InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Admiral Wolverine Lightnigbolt"

benicio127 (benicio127) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-25 11:24:00

Entry tags:

char: joker, creator: guillem march, creator: paul dini, title: gotham city sirens

Return of Mr. J in comics
Words cannot express my love for these two pages.

Upcoming Gotham City Sirens preview can be found here: http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2009/09/25/will-the-joker-cross-paths-with-the-gotham-city-sirens/

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS.

I'm LOL'ing at the juxtaposition of his melodramatic tantrum and the sheer amount of pictures he has of Harley that he has to destroy. Also the fact that he has a Harley doll.

But I think this solves the mystery of how Mr. J is coming back in comics. (Wearing the ol' zoot suit, and not a new costume. Coughcoughcough) EDITED To add: I LOL'd over this. Alley-catting means gang banging. HAHAAHAHA. That's hilarious.

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

ex_stig213
2009-09-25 11:38 pm UTC (link)

Actually, in your example, it was the Countdown team that threw out the continuity. Morrison was planning the whole thing out in every detail - it being very complicated - but editorial thought they could make a buck from a lead-in series, so they asked him for the first issue's script and gave it to the Countdown team; they ignored everything but the bare bones of the stories they were meant to be leading into, instead just doing their own thing and generally sucking at it.

Unfortunately, my scanner is broken, so here's a few textual examples:

* Poison Ivy – his previous non-DCAU story with her consists of her being stalked by a giant plant, possessed with the souls of the people she fed to it (cliche alert), leading to an entire issue of poor excuses for tentacle porn in which she is raped by said plant and develops a phobia of her own freaking powers, rendering her utterly pathetic and useless. Or, in simple terms, she spent an entire issue being raped by a haunted tree.
* Catwoman – his major arc with her in Detective reduces her to “Batman’s ex/Woman in Fridge/Woman placed on pedestal”, less than half a year after the final issue of her series said the exact opposite.
* Likewise Zatanna – all the character-building and ideas created by Morrison in Seven Soldiers: Zatanna are thrown out the window in favour of a Mary-Sue “Batman’s Girlfriend” based largely on Dini's own wife - which really shouldn't be allowed.
* Oh, and the ‘new, improved’ Ventriloquist. I’ve explained this before, but here we go again: The Ventriloquist-Scarface team worked only because it was a juxtaposition of how pathetic Arnold Wesker was compared with his alter-ego; look, for instance, in BATMAN: CITY OF CRIME, where his blank expression and silent demeanour next to his alter-ego gives him an almost frightening aspect. Replacing Wesker with a beautiful vapid blonde woman negates all of the character’s interesting features and potential for scariness, partly because it suggests that Scarface is more of a malevolent spirit than one man’s alternate personality (it is scientifically and psychologically impossible for two separate people to engender the same alternate personality), and partly because it implies that beautiful blonde women are just as pathetic as sad, useless old men. Which is a pretty broad generalisation, no?
* …And continuing with that trend, the new Ventriloquist’s origin? “Hush’s Girlfriend”.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

sailorlibra
2009-09-26 03:44 am UTC (link)

1) Poison Ivy: As far as I could tell, the tree was supposed to be symbolic of Poison Ivy's bad karma catching up with her. The only thing sexual about the story I noticed was the art.

2) Catwoman: FYI, female superheroes are allowed to be injured without being fridged, same as male characters. Whether or not an injury is WiR-worthy usually depends on the response of the attacked. What did Catwoman do when she recovered? She took away from him the one thing he really cared about. If that's the actions of a weak character, then Batman, who has never really had the upper hand on Hush, must be really pathetic. On the other hand, Selina's own series had her getting pregnant from a guy she barely knew and then give up Helena when the writer got tired of writing about her.

3) Zatanna: I don't see why you think that a woman can't be someone's potential love interest and a strong character in her own right. And I also don't see why Dini should base his Zatanna off a version that wasn't even in continuity. This is really a topic we're never going to agree on, since I personally believe that Grant Morrison is a very sexist writer. His Zee series wasn't too bad, but his bitchy Lois Lane from All Star Superman and his fridged Wonder Woman from Final Crisis really got on my nerves. And his Bulleteer series seemed to imply that all women were obsessed with men.

4) Ventriloquist: Seriously calling the new Ventriloquist "vapid?" I don't think so. Her character was not as complicated as Wesker's, which is expected considering he had been around a lot longer than her, but she had an interesting backstory and she was very intelligent. To me your explanation for why you don't like her seems actually pretty sexist. Your basic explanation is oooh, she's a woman. Women can't be scary or creeped or messed up.

Her being Hush's girlfriend did annoy me, but not because it seemed sexist. Dini's tying Peyton in with Matthew and Hush just seemed like really lazy writing. Like he couldn't think up a new female and decided to stick her in last minute. Also, it messed up her character as had been established before.

Frankly, even if I believed the examples you list to be truly sexist, Dini would still not qualify as one of the more sexist writers in comics.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	batcookies 2009-09-26 03:50 am UTC (link)
	Peyton's origin isn't even "Hush's girlfriend". That's part of her past, but it wasn't the thing that defined her. She got stuck in a mob marriage because of her dad, proved to be far smarter and more competent than her louse of a husband, and then he tried to kill her when he got tired of her... so she rose from the grave and killed him instead. (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Read comments) -