We Thought "Daguerreotype" Would Be Too Confusing

Batgirl Creative Team Issues Apology For Transphobic Villain

Quite right.

In the abstract, there's nothing wrong with a villain, or any character, that happens to be a crossdresser. But in the specific: the false association of crossdressing with insanity, dishonesty, and violence is an old and ugly stereotype. (See DRESSED TO KILL, and, on a related but not identical note, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.) It has been used to justify prejudice, discrimination, and violence against crossdressers and other trans* individuals. Do you really want to play to active, dangerous stereotypes?

It's like introducing a Jewish villain named Captain Yarmulke whose M.O. is to steal money from church collection boxes and use it to finance his anti-Christian entertainment empire.

Worse yet, it's like introducing that villain when you have no other Jewish characters in your comics. In the real world, there are plenty of crossdressers who are otherwise quite ordinary people - decent, kind, hardworking. But Batman never runs into them in his nightly rounds, and Animal Man doesn't happen to like dressing up like Amy Poelher in his off hours. If the only place for a crossdresser in your comic-book milieu is as a murderous psychopath, that sends a message, whether you intend to or not. And it's a very ugly and damaging message.

I was impressed with the apology. It wasn't defensive. It wasn't "We're sorry if someone was offended." It was: "We didn't mean to hurt anyone, but we did. We're sorry. We see the mistake we made, and we won't do it again." These folks would make lousy politicians.

Actual crossdressing superhero, ca. 1940

Pick an Amulet, Any Amulet

Last night’s CONSTANTINE wasn’t very convincing, probably because it - like most of the episodes - was rushed. In their haste to get to what they considered key scenes - ConJob uses Anne Marie as bait! Chekhov’s Amulet comes through! - they skipped the details that would make any of it make sense.

My main problem was with the character of Lamashtu, the villain. A sister of Eve’s who turned down Adam’s proposal in order to become a goddess of Hell, she is as old as humankind (give or take the show’s anthropology, which is unclear). She is capable of disguising herself as a nun (did she replace one, or has she been Sister Luisa all along?) and interacting with humans without difficulty. And she has set aside her hunger for babies in order to keep them alive for the Brujeria, so she’s not an immediate gratification freak.

She knows there is a well-informed occultist wandering around. She knows Sister Anne Marie personally, and how upset she is about the disappearance of the babies. She knows the two are working together. And yet, when Anne Marie offers up an infant to her as sacrifice, it doesn’t even occur to her - as it would to any reasonably bright 8-year-old - that it’s a trap. (Just to make it more obvious, Anne Marie is openly wearing the Amulet of Pazuzu, Lamashtu’s enemy.) And she flits Flash-style around the hallways and never even notices the three grown men who are watching her and not really very well concealed. She now seems to be one of those near-mindless, obsessive spirits you sometimes see in shows like this, unable to think or plan. In order to drive the plot, whether it makes sense or not.

And consider: when John goes to Mexico, he knows that a baby is missing, but he has no idea what he’s dealing with. A fairy, a nursery demon, he speculates? He surprised to realize it’s one of Eve’s evil sisters, and then he still has to figure out which one. And yet somehow he just happens to have with him the Amulet of Pazuzu, Lamashtu’s ex. I wonder how many amulets he was carrying in his suitcase? Maybe it’s bigger on the inside….

The show has seemed rushed to me from the beginning, getting to “the map with Rising Darkness sites marked in drops of blood” and the “supernatural safe-haven house stocked with every artifact we will ever need” (obviously taken from the House of Mystery) stage much too fast. In the comics, the best Constantine stories often moved more carefully, as he cajoled, traded with, and defrauded a half-dozen different people and demons, while dealing with the fact that they were doing the same. And the personalities of the characters involved were more complex, and played more of a role. Too complex for a TV series, I suppose. I think I’d enjoy CONSTANTINE better if a story like last night’s worked itself out over four episodes - a whole one dedicated to wheeling and dealing for the Amulet of Pazuzu, as contrasted with “I just happen to have here….” John wheeling and dealing can be more fun than him casting spells. And a convent haunted by a baby-snatching Hell goddess, and staffed by John’s former one-night-stand and occult mentor, now a nun? Stuffing that into one hour means you miss out on some of the parts that could be interesting, and - as in this episode - hand-wave the rest and hope nobody cares.

I was pleased that this episode continued the Vertigo Constantine tradition of drawing on actual folklore and mythology. Lamashtu was a Mesopotamian demon/goddess (daughter of the skygod Anu) who was known for kidnapping new-born children and eating them. Pazuzu was, in Assyrian/Babylonian mythology, ruler of the wind demons, was the son of the god Hanbi, and had a serpentine penis. (Oh, the details of old myths!) And, although evil himself, he was a rival of Lamashtu; amulets with his image were used to protect people from her. (Their star-crossed romance, and Lamashtu’s relationship to Eve, are not part of the myths.)

(Actual amulet of Pazuzu, 1st millennium BCE, now in the Louvre.)

Doctor Bifrost Tells All!

When I was four years old my father would read comics to me while I looked at the pictures. One day he noticed I was reading along with him. That’s how I learned to read. I knew the word “invulnerable” long before most of my friends.

