Dungeons and Dragons, "Celestial Warlock Mythos"

            LAST TIME, I wrote about the Celestial Warlock build that was introduced in “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”.  Not one word was spoken about the mechanics of the class, just that I heartily dislike it from a story standpoint.  To that end I issued myself a challenge, “Fix it”.

            To do this I have to first look at some inspirations in pop culture and mythology.  I need to find angels and other celestial beings that are on the side of GOOD, but are not necessarily nice, and certainly fit the flavor of the Warlock class, being a small participant in a pact with powers beyond one’s keen.

Fixing the Celestial Warlock

            Contrary to popular belief thru most of human history gods, even the good ones, were pretty fickle.  Most of this had to do with how people saw the natural world.  To pre-science humans the weather was a chaotic and cruel mistress who would level a town, flash a flood, or bake your crops to uselessness… unless you lived in ancient Egypt, the Nile provided such consistent crop output that they perceived of all but a handful of their 100+ gods as good guys.

            But, let’s make like Phillip II of France and ignore Egypt’s importance, instead let’s construct a vision of Celestial that is more akin to the terrifying but still “good” beings of the ancient world.

Book of Ezekiel

While Jesus was a rather chill guy, the Old Testament is full of visions of an incredibly powerful, unyielding, and TERRIFYING vision of YAWEH.  His angels are not just sexy people with wings but multi-dimensional lovecraftian horrors.

 

"WHAT EVEN!?"

“Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings.  Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man.  I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him.  Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

“This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.”

-Ezekiel 1, 25-28

“And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words.  Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions.  Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.  You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you.  Do not rebel like that rebellious people; open your mouth and eat what I give you.”

“Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me.  In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.”

-Ezekiel 2, 6-10

            The Warlock who is participating with this celestial force is not so much asked or bargained with, but dictated to.  “Do not be afraid,” is repeated multiple times.  The scope of this being’s goals are massive, the resettlement of entire nations, the creation of new testaments, the defense of nations, and the breaking of its Dark Adversaries like Dagon, Bal, Moloch, and Mammon.

While the mortal races are important to this being’s view of the universe, loved like children, there is a larger picture whose scope shatters the minds of mortals, a cosmic view whose fate hangs in the balance.  A “deal” handed down by a bring like YAWEH would see the Warlock only as useful as it was obedient and much like the mana from heaven in Exodus, not trusting absolutely in YAWEH will result in not only his favor revoking, but his wrath coming down like stone tablets soon after.

Nabu and the Helm of Doctor Fate

            The DC Universe (more so than Marvel) has a magical quality to it and invests its most powerful beings with the mystique of Magic.  One of the best examples is Nabu, a Lord of Order and the supernatural entity which empowers the Helm of Fate.

            While the exact nature of the Helm of Fate changes based on which continuity it takes place I think the best is in “Young Justice”.  In that continuity the Helm is NABU, when worn it suppresses the personality of the wearer and Doctor Fate becomes the dominate personality.

Multiple times Fate is bargained with before ultimately taking on a permanent wearer, as the spirit was tired of being relegated away, only to be called upon in the most dire of circumstances.  Striking a deal with Nabu is very much a core aspect of it, but like all magic it has a deep cost.

 

"Fate Must Take a Hand!"

The Wizard SHAZAM!

            Holding court in the Rock of Eternity, guarding the 7 deadly sins, and anointing champions to guard earth from supernatural threats the Wizard SHAZAM has seen champions fall to the dark side in eras past and has taken greater and greater care over the centuries to not see it happen again.

            To that end he searches for those pure enough at heart to restore the world to a truer state of good and right, rather than empowering those who would try to impose their own vision of true and right.  Captain Marvel has been one of his champions harnessing a variety of divine powers to save the world.

            SHAZAM is perhaps the closest to the idea of a benevolent celestial for the Warlock class.  That while he was once mortal, made mistakes, and is obviously functioning on another level, his motives appear to be on the level even if too many of the bad guys Captain Marvel fights are left overs from SHAZAM’s inability to keep a lid on supernatural evil.

 

"I ask too much."

The Spectre, Eclipso, and the Vengeance of God

            In the DC universe they wisely stay away from naming the Presence that serves as the supreme god of the whole shebang.  However, they do make its will felt thru the presence of various spirits and powerful beings.  The two that most fit the purpose of a Warlock-esc entity are Spectre and Eclipso.

            They are in effect two aspects of the same force, that of karmic punishment.  Eclipso represents a more primitive and brutal method of seeking vengeance which is why it was replaced by the Spectre, who is a Dante like dealer of ironic punishments, “What is justice without vengeance?... Simply a slap on the wrist, and an invitation for evil to continue… unabated.”

They may also bang occasionally.
I mean, they have a lot in common.

            The key difference in these beings has to do with how they are tied to Earth, via bonding with a mortal soul.  Eclipso possesses a living being whom it overrides.  Some can overpower the spirit, but they are usually powerful with magic.  Others can work in concert, but only if they are 9 kinds of ax-crazy.

Spectre in contrast bonds with a dead person but one that has the will and mindset to temper the Spectre’s wrath and keep it grounded, an excellent comic by J.M. Dematteis (JLA 1997 #35, Day of Judgement) illustrates how the Spectre’s wrath often makes it wish to strike at people because of what they MIGHT do.

