All my friends are magazines

[stubbleupdate]

I'm now three posts in to a short series on the Luna Bros book Ultra. The first one was all on the covers, the second was about Ultra's date with a lovely gentleman and this one is about the aftermath.

I think that I'm sticking to my idea that Ultra is a positive female character, stuck in a book that has no time for anything like that. My warning is that this post will contain examples of other characters "slut-shaming" and calling women "whores." Like I said at the start, it's a problematic book.


Before Ultra gets in to her office we see her agent. I originally wasn't going to post the first page, but it cranks up the tension for the coming swerve. It also shows Pearl's agent as somebody that actually seems to be interested in her own welfare, as well as the bottom line.



What did we tell you? That guy is a dick.
There's a tiny bit of expressive work on the Agent's eyes as he's showing Pearl the magazine.


Panel 1 - Nobody romps, except in tabloid news
Panel 2 - I hope that this guy's publicist is meant to look like Pagus, Jesus' brother, because he definitely does.
And yes, the agent is being a bit of a dick at the end, but he sorts himself out pretty quickly.
He offers PEarl the day off, but she turns it down and gets to work. In the locker room she lashes out at a green and blonde girl who says that now that Pearl's secret is out, she can stop being fake.

I'll post some more of the public's reaction to the scoop at some point later in the week.

That article in full...

Yes, a superhero analyst says that Pearl "Whored up" And this is Pearl's outfit that shows "coppious amounts of cleavage"



"I did what any other reasonable guy would do."

I realise that I'm complaining about a fictional account that is meant to come across as completely dickish and a distortion of the truth. However, I get hella pissed about the real newspapers that do nonsense like this, so this just pushed one of my angry buttons. If you read any of my stuff on LJ you'll see that I wrote on a hyperlinktastic post about one such example.

This is one of the more obvious times when the character (the magazine is a character too) is clearly portrayed as a baddie in their attitudes towards women. The issue with Ultra is that there's a lot of times when it's not-baddies that are using derogatory words to describe women.

I'd expand on my feelings about tabloids and their horrid attitudes towards women, but it's been a long day and I can't do any more brain... stuff...

Comments

[salinea]

ouch

[richardak]

I liked this miniseries a lot, but I have to say that this whole moment just struck me as totally incredible. Who would buy this? The guy is grinning and giving a thumb's-up gesture to the camera, and selling photos of her taken while she was asleep to a tabloid, and he's the victim because he's got a few bruises? Realistically, the public would say that he's a creep, and she badly misjudged him.

[majingojira]

One of my most common phrases is "Never underestimate the stupidity of the common idiot" but with things like this, it's not stupid that's driving it, but some people think that it is. I rarely buy into such stories mostly because of the exaggerations they make for the sake of the readers sympathies being in place they want. Those aren't believable.

[majingojira]

Also, I'm pretty sure this moron would, in the real world, be slapped with a rape charge so fast his head would spin and any publisher worth their salt would know that going in.

[lieut_kettch]

I'm trying to think of a powered superheroine that has a relationship with a norm who doesn't turn out to be either 1) a supervillain 2) a dick or 3) eventually horribly maimed and/or killed by supervillains.

[biod]

Or in this case: horridly maimed by superheroes.

[q99]

Wonder Woman and Tom Tresser. It didn't end up well thanks to a supervillain, but there was no maiming or killing.


And Donna Troy's husband died from something unrelated to supervillains....

[drmcninja]

Pete and MJ would be the go to, as would Clark and Lois.

[eyz]

...alright I tried and tried.. nope...no example comes to mind...


:(

[biod]

So hey, I'm stuck in the joyless third act of a book I otherwise love, yesterday was something of a disaster, and now there's this.
Anyone have a happy, funny, and/or whimsical book they've been meaning to scan?

[auggie18]

Hmm. I've got a few issues of Johnny Monster I've been meaning to scan. Too bad my Gravity collection is in another state...

[icon_uk]

Not a book, but this might cheer you up... or not... depending on your tolerance for the subject matter.

[big_daddy_d]

I love this series but man that scene, I was hoping something bad happens to that douchebag.

[kd_the_movie]

It takes some courage/vast stupidity to sell candid and horribly embarrassing photos of one of the most powerful people on Earth who could kill you in an instant.

[stolisomancer]

As long as he's not in the room when she sees it, he's in the clover. He's basically insulated, because if he turns up dead or disappeared, all eyes turn directly to Pearl and she ends up even worse off than she is now. It's a gender-swapped version of somebody who comes forward and ruins a movie star's marriage.

[stubbleupdate]

It would if he wasn't dealing with a woman who is a) a superhero and b) a good one, not a Millar-esque one.

[pyrotwilight]

Wow. Douche guy is douche. I'm only surprised he didn't bother taking pictures of her naked too.

Unless he did that as a bargaining chip for when she finds out he sold pics to the tabloids I guess.

Dude's an idiot. Most heroes wouldn't bother trying to take him out. But hell, all she needs to do is stage a superhero supervillain fight near him and have him be collateral damage if she wants to make him dissapear.

not picking on you at all...

[pervymax]

but is douchebag verboten here?

To my mind, it shouldn't be, any more then 'asshole' or 'dick', but it's possible I'm missing something. I've been surprised before.

[jaybee3]

The article itself may ring true but I think the reaction to it doesn't - AT ALL. I can't help but think of the Christine O'Donnell/Gawker stuff that happened last election and even though that wasn't as explicit as this and yes even though it got all the publicity Gawker wanted, the guy in question was widely regarded as a dirtbag - even by people who hated Christine O'Donnell and her politics. That guy actually had to go into hiding and he was so reviled that even liberal websites went after him.

