sometimes comics are the worst
Friday, 6 September 2013 11:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
I imagine most people will have heard about this already, but for anyone who hasn't: JH Williams III and W. Haden Blackman announced that they'll be leaving Batwoman after #26 due to ongoing editorial interference, including mandating that Batwoman cannot marry her girlfriend Maggie. I haven't actually been reading Batwoman, for various reasons (including but not limited to the fact that the library's on order copy STILL hasn't arrived), but I have feelings about this anyway. And obviously they are not happy feelings.
I'm sure DC's motivation wasn't "these two can't get married, they're both women"; I'm sure it was more like "these two can't get married, marriage is BORING and not EDGY". But, as The Mary Sue's report points out, these decisions aren't being made in a vacuum: they're being made in the context of actual real life same sex couples being told ALL THE TIME that they can't or shouldn't get married, so saying that Kate and Maggie can't marry is not the same as saying that a heterosexual couple can't be married. (There's also a difference between the reboot erasing old DC marriages and editorial actively blocking new ones.) And yes, it sucks that storytellers (if editorial are dictating stories, that must be how they see themselves) have to consider this sort of thing and not just tell the stories they want to. (I disagree with DC's anti-marriage agenda, but that's a different argument.) But that's just the way it will be until we dismantle the kyriarchy and move into a beautiful utopia of equality, so... maybe help us do that first? By, say, promoting diversity and equality in your comics?
There's also a whole other issue here, about DC editorial driving creators away through their constant meddling, but I don't feel like talking about that now other than to say STOP THAT DC. I don't know, I'm just so emotionally detached from the DCnU at this point. I still care deeply about the preboot characters and their world, but... the DCnU is so broken for me now (Batman Incorporated #8 was the last straw), I can't see any way of turning it back into a universe I want to read about, short of another reboot (preferably back to how it was before). :/
In other news of terribleness, Arrow has cast a young skinny actress as Amanda Waller and a white actress as Sin Lance. WHY.
(Comics aren't always the worst! I really enjoyed this interview with Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie of Young Avengers. "I mean writing is pretty much weaponised empathy, or practical empathy." :D)
I'm sure DC's motivation wasn't "these two can't get married, they're both women"; I'm sure it was more like "these two can't get married, marriage is BORING and not EDGY". But, as The Mary Sue's report points out, these decisions aren't being made in a vacuum: they're being made in the context of actual real life same sex couples being told ALL THE TIME that they can't or shouldn't get married, so saying that Kate and Maggie can't marry is not the same as saying that a heterosexual couple can't be married. (There's also a difference between the reboot erasing old DC marriages and editorial actively blocking new ones.) And yes, it sucks that storytellers (if editorial are dictating stories, that must be how they see themselves) have to consider this sort of thing and not just tell the stories they want to. (I disagree with DC's anti-marriage agenda, but that's a different argument.) But that's just the way it will be until we dismantle the kyriarchy and move into a beautiful utopia of equality, so... maybe help us do that first? By, say, promoting diversity and equality in your comics?
There's also a whole other issue here, about DC editorial driving creators away through their constant meddling, but I don't feel like talking about that now other than to say STOP THAT DC. I don't know, I'm just so emotionally detached from the DCnU at this point. I still care deeply about the preboot characters and their world, but... the DCnU is so broken for me now (Batman Incorporated #8 was the last straw), I can't see any way of turning it back into a universe I want to read about, short of another reboot (preferably back to how it was before). :/
In other news of terribleness, Arrow has cast a young skinny actress as Amanda Waller and a white actress as Sin Lance. WHY.
(Comics aren't always the worst! I really enjoyed this interview with Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie of Young Avengers. "I mean writing is pretty much weaponised empathy, or practical empathy." :D)