Monday, September 3rd, 2007

Time	Event
2:14a	... Old Devin Grayson interview: Fanzing: If you could write the "ultimate Nightwing Storyline" that would span the next ten years of his life and would be "The Law" at DC regarding Nightwing, how would it go? Who would he marry? Would he marry at all? What would his place in the Bat-mythos be? Devin: I wouldn't. I don't believe in "Law" for these characters. These characters are legends – they need to be available for and accessible to multiple generations. As my friends and editors will confirm, I have extremely strong feelings about who Dick is and what he's about and where he should end up, but I'm very aware that those are MY feelings about him, and that it's much more important to me that my little brother, now eight, grows up thinking that Nightwing's cool, too, than that I "get my way" with how the character is represented across the board. Different writers – let alone different eras – have slightly different takes on these characters, and that's as it should be. I write Nightwing one way and someone else – say, my much respected fellow freelancer Chuck Dixon, writes him in a slightly different manner, and the end result is what? Nightwing's ruined? No! It's that twice as many people have a version of him they can relate to and so twice as many people think he's cool! When approaching legends, readers should always have options. I think what happens in comics sometimes is a sort of impoverished desperation. The fans of The Titans, for example, are a lot hungrier, for lack of a better word, than fans of Batman – and with good reason. If you like Batman, you can hope you'll like what I do with Gotham Knights, but if you don't, it's no real skin off your back. You can find a Batman you like in one of several other Batman titles, in the animated series, in the movies, in the old television or radio programs…if, on the other hand, you're a big fan of the Titans, then you're all too aware that the series – this one single series with maybe occasional side projects – could suck, could be canceled, could be something you just don't like, and then you're pretty stuck – where do you go for Titans you can relate to? The answer is, you go back to the comics you love and wait for something more to your taste to come along, or you go to fan fic. It saddens me when fans aren't willing to invest their imaginations in these characters, when they write me to ask continuity questions for their fan fiction – which should be free of such constraints -- or feel their love of a character is soiled, that a character is "ruined," when any one of several writers puts down something they disagree with. Take these characters and run with them, they're yours! Dick Grayson is whoever you need him to be. Me, I may think you're totally, incomprehensibly, moronically wrong – the only bar fight I was ever in was over matters of Dick Grayson's honor, actually -- but who cares what I think, really? Would Bob Kane and Bill Finger even recognize Dick Grayson now? Were we wrong to ever veer from their vision? Isn't it better that that version lives and breathes, still, but that others have sprung up to enhance it? The point being, being narrow and reductionist about these characters is a luxury no pro can afford. I can answer every single question you just asked about Dick in a heartbeat – but I answer as a fan, not as a pro. As a professional, what's important is that I can cooperate with my fellow freelancers, that I can contribute to the popularity and accessibility of the character, and that I continue to passionately write the character as I know and love and believe him to be, while always encouraging others to do the same. Not to mention that this is serialized drama, and as such, you shouldn't expect endings, let alone happy endings. Interesting stance. (2 Comments | Comment on this)
2:53a	In which I am unaccountably vicious to a fellow Supergirl fan because she defended The Killing Joke (Edit #2, almost midnight, 4 September: There's a reason I titled the post that way. I was taking a slight dig at my own rantiness. I had the adjective phrase as "totally vicious," modified it to "harsh," & now am going with my first impulse of "unaccountably vicious" since that's what most of you comment on. But really, it's one bit in the whole thing! I was just sort of incoherently going over my dislike of Denny-edited Batman versus my like of Ostrander/Yale. (So if you're here for your dose of recreational outrage, the line is at the bottom. I have my apology here, & I expect a little bit of snark, if not full fury & lather, at that post as well.) This is chock full of spoilers, but they're for comics 16+ years old & mostly out of print. Go see what set me off: "In some ways, Babs had it easier." Done? OK. 1. Suffering of characters