Today, DC Comics told Wired that it will continue to expand the LGBT diversity of its superhero universe by introducing the first openly transgender character in a mainstream superhero comic.As a dude who came of age in the "Free Love!" 1970's, I have to say that its getting pretty hard to tell the players without a program. Here we have a guy, who's a chick, who likes to sleep with guys (because she's a chick), but also sleeps with chicks (because she's actually a guy?) Who lives with freakin' Batgirl, and the most important thing we all need to know about Batgirl is... she sleeps with chicks. Who sometimes used to be guys, I guess.
In Batgirl #19, on sale today in both print and digital formats, the character Alysia Yeoh will reveal that she is a transwoman in a conversation with her roommate, Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl). Taking care to distinguish Yeoh's sexual orientation from her gender identity, Batgirl writer Gail Simone noted that the character is also bisexual.
My question to DC Comics is: WHO CARES?!!! Is this genderbending freakishness what kids are looking for in a comic book these days? Comes the answer: No, but they SHOULD be!
Still, Simone believes that diversity isn't just a continuing issue for superhero comics: "It's the issue for superhero comics. Look, we have a problem most media don't have, which is that almost all the tentpoles we build our industry upon were created over a half century ago… at a time where the characters were almost without exception white, cis-gendered, straight, on and on. It's fine — it's great that people love those characters. But if we only build around them, then we look like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show for all eternity."Yeah! Because making a big deal about who sleeps with who and why and with what plumbing, in a KID'S COMIC BOOK, isn't sermonizing or pushing an agenda at all, is it? And neither is calling other people nassty names:
She added that she thinks most superhero comics readers don't have a problem with increased diversity, but rather with stories that promote sermonizing over storytelling. Alysia will be "a character, not a public service announcement … being trans is just part of her story. If someone loved her before, and doesn't love her after, well — that's a shame, but we can't let that kind of thinking keep comics in the 1950s forever."
But Batwoman's proposal also comes at a time when Batwoman publisher DC Comics is taking heat from comics fans for another LGBTQ issue: the hiring of noted homophobe Orson Scott Card as the writer of an upcoming Superman story. The decision to hire Card, who is on the board of the National Organization of Marriage (NOM), drew fire last week from LGBTQ rights supporters, who started a petition to have him dropped by DC, which has currently garnered nearly 14,000 online signatures thus far.
Get that? "Noted homophobe Orson Scott Card", who has the outrageous gall to suggest that marriage is supposed to be for one boy and one girl, is the hate filled frothing nutcase here who wants to damage America by forcing it to look like the Andy Griffith Show. Because the Andy Griffith Show depicts a hellish nightmare society where torture and rapine run rampant through the streets, and the starving denizens fight each other to the death over cans of pork and beans... oh wait... I don't remember that part.
Is anybody out there reading this dreck? DC is owned by Warner, and Warner isn't exactly burning up the stock market these last years, so I'm thinking no. Oh well, just keep on a couple more years selling this ridiculous trash, then they'll go broke and get sold to somebody with half a brain. Who will most likely FIRE the hell out of Ms. Gail Simone and all her little hipster compatriots.
Hey DC! Thing about rat holes? Rats live in 'em.
The Phantom Rat Annoyer.
5 comments:
The picture looks like something from Twilight with more fetish gear.
Speaking of homophobes, Vox Day has some good posts on ideology and science fiction, but all of his points apply to comics.
Hey WiFi. Yep, the Batgirl costume looks like a latex getup. Just what you want little girls to be looking at.
I read that piece at Vox Day. He's 100% right on. And I've observed the SciFi section at the book store getting smaller and smaller every year. Some places in the States they mix the SciFi with the Fantasy and it still only takes up four shelves.
In its infancy SciFi was full of balderdash and bombast. Re-read a Lensman or a Doc Sampson for a refresher on the sheer maniacal FORCE of the writing, everything is getting vaporized by petawatt laser cannon with emitters six feet across. If the thing won't die, get a bigger hammer!
And if you don't know what a friggin' petawatt is, you will by the end of the story.
I think there's a market for that, and Baen presently has that market damn near all to itself thanks to these PONCES in New York. I mean, would it kill Marvel to have Reed Richards or DC to have Superman or Batman explain the physics behind some of this stuff?
Instead we get Batgirl in latex bondagewear with the gay-tranny room mate. Why, because this is a -war- of two competeing ideologies, that's why. Their side has decided they aren't willing to put up with our side, so they're going to utterly destroy all the institutions and cultural referents of our side. Specifically science and marriage, in this case.
In my estimation its insufficient to merely boycott these assholes. We need to BEAT them in the only place it makes any difference: the market.
So maybe we should start posting some crappy-yet-deliciously-violent SciFi, Doc Savage meets the Lensman and together they eradicate the dangerous Collective. With big frickin' lasers six feet across.
We need to BEAT them in the only place it makes any difference: the market.
The comic books themselves have been loss-leaders for the movies and video game franchises since the first Raimi Spider Man movie.
If the next Batman reboot flops, it's over for DC.
Well, after watching Batman number two at the theater and being heartily skeeved out, they didn't make any money at all off me for number three. By all accounts I didn't miss a hell of a lot.
I'm looking forward to Iron Man 3. Stan Lee still has his hand in, and it'll be fun.
Well, you didn't miss much by missing episode three.
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