers and their allies, and such readers don't have the pleasant luxury of calmly stepping back and going "oh well we'll go out of our way to not hurt your feelings you poor real person" when the very real person that is them has just been smacked in the face themselves.

[thanekos]

mmm, spleen and the venting thereof.

[thebigapricot]

So dead isn't dead in DC if the writer doesn't like it?

They're two of the main gay characters of DC Universe. So I wanted to bring them together.
And what is it with writers wanting to match up all the existing gay characters? First the implication that Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer will get involved in Batwoman and now Robinson bringing Tasmanian Devil to life so Starman can have a boyfriend.

Why not just write more gay characters?

[jaybee3]

Also didn't Robinson spill the beans at a con about Jade returning before Brightest Day was finished by beginning to talk about his plans for a relationship with Starman and Jade? I'm not buying this Tasmanian Devil return thing was planned "all along". Even though he'll defend CFJ I've gotten the impression from the beginning that Robinson is very uncomfortable and self-conscious about how terrible Cry for Justice is and how badly it's been received and mocked. It was the first project he started when he came back to comics and the dialogue (like the threesome thing) shows it and many of the most important plot points in Cry for Justice (such as the maiming of Roy and the killing of Lian) were clearly not his idea. I mean this is a guy who had a whole text section in CFJ about his love of Captain Marvel Jr. (the blue suited Mac Raboy version) even though as it turns out what we got was the red suited steroided up "Shazam" Freddy Freeman who as it turns out was Prometheus all along and the Captain Marvel Jr. he loved so much never appeared. I'm going to go that wasn't Robinson's idea either.

So if DC is going to let bring back some of the D-Listers he killed, good for him. Bring back them all, I say (I also think within 10 years Lian will be back or Roy will be killed off).

[big_daddy_d]

So..he's bringing back someone who died in Cry for Justice?

That..that is actually good news for me personally. Why? Because it opens the door of hope. Hope that a certain other character returns. Who, you ask? Well I'll give you a clue. If my CfJ and RoA rants aren't enough to hint, just look at my icon.

[gunny]

But he can't offend gays or be a gay hater, he has gay friends so it's completely alright!

...ugh.

[okkult3000]

Some of my best friends were skinned alive by supervillains!

[milleniumrex]

So...dead isn't dead in the DCU now? And Lazarus pits that can bring the long-dead back to life are still around?

Dick Grayson, you idiot, why the hell haven't you stolen Lian's body yet? It's not like it might help your best friend's sanity or anything!

[okkult3000]

Why would they tarnish the unmitigated success of The Rise of Arsenal? The comic so good that, when the "dead cat in an alley" scene was brought up on Gail Simone's forum, she assumed the poster was trolling.

[ian_karkull]

I obviously can't speak for everyone here, but as a gay dude, it was never really about Tasmanian Devil being gay, for me it was about Robinson slaughtering random characters left and right for no apparent reason, thus making for an utterly unpleasant reading experience.
The fact that he literally got a Happy Ending doesn't change anything about that and smells a little bit of a Last Minute Fix to be honest (whatever happened to Starman's original boyfriend?) but I can't read Robinson's mind so I won't judge.

Whatever the outcome of that oneshot, Cry for Justice was an utterly terrible comic with absolutely no reason to exist and the whole DC line is poorer for having to suffer through it. I don't think it was homophobic at all, just plain horrible and in my book, that's more than enough.

[arysteia]

Starman's original boyfriend was *also* fridged in CfJ. How ironic.

[silverzeo]

I've already read about this guy, never really read anything with him in it. But seemed pretty interesting. So when he died before doing anything major, I felt like that was wasted potential (kinda like how DC forgot half of Jack Kirby's work till Final Countdown...) and now that he is coming back... I not so sure, afterall, what happened to Mary Marvel makes us all worried about characters who haven't been brought into play recently...

[fifthie]

Obviously there was no way to get these characters together other than by killing one and then literally turning him into a rug.

