Nihilism and the Batgirl #41 Variant Cover Fracas

"I remember you describing the white face and the green hair to me when I was a kid. Scared the hell out of me."  --Barbara Gordon

I’m thankful to live in a time when comic books are taken seriously enough to occasion regular scandals discussed not just among fans but also in mainstream publications. One such controversy arose this week when DC Comics revealed a variant cover for Batgirl #41 illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque:

 

At first glance, it's nothing more than your standard cover depicting a supervillain threatening a superhero. The Joker, one of the comic book genre’s most homicidally maniacal villains, has done this countless times, and putting his mad grin on his victims in one way or another (laughing gas, paint, blood) has been a constant motif since the character’s appearance in 1940. Nonetheless, there was an immediate furor and accompanying hashtag campaign to #ChangeTheCover.

Those calling on DC to change the cover said it's too dark for the New 52 imprint's incarnation of Batgirl, which has featured cartoonish art and brighter themes. The current run of Batgirl has also attempted to portray female heroes in an empowering light--and indeed this is the trend in mainstream comics today--and yet Albuquerque’s cover depicts Batgirl as a victim, quivering and in tears. Even worse, the cover is yet another example of that old trope in male-dominated media of men threatening women, which all too often carries a suggestion of the female character’s sexual vulnerability and tantalizes readers with the possibility of vicarious rape. It doesn’t help that the cover is an allusion to the acclaimed yet notorious Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke (1988) written by Alan Moore, in which the Joker shot Barbara Gordon (one of the women to have worn the cowl), stripped her naked, photographed her bleeding and nude, and also may have raped her.

The cover has had its defenders. The Joker is a fictional villain, so of course he isn’t going to conform to enlightened standards of morality. Besides, it’s just a variant cover and it refers to canonical events in Barbara Gordon’s past. Caving in to outcry from some people according to their taste sets a dangerous precedent allowing future social justice warriors to prevent bad guys from doing bad things and, even worse, artists from doing their job with integrity. Is it not a form of censorship to tell artists that they may not draw anything some people find offensive? As Green Arrow artist Patrick Zircher Tweeted, by those standards The Killing Joke, a masterpiece of the genre, would not stand a chance of publication today. Comic book writers, artists and publishers could soon find themselves conforming to standards more suffocating than when every comic came stamped with the approval of the Comics Code Authority.

Personally, I think the cover is good precisely because of its questionable taste. It’s about time someone made the Joker disturbing again. Perhaps more than any other villain, he should be disturbing. This is what made The Killing Joke great. It didn’t treat the Joker as a goofy character in a book, it treated him like the embodiment of something you should fear like the Devil. Barbara Gordon herself impresses this upon Batman in the graphic novel:

No! No, it’s not okay! He’s . . . He’s taking it to the limit this time . . . You didn’t see. You didn't see his eyes.

But that’s just my take and I don’t like takes as much as I like getting to the bottom of things. So which side has the argument that settles the issue and how do we know? Which is the argument that it all boils down to? As usual with these debates, which rest on conflicting interpretations of an inherently ambiguous text, I hold there is no right answer and nowhere to turn for the final word on the matter as a whole.

From Batgirl #40 illustrated by current series regular Babs Tarr:

 

It would be gratifying if there were a right answer, then we could be certain we had it and everyone else was wrong. And it would be easier, because then there would be proof, some logic, some evidence, some authority that would end the debate. But there isn’t. Even something like artistic integrity that would seem paramount only extends as far as the artist’s right to draw what he wants and doesn’t extend any further. Most would agree, for example, that DC can publish whatever it wants, critics can raise a fuss if they want, consumers can buy or not buy the issue as they please, and so on.

Without any clear answer, our only recourse for resolving such an issue is a messy process involving a multitude of individuals, organizations, systems and cultural milieux hashing it out, sometimes duking it out, or simply shouting it out, to one imperfect conclusion or another. In this case, while many have grumbled at the outcome, when the SJWs raised a fuss, the artist apologized and the company agreed not to publish the cover. That wasn’t the right answer in any absolute sense--there is no such answer--but it was the answer that arose out of the cacophony of voices, rights and interests involved.

And it isn’t half-bad.

