Fantastic Fangirls: Comics and Culture

by Sigrid

This week, at the comic store, I bought Black Cat #2. I also bought Madame Xanadu #25. And Zatanna #3.

I could have bought more X-Men related titles. God knows there are enough of them. But I stuck with my usual, and bought these instead.

I don’t normally get Madame Xanadu. This is the first issue I’ve bought. And I don’t read the Spider-Man titles, so I don’t know a ton about Black Cat. And the only DC titles I’m getting these days are Birds of Prey and Batgirl. And, of course, Zatanna.

Why get these titles? Why spend the $12.00 on titles I wouldn’t normally get?

Because they all have female leads. Because some have women on the creative teams. Because the Big Two keep insisting that female characters don’t sell books, they don’t sell solo books. Because these are good stories, with great art, and if I want more comics by women, featuring women, then I need to put my money down and buy them — even if the title is a little bit out of my usual range. The success of the Black Cat mini-series might lead to a Black Cat series. The purchase of Zatanna and Batgirl might keep those titles going for more than a handful of issues. The spike in sales of the Madame Xanadu issue #25 with Laurenn McCubbin’s art might lead to her getting more work. Issue #25 was a great jumping-in point, a single-issue story set in the advertising world of 1963. The story was creepy and foreboding, and McCubbin’s art was perfect.

I’m going to keep buying Madame Xanadu.

Because when I buy my comics — when you buy your comics — we are voting who gets kicked off the island. We are voting, with single issue sales, which titles stay and which disappear. It’s my money, my feminist dollars — and my feminist dollars see that female creators get paid, feminist creators get jobs, and female characters get time to shine.

Email: sigrid @ fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: sigridellis

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments:

What comic book characters should be in a rock band together?

Anika

I’ve mentioned before I don’t like the X-Men in Space stories or basically anything to do with Corsair or the undeniable fact that Alex’ and Scott’s dad is a space pirate (don’t even get me started on Vulcan). In my X-Men stories (and in my Carol Danvers stories) it all makes me cringe.

However.

Christopher Summers and Freddie Mercury were secretly the same person. And it only makes sense that when Alex took over the space-pirating, he also took over the glam rock. They don’t have to change their name. THE STARJAMMERS is already one of the best band names ever conceived of. And until I am informed otherwise (hint Marvel!!) I will imagine that Alex Summers, Rachel Grey, and Lorna Dane are on tour.

Caroline

If there was ever a band of heroes that could set the music world on fire, it would have to be the Heroes for Hire/Daughters of the Dragon gang of Luke Cage, Colleen Wing, Misty Knight, and Danny Rand.

Luke, with his deep booming voice and amazing range trades off lead vocals with the spry, fast paced Colleen. Misty, with that bionic arm, is a born bass player, while Danny applies his Immortal Iron Fist to percussion. Sometimes he sticks with a standard drum kit and sometimes (as the George Harrison of the group) he brings in the world music influences he picked up in the lost city of K’un L’un. It’s an eclectic sound, befitting one of Marvel Comics’ most diverse teams. I have no idea what their music would sound like but I’m pretty sure it would be awesome.

Jennifer

For over a decade, my favorite band in the world has been Hanson, the three Oklahoma brothers who burst onto the scene in 1997 with “MMMBop.” In fact, I’ll be seeing them in concert tonight. And because of my Hanson love, I’ve come to believe that there’s something inherently lovely about the idea of three brothers working together and making awesome music, despite all the potential for sibling rivalry. In fact, being in a band probably brings brothers closer together than they would be otherwise.

So, based on this theory, I’d like to propose another band of three brothers. They’re all very different, it’s true, and they rarely get along in the comics, but under the right circumstances, I think they could be very popular — or at least memorable one-hit wonders.

If nothing else, the pyrotechnics would be amazing!

Sigrid

I just watched the movie The Runaways last week. So. Y’know.

Helena Bertinelli on bass guitar. She’s tempermental, sure, but too devoted to getting the job done to be a lead guitarist. At heart, Helena will see the song and the set through before storming out of the dressing room.

