I was never an Adam Strange fan, but I flipped through it just to see what was going on, and Ralph and a very much alive Sue Dibny are featured characters. Didn't buy the book, but it just seemed odd.

Funny, I'd have taken you for an Adam Strange fan--what with your love of LofSH and the straightahead sci-finess of the character.

In any case, these DC Comics Presents special editions are basically tributes to the late Julie Schwartz and his contributions to the silver age, so they're basically out of continuity.

But it was nice to see Ralph and Sue out for one last waltz, wasn't it?

Funny, I'd have taken you for an Adam Strange fan--what with your love of LofSH and the straightahead sci-finess of the character.

Never took. Speaking of the Legion, this month's issue is actually pretty good. New writer, new (far better) artist, a little femslash...

Never took. Speaking of the Legion, this month's issue is actually pretty good. New writer, new (far better) artist, a little femslash...

Hmm. The current plan was to take a look during the upcoming Titans/Legion crossover. Which, luckilly, is soon.

There will never be a new Teen Titans on Cartoon Network, will there? They've been re-running seasons 1 and 2 forEVER. I have them memorized.

t edit ::snerk:: No sooner did I hit "post" than Cartoon Network ran a commercial for new TT episodes -- July 31, 8 p.m. Also new Justice League episodes start that night. And "Starcrossed" is re-running this Saturday, the 24th.

It also in terms of initial reasoning behind the big secret, had to be something brutal and horrific enough to drive them to abuse their power like they did. I've tried to figure out what other route Meltzer could have used to get the characters where he needed them, and can't seem to think of an effective one.

Off the top of my head? Murder. Tends to upset people. There are all sorts of ways to tell the "superheroes do bad things story" -- and it's been done much much better. Hell, Powers is DOING it better on a monthly basis right now.

I think you make the mistake here of trying to work within the story Meltzer is telling and to find ways to fix it, without realizing that the story itself is part of the problem at hand.

Part of the problem is the women-in-refrigerators problem -- as the material I quoted above points out, there are plenty of male characters who could have had brutal, horrific things happen to them. Let's take Connor Hawke, whom, I should specify, I choose because I like what little I know of him. But think about it. He entered superherodom willingly as an adult, so, no violence-against-children problem. He's been benched, or at least reduced to sidekickery. And, more than that, he's a practicing Buddhist, which means he's got a philosophy of non-violence and loving-kindness that would make for a much more ironic violent torture and death than that of your standard Westerner. Kill him off! Hey, the Blue Beetle has a heart condition, it wouldn't take much -- take him! There's a definite problem with women characters getting raped, maimed, and killed within superhero comics, a disturbing preponderance of actual-death dead, in ways that can't even be argued away with the lame "well, there aren't enough superheroines" excuse (Barbara Gordon kicked plenty of ass as Batgirl, and most of the women listed here were superheroes themselves).

The story, like many women-in-refrigerators stories, presumes that Sue is unable to protect herself or act on her own behalf in any meaningful way -- her entire existence within the IC world is that of a victim. This is a pretty standard trope in sexist writing -- woman as object, woman as possession, woman as property to be protected rather than as subject, agent, actor. The only plots that can happen to a woman like that are marriage, rape, and sometimes pregnancy -- stories that inscribe her into a story about a man, rather than getting to be the heroine of her own life.

Sue, who we were reminded in IC 1 is the only spouse ever to be made an honorary member of the JLA, an honor even Lois Lane never got, is deprived of any sort of agency that would make you understand why the League thought so highly of her or why she was one of the longest-running female characters in superhero comicdom. she doesn't even get to tell the story of what happened to her, even in flashbacks. A woman who was a liked recurring character is horrifically murdered (and while pregnant, no less: a pregnancy that doesn't exist for any reason other than to make the murder worse for her husband, another basic case of woman-as-object), and then raped in disturbingly fetishistic detail across multiple pages because it will upset her husband and his friends. This is the centerpiece of a heavily-promoted all-DCU crossover event?

(Let's set aside for the moment the fact that DC is promoting the hell out of this story to an all-ages audience, with no "mature content" warnings, despite its being WILDLY kid-inappropriate, because here at least we're discussing it among adults. There's still no narrative value in lingering over those panels other than the exploitation effect.)

And then of course our heroes have to act entirely out of character -- AGAIN, Sue is given no choice in the matter, made into an object by her friends as well as her enemies. Why? Is the rape of one woman that much more horrific than the destruction of an entire city? Or is it only horrific because Dr. Light is going tell people about it? Because he's going to find "all of yours" and deprive the League of their womenfolks's chastity? They had more than enough evidence to put him on trial and convict him, and give Sue her day in court. But what Sue might want is unimportant in this story.

Let us also set aside the argument that if they are so worried about Dr Light's potential escape and recidivism that they believe their actions to be justified, they now have an obligation to learn how to do the mind-trick well and do it to every other bad guy with a similar threat level. It's implied that they did do it more than once, in fact. So the entire idea that there could still be recurring villains is damaged. But, hey, Lex Luthor only tried to take over the world and kill Superman! Clearly, he's not as much of a threat as someone who'd hurt a superhero's woman.

I mean, come on.

I dp have to say that I've been gratified by the revulsion in comics fandom as collated by Johanna Draper Carlson at her blog.

Also, as a result of IC, the surprise (and surprisingly funny) hit Formerly Known as the Justice League will not be happening, and the creator has said he will never do a book like that with DC again. Sigh.

loves loves loves Misha.

What she said. All of that.

Yargh. I'm going to kick the thing that ate my post on IC.

Which is basically, I feel like I'm on the opposite of my usual side of the fence in this case, and I'm not sure why that is. Every reason given as to why it's problematic? I can see. They're legit reasons, and yet I remain not bothered. I am bothered by the fact that I'm *not* bothered at this point. It's possible that I've managed to convince myself that the story will address a lot of those issues (many of which I see as impossible to completely divorce from the Silver Age hero mindset) to my satisfaction. Which doesn't address the issue of the story itself (not the execution) as the problem.

There are a few indications here and there in the text, which indicate that Meltzer is conscious of the deep rooted sexism in the superhero mythos. (The Ollie/Dinah dynamic makes it particularly overt, though that may be the way hears Ollie's voice.) Enough anyway to make me curious to see where he's going with this.

Btw, Ple, on the Teen Titans cartoon I TiVoed tonight, they introduced Speedy. Speedy and Robin practically had little hearts burbling around their heads as they bonded. Felt very Roy and Dick.

Michele, you invoke Powers in your defense, and I'm a fan too, but I was wondering whether you let it off the hook. The first storyline is called "Who Killed Retro Girl ?" And various female characters have died over the course of the run.

On the other hand, Bendis' Daredevil run has been populated with very strong female characters who take matters into their own hands, and he has yet to put Milla in a fridge.

And on the third hand, The Pulse is currently revolving around the mystery of the murder of a female reporter.

And on the final hand, the current timeline of Secret Wars has a male superhero in peril.

This is probably a major tangent and maybe not relevant to the discussion, but I don't know any of Meltzer's work, so.

Issues like this make my head hurt, because, like Plei, I'm not bothered by it until people say I'm supposed to be bothered by it.