The Guardians of the Universe

            Again, from DC comics one of the oldest and most powerful species of humanoid in the universe are the little blue gnome wizards that created the Green Lantern Corp.  Their selection process is based entirely around willpower (courage) and so leads too often to members being kind of tyrannical, but they do have some standards.  They even have an Oath.

In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil's might

Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!

 

"Can you dig it?"

            Follow the rules.  Fight evil.  And in exchange you will be trusted with tremendous power.  It is important to note that the Guardians are also a cause of many-MANY issues that are left floating around the universe, caused by their quests for knowledge and control of a universe they perceived as their bailiwick.

Vorlons

            I am talking about “Babylon 5” again.

The Vorlons are a race of ultra-powerful aliens that have been guiding the other intelligent races of the galaxy since the beginning of life.  They push for a system of unity (or at least live and let live) and via their powerful telepathy they can provide wisdom and insight to the other races.  They are also huge assholes, standing off to the side in times of crisis behind a condescending wall of riddles and mysterious acting.

            Touched by Vorlons, is a trope in fiction which is about as close to WARLOCK as it gets in science fiction (the Warlock class is referenced on the TVTropes page).  It refers to how telepaths in the series would get a tremendous boost from interacting with the aliens.  Turing them into agents of the Vorlon’s ultimate goals.

            Watch the show.  It is now on a free streaming service.

Bayonetta

            The mythology of this game is dense and strange.  Its presentation is pervy in that uniquely Japanese sense.  That being said the protagonist of the game is unquestionably a Warlock by the standards of Dungeons and Dragons.  Bayonetta is a witch who made deals with the devil to hunt angels who are absolute bastards in their own right.

"I'm doing it for the thrill."

            The angels in this series care about the extermination of the witches and they act as such, leaving way too many people dead and too much of reality twisted in pursuit of their goal.  Modifying these guys to be the sponsors of Warlocks in Dungeons and Dragons would make sense.  They are the sort of capricious power source the class is all about.

Darksiders

            This franchise is goofy as hell, but its over the top nature gives birth to another instance of, “I will blow up the universe to accomplish my goal of GOOD”.  As if I haven’t made it clear by now that is the factor I am looking for.

I consider Darksiders the least “deep” of these options for what I consider to be obvious reasons.  That being said, there is a lot of stuff laid out.

            This game has a whole list of beings that could make for fitting patrons for Warlocks.  The Charred Council being perhaps the best, but Samael fits for a demonic patron, and Abaddon works for a Celestial.  You could plum the depths of this game’s maddeningly over the top goulash of names drawn from obscure Christian Mythology for an entire pantheon of powerful beings in DnD.

 

"Ghost Riders in... The Sky!"

I Swear I Didn’t Mean for this to Happen

            I am going to have to make this a 3-part deal.  Looking over the list of pop culture things here I will whip together a list of Celestial Patrons for the Warlock class that I feel work better for the intended flavor of the class than the options presented in the core book.

            You might be asking, “uh… if you ran down all of these things here, why do I need to read the next entry?  Won’t it just be the rendered version of this?”

            To that I answer, I am going to try and put some more spins on the whole thing and add a few that aren’t in here, this was more a rundown of the IDEA, not a complete list.

Though I guess if you were satisfied with this feel free to stop.

It is your life.  Have Fun!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

            If you want to read more of my stuff talking about Dungeons and Dragons, click here.

            If you would like to see more of my Political side, click here.

            If you want to read a short story I cobbled together, click here and then here.

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DC Comics and "Wonder Woman: Earth One" part 2

            Yesterday, I gave some context as to why I was reading “Wonder Woman: Earth One”.  When and why “Wonder Woman: Earth One” was written, and today I am going to talk about who wrote it, who created Wonder Woman originally, and what I thought of the comic itself.

            If you want to get a broader perspective of what I think about Wonder Woman as a character in the grand scheme of things I wrote about the Justice League a while back and Wonder Woman got her own entry.  I also wrote another thing about her and Batman not too long ago.

This movie is gonna suuuuuuck!

A bit about the writer Grant Morrison: “I like almost everything he does”

            Let me give a brief introduction to Grant Morrison, whom I consider to be one of my favorite authors of graphic novels, and if I saw him branch out into other media (maybe by giving his blessing or taking a direct hand in an adaptation of his own work) then I would call him one of my favorite writers without qualification.

            I have read a lot of Grant’s work and have read a lot about his beliefs. I actually find a certain optimism in it that is deeply appealing.  The ideas of Flex Mentallo for instance, that some parallel universe of superheroes was destroyed by anti-life and the way they saved themselves was by living on as dreams in our universe.  That superheroes are “real” in a sense and our world is guided by their noble ideas via our dreams, and that heroism can shape reality.

Even seen somebody so buff they could bend reality?

            Or the metaphysics/metanarrative of comic books in "Final Crisis".  That the white spaces between comic panels is a sort of liquid time and that to control the white space would grant the villain control of the universe.  That Superman enters that time stream and it allows him to see in dimensions beyond the comic (he sees in 3-D) and reaches out toward the reader, sensing "A presence". The idea is that the act of reading causes time to move for characters in the DC universe and we the audience are gods/souls/animus to those characters.  That the story was told out of order, folding back on itself, because the villain was warping reality, and that warped the order in which the comic was read.

