Morrison Writes my Fanon!

I really need to make that into a T-Shirt.


Comic Book Resources has an interview with Grant Morrison, where he discusses some (spoilery) details of what the upcoming Final Crisis series will cover.



One thing that stood out to me was this bit, tucked away in the second-to-last paragraph. Avert your eyes, spoiler-phobes!



Supergirl and Mary Marvel are in it. They have a big climatic battle to decide how femininity should be portrayed in superhero comics!



Now, how much the results of a story beat can influence the editorial/creative direction of a company like DC- with its focus groups and market research and whatnot- is up for debate. I know Grant has claimed that his writing has influenced the real world before, but he's never had to write against Time Warner/AOL before. ^_^

A few scattershot thoughts on this for now, because I want to wait until it plays out in the text before trying to get at the delicious subtext:

-What, exactly, do Supergirl and Mary Marvel represent at this point? In her own title, Supergirl seems to be in a transition from Loeb/Churchill's elongated-torso, no-ankle-having, tantrum-throwing cipher of a character into a more realistically proportioned growing teen girl struggling with an unfamiliar culture. In the pages of Countdown Mary has been presented as an innocent girl seduced by evil into wearing a short skirt and posing for panty shots.

-There is still time for the larger DCU to re-shape Kara and Mary as signifiers, too: there's still a Supergirl arc to clear up, and Countdown #1 and DCU #0 to go. So, we'll see what happens there, and if it even matters...

-What does Grant mean by femininity, here? Is this a fight between "good girl" pin-up art vs "bad-girl" art? Or a battle between what the ideal for a female character should be like in the DCU? Or am I over/under -thinking this?

-Its things like this that make me look forward to Final Crisis more than Secret Invasion- and by extension, Morrison's writing more than Bendis'. With Final Crisis I can expect some juicy subtext to look forward to, which is great- I like my metaphor dressed in bright colours and punching each other. With Secret Invasion, all I can reasonably expect is people talking out of character. For pages on end. But it won't *really* be out of character, 'cos its a plot point!

-Morrison also wrote Bulleteer, my favourite of the Seven Soldiers mini-series, as problematic as it is. It'll be interesting to see if any of the themes in that get played into this particular bit in FC.

And really, I'm just gonna wait for the text to come out on this one before discussing it further. It'll be the fight... of the CONTEXTUARY!

(sorry)

The Streets Just Ain't Safe No More

It's crazy on Christchurch streets, says Mayor

Christchurch mayor Bob Parker says he cannot recommend walking on Christchurch streets after midnight as new figures show the city is the most violent in the country.

He is suggesting a "draconian" crackdown on alcohol sales as a way to combat the problem.
"Walking around our streets after midnight is not something I'd recommend to people," Parker said yesterday. "It's crazy out there."

Of course, there is another, personally reasonable solution.

Diana and Clark: Just Friends

Gail Simone's new run on Wonder Woman commenced with the recently published Wonder Woman #14, and she continues to use Nemesis as a romantic foil. Which I don't mind one bit- he's handsome enough, I suppose, and not a complete douche. I don't really buy the hasty retcon that he no longer remember's Diana's superheroic identity, but hey, you can't win them all.

Partly its because romantic foils for Wonder Woman are so darn scarce: Steve Trevor, back before the Crisis, was a bit of a wet blanket. Post crisis, Etta Candy bet Diana to tapping that ass. In yo' face chosen of the Amazons!

So that really leaves Batman and Superman. Of the two, Bats has probably got the most going for him: he's suave, he's a hairy-chested globe-trotting badass, and he's the Goddamn Batman:




On the other hand, he is the Goddamn Batman.

Superman, though, is waaaay out of the picture. For one, he's married. And Diana don't play that. Two, they did try dating... Once. Way back in... the PEREZ ERA!

George Perez' reboot of Wonder Woman has a lot going for it. He got rid of the silly "has no strength when bound by... a MAN!" weakness, it has some gorgeous art, and is generally a lot less offensive all around. By and large. Etta Candy doesn't have an obsessive compulsive desire to gorge herself, for example.

(Incidentally, I plan on making another post about how glad I am Etta made an appearance in WW#14. Stay tuned, but here's a hint: I think Etta is awesome.)


And then we get moments... like this.

Diana has been in Patriarch's World a while now, and is chillaxing in her friend Julia Kapatelis' house. Coming from a society of women, she's still not used to this whole "man" thing yet. They smell funny. Never pick up after themselves. And yet...



...Superman makes her face explode.

Understandably confused by these recurring dreams, which might be explained by the epic amounts of Superman Fan Club magazines strewn about her bed-



She does what anyone would do.

She gets nekkid and prays to Eros.



She gets no answer, because Eros was way too busy reading Frank Miller's 300.

Also: She's trying to figure out if her feelings towards Superman are the same that her mother harbours towards a thug that seduced her, robbed her, and let the men under his command rape her people? Diana needs to get some... healthier relationship role models, is all I'm saying.

Seeing as her gods have abandoned her, she turns to the next most logical source of guidance on all matters of the heart.



This is Vanessa Kapatelis, the daughter of Diana's best friend and mentor Julia Kapatelis. She's like thirteen years old. So she sets Diana straight- you've got to approach him, talk to him a bit, tell him how you feel, go on a series of dates to determine if you both feel the same wa-

Oh, no she doesn't. She calls Diana's pimpPR person and gets her to set them up.

They meet up in a field somewhere; presumably to get away from the inevitable media junket that would surround the Date of the Titans, but as it turns out, the setting simply reminds Clark of the football field on Prom night back at Smallville High:



After this tumultuous start, their date only gets progressively worse- they travel to scenic Olympus, only to find that Darkseid and his crew have crashed the joint and wrecked the furniture. So they spend their entire romantic first date doing the classic "lets fight a little bit 'cos Darkseid tricks us into fighting each other, then team up to defeat the enemy" bit, though if you ask me Diana looks like she's enjoying the first part a little too much-



-and eventually they whoop enough ass to make everything right again. Hooray.

Hermes whisks them back to the deserted field where they started, and then Supes reveals that he's learned a little something from this experience:



Namely, that Wonder Woman is gonna kick his ass but proper if he tries to get fresh again.

For reals.