In the Grim Dark Future There are Only Dudes

As an aside, before I get going, I'm now on Twitter. If anyone wants to friend me, I'm listed as "filbypott".

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This is an interesting article on the exclusion of women from wargaming, focusing on Warhammer 40,000.

I've been reading the Warhammer Fantasy Battle army books, and I must say it's been fun. I enjoy immersing myself in a new world, and the more fleshed out the better. But one thing I noticed almost immediately was the exclusive use of male pronouns in the text, and that stuck out at me. Dungeons & Dragons has alternated between male and female pronouns since 3rd Edition was released in 2000 and Magic: The Gathering has always used "he or she" or "his or her" to refer to the player since its inception in 1993; as such, I've come to view gender-inclusive language as the rule rather than the exception, and coming across exclusive use of "he", "his", and "him" in a game book published in 2007 put me off.

It's not just that, though - Games Workshop seems to go out of its way to exclude female characters in the game world, too. In 40K, apparently the process for creating Space Marines just doesn't work on women, making them an all-male fighting force. In Fantasy Battle, female Skaven are neither sentient nor even humanoid - they're just giant rats for the males to mate with. Greenskins in both settings reproduce asexually, though they all happen to look male and individuals are referred to with male pronouns. And all that kinda bugs me.

Which is not to say that it's a barren wasteland for women, of course. As the article I linked to notes, the Sisters of Battle in 40K are an all-female army that wear sensible armor and aren't a horde of man-hating feminazis (God I hate that word). The various Elves and Eldar factions in both games get lots of female models. According to the tie-in novels, the Imperial Guard in 40K is co-ed (good luck finding any female soldier models, though). So, given that Games Workshop obviously doesn't actively hate women and includes them in some capacity in their game universes, it's mystifying that they aren't more accommodating of female players.

And this isn't just political correctness on my part, either. It's just a poor business model. Sure, sticking to gender-exclusive language may help assure the most immature players in their market that Warhammer is a boys' club, but if they suddenly stopped playing in protest if gender-inclusive language were adopted, would that be such a big loss? As we've seen in the RPG sector over the last decade, women can be gamers too, and as long as GW writes exclusively to a male audience, there's a big untapped market they're simply ignoring. And that's just bad business.

Fantasy and Racism

...or, "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Goblin".

This is something that's been rattling around in my tiny li'l brain for a while now.

You know what bothers me about a lot of fantasy fiction? The way "goodness" or "badness" is often conflated with how something looks. If something is "beautiful", it must be good; if it's "ugly", it must be bad.

This goes back all the way to mythology, of course, but in modern fiction I think The Lord of the Rings is the ur-example. The elves are beautiful by the author's standards, with lily-white skin and shining eyes; of course, they are the good guys. Conversely, the orcs and trolls are vile monsters, and their evil manifests outwardly with lumpy countenances and coarse, dark skin. You can see the undertones of racism there. Tolkien was a good writer, though, and he managed to subvert this idea within his own mythos. In his backstory, some of the elves were murderous kin-slayers. The heroic Aragorn was scruffy and looked "foul" to the hobbits, while the Dark Lord Sauron was described as achingly beautiful before he was reduced to a disembodied spirit who only appeared as a red eye in people's minds. No luck for the orcs, though: they remain downright demonic, every one.

Tolkien was a good writer, but flawed. Needless to say, most of his successors have possessed his flaws but not his talents. Dungeons & Dragons is a perfect example: elves and dwarves are inherently "good" and even nameless non-player characters are valued (i.e., mourned for roleplay XP), while goblins and orcs are inherently "evil" and just there to kill for XP unless the DM goes out of his/her way to give a goblin NPC a personality. This extends even to their game stats: elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings all have abilities that can be used both in combat or in roleplay; while goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, ogres, and other "savage" humanoids have stats that are purely combat-oriented. (The exception is kobolds, who have a bonus on mining and trapmaking; perhaps for this reason, D&D went out of its way to push kobolds as a viable player race toward the end of 3rd Edition's lifespan.)

The thing that prompted me to write this post is this page on the subject of goblins in D&D, written half tongue-in-cheek from the position of a goblin advocacy group. In the 3rd Edition Monster Manual, the combat tactics of goblins is described thusly:

“The concept of a fair fight is meaningless in their society. They favor ambushes, overwhelming odds, dirty tricks, and any other edge they can devise . . . goblins have a poor grasp of strategy and are cowardly by nature, tending to flee the field if a battle turns against them.”

Meanwhile, in the same book, we have the elves' strategy:

“Elves are cautious warriors . . . maximizing their advantage by using ambushes, snipers, and camouflage. They prefer to fire from cover and retreat before they are found, repeating this maneuver until all of their enemies are dead.”

Exactly the same thing as the goblins, but described in more glowing terms while the goblins are portrayed as cowardly and craven. It's a total double standard. This dichotomy reminds me of two news articles I saw side by side in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, with one showing a black "looter" and the other a white guy who "found some supplies". I'm not comparing goblins to black people, nor do I think that D&D is worthy of the same kind of outrage as the news articles. I just think that both are symptomatic, to very different degrees, of the institutionalized prejudice in our culture.