            Or how Arkham Asylum is a metaphor for Batman's broken mind and that the bad guys are all manifestations of his fevered imagination.

            Grant has a lot of dense themes.

            Morrison’s name is what drew me to “Wonder Woman: Earth One”.  I am a big fan of his work and not a fan of Wonder Woman.  Morrison himself has not been a fan of the character in the past, describing her as a strange mish-mash of different elements, which if you don’t know anything about Morrison that statement would be akin to hearing Donald Trump calling Vince McMahon a boisterous egomaniac.  Grant is not wrong in his assessment, but you are wondering what specific element is the tipping point that causes this particular person’s code of ethics to ring with disapproval.

Wonder Woman: “What in Hell was the creator thinking?”

            Wonder Woman is the warrior princes of the mythical island of Themyscira, ruled by her mother the stubborn but noble Queen Hippolyta.  Diana defies her mother’s wishes and joins a competition of strength and winning earns the title of Wonder Woman and takes on the role of ambassador to “Man’s World” and subsequently must use the divine powers granted by the Greek gods, her Amazonian warrior training, and magical technology to bring peace and freedom to the world.

            Wonder Woman was created by a polygamous man named William Moulton Marston who wanted to create for women a strong figure to serve as a counter point to the numerous male heroes that had cropped up in the genre.  He based Wonder Woman’s personality off his first wife, Elizabeth and Wonder Woman’s looks off his second wife, Olive.

            William also decided to throw in other elements of his life, Feminism being chief among them.  Utopian ideals based off of classical ideas of art and beauty.  William was the inventor of the polygraph, so he gave Wonder Woman a magic lasso that compelled people to tell the truth.  And, because he liked his kinks and thought they would help the book sell he threw in a lot of BDSM imagery and gave Wonder Woman the weakness that she had to obey anyone who bound her hands…. Morrison found Wonder Woman to be a collision of strange ideas and decided to explore all of that via Earth One.  It is a shame that the book kind of sucks.

I am not kidding.  If you google "Wonder Woman, Bondage" this kind of thing is everywhere.

Wonder Woman Earth One: “What Worked?”

            Let’s start with some things I liked.  I liked that the Amazonian culture was portrayed as being more complex than in previous iterations.  Too often they are portrayed as overly perfect and that (to me) takes away from their relatability.  Everyone having super powers, access to magical technology, and living in perpetual divine harmony sheltered from Earth and then blaming it all on men seems a bit… stupid.

            Humans are humans and any culture based on a warrior ideal will have drawbacks related to valuing competition and giving them aspects of arrogance.  Idealizing themselves and blaming on men any short comings they can see in our world via their myopic view is a smart way of portraying them as powerful and capable, but still flawed.

            Some might say that takes away from the feminist message of the story and setting, I disagree.  Feminism is about equality, not about women being perfect but for the interference of men.  What is more, the ideas of Feminism in the world/themes of Wonder Woman perhaps does not naturally gel with the feminism of today.  Themyscira (Wonder Woman’s home) is exclusive, based around conflict and domination, and in the context of even the oldest comics happens in reaction to a particularly vile man threatening their way of life.  Hash tag, “not all men” I suppose.

 

Call me crazy, but the best utopias tend to feel attainable, rather than impossible.

            The art is great, though there were some strange choices with the comic’s layout, frequently having only a few panels on a page and lots of dead space depicting bonds.  I suppose this is symbolic of the framing device of the story (more on that later) but it could have been done without making the pages so empty.  That lack of visuals has the side effect of making the story seem more “talking” rather than “doing” but that is also a side effect of the poor framing device for the story.

            I liked that they turned Steve Trevor into a black guy.  Giving him a racial component as to why he would not tell the government about the presence of the Amazons was a somewhat clever twist.  It also drives home the “not all men” aspect when he explains how his ancestors were exploited.

Wonder Woman Earth One: “What didn’t work for me?”

            The Framing of the story.  Rather than showing us the events of the story as they happen, that Diana (Wonder Woman) rescues Steve from Themyscira and returns him to “Man’s World” and then meets Etta Candy and is forced to return to answer for her violations of Amazonian Law… No, instead we are shown the trial of Wonder Woman and all of the events of the comic are told in flashback while magical truth is compelled from Diana and the witnesses.

            The panels I spoke about being overly spaced out come from this framing, the pages where the character is shown giving testimony show them standing surrounded by bonds of what are presumably truth.  It is a visual metaphor, but one that could have been done better in my mind.

            I dislike the lack of action.  Aside from one chase there isn’t a lot of warriors being warriors in this warrior-woman culture.  Things are dull and talk heavy.  I wouldn’t mind that either, but they tend to talk in an overly formal and declarative fashion (another aspect of Amazon culture which displays their arrogance) and that gets a bit boring to read.  Even the conversational dialogue of Etta Candy is dragged down because she talks near-exclusively about asinine nonsense.

 

Here is the thing, if the joke is, "I am saying the premise out loud" then there is no joke.  The story is just silly.

