Archive for category comics
Psy-Ops, Simplicity, and Superheroes
When I first heard that comic books were air-dropped onto war zones, I remember thinking it must be a goodwill gesture. Something fun, something bright. Something to distract the suffering children.
Yes, I’m an idiot.
It somehow didn’t click that the thousands of comics, say, dropped on Iraq in the early ‘90s were more likely show Saddam Hussein cutting off his own head than a cheery selection of Calvin and Hobbes.
I was planning to discuss psy-ops and propaganda comics while writing about Joe Sacco’s Footnotes In Gaza for Bookslut, but Sacco distracted me with his hundreds of pages of heartbreak. Would it have been too tenuous to compare his work with Captain America punching Hitler back in 1941? They’re both designed to win hearts and change minds, after all. And comics have a long history of being used as propaganda – whether to rally support at home like Hitler’s glass jaw above, or loaded into cluster bombs and dropped on the enemy to destroy morale.
Sometimes, however, the pretty pictures can have the opposite effect. During World War II, the Japanese reportedly dropped leaflets designed to convince American soldiers their wives were busy being unfaithful at home; they were illustrated – ahem – graphically enough that they became collector’s items. “Our guys loved it,” says military historian Stanley Sadler. “They’d trade them like baseball cards.”
That same article by Ian Urbina references a failed use of superhero-specific propaganda, too. In 2000, DC Comics made special Superman and Wonder Woman comics in multiple languages to illustrate the dangers of land mines. But… umm… what were those weird, word-filled clouds hanging over the heroes’ heads? Urbina explains:
“Though widely understood in some contexts, thought bubbles appearing above a cartoon character’s head left some readers, especially rural ones, completely baffled, according to press accounts.”
The perceived simplicity of comic art is what makes it so appealing for cross-cultural propaganda. Unfortunately – and setting aside the possibility that this story is another example of the “caveman panic” rumour circulating around the Lumière train – it’s never that simple. Read this fascinating piece on the attempts to cure “The Forever Problem” at a New Mexico nuclear waste vault. Once you set aside a shared written language and a shared visual vocabulary, how do you communicate grave danger to humans living a thousand years from now?
Comic books have hundreds of specific visual conventions, from the wavy lines above an angry man’s head in the newspaper funnies to the ornate font Marvel’s currently using to imply that Thor and their other Norse Gods sound kinda ‘Ye Olde’.
And superhero comics may be many things – daft, adolescent, awe-inspiring, overtly sexist and conceptually daunting – but they’re rarely simple.
Underwear On The Outside
In Superman: Secret Identity #3, the Man of Steel wonders if his costume might be a little snug. It’s the latest of god-knows-how-many updated retellings of Superman’s origin story, so we get to see him wearing his costume in public for the first time – uh, again – and muttering: “All right, Clark. Don’t think about how tight it is.”
As far as catchphrases go, it’s no “Up, up, and away!”, is it? When even Superman is worried that he looks stupid in his iconic, entire-industry-inspiring costume, you can understand how difficult difficult it is to wear your underwear on the outside.
The popularity of superheroes used to be able to force anyone into costume. In his book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre (2006), Peter Coogan uses a character called The Scorpion to illustrate this trend:
“The Scorpion, created by Howard Chaykin, exemplifies this shift. The Scorpion’s adventures were set just before WWII, and the character himself was a pulpy soldier of fortune with some science fiction elements. The Scorpion debuts without a costume, wearing a leather jacket, flight scarf, riding boots, and armed with pistols. A new creative team was brought on after the second issue, and the Scorpion was made over, appearing in the third and final issue in a blue-and-orange cowled affair sporting a large scorpion chevron.”
Like I wrote when talking about Power Girl and her costume’s notorious cleavage window, you’re currently more likely to see superhero comics apologising for oulandish outfits than embracing them. The first example I can remember was a decade or so after the Scorpion’s crisis, when John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad ditched their costumes altogether.
The Suicide Squad was a team consisting of various villains and sociopaths, forced into good deeds by their government in order to reduce their prison terms. It was a serious espionage story with an alarmingly high body count. (At least it seemed high when back in 1987; now, a smattering of character deaths seem to be expected in even the most lighthearted superhero books.)
