Category: Comic Book

[Stitch Likes Stuff] Batman: Wayne Family Adventures

Stitch2 Comments

If you’ve seen me gush over Lezhin’s Painter of the Night, you’ll remember that I actually love webcomics. And as you all know, I fucking love DC Comics… especially the Batfamily. This latest comic – by artist StarBite and writer CRC Payne – taps into a lot of the slice-of-life content that the Batfandom I grew up with flat out adored.

I read the first six episodes (paying for the last three on Fast Pass) and I loved every moment of it. For the most part, this blends canon personalities/visuals with headcanons from fandom – one noted difference is that Duke is explicitly part of the Batfamily… something that modern (more modern?) fandoms still struggles to accept. It’s a very cute comic in the webcomic tradition, simple one-shot, family-oriented comics that reminds us that Batman doesn’t have sidekicks… he’s part of a whole Batfamily.

The characterization is largely solid (the fandom influence is obvious though) and it’s definitely far away from the way many of the dudes working on Batman across the decades have handled the Batfamily as a unit. I’m not necessarily concerned about the coloring, but Damian Wayne being relatively dark skinned is largely a fandom thing and if Talia and Ra’s aren’t dark skinned themselves, I will have questions. I loved having Cass and Stephanie back in the Batfamily in a way that’s super hard to ignore. I know they’re in the comics as of late, but it’s still super hard for me to get back into the comics I used to love… so I’ve been sticking to the outskirts of all of that… but this makes me want to try again to get back into the DC game.

Anyway, if you’re interested in checking out the comics for yourself, the first three episodes of the webtoon are up on well… Webtoon. And I’m interested in hearing your thoughts even if they’re critical!

Batman: Wayne Family Adventures

Queer-Coding, Bad-Bat-Takes, And Why The Joker Isn’t That Important to Batman

Stitch4 Comments

Content Warning for stereotypes built from homophobia and transmisogyny that are present in the Joker’s portrayal across the years.

joker post header
The art in this header is Alex Ross’s 2015 piece “Mind if I Cut In“

“In some ways, the Joker is a dark reflection of who Batman is. The loss of Bruce Wayne’s parents could’ve driven him to that edge, to where he could’ve become the Joker himself. But instead, he fought against that. Batman’s trying to bring order to the world. The Joker’s trying to bring chaos to the world.”

—–Dan Didio, Superheroes Decoded, Part One: “American Legends”

If the word “camp” is applied at all to the eighties Batman, it is a label for the Joker. This sly displacement is the cleverest method yet devised of preserving Bat-heterosexuality. The play that the texts regularly make with the concept of Batman and the Joker as mirror images now takes a new twist. The Joker is Batman’s “bad twin,” and part of that badness is, increasingly, an implied homosexuality.

—–Andy Medhurst, “Batman, Deviance, and Camp”

Despite what many comic book writers, editors, and some comic historians currently, the idea that the Joker serves as Batman’s darker “other half” is one that hinges on incredibly modern interpretations on the character that go hand in hand with ham-fisted attempts to squash them into these roles.

It’s also, not very accurate.

Didio’s comments in the first half of Superheroes Decoded are, at this point, the party line. They’re part of this attempt to reframe the Joker as necessary to the Batman’s mythos to the point where neither character can survive without the other, framing them as codependent and lost without one another. While I can see some validity in that statement where the Joker is concerned, I don’t see the point in making heroes that can’t exist without that one villain to torment them.

I especially don’t see the point in making Batman one of those heroes.Read More »

Wonder Woman:Earth One – Volume 2  – Somehow Worse Than The First

Stitch4 Comments

Note: This review contains descriptions and images of things from this book that include (but are not limited to): Nazis, sexual assault, the whole MRA and negging plots Morrison writes and Paquette illustrates, and all the misogyny that really has no place in a Wonder Woman Book

WWEO - Credits Page

If you thought that two years would lead Wonder Woman: Earth One creators Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette to figure out that maybe their approach to a reimagined version of Wonder Woman in the previous volume wasn’t acceptable and was in fact frankly misogynistic, well… you’d be wrong.