So I don't think there's no way that this Jason guy would be be thought of as a "winner" or a hero by the public for dishing on Ultra. In fact the backlash would probably help her.

[mrstatham]

But the article doesn't really ring true at all, since it's full of unsubstantiated facts and ridiculous opinions about Pearl, and Jason actually paints himself as more of a dirtbag by suggesting every guy in his position would take the pictures he did. The article's standard issue gossip garbage. The reaction, to me, does ring true; look at how many people are judgmental over things like nude pictures being leaked - a good portion of people will judge the actress or celebrity involved as if they're at fault.

Another matter entirely, but also look at the initial reaction to the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie relationship. Everyone loves them now, but back when news first broke, the number of people calling Jolie a homewrecker and accusing her of stealing Pitt from Jennifer Aniston was astonishing, given a lot of what we heard was merely tabloid crap. But the amount of scorn that a woman can get in the tabloid press and the reaction to it does seem crazy compared to the usual response to stuff a man does, except in rare cases like the Tiger Woods thing.

[mrstatham]

To be fair to her boss, who is a bit of a dick in that scene, I think that he's probably the most compassionate character in the story toward Pearl; I think the only reason he'd be pissed off here is because he's been on damage control all morning and she comes in utterly oblivious to the mess she's at the centre of, which would have to be frustrating.

That said, if everyone in the Ultra Universe seems to know and understand that the Miguel Montana character, who published the photos and story, is a lowlife piece of shit who seems to be the sort who'd sell his own mother for a story, why people would give the story any credence or actually believe it is beyond me, especially the 'professional opinions' brought in on Pearl's dress and appearance and her sex life. That said, enough people buy trashy crap like that in real life.

To me, though, I think the reaction to the story and the apparent 'truth' about Pearl is fairly realistic; look at the recent response to the hacked pictures of Scarlett Johansson stolen from her phone - I couldn't believe how many people were being judgmental over that online, calling her a slut, skank, whore or something equally unpleasant. Questions of why she had the pictures of herself like that on her phone in the first place are beside the point, given a) it's none of our business and b) it's her fucking private phone! And yet the amount of scorn and spite directed at her and not the people who had hacked her phone was ridiculous, especially since we're now beginning to enter an era where phone hacking is bringing down some big people.

So, yeah. I thought the reaction of most of the people in the story was pretty well done. There are a few compassionate characters, and there are judgmental ones who turn on her. It just makes the Awards scene a little more satisfying when that guy pops the kid in the mouth for mouthing off, although even that feels a little off..

[proteus_lives]

I think it's astonishing that celebrities still take nude pics of themselves and make sex tapes.

People hunt for this shit, it's like leaving your keys in the ignition.

Unless the release isn't "accidental" of really "stolen".

[proteus_lives]

Celebrity is a double-edged sword.

[kiev4am]

I don't know this comic, but in my experience of tabloids the above seems pretty accurate. You see stories like this all the time in the UK tabloids, 'my wild night with so-and-so' and the papers don't care whether it's true so long as they get their story. Much attention paid to what she was wearing, whether she made the first move, etc. etc. I wouldn't be surprised if all these papers have a special 'libel fund' for paying out to people they smear, and if they reckon the sales outweigh the legal fees they just take the hit and run the story.

Also, just wanted to thank you for your LJ post about the Daily Mail. More people outside the UK need to know what a hateful, racist, misogynist, pandering, hypocritical rag it is. Really, there are no lows to which it won't stoop in its quest to make its readers hate and fear some generic 'other' or other. It uses the sicko right-wing strategy of making out that all the minorities are really the ones with the power and advantages in a nasty corrupt liberal PC system, so obviously the thing to do is oppress the hell out of them to 'rebalance' things. Sigh.

[jlbarnett]

I think UK tabloids are worse than UK ones. It's been a while since I read one, but I don't think we'd get near the opinion added, instead just getting the "gory details" of the event.

[espanolbot]

Hm, I think that a similar thing happened in the LA-based Intiative team over in Marvel, where they kick the girl out of the team and manage to get her ex-boyfriend prosecuted for it as she was underage or something similar.

Hrrmph, it seems to be an interesting and horrifying combination, mixing superhero comics with tabloid journalism. I mean, superhero comics may get flack for bad protrayals of women in fiction, but a lot of tabloid newspapers fictionalise reality in order to sell stories.

Like manufacturing stories of potential breakups, such as the British press' fixation for the past five plus years of saying how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's relationship is falling apart as implict come-upance for Pitt's previous marriage failing.

Or the many, MANY body issue things that are more to warping the psyche of the readers' perception of themselves through the judging of people who aren't looking their best because they didn't know they that they were in a situation where they'd be photographed. For example, there are multiple magazines where I work that only ever frontpage stories are about how allegedly fat female celebrities are.

Agh, it angers me as a journalism graduate and as a human being. XP

[stubbleupdate]

You picked the wrong book to get wrong with the wrong poster

Becky wasn't kicked out of the Order, her boyfriend wasn't prosecuted and the tape didn't get out.

What happened was Kate Kildare leaked that Becky had lied about her age in pageants. This meant that the tape was made when she was underage so there was no way that her ex could release it without doing time.

[turtlefu]

So is this the conclusion? Do we ever find out what Pearl does? Does she confront the dirtbag? Does ANYTHING bad happen to the guy?

[stubbleupdate]

This is not the conclusion

[crabby_lioness]

Today in 2011, this wouldn't happen this way. The guy would probably try it, and some sick puppy might publish it (more likely on the internet than in print) but within hours or days there would be an outcry.

BUT when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, this is exactly what would have happened. And in parts of the world it might well still happen today.

So as long as they don't say it's 21st Century America, I can see it all too easily.