In time, the supervillains on the Squad ditched their costumes altogether, deciding on a more ‘serious’ look for their serious stories. I can see why. This year, DC released JSA Vs. Kobra. It’s a grim tale of global terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and suicide bombing that took itself absolutely stone-faced seriously – even while starring a character called Mister Terrific who has the words FAIRPLAY written down the sleeves of his jacket in giant letters.
I’ve spent my whole life honing my ability to suspend disbelief, and I still had to stifle a giggle at this yawning chasm between style and content.
For the non-comic-reading public, costumes can be an even harder sell. Recent superheroic TV shows don’t dare. Smallville is still clinging to its long-standing “no flights, no tights” policy for young Clark Kent. And NBC’s deservedly-maligned Heroes is happy to be one of the stupidiest shows on TV – but god forbid they’d ever put their characters in costume, because that would just look dumb, right?
Coogan suggests three elements to define a superhero: mission, powers, and identity. Costumes, he says, is an integral part of the latter – “iconic representations of the superhero identity”. Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins agreed, concreting the importance of Batman’s “theatricality” in the minds of the millions who saw it. However, it still required his costume to become practical military-style armour, rather than just bright fabric for symbolism alone. (Well, okay: symbolism and ease of impromptu dancing.)
The costumeless Suicide Squad later find themselves unwillingly involved in a major crossover called “War Of The Gods” in issue #58 (1991). Before they head off to battle angry mythological figures, they’re told to put their old costumes back on by the immortal antihero Black Adam:
“Everyone who has one should be in costume. [...] We go to fight gods and magic. Ceremonial garb has a value and should be worn.”
Maybe it’s that simple. Superman should remember this the next time he’s feeling shy.
Power Girl: “They ain’t looking at my face.”
This is a sentence I never thought I’d write: I want to talk about Power Girl’s cleavage.
A story in this month’s JSA 80 Page Giant features what seems to be a rather odd metafictional moment. Here, DC Comics’ charmingly brash superhero, Power Girl, thinks that her revealing costume is being mocked by her rookie teammate, Cyclone. When Cyclone explains that, no, no, she loves the costume, Power Girl shoots a barbed look out towards the reader. She says: “Most women don’t react quite that way.”
Some readers explained that they felt they were being lectured by the comic; reprimanded for daring to think that there’s sexism present in the way Power Girl is drawn (with her seemingly ever-increasing bust size) and the costume she’s drawn into (with its notorious cleavage-window).
The writer of the issue, Jen Van Meter – in an incredibly classy move – responded to one of her critics. She explained that Power Girl’s glance out of the page wasn’t present in the original script, before going on to say:
“Do I like the vast and very gendered disparity in costuming in conventional superhero comics? No. Do I love superhero comics despite the many flaws of the genre? Absolutely. Having chosen to write superhero comics for hire on occasion, must I work with what’s available to me? Sure.”
Spend any time online and you’ll witness the argument usually used to shut down talk of this ‘very gendered disparity’. It goes like this: hey, all superhero costumes are skintight and ridiculous! Shut up!
And while that misses the point entirely, it’s true that superhero costumes are inherently ridiculous. More and more, supermen and superwomen seem a little embarrassed by their outfits. (This is made even worse when they’re translated into non-animated films. Real actors, real physics, and real fabrics just make the problem that much worse.) Comic books have struggled to find logical ways to explain these bizarre spandex fashions.
(My favourite justification comes from writer Grant Morrison. He suggested the X-Men originally dressed like superheroes because the public already trusted superheroes, and therefore they’d be more willing to accept mutants with strange powers within that preexisting heroic framework. That kind of conceptual möbius strip isn’t for amateurs!)
Power Girl’s costume, however, is seen as so uniquely provocative that her writers constantly have to address the issue. Sometimes it’s taking the reader by the hand for a guided interpretive tour, like Cyclone’s subsequent pro-costume speech, above:
“’Cause from a theatrical point of view, it’s perfect for who you are and what you do. It’s all about contradictions. The hole draws the eye precisely where everyone knows they’re not supposed to look – putting anyone you’re dealing with off-balance. The name says girl, but the costume says woman… and not just woman, I mean. It says, “I’m tough enough to handle everything I am. Are you?’”
Sometimes it’s a quick gag, as in JSA Classified #1: “Green Lantern used to ask me why I never wore a mask. It’s because most of the time… they ain’t looking at my face.”