[stolisomancer]

Not to detract from the very real issues concerning Tasmanian Devil, but the thing that's always sprung out at me about this very page has always been the upper left panel, with the just-shy-of-naked woman getting decapitated.

That is seriously a Photoshop filter away from being some kind of wank picture for a future serial killer, and it never fails to disturb me on a base level. I have no idea how anyone could think publishing that was a good idea.

[greenmask]

It's nasty, innit?

[tsunamiwombat]

Is that KNIGHT killing people?

I am confuse.

[glprime]

Prometheus, the main villain in the mini Cry for Justice

[bradygirl_12]

Ugh, so this is what comics have come to: killing off characters, skinning them, and making them into rugs. How sick is that?

Cry For Justice was truly the most loathsome among many loathsome books.

[pyrotwilight]

Sigh.

So many deaths in this story because of Prometheus.

While Faces of Evil: Prometheus was written by Sterling Gates I'm still very annoyed they brought the Blood Pack in it to have Hook and Anima get killed (and Gunfire to be de-handed) and then even more death and pointless character destruction in the actual Cry for Justice mini.

I can't even tell which global guardians are getting killed, I don't know them, it's killing people for the sake of making Prometheus look dangerous.

[icon_uk]

To be fair the Global Guardians had a fairly fluid membership roster.

According to Wikipedia, they're Gloss (formerly of the New Guardians) and Sandstorm (a Syrian guy apparently)

[screamsheet.wordpress.com]

Not sure I get the logic here. Tasmanian Devil had to die so he could get resurrected and become Starman's boyfriend? Why? If you wanted to hook the two together, why not just do it instead of having a death/resurrection plot?

I sounds to me like Robinson was less planning it from the beginning and more like he's doing damage control because he's sick of the "Robinson hates gays" backlash. (Admittedly, I think saying he's homophobic is unwarranted, but at the same time, he brought a lot of it on himself by having the character not only killed, but skinned and used for a rug.)

Also, wasn't part of the point of Blackest Night to add some weight to superhero deaths? Has this been undone already?

[kirke_novak]

So Tasmanian Devil had to die to Starman got some tail - pun intended. Fridged and F'Ringed at the same time.

[suzene]

Anyone know where I can send Marc Andreyko's cookies and flowers? I have the sudden urge to let him know anew how much I appreciate Todd and Damon.

[biznizzonpeyote]

.....I'm tired, so I'll just say it now.

I don't hate James Robinson, nor did I particularily think he hated gays because of CFJ. Loved Starman. Loved New Krypton, even the ending because it just defied so many expectations of how it was going to end. Loved his Justice League run after he started ironing out the bugs (going with seven instead of, like 15 or so). Love the friendship he's building with Congorilla and Starman.

Now for the drama bomb: I DID NOT hate Cry For Justice. Not just because of the art, not just because Robinson is one of my favorite writers. I'm a guy that doesn't mind death in comics; I may feel sorry for the person who died, but except for a few exceptions, I do not revel in that character's death.

Now, there were things I liked in CFJ, and there were things I ABSOLUTELY HATED. To list two were Ray Palmer and Lian's death. My problem with Ray is that I absolutely LOVED Blackest Night and there he was called one of the most compassionate people on Earth. CFJ Ray is nothing like the BN Ray. Now, another couple drama bombs: I didn't like Lian. She's a kid, the kind that for some reasons got on my nerves. I still felt sorry when she died, but guess what? I don't think it's the worst thing ever! In fact, the big thing that bugs me about Lian's death is that Robinson didn't originally plan it (or so I heard) and it was editorially mandated.

I'm a pretty forgiving guy when it comes to comics. There were points during Rise and Fall that I shook my head, but guess what? I didn't hate it and now every month, I buy Green Arrow and Titans. And I don't think they're crap. GA is better, but I want to see where Eric Wallace is going with Roy (and Osiris). I'm doing the same for Robinson and his JL work, and I'm liking where it's going. This is my opinion and mine alone, I just wanted to get this off my chest since, despite the motto, I DO think that sometimes, it IS just me.