Bully the Little Stuffed Bull lives in New York City, and his recent post about Doctor Strange mentions that real New Yorkers never call for a cab to the airport: they either hail one in the street, or call a "car service".
That got me thinking about the Fictionopolis, and the conceit shared by publishers and many fans that Marvel Comics are more "realistic" for eschewing such constructs.
Perhaps Marvel New York had some verisimilitude back when Stan and Jack and most of the rest of the Marvel creators actually lived in NYC, or were at least from there, tapping into its rhythms, into the lyric cant and jargon of its inhabitants. Once the House of Ideas started casting its net wider, however, employing writers and artists from across the country and the world, it became as much a fiction as Metropolis or Gotham.
Here's a secret: even in the '60s, it never did feel any more authentic to a kid growing up in Southern California. East Coast cities in general, and New York specifically, are entirely different from their West Coast counterparts. The New York of comics and movies and television might as well have been Metropolis.
Or Bespin.
Or Minas Tirith.
Of course, on the other claw, I never thought twice about the palm trees and brush-covered hills surrounding the low-lying sprawl of Adam West's "Gotham". After all, that was what the Real World looked like, right? Native Californians never notice California Doubling until we travel outside the bounds of the Bear Flag Republic: the world on TV looks like the world around us. It never occurs to us that Angela Lansbury's Maine has a whole lot of chaparral scrub along its Mendocino cliffs.
I can understand how Marvel must feel to Easterners and New Yorkers, though -- or how it must have felt at one time. One of my favorite comics as a hatchling in the '70s was Marvel's Werewolf by Night. I enjoyed all of the horror-themed heroes of that era, but Jack Russell's adventures had a special appeal, because it wasn't set in that mythical, far-off land of New York. Jack hailed from Los Angeles, and the wide, open streets, the palm trees, and LAX's iconic Theme Building often graced its pages. The sun-drenched daylight scenes contrasted not only with the moody, broody moonlit nights in which Jack's alter-ego played, but with that strange and claustrophobic city crammed full of capes and costumes, mansions and Baxter Buildings, in which Bakshi's animated Spider-Man could swing and swing for hours without ever running out of Thoroughly Useful Vertical.
As an adult living in San Jose, New York City is still an alien world to me. A couple of years ago, I was watching CSI: New York, and found my attention caught by one of those sweeping camera pans across the Manhattan cityscape. For the first time, I really looked. at what I was seeing, and realized that I simply had no touchstone for it. San Francisco is a tiny peninsula with a distinctive skyline, but most of the tallest buildings are along one of two streets. Oakland and San Diego each have a tight, localized cluster of tallish buildings. Los Angeles has a larger one, rising up out of nowhere in the middle of the eternal suburban plain, but they were largely erected after my move North.
And San Jose? San Jose is cute. It has a burst of the Tall, right there where the freeways meet, no more than half a dozen buildings that are only considered "skyscrapers" by the truncated standards of a seismically active region. It looks like Town, as in "goin' to Town", the local civic center of a far-flung rural community.
Which is exactly what it was, right up to the middle of the last century.
Those sweeping camera pans, though ... New York goes on for blocks and blocks, for miles and miles, with a density that is flat-out incomprehensible for someone from the Sprawlwest. The buildings I consider "tall" are medium-sized in that urbscape. I finally caught a glimpse of the urban archetype that inspired Asimov's Caves of Steel, of planet-wide cities, of the Human Hive.
I was ... intimidated.
It's an appropriate setting for the larger-than-life conflicts of the Pantheon of the Twentieth Century, most assuredly.
But it's still not real to me.
Not yet.
Showing posts with label DCU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCU. Show all posts
Friday, August 27, 2010
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Fine Feathered Felony
As I've mentioned elsewhere, my favorite Batman adversary is The Penguin.
The depictions we've seen in recent years, alas, don't quite get him.
I don't disapprove of the depiction of Oswald as smart, savvy crime boss, pulling strings behind the scenes while he poses as a Legitimate Businessman; the role suits him like a well-tailored tuxedo. Unfortunately, as the Batman titles move away from Theme Villains who treat Crime as Performance Art, there's a tendency to sweep that period under the rug entirely. Cobblepot is now a Clever, Devious Gangster, and one gets the impression that he has always been a Clever, Devious Gangster.
Fiction, however, suffers no lack of Clever, Devious Gangsters, nor does Real Life. Everyone knows they're Connected. Everyone knows they've got their Fingers in the Pies. Nobody can get any hard evidence, or pierce their thin veneer of Legitimate Business to bring their nefarious deeds to light.
