Stan Lee, the victim and the shooter

There’s been a little controversy over Stan Lee’s get well message to a boy who was shot.

In case you hadn’t heard, Bowe Cleveland of Taft, California was shot on the week of January 6. A teacher talked the gunman down from shooting anyone else. Apparently, Bowe has a nickname because of this shooting—“Bulletproof Spider-Man.” He’s a huge comic book fan, and when word of this got to Stan Lee, he sent the message, which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biEXOzaYNwo&feature=player_embedded

So where does the controversy come in? Because Bowe, who not only is a comic book fan but also a volunteer and apparently a well-liked student at his high school, apparently bullied the shooter. Because of this, there’s been a few comic book fans who didn’t think it was right for Stan Lee to send a get well message to the bully, or at least wait until the whole story had come out before he’d given Bowe his support. There are other people who feels the first group of comic book fans are crazy—a kid who was a comic book fan got shot. Stan Lee offered a get-well video on the Internet. What’s the problem?

I have to admit, as a knee-jerk reaction I’m more sympathetic to the shooter. I was bullied in high school, the same as the shooter, whose name is apparently Brian Oiver. I’d rather not go into the sordid details, but it lasted for a long time, and I remember one or two times sitting up in bed just hoping that the next day wouldn’t come so I wouldn’t have to go to school. I remember feeling weak for not choosing to fight back, although I can’t say that I would have fought back if I had the chance to do it again, what with my school’s idiotic “you’re fighting even if you defend yourself” rule, and that if you were caught fighting (even in self-defense) you’d be expelled from all academic and honors organizations, although strangely enough not from any of the athletic teams, which is kind of telling.

The problem is that shooting someone isn’t the same as beating someone up. Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but I feel it needs to be said. Plenty of people get bullied in schools, and I’d argue that comic book fans and people with geeky interests still tend to get bullied more than most. So it’s hard to feel any sympathy for a bully when something bad happens to him or her. Didn’t they deserve it, in some karmic cycle of retribution?

If real life were more like Hollywood, I’d agree, but it’s not. We have no way of knowing how much Bowe will recover, how long it will take, and how much of a financial burden it will be on his parents. Now, you can manage to hurt someone permanently just as bad with a knife, a club or even your hands, feet and a little imagination, but it’s easier to scar, maim, and kill with a gun.

So Bowe deserves sympathy, and it’s great that Stan Lee taped that get well message for him. However, I have to wonder whether Brian Oliver wasn’t another victim in this tragedy. I suspect most of the media will let the matter drop, since no one was actually killed, but Brian Oliver doesn’t seem like just another psychotic gunman. He was convinced to put the gun down, he targeted two people that he said were bullying him, and he didn’t try to kill himself afterwards. This strikes me as a very different set of circumstances than other school shootings, and it’s a shame that, if the truth of the matter ever gets out, we probably won’t know about it. It’s also worth pointing out that we probably won’t know much about Brian Oliver, either, other than he was just “the shooter.”

James Gunn, Feminism, and Apologies

Let’s start this off with the fact that I’ve only recently started to learn what feminism is all about. I thought I’d known when I started talking with a friend of mine who is a feminist. I was for equal pay in the work place, I was pro-choice and I thought women should be able to hold any career men do. In reality, it was more like just a start, and thinking I knew a lot about feminist issues was definitely one of the bigger mistakes I’ve made in the past few years, to the point I’ve really hurt a friend’s feelings because of it. Since then I’ve made an effort to really understand feminist issues, and while I won’t say I completely understand feminism, I know enough about it to understand that 21^st century culture is still slanted against women, and that I probably won’t be able to understand it entirely.

When looking back on some of the views I’ve had, though, I can say that at least I didn’t make any blog entries about them. If I had I think I would have taken them down, the same way James Gunn, the director for the upcoming “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie, did. I would have also, like Gunn, learned the hard way that things pretty much last forever online.