            Lastly, this is the origin story of not only Wonder Woman, but the story of her people’s self-imposed exile from Man’s World.  It involves rape and domination of the Amazonians by Hercules, mightiest of all men and his being overthrown by Queen Hippolyta who then left Man’s World forever.  This sets the ground work for a subversion of the traditional Wonder Woman origin story, and this was kind of beaten to the punch.

            Originally Wonder Woman was based on the Pygmalion myth.  Queen Hippolyta wanted a daughter and so she molded a baby from clay and the goddesses blessed the clay doll with life.  This clay child grew to be Wonder Woman.

            In the Justice League cartoon of the early 00’s, Wonder Woman was molded not just by Queen Hippolyta, but by Hades (god of the underworld) as well.  In the now dead “New 52” it was revealed she is actually the birth child of Queen Hippolyta and Zeus, changing the origin again.  On Earth One, Wonder Woman is the birth child of Queen Hippolyta… and the product of rape by Hercules.

            This is treated as a dramatic revelation, and had this comic come out in 1999 it would be.  That would be a big departure from the origin story that had existed for decades, and if it had come out then people would have lost their shit and Grant Morrison would never stop getting hate mail.  But, “Wonder Woman Earth One” didn’t come out in 1999, it came out in 2016.  The origin story has already been subverted multiple times.  So, this is kind of ‘meh’.

            Don’t get me wrong, the ‘meh’ is the revelation, not the rape.  Including that element (which had always been hovering in the background) as an explicit element in what motivated Queen Hippolyta and the Amazonians is a shift.  A bad one.  Maybe.

Again, rape and weird politics related to the idea have always been there.

            Truth is, the influence of elements such as rape in super hero comics can be a tone destroying, overly dark element, especially when it is not the focus of the series.  Making Wonder Woman a child of sexual assault whose mother lied to her about her origin and demonized the other gender because of this transgression (not just Hercules, but men in general) is iffy.  Hash tag, “Not all men”.

            So much so that I am just going to say that I dislike the revelation of rape in the origin.  I do not like how it was done in this story, and it actually feels like an out of character move for Morrison to include it because he has criticized the use of rape elsewhere in the industry.  If this revelation had happened in a Volume 2 or 3 of the series, it might have worked.  Here, the meta-narrative just doesn’t work.

In Conclusion

             I am apparently not alone in my feelings of disappointment.  The amazon (that is to say the website) reviews could boil down to, “Not Morrison’s best” and “A disappointment”.  That being said it is still not as bad as “Teen Titans: Earth One” and is really just another alternate world Wonder Woman, there have been plenty of those so it probably won’t be too ruinous to the character… At least, I thought that it would not hurt the character.

            Later this year a “Wonder Woman” movie is coming out in the DC cinematic universe.  I will ruffle no feathers in saying the trailer looks like shit and I am betting the movie will be awful even if it does make a bunch of money.  All that aside, I am going to make a prediction, Wonder Woman’s origin will involve rape, and the rapist/father will be the main villain of the movie, Ares the god of War.  It is going to suck, be a tonal blemish on the franchise, and it will almost certainly have some inspiration taken from this story as both Steve Trevor and Etta Candy are featured in the trailer.

            Maybe I will be wrong, but I doubt it.  PLACE YOUR BETS!

 

I hope this is the look they use for Ares.
The newer appearance looks too much like Bor from "Thor the Dark World".

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DC Comics and "Wonder Woman: Earth One", part 1

            I have recently been finishing out a degree, this has involved me taking an undergraduate course at my alma mater.  Often, as the drive to the school is pretty long, I will meander around the campus and into the library to kill some time before driving back home.  While there I was drawn to a hardcover collection of a comic series I knew of but had not yet read, “Wonder Woman: Earth One”.  It was kind of bad, and that is super disappointing.

            This thing went super long discussing the background to all of this that I didn’t even get into talking about the book until I had written 1800 words, so I decided to split this in two, and it is an unclean cut mostly done so that each part is easier on the reader.  Hopefully this is entertaining/informative.

Some Backstory: For Which I Cannot Cite Anything

            At the turn of the millennium, nearly 20 years ago now… I feel old… nearly 20 years ago Marvel comics created the “Ultimate” line of comics.  It was a fresh modern take on their classic characters to make things more accessible to new readers.  Spiderman was back in high school, the X-Men were late teens and early twenties, and everything had a more cynical tone informed by the decades of superhero comics that had preceded them to draw on some of the strongest elements and stories but writing them with an eye toward being more long form, taking 6 issues to tell a story rather than the traditional 1 or 2.

This is promo art from the "Ultimatum" event that was written by Jeph Loeb.
This is the event that started the slow death of the whole universe.

            The Ultimate line was a huge success and after a little over 15 years the line grew into its own massive continuity, and was nearly murdered by bad writing at several points (I have mostly forgiven Jeph Loeb for his part in it).  I have a real soft spot for all the Ultimate line, I felt that having a universe that was freer to explore new ideas with old story ideas led to some creative stuff.  The dialogue was punchy, the action was exciting, and the fresh takes worked.  Marvel, the House of Ideas, had proven they could be the House of Fresh Spins.

            DC smelled money.

