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)

Countdown 14: Who Booked This?

Scans Daily has a selection of scans from Countdown 14, and while the whole freaking thing is hilarious, there's three bits I want to comment on:

1) You know your characters have no substance when even the colourist can't tell the difference between EXTREEEME~! Jason Todd and EXTREEEME~! Batman.

2) To continue the meta-commentary on the relationship between the readers and the publisher, pay attention to the conversation between Evil!Superman (henceforth called Fanboy Prime) and the Evil Monitor (hereafter reffered to as DC Comics Editorial.)

DC: We gave you a perfect, happyhappy earth. And then we invaded it.

FP: WHY?!?!

DC: Because you will buy anything we'll print.

FP: YOU'RE RUINING IT!

DC: Well, yes, but, we're still selling 70~80k books a week to you. Haw haw!

2b) I love that Fanboy Prime goes all Liefeld on the third page. Complete with flipper-feet. Oh, symbolism, how I love thee.

3) More a general comment- notice how Countdown is a lot better when they focus mostly on one storyline and don't do one-page callouts to other crossovers? Huh? Huh, DC? You paying attention here?

In other news: THRILL to my first ever poll! Who is... the FUTURE BEETLE! Also, I'm taking questions for the 10 Characters of Doom meme, after being tagged by Ami yonks ago. I've got a list of 10 characters written down, and if you post questions in the comments section of this post, like "1 breaks 5's ant farm, how does 8 help them fix it before they notice?" and I'll answer them all when I get enough questions. So gets askin'!