Perhaps because they're the designated antagonists in most fantasy, I find goblins and orcs much more interesting than elves and dwarves. Surely there's more to them than mindless violence. What if they have some moral justification for their aggressions against humans and elves besides just being inherently evil? Or, heck, what if they're not all that violent at all and their reputation is just propaganda from books written by humans? (Yes, I have been reading Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes, why do you ask?)

In the D&D campaign I'm very sporadically working on, I try to go out of my way to give goblins and hobgoblins and ogres actual cultures and a place in the setting that goes beyond violence. There are still evil goblins, but they have reasons for their actions. There are also quite a few good goblins, and evil dwarves, and so on. Basically, no race is tied to one moral alignment. They're people, not monsters.

So, yeah. This post turned out a bit longer than I intended, but it feels good getting my thoughts out of my head and onto the (web)page.

Winter Anime Thoughts

Happy New Year, folks!

I'm not as into anime as I used to be. It's mostly a result of having less free time than I used to - I can barely keep up with comics now for the same reason and I've just dropped RPGs as a hobby. I also feel like my tastes have matured a bit, such that I need more than wicked sweet action to keep me entertained for more than five minutes. Even at the height of my interest, though, I never followed the anime "scene" and actively kept an eye on upcoming schedules. I did get sucked into a few series because of their popularity (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Ouran High School Host Club in particular) and ended up watching each episode as it came out, but I don't have the energy to do that nowadays.

That said, I'm looking forward to the coming anime season for the first time I can remember solely because of Axis Powers Hetalia, a webcomic-turned-anime that I was turned onto by chance on TV Tropes Wiki. In a nutshell, it's a series of gags about world history in the last 200-odd years starring various nations anthropomorphized as handsome young men, mostly revolving around the relationship between Germany and Italy, hence the title. It's potentially very offensive in how it skips over all the blood that's been spilled in the World Wars and other conflicts, not to mention the various national stereotypes, but that's mitigated by the fact that the author really knows his history and geopolitics and gives every country his fair share of ribbing. I'm a bit of a history buff so I'm sure I'll get quite a bit out of it, but for various reasons I can't get into the manga, so I'm hoping the anime will give me something to latch onto.

Anyway, I've also taken a look at the rest of the 2009 winter season, which is laid out in this image (which Photobucket has regrettably shrunk). The only things that particularly appeal to me are a remake of the underappreciated mid-90s superhero action anime Birdy the Mighty and a new season of The Slayers, the perennially popular fantasy comedy that's been going strong for nearly two decades. Nothing else jumps out at me as something I'd watch, but one show does stand out for just how utterly braindead its premise is:



That is quite possibly the stupidest idea for a TV show I have ever seen.

I can only wonder how the planning phase of this waste of ink went...

"Hmm. Who's our target demographic, again?"

"Sex-starved male shut-ins with no understanding of women whatsoever!"

"Gotcha. So we need a whole mess of gorgeous, submissive young girls who are inexplicably head-over-heels in love with a nerdy loser and an excuse to shove them all into a contrived romantic plot. What've you got?"

"Okay, so, like, the girls are all actually soda cans, and they need carbon dioxide to survive. And how do they get it? By kissing this guy. It's scientific!"

"Uh... pardon the pun, but are you sure they'll swallow that?"

"As long as we flash some panties every five minutes, they'll swallow anything!"

"...Give this man a raise."

Reading Regrets

From my excellent friends Ami Angelwings and David Wynne:

On the assumption that in ten years, a lot of twenty-somethings will be re-reading Twilight and wincing in embarrassment:

Name three series or writers that you devoured as a teen but are now somewhat sheepish about having liked as much as you did. For each series, list off what you dug about them, what you're wincing at in retrospect, and whether you'd read 'em again.

This was kinda tough, because there's not a whole lot I'm embarrassed about having enjoyed. (What can I say? I am a gentleman of exquisite taste.) Heck, I'm not even ashamed that I liked The Sword of Shannara! I had to really wrack my brain to come up with answers to this.

1: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
What I dug about them: They're epic fantasy. That alone was enough to get me hooked at first. C. S. Lewis was an imaginative writer who was equally good at writing action and humor, so it was easy to get into his books.
What I'm wincing at in retrospect: There's no easy way to put this: The entire series was a recruitment tool for conservative Christianity. I loved the books without question until the very last page of the last book, where Lewis wrote something to the effect of "...and Aslan no longer looked as a lion to them." Yes, Aslan didn't just represent Jesus, he was Jesus. The realization that the books served no purpose but to preach at me made me angry. I've hated allegory ever since. This is why I feel The Lord of the Rings was a far superior fantasy: there are Christian themes in the book and things Christians can find applicable to their beliefs, but nothing that actually represents anything from Christianity. And that's not even touching Lewis's implicit bigotry toward women (who screw everything up if they're not perfect little Christians) and racism (because good Calormenes actually worship Aslan, they just don't know it yet).
Would I read them again?: Probably not. Not least because I rarely re-read prose novels that I've already read (making an exception for Tolkien), but also because I just can't reconcile Lewis's worldview with my own. I'd be too busy gnashing my teeth in frustration to enjoy them.

2. Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu
What I dug about it: Akamatsu's art, while standard-issue "cute manga" style, was still very expressive and dynamic, and the man has an incredible gift for sight gags. If nothing else, the comic was consistently fast-paced and funny.
What I'm wincing at in retrospect: It's just a typical sexist harem manga. Actually, no, scratch that. It's the archetypal sexist harem manga. You've got one nerdy loser of a male surrounded by a bunch of gorgeous young women with improbable figures who by the end of the series are all head-over-heels in love with him. Plus some of the running gags, like Naru's hair-trigger acts of violence against Keitaro whenever she (inevitably wrongly) assumes he's perving on her or the other girls got incredibly tiresome after the first volume. And as for Ken Akamatsu himself, once I learned that he drew pornographic comics about pre-pubescent girls and wrote an essay that defended rape, well, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Would I read them again?: I might, if only to look at the art again.

3. Lots and lots of Star Wars tie-in novels
What I dug about them: Um, well. They were novels about Star Wars. That's pretty much all I needed.
What I'm wincing at in retrospect: I can't really get as in-depth about these as the others. The problem with them is simple: they're cash-grabbing crap written by talentless hacks. That's all.
Would I read them again?: If someone put a gun to my head and ordered me to, I might consider it.

Doctor Why?

You know, I have to admit, I've never seen the appeal of Doctor Who. Maybe it's just the culture barrier at work, but whenever I've seen clips from it, the program just struck me as "like Star Trek, but even sillier."

And really. Dude comes to Earth, last survivor of a powerful alien race (except for a few others who keep popping up), gets involved with human woman, has adventures around the universe... I can get all that from Superman.

And then there's those robot salt-shakers with plungers on their heads. 'Nuff said.

From the brilliant mind of Jack T. Chick...

Hm, lemme see. We've got a filthy Muslim, a vile Satanist punk, a dirty Chinese commie, a disgusting pagan witch, a depraved... atheist schoolteacher? And a murderous... is that a paleontologist?

'Cause we all know those dirty evil-lutionist bone-diggers exist for nothing but to hate Lord Jesus!

Yikes!

Wow, my last post got linked to by a couple of blogs with larger readerships than mine (read: greater than 4) and attracted a heck of a lot of responses. I'm not used to that! I mean, I get that I have to expect that when I publish my own writing on a public blog, but man, it's overwhelming! I don't know how Ami or the DJ deal with it. Especially when the attention I attract is negative (correct, but negative), that's just not something I'm prepared for. Well, at least no one's called me names or threatened violence... yet.

Phew.

Well, I just wanted to get that out there.

Watch this video.



"Maybe I'm just imagining things, but you look like you're enjoying yourself."

*nod*

Japanese Heroes with Grant Morrison

Right. I've just finished looking at some pages from the Final Crisis Sketchbook by Grant Morrison and J. G. Jones that had been posted at scans_daily concerning a number of Japanese superheroes Morrison dreamed up for his upcoming crossover. I'm a sucker for intersections between Japanese and American pop culture due to my abiding interest in both, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the subject.

You'll want to look at the pages yourself right here before going on first for sake of reference. I've quoted the text of the pages below, interspersed with my own commentary.

Let's begin, shall we?

JAPANESE SUPERHEROES
Japan has embraced every aspect of the superhero culture, chewed it up, spliced it together and incorporated the result into its own hyper-accelerated pop media landscape.

A hero is a role to play, a franchise, a pop star whose cult status might last for a week on the streets of Shibuya before a drastic change of fashion. Anyone can fill the role of hero as long as they're cute enough. Real heroes go unnoticed in favor of gorgeous wannabes. Teams come and go in the blink of an eye, like in Image comics stores. Western motifs are chopped up, collided and spliced with manga fetish wear, Sailor Moon meets Batman, Mecha-Wonder-Woman, Lolita Undertaker Zatanna girls.

I have to say this is setting off warning bells. While that kind of superficiality is pervasive in modern Japanese culture, I have qualms about using it as Japan's defining trait in this story. Of course, it may play out differently, but I'm still concerned.

Before we meet some of these characters who will play a part in our story, let's see the milieu out of which they grew and take a look at the original Japanese superhero team...

BIG SCIENCE ACTION
These guys were Japan's JLA back in the day, with a ring or halo-shaped base hovering above Mount Fuji -- and let's be vague about when that day was -- and these heroes reflect many different Japanese "super-hero" types with an appropriately "retro" design. The aim with design is to make us feel that we've known these characters all our lives, somehow.

Ultimon
Ultraman type Giant Monster killer/young Japanese man indoctrinated into the Ultimon -- a secret society of Ultimate Monster Killers -- the last survivors of the Monster Wars which devastated old Japan. The Ultimon are super-samurai with technology and weapons we can barely imagine.