Creative Crisis: “Let’s just blow the whole thing up”

            Typically, when DC thinks that their universe needs a fresh take they just blow up the whole universe and call “REDO!”  Most famously this was done with “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, a bloated mess of a book that existed to fulfill a mandate but is so unfocused and loaded down with cameos, minutia, and bombast I consider it nearly unreadable by modern standards.

This headache inducing image could be considered an adequate summation of the event.

            20 years after that universe explosion DC did it again with Final Crisis (kind of, the reboot was delayed till another event called “Flashpoint”).  “Final Crisis” was written by a literal wizard, Grant Morrison.  Remember that name, he will come back.

            Unfortunately, DC screwed the pooch on the whole thing and we ended up with the “New 52” which I consider a creative wasteland.  This “New 52” took previously interesting ideas and striped them down so far that they just didn’t work, and paradoxically it kept both too much and too little of the old continuity to be a fresh start.

            DC had previously been the book of legacies.  That the universe had a long history that is respected and revered.  In DC, there had been Flashes, Green Lanterns, and Hawkmen all the way back to WWII.  There was appeal to seeing those classic characters and concepts juxtaposed by Robin, Superboy, and Wonder Girl.  The contrast of young and old heroes showed how the idea of heroism had evolved over the decades and that old costumes could be looked at as cheesy and fun, but also as the source/inspiration of the modern stuff.

            In the “New 52” almost all of this legacy had washed away.  DC had forgotten what their fans (and people in general) wanted from them, a sense of longevity.  Superman is classic.  Batman is classic.  Wonder Woman is classic.  DC should have stuck to their original plan, which was to go classic.

This is a video about the death of the "New 52" made by Linkara. 

He is a well known comic reviewer.

The All-Star Line: “Please, stop letting Frank Miller do stuff”

            Before “Final Crisis” there was the All-Star Line, non-canon stories of the biggest characters in DC’s stable, written by the best/notorious writer’s in DC’s offices, drawn by the best artists in their art-jails (I assume all artists are kept chained or caged since the Image incident of the 90’s).  These were “All-Star” titles.  The line had one success and was then immediately killed by abject stupidity.

            The first book out of the gate was “All-Star Superman” which is in my all-time top 5 for comics.  It is a 12-issue series drawn by Frank Quitely written by Grant Morrison (Hey, there is that name again, he will show up again though, so keep looking out).  It is an absolute classic.

            Superman engages in his last heroic deeds for the ages, battling time eating monsters, answering the unanswerable question, and defeating the Tyrant Sun.  It is written in a style that showcases everything that is strange, fantastical, and sweet about Superman and by the end it drew a tear from my eye and the thought, “You did it Superman, you saved everybody.”

This image does a lot to sum up the tone of the work.

            This triumph of storytelling was followed up by “All-Star Batman and Robin” which is an unmitigated piece of shit.  Confusing, over written, misogynistic, dumb, repetitive, dumb, mean spirited, vile garbage.  It was written by Frank Miller, a man who produced some classic Batman stories in the brief window of sanity he experienced in the 80’s and has been riding that success ever since.

            Frank has subsequently written “Holy Terror”, a racist fan fiction piece that was considered such hot garbage that DC wouldn’t let the damn thing star Batman as Frank had originally intended and had to sand the identifying signifiers off of it.   “Holy Terror” could be considered the worst thing Frank ever wrote, but the thing is, “Holy Terror” is complete, “All-Star Batman and Robin” has yet to be finished, and if it is ever finished I will apologize to Frank Miller for thinking that he couldn’t bring himself the last muscle clench to force the final issues out of his ass.

Did I mention the misogyny?

            DC had plans for All-Star Supergirl, All-Star Batgirl, and All-Star Wonder Woman.  NOPE!  The whole line was shit canned as a failed experiment… Till kind of recently.

Welcome to Earth One: “Let’s give this a shot, nothing else is working”

            When it came to the attention of DC that the “New 52” was not really working, probably about the time they had canceled 52 titles (all had been replaced to keep the line 52 titles deep)  DC started flailing.  Killing as many books as you had launched with (I think) prompted them to do something kind of desperate.  They were going to do an All-Star product line and just call it something else.

            Welcome to “Earth One,” a series of stories written by prominent writers with gifted artists focusing on the most popular of properties.  They were set to do a very Ultimate-ish rendition of the DC line-up.

            Superman now has 3 volumes down written by JMS, creator of “Babylon 5” and writer in nearly every medium at this point.  I like his stuff.  He gave Superman a fresh new villain, a perspective on the world only Superman could have (when you can do anything what do you choose to do), and reintroduced the crystal look of Krypton in such a way that I actually liked the visual (usually I don’t, preferring the Kirby inspired Zeerust designs of Bruce Timm in the 90’s).

            Batman got a run by Geoff Johns, who I think of as our universe’s version of the DC character Chronos because he keeps undoing and re-writing continuity to suit his own fanboy vision of the DC universe.  All that aside, Geoff’s Batman book was a great fresh take on the character, with fun mythology construction, a new villain, and a dark take on Alfred of all people.

