Man-dates in Extreme Justice, and "event comics" criticism request

[ejne7]

Two things:

Firstly, people actually requested more Extreme Justice, so I'm sharing the two scenes in which bystanders read a team-member as Blue Beetle's boyfriend. The surprising part is that neither of these teammates is Booster Gold.



First up is Ronnie Raymond, in EJ #9 (October 1996, by Velez, Rio, and Branch).

Now, Booster Gold has for months been trapped in the life-support armour Ted made for him after Devastator ripped his arm off in JLA. It keeps malfunctioning, and needs loads of maintenance. Ordinarily that's just Ted's bag, but lately he's being led astray by new team-mate Firestorm, who is at this point basically a high-functioning alcoholic.






Ted's newsboy cap (it's a continuity nod! He had one when he was a Steve Ditko character too!) is by far my favourite part of this. That and his going "sigh" while he fights the baddies. Well, that AND the fact that he appears to have made the left-hand baddie in the third panel of that last page bleed from the mouth just by voguing at him in the manner of a cheap Karate Kid knock-off.

Also, I find it interesting that around this time in comics, you could start introducing the idea that Gay-Bashing Is Bad, while still being ambiguous about whether it's bad because it's wrong or bad because "eugh, they said we were queer!"

Skip forward eight issues (to EJ#17 by Washington, Morgan, and Branch); Ronnie gets into rehab, Booster gets out of the tin can, and Captain Atom learns that he is not, as he's always believed, actually Nathaniel Adam, but a clone of the real Adam (now operating as the villainous Monarch) created in the quantum field. (I assume this plot point was quietly dropped and stamped upon at some point between EJ and that one disastrous Wildstorm crossover?) Cap responds to the discovery by angsting for several issues and then having a Haircut Of Character Development. And going for a coffee date with Ted.

Caveat: in this scene, it's possible I'm picking up subtext that's not really there. But I'm hoping that since this is S_D I can get a motto :)





OH BOYS YOU TRIED.

And here's a bonus for those upset by the art: the series did also bring us some early instances of Chris Batista drawing Booster Gold.



Secondly, a request: Can anyone recommend me any serious/scholarly books, journals, etc. that discuss the phenomenon of "event" comics? I saw that the Sequential Art Journal is bringing out Classics on Infinite Earth: The Justice League and DC Crossover Continuity, and I'm looking for titles like that: stuff discussing the genesis of events comics, and how we got from The Great Darkness Saga through CoIE and developments like 52 to *fifteen* distinct mini tie-ins with Flashpoint. (I know my DC bias is showing here; I'm equally interested in Marvel-focused material for this.)

If I get a good response on this I promise to stop posting Extreme Justice :)

Comments

[bluefall]

I'm pretty sure you're not reading anything into that scene with Nate that isn't there.

Also idk but I kinda want to try a buffalo won-ton now.

[ejne7]

It's the bit where Ted takes his hand off Nate's shoulder and turns it into a MANLY FIST OF HETEROSEXUALITY that made me think I wasn't hallucinating :)

[richardak]

I don't agree that the Captain Atom/Wildstorm crossover was disastrous at all, but yes, that plot-line about Cap not really being Nathaniel Adam was dropped. And thank goodness, because it was really stupid, and kind of a rip-off of the Spider-Man Clone Saga, when I think about it, although they came out around the same time, so maybe it was just a coincidence. But mostly it was just really stupid.

What I find strange about this is that the writers made a continuity nod to something as obscure as Ted's newsboy cap from the character's Charlton days, but apparently forgot that Ted hated Captain Atom, which only went back to when they were in the JLI together. Unless I'm badly misremembering things, this series never explained how the two of them reconciled and became friends, it just forgot that they weren't.

That being said, on scans daily it's never just you. The subtext here is definitely real. Nonsensical, again, but real.

[ejne7]

I mean, it was disastrous in the literal sense of annihilating the Wildstorm Universe (it got better), but you're right, I'm probably remembering Armageddon through the lens of my entitled Wildstorm fanpain. Maybe I'll try to reread it now the rage (and Wildstorm) are over.

Ted was the least explored and developed character in the series, I'd say, so glossing over his history with Cap doesn't surprise me much. Firestorm had the leukaemia plot, Cap had the stuff with Monarch, Booster had the armour/tentacle lion debacle, Maxima and Will had a relationship (I'd quite like to post scans from that, because there's some interesting stuff where Will calls Maxima out for fetishizing him); even the *Wonder Twins* got an arc. Ted just hung around driving the Bug, making clothes for Booster, and wisecracking.

What I didn't get about the subtext was this: if the two women are assuming that Nate is talking to Ted about being gay, why do they storm off with their noses in the air when Ted comes up with his (totally boggling) cover story?