This type of thought is sometimes called anti-foundationalism, for it denies the existence of any ultimate ground upon which opinion about what should be rests. It is part of the positive brand of nihilism championed by politician and philosopher Gianni Vattimo. I’ve blogged about it before with regard to Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and it has changed the way I approach nearly every issue. In a world without Truth, people must communicate--speaking and listening--to reach a consensus.

Consider this from Vattimo’s Nihilism & Emancipation:

An ethics that no longer refers to the Other, meaning to a transcendent being, will be an ethics of negotiation and consensus rather than an ethics of immutable principles or categorical imperatives speaking through the reason of everyone.

And this:

The goal is not to establish a definitive proof once and for all, only to establish an agreement that, albeit subject to revision, does nevertheless seriously bind the contracting parties (much more seriously than any “eternal principle” whatsoever.)

In the case of Batgirl #41, we might say that a weak consensus--or an apparent majority opinion--was reached by those whose interests were most immediately at stake, those who made their voices felt most firmly, and the general trend toward social consciousness in media. This consensus is flawed, temporary, and not without detractors, detractors who are at liberty to rejoin the fight next time.

This is what it means to live in the postmodern world, an intersubjective reality, and a democratic society. It’s complicated, it’s noisy, it’s frequently frustrating, but I would rather live in this world, in which answers are reached through the mechanisms of a free society, mechanisms which result from and include discourse, than a world in which answers are passed down from some unimpeachable authority--whether a despotic ruler, immutable law or abstract principle.

Other posts on comics:

Two Narratives: The Cover of Teen Titans #1
Thor Is the Woman of the Day!
The Rise and Fall of Kate Kane aka Batwoman


 

The Rise and Fall of Kate Kane aka Batwoman

“Kate Kane survived a brutal kidnapping by terrorists that left her mother dead and her twin sister lost. Following in her father’s footsteps, she vowed to serve her country and attended West Point until she was expelled under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Now she is many things: estranged daughter, grieving sister, proud lesbian, brave soldier, determined hero. She is Batwoman.” --Batwoman 

Successful superheroes inspire their corporate backers to create spinoffs. Thus, Superman gets a whole family complete with pet dog Krypto, while Batman has Batgirl and the lesser-known Batwoman (profile). This kind of gimmick may sound corny to those who don’t read comics, but when DC Comics rebooted Batwoman in 2006, they weren’t messing around.

One thing to know about Batwoman is she is a lesbian. As I remember it, her new incarnation’s very first appearances were unremarkable, but her sexual orientation raised eyebrows among comic book readers. I remember gay men appearing in comics before, but I don’t remember any lesbians. This was when I first heard the term “lipstick lesbian,” because Kate Kane--the woman behind the mask--exhibits traditionally feminine traits such as wearing makeup.

At first, it seemed DC intended to relegate this bold move to a practically unknown character, but that proved untrue. From 2009 to 2010, Batwoman was the main feature in issues #854-#863 of Detective Comics, one of DC’s longest-running titles and the one that introduced Batman in 1939. The creative team was top-notch, consisting of writer Greg Rucka and artist J.H. Williams III. They developed what was to become, for a time, one of DC’s better characters.

Rucka/Williams--and later Williams and W. Haden Blackman--handled Batwoman’s sexual orientation with skill. It was no joke or cheap thrill, and while an egalitarian message did appear from time to time, it was never ham-fisted. Instead, the series simply showed what it would be like for a woman who happens to be gay to also be a superhero.

For years in comics and film, we have seen Bruce Wayne try to balance his life as a crimefighter with his love life, and Kate Kane must do the same. Her main love interest is Maggie Sawyer, who gets jealous when vigilantism or other women take too much of her girlfriend’s time. There’s kissing, cuddling and lazing in bed, but it’s never voyeuristic. And while there are plenty of hotties hanging around--a busty blond here, an exotic femme fatale there--Kate is no playgirl. The relationships come across as more meaningful than the customary Bruce Wayne fling.

 

What intrigued me most was how the creative minds behind Batwoman balanced a socially conscious hero with the traditional eye-candy approach of comics. In regular life, Kate Kane is a petite and cute redhead with a wardrobe that blends Goth, girly and menswear à la Coco Chanel. But as Batwoman, she’s a busty, leggy wonder in skintight black latex with red highlights.

