scans_daily | WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??

"Marvel does a better job of avoiding it..."? What Marvel books has that person read? What about Dark Avengers where Moonstone was being passed around by all the guys on the team? What about how Tigra was treated much, much earlier in West Coast Avengers? And what about Emma Frost and her various clothes (and lack of) throughout the years?

No Avengers title is good for women.

'Nuff said.

Aw now, I wouldn't go that far. I mean the Avengers books have been pretty good to women so far. Just look at what they've done with one of the founding members the Wasp...

...

Well, not the best example. Well, there's Ms. Marvel! They never screwed her over! Well, except for that time she was raped....

......

Well, what about Scarlet...Witch...

I'm just gonna go sulk in my corner now.

So far Jessica Jones has been treated with a fair amount of respect?

Wasn't she introduced as having stopped being Jewel because of a degrading experience with Purple Man?

Yeah, because she's one of Bendis's babies.

Not to mention She-Hulk, Mockingbird, and the rest.

I disagree.

AA is pretty good.

I didn't find the Moonstone thing so bad because you really understood that not only does moonstone enjoy sex but she had no qualms about using sex as a manipulation tool (which is sooo in her character).

I never got the "oversexualized objectification" vibe from her.

In regards to Cammi...I was hoping she'd show up in Thanos Imperative. But Drax is dead anyway :( *im still mad about Marvel scuttling away the Post Annihilation Cosmic!Marvel*

I wouldn't have found it to be so bad either if Bendis hadn't decided to try to justify it by saying that she was just doing it to fuck with everyone's minds. I don't know about anyone else but I didn't see her fucking with anyone's minds...just fucking. There's nothing wrong with that, and I don't put it past Moonstone to use sex as a weapon but sheesh...don't say she's screwing around to mess with brains when she's clearly just going around enjoying herself.

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What Marvel books has that person read? What about Dark Avengers where Moonstone was being passed around by all the guys on the team?

That's not what was happening. That was Moonstone passing all the guys on her team to her. Agency: it matters.

Okay, okay, point. I worded it wrong. I should have said when Moonstone was working her way through the team. Which, even though it's a bit more empowering, is still sexualized cheesecake. Or at least some might see it that way.

Not saying that I had a problem with it. But I know many people did.

It was definitely...

well I'm not gonna lie, I love Moonstone, and Dark Avengers is the first thing I read with her; so obviously I don't have a huge issue with it :p

but it's certainly a negative stereotype in many ways (and only made a modicum amount of sense) though the reasons it's a negative stereotype are also rooted in the sexist way culture views female sexuality etc.

Well Bendis's crappy writing and his horrible characterization of her didn't help. He took away her intelligence, her craftiness, her signature sarcasm, and everything good about her character and all that was left was the woman of the team who served as eye candy for the book, and all there was to her character was the fact that she was sleeping around. Thankfully she's getting better under Parker's pen--much better--but under Bendis, eegad. And I forget who it was that was writing Ms. Marvel during "War of the Marvels" but Karla's characterization there was just awful. When you forget about one major power that features heavily in the set that your character has (in Karla's case, intangibility), you fail as a comic writer.

(Yes I love Moonstone too, in case anyone can't tell :P)

didn't it start earlier with Ellis' Thunderbolt? Or did you like how she was characterised there?

See I hear that accusation with Ellis's run a lot and I have read through that run multiple times and frankly I don't see where he messed up her character there. Really the only thing he messed up big on was making up the heated rivalry between her and Songbird, who happens to be another one of my favorites. Before Ellis Karla and Mel never really hated each other all that much...oh Karla would push Mel's buttons by jabbing at her "white trash" past and making snide remarks about how she would sleep with anyone and Mel didn't really trust Karla but the two of them weren't arch-rivals...they were just there. Ellis changed that.

But that was the only thing. Far as I can see Karla was still pretty crafty, manipulative, and smart under his pen. About the only thing I could see that his critics might be right on is the fact that Ellis basically pushed Karla over the fence into being pretty much pure villain, as opposed to before when she really was riding the fence.