Scandal Savage, drums. Scandal is better than all of this, but as long as she gets to perform, gets to drum, and gets her pick of the groupies, it’s all fine. Nothing mends a broken heart like the new girl in the next town.

Laura Kinney, rhythm guitar. Laura will do what she is told, and will do it very, very well. You don’t want her using her initiative, though.

Jessica Jones, keyboards. She’s a little too old for this, and wonders why she said yes to coming back, but now that she’s here she’ll stick it through.

Carol Danvers, lead guitar. The actual leader of the band, Carol can’t decide if she’s a den mother or a drill sergeant. But the moments of glorious solos in the spotlight make up for the hard work of keeping this mess of a band together.

Casey Bullocks-Femur, lead vocals. Casey loves the band, loves the crowds, loves the groupies, loves the interviewers, and loves you. And every moment she sings, you know it.

So what about you? What comic book characters should be in a rock band together?

We got a great response to our last book club discussion, on Ghost in the Shell, and we want to thank all the readers who contributed to the conversation and provided different perspectives. You guys are awesome!

This month, we’ll be doing our third book club, and this one is a bit more in our normal superhero wheelhouse: the first volume of Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner’s Power Girl.

The six issues contained in this first volume, A New Beginning, feature DC superhero Power Girl dealing with all the trials and tribulations of her civilian and superhero lives, and the problems that come from trying to balance the two. Power Girl has strength and sass in spades, and both are amply displayed over the course of the volume — as is her sincere friendship with fellow heroine Terra. While the book appears light, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface, and we here at Fantastic Fangirls feel it’s worthy of serious discussion.

Power Girl: A New Beginning, available here on Amazon and here on InStockTrades.com, is a great jumping-on point for readers unfamiliar with the character, or even the DC universe as a whole, so I encourage everyone with even a passing interest to check this out. If nothing else, it’s an excuse to gaze lovingly at Amanda Conner’s gorgeously expressive art!

We’ll begin our discussion of Power Girl: A New Beginning on August 24th, 2010. Get your copy, read up, and get ready to join the conversation!

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments:

What comic book do you want made into a video game?

Anika

I would like a teen superhero dating sim. The questing would be all about learning to be a superhero and there could be fighting, puzzles, and other minigames. And then dating — which could be called building a relationship and learning teamwork if it MUST. But would totally be dating. Or at least bonding. And the points you win for superheroing would get you accessories for your supersuit and cool gadgets all the better to impress your teammates with.

Pretty much any teen team would work: any version of the Titans or the X-Men, any of the current Young Avengers/Allies/Academy. Or it could center on a certain teen — like Spider-Man, or Dick Grayson, or Supergirl, or Hope Summers.

Build a superhero, build a super-identity, build a super team, and build relationships. With fighting, puzzles, and other minigames. Plus dress-up. And dating. Best game ever.

Caroline

I’m thinking Phonogram Rock Band.

Phonogram, the incomparable two volume love letter to pop music by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie presents all kinds of playable possibilities. There are the songs, of course. Reading Phonogram already persuaded me to sample many of the musical artists featured in that book, and the chance to obsess over the songs, and sing and play along with them, would help complete the full Phonogram experience. (There could even be bonus points for dancing — or awkwardly not-dancing — like David Kohl).

The opportunities don’t end there, though, because Phonogram presents role-playing possibilities, too. The major characters in the comic are “phonomancers” — music-based magicians — each with their own special set of interests and abilities. The message of Volume 2, The Singles Club seemed to be, in part, that everybody who loves music carries some of this magic with them. The chance for every player to design a character, based on their own musical likes and dislikes, would add a personal dimension to the game.

I know the idea of a Phonogram game isn’t very realistic — music licensing costs money — but it’s a fun idea to kick around. We could all be phonomancers for a day.

Jennifer

Honestly, I’m not much of a gamer. I’ve played my fair share of Pokemon and Sonic the Hedgehog and Rock Band, but for the most part video games — especially intense, multi-layered games with elaborate storylines — are beyond me. I like a good fighting game as much as anyone else, despite being a button masher of the highest order, but most fighting games based on comic books have already been done, from my beloved X-Men arcade game to the Justice League: Task Force game my younger brother and I used to play on our Sega Genesis.