I talked about all of the issues in the previous volume two years ago (including a comment where I described Paquette as having a “Greg Land-esque art style, incredibly sexualized”), but there’s literally no sign of growth or an awareness of what feminism actually is in the second volume of DC’s Wonder Woman: Earth One series.Read More »

Dear Comic Fans, Guess What: You’re Still Not Handling Racebending and Diverse Casting Very Well!

Stitch1 Comment

Dear Comic Fans - 2017

We did this in 2015.

And in 2016.

Now it’s 2017 and I’ve got at least four different posts on racebending under my belt because nerds still don’t know how to behave.

This is an ongoing project looking at the continuing state of fandom’s reaction to  racebending following my first piece on how badly comic fans respond to racebending in the works that they love and three years in,  people are still cutting up about racebending while claiming not to be racist.

They’re not racist, they claim in comment sections across the internet, but the idea of Black women being cast as aliens, goddesses, and the iconic love interest of the Fastest Man Alive, still sends them into literal conniptions. They assume that racebending is Social Justice Gone Wild, not the best actor/actress being chosen for the role. At multiple points, I’ve seen them claim that white redheads are being erased from popular culture.

Of course, these same people screaming about authenticity and sticking to the source material stay silent in the face of whitewashing (as in the case of Deadpool actor Ed Skrein initially being tapped to play a Japanese character in the upcoming Hellboy remake).Read More »

[Book Review] Miles Morales – A Spider-Man Novel

Stitch1 Comment

Miles Morales Cover

Title: Miles Morales: A Spider-Man Novel
Author: Jason Reynolds (Twitter)
Rating: Super Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Superheroes, Slice of Life, Spider-Man, Young Adult, Race and Representation
Release Date: August 1, 2017

Publisher:  Marvel Press/Disney Hyperion

Order Here: AMAZON (KINDLE)  | AMAZON (HARDCOVER) | BARNES AND NOBLE

Note: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review and that’s what you’re getting.

SYNOPSIS

“Everyone gets mad at hustlers, especially if you’re on the victim side of the hustle. And Miles knew hustling was in his veins.”

Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He’s even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he’s Spider Man.

But lately, Miles’s spidey-sense has been on the fritz. When a misunderstanding leads to his suspension from school, Miles begins to question his abilities. After all, his dad and uncle were Brooklyn jack-boys with criminal records. Maybe kids like Miles aren’t meant to be superheroes. Maybe Miles should take his dad’s advice and focus on saving himself.

As Miles tries to get his school life back on track, he can’t shake the vivid nightmares that continue to haunt him. Nor can he avoid the relentless buzz of his spidey-sense every day in history class, amidst his teacher’s lectures on the historical “benefits” of slavery and the importance of the modern-day prison system. But after his scholarship is threatened, Miles uncovers a chilling plot, one that puts his friends, his neighborhood, and himself at risk.

It’s time for Miles to suit up.

REVIEW

Jason Reynolds’s Miles Morales: A Spider-Man Novel is the kind of Miles Morales content that I’ve been craving since the second Brian Michael Bendis had Miles straight up not get that him being “the Black Spider-Man” was significant representation for kids.

Reynolds’ novel portrays a version of Miles that fans of the character (and some of his lingering detractors) need to be reading. It is, easily, a portrayal of Miles that is more honest and authentic than any we’ve seen so far. Reynolds’ imbues the novel (and Miles’s life) with details about his day to day life at home and in school, giving us a look at Miles’s life that we so far really haven’t seen in the comics themselves.

What’s fantastic about Miles Morales, is that this is a novel where we really get to know not just Miles, but the people around him. When Spider-Man Homecoming came out, everyone was beyond pleased with the fact that we had more time with Peter and his friends and in his neighborhood than ever before.

We got to know the kid under the mask.

That’s what Jason Reynolds does for Miles.Read More »

Totally Anecdotal: Stitch’s Brush With Racism in Education

Stitch1 Comment

I wanted to start my review of Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales: A Spider-Man Novel with a slightly relevant anecdote on an experience I had as a teenager.

As an adult that was once a Black kid in the US education system (in Florida, natch), one racist teacher can make your school life a living hell even if they’re not part of a creepy (but absolutely plausible) plot to disenfranchise and subjugate Black people. So I wanted to talk about that.

