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WickedHate posted:The author of The Killing Joke doesn't even like The Killing Joke, you jackass. e: That was already brought up but Alan Moore hates everything he's done for a major company. He hates V for Vendetta, he hates Watchmen, he hates Killing Joke, he hates Miracleman, I haven't heard him say anything about Swamp Thing but he probably hates that too.
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Mar 17, 2015 21:58
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AzraelNewtype posted:You mean the same creators who said they didn't know about the cover until it was released to the public didn't start commenting on how inappropriate they found it for their book until after they saw it? Huh. Funny how that works. Which is sort of my point, it seems very poor managament for a variant cover to be produced for a comic series that doesn't take the current creators' wishes into account. If this is the case, DC looks even worse, because they clearly aren't communicating properly within their company and teams. All of this would have been avoided if they'd had the writer toss them a sentence about what sort of variants they'd like to see. If they didn't care about the tone of the story, then the creators' statements are sort of meaningless, since it seems the publishers just don't care enough, unless it affects the bottom line.
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Mar 17, 2015 21:58
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As a Batgirl fan, one of my major problems is that The Killing Joke is a terrible Barbara Gordon/Batgirl story. It's a pretty good Joker story (not the best, but pretty good) and a decent-to-okay Batman story, but a loving awful Batgirl story. If someone came to me and said, "Batgirl is pretty cool, where can I read more about her?" The Killing Joke wouldn't even rate a mention since all the events that actually relate to her are better represented and dealt with in comics where she's actually the focus of the story and not a prop. So, in that sense, it's a pretty terrible choice to use it as a variant for your Batgirl title right out the gate. I mean, people bring up Knightfall and A Death in the Family as counterpoints, ignoring the fact that both of those stories are about the respective characters. A Death in the Family has Jason Todd looking for his mother, finding her entangled in the Joker's plot, and dies trying to protect her despite being betrayed by her. Knightfall has an exhausted Batman heroically confronting Bane, getting his back broken, and then it moves directly into a story about his recovery that proves how much cooler Batman is then all those edgy '90's heroes. The Killing Joke has nothing to do with Batgirl. It's something bad that happened to her. It's a part of her history. But nothing in the story is about her. And that's also what kind of galls me about the defense that the story is "responsible" for creating Oracle. Ostrander, Yale, Dixon, and Simone created Oracle. The Killing Joke had no plans for Barbara Gordon beyond "cripple the bitch" and there's no reason that should be celebrated by Batgirl or Barbara Gordon fans. And that's all even before we get into the problems like the representation of gender in comic books and how sexual violence is not just A Bad Thing that happens in comics, but specifically A Bad Thing That Happens to Women. Sure, you can count Nightwing, Green Arrow, Batman, Starman, and maybe even Superman as having been sexually assaulted, but there are probably more superheroines with sexual assault in their origin story then all the male heroes combined. And that's a problem. It's a problem that covers featuring female heroes are overwhelmingly sexualized while male heroes are presented as hypermasculine power fantasies. If you don't get why these things are problems, well, you're probably not the target audience of Batgirl anyway. So please quit complaining about comics that aren't for you kthxbye
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Mar 17, 2015 22:01
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gently caress it I'm not gonna spur this on anymore.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:01
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The idea of Luthor literally curing cancer as a smokescreen just to backstab Superman is fantastic. PS. You are all babies.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:01
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have we hit the point were someone argued censorship. That is my favorite part. Also I don't see the point in having a killing Joke variant for Batgirl, I mean she is in the story but she is so incidental you could replace her with anyone and it wouldn't make a difference.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:05
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I think the real problem with the argument of 'you guys act like murder, torture, and other violence are somehow less terrible than something sexually violent' is that sexual violence is the only thing that DC seems to approach with any kind of real impact that's long term, as well as with actual detail or whatever? If you get murdered, you'll be up and walking around two years later or your a nameless schlub being killed by the thousand, at which it becomes a parody and no one cares. If you're tortured, you'll have a single arc (unless you're a woman!) of having PTSD from it and freaking out at basic poo poo, and then you'll be back to normal. Or you're a side character and you probably get shot at the end anyways, thus, see murdered. It's really hard to take either of these seriously in comics, when you've got Joker completely tone death-ly murdering 10s of thousands of people each week to establish him as PSYCHOOOOO, everyone who dies getting up and walking around, and Batman recovering from brutal torture and 'manning up' a week later, instead of dealing with years of fallout. Meanwhile Batgirl and women heroes in general tend to get treated differently in torture first of all? Like, if a woman her gets tortured, rape is going to be implied for them. It happens every time with them. How often does it happen with male heroes? One in every hundred times? And then it's going to become this big thing and they'll deal with it for a year or two, if not more. They don't get the advantage of going 'i'm batman, so i'm gonna pick myself up and be fine in a week'.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:08