            The Teen Titans got Jeff Lemire, a writer I had never heard of, and judging by this book I don’t think I would like any of his stuff.  I didn’t care for the art either which is odd because Terry Dodson does good work.  The story was kind of shit.  The world felt claustrophobic as all hell.  The characters got their abilities from a single source rather than the diverse plethora of origin stories they had before (writing tip, that I covered with my multi-part discussion of the Justice League so long ago, when you make a team you want each character to bring in something new from their own little corner of the world, when everyone has the same origin it makes the world smaller and harder to expand on).

            And then came Wonder Woman.  They gave her to Grant Morrison (There he is again)…

Next Time

            I will review the actual “Wonder Woman: Earth One” comic instead of just giving context for why it exists.

            There will also be more context.

To say one thing, they stayed true to all the bondage subtext.

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"Worst Disney Songs" and "Racism!"

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.
(For some reason the formatting is being a jerk, and I can't get everything centered)

            Today is day 12 and the topic is “Worst Song”.

There are really only two possible contenders for this crown made of thorny twigs held together with poo.  And really, it is because Disney is such a venerable institution that they have a metric ton of OLD SHAME hanging around tainting their legacy as an American icon.  Family entertainment used to be kind of racist on multiple levels, and these two songs are racist on the most obvious level.

Is it fair to judge modern Disney by the actions of their company at a time when social norms were different?  No, and I am not judging modern Disney, I am judging them as a whole.  Looking at weaknesses in their legacy makes sense, and shouldn’t be held against the modern company who is obviously not too appreciative of this stuff.  Both of these tunes keep appearing at or near the bottom of every “Best/Favorite Disney Songs” list on the internet to no objection and nobody at the company seems to be lionizing them.  All that being said, let’s look at these things.

You know how white people are the default race?  Like how everyone used to be white till some folkloric BS turned them into their current race?  Some people actually think this stuff—which is fucked up when you hear some people claim that black people are the descendants of Cain, the Bible’s first murderer, cause Adam and Eve were not only literally real, but also definitely white according to these people—yeesh!  So what race is just discolored white people according to an old Disney movie?  “What Makes the Red Man Red” from “Peter Pan”.

What is sad is that this song happens in an otherwise good movie.  Peter Pan is an energetic figure who embodies a fun idea of never having to grow up and just having adventures forever with one’s friends.  The adventures have pirates, Indians, mermaids, hidden forts, and FLYING!  The movie even has subtle stuff like how Captain Hook and Wendy’s father have the same voice actor.  “Peter Pan” also introduced Tinkerbell, the—I going to say first—in a long line of strange pop culture sex symbols; a tiny mercurial-backstabbing-jealous-insecure pixie obsessed with a 10-year-old boy; Harley Quinn was not the first unhealthy animated fixation.

Maybe I am reading too much into a woman in a short skirt standing on a mirror floor.
There is nothing sexually suggestive about that right?

So what is the other song? This one is less obvious for reasons.  Rather than having minority characters they have animals that embody racial stereotypes singing about how they are a particular ethnicity.  You know, cause using animals to embody de-humanizing stereotypes is okay!  No, not really.  Not when you explicitly point out the ethnicity as the source of the stereotypes, if anything it makes them worse.  This sort of racial coding is what was wisely avoided in “Zootopia”.

The song is “We are Siamese (If you Please)” from “Lady and the Tramp”, a movie that many people probably would have forgotten existed if not for the iconic image of eating spaghetti leading into a kiss.  Overall this is less racist, as it is just buck toothed, slant eyed, and devious cats introduced with the sound of a gong…. I guess that is—strictly speaking—less racist than “What makes the Red Man Red”.

But here is the thing, it is a worse “song” from a musical perspective as it has no energy.  Slinking background music taken from some stereotypical Asian den of inequity of the era, and insidious back and forth rhyming by two characters who—I am guessing—are only two characters so they could get the rhyme of saying “we” at the beginning of the tune.  I would even say that their interchangeability could be seen as another Asian stereotype.

So which of these two is the worst song?  Do I have to choose?  In addition to being awful by the standards of subject matter they sound like crap!  They have no redeeming features and serve only as mill stones strung around the necks of their respective films.  Neither really tie into anything, they are not about or by substantive characters, they just show up, make female leads of their respective movies miserable, and then bug off.

If I had to pick one, I am going with “What makes the Red Man Red” because it uses human characters the stereotyping and racism is less masked and thus worse.  It is a close call.

If I had any memory of "The Aristocats" I might have spent some time on whatever the hell this is.

Bonus Topic: Racial Stereotypes

            I have talked about perceived racism in movies before but there is an aspect I haven’t talked about until here, the idea of racially charged stereotypes and characters.  The two above examples came from an era in which they were common and seen as part of comedy, laugh at the minorities by exaggerating traits or pointing to those traits as somehow “wrong” or “distorted”.

            What about stuff from the modern day?

            Recently the TV shows of “Supergirl”, “Legends of Tomorrow”, “Flash”, and “Arrow” had a mega-crossover.  An alien menace was threatening all for shows with complete domination.  These aliens were called… The Dominators… Not the most creative thing, but aptly titled.  Why am I bringing up a CW/WB owned and operated property here?  Because the Dominators look like this in the comics.

Can you see the issue people might be having?
I mean, they're not cats singing about their Asian origins, but you can see what people might have issue with.

