DC at SDCC: Provocative (Grant Morrison in a Dress) is Good? (Final Part, Saturday)

[turtlefu]

This is it! The final part of this massive clusterfuck! But first, legality!
 

Maybe they'll get around to the black guy... eventually

 

DC’s New 52 Panel (Saturday Morning)

Winick says that with Batwing, he’s trying to mix superheroes with real-world issues in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He called Africa “a very politicized and ravaged country”.

“Now THERE’s that white privilege I was talking about! Good job we have mighty whitey to tell us how horrible of a “COUNTRY” Africa is! I get a huge feeling Winick is going to use this book as his mouthpiece for his opinions on the politics and culture of Africa, which he will grossly misunderstand and possibly turn into a "look at those SAVAGES" situation.”

DiDio made a list of heroines in starring roles. He says DC has the best percentage of females in starring roles.

“DC, DIVERSITY IS NOT ABOUT NUMBERS. Why don’t you guys GET THAT!? Also, I call bullshit on that anyway. Besides, Marvel is employing far more female creators (Deconnick, Immomen, Rios, Liu, etc.)”

Morrison says that Cass still exists in the DCU.

“Yay Cass!”          

The same Batgirl fan from the panel who asked about heroines on covers asked this panel why there weren’t more female creators in DC. DiDio says, GET THIS, they hire the best writers and artists they can! And the audience applauds! Morrison mocks her by saying he looks great in a dress, then turns around and encourages the female fans to submit work to DC.

“So, DiDio implies that the female talent out they isn’t good enough for DC, and then Morrison mocks a justifiably upset fan. Then he turns around and saves face by encouraging the female fans to submit their work. Presumably to be told that they aren’t good enough for the wealth of talent that DC only employs, like the kind that puts out Cry for Justice or the Rise of Arsenal.”

DC’s The Dark and The Edge Panel (Saturday Afternoon)

Lemire says Animal Man’s main character is actually Maxine, Buddy’s daughter. She gets her own powers.

“Which is interesting, but I can’t help but feel it takes away from the “everyman” qualities Buddy was supposed to have”

Cornell SPECIFICALLY calls Horsewoman a “diversity character, to state it crudely”, and compares her to the Man with No Name [Clint Eastwood’s Western Character]

“Good Job Cornell, you just took away the good feelings I had for you. Turns out his wheelchair user was just there for diversity cred!”

Cornell says Apollo and Midnighter are still gay, but they meet for the first time in the first issue, and their romance is slow. He also says that if he changes anything he won’t expect to come out of the “Gays in Comics” Panel alive.

“Okay, I do like the idea that they don’t immediately jump down each other’s pants, like they did originally. But apparently Cornell feels like the only thing wrong with changing their sexualities would be the negative fan reaction? Uh, you shouldn’t change their sexualities because that would homophobic, not because you fear how the fans would react.”

This one is the worst. DC replies to the negative fan reaction towards Harley’s new costume by saying “Provocative is good”, but says that Harley still has the same personality.

“REALLY DC, why is PROVOCATIVE only good for your FEMALE heroes, so you can dress them is as objectifying clothes as possible, but your male heroes wearing briefs on the outside is SO BAD it needed to be changed IMMEDIATELY.”

“Oh and just to add, included were some pages from an unknown book showing a gratuitous scene with strippers. I think it was either from Blackhawks, Suicide Squad, or Sgt. Rock.”

Comments

[stubbleupdate]

In what way does Maxine getting powers take away from Buddy's everyman aspect?

Also, your picture is borked. Host it with abload.de or something.

[shadowpsykie]

“Now THERE’s that white privilege I was talking about! Good job we have mighty whitey to tell us how horrible of a “COUNTRY” Africa is! I get a huge feeling Winick is going to use this book as his mouthpiece for his opinions on the politics and culture of Africa, which he will grossly misunderstand and possibly turn into a "look at those SAVAGES" situation.”

out of curiostiy does Jewish count as white? i'm not entirey clear on that.

[shadowpsykie]

Morrison mocks her by saying he looks great in a dress, then turns around and encourages the female fans to submit work to DC.
I don't think Morrison was mocking HER, i think he saw a difficult situation and was trying to diffuse it through humor. was it ill timed and not at all well thought out? MOST DEFINATELY!

Dido on the other hand? (yeah i heard the audio) yeah he sounded really hostile

[sparkysharps.livejournal.com]

Every time DC responds to their lack of female writers and artists with "we're hiring the best around!" I want to scream LIIEEEEFFFEEEEEEELLLLLD at the top of my lungs.

Seriously, DC, you hired fucking Rob "FUCK! MY SPINE!" Liefeld. You're telling me you couldn't find anybody -male or female- better than him?

[biod]

I would also like to point out that they hired Rob Freaking Liefeld for the New 52 as one of those so called people with quality. Just throwing that out there.
I still look foward to Seven Samurai (/Magnificent Seven, same difference). in midieval times. I think Horsewoman may have been crippled already, then Editorial or PR or whoever just ran with it in a misguided effort to make up for Babs getting het bipedal locomotion back.

