Positive words and images

I've been doing a lot of writing, rewriting, and rearranging for these last few posts. I will probably still wander a lot.

Monday's reviews were built on a few things, including some really nasty writing about Pretty Deadly, but also frequent slurs against female writers and artists, and against female characters. I thought about four female creators who mean a lot to me, realized they all had current projects, and so reviewing them seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

I came to Becky Cloonan because of Killjoys, but once there, she is the reason that I took any interest in Swamp Thing. Not only did she draw some of the most beautiful work I have ever seen, but she promoted it. Just seeing one page of Amy Reeder's art on Halloween Eve, I had to track it down. I did not know the name, but it was so visually compelling I had to know.

Back at the time of the MOOC I was still unfamiliar with a lot of this, but I was instantly drawn to Kelly Sue DeConnick's passion in talking about not just her work, but other work. Listening to her at ICAF has taught me so much about collaboration, and writing. Gail Simone has not just been a key figure in writing comics, but she is a consistent cheerleader for them. Comic stores need help, and she reached out to them, offering to re-tweet sales and specials, and then doing it. (And yes, I love her for her work on Women in Refrigerators, but that is not all she knows or does.)

So my first thought when I see any criticism of any of them is "What kind of idiot are you?" And I thought this might end up being a feminist piece today, but it appears to be getting a bit more complicated, because I nearly got sidetracked by a Facebook post.

It was a friend of a sister, but she read it to me, and it was so appallingly ignorant. It was wondering why young black men were so violent, because the jails are full, and that can't be that all the police are racist, and we really need to start using the death penalty.

That was just what I remember. Initially we both felt like there was too much ignorance there to even start, and then I decided I did need to say something, and wanted the exact text, and she checked back and it was deleted.

(Let me just throw out there that prison population is largely due to drug enforcement policy, which is very racist, the death penalty is not a deterrent, and many things correlate more with economic factors than race, though don't think racism didn't play a role in creating some of those economic factors.)

It is easy to be stupid about people you don't know, and it is easy to not get to know people outside of your own walk of life. It is a really good thing to get to know people who are different from you. That does mean race and gender, but also it means ages, jobs, religious background, economic status, and everything. It is good, but it doesn't happen enough.

Something that can help with that is seeing a variety of images in media, because that affects what we can imagine for ourselves. If the magazines only show tall, dangerously thin girls, which is a pretty unusual body type, it is hard for the rest of the population to feel attractive. If all of the professional positions are white males, and all of the heroes are white males, and girls only exist to be in distress, and black people only exist to die and provide some emotional resonance, that really only works well for white males. If you only see one story about your group, whether that story is crime or academic achievement, it feels limiting,

One of my teen girls is black, and she has written that she hates being black because people always look at her with suspicion. That is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for the human cost to her, because surviving adolescence is a difficult thing no matter whom you are, and no one needs added layers of difficulty. But there is also an unacceptable cost in terms of the loss to society of developed talents, service given, and resources provided.

(Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu-Dunn is a pretty good book on this, but also right now I am thinking of Dasani: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/#/?chapt=1)

There are thousands of factors at work here, so the comics portion of it is only a small slice, but it can be an important one. Seeing Dayoung fly in Rocket Girl and be herself, yes, that is a great comic for young girls. I don't think the enjoyment has to be limited to them, but it is important for them to see.

Returning back to one of those annoying threads, an article about potential developed projects from comics mentioned White Tiger, specifically Angela Del Toro. One person, no matter how many points others made, kept arguing against it. She has no following, no strong story arcs, but yes, there was this undercurrent of "Cooties!"

What I say next may be hurtful and offensive to some, and I am sorry, but comic fans do not make movies successful. If a movie only gets people who read the comic there, it is a flop. It would be nice if each movie broadened the base of comic readers, but there's no guarantee there.

Also, movies based on comic books don't always adhere strictly to the comics. Sometimes they borrow plotlines or people - I love what they did with Lucius Fox in Batman Begins, but if someone sees just a spark of a character that may resonate with film or television audiences, that can be enough. They may end up creating a mess, or they may create something that doesn't find a big enough audience, because there are always those risks. However, sometimes an idea to turn a stereotype on its head can lead to a movie that while not incredibly successful on its own, spawns two successful series, several comics, and careers. There's always a risk, so why not try and do something good.

So I would love to see something happen with White Tiger, and something with Daughters of the Dragon. I could see that being a good television series. It doesn't have to be fictional. I would love to see a comic book series about Apartheid and the ANC. Feature Mandela of course, but also Biko and Mbeki and de Klerk and Esterhuyse. There's a lot to tell.

You know what other things could be good? Series based on Chang Apana (loose basis for Charlie Chan) and Bass Reeves (possible inspiration for the Lone Ranger). Because it's not that people of color have not been contributing all along, but their stories don't get told. The Old West has been especially white-washed.

And then we take that, and we create this idea of how things are, and whether it comes to various individuals as virulent racism, or a fairly "benevolent" racism, or an internalized idea that amounting to anything is impossible, none of it is good enough.

Comics know heroes really well. They can also be them.