 

 

However, the approach was always respectful. Often when comics decide to focus on women, the result is a gaggle of bodacious superheroines lounging around like Victoria’s Secret Angels before launching into battles that require flouncing in ways that plant their special parts right in your face. By contrast, Batwoman always manages to look good, and there’s a healthy eroticism at work, but she’s never there for drooling over.

Feminism has taken a liking to comics, and Batwoman satisfies its demands well without preaching. Rereading early arcs of Batwoman’s own monthly title, I was surprised at the degree to which powerful and professional women dominate the cast of characters. Kate’s girlfriend Maggie is a captain in the Gotham City Police Department, she maintains a rocky working relationship with Agent Cameron Chase of the Department of Extranormal Operations, and her sidekick is Bette Kane (aka Flamebird). The villains tend to be women as well, from her twin sister Beth to the Medusa operative Sune. Aside from Kate’s father, who serves as Kate’s primary backup, men come and go and generally carry little weight.

In addition to addressing timely issues, Batwoman was for years simply written and drawn better than most comics. The writing maintained the carnivalesque atmosphere of Batman and combined it with a gritty, noir realism. Meanwhile, the art was stunning.

But comic book publishers excel at ruining a good thing.

In 2013, Williams and Blackman suddenly quit because of editorial interference. Apparently it had been going on for a while, and when DC told them Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer could not get married, it was the last straw. They were on board to do a few more issues, but DC cut them off just as Batwoman was about to kick Batman’s betighted ass.

 

New month, new creative team, new arc (without any resolution to the previous one), and a massive drop in quality. Batwoman has since become a vampire and fought a battle in outer space against monsters so unimaginative that Ben 10: Alien Force, or hell, the Care Bears would sniff in derision. I hate to end on a sour note, but I shouldn’t have kept my subscription as long as I did. Creative teams like those who oversaw Batwoman’s rebirth rarely come along, and now they’ve moved on to other projects.

 

 

Proof that 2016 Was the Best Year Ever for Movies

A little while back, I ran across some click bait claiming 1999 was the last great year of movies. The author compared such medium-expanding greats as Fight Club, American Beauty, Magnolia and Being John Malkovich with the sorry profusion of superhero films today. I was surprised a whole genre could be so slighted, and then when the first photos of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman appeared, I realized something must be said, preferably with some hyperbole:

We live in the Silver Age of Hollywood.

In 1989, I was all about Tim Burton’s Batman. Before it came out, I caught teasers on a little black-and-white television with rabbit-ear antennae. I had the movie comic. My dad, who knew Purple Rain was among my earliest music purchases, bought me the soundtrack by Prince on cassette. My friends and I all agreed that Kim Basinger, who played reporter Vicki Vale, was “hot.”

Batman was a big deal. Until then, superhero movies had been a lot like Shakespeare in the park: men in colorful tights, stilted dialogue, occasional fighting. Batman and Batman Returns changed all that by turning the tights into armor and shrouding everything in a lot of shadow. Suddenly, actors--and big names like Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer--could look like the larger-than-life figures from the pages of comic books, and the movies could be cool.

New-style fan trailer for Batman:

 

After that, the Batman films trundled on, but superhero films on the whole languished until X-Men in 2000. Perfect casting, emotional subplots, and more stylish costumes set a new standard that director Sam Raimi quickly met with Spider-Man in 2002. Big budgets, new technology, and artistic vision were making the bizarre and tacky worlds of comic books--and fantasy (The Lord of the Rings) and science fiction (The Matrix)--possible for the silver screen in ways that weren’t cringe-inducing. Thus, 1999 wasn’t Hollywood’s last good year, it was the beginning of a better Hollywood.

Now we have the glory that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more. The Avengers in particular showed that Hollywood can pull off a superhero ensemble wearing costumes that resemble the traditional ones, make it appeal to a broad audience, and rake in a fortune at the box office. It’s the apotheosis of Stan Lee! Someone go commission a painting!

As a lifetime reader of comic books, this is a dream come true.

Cynics might insist that for all their success, for all their dazzle, superhero movies are still fluff, but don’t buy it. That’s only on the surface. Underneath, there are powerful, universal themes of justice, responsibility, morality and identity. Along the lines of that last is the nature of masks: what they hide, what they reveal, how they represent the different sides of a single personality, how they spice things up. A lot of that can be found in the iconic scene in Spider-Man when Spidey kisses Mary Jane in the rain.