So the most useful kind of comic book game, for me, wouldn’t be something elaborate — it would, instead, be the kind of game I could mindlessly click at while working a desk job or talking on the phone or brainstorming a thesis for a paper. Solitaire with comic book characters on the cards, for instance, or Bejeweled with various colored lantern rings as the gems. I once made a custom set of Snood icons out of images of characters from RENT, and it made the game experience just a bit brighter; I can only imagine the effect would be the same with superheroes. I don’t need all the bells and whistles of a full-fledged video game — just give me a flash game with a comic book twist, and I’m sold.

Sigrid

Oh, well, that’s easy.

LEGO Birds of Prey.

Here’s a set of images from LEGO Batman: The Videogame:

I look at that and can only squeak in glee at the thought of LEGO Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress, and whoever else from whatever era of the comic gets included. Don’t you want to see the LEGO Calculator? Or LEGO Blockbuster and Nightwing? Or LEGO Secret Six, in a guest role? LEGO Bane and Ragdoll eyeing LEGO Savant and Creote?

What comic book do you want made into a video game?

by Sigrid

I’m the first person to admit I like a dark and dangerous story. I like stories with very high stakes. I’m a Doctor Who fan — the universe is on the brink of extinction on a regular basis in that franchise! Here’s what I like about dark, gritty stories; I like what they reveal about the characters.

The recent Dark-whatever titles from Marvel are good examples of the kind of dark stories I like. Heroes and villains are both tested, the lines are blurred between those categories. Characters have to see what kinds of choices they make when their backs are against a wall they didn’t realize was there. I liked the Dark Thunderbolts, with Ghost and Songbird and the Black Widows all being quintessentially themselves. I loved Dark Avengers, featuring the intertwining spirals-towards-madness of a group of psychotic villains let off their chains. I loved seeing Moonstone sink lower and lower as she was encouraged to do so, Daken using his powers of slinky bisexuality to screw with everyone, Bullseye just … going perfectly mad.

The plots served the characters. The plots made the characters more interesting, added depth and nuance to characters we thought we already knew.

X-Men’s Second Coming event was just about the opposite of that.

Many characters die in the sprawling story of Second Coming. I do not, for one tiny, minuscule moment, believe that any of them will stay dead. Death is not high stakes, not in superhero comics, not anymore. Character death is as tired a “stakes” as abuse is a tired origin story for female characters. Death isn’t an adequate threat — not unless the characters in the story think the death is an actual loss.

The problem with this is, the relationships among the characters have to be established prior to the death. Having the fellow characters mourn afterwards without establishing the prior relationship is like comic fans mourning the loss of a title they never bought — too little, too late. And it doesn’t work to have the characters’ grief rely on storylines that are fifteen years old. I, personally, happen to know and remember and understand that Kurt and Logan were very good friends. But almost the only thing they did in Second Coming was argue — it doesn’t pre-pay for Logan’s grief, later. Not in this story.

Now, saving the mutant race — that’s a stakes I can get behind, even though I do not for one minute think that Marvel is going to kill such an intensely lucrative property. But there is a lot you can do, short of mass murder, that is interesting. When I read Wanda’s words, “No more mutants,” in 2005, I got chills. The fate of a people at stake, right there. In contrast, this latest threat to just, you know, kill everyone, was unimaginative.

Maybe I would have cared if I knew anything about the villains in question.

I know, I know, they are all villains from years past. But once again, the current story, the one I am reading now, failed to make me care in the slightest. I happen to know who Cameron Hodge is — but did he get to trade threats of a vaguely sexual nature with Warren, as he has in stories past? Did he get to remind Hank of his vastly superior intellect and how he duped them all to betray their own kind? Not really.

