Justice For Lori (An Open Letter to DC Comics)

Well done DC, I didn’t think you could do it. You have truly sunk to a whole new low, everyone knew that Superman Year One would be bad, everyone except you. From Frank Miller’s (the book’s Author) previous comments on “How he hated Superman”, to well what more do you need?. Now you could call Superman Year One a deconstruction of Superman, but it’s not Superman Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek was a deconstruction, what Miller and Romita have produced is a sabotage of Superman. The book that is only on it’s second issue has many problems reflecting the character of Superman, unlike many of other versions The Man of Tomorrow retains his super-intelligence but lacks any of his usual altruism, instead of being a champion of the few he’s part of the military complex he’d often fight against. But that’s nothing, you have the big blue boyscout do one of the worst things I’ve ever heard of, not only did he rape somebody, he raped a Mermaid, a literal Mermaid with a fish tail and everything. So not only did he penetrate somebody a feeling person with callous disregard, he did it violently, perforating her tail and then what was probably gushing with blood continue to stick his dick in her, in and out lubricated by her blood, all uncaring, without compassion or empathy. Thankfully this was only done in words, but Lori (the mermaid in question) reacts with approval and admiration for her violator. Now Superman is supposed to be somebody to look up to, the man who fights for “Truth, Justice and The American Way” and this is what he is now, his truth is an abuser of women and gets away with it because they live underwater isolated from the rest of the world. No that’s not Superman, that should never be Superman, this character does not deserve to use that nom de plume. Superman’s reputation and character could bounce back from this, this is just one out of continuity story written by somebody who doesn’t know what good taste is, but Lori. Lori Lemaris is an obscure character, she’s rarely featured in Superman stories, and this series when it’s completed will be on book store shelves. But her original back story and earlier stories won’t they won’t be accessible to new fans, they won’t know of the sweeter version. The version where she was Clark Kent’s college finance who hid her tail under a blanket and went round college in a wheelchair. They won’t know that Clark didn’t know she was a mermaid until after she broke off the engagement, no she’ll be the Mermaid he forced himself on.

What’s most shocking to me, is this is not an isolated event. Tom King’s run on Batman had a scene where a “Jokerfied” version of Hal Jordan used his Green Lantern ring to commit suicide, in front of Booster Gold who responded to this with “That was pretty cool”. And King actually won an Eisner award for writing this. Is this what you want now, violence and shock for no value and to get patted on the back? is it all for the approval of the vocal minority of Comicsgaters who think your competition is just a bunch of SJW’s. Because thats not what your heroes should be, they’re the Justice league, they fight for Justice, they fight for everyone. You shouldn’t be giving hate monger’s like Frank Miller a soapbox to scream their agenda from, as to use their own rhetoric is virtue signalling, but those are bad virtues. Hate Minorities, Hate Islam, Hate Women. These ideas would make Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster spin in their graves. You would take their creation, the creation of two Jews and make him the voice of White Supremacists and Nazi’s.  

To quote a DC writer who isn’t Frank Miller, Grant Morrison “Superman is the greatest idea mankind’s ever had”. Yes that is true an all powerful being who always does the right thing and is a constant doer of good. A god who walks among us care’s for us, stands up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. A being of great intelligence who does what he can to guide us to a greater future is a wonderful idea. What you’ve made in Superman Year One Issue 2 is a bad idea, it even sounds like the parody of a bad idea, “Commando Mermaid Rapist”.

The question I really have to ask is “Why did you let this happen with Superman?”, why did nobody in editorial or John Romita Jr say no to this idea? This was after all Romita and Miller’s “Passion project” why this? Would you let this happen with Batman? why Lori? is it because Lori is a lesser known character? would you let Batman rape Harley Quinn? 

Right now DC Comics I hope in a few years you fail to renew the copyright on Superman and he enters the public domain so we can all write our own Superman stories, because I guarantee they’ll be better than the one you’ve just released. 