It's a complex and multifaceted character archetype, admittedly, but it's a common one—and if there's one thing that Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot strives never to be, it's common.
Without her career as Batgirl behind her, Oracle is just another hacker. Without his career as a Theme Villain, Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot is just another Made Man, differing from Rupert Thorne or Tony Zucco only in his nom de guerre—and his real-life peers include such notables as "Baby Face" Nelson.
To me, the Theme Villain and the Clever Devious Gangster are two sides of the same Penguin coin.
Golden Age Oswald had one of the best origins in comics: he got no respect because he was, frankly, a funny-looking little fat guy with mildly eccentric habits. He deliberately constructed the Penguin persona, exploiting and accentuating his comical appearance, encouraging people to underestimate him.
He pulled off big, flashy, ridiculous stunt crimes, deliberately provoking
the local costumed vigilante, because that's how it's done in Gotham.
And it worked.
He made his rep as the one Flashy Theme Villain who was Smarter Than He Was Crazy.
When he walked into a room, people no longer thought, "what a funny little man!"
They thought, Holy crap, it's the Penguin!Get in the car!"
His "Crime as Performance Art" routine paid off. He got respect.
And he parleyed that into the criminal empire we see today, in the Aluminum Age.
Now, there's a unique character.
I'd love to see a Penguin graphic novel that shows his evolution from Performance Artist Gimmick Villain to Criminal Mastermind. He slowly and quietly builds up his organization—and every time the Bat starts getting too close to his real operations, he puts on the tux and the top hat, grabs a bumbershooter, and pulls off some big, flashy, incredibly distracting Stunt Crime.
He's thwarted, captured, tossed into prison, and uses his prison time to make more contacts and connections. He serves a short sentence, since he studiously avoids injuring or killing anyone in his big stunt crimes, and might even get time shaved off his sentence for "good behavior": he keeps his prominent nose clean when he's inside.
Eventually, he "goes straight", opening the Iceberg Lounge and putting himself on display as Supervillain Chic. He writes his memoirs, and does the talk show circuit, openly talking about his "misspent youth", freely admitting that his "Fine Feathered Felony" was, in essence, a publicity stunt to garner the respect and recognition that he so craved. He's witty and charming and funny and a great draw.
And in the background, though layers of front companies, bribes, and shady connections, he runs a good chunk of the Gotham City underground.
*Aren't these Thornes and the Zuccos of the world the ones that the Batman is supposed to focus on? Isn't he the Great Detective who can get the goods when nobody else can? They used to be disposable mooks, soundly defeated and sent up the river; nowadays, they seem even more untouchable in Gotham than their real-world counterparts. I need to do a post about the "Batman is Useless" trope, and how it really only emerged Post-Silver Age.
The depictions we've seen in recent years, alas, don't quite get him.
I don't disapprove of the depiction of Oswald as smart, savvy crime boss, pulling strings behind the scenes while he poses as a Legitimate Businessman; the role suits him like a well-tailored tuxedo. Unfortunately, as the Batman titles move away from Theme Villains who treat Crime as Performance Art, there's a tendency to sweep that period under the rug entirely. Cobblepot is now a Clever, Devious Gangster, and one gets the impression that he has always been a Clever, Devious Gangster.
Fiction, however, suffers no lack of Clever, Devious Gangsters, nor does Real Life. Everyone knows they're Connected. Everyone knows they've got their Fingers in the Pies. Nobody can get any hard evidence, or pierce their thin veneer of Legitimate Business to bring their nefarious deeds to light.
It's a complex and multifaceted character archetype, admittedly, but it's a common one—and if there's one thing that Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot strives never to be, it's common.
Without her career as Batgirl behind her, Oracle is just another hacker. Without his career as a Theme Villain, Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot is just another Made Man, differing from Rupert Thorne or Tony Zucco only in his nom de guerre—and his real-life peers include such notables as "Baby Face" Nelson.
To me, the Theme Villain and the Clever Devious Gangster are two sides of the same Penguin coin.
Golden Age Oswald had one of the best origins in comics: he got no respect because he was, frankly, a funny-looking little fat guy with mildly eccentric habits. He deliberately constructed the Penguin persona, exploiting and accentuating his comical appearance, encouraging people to underestimate him.
He pulled off big, flashy, ridiculous stunt crimes, deliberately provoking
the local costumed vigilante, because that's how it's done in Gotham.
And it worked.
He made his rep as the one Flashy Theme Villain who was Smarter Than He Was Crazy.