The oddest explanation for Power Girl’s outfit comes out in a heartfelt, tears-in-her-eyes conversation with Superman in JSA Classified #2:
“People always ask me why I have this hole right here. They think I’m showing off… or just being lewd. But the first time I made this costume, I wanted to have a symbol like you. I just… couldn’t think of anything. I thought, eventually, I’d figure it out. And close the hole. But I haven’t.”
Remember that tragic justification for why Batman constantly disappears on a mid-sentence Commissioner Gordon? This scene attempts the same retroactive poetry, but fumbles badly.
Years ago, I interviewed DC Comics’ writer Gail Simone for a feature in Yen Magazine. (How long ago? Joss Whedon was still directing the Wonder Woman movie, that’s how long ago.) She said that she might be considered a “contrarian” in the debate over gendered fashions of superhero outfits. She said:
“I think it’s fine if most of the male and female characters look fabulous, even if the outfits are impractical. I owned a beauty salon before I became a writer and I know there’s a power in glamour. That said, sometimes the outfits betray the nature of the character, and that’s unforgiveable.”
You could easily argue that trying to make Power Girl’s cleavage an empty symbol of angst is a betrayal of her character; it certainly seems more cynical than depicting her as owning her costume-choice with a shrug or wink or smile.
But here’s the final chicken-or-egg riddle: how much of her tough-talking, fun-loving personality has been slowly developed to justify her costume – and not the other way round?
Batman Hates Goodbyes
There’s a gag that’s been running through Batman comics for as long as I can remember. Batman and Commissioner Gordon are engaged in a terse discussion over Gotham’s latest batch of murders. Batman then disappears mid-conversation, leaving poor Gordon talking to himself by the light of the Bat-Signal.
Every writer seems to have provided their own variation on this same vanishing act, but only one I know of explains why Batman does it.
Before I get to that, though, a little more on my last mention of the “tangle of personal tragedies and pointless minutia” of some comic book continuity. Company-wide reboots like Crisis On Infinite Earths are one way to fix these snags, but more common is to perform on-the-fly ‘battlefield surgery’ on continuity hiccups. Writers create new justifications for odd notions from previous issues as they go – or, at worst, they find new excuses to ignore the weirder or dumber elements of their characters.
Geoff Johns’ work on Green Lantern is dedicated to this conceptual surgery. He took the fact that Green Lantern’s ring originally didn’t work against the colour yellow – a random weakness introduced to give villains a shot at winning – and transmuted it into an all-encompassing, world-building logic for his corner of the DC Universe.
He’s created a sci-fi “emotional spectrum” of warring colours that explains early Green Lantern stories while also providing endless fodder for later ones. Admittedly, I’m still waiting for him to tackle the time Green Lantern fought The Shark despite his invisible yellow forcefield. (Yes. You heard me. Invisible and yellow.)
Sometimes a retroactive justification can be much smaller in scale. Greg Rucka wrote an idiosyncratic Batman story called “Falling Back” in Legends of the Dark Knight #125. It came towards the end of a sprawling crossover called “No Man’s Land” – a surprisingly good crossover, too. Even when it was leaking logic it was full of fascinating ideas and dark character turns.
Gordon is upset that a defeated Batman disappeared, abandoning Gotham. Now that Batman’s back, Gordon wants nothing to do with him. He’s furious that Batman left the city unprotected without even a word; furious that no one in law enforcement will take him seriously because he needs a masked vigilante to help him.
They finally meet, face to face. This issue is almost entirely dedicated to their conversation: no fight scenes, no flashbacks. Artist Rick Burchett lets whole pages sit, empty of dialogue, as these two men struggle to find the right words. Downstairs, a waiting Robin nervously says it feels like his parents are deciding if “the divorce is final”.
When Batman tells Gordon that they’re still partners, Gordon responds: “Partners are equal, Batman! When have you ever treated me like your equal? Partners, for example, tell you their plans! They keep you informed! And they sure as hell don’t walk out on you in the middle of a sentence!”
Batman slowly bows his head, and says: “I’ve never been good at saying goodbye.”
Batman’s disappearances aren’t just him being needlessly spooky; it’s that he’s still so consumed with guilt and grief over his parents’ murder that he’d rather vanish than risk another goodbye.
And, just like that, a tired gag is injected with retroactive heartbreak.