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BottledBodhisvata posted:I am only saying that those criticisms seem largely shallow and knee-jerk and stem from some weird notion that while all other kinds of violence and depravity are fine, sexual violence can only be handled with kid gloves, and is somehow worse than the aforementioned murders, tortures, imprisonments and so on. In truth, they are all awful and traumatic. This is not the case in regards for murders, tortures, or imprisonments. There is no socially-perpetrated rationale wherein murder is less prosecutable because the victim was somehow asking for it...unless we factor racial issues, which is a whole other (though not entirely dissimilar) topic. All those things you bring up are bad things just like sexual assault is a bad thing, but we as a culture treat and perceive the latter in different, less commendable ways. That is the context for why people might want sexual assault to be treated with "kid gloves" in a way that other general crimes aren't, in the same way that we might not want to show John Stewart getting physically brutalized by police officers as a way to titillate readers considering the current problems facing our cultural climate. In addition to that, yes, consider the longstanding treatment that female characters have received from genre media -- even if it's merely the perception of treatment that female characters have received -- that DC has just now very recently started to combat. When you currently have less leading female superheroes than can be counted on one hand, when you have a recurring reputation for marginalizing female characters and their fans, particularly in the Batman mythos ("How do you like them apples?" -Bill Willingham)...all in all, it's an extraordinarily dubious decision to showcase one of those leading women tied up weeping in fear next to her grinning assailant in a series that has been specifically trying to counteract all those stigmas. That fan-created Superman/Doomsday picture is a great litmus test for how the cover comes across, but even that doesn't quite reflect the tackiness of the Batgirl/Joker situation because their situations don't truly mirror each other. It would be incredibly shocking if DC released that Superman cover, but it doesn't perpetrate any harmful trends because there are no longstanding trends of marginalization and sexual violence against leading male heroes. Consider, on the other hand, how it would come across if the cover depicted Wonder Woman, Carol Danvers, or Kamala Khan in that scenario next to Dr. Light, the Purple Man, or the Red Skull, respectively.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:15
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MGTen posted:And that's all even before we get into the problems like the representation of gender in comic books and how sexual violence is not just A Bad Thing that happens in comics, but specifically A Bad Thing That Happens to Women. Sure, you can count Nightwing, Green Arrow, Batman, Starman, and maybe even Superman as having been sexually assaulted, but there are probably more superheroines with sexual assault in their origin story then all the male heroes combined. And that's a problem. It's a problem that covers featuring female heroes are overwhelmingly sexualized while male heroes are presented as hypermasculine power fantasies. If you don't get why these things are problems, well, you're probably not the target audience of Batgirl anyway. So please quit complaining about comics that aren't for you kthxbye I'm with you on this reading, I never would say the Killing Joke is particularly a "Batgirl" story, and she is reduced to a victim and a plot device first and foremost. That's a very fair criticism, and something that happens a few times in Alan Moore's books. Your last paragraph, which I quoted, seems a bit simplistic. Violence, murder, theft, torture are all things that happen to women. Sexual assault isn't a Bad Thing That Happens to Women, it's a Bad Thing That Happens to Everyone. If you are so caught up on Barbara's gender, I feel you're missing the point of what writers like Gail Simone wanted to do with superheroines, which was to extract them from gender stereotypes and put them on even footing with their male counterparts. If we are unwilling to subject Barbara to the same dangers that Batman would face, she's already being given special treatment on basis of her sex. You seem to eliminate the sexuality from the "hypermasculine power fantasy" as well. Male superheroes are drawn just as provocatively as the women, wearing spandex so tight it may as well be body paint. While they are less likely to be placed into sexual situations, this isn't always the case, and there's plenty of examples of superhero males being on the receiving end of some sort of sexually-themed violence. Hell, Poison Ivy is basically a female date rapist with a homicidal twist. To say these are wholesale problems forgets that the whole point of superhero stories is to craft narratives and situations that are larger than life, and populate them with characters accordingly. Not every superhero is a super masculine power fantasy anyway--look at Booster Gold, as a perfect example. He's a sleazy and self-serving twerp who steals super powers and goes back in time to try and not be a loser. He looks the part of a hero, but lacks something that all the other heroes possess, a moral compass. He has no virtuous reason to fight, and until he finds one he's a floundering trainwreck. The core of superheroes isn't the capes or the costumes or even the physique, it's what they stand and fight for. That's another thing that excited me so much about Barbara returning as Batgirl, because she seems poised to fight for the exact things people criticize DC for not taking into