Okay, so Japan's greatest superhero is a pastiche of Ultraman. I can go for that.

Together in the ruins of Tokyo, young Dai Yokohama and his master fought the three COLONIZERS (all the monsters we see him fight look like "real" versions of POKEMON creatures, as if nature had actually created Pokemon horrors to run around causing real devastation):

SCARRBA the PROTECTOR leads the charge -- a multi-headed Hydra thing spitting a different death ray from each head. Eyes of one head fire lasers. Mouth of another shoots fire. Horns on the third launch electrical bolts, etc.

Right out the gate we have a King Ghidorah homage. I've gotta give him points for that.

KRY-TORR the BURROWER digs up the streets, and the rubble of fallen buildings flies from his hellish, centipedal multi-legs.

I'm getting a Baragon-meets-Onix vibe here: Equal parts Pokemon and kaiju.

LORLOXX the LAYER squats and releases fuming glass eggs from rows of pipes in its sides, all filled with squirming monstrosities.

The most clearly Pokemon-themed monster from what I can tell, though it still has Morrison's name writ large all over.

Then his master died. The last of the Ultimon fell before teaching his young apprentice his final secrets. But at that moment all his master's power flowed into the boy. Yokohama killed Scarrba.

Then the others rose against him and, in an incredible baptism of fire, he defeated them too. Then, through the apocalyptic smoke and ruin, came an army of monsters -- seizing their moment, seeking revenge for their defeat in the Monster Wars.

As the new Ultimon prepared to die in performance of his duty, in defense of Tokyo, the sun rose... and out of the sun came Japan's defenders to his aid. Never before had they teamed together, but that day demanded a miracle.

Cosmo Racer, Hammersuit Zero-X, Goraiko, Sunfire and Rising Sun.

Together, they hurled the Monster Army back into the Outer Darkness, together they built a new Tokyo and set their incredible watch station in place, like a halo above the haze where Mount Fuji rises.

BIG SCIENCE ACTION was born, and the classic lineup soon emerged...

I have to say, of all the characters previewed here, Ultimon is my favorite, simply because he has the best-detailed backstory. He feels the most genuine. I think that he alone would be capable of sustaining his own solo series, and I would buy it.

The name "Big Science Action" is a little too weird for my tastes, though. It gets worse for the other team, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Cosmo Racer
This living robot kid from space is a cross between Silver Surfer and Pinocchio -- partly amnesiac, he is trying to get home to his beloved maker somewhere far in space but has wound up on Earth unable to find the crystals he needs to power up his roller boots for interstellar trave. He can still race along on his blades at speeds up to that of sound.

What only we know is that his "Maker" is a monstrous space tyrant who has sent his little herald out to identify and pacify target planets.

Cosmo Racer's a gritty little "grrrr" guy who never lets you down and ALWAYS finds a way...

Another interesting character, even though his backstory and appearance are explicitly Silver Surfer-meets-Astro Boy, with a touch of Megaman.

I wonder why he has the same insignia on his chest as Kimiyo Hoshi AKA Doctor Light from Crisis on Infinite Earths and Justice League International.

Boss Bosozuko
Boss Bosozuko is a young, hotheaded, nuclear Human Torch. He has a cool-as-hel nuclear-powered future motorcycle with radioactive galactic spiral wheels. He's passionate, angry, tender, emotional, always yelling and acting out, always emoting, like the boys in AKIRA.

Again, his origin is made explicit: Akira. He seems less "serious" than Tetsuo or Kaneda, though, and reminds me of Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and a host of other older shounen heroes.

Hammersuit Zero-X
Gundam meets Gigantor with huge steam-hammer hands -- spunky young girl scientist schoolgirl has created this giant robot suit to run around and right wrongs in.

The design looks closer to something from Neon Genesis Evangelion to me: Gundam machines look more like blocky military hardware. Again, I think it's a tad too Morrisonistic.

Junior Waveman
Junior Waveman is just that, the youngest member of the Wavemen -- a group of rough, tough men and women who live a self-sufficient life in international waters -- 4 guys, 4 women and the teenaged super-genuis daughter of the Wavemen's leader, Senior Waveman Otomo.

Spoiled young Riki Kimura was swept from the deck of his incredibly rich parents' yacht when a terrifying sea creature (one of the Monster Army repelled by Big Science Action on their maiden mission) descended upon them.

The Wavemen arrived to fight off the beast, but Riki's parents were dead. To make things worse, Senior Waveman Otomo also died in the battle against the monster but not before saving the boy's life. The Wavemen took the sickly, ungrateful boy into their care where he learned to grow strong an appreciate life.

Very strong sentai vibe here. I'm admittedly not that familiar with the genre beyond a couple episodes of Power Rangers, but Morrison seems to have hit most of its common tropes: Team of brave men and women, probably multinational (but with a Japanese leader, naturally), standardized costumes/powers, fighting monsters, etc.

He also reminds me superficially of Sosuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic!, but only a little.

And now for the other guys.