I don’t expect many people to agree, but I’ve long felt genre flicks and comic books are where the true edge is in art today. Literary fiction and whatever’s winning Academy Awards are largely playing it safe, no matter how serious their stated subject matter. Comic books, by hiding what they’re really about under easily dismissible manifest content, can be much more effective, moving and subversive.

Director Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (previous post) is a great example of how superhero films can be arty and deep, and with Man of Steel (previous post) director Zack Snyder finally delivered a Superman with dramatic potential. Henry Cavill, one of the highlights of The Tudors, plays a Kent/Kal-El who is pretty, sympathetic, gritty and not a putz, so I’m glad he will be reprising his role in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Which brings me back to Wonder Woman, whose Amazonian costume revealed recently recalls some of my favorite designs from the comics:

 

If you had told me in 1989 that in 2016 I would be able to see a movie called Batman v Superman and it would also feature Wonder Woman, I would have started paying a lot more attention in Science so I could make a Hot Tub Time Machine. The uses are obvious: quality time with Kim Basinger and traveling to 2016 to see The Bat, Supes and Princess Diana tear it up on the big screen.

And that’s why 2016 will be the best year in movies that ever was. Superhero movies aren’t what’s wrong with Hollywood today, they’re why Hollywood is bigger and better today and looks only to improve for a while to come.

 

 

Thor Is the Woman of the Day!

 

"τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν" --Heraclitus

As a rule, I never blog about anything until the issue is cold, but perhaps I can get this post out during the initial buzz. Marvel has announced an upcoming arc in which Thor will be a woman. The move has created a minor sensation and generated what is sure to be brief controversy.

 

The move follows a number of changes in recent years to prominent superheroes’ basic descriptions. I’m not as in touch as I wish, but some examples that spring to mind are Batwoman as a lesbian, a Muslim Ms. Marvel, and a black boy as Spider-Man. Nick Fury is a great example. White for decades, he became black in Marvel’s Ultimate imprint when Samuel L. Jackson gave permission for the character to take on his likeness.  Given Jackson’s actual portrayal of Fury in the insanely popular Marvel Cinematic Universe, this latest incarnation of Fury may very well be the most widely known.

I would guess there are many more examples touching on race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality, but I don’t want to focus solely on diversity because comics are given to other big changes as well. Superheroes quit, they get married, their costumes change, their groups disband, they switch allegiances, their identities are revealed, they die, they come back to life, and they do much of this with alarming regularity.

When I was a kid, Robin died in Batman: A Death in the Family. Jason Todd wasn’t the first Robin and there have been others since--including a girl.  When I was in high school, the villain Doomsday killed Superman, an assassin named Azrael filled in as Batman, and Magneto stripped Wolverine’s claws of their adamantium. In 2007, Captain America died, and in 2010 artist Jim Lee redesigned Wonder Woman’s iconic outfit. Soon after, the Human Torch died and the Fantastic Four itself ended as a group and a comic.

 

Those are merely a few examples that spring to mind. A more avid fan could produce a much lengthier list. And each time these changes occurred, they were played up by DC or Marvel as a major event. Now that we have the Internet, major media outlets sensationalize these changes and fans and the general public get worked up. But not one of the changes mentioned above stuck for very long or, in the case of recent changes, shows any indication of being irreversible. Bruce Wayne is Batman again, Wolvie has his adamantium claws, the Fantastic Four has been relaunched.

Superman isn’t dead.

The protean nature of comics is something I love. Without a single version of each character, creators can explore them from fresh angles and present them anew to younger generations. I’ve often thought superheroes were like ancient gods for their boundless natures. It makes no sense to ask for the definitive Pan or Zeus. Their attributes and behavior change from place to place and across time. They have many guises and superheroes are similar shapeshifters.

 

I’ve been disappointed to see fans reacting negatively to many recent changes. Sometimes, the discomfort results from political dogma, for in today's climate, political affiliation drives many people’s views on race, religion, art, sex, you name it. Casting a black man as the Human Torch for a Fantastic Four reboot suddenly becomes an affront to all that is holy. Already, I have seen online rants proclaiming the upcoming female Thor as another in a long series of feminist attacks on men.