When he walked into a room, people no longer thought, "what a funny little man!"
They thought, Holy crap, it's the Penguin!
His "Crime as Performance Art" routine paid off. He got respect.
And he parleyed that into the criminal empire we see today, in the Aluminum Age.
Now, there's a unique character.
I'd love to see a Penguin graphic novel that shows his evolution from Performance Artist Gimmick Villain to Criminal Mastermind. He slowly and quietly builds up his organization—and every time the Bat starts getting too close to his real operations, he puts on the tux and the top hat, grabs a bumbershooter, and pulls off some big, flashy, incredibly distracting Stunt Crime.
He's thwarted, captured, tossed into prison, and uses his prison time to make more contacts and connections. He serves a short sentence, since he studiously avoids injuring or killing anyone in his big stunt crimes, and might even get time shaved off his sentence for "good behavior": he keeps his prominent nose clean when he's inside.
Eventually, he "goes straight", opening the Iceberg Lounge and putting himself on display as Supervillain Chic. He writes his memoirs, and does the talk show circuit, openly talking about his "misspent youth", freely admitting that his "Fine Feathered Felony" was, in essence, a publicity stunt to garner the respect and recognition that he so craved. He's witty and charming and funny and a great draw.
And in the background, though layers of front companies, bribes, and shady connections, he runs a good chunk of the Gotham City underground.
*Aren't these Thornes and the Zuccos of the world the ones that the Batman is supposed to focus on? Isn't he the Great Detective who can get the goods when nobody else can? They used to be disposable mooks, soundly defeated and sent up the river; nowadays, they seem even more untouchable in Gotham than their real-world counterparts. I need to do a post about the "Batman is Useless" trope, and how it really only emerged Post-Silver Age.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Here Come Blackest Night Spoilers!
The climax of Blackest Night #7 made perfect sense to Your Obedient Serpent.
Sure, everyone's been anticipating that BN would climax with some kind of "White Lantern" moment, but most everyone -- including Your Obedient Serpent -- has assumed Geoff was grooming Happy Hal for the role, what with his sampling ring after ring.
Of course, each successive sampling demonstrated that Hal simply wasn't SUITED to wielding anything but Will. His big moment of Avarice? Two hamburgers. His greatest Hope? "I hope you'll stop asking me." Carol's whole arc in Blackest Night has been the essentially unrequited nature of her love for Hal.
Hal's got drive and focus and determination, but he doesn't have a lot of passion. He's just too narcissistic. And Johns has been highlighting that by having him Taste the Rainbow.
At the same time Johns has been distracting us by decorating Hal's digits with different neon colors, though, he's been establishing those passions as part and parcel of Sinestro's character. Fear and Will were always there, but we've also seen his lost and secret Love, his Rage at the Guardians, his Hope for a "better", more orderly world, and his Compassion for those who suffer because of "chaos".
And he Wants. He Craves. He Covets. He wants the respect and honor that was once his, and is now Hal's. He wants Power. He wants to be the Greatest Of All Lanterns -- and this, too, has been part of his for as long as Fear and Will.
Hal is simply too pure. He's a Green Laser, a single frequency of Ego and Drive and Will.
Sinestro can wield the White, and should, because, of all the ringslingers we've met, he and he alone has mastered all of the emotional spectrum.
Though Guy has almost as strong a claim, come to think of it.
Sure, everyone's been anticipating that BN would climax with some kind of "White Lantern" moment, but most everyone -- including Your Obedient Serpent -- has assumed Geoff was grooming Happy Hal for the role, what with his sampling ring after ring.
Of course, each successive sampling demonstrated that Hal simply wasn't SUITED to wielding anything but Will. His big moment of Avarice? Two hamburgers. His greatest Hope? "I hope you'll stop asking me." Carol's whole arc in Blackest Night has been the essentially unrequited nature of her love for Hal.
Hal's got drive and focus and determination, but he doesn't have a lot of passion. He's just too narcissistic. And Johns has been highlighting that by having him Taste the Rainbow.
At the same time Johns has been distracting us by decorating Hal's digits with different neon colors, though, he's been establishing those passions as part and parcel of Sinestro's character. Fear and Will were always there, but we've also seen his lost and secret Love, his Rage at the Guardians, his Hope for a "better", more orderly world, and his Compassion for those who suffer because of "chaos".
And he Wants. He Craves. He Covets. He wants the respect and honor that was once his, and is now Hal's. He wants Power. He wants to be the Greatest Of All Lanterns -- and this, too, has been part of his for as long as Fear and Will.