James Gunn came under fire in the past week or so for an article in his blog, “The Top 50 Superheroes You Most Want to Have Sex With,” that was posted in February of 2011. It has such gems in it as Tony Stark being able to make the lesbian character Batwoman straight if he just sleeps with her, and that the Stephanie Brown incarnation of the Batgirl would be “easy,” since she’s a teen mom. There’s also a few shots taken at gay or supposedly gay superheroes, Gambit and Nightwing among them. Gunn responded by saying it was satire. Personally, I couldn’t see the humor. The big problem is that the humor may have been funny in Gunn’s mind, but it’s not funny because people have made similar statements, including me at times. People honestly do think that a teen mom will sleep with anyone. They do feel that lesbians just need to have sex with “the right man,” and once they do they’ll be straight. I’m also pretty sure people are aware that a lot of people still look upon homosexuality as unnatural and disgusting, and if you don’t know that, take a look at the Westboro Baptist “Church.”  Any of these beliefs are disturbing by themselves, and all three of them in one list is almost sickening.

One good thing to come out of this whole mess, though, is Gunn’s apology, which he issued to GLAAD. Here is the full text:

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny.  In rereading it over the past day I don’t think it’s funny.  The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings.  However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many.  I’m sorry and regret making them at all.  People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page and other mediums know that I’m an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian community,  women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said.  We’re all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us.  I’m learning all the time.   I promise to be more careful with my words in the future.  And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all
- James Gunn

Note that in his apology, he apologizes to people who were offended. He doesn’t try to make excuses. He’s not sorry that people “took his statements the wrong way” or that people “misinterpreted his statements,” the way so many politicians who give insincere apologies are. He does say he’s a proponent of the gay and lesbian community, but doesn’t use that as a defense, which is an easy trap to fall into. A lot of apologies turn into a defense, where the apologist says something along the lines of, “anyone who knows me will tell you I’m NOT sexist/racist/misogynist!” This puts the pressure back on the person or people who were originally offended, and it doesn’t really help anything. Sometimes you need to accept that you were wrong and that it doesn’t mean you’re a horrible person.

In Gunn’s apology, he also promises to be more careful. He’s trying to change based on what he did, and honestly you can’t ask for more. In the future, Gunn is going to have a lot of eyes on him, especially with his stint as director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. I suspect if he does say anything sexist or misogynistic the Internet will know.

For now, though, I’ll accept his apology at face value. It’s not easy to admit you were wrong in front of the whole world, and even less easy to keep a promise you made in public. 

An Empowered Post about Empowered

So it’s been a couple of weeks since the last post. I have a good excuse, though—kind of. I was sick for one week, and spent the next week getting back to normal. Now, finally, I get to get back to the work of dreaming up cool topics to talk about. I know the whole “book-of-the-month” spiel is kind of overdone right now, but it’s still a good excuse to bring up comics that I like or talk about a comic I really think could use some more publicity. Me talking about these sadly underpublicized titles admittedly has a yelling at the whirlwind type of futility, but so be it. Sometimes, you gotta yell.

This particular BOTM is kind of dangerous to talk about, because it has to do with sex. Lots of sex. Most of it has to do with bondage, but there’s definitely no shortage of people getting it on in the panel, as well as nubile bodies strutting across every page. Usually, when you say a comic is all about sex, it’s pretty much a given that it’s going to have women in cheesecake shots at least every other page, and that it’s going to have all the depth of, say, a pudding cup. Also a comic about sex can’t be about anything other than helping people to get off. Alan Moore writing Lost Girls? Trying to make a literary pornography title? Fuhgeddaboudit! Everyone knows that a comic about sex can’t have a good plot or good pencils! 

To the people who think that, I say you obviously haven’t read Adam Warren’s “Empowered.” I don’t know what inspired Adam to try his hand at this, but I’m glad he has, and while I’m not happy that his pitches to Marvel and DC have yet to be accepted, at least it means we get to see Adam Warren unleashed, working with his own creations and telling a story he’s obviously enjoying as much as his audience.

For those who have yet to pick up the books, “Empowered” features the adventure of a bondage-prone superheroine named Empowered, who is more or less gifted with a super-suit that allows her to go out and fight crime. The only problem is, when the suit gets torn, it becomes less powerful. Almost exponentially less powerful, actually, and the suit is so fragile that it gets torn with the slightest effort. Which means that Empowered gets defeated a lot, and since the “unwritten rules”  between the superheroes (colloquially known as “capes”) and supervillains (colloquially known as “bad guys”) rule out cape-killing, this means poor ol’ Emp is oftentimes trussed up while her outfit clings to her in tatters.