is often a legitimate & necessary part of storytelling. Fair enough. But what the story says about suffering matters. Alan Moore & his British ideological kinsmen take the perverse position that one just stands there & takes it. I suppose that's to be expected in a country where it's a crime to defend yourself from a robber. I think Paul Hogan was wrong about Americans having questionable sanity, being descended from adventurers. Most of the sane British stock apparently left those bloody dark islands long ago. (Hmmm, Neil Gaiman lives in the US now, does that mean he's becoming sane in our sunnier climate? Nah. It's just a shame the degenerate progeny of our ancestors' useless cousins are invading our shores now. And we foolishly fear the Mexicans!) OK, I'm kidding. I think it's mainly just British comic-book writers that embrace that trope. And American editors & fans, unfortunately. 2. But to say that Jim Gordon suffered more is total nonsense. They both went through traumatic experiences, & they both had a loved one go through a traumatic experience. But Babs was crippled. Oh, that's right, women don't need legs, right? That athleticism she was so proud of, well, she could "grow beyond that." It's an opportunity! How fully one must have had to internalize sexist literary tropes to think, "Jim suffered more." Shelly, I know this is out of the blue, but do you have daughters? Do you see them as a function of their father? 'Cos I just had this creepy feeling that you would defend your husband if he abused your daughter. 3. I read The Killing Joke when it was more or less new, as I recall. The characterization was...different, for a Batman story. Did Bruce & Barbara call each other by their first names before that? And we were supposed to sympathize with the Joker, somehow. I wonder how many people kept sympathizing with him even as he kidnapped, stripped naked, sexually abused, tortured--can I just fucking say raped!--Jim Gordon. Wertham was right about rape fantasies in comics. And the people who published this were part of the problem. (I liked Son of the Demon a lot better.) 4. On the other hand, I managed to put together a complete run of Ostrander & Yale's Suicide Squad, even though I only bought three (two?) issues before it was cancelled. Now that was, at times a nasty, bloodthirsty book, with other people's characters, their brainchildren, being killed off mercilessly, or (a few times) retconned into...strange & treasonous things. I'm not going to defend it as having a terribly constructive attitude toward shared continuing characters. But the women were not props. The main character was a woman. And DC's category-happy loose-leaf Who's Who called her "Supporting Cast," 'cos she dressed like a bureaucrat, not an acrobat, & they just didn't get it. Anyway, Suicide Squad was a monthly book, & some of the stories are clunkers. It had a body count, it could come off as sadistic, &--parts of it are heartbreaking. ( spoilers, technically ) 5. But here's the thing: The "adult" Batman novels of the late 1980's, except for Son of the Demon, were exercises in bringing in someone from outside, who had never written & would never write the regular series, to do a one-off Batman story. Maybe even a "what if." Alan Moore never had to take responsibility for the regular Batman series. Ostrander & Yale, whatever their faults, did. "Kill your darlings," Kim (or was it Bob Greenberger?) said, & they knew it was their own babies they were messing with. In time, I think they found a stride. At least my favorite Thuggee cult leader got more time to shine than some of the other characters did. Even the traitor had time to make the story work by getting the Squad, & us, to trust her. That's serial storytelling. ... Edit #1, (afternoon, 3 September): When I posted this last night, I started with the idea that I had a point. But fortunately I’m not in a debate, so I can let my position be overwhelmed by facts. Here’s a big fact: While I found The Killing Joke disturbing on first reading, I sort of accepted it as making a kind of storytelling sense at the time. I was just along for the ride. But years later, Ostrander & Yale, in a story in one of those Batman family anthologies, reframed the end of that story from Barbara's perspective, & that cemented for me that Bruce messed up. I'm not sure to what degree I'd already come to see leaving the Joker alive as a betrayal of Batman's "War on Crime" or of Barbara specifically. But I think I had already turned on Batman. And it’s Batman as a premise that suffers. ___ * I'm kidding. I think there were four up scenes. ;p (24 Comments | Comment on this)
3:57a	How Kanigher did a revamp. Comic staffers, take notes. Y'all're doin' it wrong. (Comment on this)

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