account, like women's issues and violence against women, precisely because she comes--like Batman--from a new position of trauma and pain. But I don't think anything you described up above stands as an objective bad thing. Sexy superheroines are awesome, and men and women seem to enjoy them. If a superheroine has nothing to her character BUT her sexuality, she's likely not going to last long because people would lose interest. That doesn't mean a superheroine can't look good. In the same way movie and TV stars tend to be handsome and photogenic, the same applies to superheroes. People just like to see beautiful people as heroes in stories, it fits time-honored archetypes. Telling anyone to "quit complaining" about comics they don't read is laughable. Do you have no confidence in your position that you can't stand to see it challenged? Or are you so certain you are correct that you don't think you need to listen to alternative viewpoints?
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Mar 17, 2015 22:16
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This whole debate should have ended when the fact that the original artist asked for the artwork not to be used, and DC should be applauded for once respecting the artist wishes. You can argue all you want about whether the artist was bullied into making the request or not, but that is all moot because he made the request in the end and DC agreed with it.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:24
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BrianWilly posted:We live in a rape culture where the physical exploitation of women is often discounted, if not outright approved. Do we now. quote:The climate of our society is such that blame and responsibility for sexual assault, harassment, or exploitation repeatedly falls on the victims and not the assailant. There are examples of this, but there's plenty of people who don't get away with rape. I don't think sexual assault is nearly as permissive as the "rape culture" argument permits. You can point to small town lacross teams having their rapes covered up, but I'd point out that those cover-ups didn't last, and when I think of "rape culture" I am more inclined to think of something like Saudi Arabia or Libya, where a woman is punished for the rape in lieu of the rapist, something which does not happen in our legal system, and I think is broadly culturally frowned upon. quote:This is not the case in regards for murders, tortures, or imprisonments. There is no socially-perpetrated rationale wherein murder is less prosecutable because the victim was somehow asking for it...unless we factor racial issues, which is a whole other (though not entirely dissimilar) topic. All those things you bring up are bad things just like sexual assault is a bad thing, but we as a culture treat and perceive the latter in different, less commendable ways. That is the context for why people might want sexual assault to be treated with "kid gloves" in a way that other general crimes aren't, in the same way that we might not want to show John Stewart getting physically brutalized by police officers as a way to titillate readers considering the current problems facing our cultural climate. All the rest of this, I don't know what to tell you. I agree, sexuality in general is suppressed in American society, and this causes scenarios where rape and sexual assault are placed on pedestals where they seem to be crimes too horrible to even talk about, but that's an incredibly unhealthy attitude. I'd be so bold as to say that a broad majority of people you encounter have, whether knowingly or not, been a victim of some sort of sexual assault or trauma, and most people tend to suppress it. That suppression is far more unhealthy than actually being open and talking about it, which is what all rape counseling and trauma centers I've ever had experience with encourage victims to come forward and talk about it. Saying "this cover perpetuates rape culture" is the same nebuolous handwringing that placed the blame of school shootings at the feet of video games. It's just not coherent. If you want to argue it's a symptom of rape culture, maybe you'd be onto something, but I think that the term is used to shut down discussions or expressions moreso than anything else, which rubs me all wrong. As for the marginalization of female superheroes, I won't argue much there, many don't get very good attention and moreso than their male counterparts, they tend to suffer first and foremost when bad writers come on board.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:25
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Senor Candle posted:gently caress it I'm not gonna spur this on anymore. I had to delete my FB status about it, one of my friend's has a shitload of Bleeding Cool buddies and they started to dogpile.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:27
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BottledBodhisvata posted:You seem to eliminate the sexuality from the "hypermasculine power fantasy" as well. Male superheroes are drawn just as provocatively as the women, wearing spandex so tight it may as well be body paint.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:28
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Rhyno posted:I had to delete my FB status about it, one of my friend's has a shitload of Bleeding Cool buddies and they started to dogpile. In those cases I just tend to delete my friends.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:28
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Holy crap you seriously pulled the 'hypermasculine power fantasies are just as sexualized as women in basically bikinis' line. You really did it. I've never seen that in action, I've only heard that some people used it years ago. Amazing.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:28
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Senor Candle posted:In those cases I just tend to delete my friends. It wasn't really him, he posted about it but then they just all pounced. I taunted them with a "well too loving bad, the cover is pulled" and deleted the status. So I got a little satisfaction out of it in the end.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:29