            They are based on—if you couldn’t tell—lots of traditionally racist Asian stereotypes.  So you might think I would be among the first to say, “having these things as the bad guys in the modern world is racist.”  You’d be wrong.

            The Dominators are aliens.  The yellow skin, yellow in the sense of yellow not in the sense of Asian; the huge teeth, huge in the sense of menacing fangs rather than goofy buck teeth; long fingers, in the sense of monstrous claws rather than portraying an Asian person as sub textually a manipulator; and the other exaggerated traits are all dehumanizing.  When taken together they do look like an old time racist cartoon of an Asian person, but the story makes no comparison between those aliens and Asian people.

Though it would help if there were more Asian cast members on the good guy team.
Or if there were more Asian roles in superhero stuff at all.

            Generally speaking, those old cartoons were about Asians and drawing them with these features was to dehumanize them, to make them alien, because these features of claws, teeth, and jaundiced skin were creepy.  You could take anyone of those features and it would make for an alien race in Star Trek or Star Wars, because they are alien, and those alien features are weird.  They are not scary because we associate them with Asian people, real Asian people don’t look like that.  Those traits are scary because they are alien.

            By saying that these traits are inherently racist you are missing the forest for the trees.  The reason the traits are racist is because they were used as racist tools, there is nothing inherently racist about the traits themselves.

            Now you could say that putting all the traits together is evoking the image of the racist caricature, that it draws on a vague cultural awareness of that image to make it scarier.  I don’t think so.  Aside from Fu Manchu there are not a lot of Asian stereotypes still floating around that look like this.

Let’s look at another example of these things with a Marvel property, the Mandarin, who in the comics is this sort of racial pastiche.  Even the Mandarin’s live action presentation in “Iron Man 3” was rightly deconstructed and mocked as a racist idea created to scare people.  The Mandarin is evoking stereotypes and breaking them, the Dominators I would argue are not even evoking stereotypes, they are using the exaggerated features of a stereotype because those features make for a good alien.

THOUGH!  These guys came to predominance in the 80's a time when fear of Japanese economic world domination was reaching a fever pitch, and they do have a bit of Japanese flag on their face.  So maybe I am giving too much credit to the creators when I assume they aren't racist.

            Boy did this turn into a completely different blog than what was intended.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry.

            Feel free to comment about how racism in pop culture is not a big deal, or how I am racist for excusing the use of discredited tropes being used as such.  Whatever.

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Batman, Wonder Woman, and Identity Politics

I thought about this a while back when people were complaining about the casting of Scarlett Johansson as a traditionally Japanese character in the upcoming "Ghost in the Shell" movie and flashing back to Idris Elba being cast as Heimdall in "Thor".

That the Norse gods should be a definitively thought of as a white group of characters, seeing as the Vikings were in fact white.  This argument ignores that the Vikings also traveled the world as sailors and discovered many different races and could have acknowledged this diversity in their myths.  This also ignores the fact that the myths were collected 200 years after they stopped being actively practiced, this collecting was done by a white person in a predominantly white world and... the "races" of the gods become a little more fluid as the original iconography of Vikings in the pre-Christian academic world is not very clear.

Heindall as he might have once been perceived.

And as the fictional character is now perceived.

I would also see online people asking, "What about a white/Caucasian Luke Cage? Or Black Panther?" saying that you could color blind cast in both directions.  Ignoring for a second that taking one of the few recognizable minority characters and casting them with a white actor is in no way equivalent to casting a minority into one of the many-many roles that has been traditionally considered white, my response was that being black is a big part of those character's identities.

Luke Cage is blacker than the ace of clubs and Black Panther was designed to be a distinctly Black character, with a mythology that is all about being a mysterious and powerful head of an African nation that itself is cloaked in mystery.  Most (if not all) white heroes of the Gold and Silver Ages of comics are white because that was the default at the time they were created.  The books were marketed to white children and teens and the characters were white "role models".  Race as it informs or relates to their characters is nil and the number of times the subject is approached it is very lightly touched and then moved away from (mostly because of an industry wide “mums the word” policy of not discussing social issues).

So I asked myself what character would be the definitive WHITE character because you could easily see how their position in their world is informed by and tied to their being white.

Mr. Sunshine and Happy Times himself.

It's Batman.

Bruce Wayne is old money New England elite.  His family has a crest, they have an estate, and they have been part of Gotham (New York) high society for decades or centuries and can trace themselves back further.  The KNIGHT part of Dark Knight seems to very much infer the idea of old time very wealthy royalty using their money and means to protect the people of their Barony/County/Kingdom.  Bruce is the Prince of Gotham and Batman is his suit of armor both literally and figuratively.

Now other cultures have crests and shields.  They have totems that can be utilized to strike fear into the hearts of their foes.  They have family lines... BUT! We live in a culture in which the idea of a wealthy landed elite family THAT WAS BLACK did not, and still for the most part does not exist.  If Thomas and Martha Wayne were seen as upper crust high society people descended from well to do old money and they managed to navigate the racial politics of their day to plant Bruce as the wealthy playboy and Inquirer target… well, that just doesn’t exist in Americana.  It would ring false to the audience.  So, with that in mind, Batman is very "white".