[espanolbot]

Cornell says Apollo and Midnighter are still gay, but they meet for the first time in the first issue, and their romance is slow. He also says that if he changes anything he won’t expect to come out of the “Gays in Comics” Panel alive.

“Okay, I do like the idea that they don’t immediately jump down each other’s pants, like they did originally. But apparently Cornell feels like the only thing wrong with changing their sexualities would be the negative fan reaction? Uh, you shouldn’t change their sexualities because that would homophobic, not because you fear how the fans would react.”

No offence mate, but I think that you might be over reacting a little. He, like Morrison, was trying to be funny but seems to have been ill timed in that regard so people think that he was just trying to be flat out offensive.

And in regard to Horsewoman, yeah it was ill advised for him to bluntly say that she was there for diversity's sake, but considering they're doing away with Oracle this might be the only forum that DC has avaliable now to show that a wheelchairbound woman can just be as badass or strong a character as Barbara in Batgirl mode (in what I'm almost certain is an exosuit).

[aaron_bourque]

She has the same personality

Uh . . . then she wouldn't be wearing that. She'd be wearing something goofy.

[marco]

Mmmhmmm. I wish I could appropriately grumble. There's just so much wrong here.

I honestly don't know what to make of Winick's comments anymore. I don't think I can be hopeful about what he'll present of Congo (or Africa period), but I'll still browse through Batwing just to see how it'll go. (I know I won't be touching Catwoman.)

Is it bad that I wish someone would effectively make a point to DiDio? Maybe not in the most polite or reasonable way possible. (I think I couldn't be bothered by that post about Marvel yesterday because DC has just made me so ...I just have a serious headache with them.)

For a while, I just thought, once this Flashpoint and new origin stuff ends and gets retconned or whatever, everything will be okay! But ya know... No. It probably won't be. Why is it not that easy? ;n;

[fifthie]

So if provocative's good, where's that comic with Superman in a bright red thong and an S cut into his chest hair?

[starwolf_oakley]

Cornell says Apollo and Midnighter are still gay, but they meet for the first time in the first issue, and their romance is slow. He also says that if he changes anything he won’t expect to come out of the “Gays in Comics” Panel alive.

For a long time, part of the "hook" for Apollo and Midnighter was that they had no idea who they were *before* they were Apollo and Midnighter. They don't even know if they knew each other before or not. The only person who knew was Henry Bendix, and he never told them. Bendix played "multiple origins" with Apollo and Midnighter once, IIRC.

[whitesycamore]

Since Winick has stressed that Africa is a continent before:

"It's a fictional city, but based much in the way Metropolis is supposed to be New York City and Gotham, depending on who you want to debate about it, is either a dark version of New York or based on Chicago just as far as geographics and the general feel of it. We are actually basing this off a couple of cities in Africa, just because Africa is, again, a whole continent. If you think of one city in North America it's very different than another on the continent -- Toledo, Ohio is very different from any number of cities you might find in South America."

He also talks about Africa as a continent elsewhere in the interview. I'm guessing that calling it a 'country' here was a slip of the tongue, or a transcriber error. Say what you will about Winick, it's clear that he is at least aware of Africa as a massive, diverse continent.

[newnumber6]

"Lemire says Animal Man’s main character is actually Maxine, Buddy’s daughter. She gets her own powers."

So then shouldn't it be called Animal Woman? Or maybe Animal Girl, depending on her age.

(Yeah, I know, there's no real reason the name of the comic has to be the name of the main character, and sometimes for valid storytelling reasons the viewpoint character, who might get the title, isn't the "main character" that the stories revolve around, but it feels to me like they're saying, "But we know the book won't sell if we blatantly focus it on a girl, so we're generously hiding her off-putting femaleness behind a man who'll appear on all of the covers and lend his name to her.")

[darkknightjrk]

I honestly think Winick's in a catch 22 with talking about the setting. You focus too much on the superhero side, people will bitch that you're ignoring or making light of the problems in Africa--you focus more on Africa's problems, people will bitch that you're making it look like the people of Africa are savages and can't take care of themselves. There's literally no way to win there.

[rdfox]

Positive: It's nice to see Winick living down to my expectations of his brainpower.

[feyandstrange]

I demand Grant Morrison in a dress. Right now. And maybe DiDio as well. If we're gonna have sexism, let's go whole hog and have bad drag.

Also, we should totes send them to "Africa" and see if the locals can scam them out of their retirement funds.

Diversity character? Cornell, your name is on my cane's list. And your book is off mine.

[eyz]

I still can't get behind this new costume for Harley...can't we call her "Maggie Queen", Harley's slutty retarded cousin and hope for the real Harley to pop up later and smash her with a giant hammer??

[mrstatham]

I call bullshit on the complaints about Harley's new costume. She was wearing skintight gear before, but the second we see some skin, everyone casts their hands up and cries sacrilege. Her new costume's no more provocative than Ivy when she's prancing about sans boots and gloves with just the leafy bathing suit on.