Even before Ellis though Karla was a pretty sexual character. She did strip naked in front of Hawkeye in the training room and then seduced the Counter-Earth version of Lloyd Bloch. I believe both those times were under Nicieza's pen, the guy who is revered among the hardcore Thunderbolts fanboys as the only true Tbolts writer.

I believe both those times were under Nicieza's pen, the guy who is revered among the hardcore Thunderbolts fanboys as the only true Tbolts writer.

Really? Not Kurt Busiek, who CREATED the concept of the Thunderbolts? That's.... sad more than anything.

Yep, really. I almost never heard Busiek's name brought up in discussions of the 'Bolts. It's always Fabian's.

I think I've heard more of Busiek in positive fashion myself. Possibly one of those "it depends where" kind of things.

I thought Moonstone was manipulative, but also portrayed as... not as smart as she thinks she is in that run. Kind of getting way over her head in term of the team leadership.

She wasn't a good leader because she always looked for fast and easy fixes rather than focusing on the big picture. That and she didn't care. She liked being leader more for the power and the prestige, not to mention the hefty paycheck Osborn was giving her for holding the position. When it came to doing a good job though she just didn't give a shit. Karla was quite self-centered as she's always been.

Now when Bendis got ahold of her, all that flew out the window and she lost all that intelligence and manipulation. I look at all the missed opportunities where Karla's skills at being manipulative could have been put to good use...Molecule Man for instance. Here is this insane, incredibly powerful guy and she doesn't try to manipulate him? Or Sentry for that matter? And what about when Ares hit on her? Now there would have been an opportunity to use her sexuality as a good manipulation tool considering how key Ares was to Osborn's plans at the time. Instead she sleeps with Bullseye because he dresses like her ex? That made her look hardup and pathetic, made all the worse by the fact that in Ellis's run she couldn't stand Bullseye. She thought he was a disgusting creep and he even tried to kill her once. I mean, really.

Karla is, first and foremost a manipulator, she'll use whatever technique she deems necessary to give herself the upper hand in any situation and has few scruples.

When she was a therapist, we saw her phone up a patient who was having suspicions about her husband, and using a fake voice, encouraged the very suspicions she was supposed to be treating, so she could keep the lucrative patient a while longer, and she DID manage to psyche the original Moonstone into actively rejecting the gemstone which gave him his powers, which she promptly grabbed and absorbed herself, giving her the Moonstone powers.

In the Busiek Thunderbolts run she could be seen playing characters off against each other ALL the time, and made sure that she became Jolt's best friend in the group before anyone else could, since she was a wild card, and if there was going to be a wild card, she wanted to be the one she'd turn to for guidance.

There's an awesome moment where she's trying to get the now biomechanical Techno (Fixer as was) to join her against Zemo. She tries reason and argument and then you can all but HEAR her shift gears as she poses suggestively and tries to play on his libido. It SHOULD be sexy (and perhaps it was to some), but it's such a calculated move that it's clear she's entirely in control.

Whilst I have no doubt she would use sex as a manipulation technique if it suited her*, it would be one she would only use in certain circumstances and she had no higher expectations of those she was attempting to influence. Perhaps with the Dark Avengers, who were hardly an intellectual bunch she decided to go for the most basic primal urges of the team, though I would have expected more... variety from her as she is a VERY smart woman.

* To contrast with her relationship with Hawkeye for example, which was very much "real" rather than a power game, which made it rather sweet.

Great analysis!!

Perhaps with the Dark Avengers, who were hardly an intellectual bunch she decided to go for the most basic primal urges of the team, though I would have expected more... variety from her as she is a VERY smart woman.

Why couldn't she go for a manipulation tactic that's both effective and enjoyable for her?

Very smart women like to have fun too.

I should know. :D

See I don't think she necessarily found it fun (at least not in all cases, I mean to say, Gargan?), just... tactically convenient.

Also, because using exactly the same approach with everyone on the team seems short sighted. It would highlight her intelligence and skills if she had found OTHER weakpoints, like discovering that, say, Sentry had a thing for old comicbooks, or Daken has a petit-point collection to die for.

Now might be a good time to pint out that I'm pretty hazy on who exactly the Dark Avengers are/were (Marvel comics? What are those?) I just assumed most of them were hot, because you know, superheroes. although wait - the Dark Avengers are actually super *villains,* aren't they? OK then, you may have a point.