But this got long and no one wants to read this sort of thing literally on top of a review so…

Separate post!

border

Ten years ago I was a senior in a mediocre charter high school. I was sixteen and had just skipped a grade (taking 11th/12th grade English at the same time) so that I could graduate early. Up until this point, all of my teachers were aware that I had “Bored Genius Syndrome” and that if they didn’t keep me engaged in the school work, something else would.

So they kept me busy.Read More »

“What if a white guy played Black Panther?”: The Fake Concern of Fake Geek Guys

Stitch3 Comments

racebending mike.jpg

Whenever I talk about racebending as a concept when it comes to comics and comics-related properties, smartasses always show up to say something snarky like “what if Black Panther or some other Black hero were a white guy”.

They crowd into my mentions or any comment field they can get a hold of, trying to shout down my commentary by insisting that they’ve finally found the one way to get one over on supporters of racebending.

It’s supposed to be the kind of comment that leaves Black comic fans stumbling around in a haze formed by our hypocrisy (because if we don’t want characters of color whitewashed, we shouldn’t keep pushing for white characters to be racebent).

Read More »

For a Howling Good Time, Try Moonlighters!

Stitch

Moonlighters Cover

I don’t just adore Space Goat Productions’ Moonlighters series because the talented writer on the book is my pal (and fellow Comics Alliance alumus) Katie Schenkel or because artist Cal Moray is equally talented and that they draw the cutest werewolves I’ve ever seen.

I love it because Moonlighters is basically everything I’ve ever wanted in family friendly urban fantasy.

Read More »

[Book Review] The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon

Stitch

the-caped-crusade-glen-weldonTitle: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture
Author: Glen Weldon (Twitter)
Rating: Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Nonfiction, Batman, Comic Book
Release Date: March 22, 2016
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Order Here: AMAZON  (PAPERBACK)| AMAZON (KINDLE) 

Note: This review was originally written for a graduate level course I took last semester where we had to write a review for a scholarly book that was related to our thesis. As this book actually inspired my current thesis project (about queer readings of a queer-coded Joker and the role that homophobia plays in these readings), I couldn’t pass up on the chance to review this book.

A regular panelist on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, Glen Weldon is probably the best author that could have ever been drafted to write a book about how Batman’s creation shaped the development of nerd culture and fandom as it exists right now.

His book The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture seeks to put Batman into a certain cultural context, looking at the way that the character’s history has shaped generations of fans, comic and film creators, and the fans that would grow up to become these creators. Weldon looks at how, over the course of the past seventy-seven years, Batman and nerd culture have participated in certain cycles that alternated between “camp and cheery” and “grim-dark and gritty”.

In The Caped Crusade, Weldon approaches the heterocentric canon of Batman’s various texts through a perspective that only a gay man can bring to the table. In his close queer reading of Batman’s history, canon text throughout the decades, and the fan community (or fandom) that sprawled up around him, Weldon looks at how queerphobia shaped Batman’s trajectory and inspired hundreds of thousands of fans to eschew the very idea of a queer Batman while queer fans clung to the potential opened up for them by the subtext embedded within the character.Read More »

[Book Review] Marvel’s Black Widow – From Spy to Superhero edited by Sherry Ginn

Stitch1 Comment


black-widow-cover

Title: Marvel’s Black Widow: From Spy to Superhero
Editor: Sherry Ginn
Authors: Malgorzata Drewniok, Heather M. Porter, Samira Nadkarni, Valerie Estelle Frankel, Jillian Coleman Benjamin, Sherry Ginn, Lewis Call, David Kociemba, and Tanya R. Cochran
Rating: Yeah, No Thanks
Genre/Category: Nonfiction, Superheroes, Feminism, Popular Culture, Comic Books
Release Date: March 1, 2017
Publisher: McFarland and Company

Order Here: AMAZON

Note: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review. All of the views in review are my own.

This collection of essays first came to my attention last semester when I looking for sources I could use in a paper for my Cold War literature class about the position the Black Widow held when it came to Anti-Cold War propaganda in comic books. This essay collection is both a celebration of Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) and a criticism of the cultural environments that led to her creation and subsequent (frequent) reimaginings/reinventions as a second-string to male heroes in Marvel’s various universes.

Out of the volume’s nine essays, I thought maybe three or four had serious worth and didn’t make me want to pitch my kindle.

Read More »

[Guest Post] Love, pain, redemption – Bruce & Dick in Nightwing: Rebirth.

