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.

 

 

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.