In fact, we already know what you would have to alter and tweak to make a black Batman work, I have already mentioned him.  Black Panther is basically Black Batman.  The totem, the royal trappings, the legacy of wealth, and being the best as a service to one’s city/nation.  Also the reliance on gadgets and martial arts but also having frequent elements of mysticism present in the background.  That is how you would have to change the character to make the premise work, by so fundamentally changing the setting that the idea of changing the race becomes a non-issue.

"I don't see the resemblance." -Moron.

Superman could be any race (you can tell because they have made 10,000 knock-offs of the character and many of them are of different skin tones).  Martian Man Hunter frequently is multiple races and different authors have expressed the Martian race as being gender fluid as well, because of their shapeshifting (and I personally see that as the better interpretation, that when “he” refers to his “wife” who died on Mars, “he” is using terminology that makes the most sense to those “he” is talking to).

Wonder Woman, Flash, the various Green Lanterns (though they really need more women from earth to be considered diverse to audiences), and nearly everyone else on the Justice League could be a different race. Mr. Terrific was a white guy in the Golden Age of comics and Michael Holt, the character that carries the mantel now is a black guy (and atheist which is its own sort of minority in the Comics industry).

The NEXT person to hold a particular mantel (including that of Batman) could be any race without question, and many characters do have minority characters taking on the role of following the legacy of a character (Rhodes served as Iron Man, Sam Wilson is currently a Captain America, Miles Morales is a Spider-Man… Notice how much of this is taking place under the MARVEL header?  They are better at this).  BUT, Bruce Wayne-Batman makes the most sense in the context of Americana as a White person.

Let me take this a step further with discussion of another character that I imagine people would insist is “white” or “Mediterranean” depending on how particular you are of ethnic and racial identity.  You know, Wonder Woman really doesn't have to be Greek.

I think I might be the only person who thinks that the trailer to her upcoming movie looks awful too.

Like the Vikings, the Greeks were sea fairing and were aware of lots of races and cultures outside of their own. They would have seen black people.

The idea that Wonder Woman’s homeland of Themyscira is some extra dimensional utopia that is nothing but white women is also really fucking racist.  Like on its face.  Writing tip, if you ever make a Utopian society in fiction and go out of your way to point out that everybody is the same racial group, it is explicitly racist.  Having Themyscira be a multi-ethnic/racial matriarchal utopia that follows the principles and religious guidance of a very modern interpretation of the Greek Gods... not racist.  It is still SEXIST, no question there, but that is kind of the whole point/conflict of the character of Wonder Woman when she acts as a liaison between Themyscira and Earth.

I would also draw comparisons to Asgard and Marvel’s mythical Asian city of K'un-L'un (a popular destination for the superhero Iron Fist).  Certain earth cultures saw advanced and mythical civilizations and chose to emulate them creating the distorted myths that we know today in our world.  So, rather than the Marvel comics being inspired by the myths and everyone in real life bitching about how the comics and movies do not follow the myths, instead the myths were inspired by the Marvel civilization.  In that case Wonder Woman, Thor, or any other mythical figure could look however the comic artist wanted to draw them (African, Chinese, Hindi, Samoan, or European) and the "real" myths and history could be seen as the white washed versions.

Essentially in the DC universe Greek civilization emulated the Amazons (who are actually very diverse and “wise” … though still somewhat big into misandry) rather than the Amazons following and emulating Greek society. When the Greeks copied the history and myths of the Amazons they just made everyone Greek, and made Hercules the good guy of the story and played up the "masculinity = Good" angle (in the Wonder Woman comics Hercules was a villain).  You could even see this as a form of… It is white washing, but it is also male-ifying things… Penis-Washing?

Not to mention all the typical weird stuff going on in comics from the era of her creation that got thrown in right along side the strange sexual imagery.

This sort of Greek re-writing of Amazon myth would explain the disdain Themyscira has for Earth, and why the Amazons did not interact with "Man World" for thousands of years.  The Amazons did not like being taken out of their own stories and having their worldview coopted and corrupted to a Patriarchal and Misogynistic Greek culture which saw women as inferior.

“Women are the weaker sex… being born a woman is a divine punishment, since a woman is halfway between a man and an animal.” -Socrates

“The Male is by Nature superior and the female inferior and one rules and the other is ruled… This inequality is permanent because the woman’s deliberative faculty is without authority, like a child’s.” -Aristotle

Nothing going on here.

            It is easy to see how the Amazons might have interacted with Ancient Greece, taught them some things about the gods, art, and their history, and then left because they saw it getting appropriated.

            Of course this is all the diegetic explanation of things.  All of this is fiction.  Made by people to sell books and toys to children.  Batman was not made to push an Alt-Right dream of a world protected by its white betters, but I would point out that Wonder Woman was specifically designed to be a female icon in the genre and is rife with text of female empowerment, and subtext of bondage and sexual politics.

All of this is up to the authors and readers to decide what they want.  But the idea that a fictional character must be a certain way should be looked at in the context of what that character is and where they exist in their world.  Whether race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or politics makes sense for that character should inform and be informed by who and what the character is.  Otherwise it is all just weird.

There is a great big multiverse out there, waiting to grow with weirdness though.  So whose to stop us?

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.