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New / Mighty Avengers

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05:23 / 15.09.07

Would love to see the SKK go up against some Skruvengers!

I fell for Night Nurse after The Oath mini too. I think her boyfriend is a damn Skrull though, which can't bode well for her. As much as I've enjoyed the last 2 Dr Strange minis, his absence from Civil War, his underwhelming presence with the NA, and certain things said in some Bendis interviews make me think he's a likely candidate.

Hell, maybe the entire Marvel universe super-poulation was a Skrull at some point, if only briefly. Would Marvel actually use this to repair any continuity glitches or out-of-character moments? Honestly, I wouldn't mind, so long as Steve Rogers stays dead and Iron Man remains human (with everyone suspecting him to be King Skrull - bwahaha).

The latest NA was enjoyable, but something about the art kinda bugged me. Now, I like Leniel Yu's work just fine, the fault may be Bendis's - but having 2 double page spreads up front featuring Wolverine vs the Hood was just 2 much IMHO, especially when the last page surprise was UNDERwhelming and cramped. You couldn't tell from the art alone that Symbiotes were running amok and that reveal deserved a nicer spread/more attention.

Essential Dazzler

23:38 / 11.10.07

Staying on current form RE: Female characters, Tigra's involved in a fairly nasty scene in NA #35. I haven't read The Hood, wasn't he supposed to be an anti-hero?

12:19 / 12.10.07

My opinion: It's next to impossible to take a baddie seriously who sounds exactly like the man Bednis (sic), even when he's engaging in gratuitous acts of violence towards a scantily clad woman.

UGH and YEEEEUUUCK! respectively.

Oh, and what the shit did that cover have to do with the content?

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

14:54 / 12.10.07

The Hood wasn't quite an anti-hero. He had limits, but they were flexable. He was more of the anti-Peter Parker than anything else. The nasty turn in Avengers is a bit of a change of character for him, although at the end of his series, it was hinted that the Hood itself (the device) was trying to influence him.

19:42 / 17.10.07

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it was pretty weak to put Symbiote-Wolverine on the cover and then have only one distant glimpse of him in the issue.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

20:47 / 17.10.07

I'm wondering if the cover mismatch might be due to plots being shifted around to try and get Mighty Avengers and New Avengers coming out at the same speed again.

Spyder Todd 2008

01:13 / 18.10.07

Yes, curse these artists for not drawing quickly enough, or at least at at the same pace. You would think that since Marvel pushed back every issue of everything during Civil War, they could manage to publish the two concurrent Avengers books so that the interlocking stories actually, you know, interlock...

07:15 / 18.10.07

Even worse, in fact, was the way the re-cap paragraph included stuff from Mighty Avengers that probably won't happen until about January.

Professor Silly

18:44 / 18.10.07

That said, the art in the newest issue of Mighty tickled my eyes in all the right ways. Somebody get Cho some trucker speed so that we may enjoy his work in a more timely basis.

00:18 / 19.10.07

Yeah, Cho's art is pretty great. He has said that [like Bryan Hitch said in interviews about The Ultimates] that perfectionism and pressure to top himself have led to delays in his art and some creative blocks.

I guess Ares smells bad, since The Black Widow is holding her nose as he talks nearby in the latest issue...? I note that she never really held her nose around him in earlier issues... maybe all that fighting has worked up a good sweat...?

Get ready for FANTASTIC VOYAGE inside Ultron Mark IX! Should be fun.

08:55 / 19.10.07

Just to expand on my criticism of Bendis's Tigra beatdown above, I think what really bothered me about it is

a) in comics when people want to express the uber badness of baddie-bad-bad, beating up women - often scantily clad women - is reached for uncomfortably often

b) female characters are continuously presented as little more than soft porn. Tigra has most definitely been constructed this way, so it makes it a little difficult not to read the scene as being on some level an attempt at titillation.

c) Bendis singularly failed to make me believe in the Hood as a villain (see my comments above about the Bendis voice), so having him beat up a woman in a bikini to prove his evilness felt forced and hamfisted. A cheap nasty way of getting me to buy him as a scary guy.