SUPER YOUNG TEAM
This group of flamboyant new teenaged heroes derives from Japan's willingness to co-opt and mash together Western music and fashions to create bizarre pop hybrids. Here they've used the same cultural mix-and-match approach to generate a team of colorful youngsters in day-glo outfits.

Warning bells again.

For those of you without the frankly rather pathetic ability to remember such tiny details (*hangs head in shame*), the Super Young Team were first mentioned off-hand two years ago in 52 #6, where a couple members of the Great Ten (that Chinese superteam that Morrison also created) refer to them as "flamboyant fools" or some such, though no details were given.

Most Excellent Superbat
Self-styled leader of the team -- a vivid and garish combination of Superman and Batman motifs. He's the superhero as dandy, as fashion cult, as psychedelic Couture icon. Everything about superhero costuming refined into pure style as worn for the catwalk. Polished, sleek and shiny, super-colorful. Cheekbones like Johnny Depp.

He has his own TV show and legions of fans who swoon over his every inane utterance.

I hate this guy already.

From what I understand, according to an interview at Newsarama, Most Excellent Superbat was created when the writing team from 52 got drunk and started calling out random ideas or something. I don't remember if it was Morrison or Geoff Johns who blurted out the fateful name "Most Excellent Superbat" (probably Morrison), but the fact that he's the result of a drunken stupor shows.

I'm immediately reminded of that scene from the Bill Murray film Lost in Translation where Murray's character winds up on a show with a totally inane guy (who really exists) who pretty much summed up every stereotype about how disgustingly superficial Japanese television is, and the Superbat seems to be that man in a superhero costume.

The thing that bothers me most about him is that he's just a wacky Japanese Superman/Batman wannabe without the others' pedigree in an existing genre.

And if you think his name is bad, just you wait...

Big Atomic Lantern Boy
A big guy wearing a steel vest with a round porthole in the chest -- behind the porthole we see an eerie X-ray image of his ribs and lungs. He fires destructive blue beams from the plate window in his chest. The whole contraption is bright green.

He's a big, shrug and "so what?" kind of guy. Fatalistic. He's the guy who drops deadpan, acid one-liners at perfectly inappropriate moments. He's Superbat's faithful right-hand man.

Another character that screams "Grant Morrison made this!" just a little too loudly. At least he has a personality, though.

Bad names? The worst is yet to come...

Shy Crazy Lolita Canary
A tiny winged girl in a manga schoolgirl outfit. She's the size of a canary and has a shatteringly loud voice, which sounds like many, many voices all mashed together. It's the sound of the shopgirls in every Tokyo store screaming SUMMMIMMMMMASSENNNNN!!! as loud as they can, at the highest pitch possible and en masse. A totally air-headed teenaged girl with a good heart.

What. The. Fuck?

Okay, first of all, she seems to be the token magical girl, though she comes across as more of a shounen/seinen fetish character like Lum or Belldandy than a shoujo audience surrogate like Sailor Moon.

Secondly, the "sumimasen" ("sorry!" or "excuse me!") seems to be a dig at the dojikko/clumsy girl moe archetype that a lot of anime fans seem to dig, but which does not appeal to me whatsoever.

The loose socks are a nice touch, though.

Shiny Happy Aquazon
Giggly, shy, annnoyingly cute but fiercely brave denizen of the deep. She's the amphibious, defiant offspring of Junior Waveman Kimura and uses special underwater machines to fight alongside her teammates. She's not very good at what she does, but everyone likes her and nobody wants to say anything.

She seems to be the embodiment of the sexy and physically powerful but emotionally juvenile character type -- I'm reminded of a more infantile version of Youko Ritona from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann or Shana from Shakugan no Shana. I think that this was another subtle dig on Morrison's part but she doesn't come off as an appealing character.

Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash
Basically, Sonic the Hedgehog meets Impulse. A precocious speedster kid with a huge round helmet and giant running shoes who can reach speeds up to 500 mph. He knows he'll wind up a salaryman in a few years, so he intends to have the time of his life while he still can.

