espanolbot: (Default)
[personal profile] espanolbot posting in [community profile] scans_daily
This is important. Watch the video (starting around the 34 minute mark), or read the synopsis.

No directly insulting any members of the DC staff either, I want this thread to stay put and not get locked and stuff.

At the Auckland Writers And Readers Fest, one panel saw Adrian Kinnaird, Ant Sang, Chris Slane, Dylan Horrocks and Karen Healey talk about the industry and the artform.

And it got onto sexism in comics. With Karen Healey recounting to the audience the example of Stephanie Brown’s (Spoiler, Robin, Batgirl) death in the DC comics and her lack of memorial case in the Batcave.

Luckily Dylan Horrocks was one of the writers of the crossover event in which this happened, working on Batgirl, and was able to explain the workings of her death from inside the Batwriters meeting held in a New York office over a weekend.

As well as a Dan DiDio impersonation, he told the audience that the writers were told two things about the Batman: War Games crossover event they were writing, that it would “involve some kind of Gang War in Gotham” and that “Spoiler was gonna die”. Thirty-four minutes into the video above, he recounts the experience.

AWRF2011: Graphic Novels, Comics and Cartoons from Auckland Writers & Readers Fest on Vimeo.



What Dylan Horrocks said,
"It was one of the most depressing weeks of my life, because we basically spent the whole week in this horrible office planning how to kill this poor teenage girl who I really liked, I thought she was a great character and she was one of the few friends that my character had, and I tell you the whole thing about her being Robin, was simply a trick.

The whole way through it was planned purely as a trick to play on the readers, that we would fool them into thinking that the big event was that Stephanie Brown would become Robin but we knew all along it was a temporary thing, and she was then going to die at the end of this crossover story.

It was really seedy, and I think about two days into it, I basically said look, I don’t want… because they planned this big long torture scene, I said I don’t want to really have anything to do with that. And there was another scene which was… I was Pilate, I was Pontius Pilate, I don’t want any of that in Batgirl, in effect what I did is I wrote my comic out of the key events in the story, cos I said I didn’t want to have anything to do with the big shoot out at the high school scene, so it was a really strange experience, for me that was the most depressing…

So when there was that big online debate about Stephanie Brown’s death I felt kind of really pleased and vindicated, and the other person who I think was probably happy about that but I don’t think she’s ever said so in interviews was Devin Grayson who was writing Nightwing at the time… she raised several issues during this meeting, she was one of the other writers in the meeting who said how come we’re always killing off the girls, and also how come we’re killing off the ethnic characters,[Karen mentions Orpheus], there was a lot of debate in that meeting, well ultimately it all came down to this is what we’re going to do. The editors I was working with were nice people,…[INTERRUPTION] no they weren’t all white, they weren’t all straight…[Karen asks if they were all men] yes, they were all men, but the writers weren’t all men, but I think the thing is the industry is much more diverse and much more liberal and much more politically liberal than the comics necessarily imply, but there are these kind of commercial expectations on where the stories are going to go and we do get these directives from the head editorial office, the tone of the whole industry has dug itself into a hole, and it means that really decent people who would love to be good stories end up writing these whole…"

Woooooooooooooow. I knew there was a reason I liked Horrocks. And they actually spent a week planning how to torture Steph, the end result involving broken glass, powerdrills and Black Mask basically calling her the Bat Family's whore, while the artist drew her in the positions that best showed off her ass... OW.

You know, I've felt bad about some of the things that I've said about DC falling the Fall of Cass Cain, but MAN!

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/15/%E2%80%9Csome-kind-of-gang-war-in-gotham%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cspoiler-was-gonna-die%E2%80%9D/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BleedingCool+%28Bleeding+Cool+Comic+News+%26+Rumors%29&utm_content=Twitter

For legality, the cover of and a part of a page from Horrock's Steph and Cass team-up issue,



Date: 2011-07-17 02:06 am (UTC)
salinea: Balder is unhappy (*D:*)
From: [personal profile] salinea
There was no good reason for Steph to BE Robin in the first place, just as Damian would have no business being Batgirl.
How are those propositions symmetrical? What is it about Robin that makes it must be a boy? "Batgirl" implies femaleness by virtue of the gender being mentioned in the name; and as a role,as Barbara created it, it is someone affiliated with the batfamily, but relatively independant of Batman himself.
Robin's main role is being the Batman's sidekick and partner. Why should Batman's sidekick and partner be necessarily male?