What separates this book from every other type of sexy superheroine book is that Adam Warren isn’t just telling stories about a bondage-prone superheroine. He’s deconstructing her world as he tells these stories, trying to figure out what sort of people the bad guys are, what sort of people Emp’s teammates are, and most importantly who Emp is. Already, Empowered has become a very Spider-Man like hero, one who is easily more heroic than most of the other “capes.”

This brings me to my next point—character depth. It’s kind of sad that in this half parody half sex comic the characters have more depth than a lot of mainstream characters produced by the Big Two, but there you go. Over the volumes, you learn a lot about Empowered and the other superheroes by what they do and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t do. You can laugh at Captain Havoc’s fratboy mentality and raging egotism, whether he’s putting the smackdown on the bad guys or trying to bolster his reputation in slash fiction by writing stories about himself. As a side note, even the smallest gags are consistent with the characters. Jeph Loeb could learn a lot from Adam Warren. It’s clever, too—in Volume Six, the big bad is revealed to have a hobby that is almost guaranteed to make you laugh, but given the villain’s power set, it makes perfect sense. That the villain’s hobby is another brilliant bit of superhero deconstructionism is just the icing on the cake.

Finally, Empowered is one of the smartest comics out on the market. Yes, Grant Morrison is still the king of the “out-there” ideas, and yes, when Neil Gaiman deigns to write a comic it almost always has some big idea that resonates on a personal level, such as his two-part Batman story. Adam Warren, however, laces “Empowered” with several polysyllabic seldom-seen words that very rarely feel out of place, regularly brings up cutting-edge scientific ideas and blends them together in ways that just make a lot of sense. The best example of this is an old Gen-13 story Adam Warren wrote concerning the intersection of bubblegum pop songs and memes, but Empowered has its fair share of intelligentsia-only humor as well. Honestly, the only flaw of “Empowered” is that Emp and her friends are written as just a little too aware of their statuses, even when they’re not breaking the fourth wall.

Oh, and one more teensy fact. Almost insignificant, really—“Empowered” is fun. It’s easily one of the most fun comics I’ve ever read. Want an example? Here’s a three-page strip Adam Warren on Emp’s reaction to the pilot of the now-canceled “Wonder Woman” TV show. Here’s Page 1, http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3cjrmh , Page 2,  http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3cjreo   and Page 3, http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3cjqyc  Enjoy. If you don’t wind up laughing, there’s something wrong with you.

So get out there and start reading Empowered. It’s published by Dark Horse, a Deluxe volume is coming out, and it’s really good.

Why Rob Liefeld?

                I saw in comic book news that Rob Liefeld is going to start writing Hawk and Dove. If this strikes some of you as untrue, you’re not alone. I couldn’t believe it myself when I read it. So let me say it one more time, and maybe it will sink in—ROB LIEFELD IS GOING TO BE WRITING A COMIC BOOK FOR DC COMICS.

                At this point, I have to wonder why Rob Liefeld is getting any work at all. Marvel and DC have to know about the reputation this guy has. He’s left the flaming wreckage of more comic book titles in his wake than any other writer, penciler and editor I know, and I can’t see any good coming out of Hawk and Dove. Actually, what I expect is that the book will be so delayed that there will be a six-month gap between issue 6 and issue 7, with writing that is only slightly less gripping than watching paint dry. 

                Before we go on, I need to point out that, although this blog post is going to savage Rob Liefeld every way possible, I don’t hate the man himself. He doesn’t strike me as a jerk, and he has taken the time to actually answer some of his naysayers online, which I think is admirable because it would be much easier for Rob to just ignore what people say about him.

                So Rob Liefeld the man is fine by me.  His body of work, though, is a completely different story. I used to like Rob Liefeld when he started doing New Mutants, and I confess that I loved X-Force and wanted to see what Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza were doing each month. I even managed to overlook some of the glaring anatomy problems for a while there, too.

                When Liefeld joined Image, though, my whole view of him changed. Youngblood #1 was godawful. There’s just no getting around it. It didn’t help that a lot of characters seemed to be Marvel heroes with the serial numbers filed off. My brother Andy, when he first saw an ad for Youngblood (to be published by Malibu comics no less!) said that Rob Liefeld had just used elements of characters that he’d drawn in X-Force and shuffled them up a bit. I think Andy was right in hindsight, but he misdiagnosed the problem. The problem wasn’t that Rob was shuffling around old designs, the problem was that he was swiping old concepts and then shuffling around old designs to fit them.