What purpose did it serve, having recurring villains recur, if there’s no character growth? (Murder is not, I shall point out, a moment of character growth for any member of X-Force. Not when that seems to be all they do.) Using Bastion, Stryker, Hodge, and the rest of the lot makes sense if the heroes and villain get to interact, to talk, to threaten each other, to bluster, to rebuff, to affect each other’s future selves and future way of seeing the world. If all the villains do is engage in gruesomely bloody fisticuffs, what was the point? As far as I can tell, the only reason recurring villains were used in Second Coming was to avoid explaining to the reader who these people were, and why we might care. Our knowledge and our caring — our engagement with the arc and interaction — was presumed.

Dear comics, comics that I love and adore, and to whom I have a deep fidelity: Don’t you ever presume on my faith. I have quit reading all superhero titles once before, and am perfectly prepared to dump titles that fail on any level to engage me. I am about as core-target-audience as reader as your market research says you have, minus the penis, of course. And I tell you now, there is one single reason I didn’t stop reading the X-titles this week.

Uncanny X-Men The Heroic Age #1.

Here we have consequences. Here we have characters struggling with their actions, worried about their futures. Here we have stakes that matter — leadership, family, homework, romantic relationships. Nobody gets gutted, maimed, or has a limb amputated in Uncanny X-Men The Heroic Age — yet I teared up as Hank tells Molly what it means to truly live one’s life. I re-read this comic, when I have had little but bored contempt for the last half-year of X-titles.

Dark and gritty doesn’t mean death and maiming. It means consequences that affect people. Second Coming had way too much of the former, with no plausible depictions of the latter. It is my hope that the X-titles from this point on will remember that, at heart, they are the stories of characters who are metaphors for us, the readers. We want fantasies of power, we want fantasies of surviving loss and grief and being stronger for it. We want fantasies of sex and desirability, and also fantasies of intimacy and friendship. We want stories that tell us the world is a dangerous place and we are strong enough to not only weather the storm, but to make the universe a better place while doing so.

Enough with Second Coming, with pointless, purposeless death and desolation. Give me mourning that leads to resolve, rage that leads to commitment, and isolation that turns into family. Give me the Heroic Age, X-Men. Give me the Heroic Age.

Email: sigrid @ fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: sigridellis

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments. But this week we are doing things a little differently. As an ongoing part of the recent site redesign we are archiving our past posts; Q&A 1 to 74 are now listed here and for this week’s Q&A each Fangirl has chosen one of our past questions to revisit:

Anika

I’ve been doing a 30 Days of Marvel Meme over on tumblr (indexed here )so I let today’s question help me choose what to revisit: Q&A 28 Who is your favorite animal in comics?

Dear People Who Write Marvel Comics,

I am writing to report a Grave Injustice. There are no comic titles in which I currently appear. I was a VIP (Very Important Pet) in the MS. MARVEL title and it is really unacceptable for me to have been forgotten. I understand there was even a series called PET AVENGERS in which I did not appear. The implication is my human is not a real Avenger and that is not only insulting, I believe it would make her cry. But I have a solution: I should be in NEW AVENGERS.

First of all, I am adorable. Second, I am named after Chewbacca and everyone loves Star Wars. Plus keeping me out of New Avengers is just like when Princess Leia gave a medal to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker but not to Chewie. Unfair! People still talk about that you know. Third, there is a baby in New Avengers and babies love cute fuzzy animals. Almost as much as kitty cats love babies. Okay, that’s a lie but I am willing to put up with the baby if I get to stay in the posh mansion with my human (please don’t blow it up, I’m tired of my home being blown up). Fourth, I’m made of magic. I read AVENGERS CHILDREN’S CRUSADE, magic people are dangerous out on their own! Fifth, I am really, really adorable.

But the most important reason is: Carol needs me.

See? Okay, so she now lives in a posh mansion with her best friend and her not boyfriend and she’s not alone anymore and even all her friends are back or probably will be soon but take it from me — no one can replace your magicked cat from the fake alternate reality made up by your crazy witch frenemy. It’s just Not the Same. She needs me and I need her.

Plus, I’m REALLY adorable.

Yours sincerely,
Chewbacca the Cat

P.S. Don’t tell I said she’d cry about the Avenger thing. I’m the only one who gets to know she cries.

