DC Comics Reboot

Published by tonidorsay on October 3rd, 2011 - in Uncategorized

So I am a person who likes a few comics.

I have for a long time.  I don’t talk about it much, though.  I’m not an enormous fan of them, and since I’m the sort that likes my continuity to be, well, continuous, I tend to be somewhat aggravated by things that “serious” comics fans let go with a few whines.

I’m not real picky — to me, it doesn’t matter if the heroes are owned by a particular company or not — these days, the very large entertainment conglomerates own everything anyway.

DC launched their New 52 reset.  Hearing the news made me take a look at a few things that were of interest to me.  THings like the number of “Wildstorm” characters that were suddenly part of the DC universe, but not quite the same as they were when Jim Lee ran it as part of the Image deal in the last heyday of the 90′s.

Jim Lee being Publisher — now that was interesting enough, and didn’t bode well for the feelings I had toward the project overall.

Don’t get me wrong — I like his work ok.  But he has a very stylized method of portraying people, and it is best used with a good story, since in my mind, Lee is not really the best writer and decidedly not one of the great creators out there.

But like several of his former Image partners, he’s one seriously canny business dude. As an artist, though, he shouldn’t be the one in charge.

And that particular misgiving of mine about his body of work seriously shows up in the New 52 issues any time a woman is portrayed in the issues I’ve seen.

Now, I “get” the whole sex sells thing.  I understand that while yes, the very young are readers, they are not going to be the people who read most of the comics that are sold today.

Because they don’t have money and to be perfectly honest, the basic comics that people remember fondly of bygone days are nothing like the comics we find today.  They are much darker in tone, more violent, and, these days, even more sexually charged.

Not so much on the guy side of things, though.  But very much on the gal side of things. Men are portrayed as, basically, hulking brutes with lantern jaws and short cropped hair and all that kind of stuff.

Blame  a few of the most popular writers out there.  Watchmen.  The Dark Knight Returns. Sandman.

Those sold very well, and they continue to sell well, all things considered.  The market people may be thinking of might be preteens, but the actual market being sold to is males 13 to 25, with an eye to the stereotypical person that shows up at Comic Con every year.

Those are the people comics are written for — the ones who will shell out 3 bucks for 13 pages of hypersexualized mindless dreamery.

They are competing with games these days, and movies.  Which might strike some people as odd since most of the movies that get talked about anymore seem to be about the comic heroes and villains that come from such.

Which is not to say that women aren’t part of that market, really.  They are.  Women are actually very much into comics, but they aren’t who is being sold to.

They were, and have been, for years.  THe comics become “specialty” types.  The US isn’t as segmented and rigidly defined as, say, manga, but it does have its genres.

I was hoping, personally, that since the comics I like generally get kicked to the curb after a few issues, that perhaps one of them would be decent in this reboot.

So I went out and I got the new Wonder Woman. Supergirl. Batman. Batman, the Dark Knight. Action COmics. Detective Comics. Superman.  Justice League. Voodoo. Grifter.

I like my computer stuff and my gadgets and all that.  So I did digital copies.

I wasted a chunk of change, I think.

Catwoman was horrible.  I understand that part of the reason she always sells well is that she has hot covers and all that.  But this catwoman is supposed to be something like her previous incarnations.

And she is.  As seen through the eyes of some idiot who has no clue what basic psychology means.  THis is someone who was raised on wet dreams and Michael Bay movies, I think — where women are window dressing at best, and worn out old useless husks of former window dressing most commonly.

I can’t imagine what they’ve done to Batwoman, Batgirl, and other bat-females.  It does not bode well.

Supes, who’s rebirth here is pretty much a response to legal challenges filed and court decisions handed down and similar stuff with the estate of his creators, gets off pretty darn well.  But Perez, who writes Superman, is actually pretty damn good about that kind of thing.

Action COmics is still too soon to tell.

Perez is up there with the guys (in this case, pretty much all of them) who I think actually do a decent job of telling a story that is illustrated. Which is the sort of stuff I like to see in comics.

All too often I get a bunch of panels that a story is then cobbled together to tell a story around. Pretty pictures, if I’m lucky.

Catwoman I was not so lucky in — and yet there is a vague attempt to tell a story there.

In fact, I think the Supes family probably gets better treatment than poor bats does.

Perez. Starlin. Byrne. Claremont.

I had special hopes for Wonder Woman. Her and Supergirl I’ve liked since I was in single digits myself, reading old Supe’s comics left over from my uncle’s stash of them.

I loved the way Donner did Superman.  I didn’t expect that to hold true here, mind you — but that kind of underlying respect for the source material is apparent in the Supe’s line.

Not so much in the Bat’s line.  Too soon to tell in the Wonder Woman line, who seems to have been demoted. I kinda like that, though.