Another character whose origins are clear: He's a video game character come to life, with a bit of the young shounen protagonist thrown in for measure. He's probably the Super Young Team member who least offends my sensibilities, though his name is the pits.

~~~

And that's it. I have to say that I seriously hate the Super Young team, mainly because they're blatant knockoffs of the Justice League. I get that that's the reaction Morrison is trying to evoke, but I think he could have done so with more original characters.

And what are up with their names? The Superbat and Lantern Boy are bad enough, but "Shy Crazy Lolita Canary?" "Shiny Happy Aquazon?" "Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash?" I'm reminded of that other Asian team Morrison created, with names like "Accomplished Perfect Physician" and "Socialist Red Guardsman." Grant Morrison seems to think that the best way to make a character seem "Asian" is to give them a stupid idiosyncratic name.

On the other hand, I rather like Big Science Action, name notwithstanding. These guys come off as actual heroes, not media diva poseurs. They appropriate Japanese culture in weird and stereotypical ways, yet they still manage to feel strangely genuine. I'd like to see more of them.

All told, I think the thing that bothers me most is the casual racism involved in, as I mentioned, defining the whole culture by one trait: Superficiality. I'm one of the people who's still offended by Mother of Champions, and while these guys aren't half as offensive as some of the Great Ten or Egg Fu, I still feel like Morrison hasn't learned his lesson. He's from an overwhelmingly Caucasian country, I realize, so he probably has a rather one-sided view of race and ethnicity (see also anything Mark Millar has written at Marvel), but you'd hope somewhere along the line an editor would look at it and say "Chotto matte, kudasai..." I appreciate that Morrison is willing to go to great lengths for "The Concept," but when he sacrifices taste to do so, I have to shake my head and groan...

Of course, this all comes with an important proviso: Wait and see. There's a big possibility that these characters will only appear in a handful of shots and/or get killed shortly after they appear (a sad reality of modern comics), so all this hand-wringing on my part may be unnecessary.

And that's all I have to say for now. Ja, mata ne!

Comic Complaints

Gail Simone leaves All-New Atom and gets replaced by some guy no one's heard of. It gets canceled.

John Rogers leaves Blue Beetle and gets replaced by the guy responsible for the pile of excrement that is Amazons Attack. Fans fear it may get canceled.

Greg Rucka leaves Checkmate and gets replaced by Bruce Jones. I wish it had been canceled instead of suffering the indignity.

Well, at least Green Lantern and Justice Society of America are still in good hands...

My City Screams!

You know, I'm kinda pissed off at Frank Miller for his upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit, which is apparently going to be Sin City 2 ("The city is my mother. The city is my lover." *GAG*). He seems to have missed the part where Eisner wrote the Spirit as an easygoing, compassionate protagonist in tongue-in-cheek life-affirming stories, and has instead opted to write him as a cheap knockoff of a version of Batman that hasn't been seen in 15 to 20 years.

I just really, really hate Frank Miller. He's such a disgusting conglomerate of every negative stereotype of masculinity there is. The Dark Knight Returns was a great book, I admit, but everything since then -- Sin City, 300, All-Star Batman & Robin The Goddamn Batman -- has been a festering mass of gratuitous sex, violence, and pandering to braindead fratboys who think being a man means acting like a fucking ape.

Oh, and whores. Can't forget the whores.

Gawd, Frank... just... just stop being such a damn parody of yourself, already...

Worlds Collide

Normally I wouldn't post about this because I'm not sure what level of reference my friends have about these issues, but since Ragnell the Foul has written at length about it (go read it) I think I can safely assume that it's known to the comics blogosphere at large now.

So apparently some guy who calls himself The Ferrett cooked up a scheme to grope women at conventions by offering "yes, you may grope me" buttons at the front door.

Um.

That's creepy.

Apparently some women don't mind that (at least going by the comments on his post), but it seems to me that most of the women who would submit to that kind of bizarre crap would be doing it because they're too insecure to say no or think that pleasing these creeps would get their respect or something. But the real thing that kills it for me is that there would be a lot of teenage fans at these conventions as well, and this kind of shit just isn't appropriate for what should be a family-friendly event.

And really. "The Open-Source Boob Project?" Like someone on the Penny Arcade forums said, why does everything nerds do have to reference something else nerds do?

Anyway, once again, this is not something I'd normally write about if not for the fact that I'm already acquainted with The Ferrett by way of his column on magicthegathering.com. In fact I first read about this story at the MTG Salvation forums, so when it appeared on Ragnell's blog I had a strange "worlds collide" moment. The thread on the subject is mostly full of annoying nerds making excuses, saying how they "don't see the problem with it" and bemoaning the evil feminists who are trying to spoil their fun, but there was one post I really liked:

I'm surprised so many people here are supporting this. Even if you're not supportive, not being directly opposed to it is pretty shocking to me. I've researched into it a bit, and the response from the general public, online and off, is so strongly negative that it's not even funny.

The only people okay with this seem to be guys into the hobbies that would be at these conventions. Once more I am reminded of the social retardation of the Magic fanbase, and sigh at having to game with them.

Seriously, nobody thinks this is anything but creepy except for *gasp* other creepy nerds.

