Author Archives: Noah Berlatsky

Let Venus Wear Her Girdle, Damn It (OOCWVG)

Posted on by

In my post about Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman yesterday, I realized I forgot to sneer adequately at one of the things that most annoyed me in his scripting for WW 196-200. Namely, the gods.

I don’t mind that Rucka turns all his gods into irritating American suburbanites and/or hipsters (Aphrodite as bored housewife; Cupid as stoned California drop-out, etc.) That’s fine; whatever. Some of the dialogue is kind of funny, I guess. I sort of laughed when Ares told Cupid to stop hitting on his great aunt and Cupid says “like that ever stopped anyone in this family from getting game.” I don’t know. I don’t expect a ton from Rucka at this point; I guess I appreciate any indication that he’s trying at all to entertain me rather than educate me or encourage me to fawn over his Amazon paragon.

So, right; updated gods — not especially clever, but par for the course. What really irritates me, though, is the theology. At one point, Ares explains at length to WW that he (Ares) is now more powerful than Zeus, because nobody is scared of the sky but everybody loves war. Putting aside the question of whether Zeus couldn’t somehow piggyback on climate change fears, I just want to say — I am so, so, so sick of the whole “it isn’t the worshippers who get power from the Gods — it’s the Gods who get power from their worshippers” wheeze. It was tired when George Perez dragged it out for his WW series, and after Neil Gaiman picked it up, dusted it off, and then (in his elegantly canny British way) jumped up and down on it for years…well, there wasn’t a whole lot left.

And yet, here’s Rucka, trundling along years later, spouting this crap like it’s actually insightful or meaningful or anything but the tedious ploy of a nonbeliever who wants to have a deity for verisimilitude while pissing on him (or her) too. The logic is patently ridiculous…and as a result it makes the Amazons look like idiots. If they know that their prayers and belief give the Gods power, then, you know, why not think about something else for a while? Why worship a figment of your imagination? Doing so isn’t profound, and it’s certainly not an alternative to man’s world, where everybody is always already worshipping their own immaculate feces. (And, yes, Alan Moore’s worship of his own imagination also irritates me, though at least, unlike Rucka, he actually does have an imagination.)

It seems to me like if you’re going to use gods in a super-hero comic, you can do one of two things. First, you can just treat them as super-heroes, which is more or less what Lee/Kirby did with Thor (at least in all the Thor I’ve read; maybe somewhere they try to build a theology/philosophy to explain the gods, but I mercifully missed that.) Nothing wrong with gods as superheroes; it’s entertaining and goofy and involves people hitting each other with unusual weapons andl/or force blasts, which is what comics are all about.

Or, second, you can actually, you know, have some kind of concept of transcendence and use the gods to explore that. That’s what Marston did in the first WW series. His Aphrodite and Ares are archetypes connected to his ideas about femininity and masculinity and love and war. Aphrodite especially is definitively transcendent; she’s wiser and more powerful than any other character. It makes sense that the Amazons worship her, because she actually seems to know things they don’t.

Of course, the things she “knows” about submission and love and gender roles are things you could disagree with — but Marston believes in them. What’s most irritating about the “gods are there because we believe in them” meme is that it true to some extent — but the truth is vitiated by putting it so clumsily. Yes, fictions do have power, and the power has something to do with belief. But that belief is at least in large part the artist’s belief in his or her own work, and it is created not just through saying, “hey, I believe in that,” but through genius and craftsmanship. Marston’s Aphrodite means something because Marston took the time to make her mean something; she’s transcendent because Marston thought there was transcendence, and thought about how to express that in his work. Rucka’s Ares, on the other hand, just says, “conflict is important,” as if anybody couldn’t have figured that out for themselves. And then he says he’s powerful because people think conflict is important. Just give it up, already. Don’t lecture me on the meaning of existence when you can’t even figure out how to tell a decent comic book story.

Wonder McDonnell (OOCWVG)

Posted on by

So; Wonder Woman #196-200, Greg Rucka’s first few issues on the title, I think, with art by Drew Johnson and Ray Snyder.

Wonder Woman publishes a book filled with wisdom. We don’t get to hear much of that wisdom in detail, but apparently she thinks peace is good, eating meat is bad for the environment, and you should support your local U.N. The comics, in other words, are kind of like listening to World View, except with all the actual information about world events replaced with platitudes and remarkably poorly rendered, unstylish art. It can also be distinguished from World View because it has less action. Wonder Woman wanders around to signings and readings while a shadowy, nefarious organization attempts to…ruin her reputation! Like in Legends! Remember Legends! Except, this time, instead of Darkseid, we’ve got some blandly blond executive type and Dr. Psycho. Not the Marston version with ectoplasm and kinky hypnotism. No, this is a tedious, latter-day version who does nothing for five issues and finally is unleashed at the end to…start a mild riot, which the police break up by themselves without even Wonder Woman’s help. That’s because Wonder Woman is engaged in a by-the-numbers slugfest with Silver Swan. Who apparently is the tortured, mind-twisted Vanessa Kapetelis, the teen Mary Sue from George Perez’s run on the title. I presume the obligatory desecration of Vanessa isn’t Rucka’s fault. Still, it does suck that every minor character, no matter how innocent, has to eventually show up as a super-villain. It sort of makes you think that the people writing this stuff don’t actually have more than two ideas to rub together.