Also, because using exactly the same approach with everyone on the team seems short sighted. It would highlight her intelligence and skills if she had found OTHER weakpoints, like discovering that, say, Sentry had a thing for old comicbooks, or Daken has a petit-point collection to die for.

It's Daken - fuck the petit-point collection. If she decided to limit herself to one dude from the team then she pretty much has to get on that. He'd be more fun than a barrel of particularly sexy monkeys, you know it.

I think Daken's weakness is sipping tea from delicate china cups, anyway. That and cashmere scarves.

Moonstone definitly slept with Noh-Var (who is a white haired pretty boy, natch), Bullseye (who personality asides isn't ugly) - can't ever remember if she actually slept with Daken (thought she tried, hit on him in the tea house while he wore that cashmere scarf and Daken got contrarian on her - probably jealous she'd succeeded on sleeping with Bullseye and he hadn't yet). I don't think she slept with Ares either (a matter of taste, I guess...), Sentry (definitely not ugly) & Gargan (much less pretty, but you can't diss tentacles, can you?)

No, she basically turned up her nose at Ares (which still bugs me...he was a freaking god for crying outloud, and like I said it would have been a great opportunity to be manipulative), and I think she latched onto Gargan mainly to spurn Daken whom she was pissed off at at the time.

The petit-point was a slight riff on a rather great moment in James Robinson's Starman run when, after the snake-based villain Copperhead has been hired by a villain, we see him take a little time out during his mission to pursue his hobby, which it turns out is collecting (of all things) vintage transistor radios. We see him chatting very knowledgeably and amiably in a couple of shops, about the pieces he's picked up here and there. He deals politely with a dealer who plays fair, but when another dealer tries to cheat him... well, copperheads ARE lethally poisonous.

I just assumed most of them were hot, because you know, superheroes. although wait - the Dark Avengers are actually super *villains,* aren't they? OK then, you may have a point.

Yeah, that as my logic there, either she doesn't know where they've been, or in some cases worse yet DOES know, and either way may feel like she wants to scrub her skin raw with steel wool to feel remotely clean again.

That was Brian Reed, writing Ms. Marvel.

Which was, y'know. What he was saying. Not that Marvel was adequate but that it was mariginally better.

To be fair, it was Moonstone passing herself around.

I mean that's not really *better*, but...

I think it is most definitely better, much better even, if it's her own choice.

I mean that's not really *better*, but...

Um, yes it really, really is?

I agree except on Emma. She does all that on purpose. She had plastic surgery, she wears clothes like she does because she wants to look like that. She's supposed to be absurdly showy and dress too sexy. Rarely does she ever actually act like it.

Cammi!!! How are you going on the cosmos alone without your pet homicidal badass guy! I worry for you.

She's traveling with Thanos' former pet chaos sprite. I'd say she's set. :D

it's just not the same when the pet isn't played by Vin Diesel!

man, i had forgotten about this. if cammi is still with them, she truly is going to make a bitchin supervillain when she grows older and decides to make a trip back to the motherland.

i'm sure there are bunch of other forgotten kids travelling around the cosmos. she could go looking for them and make them her posse.

"I don't think our industry puts it's best foot forward when it comes to the depiction of women" - You can say that again :)

But it's alright for Spider-Man to have done...well, pretty much everything after OMD, Tom? (I was going to make a list, but then I realized that would take too long)

It was a DC focused question and Spider Man was not mentioned at all. I am not exactly sure where you are coming from with this.

Because Brevoort is a hypocrite chastising DC for something that he has had kid-friendly Marvel characters engaging in all the time. I don't see how Batman doing the nasty with Selina is anymore raunchy then the sexual shenanigans that have cropped up throughout Spider-Man.

Not that I'm a fan of either direction, but this is a case of "Do as I say, not as I do."

I'm gonna be honest, here, the whole thing about a popular Teen Titans cartoon with a non-sexualized depiction of Starfire being an argument as to why it's so awful to sexualize her (like the one Shortpacked and that Gawker article made) strikes me as rather baffling. Other arguments may have merit, but I just can't understand that one. Why should DC be in any way obligated to align their books accordingly to pacify the audience of a family-friendly spin-off media? It's not like they took an innocent character from a kids show and sexed her up; it's the other way around.