I liked some of the Image stuff. But DC has filled that spot in a grab for dollars.  Only its no longer just found on the covers and in idiocies like “swimsuit specials”.  Now its in every panel, of every page.  And Voodoo — who was always an interesting character but was essentially there just to have a bit of mixed race flava for the swimsuit special from my POV — is nothing but pure horseshit of the sort that makes little boys wank hard in their bedrooms.

Little boys being a term used loosely here.

All in all I picked up 11 comics.

I’m not likely to pick up many more of them.  Aside from the expense, which I can admittedly ill afford, there is a lack of enthusiasm for me.  Granted, I’m well outside the target demographic. And yes, ending sexism in comics is decidedly not something on the minds of the publishers and the people who do the artwork here.

But I would be lying if I didn’t say that they turned me off because they handled women not merely badly, but with comes across as an extra special attempt at misogyny on an order unlike pretty much anything I’ve ever seen.

And I’ve seen some pretty wild shit in my day.

The problem, though, isn’t the misogyny.

Its that they turned me off.  I *want* to like comics.  I could figure out a way to purchase one or two a month, even at the unimaginably obscene prices they are charging for digital copies (come on, people, really?  It costs you 3 bucks to make a book, I can understand, but to sell a file?).

I don’t particularly like the X-men.  I’m not a fan of most of the mainline Marvel stuff.  I honestly prefer the movies to the comics there. I was turned off of them by the latest greatest end of the whole fucking mutant deal that happened long after the first round of latest greatest mutant ending disasters that fucked with the timestream and retconned the order of the universe and that was all long before someone decided they had too many mutants running around and killed everyone off or whatever it was.

I remember a point in time when the core of the New X-men all dies to save the universe and were brought back to life but rendered invisible to any and all cameras. By a Goddess.

I liked the characters, mind you.  It was the stories and the way they just seemed to have to get bigger and meaner and less and less about being heroes and so forth and so on.

Because I really, really like the idea of Heroes.

Not the rage of Anti-Heroes we tend to get stuck with.  But actual heroes. Heroism is something exceedingly rare in Comics to my jaundiced and cynical eye.

See the earlier citations of certain books and writers whom I blame for the destruction of heroes.

I’ll also note that I have a hard time writing heroines.  ’Cause I always immediately associate it with drugs and women, which is never a good thing.

We need more heroines, though.  I would love to see a strong, sex positive heroine.  Unfortunately, sex positive to most of the comic book artists and writers these days seems to mean she likes to get freaky while she’s kicking ass in clothing that by most probably would be banned in public places.

Because, well, we do live in a society that says we need to avoid being raped, not one that says we shouldn’t rape.

So maybe I’ll have to take up the challenge and write me a comic book that does that.

Problem is, I can’t draw worth a damn, and who’s going to be a comic where the cover doesn’t show ample cleavage?

Well…

Published by tonidorsay on September 28th, 2011 - in Uncategorized

At this moment, after attending a meeting earlier this evening that has me elated and wanting to seriously get involved in the effort that the revision of this blog was originally intended for, I am kinda sorta stressing out.

Here’s the thing:  I have a job.  It is a critical, consuming, important job.  It is a job which I am committed to through, at present, July 15th of 2012.

It is, right now, the Dawn of October, 2011.  The Arizona State Redistricting commission has not released the new maps yet.

One of my worst fears, that someone I personally support is going to be running for congress that lives in the same district, is absolutely certain.  I’ve known that since April, as well.

And, due to a need to keep a house over the heads of people who need it, most of my waking hours are filled with the effort to raise funds and or secure funding for the company I work for.

To say that I am in a pickle is an understatement, as it means that a certain detractor who I really don’t want to give a chance to say I told ya so is going to get that chance.

For now.

So, I’m going to have to step away from running for Congress.  For now.  Instead, I’ll set my sights for 2014 for congress, and will probably run for State Legislator early next year.

However, if any of you want to run, then absolutely feel free to do so — I will do what I can to support that effort.  Which isn’t a lot — the job I have is as the ED of a 501(c)3 non profit organization.  Which precludes supporting political candidates openly or financially at this time.

So, yeah, *fuck*.

Now onto the good news.

Since I’m not running for federal office, I get to start blogging again.  Running for the state legislature actually is easier if I blog — I just can’t do certain things in the way that I’m, um, err, known to do them.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t have a lot of time to actually blog anymore.  Or at least, not tons of time. But I am willing to commit to this much: three times a week, I will make a posting.  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

It is, ultimately, the most I can manage right now.

I will note that I am not writing as Dyssonance here.  I am writing as me.  Just me.  Not the political me, not the “dyss” me, just me.

So some of you will get to see the difference there. Not that there is a lot, but I’m generally more inclined to be a tad more polite since we’re talking mixed company.