...which pretty nicely sums up my reaction as well. I don't like being associated with a community that thinks this is okay, just like I hate calling myself a Democrat when a plurality of Democrats are against gay marriage. The Ferrett and his ilk are the people that make me ashamed of calling myself a nerd or a geek.

I do wonder if Wizards of the Coast will see fit to terminate The Ferrett as a columnist. This is a bit like the Don Imus incident from last year, which I think was justified (he seriously pissed off a large number of potential consumers, which is just bad for business), but Imus aired his crap on the job while The Ferrett did it on his personal journal. So I could see it going either way.

All I can say is that I wouldn't miss him, since his writing style annoyed me anyway.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC

In the words of George Costanza, worlds are collidin' here!

Who in the world thought this was a good idea? I mean, it's painfully obvious it's "inspired by" Capcom vs. Marvel. I must say, if a simple crossover was all there was to it I wouldn't mind, but considering that this is the bloodiest fighting game series out there crossed with the poster universe for "Thou Shalt Not Kill," they're going to have to either nerf the MK characters or "grim 'n' grittify" the DC ones, and either way you're losing something.

A Brief Observation on Superman

Superman is one of my favorite superheroes. I don't actively buy his series, but I enjoy reading about him when he shows up in the various ensemble books I get, I'm a fan of his Timm/Dini animated incarnation, and I just really like the concept of an extraordinarily empowered individual who does good not because of a tragedy in his past but because it's just the right thing to do.

Anyway.

It annoys me when people say that none of Superman's villains are worthwhile because none of them can hurt him. That's ignoring four things:

1) Many of them (Bizarro, Parasite, Metallo, power-suit Lex) can hurt him physically;

2) Many of those who can't (Lex, Brainiac, Mxyzptlk) can potentially defeat him mentally without having to touch him;

3) Those who are a match for him neither physically nor mentally (Toyman, Prankster) can still be effective villains by menacing the people he cares about, including the citizens of Metropolis; and

4) Kryptonite is everywhere.

I'm just saying.

Anime Reviews: Fushigi Yūgi (SPOILERS)

Okay. Enough with the videos and memes and whatnot. It's time again for a POS -- a Piece Of Sh--

Wait, no.

A Post Of Substance.

...

I think I need a new acronym.

ANYway, I've gotten back into anime lately, so I thought I'd try to put down my thoughts about several series I've been watching lately, if only as a writing exercize. I'll be doing this as a series of reviews (assuming I can keep focused enough to do so), starting with the first new show I viewed this year.



I finished Fushigi Yūgi last month, and I was underwhelmed. It's not easy to write about it since it's no longer fresh in my mind, but I'll try to summarize what I felt was wrong with it.

The thing that really stuck in my craw was the show's constant use of sexual violence as a plot point. The villain turns the heroine's friend against her by convincing the young woman that the heroine abandoned her and allowed her to be raped and he came to her rescue, making him the only person she could trust (in fact he killed her attackers before they could rape her). Later, the same villain has the heroine cornered, threatens her with rape, knocks her out, and tells her that he raped her while she was unconscious (in fact her ill-defined magical powers protected her and zapped him when he tried). After that, not one but two of the villain's henchmen attempt to rape her again! 'Cause only a virgin can use her powers of the ancient bird-god and yadda yadda save the world or something. Why the hell do the gods care about the state of a woman's hymen?

In the end, the only person who actually was raped was the villain himself, when he was a boy, which is apparently why he turned into such an evil bastard. Or something.

All this in a series created by a woman and aimed at teenage girls. Phew.

Another thing that really bothered me was the lack of character development for several of the lead characters. Right up at the end of the series, two of the heroine's companions give their lives to help her, but we in the audience have no reason to care because they'd only been there as background characters and had what felt like less than ten lines between their introductions and their deaths. In fact, all the villain's henchmen end up more developed characters than the heroes! It's shameful.

And the ending... well, without spoiling anything, while reasonably action-packed, it relied too heavily on hastily contrived deus ex machinas.

Finally, the heroine, Miaka, ended up grating on my nerves a great deal. Anime fans will recognize a certain kind of female protagonist: Ditzy, clumsy, gluttonous, and boy-crazy, yet imbued with a bizarre martyr complex and an inexplicable charisma that makes every young man she meets fall head over heels in love with her. She's simultaneously a Mary Sue and a reflection of all the negative character traits young girls hate about themselves (at least as the writers perceive it). It's wholly appropriate that Miaka is voiced by the same actress as Sailor Moon, if you know what I mean.

I don't mean to say that the whole series is garbage because it's not. The first half is well-done, and I liked and cared about most of the main characters a great deal. When two of them died (not the two mentioned above), I was genuinely moved by their sacrifice.

Also, despite being a vile wannabe-rapist, the fact that the villain was basically the Goblin King from Labyrinth scored some points in my book. (This plus the fact that the show's plot is lifted wholesale from The Neverending Story makes me think the creator watched a few too many fantasy flicks in the '80s.)

But none of that saves Fushigi Yūgi from winding up as a wholly mediocre viewing experience. I've read some of the other works by creator Yū Watase, and I can say that in my opinion her best work is done when she ditches the pretentions at writing a great epic and just sticks to what she knows: Wish-fulfillment fantasies about dorky girls surrounded by hot guys who inexplicably love them, nothing more, nothing less.