I sent my first letter to a comic book letter column (probably Letters To The Batcave) when I was five. My dad helped. In those days you sent a question on a postcard, and, even if they didn’t print it, you got an answer back on an official DC postcard! My question was, “How do they use the Bat-signal during the day?” The answer came back: “They bounce it off of clouds.” I’m still not sure what that means.

I grew up on DC, but about the time I was 12 I mainly switched to Marvel. There were a number of reasons, but one sticks out in my memory. Someone had a letter published (possibly in Metropolis Mailbag) asking “How come the Atlanteans in Superman have fishtails, but the Atlanteans in Aquaman have legs?” Their answer (paraphrased): “It’s just a comic book. We keep some things the same, like Ma & Pa Kent’s names, but we don’t think we have to pay attention to details what the Atlanteans are like in different comics.” And this seemed… wrong to me. Worse than wrong - boring. It seemed to shut down the imagination I brought to my reading. I mean, Superman and Aquaman were friends - what if they went to Atlantis together? See, I had just read (and fallen deeply in love with) The Lord of the Rings, and, even if I didn’t know the word, world-building had become an interesting and important idea to me. (Of course, if you asked them 20 years later, they would explain that there was more than one city with the same name, Atlantis, and then write stories about the relationships between the cities. But at the time their official, stated policy was: we don’t care, and you shouldn’t either.)

Marvel seemed to be building a more interesting, more consistent world. (I realize now that a lot of that had to do with the fact that they were newer, with less accumulated baggage;  smaller; and one man, Stan Lee, was writing most of the comics. But they did have some writers for whom world-building was a genuine interest.) Each month I bought every comic set in the Marvel Universe. But it wasn’t really sustained. I could write a lengthy essay on how Marvel Comics built and maintained a fascinating “shared universe” - and then, over time, neglected it and let it get sloppy and confusing. In fact, I did. And then pretty much drifted away from comics.

But during all this time I always kept an eye on what was happening over at DC, reading fanzines, glancing at comics in the store. Those characters - they were my people! (Fans get proprietary; territorial; tribal.) And I never went very long without buying a copy of The Legion of Super-Heroes. Really, how could I?

I came back in 1986 for Crisis on Infinite Earths. Loved it. The story was fascinating, unlike anything I had seen; the art was great. And now DC could start fresh, without all the accumulated baggage (inconsistencies, multiple conflicting versions, antiquated concepts) of the past. Thanks in part to Marvel, a lot of people (readers and writers) were interested in a shared universe that actually had some coherence. DC could design one and move forward from there, with fresh versions of the characters I was still interested in.

DC’s follow-through didn’t exactly have me jumping for joy. They couldn’t decide what they wanted - fresh start, or their entire publishing history mashed up together. Editorial planning and communication seemed weak. Very quickly characters and stories started tripping over each other; new baggage piled up fast. (I’m mixing my metaphors.) And, having had a great success with CoIE, they seemed to think they needed to have something just like it each year - if not a history-changing retcon, then at least a massive, all-heroes-on-deck, let’s-change-direction, everything-you-know-is-wrong maxi-series with infinite crossovers. Most of these seemed uninspired, obligatory, and not very good. CoIE worked in part because it was so novel. Its replicas weren’t. And they made it harder, instead of easier, to create a coherent shared universe, because of the constant churn, like ripping up your rose bushes before they can bloom. 

But I was very curious to see what would happen next. And there were some writers who I thought were doing a good job. So I continued reading DC, buying a sizable number of their comics every week. I got invested, to some extent against my better judgement. This is a personal paradox I deal with - even when I’m not really enjoying a continuing story, part of me still keeps asking, “And then…?”

After that, the long, confusing, and numbing trek through Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, and Final Crisis. I read them all, and articles about them, and I still won’t pretend I can tell you what went on. The stories seemed at odds with each other and themselves every step of the way. (I saw more climactic moments and final fates for Jimmy Olsen and for the New Gods than I cared to keep track of.) I had a multitude of criticisms, believe me, and I was mainly around to see what would rise out of the wreckage. But Blackest Night and Brightest Day both had their charms, and made good use of some characters I enjoyed. Oh, forgive me, but I found myself intrigued by Jackson “Kaldur’ahm” Hyde, the new Aqualad. My paradox kicked in: “And then…?”

And then Flashpoint and the New 52. DC kicked over the table again. And if I was interested in the new Aqualad, or any of the other mysteries, developments, and ongoing plots of the DC Universe I’d been following, well, that was just my mistake, wasn’t it? I thought this broke the implicit agreement between readers and writers of ongoing sagas: you get interested in the situations we set you, you keep coming back (and buying) every week (even through the weeks and months that aren’t very good), and we’ll show you “what’s next.” But of course, DC is a corporation, and the writers are employees, and the promise is just a marketing tool, somewhat lacking in sincerity.

That makes it a little hard to get invested in the New 52, doesn’t it? I mean, fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice - we won’t get fooled again. But, interesting writers, interesting artists - I decided to give the New 52 my best shot. I will admit, it’s pushed a lot of my buttons, particularly the big red ones that say DO NOT PUSH THIS BIG RED BUTTON. I will admit, I’m not buying as much of it as I started out with. But these are the characters I grew up with; this is what DC has decided to do with them; and, as you might expect, I have opinions. So I thought I’d write some pieces about them.

Read ‘em and weep!