Can’t say if I’ll be all that couth — depends entirely on what some folks say, lol.

So, um, see ya Friday.

oh, and tell all yer friends, natch ;)

To begin again…

Published by tonidorsay on August 20th, 2011 - in Uncategorized

Howdy.  Getting right to the points…

Microsoft should buy HP’s PC business.  While the culture clash would be somewhat startling, the ability to gain control of the hardware basis would give them a firmer footprint, as well as provide them a large chunk of IP and consumer power while placing them in a position to compete in the current tech marketplace.

At least as I see things.  They likely won’t, however — I’m not certain Ballmer has the skillset or that MS can find the right people to head up that kind of unit, despite the apparent wisdom of such a move.  Plus, there is the historic difference twixt them and Apple.

But with Google buying Motorola Mobile and Apple having a strong and seemingly firm grip on new tech, it strikes me as the wisest move on their part.

Ah well. (more…)

The Other Kind Of Campaign

Political campaigns are, generally, pretty ugly affairs.  There’s going to be lots of dirt flung, mud hurled, and aspersions cast on everyone involved, and the winner is generally thought to be the person for whom the dirt is least thick and heavy.

In my case, I will not run this campaign by hurling mud or dirt.  I may ask a lot of questions, though.  Questions which to many people will seem fairly “silly”, as most often they will be the simple questions.

It has been my expereince, though, that the simple questions are the hardest for people to answer honestly.  That they are the questions that people have the greatest challenge trying to answer.

Also, in my case, I will state, beforehand, that anyone with the resources and desire can find plenty of dirt to hurl at me.  Piles and piles of it.

And the first bit of dirt they can hurl at me is that I am a transsexual.  Now, they probably won’t use that term.  They might call me gay or homosexual — neither is true, however.  They may say that I am transgender, or a drag quen, or a transvestite.  Again, all things that are not true, but a lot of people may see things differently since most folks literally don’t know much of anything about all those terms and what they mean to the people they are being used against.

There willbe some groups who immediately on seeing anything in the media that deals with me start calling me a man.  Which is rather laughable, all things considered.  These are people, however, for whom being laughed at is fairly common, so it willhave no impact on them.

I have no doubt that there will be some people who will say that I am a terrible person of all sorts — there will be intimations of danger to women and children (which is going to have to be dealt with), for example.  There will be a few columnists who really can’t stand the thought of me and will bring up the actions of other people in the past to disparage me.

Based ont hat past history, there are likely going to be people who distribute a flyer that says I’m a child molestor.  Usually a day or so before the primary elections.  Once I win those, they will do it again just before the general election.

There will be phrases like “shemale” and he/she and many, many others.

And I’m going to say let it happen.

There will likely be interviews with my family, or people who try and pry into their lives. And its possible some of my children will cooperate with such — they haven’t seen me in years, after all, and are not fondof the personthey remember.

Which doesn’t bother me all that much because I wasn’t fond of the person they remember.

Dirt on me is that I have a big mouth and say things that are just plain nasty at times.  I have a temper, and it comes out at times.

Pretty much, well, the same stuff that one can say about anyone.

I am an outsider.  This gives me a lot of special perspective that isn’t colored by certain expectations.  Yes, I am an activist, and yes I have done things to try and change laws to make things fairer for gay people and trans people.

But that, in and of itself, is not the focus of my campaign.

I have answers to the questions about health care and all the rest, but my focus and my primary concerns come down to four things.  Fiscal Prudence, which means being frugal and careful with what we spend, and ending the rampant use of government funds for things which serve primarily political ends. Effective Government, which is about making sure that there is little waste and duplication of efforts, as well as that the interests of all the people who are served by a representative are truly represented. Small business, which is not only the backbone of  America, but a stronger investment in our future than vast corporations that are “too big to fail”, and that can provide far more jobs than those corporations do if we stop trying to put them out of business. And, lastly, Personal Liberty, which is the ideals on which this country was founded.

Now, I am well aware that those are not the usual Democratic Candidate talking points. You’ll hear those as well, no doubt, but they will almost always fall under one of those four areas.  There is a fifth area, but that’s something I’ll wait to talk about until later.

As I run this campaign, not only will I share with you what I will do for you, but I will share with you the thoughts and experiences that I have in the process — something I will continue to do well into the future after I’m elected.  It is my goal to represent your interests in Congress, and that means I need to know what you think about these things.

We’ll talk about those concerns. Not what I think they should be, but rather what you tell me they really are.

 

Nope, Not yet.

Published by tonidorsay on May 13th, 2011 - in Uncategorized

Welcome to the site, though.

Getting there.  Will likely start in depth sometime around the 7th of June.

In the meantime, let’s see what I get up there.

This is a different kind of campaign. For a different kind of candidate.

 

© 2011 and later by Antonia E. D'orsay. All rights reserved.