Was prompted to ost this after Newsarama's simpering, obsequious interview with Bendis on the subject.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:17 / 19.10.07

To be fair I thought Bendis acquited himself reasonably well there, in that the interviewer is all like "There does seem to be a segment of fandom that’s looking to go after anything that remotely looks like a misogynistic act, hurr hurr crazy femininists", and Bendis actually comes out and says:

But to the larger point – there’s a lot of misogyny in comics, and a lot of misogyny in all media. Even female empowerment is sexualized in this country, and that’s not good. I completely agree with all of that. You’ve got to be careful in how you show it, but I just don’t think this scene fell under any of that.

I can believe he wanted that scene to not seem sexualised. Doesn't mean I think he succeeded, though. Partly that's to do with the art (if you look at the script extract, there's nothing about Tigra having started to undress before The Hood attacks), but it's also partly about the way that Bendis has previously had Tigra appear in his other Avengers title, and partly the way that the beating does continue off panel, despite his claim in the interview that he deliberately didn't do that...

13:48 / 19.10.07

I can believe he wanted that scene to not seem sexualised

Oh, I'm sure he didn't - I think Bendis is basically a good guy. As ever, it was Newsarama that fucked me off.

I do, however, feel that he's being a little naïve. I mean, what have we got here, oh yeah, it's another sexy, sexy woman* (a woman that has previously been presented as lustful by Bendis) just in her pants, the only difference being that this time she's being beaten senseless.

I dunno, given the current environment I think I'd be steering well away from that kind of thing unless the story really demanded it.

*Presenting women this way just *has* to be editorial policy, or heavily encouraged by editorial. Since I started paying attention to the amount of crotch/tit/leg/summissive shots of female characters in comics I have been utterly amazed by how common they are, especially in the tent pole books.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:22 / 19.10.07

I really don't think editorial need to actively encourage this kind of thing: once something's ingrained in the culture, it doesn't need active encouragement. Editors just need to turn a blind eye and provide justifications if anyone carps.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:33 / 19.10.07

Pretty much. I mean, Frank Cho is a good example over on Mighty. His women are always sexy, pouty, leggy, breasty ladies, so even if Ultron is kiling a lady with tentacles, she'll be doing it in a sexy, pouty, leggy, breasty way.

17:38 / 19.10.07

Actually you can read the script at Newsarama there, and there's no point at which it says 'Tigra opens her top' - Yu has embroidered a bit from the removal of the pendant which (apparently) keeps her furry form in check.

I don't really have any ethical problem with this particular scene, beyond the fact it was deeply unpleasant as violence mostly is*; unlike McMillan, say, I can at least imagine a scenario involving an Avenger of similar status - yr Starfoxes or Darkhawks, say. Darkhawk easy. I imagine Tigra is included here because BMB plans to make fuller use of her in one or other of his Avengers books ultimately, and in the interim she serves as a bridge.

That being said, it has come at the near edge of a confluence of unpleasantness involving the Sentry's wife (not actually) in a refrigerator and the Illuminati "hatin' on the wimmens".

*I think superhero comics have generally cut back on the violence over time - check those horrible Fletcher Hanks toons for an olde time exemplar - and this is a good thing, mind. It's the layering of the afterparty voyeurism atop that makes it particularly nasty here, but there's no remote endorsement or approval that I can see.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:08 / 19.10.07

Really? You don't think that with Darkhawk it would be just a little bit... gay?

20:19 / 19.10.07

In what sense? I don't understand the question.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:22 / 19.10.07

I think the implication is that the Tigra scene is rife with a sexualized element that pretty much prevents the same scenario from occuring with Darkhawk in Hetereocentric Avengers Land, Falcon.

20:47 / 19.10.07

Hm, yeah, I think I was working toward that conclusion. While I don't for one moment doubt that a - hopefully - small portion of the audience were most likely rubbing one out because there is a demographic who enjoys scenes of Empowered (furry) women being dominated, (and indeed perhaps bondage-fan George Perez was among them, who knows?) I don't read the scene's intent as being to sate this particular noxious desire. Sometimes superhero(in)es get the shit kicked out of them, normally as a prelude to rising above; I believe that's the intent, but this is a part of the problem of commenting on a serialised story - should my scenario come to pass then I imagine the lj crowd will perceive this as a "backing down" of some sort on the behalf of the writer, and I already pretty much wrote my vice versa.