K Ben on Comics Presents: Two in One Team ups and The Bold

I’ll admit it either you get this title or you don’t, but with the impending cancellation of Scooby Doo Team up after 50 issues and the recent revival of Marvel Team up, it felt like time to write about the Team up books. 

The Team up book is easily the most underrated of all ongoing comic books. How often do you see a celebration of Marvel Two-in-One? The stories are rarely reprinted in collections and if they are, it feels more like they’ve been added to fill out the trade paperback. And with comics being written for the trade, a book thats meant to focus on one-shot stories with a different guest star on the cover each month (sometimes they would be multi-part stories but the star of the book eg. The Thing on Marvel Two-in-One would team with different heroes in each part). 

While a different hero every month makes the book harder to collect in Graphic Novel form, do you wait for Spider-man and Captain Marvel to team up 6 times before you put the trade together or do you just collect the first 6 issues and only put the two most popular character on the cover? Editorial decisions must be made. But showcasing lesser known heroes is the biggest bonus it gives to the publisher, sure an A-lister and an A-lister together should get both lots of fanboys to buy the book but you put a B-lister without their own book in there and you retain the rights to the character. Which is especially important when retaining copyright on the character DC infamously lost the rights to the name Captain Marvel, leading him to be known as Shazam on the cover until eventually everyone gave up on trying to distinguish him from Marvel’s array of Kree Warriors who used the name and just called Billy Batson’s alter ego Shazam. This system also seems more effective than having all your in-between-heroes together in one team like the Champions which was formed for this exact purpose, but didn’t make sense as it really felt like a hodgepodge of random heroes (Angel, Beast, Iceman, Black Widow, Hercules and Ghost Rider). The team never found it’s audience and ended up being a punchline for years to come despite guest-starring in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider and Godzilla’s Marvel book. DC most blatantly used this trick in DC Comics presents 77 & 78 by teaming up Superman with a team called the Forgotten Heroes (the teams line up was Cave Carson, Immortal Man, Congorilla, Rip Hunter, Animal Man, Rick Flag, Dolphin and Dane Dorrance) to battle a team called The Forgotten Villains (Mister Poseidon, Faceless Hunter, Atom-Master, Kraklow, Ultivac and Enchantress), and yes that is the same Rick Flag and Enchantress featured in the Suicide Squad and the same Animal Man Grant Morrison would make a name for himself writing for.

The Team up book is a much more efficient way to tell if the Comic-buying public wants more of this B-lister, all they have to do is check to see how well that issue sold and if it proves sufficient demand for a new Amethyst princess of Gem-World solo series, although DC may always attribute it to being a red comic book cover (yes DC believes that Red covers sell the best, then blue and nobody buys yellow).

Now the biggest flaw of the Team up book is that sometimes the Hero feels like they don’t belong in the story, the most notable instance I can think of is Marvel Team up 41-43, where Spider-man teams up with Scarlet Witch and ends up in the Salem Witch trials, the the pair need saving by Wanda’s husband the Vision in the next issue only for all 3 to team up with Doctor Doom in the last issue. At no part in that story did it need to be Spider-man, however this does allow the other characters to shine as the audience on a Spider-man book will most likely know how cool Spidey is. This problem was not found in the 2009 Deadpool Team up which pretty much lived off Deadpool breaking the fourth wall and pointing out that his co-star was a B-lister and that they hadn’t shown up in a while. But sadly the book was cut short and not reaching it’s lofty goal of 900 issues (as the series counted backwards and ended on 883). 

I should probably mention Brave and the Bold the comic that inspired the Batman cartoon that referenced Silver-Age and Bronze Age stories and made Aquaman cool. That’ll do, but Mark Waid used the book in a more interesting way, removing Batman as the A-lister and having both members on a rotating door. Under Mark Waid the Brave and The Bold was an epic crossing the DC Universe with different heroes at different times (and sometimes different earths) being effected by the same by the same maguffin “The Book of Destiny”.