Stitch

This guest post comes courtesty of one of my dearest friends in and out of fandom, Yamini, who kindly allowed me to repost her brilliant analysis of Batman and Nightwing’s relationship in Nightwing: Rebirth. (This post is also available on her tumblr, so please reblog it from there if you want to share!

bd01

“… And Fate them forged a binding chain / of living love and mortal pain” is one of my favourite lines in JRR Tolkien’s Lay of Leithian; encapsulating the poem’s driving conviction that mingled love, pain, surrender, and redemption can form the foundations of the most important relationships we can have with other human beings.

I found myself thinking about it after reading Nightwing #8 (by Tim Seeley, Javier Fernandez, Chris Sotomayor and Carlos Mangual) because love, pain, and redemption are so much a part of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, and how they relate to each other, and I haven’t read many comics that mediate on that as beautifully as this one (and hell, this whole arc) does.Read More »

Bendis, Opportunism, and Bad Judgment Calls in a Terrible Time

Stitch2 Comments

Note: This post contains spoilers for Invincible Iron Man #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Stefano Caselli, and Marte Gracia.

riri-panel-issue-1

Earlier today, Marvel Comics’ writer Brian Michael Bendis made a bad judgement call.

With people all over the world reeling from the fact of a Trump presidency, Bendis decided that there was no time but the present to do one thing: ply his comic, the upcoming Invincible Iron-Man #2, as a distant distraction.Read More »

Whose Luke Cage Reviews Matter To Me

Stitch1 Comment

I started watching Luke Cage yesterday morning and immediately I found myself bombarded with the thinkiest of thoughts.

I have thoughts on respectability politics in the series, on Luke Cage’s old-fashioned everything, on Black womanhood, on the use of the word “nigga” inside our community.

And at the end of the day, I also have thoughts about how I am absolutely uninterested in any hot takes on the series that don’t come from Black women.Read More »

Dear Comic Fans: It’s been a year since my first post & y’all are still racist as heck when it comes to racebending

Stitch4 Comments

Back in August 2015 I wrote “Dear Comic Fans: We Get it. You’re racist and racebending scares you,” as a direct response to the racist backlash towards Keiynan Lonsdale being cast as Wally West on the Flash television show.

Well, it’s been a little bit over a year and I honestly can tell you that yes, fandom is still filled to the brim with racists who think that if they scream about red hair and “blackwashing” loud enough, that no one will notice that the only time they know or care about changes to characters’ races when it concerns white characters being cast with actors of color.

Look, if the only thing you care about when it comes to casting is an authentic hair color, then I have to introduce you to the wonders of hair-dye and wigs. And then I get to beat you with a bag full of them for complaining endlessly when these (usually female) characters are racebent since you stay silent when a white male character isn’t done to style.

photogrid_1474736950131Neither of the two actors playing Barry Allen look like him.

Neither of them have his canon personality.

But where’s the press reporting about how terrible both of them are for the job because they don’t have blond hair and because it’s so strange to imagine this iconic blond character being played by men who have dark hair?

Suddenly, authentic appearances don’t matter and there’s no fuss about “iconic” anything.Read More »

Suicide Squad: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Stitch1 Comment

 

image_121_2d1rn

If I had to put it to numbers, I’d say that Suicide Squad is approximately 70% “my thing”.

The 30% that isn’t is largely comprised of the following: violence against women being brushed off or used as humor, most of the male/female relationships (and the fact that there are no positive female friendships or relationships in the squad), Katana basically not getting to do a lot beyond fight scenes and a few emotional moments, Slipknot being killed off within minutes of his introduction to prove a point, how David Ayer reframes Harley and the Joker’s relationship (and her characterization), and the Joker himself.

Had Suicide Squad come out in 2007 when I was a fresh-faced high school senior, I would have loved it entirely from the start. Of course, 2007!Stitch wasn’t as focused on picking out the problematic elements in the media they consumed as 2016!Stitch is.

As it stands, I actually enjoyed Suicide Squad almost as much as 2007!me would have. I went into the film kind of hopeful, having read several reviews that were really critical of the film but trying to will DC into having better luck with this film than with Batman Vs Superman (which I saw in theaters and hated but then, when I got the Ultimate Edition, came to understand it a bit more).

And you know what? It was entertaining as hell to watch.Read More »