Does that make any sense, at all?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:55 / 19.10.07

It does, but you can't really ignore the inherently sexualized violence that wouldn't have occurred in a male equivalent scene -- it isn't that this was necessarily done on purpose, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. The point is not that Tigra was in a very violent scene, but rather than Tigra's presence in the scene led to a sexual aspect showing up in the violence.

21:04 / 19.10.07

Okay, basically I've just repeated Flyboy and added one or two dim thoughts into the mix. Must. Read. Harder.

I thought this was a good comic, really, though; actually can't remember a Bendis script that had such great rhythm for years - I don't, therefore, really want to believe bad things about it, even though reading it I was like 'this is really quite horrible, what's happening here' and 'this will cause a shitstorm', which it hasn't actually to the extent I expected. So I guess what I'd ask to make distinctions is: "If Tigra's shirt is open a bit, does that therefore push, or eroticise, the assault over and above the line of normative superhero comic violence into sexist, or even misogynist, violence?"

21:04 / 19.10.07

xpost there

Maybe I should ask 'can a superheroine, or Tigra specifically, appear in a violent scene without it being sexualised?', then.

21:05 / 19.10.07

Which might not be too much of a worry if it wasn't for the overall treatment of women in popular American comics.

21:05 / 19.10.07

xpostagainness

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:09 / 19.10.07

Maybe I should ask 'can a superheroine, or Tigra specifically, appear in a violent scene without it being sexualised?', then.

I nearly ended with the same question, and I'm not sure how I could answer that. Can anyone think of any examples? She-Hulk's been shown in violent scenes, were all of them inherently sexualized? Or is there a difference because of her strength?

21:13 / 19.10.07

Well, they're probably differently oriented, you know. A She-Hulk-Titania throwdown, e.g., would equally have it's, ah, 'fans'.

Haus of Mystery

21:15 / 19.10.07

Y'know, I always found the Robin beating in 'Death in the Family' weirdly lurid, and somewhat kinky. I mean it's just plain nasty don't get me wrong, but there's a moment where Joker takes a pause and is all sweaty, where I remember feeling a bit...ergh when I was a kid. It's as if all those supressed sniggers about Batman & Robin come to a head in a bizarrely sadistic sequence. Added to the fact that readers were then left responsible for the little tikes life (supposedly) and you're left with a deeply unsettling handling of a fictional creation.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:16 / 19.10.07

Perhaps another question would be, how often does male/male violence in comics -- and in fact, male-female violence -- gear toward the sexualized (and in the case of male-female, geared towards sexualizing the male character)? The only example I can think of off the top of my head is Jack Knight's encounter with the Mist, but that is explictly not subtextual, and I'm not sure if "explicit" is really what we're talking about.

21:16 / 19.10.07

(You know, I want to have this discussion but I'm drunk and I shouldn't)

I do feel equipped to comment on this, however

I thought this was a good comic, really, though; actually can't remember a Bendis script that had such great rhythm for years

This is one of those moments, like with Maleev, where I look on uncomprehending.

It was bendisbendisbendis not a supervillain talking in that comic. Brian Darren Bendis! And it was almost all talking, and it didn't feature the title characters (call me petty but that bothers me).

21:18 / 19.10.07

Iron Man, completely agreed.

21:21 / 19.10.07

[I SAID THAT IN A SYNTHEZOID VOICE]

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:35 / 19.10.07

For the record, I quoted some of the Tigra discussion with appropriate linkage over in the Scary Sex thread so it's got some room to breathe and maybe get some more voices.

21:50 / 19.10.07

It was bendisbendisbendis not a supervillain talking in that comic.

Have you read a Bendis comic before, Vizh? He don' do the police in different voices, really, does he?

16:52 / 20.10.07

Sometimes it's worse than others, tho', and in this instance it seemed worse. He was very self-consciously trying to establish the Hood's voice in this issue - the tension between that raw fact and the fact of the Bendisvoice created the problem (for me), I feel.

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