Who the fuck wants to read this crap? Whose idea of a hero is a NPR commentator in a swimsuit? Rucka just seems endlessly fascinated by how busy WW is; how she’s racing from one do-gooding enterprise to another. The supporting characters are mostly her staff, because, damn it, social secretaries are fascinating. The series often feels like a journalistic puff piece from a fashion magazine or something; it’s like WW is Angelina Jolie. And I know that lots of folks like to read about Angelina Jolie and her doings, sure. But Jolie exists; why do you want to invent her? I can understand the appeal of Twilight; I can understand the appeal of Superman; I can understand the appeal of the Marston Wonder Woman, who was fun because she had amazing adventures and exciting powers. But Wonder Woman as ersatz, earnest celebrity? For God’s sake, why?

In fact, to see how wrong-minded this approach is, you don’t have to go any farther than the back-up features in WW #200, an annual sized volume. A short story by Robert Rodi with art by Rick Burchett called “Golden Age” essentially retells Rucka’s story in the style of Marston/Peter. And — despite the fact that artist Rick Burchett disgraces himself in trying to imitate Peter, and despite the fact that Rodi is unwilling to fully embrace Marston’s bondage fetish — the result is delightful. We ditch the leaden plot, and instead rush blithely from enjoyably ridiculous complication to enjoyably ridiculous action feat. WW refuses to endorse Veronica Callow’s perfume, so Callow builds a super-robot which imitates WW and performs numerous evil deeds (painting a moustache on the statue of liberty! kissing Steve Trevor!) WW despairs as her friends turn against her…but then, with the help of Etta Candy, she uncovers the dastardly deeds…and convinces the robot to turn to the good! And at the end the goddess Aphrodite appears and turns the robot into a real girl. WW sum up by noting that she defeated the robot with “my powers of persuasion! That’s all any girl needs to be a Wonder Woman!” By this point, anyone willing to satirize Rucka is okay in my book…and, as a bonus, we also get to see one of the Amazon kangaroos, lost for many years in the seas of continuity.

Photobucket
This is one of the only bondage scenes in the story (the villain is tied up at the end. Artist Rick Burchett gets Peter’s stiff poses, more or less, but Peter’s fluid linework not so much. The motion lines for the spanking for example, are uniform weight, simple boring strokes, clumsily positioned. No way would Peter draw them that way.

Again, this doesn’t actually read like it’s by somebody who really understand, or likes, or even read the Marston/Peter run that closely. Having WW’s friends turn on her and the anxiety about kissing Steve — that’s way, way Silver Age. Marston’s WW would never cut and run back to Paradise Island…and no way would Marston’s Steve reject a kiss from WW. But that’s neither here nor there; the point is that this is silly, action-filled fun, with the central messages (persuade, don’t fight! women power, yay!) presented with tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but still with less pomposity and greater clarity than in Rucka. If they published a WW comic like this now, I’d probably have to buy it, even if the art did suck this badly.

(There’s also a moderately entertaining silver age story called “Amazon Women on the Moon” which is about what is says (by Nunzio Defilippis and Chistina Weir with actually competent art by Ty Templeton). And then there’s an adequate retelling of the Perseus legend by Greg Rucka. And hopefully that’s the last Greg Rucka I’ll read for quite some time.)

_______________

For those who want more Rucka-bashing, I made fun of the Hiketeia here.

Female Yakuza Tale

Posted on by

Matthew Brady promised me that Female Yakuza Tale would be good, and he was pretty much right. The sequel to Sex and Fury it’s got a different director, Teruo Ishii, who largely ignores telling a coherent story in favor of extravagantly gratuitous violence and sex. High points include a prostitute hawking and blowing a wad of snot down the throat of a guy trying to sneak a surreptitious peek; the moment when female swordswoman Ocho is about to cut off the fingers of gambler Big Tiger, and Tiger’s wife begs Ocho to spare his middle finger as a favor between women (the wife waggles her own middle finger suggestively); a character named Yoshimi of Christ who declares “When I pray, I kill”; and a final battle scene involving gaggles of women fighting nude — especially the moment where a bunch of them beat their former rapist to death, and then piss on his corpse. It’s all done with cheerful insouciance — there’s never a moment where you feel like the filmmaker actually thinks he’s imparting a moral or elevating lesson (as there is throughout Lady Snowblood: Lovesong of Vengeance for example. (There is one moving scene where, in flashback, a 17-year-old Ocho is caught cheating at cards; she is about to have her finger cut off, but a big crime boss intercedes, and offers to allow his own finger to be chopped in return. Then he tells Ocho to go forth and sin no more…but, and this is kind of the best part, in some sense, she does actually spend the rest of her life as a professional gambler. So much for life lessons.)