Discomfort also simply stems from a psychological need for orthodoxy, for something solid that can't be fucked with dammit. But that's where the fun is. Frank Miller’s portrayal of Batman in All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder (2005-2008) was too gritty for some, and there were complaints about Superman killing General Zod in the film Man of Steel (2013). Apparently, these two heroes are so saintly they never take life. Please. Comics and movies had more edge than that in pre-Leave It to Beaver days.

The point is this: Heroes change. Superheroes change. That’s the nature of story, of myth. It’s a good thing, so no need to fret over it. But if Thor as a woman bothers you, don’t worry. The way things change in comics, she won’t be a woman for long.

 

The Dark Knight Rises and Forestalls Revolution

It’s hard not to miss the theme of class warfare in The Dark Knight Rises, the third of Christopher Nolan’s masterful trilogy bringing Batman back to the silver screen, but what does the movie really say about it? When I watched the film again recently on DVD, there was more there and it was more nuanced than I remembered.

On a first viewing, the movie seemed to merely have a thin subtext along the lines of Occupy Wall Street: Isn’t it unfair how some have so much while others have so little?

 

When the villain Bane raids the Gotham Stock Exchange, a stock broker outside is distraught, claiming, “It’s not our money, it’s everybody’s,” a skeptical police officer nearby says, “Really? Mine’s in my mattress.” This and several dialogue exchanges highlight the difference between those who make their money on Wall Street and those who labor for wages.

Later, Bane locks most of Gotham’s police officers underneath the city, turning the city over to the common people. The result is instant revolution, with the masses dragging the rich from their homes and expropriating their wealth.

The point’s been made, but I can’t help but mention one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Bruce Wayne attends a ball, where he dances and verbally spars with Selina Kyle (Catwoman), one of Gotham’s marginalized living in a rundown apartment in a seedy neighborhood. With touching sincerity and anger, Anne Hathaway delivers a number of lines on economic injustice, among them the following:

“You think all this can last? There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, ’cause when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

Slovenian philosopher and self-professed “some kind of a communist” Slavoj Zizek (video), however, has expressed disappointment with the film for its anti-revolutionary tenor. The film quite firmly states that if the people are given control of themselves, the result is violence and chaos:

There is this side to the film, and it has clearly drawn inspiration from some of the bloodier incidents of the French Revolution, even making them more sinister. At least the storming of the Bastille was an expression of outrage against the Crown’s practice of taking political prisoners, whereas the prisoners Bane frees from Blackgate Penitentiary appear to be mostly violent offenders. And the movie turns the Committee of Public Safety, which presided over the Reign of Terror, into mere sentencing hearings ruled by a bona fide lunatic, the Scarecrow, who only hands down one of two sentences: death or exile by death.

The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t seem to have much faith in revolution.

But something tells me that’s because Nolan is not trying to side with either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat over and against the other. To return to the man with his savings in his mattress at home, the stockbroker has an immediate rebuttal to this that I don’t take as a defense of status quo capitalism with all its failings so much as a statement highlighting the realities of today’s economy:

 

“If you don’t put those guys down, that stuffing in your mattress might be worth a whole hell of a lot less.”

Nolan’s Batman films are about many kinds of people--rich and poor, law officer and civilian, white collar and blue collar--working together each in their own way for better communities against forces that seek to bring out the worst in us. Consider the scene in the previous film, The Dark Knight, when the Joker plays a ferry full of regular citizens against a ferry full of prison inmates. Each group has the choice of blowing up the other and thereby saving their own lives, but they don’t do it.

The world of Batman is rich in villains, perhaps because the unsavory in human nature is so easy to come by, but Nolan’s films are at least equally populated with heroes, and these heroes go beyond Batman and Jim Gordon to district attorneys, entrepreneurs, police officers, charity directors and the common man, whatever his place in society.

In a sense, anyone can be Batman--we are all Batman, potentially--and each is responsible for doing the Right for the greater good:

“A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.” (Batman himself)

Zizek is not satisfied with this vision of society, and I’m not sure I am, but it has its benefits, and in the absence of a revolution, it provides a ghost of a chance for a somewhat better world in which to live.