                Then there was the writing, which was atrocious. The only part of Youngblood #1 I remember was the foreign affairs team going into Iraq and taking down Saddam Hussien. Seeing as how this occurred around the time of Operation Desert Storm, it came off as one of the lamest tie-ins ever.

                Even that could have been forgiven, though. So Liefeld’s proportions are way off, he seems to have trouble drawing knees and his sense of continuity from panel to panel can be spotty at best. Who cares? His artwork is dynamic, and it’s fun to look at, at least fun enough to flip through once. And he could have improved as a writer, had he kept the book going. Instead, Youngblood vanished off the face of the earth, and along came other titles that also got delayed after two to three issues. Some titles, Brigade for instance, were delayed after the first issue!

                So far, the picture is kind of grim. It isn’t helped by the fact that there has been no improvement since the 1990s. For instance, Rob Liefeld’s studios got the chance to do Captain America and the Avengers in the Heroes Reborn project. Same writing, admittedly better quality of writing, but still the books got delayed after about three issues, and then Marvel gave them over to Wildstorm studios! What about when the other Image comics booted Rob out and he created two other comic book companies, Maximum and Awesome, which also proceeded to fail?

This brings up another point—Rob Liefeld has a ghastly track record when it comes to being a businessman. The man still owes Alan Moore money for the work that he did with Awesome Studios, for heaven’s sake! Alan Moore, who happens to be arguably the greatest comic book writer alive? What about the reports that he was dipping into the Image comics coffers to pay off some personal debts?

Let’s just take a second to sum up here. Rob Liefeld’s art, while dynamic, is recognized as a joke by most comics fans. His skill as a writer is not exactly awe-inspiring. He has a problem with getting books out on time. He seems to destroy the businesses he helms faster than George W. Bush. Given all that, I want to know what could possibly make an editor say, “Yeah, I think you’ll do a great job on this title!”

                Let’s be fair, maybe Rob Liefeld’s name on a book means better sales. It’s likely. Maybe the sales figures for a Liefeld book are so high that it’s worth keeping him on for two or three issues, even if it means there will be a three-month gap between them. Maybe Rob has a lot of friends in the editorial department. It’s not unheard of for friends to give friends jobs, even if more deserving people are available. Maybe editors are looking for Rob Liefeld to capture that old ‘90s magic, where even the low-selling books would have a run of a hundred thousand copies.

                Whatever the reason, though, the editors have to know what they’re getting, and what they’re getting is a man who has demonstrated far more often than not that he is going to let you down.  

               

A (Spoiler-Filled) Review of Young Adult

Just so everyone knows, this review will contain spoilers, where I talk extensively about the new Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody movie, Young Adult. I’m even going to cover the ending.  What this means is don’t read through this entry unless you really really want to know what happens in this movie or if you have no plans on seeing the movie. Everyone ready, then? Here we go…

The problem with writing about Young Adult is that there are so many ways to approach the movie. I could start off with the old Steve Martin quote, “Comedy isn’t always pretty.” I could also talk about how Charlize Theron’s character is like watching Charlie Sheen on “Two and a Half Men” once the cameras are removed.

Instead, I’ll start by saying I have a compulsion to watch movies where the plot is the main character returns to his or her hometown. Not enough of a compulsion where I have to go out and rent the movie, but enough of one that I want to know what the plot is. For the most part, the movies are utter dreck, usually romantic comedies where the main character has all sorts of embarrassing pratfalls and incidents, and ends up solving literally everything with some impassioned romantic speech about how their co-star is their sun and their moon, and that the main character is a much better person now. Sweet Home Alabama, check. Hope Floats, check. Just Friends, check.

Then we have Young Adult. The plot is pretty simple: Mavis Gary (played by Charlize Theron), has escaped her small town of Mercury, Minnesota to escape to Minneapolis, Minnesota. She’s a ghostwriter for a young adult series of books that is eerily similar to the endless Sweet Valley High series. When she’s not writing, she’s a hard-drinking party girl with no sense of neatness and a line of one-night stands. As she’s busy ghost writing the latest book, she gets an email from her old high school sweetheart who has sent out a mass email about the release of his first baby. Mavis takes this as a sign that she was always meant to be with her high school sweetheart, and immediately goes on a quest to win him back. The whole wife and kid thing? To her, it’s just prior relationship baggage. Nothing to be too concerned about.