Hal is simply too pure. He's a Green Laser, a single frequency of Ego and Drive and Will.
Sinestro can wield the White, and should, because, of all the ringslingers we've met, he and he alone has mastered all of the emotional spectrum.
Though Guy has almost as strong a claim, come to think of it.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
In Brightest Day....
This made me laugh out loud:
I may have to print it out and post it at work.
Speaking as a long-time fan of the Green Lanterns, who's read the book(s) through all the ups and downs since 1970 or so, this multi-year arc that Geoff Johns has been writing is the Best Damned Run Of Green Lantern ever, one of the best things DC has done in the last decade, and Blackest Night is shaping up to be the "Final Crisis" that Final Crisis wasn't.
Honestly, it's a big part of why I still bother with superhero comics.
After, what, five years of non-stop Big Events and Red Skies Crossovers from both major companies, after a year of working in a comic store, and after my Fanfic Epiphany from a couple of years ago, I've come very close to burning out on commercialized adolescent power fantasies.
But Johns is good, and Blackest Night is not so much an Editorially-Mandated MegaCrossover as it is the logical climax of the story he's been telling for the last five years.
Still and nonetheless... "They turned Green Lanterns into Care Bears" is spit-take-worthy.
I may have to print it out and post it at work.
Speaking as a long-time fan of the Green Lanterns, who's read the book(s) through all the ups and downs since 1970 or so, this multi-year arc that Geoff Johns has been writing is the Best Damned Run Of Green Lantern ever, one of the best things DC has done in the last decade, and Blackest Night is shaping up to be the "Final Crisis" that Final Crisis wasn't.
Honestly, it's a big part of why I still bother with superhero comics.
After, what, five years of non-stop Big Events and Red Skies Crossovers from both major companies, after a year of working in a comic store, and after my Fanfic Epiphany from a couple of years ago, I've come very close to burning out on commercialized adolescent power fantasies.
But Johns is good, and Blackest Night is not so much an Editorially-Mandated MegaCrossover as it is the logical climax of the story he's been telling for the last five years.
Still and nonetheless... "They turned Green Lanterns into Care Bears" is spit-take-worthy.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Viva Oracle!
This was originally posted as a response to Ragnell's post about Booster Gold #4, which ends with the surprise reveal that Barbara Gordon's crippling and subsequent career as Oracle happened because of the Bad Guy Time Travellers and their plot to thwart the origins of the whole Justice League -- including their "rightful" leader, Batgirl.
I love this idea, and I can't wait to see how it plays out... but until I read the comments in Ragnell's post, it never occurred to me that DC would actually have Booster and Rip succeed in "fixing" that one.
Frankly, I think they'd be damned foolish to consider it.
I can't consider Oracle a "mistake" on DC's part. Barbara Gordon as Oracle is a far more interesting, original character than Barbara Gordon ever was as the Earth-One Betty Kane, introduced to bolster the sagging ratings of a campy TV show that most fans would rather forget.
She's a more successful character, too. Her tenure as Oracle (1989-2007) is just three years shy of her tenure as Batgirl (1967-1988). At this stage, her Batgirl career was faltering; one reason Moore was allowed to treat her so cavalierly was because the character has simply failed to find a niche. She had never broken out of back-up series and Special Guest Sidekick appearances. The closest thing she'd gotten to a "team" was as a tagger-on to the Dynamic Duo. In the stories, Barbara was wondering if she was really making a difference as a crime-fighter, if she might do more good by directing her talents elsewhere.
At least one person has said that they want to see Barbara resume the Batgirl role because Oracle, the "Superhero OnStar", "makes things too easy" for other DCU characters, and writers tend to use her as a crutch. To Your Obedient Serpent, this almost qualifies for the Women in Refrigerators List: impose a major life change to a female character to produce a desired effect on a male character.
I keep hearing people object to the creation of Oracle because of the Fridge Listing of Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. Sure, Babs's crippling is classic Fridge List material. That was Alan Moore's script -- and while it set the stage for the introduction of Oracle, it was NOT her origin.
Barbara Gordon's recreation of herself as the Oracle was the work of John Ostrander, and it was as far from the Fridge List as you can get. It pulled the character out of the shadows of the Established Male Dynastic Centerpiece, and made her a unique, exotic figure in her own right. It gave her her own story, in her own way.
Barbara Gordon was always a highly-intelligent character with a photographic memory. That was there from her introduction. Ostrander's genius was in using the crippling injury imposed by another writer to refocus the character on that intellect.