[richardak]

It's true that Armageddon destroyed (and instantly recreated) the Wildstorm Universe, but the point was not to destroy it, any more than the point of Crisis on Infinite Earths was to destroy the DC Universe. Wildstorm had started out as a place where writers were telling innovative, interesting stories and artists were breaking new ground visually, but by the time DC acquired the brand, it had become synonymous with some of the worst excesses of nineties-era grim-and-gritty "extreme" comics. (Not unlike Extreme Justice, I suppose.) The idea behind Armageddon was to fix this. It didn't work out, but that had more to do with the fact that DC had no idea what to do with the Wildstorm characters after that.

Under-utilizing Ted Kord was one of the problems with this series. But even if a writer decides he doesn't want to focus much on a particular character, that's no excuse for just disregarding that character's history with the other characters.

In answer to your last question, I don't know. Maybe they're slash fans, and they're just disappointed to hear that they've misunderstood the conversation? The art is not great, so it's possible that what was supposed to be a look of disappointment is coming across as snootiness or something? Who knows?

[ejne7]

Maybe *they* were on a date and pleased that the coffee shop was becoming a popular gay hangout. And then were disappointed in the guys' clunky denial. Heh.

[feyandstrange]

I like to think that so self-respecting woman-loving woman would have worn earrings that are basically giant plastic exclamation marks, but that's my prejudice showing.

[ejne7]

Heh, you gotta give her some latitude for it being the Nineties :)

[feyandstrange]

I'm not even seeing just gay, but possibly trans; "I'm not even in the right body anymore" is instantly gave me a girl!Adam there. Tight purple shirt SO NOT HELPING HIS ARGUMENT.

[junipepper]

motto!

[fungo_squiggly]

The "secret cowboy" stuff is even funnier in this post-Brokeback Mountain world of ours.

[ejne7]

I love that it was the VERY STRAIGHTEST THING Ted could think of. Buncha dudes in chaps out together on the lonesome range.

Mind you, given the attire of the other bar patrons in the scene with Ronnie, I was quite surprised that they got gay-bashed there.

[badficwriter]

Yeah, I was looking at those guys and going, "Wait, that guy ALSO has long hair."

Perhaps...they believed baldness canceled out teh Ghey!

(Maybe that's why Luthor got so pissed?)

[ejne7]

Don't even get me started on how Ted is obviously wearing Booster's shirt...

[feyandstrange]

I suspect it's the use of conditioner and a brush that sets them apart, but that's based on a vague explanation from a guy from Montana who had long hair.

[feyandstrange]

He's not alone in that; a while ago when the Mormons found out that half of Europe mistook its tie-wearing young men in pairs for gay married couples instead of missionaries, it instituted new rules about not sitting next to each other on buses and the like, and publicly mentioned changing its dress code to something "more John Wayne", IIRC. (Which was pre-Brokeback, but not before most people knew Wayne was secretly gay.)

[icon_uk]

As far as I am aware there has never been any actual evidence that John Wayne was gay. Some rumours yes, but those are hardly proof of anything (Best one was that he might be gay because his real name was Marion, which is the sort of head-desking idiocy that causes me actual pain to think about).

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

Alas, the ugly, cluttered non-Kevin Maguire art just puts me off.

[ejne7]

Yeah, Maguire was long gone by this point. I keep hoping someone will post some of his new Tanga stuff on here, having missed it in the comics shop.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Personally, the way I read this sort of stuff is that being part of a super-team tends to break down social boundaries a bit. It's like being a cop, or a soldier - you and your contemporaries have been through hell together, so you have a basic connection with them that tends to make you much more comfortable in each other's presence. To an outsider, this can read like a romantic or sexual connection - it's not (at least, it's not here), but it's easy to see how it could be read that way.

[ejne7]

Yeah, absolutely. And I know that as a reader I'm guilty sometimes of *willfully* interpreting as slashy scenes that are just as plausibly epic bromance. (But before I feel too bad about it, I remind myself of Warren Ellis parodying the early Apollo and Midnighter deniers: 'They're just really good pals doing a stakeout together! Naked!' We all bring a lot of stuff into the text with us.)

[psychopathicus_rex]

It probably doesn't hurt that the majority of these characters are very good-looking. That has a tendency to *cough* inspire such thoughts in one. (I recall at least one X-Men spin-off novel musing on what a COINCIDENCE it was that the team has such a statistically disproportionate amount of extremely beautiful women in it.) If they were just regular-looking people, such thoughts might not even cross the collective mindset.

[icon_uk]

Hey apparently George Perez gave Titans Tower a pool deliberately so he could draw lots of swimwear clad beauties of both genders...

[psychopathicus_rex]

Hey, when life DOESN'T bring you lemons, make lemonade anyway. (Uh... if that makes sense.)

[icon_uk]

"When life gives you spandex clad hotties, make them have a reason to strip down further"?

[psychopathicus_rex]

Potato, potahto...

[ejne7]

My only problem with that argument here is that Ronnie literally does look like my cousin, Ted looks like late-stage Michael Jackson, and Nate looks like the lovechild of Chris Noth and one of the Rapa Nui moai, and yet it is still slashy. Eheh :)

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, OK, here they're not too terribly handsome-looking. But it's been established in other comics that they're SUPPOSED to be.