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BrianWilly posted:Ah gently caress, you're one of those. BottledBodhisvata posted:Do we now. Not that there was any reason to read beyond this to know everything he'd be typing after it would be even more bullshit.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:29
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BrianWilly posted:Ah gently caress, you're one of those. Nightwing is man candy first and foremost.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:29
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Rhyno posted:It wasn't really him, he posted about it but then they just all pounced. I taunted them with a "well too loving bad, the cover is pulled" and deleted the status. So I got a little satisfaction out of it in the end. It's the little things in life.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:31
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gently caress this thread is moving at the speed of stupid right now. Rhyno: Facebook added an unfollow option. It's great for remaining friends with idiots but not having to listen to what they have to say.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:34
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i dont know why y'all are arguing with bottledbodhisvata the man who i see pop up in nearly every games thread to bitch about feminists
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Mar 17, 2015 22:34
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Madkal posted:gently caress this thread is moving at the speed of stupid right now. Well it wasn't him so much as the crowd from Bleeding Cool that followed.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:38
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Rhyno posted:Well it wasn't him so much as the crowd from Bleeding Cool that followed. Are the the opposite side of the coin from ComicAlliance?
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Mar 17, 2015 22:39
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Madkal posted:Are the the opposite side of the coin from ComicAlliance? Now that's a false equivalency the likes of which I haven't seen in years.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:40
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Madkal posted:Are the the opposite side of the coin from ComicAlliance? Does CA have a forum? If so I was unaware. But BC is horrible, nearly as bad as CBR used to be. It's all MENS RIGHTS MENS RIGHTS and nonsense I can't deal with.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:41
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Hey BottledBodhisvata what's your favorite comic book series currently going?
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Mar 17, 2015 22:55
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Nightwing is man candy first and foremost. Yes. He is. He is literally like the only one. And look at how angry big sites get whenever they show off Nightwing's butt, or accentuate it. Look at how angry Goons got when in the recent Grayson books they've been giving shots of the butt, because they know girls (and some guys) enjoy it. Look at how angry men get when a single character is sexualized to any extent, and tell me again that this is equal to the dozens upon dozens of women who show off their rear end, chest, thighs, and whatever else gets people off. But also tell me how women shouldn't be able to complain about it, since this one man is treated the same way. Edit: Basically this is the same argument that got us the new 'all male ghostbusters' because guys got all pissed off that an all women movie might exist, despite the fact that all men movies exist numbering into the hundreds. Which they've never complained about before. "Sexualization and lack of inclusion is only a problem when it supports my arguments about feminists being bad" -MRAs/Gamers Gaters/BB KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 22:56
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Lurdiak posted:Now that's a false equivalency the likes of which I haven't seen in years. Lurdiak posted:Now that's a false equivalency the likes of which I haven't seen in years. Oh forums. My bad. I was thinking that with CA running articles like "Hire this woman artist" and such, and then BC would be the opposite. User comments on both sites probably suck a lot.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:56
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Telling anyone to "quit complaining" about comics they don't read is laughable. Do you have no confidence in your position that you can't stand to see it challenged? Or are you so certain you are correct that you don't think you need to listen to alternative viewpoints? I'm sorry. Does it bother you to have your opinions and experience summarily dismissed as being unimportant or lacking in value? Does it hurt your feelings that for once things might not actually be about you? That must be awfully hard on you. I sympathize. I really do. Putting aside being a sarcastic rear end for a moment, the stuff you posted is a bunch of hot steaming nonsense. Sexual violence is overwhelmingly portrayed in comics as something that happens to women. If we lived in a world where Batman was just as likely to have "was gangraped" as part of his origin as Gamora or Hawkeye then we wouldn't even be having this conversation. But we don't and the fact that you don't understand this point astounds me. It's like you think that if you pretend equality between the genders has already been achieved then it's not a problem. Like a child that thinks if she covers her eyes no one can see her. Also, outside of a handful of minor examples, not many women (or gay men for that matter) are looking at the latest depiction of a steroid abuse stuffed into a spandex onesie and going "that's hot". I mean, you do have sort of a point. The majority of male comic heroes are sexual fantasies, that much is true. The problem is that they're sexual fantasies for heterosexual men and no one else.