As a front-line fighter, Barbara was a B-List character, and her chosen nom de guerre insured that she'd remain there, as "Batman's Girl Sidekick". As Oracle, she's A-List. The idea of Barbara Gordon leading the Justice League only makes sense after 20 years of seeing her as Oracle. Batgirl was no leader, and showed no signs of developing into one. As a kick-fighter, she was playing catch-up to people with more training, more motivation, and more special "edges" than she would ever have. It took Ostrander's re-emphasis of the character according to her unique strengths that allowed her to become the formidable presence she is today.
Taking that away from her would be crippling the character. Frankly, if Barbara got the use of her legs back (without time-travel trickery), I'd be utterly disappointed if she gave up being Oracle. She's done far more good that way that she ever would as one more high-heeled boot to a bad guy's face.
(Okay, if she got healed and put the costume on again strictly because she was offered leadership of the JLA, I could buy it.)
And you know what? "Oracle" only works as an ex-crimefighter. Putting some random person hospitalized by violence into the chair and behind the keyboard just doesn't have the emotional impact.
Finally... I'm hardly a fan of the school that insists that a superhero has to have some driving trauma, but I've got to admit, Oracle has a lot more solid motivation than the librarian who took a few judo classes and started crimefighting for fun.
I love this idea, and I can't wait to see how it plays out... but until I read the comments in Ragnell's post, it never occurred to me that DC would actually have Booster and Rip succeed in "fixing" that one.
Frankly, I think they'd be damned foolish to consider it.
I can't consider Oracle a "mistake" on DC's part. Barbara Gordon as Oracle is a far more interesting, original character than Barbara Gordon ever was as the Earth-One Betty Kane, introduced to bolster the sagging ratings of a campy TV show that most fans would rather forget.
She's a more successful character, too. Her tenure as Oracle (1989-2007) is just three years shy of her tenure as Batgirl (1967-1988). At this stage, her Batgirl career was faltering; one reason Moore was allowed to treat her so cavalierly was because the character has simply failed to find a niche. She had never broken out of back-up series and Special Guest Sidekick appearances. The closest thing she'd gotten to a "team" was as a tagger-on to the Dynamic Duo. In the stories, Barbara was wondering if she was really making a difference as a crime-fighter, if she might do more good by directing her talents elsewhere.
At least one person has said that they want to see Barbara resume the Batgirl role because Oracle, the "Superhero OnStar", "makes things too easy" for other DCU characters, and writers tend to use her as a crutch. To Your Obedient Serpent, this almost qualifies for the Women in Refrigerators List: impose a major life change to a female character to produce a desired effect on a male character.
I keep hearing people object to the creation of Oracle because of the Fridge Listing of Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. Sure, Babs's crippling is classic Fridge List material. That was Alan Moore's script -- and while it set the stage for the introduction of Oracle, it was NOT her origin.
Barbara Gordon's recreation of herself as the Oracle was the work of John Ostrander, and it was as far from the Fridge List as you can get. It pulled the character out of the shadows of the Established Male Dynastic Centerpiece, and made her a unique, exotic figure in her own right. It gave her her own story, in her own way.
Barbara Gordon was always a highly-intelligent character with a photographic memory. That was there from her introduction. Ostrander's genius was in using the crippling injury imposed by another writer to refocus the character on that intellect.
As a front-line fighter, Barbara was a B-List character, and her chosen nom de guerre insured that she'd remain there, as "Batman's Girl Sidekick". As Oracle, she's A-List. The idea of Barbara Gordon leading the Justice League only makes sense after 20 years of seeing her as Oracle. Batgirl was no leader, and showed no signs of developing into one. As a kick-fighter, she was playing catch-up to people with more training, more motivation, and more special "edges" than she would ever have. It took Ostrander's re-emphasis of the character according to her unique strengths that allowed her to become the formidable presence she is today.
Taking that away from her would be crippling the character. Frankly, if Barbara got the use of her legs back (without time-travel trickery), I'd be utterly disappointed if she gave up being Oracle. She's done far more good that way that she ever would as one more high-heeled boot to a bad guy's face.
(Okay, if she got healed and put the costume on again strictly because she was offered leadership of the JLA, I could buy it.)
And you know what? "Oracle" only works as an ex-crimefighter. Putting some random person hospitalized by violence into the chair and behind the keyboard just doesn't have the emotional impact.
Finally... I'm hardly a fan of the school that insists that a superhero has to have some driving trauma, but I've got to admit, Oracle has a lot more solid motivation than the librarian who took a few judo classes and started crimefighting for fun.
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