When she gets to her hometown, she meets Matt Friedhoff (played by Patton Oswalt), a high school geek who got severely beat up once upon a time because some jocks thought he was gay. As Mavis tries to steal her high school sweetheart away, she and Matt form an odd bond with one another.

That’s the plot, and it seems on the surface to be one of the standard funny-and-sweet ideas, where Mavis of course realizes that Matt is the one for her all along, and they live happily ever after. Except that’s not where the movie goes at all. Mavis and Matt are two incredibly broken people, and at the end of the movie only Mavis shows signs of growth. I’ve noticed a few other reviewers complain about wanting to see more of Matt, and I agree, but he’s not the main character in this movie—Mavis is.

One of the best parts of Young Adult is that it takes some tired tropes and examines them. On the surface, Mavis is essentially Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men.  (I know that Charlie Sheen plays a different character named “Charlie,” but come on—we all know he’s playing himself.) But Mavis sits head and shoulders above Charlie Sheen and those similar freewheeling party characters just by asking why the characters do what they do? In Mavis’ case, it’s because she is fundamentally unhappy. There’s a fantastic scene where she talks with her parents, and as her parents are fussing over her, she says with no lead-in, “I think I’m an alcoholic.” It comes at you sideways, but it’s also completely plausible. As the movie goes on, more and more cracks in Mavis’ personality become apparent, until the façade she’s created for everyone, including herself, falls apart. Here’s the thing, though—at the end, Mavis’ personality has been completely deconstructed, and she knows it as much as anyone. “I’ve got problems,” she tells Matt’s sister, and then Matt’s sister gives Mavis as much praise as anyone has heaped on her throughout the movie. There are no easy answers in this movie, and no one is one hundred percent good or bad. As Matt’s sister points out, Mavis has reached out. She has tried to be the best she can be, and even though Mavis has become this alcoholic, arguably depressed, woman, because she’s fallen so far short of her goals, that’s a lot more than many people who still live in Mercury can say.

The other side of the coin is Matt. He’s broken both physically—he has to walk with a crutch—and mentally. He doesn’t really engage the rest of the world, he just does the accounting for a sports bar and spends the rest of his time painting action figures and brewing extremely alcoholic liquor with names like “Mos Eisley Vintage.” He’s basically been shown how far down the totem pole he truly ranked in high school, and it shows in his mid-thirties. He’s never been able to put the past behind him, as opposed to another handicapped character who shows up briefly, Mavis’ cousin Mike who somehow became a paraplegic. Matt hates him because his injury stole the attention away from Matt, Mavis hates him because his injury took place on the weekend of her 16^th birthday party. The thing is, Mike is better adjusted than either of them. The symbolism is pretty obvious, but what’s interesting is how many ways you can analyze the three characters. There’s some implication that Mike was popular as well, and his injury was due to an accident. Mike’s injury was getting beaten up with a crowbar. There is some difference there, and it would be fun to discuss it with other people.

The layers of depth are really what propel Young Adult into the realm of greatness. Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman have managed to put together characters that are so three-dimensional and so much goes on in the movie that it will have people talking about it for months, or at least it should. Does Mavis have clinical depression? Will Matt be able to come to terms with his injury and move on? What is the real view of Mavis—sarcastic depressed failure, or a woman who has done some remarkable things?

I should point out that Charlize Theron makes the movie. She really brings Mavis to life, and she puts forth an Oscar-quality performance. A lot of her performance is non-vocal, and she portrays it expertly. She does bored extremely well when she’s by herself, but she’s showing more than just boredom. She’s showing boredom plus frustration plus resignation. She’s a good enough actress that when she’s standing in her underwear near the end of the film, it’s not sexy. It’s her symbolically letting her façade drop, and it’s a little heartrending, which I never quite thought I’d say about seeing a model in lingerie.

In case I haven’t put too fine a point on this review, Young Adult is very, very good. I seriously think the film should get some Oscar awards, and unlike a lot of Oscar-worthy movies, this isn’t pretentious or artistic at the expense of the story—it’s simply a well-told, deep story, and almost everyone will walk away with something different. For me, what I got out of it was this—happiness is a choice. One thing and one person isn’t going to make you happy. It’s something you have to do for yourself. I think I’ve known that already, but it’s good to relearn.