Date: 2011-07-17 02:14 am (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
Robin the Boy Wonder.

Date: 2011-07-17 02:23 am (UTC)
airawyn: (Robin!Steph and Batgirl!Cass)
From: [personal profile] airawyn
Becomes Robin the Girl Wonder. What's the problem?

Date: 2011-07-17 02:24 am (UTC)
salinea: (bite me)
From: [personal profile] salinea
you didn't actually answer me.

Date: 2011-07-17 02:33 am (UTC)
jeyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jeyl
Robin is not a gender binding word. Last I checked, there are indeed female robins in nature.

Date: 2011-07-17 01:12 pm (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
Robin the Boy Wonder generally implied male. YMMV.

Date: 2011-07-17 03:27 pm (UTC)
jeyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jeyl
That's a subtitle Kenn, not the full name. Are you going to argue that Renee Montoya shouldn't be called "The Question" because the original question was a guy?

Date: 2011-07-19 12:39 am (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
Absolutely not.

Date: 2011-07-17 05:30 am (UTC)
brilliantnova: (Default)
From: [personal profile] brilliantnova
Carrie Kelly anyone O_o;
Maybe they should shake it up and in regular DCU make the Robin a female.

Date: 2011-07-17 01:15 pm (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
Technically, Carrie is a future, POSSIBLE Robin. Though I will grant you that Frank Miller did give us the awesome doomed Jason Todd, prostitute Selina, Bats Vs. Supes, and All Star Batman And Robin, so his work must be adhered to. (I have no hard evidence of this, but I guess that Mr. Miller never got over Jill St. John in the Robin costume.)

Date: 2011-07-17 02:55 pm (UTC)
nezchan: Toony version of me, more or less (Default)
From: [personal profile] nezchan
Perhaps they're not all palatable, but they're possible, now that the subject has been breached. No matter how you may consider having a vagina makes you unqualified as Batman's sidekick, it's been demonstrated it can work.

Failed literary experiments such as a lot of what you mention do not invalidate successful ones such as a female Robin.

Date: 2011-07-17 03:01 pm (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
I'm just saying that if you're going to worship at the Church of Miller, you're going to have to accept all the sacraments. Yes, you CAN have a female Robin, the Boy Wonder, just as you can have a male Batgirl. Just don't assume that DC/Warner are ever going to change their branding and trademarks to include them.

Date: 2011-07-17 03:04 pm (UTC)
nezchan: Toony version of me, more or less (wut)
From: [personal profile] nezchan
Well, it's a good thing nobody WAS saying we should worship of the "Church of Miller" (except for you).

Lovely slippery slope, though. Perhaps you might want to argue in good faith, as a change of pace?

Date: 2011-07-17 03:11 pm (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
Sorry. That's what I got out of your post. I read it as carefully as you read my original, I'm betting.

Date: 2011-07-17 05:06 pm (UTC)
nezchan: Toony version of me, more or less (wut)
From: [personal profile] nezchan
If you got that out of my post, then I have to wonder if you read it at all.

Date: 2011-07-17 03:32 pm (UTC)
jeyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jeyl
"Yes, you CAN have a female Robin, the Boy Wonder, just as you can have a male Batgirl."

Well, no. You would have Robin the Girl Wonder (Or just plain Robin) and a male Batboy. Robin doesn't have a "boy" or a "girl" in it's title. The Boy Wonder is a subtitle. And as many have already pointed out to you, if they want the subtitle to go with the female Robin, they aren't going to call her The Boy Wonder, they're going to call her The Girl Wonder.

Date: 2011-07-17 03:49 pm (UTC)
salinea: Magneto going *?* (wtf)
From: [personal profile] salinea
the "if you like one thing this author did, you HAVE to like EVERYTHING ELSE this author did" proposition you're trying to sell makes absolutely no sense.


Then again, I don't think you're arguing in good faith, so that makes sense.

Re: Hrrm.

Date: 2011-07-17 01:08 pm (UTC)
kenn_el: Northstar_Hmm (Default)
From: [personal profile] kenn_el
Because that's where YOUR mind goes. I never said nor implied any of those things. They are repugnant, as is your attempt to lower the level of discourse.

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