It's irrelevant to Red Hood and the Outlaws how popular Teen Titans! is, and saying that there's a potential fanbase being left out (kids) isn't even a good argument for why it should go after those audience figures--isn't that the exact same excuse hacks use when they tone down their originally R-rated movies to PG-13? No, I'm not saying Red Hood is automatically a better book when it has sexy, violent content (I'm not interested in Lobdell's take on these characters either way), but if that's the type of book it wants to be and they want to attract an older audience for a book about mercenaries, I don't see why abandoning the Teen Titans! fans is being made into such a fuss.

It's irrelevant to Red Hood and the Outlaws how popular Teen Titans! is

"is" yes, "was", less so I'd say. One of the points of this reboot is to lure new readers into comics, those who grew up with the Teen Titans cartoon which ended five years ago, (and any episode of which pulled in many many times more viewers than any Titans comic has had readers in many a decade) would only have the cartoon as a frame of reference.

I sort of agree. Teen Titans ended in 2006! I know a lot of people are nostalgic about that cartoon, but people should not be upset that they decided to take the character in another, less familiar direction? It would be boring if she was exactly like her cartoon-counterpart, especially since the cartoon hasn't been relevant in 5 years!

The characterization was shitty, but not because it "wasn't like the cartoon I grew up with."

I think one of the reason this is annoying is that other characters were changed and people claim the reason is to make them more coherent with their cartoons / movies version. Babs as Batgirl would be the most visible example of this. But apparently this justification only works as a one way street - to make characters whiter, sexier, slimmer, and less disabled.

This, very much.

I mean, seriously. Despite the fact that, in comics, Babs has been Oracle longer than she's been Batgirl, almost as long as Starfire's existed, they claim they're afraid people who watch the cartoons/old TV shows/etc, won't be able to get into Batgirl because the name of the her civilian identity is Stephanie Brown, not Barbara Gordon, when, personality wise, they're not all that different (there are differences, certainly, but no more than the differences between any individual incarnation of BabsBatgirl... hell, one mainstream version of Babs was blonde and Alfred's Niece, not Gordon's).

Yet when there's an extremely popular version of another character that's basically completely different personality-wise from the way she's been in the comics, and pretty well the only version somebody outside of comics will ever have heard of, not only do they not do anything to attempt to harmonize her, they actually go the other way and sexualize her even MORE (and for Starfire, that's a tough job).

For me personally, its not anger so much as confusion when using the show as an argument. Why would you throw away a character (from the show) that brought in way more eyes to the character than any comic book possibly could, and change her in a way that scares away all of those prospective readers from the book, and possibly the DCnU? Anyone who wants to get into comics and has seen that show looks, sees starfire, sees the change, isn't interested. I think Shortpacked was extremely accurate on that front.

For other people, I don't think anybody thinks they are obligated to keep her the same. I think its rage that the cartoon Kory (who is arguably the happiest and most bubbly) was a believable variation on the character. To take that (what could have been) and make her this new person, is a couple lunges in the wrong direction.

Well, I think it's because like I said, it's the cartoon's depiction that strayed from the Starfire character and not the other way around, so the idea of taking advantage of an alternate version probably didn't even enter the equation. I mean, we're talking about a character who Wolfman specifically created with the intention of making her the sex symbol of the book, which Perez then designed partly based on a stripper he knew. So it just rubs me the wrong way to suggest that DC should have retooled one of the character's fundamental traits (her sexually provocative look) that's been there for years and years, just for the sake of an immediate economic gain.

Moreover, if we're really going to talk about roping in another media's audience, wouldn't it make more sense to expect the people intrigued by the recent UNDER THE RED HOOD movie to be intrigued by a book called RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS? I gleaned from talking to people that since coming on Netflix streaming a few months ago, the film has been steadily gaining popularity among twenty-something guys who don't know a lot about comics and would make very easy prospective DCnU readers. Clearly, the book is well-aligned with the demo for that movie. I dunno, I feel like that makes a lot more sense to expect than "now grown-up Starfire fans who used to admire her on that show from 5 years ago when they were little girls."