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Mar 17, 2015 22:59
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KittyEmpress posted:Look at how angry Goons got when in the recent Grayson books they've been giving shots of the butt, because they know girls (and some guys) enjoy it. 
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Mar 17, 2015 23:06
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redbackground posted:I was upset with the quality of the dialogue. Yeah but there were a bunch of people (or at least 2-3) going 'oh DC seems to realize how much people like Dick's butt, how gross is this pandering by giving shots of it'
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Mar 17, 2015 23:11
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If we could leave any and all references to GamerGate in the GBS Hellthread, that'd be great. I think the bigger highlight of the issue is that the comic industry and its fandom fetishizes the Joker's horror factor a bit too much anyway, but that's me. Cover's removed, and it was just a variant. C'est la vie.
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Mar 17, 2015 23:13
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Probably Magic posted:If we could leave any and all references to GamerGate in the GBS Hellthread, that'd be great. There is a now a hashtag like #savethecover or some poo poo going around. This isn't even close to being over.
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Mar 17, 2015 23:22
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Rhyno posted:Well it wasn't him so much as the crowd from Bleeding Cool that followed. Why are you friends with Rich Johnston?
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Mar 17, 2015 23:31
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I looked through news sites before I opened this thread to see if anything new happened while I was sleeping to spur 100+ new posts.
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Mar 17, 2015 23:31
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Rhyno posted:There is a now a hashtag like #savethecover or some poo poo going around. This isn't even close to being over. I said this in another forum, but I am DREADING the possibility of #ComicGate. Like, the cover is chilling and well-drawn, but I kinda resent it for starting this shitstorm.
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Mar 17, 2015 23:31
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Equeen posted:I said this in another forum, but I am DREADING the possibility of #ComicGate. Like, the cover is chilling and well-drawn, but I kinda resent it for starting this shitstorm. ComicGate would be harder for them to pull off because there are very few major comic book companies and most of their targets would be working for the very ones they'd be trying to "stand up for". DC, Marvel, Image, they aren't gonna stand for that poo poo, as they've already shown. Who's gonna stand by them? Zenescope?
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Mar 17, 2015 23:42
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Equeen posted:I said this in another forum, but I am DREADING the possibility of #ComicGate. Like, the cover is chilling and well-drawn, but I kinda resent it for starting this shitstorm. nerds already tried to do #comicgate and it loving fell on its rear end and died within a day so i wouldnt worry too much bout it
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Mar 17, 2015 23:42
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Rhyno posted:Does CA have a forum? If so I was unaware. But BC is horrible, nearly as bad as CBR used to be. It's all MENS RIGHTS MENS RIGHTS and nonsense I can't deal with. Uh, "MENS RIGHTS" is very triggering for me when it's clear you're talking about western white mens right, as a minority deeply-melanin-abled male who does not identify with these issues, I feel
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Mar 17, 2015 23:44
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ruddiger posted:Uh, "MENS RIGHTS" is very triggering for me when it's clear you're talking about western white mens right, as a minority deeply-melanin-abled male who does not identify with these issues, I feel It's 100% fedora-wearing, unshaven-necked white males.
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Mar 17, 2015 23:46
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