Next up: Lucky☆Star.

On the latest Captain America... (SPOILERS)

Read part of it on scans_daily.

Obviously the replacement of Steve Rogers by his sidekick mirrors the death of Barry Allen and Wally West's becoming the Flash. We should be happy that Cap's legacy is being upheld, right?

And yet... Barry Allen died saving the universe.

Steve Rogers was shot dead on the street after being arrested for upholding America's ideals.

That really, really sucks.

Goddamn it. I wish that idiot Quesada would get the boot and someone would bring back the real Captain America.

Afganis-tan

Um...

Am I the only one who finds this just a mite distasteful?

Especially this part here?

I mean, I think it's great and all that someone's trying to educate people about Central Asia's tumultuous history, but there's got to be a better way...

Countdown Presents: Lord Havoc and the Extremists

I've been reading this comic, not because I have any attachment to the characters (I don't, tho' it's always nice to see some JLI alums pop up), or because I like the author (I don't), or because of the Countdown brand name (hellz no), but because I'm always interested in exploring new Earths throughout the new multiverse and yadda yadda.

Anyway.

I can't quite figure out whether or not it's supposed to be a parody of bad '90s comics with overwrought plots and dialog, characters who are total jerkasses, and art that looks like it was done by a hormonal 14-year-old boy.

If it is, then it's actually pretty darn clever.

If it isn't, it's crap.

Hmmm.

Ten Comic Book Characters I Don't Particularly Like

Apparently there was a meme on LiveJournal this past week to list 10 characters from comics you hate. I missed out on that, but being disgracefully late never stopped me from getting involved in a meme!

Note that I really don't hate many characters (except for #4, whom I don't really see as redeemable), and there are rare instances when I find even these sad sacks interesting, but in general they just bore me and/or piss me off.

1. Spider-Man
Yes, Spider-Man. To be fair, it's not really Spidey I have a problem with so much as the editors mandating his life's direction. It's just one insipid tragedy after another. The poor shmo isn't allowed to be happy for even a moment. Instead it's just angst, angst, angst. NO THANKS. I'll be over here reading my happy, hope-inspiring Superman comics, thankyouverymuch...

2. Green Arrow
I dislike Green Arrow for the same reason I dislike Michael Moore: He claims to speak for the same political ideals I do, but at the end of the day he's just an obnoxious rich white guy with a chip on his shoulder. They both just end up making me look worse.

3. Egg Fu
He's Fu Manchu as a giant yellow egg. We couldn't have just left him buried back in the Silver Age where he belongs? I wish that when they reintroduced him last year they could at least have purged him of all his Yellow Peril elements and made him completely alien, but no, he may not have the moustache anymore but he's still "Chang Tzu," the living embodiment of the "inscrutable East" stereotype.

4. Mother of Champions
In the same vein as the above... Yeah, she's appeared for no more than two or three panels over a year ago, but the very fact that a Chinese woman whose super-power is having lots of babies so much as exists pisses me off.

5. Catwoman
The "femme fatale" thing never really interested me all that much. That's pretty much all I have to say.

6. Sally Floyd
...on general principle.

7. Orion
I'm one of those people who doesn't worship the warrior archetype, and as such Orion holds little to no interest for me. Mister Miracle is so much more interesting, or at least he was before Jim Starlin stuffed his wife into a fridge.

8. Major Force
Speaking of fridges!

9. Bigby Wolf
I don't hate him so much as I'm incredibly tired of how Bill Willingham constantly uses him as a mouthpiece for his political views. "Operation: Israel" my ass.

10. Jean Grey
Stay dead, already!

Honorable Mention:
11. Wolverine
Yeah, he's an obnoxious manly-man prick and he pretty much singlehandedly killed the concept of the "cape," but his gruff obnoxiousness makes his brief humanizing moments that much more effective (and the parodies more hilarious). So he manages to stay off the list.

Thoughts on The Golden Compass

Apparently a lot of religious people are getting up in arms over this movie The Golden Compass because its creator is an outspoken atheist and he used his books to get his beliefs across to young readers.

So... wait wait wait.

One British guy writes a series of fantasy novels explaining his personal beliefs, and they're hailed as being among the greatest young adult literature of the 20th century.

Another British guy writes a series of fantasy novels explaining his personal beliefs, and... controversy.

Huh?

Okay, honestly? I liked The Chronicles of Narnia. They were well-written, they had engaging characters and exciting plots, and while I didn't agree with C. S. Lewis's Christian message I thought it was stated gracefully and eloquently. In fact, the main problem I did have with Lewis is simply that his fictional world wasn't created with as much verisimilitude as Tolkien's. :P I highly recommend his books.

So why the hell can't right-wing Christians have the grace to let someone outside their group have their say? Hypocrisy, much?

Ahh, well. In a way, the Christian Right is actually doing the "atheist agenda" (heh) a favor by raising such a stink. No such thing as bad press, after all.

Anyway, if I end up seeing this movie for political reasons, it won't be because the author's an atheist. It'll be because the villain is an evil woman named Coulter. :D

More Ranting (SPOILERS for Countdown: Arena)

Countdown: Arena #1 pissed me off.

So they introduce 52 alternate versions of the DCU and its most popular characters... and immediately start slaughtering them en masse.

I'm insanely pissed that Victorian Batman and WWII Batman unceremoniously got their throats ripped out by Vampire Batman. I really liked both of them. Hell, I put in like 300 votes for WWII Batman just because I knew Vampire Batman would kill them if he won and I didn't want them to die. I was right. Lot of good my votes did...

Screw you, DC. That was a stupid move.