The argument that Willis made in "Shortpacked!" was that it was a bad business decision, since they were alienating a large potential customer base. But I agree with you that this argument is tendentious: there is little evidence for the proposition that DC could have attracted a significant proportion of the cartoon's fan-base, and, in any case, the demographic group that is the current primary customer base of most comics, and the demographic group to which that issue of Red Hood was clearly trying to appeal, males aged 18-35, is the most desirable demographic from the perspective of advertisers. Since all periodicals rely on ads for a significant chunk of their revenue, it would be a bad business decision for DC to deliberately seek a less desirable demo.

Speaking of targeting the right demo, if Willis really believed his own argument, and really wanted to effect change, he would have aimed his argument at TimeWarner shareholders, not comics readers.

Except that's exactly the problem. Didio himself said so: the 18-35 comics reader market, which the industry has been increasingly cater to for the last 15-20 years, has become smaller and smaller. The only way they managed to stay profitable to that demographic was to continue to raise cover prices and now that strategy has finally played out.

You say that there is little evidence that DC could have attracted a significant part of the cartoon's fan-base...but DC stated that this was a part of the point of the whole exercise. DC was trying to broaden it's market, appeal to lapsed readers and attract new readers. Didio claimed they needed to do something 'drastically different'.

Starfire highlights an opportunity that DC missed. She didn't have to be the animated version....but she could have been a version that incorporated some of the more popular elements of her most famous incarnation that would have, if not attracted at least not repelled potential new fans of the character. If they really wanted a sex-prop for Red Hood, why use Starfire, specifically?

It all just seems a massive missed opportunity.

What DC says and what they actually believe may not be the same thing. Ask yourself which DC is more likely to state publicly: we are looking to attract a whole new group of readers to comics by relaunching a more diverse DCU; or, we are looking to get Marvel fans to start buying DC titles and to get people who are currently buying a couple of DC titles to buy more. The latter is a much better business strategy, but the former sounds much better for public consumption.

Except one of the big huge things about the reboot was re-aligning their characters to fit in better with the popular media spin-offs. We saw it with Babsgirl and GreenArrow-Batman, and it was used to justify some other stuff they've done. I'm still extremely bitter about Oracle, and one of the things many people said to justify replacing Oracle; ie, Babsgirl is more familiar to non-comics readers so she'll help bring in more readers.

But the one time changing something to fit in with the spin-off would actually IMPROVE the character, they have to say "No, let's completely misinterpret Starfire as an emotionless sexbot"

So that's why Rulk gets to sit in; he DOESN'T eat all the dip!

I commented elsewhere that ~~Marvel~~ Disney's gradual evolution of Wolverine from psycho-berzerker to family-friendly icon has been handled gracefully over the last several years (maybe since he joined the Avengers). I have even come to approve of the way they "sexed up" Squirrel Girl (my fave femme hero) without the crassness of going full-Starfire on her.

Notwithstanding the above-cited (and non-cited) "petit-fridging" of females in Marvel and in comics in general, IMHO ~~Marvel~~ Disney seems to manage their properties SO much better than DC the WB marketing department does.

As an aside, does anyone else enjoy the irony that Image-style comics sprang from Marvel-style comics, and have now consumed and regurgitated DC comics?

Are you going to credit Disney's influence on the arc where Wolverine killed all of his illegitimate children?

Yup, that's exactly what made me take notice. A brutal hurrah (was that book NC-17?), but what better reason for Logan to renounce his berzerker ways? One last shocking burst of purposeful ultra-violence to cement his new persona.

Not quite Disney's traditional "Mustafa, betrayed by his brother, falls to his death" or Bambi's Mom (which shocked my sensibilities as a child), but ours is a much more violence-desensitized era.

The part about Marvel taking the issue better or not..is disputable. Sounds more like a comment out of a Marvel fanboy. Both good and bad examples can be easily pointed out at both companies.
Naaaah, I'd say "Vertigo" maybe does a much better job than both these. (Yes! Yes, I know it's part of DC/WB, but I was speaking publishing-brand-wise)

Focusing on the scans (specifically scan 1 panel 1): The Kree have obviously played the Gears of War games.

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??

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