Where was I? Oh, right, no moral center. Also, it doesn’t have the grim rape-revenge intensity of Scorpion/ It’s almost parodic in its offensiveness — the mood almost seems within hailing distance of something like Toxic Avenger, though this is infinitely cleverer and better made. I enjoyed it pretty thoroughly. I may well have to try to find more movies by Teruo Ishii. Any recommendations as to what I might look for next?

Super Edward (Female Creators Roundtable)

Posted on by

This is the first post in a roundtable on female creators here at HU. Tom, Miriam, and Cerusee will have posts up on this topic as the week goes on.
___________________________

As threatened, I did in fact see the Twilight movie this weekend. It was actually a good bit better than I thought it would be. I Admittedly, all the actual suspense and vampire stuff is incredibly clichéd – the good vampires vs. the bad vampires; the oh-so-painful need to keep from sucking human blood…the darkness! The tragedy! It’s Buffy light, which is saying something. Even the effects are mediocre and half-assed for the most part. Still, there were good parts. I’m not especially in to the pale slight goth-looking thing myself, but I have it on good authority that if you are, Kristin Stewart is something special. Moreover, her acting was quite good — she manages to come across as both painfully awkward and definitively intelligent, which is not all that easy to pull off. Indeed, the cast as a whole is a lot less cringe-inducing than you might expect. Partially I think it’s the director, Catherine Hardwicke (who also did the very decent Tank Girl movie) who seems to have a real talent for awkward high school interactions. The moment where one of Bella’s friends is asking her to the prom, and she’s so fixated on staring at Edward that she doesn’t even hear him is pretty priceless. Meeting the families was quite funny too…the vampire clan is both cute and freakish, and Edward’s exasperation with them is about exactly what you’d expect from a regular 17 year old dealing with a regularly weird family. I wished more than once that Stephanie Meyer had just written a teen high school drama without all the fantasy crap.

Though, of course, it probably wouldn’t have been popular enough to get made into a movie in that case. The movie seems almost scientifically designed to appeal to the tween-girl hindbrain. Several commenters over at this Robot 6 roundtable noted that the relationship dynamic between Edward and Bella is extremely creepy – and, yep, that’s the case. He’s a complete romanticized stalker, breaking into her house every day for weeks to stare at her sleeping, constantly talking about how his love for her compels him to hurt her. When he first sees her, he stares and stares and stares and is utterly creepy.

So right; encouraging teen girls to romanticize their stalkers — bad. Except that…the whole point of the story, what’s exciting about it, is that Edward will never hurt her. In fact, he won’t even have sex with her. He’ll barely kiss her. There’s a scene where he shows up in her bedroom, and he makes her hold still so he can kiss her…and things start to get hot and heavy, and he leaps away from her, bashing into the wall of her room. Then they spend the night talking, until she falls asleep in his arms. Her mom asks her “are you being safe?” at one point and the irony is that she isn’t, of course — Edward’s anything but safe! But the bigger irony is that she’s being super, ultra, duper safe. No condoms needed here. You might as well say that the story is fetishizing virginity as that they’re fetishizing stalking. Indeed, the whole point seems to be that they’re fetishizing both. The appeal is that you have all the darkness and danger and sex and lust you want, all the magic irresistible power of female sexuality – and its all utterly defanged. You can be dangerous and cool and sexy and stay completely safe and untouched.

What’s funny about the Twilight/San Diego Con flap, in fact, is that, if Twilight belongs anywhere, it’s at a comic convention. It’s the perfect female power dream complement to the male power dream inaugurated by Siegel and Shuster, and still running Superman is a fantasy for boys about having secret power and being invulnerable. Twilight is a dream for girls about having a secret lover who will keep you invulnerable. They’re both utterly transparent and infantile and clueless; Superman wears his underwear on the outside and that’s supposed to be tough and glamorous? Edward drives a Volvo and plays baseball and that’s supposed to be dark and cool? But that cluelessness is also a kind of innocence, and a charm. I don’t necessarily want to read the Twilight books, and lord knows I don’t ever need to read another Superman comic. You could argue that either vision is damaging or dangerous, as you could argue that any fantasy is unhealthy and unrealistic, I guess. But I don’t know. I was a kid, and, for that matter, a tween. I can see the appeal.

Update: Cerusee posts on Ordinary People, Jane Austen, and Zombies.