Caroline

I decided to revisit my answer for Q&A # 6, back when we were about to celebrate our first Halloween. The Q&A asked what character we would choose to dress up as, and I commented that there wasn’t really a Marvel or DC costume I was interested in attempting.

But since then I discovered Beryl Hutchinson:

Also known as “Squire,” Beryl is a favorite of Batman & Robin writer Grant Morrison, most recently seen in a story arc that took Dick Grayson and Kate Kane to London’s underworld. She’ll also be featured in an upcoming miniseries by sometimes Doctor Who scribe Paul Cornell. Basically, Squire is the British version of Robin. I don’t really know that much about the character, but she’s spunky and fun. Plus, her outfit looks like something a normal person could make — with enough fabric and commitment — and actually wear. I’m not claiming it’s in especially good taste, but, well, she’s a masked vigilante. That’s what makes it awesome.

Now I just have to work on my Cockney accent.

Jennifer

In Q&A #60: What comic book character do you want to compete at the Olympics?, I said that I wanted to see Cyclops as a figure skater, because he reminded me of Gold Medalist Evan Lysacek. I also said that snowboarder Shaun White looked a lot like Shatterstar.

In retrospect, I think I got my signals crossed a bit, and missed the most obvious answer. Shatterstar is an athlete/performer, a person in perfect physical condition who loves performing physical feats, with flair, for a crowd. He doesn’t mind outlandish costumes, and his hollow bones would allow him to soar through the air with ease. He’s also not exactly heterosexual. Shatterstar is, in short, the PERFECT comic book figure skater, and I’d love to see him as an Olympic competitor.

If only because Rob Liefeld would most certainly disagree.

Sigrid

My answer to Q&A #31, What’s your favorite comics re-read was and still is Alias, by Brian Michael Bendis. But there are other great comics out there that I re-read, including Gotham Central, Avengers Disassembled, and Astonishing X-Men, all mentioned by the other Fantastic Fangirls in the previous Q&A. But one that wasn’t mentioned then, that I re-read on a semi-regular basis, is the Gail Simone run of Birds of Prey.

I love these stories. It’s not the plots that stand out for me, though none are memorable for being bad, either. It’s the characters. Gail Simone understood Dinah, Barbara, and Helena from the start. Dinah is one of the sanest, most stable, most together heroes in the DCU. She’s sure of her self, confident enough to be a decent partner for Babs’s pushy, over-controlling, stalker-y form of friendship. Barbara is incredibly strong, and gets stronger the more she’s backed into a corner. But there’s a slightly brittle quality to Babs that Gail writes perfectly, and being in a partnership with Dinah compensates for that, somewhat. And Helena has so much to prove to the world, starting with proving her own right to be alive to herself. The three of them make a functioning dysfunctional family, with Babs as the bossy and somewhat shouty paternal figure, Dinah as the reasonable mom, and Helena as the rebellious teenage kid. It all comes through in the writing in those stories.

But there’s another reason I re-read Birds of Prey. It’s because Gail Simone thinks of her characters as queer. Or, at least, she thinks of Dinah as bisexual. “To me, it was no big revelation that Black Canary might be bisexual. I didn’t even think it was much in question.” That’s a huge part of why I re-read these comics. Because they feature, in the mind of the writer and in my mind, a bisexual woman who is sane, powerful, emotionally stable, compassionate, dangerous, and has good relationships with both men and women. Hell, yeah.

And if said female character gets a little flirty sometimes with her partner? I’m not going to object to that.

We encourage you to give the list a look and choose a question you maybe missed the first time or have a new answer for! What previous Fantastic Fangirl Q&A would you like to revisit?

Posted by Jennifer

The Mandarin, Iron Man’s primary villain, is a problematic character. Created in the early 1960s, he bears the racist mark of his Yellow Peril origins, and with so many strikes against him, from his name to his physical character design to his particular brand of villainy, he’s nearly impossible to use well in modern comics, where the weak excuses once used to justify the racism of his existence hold no water at all.

I don’t think Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man Annual completely solves this problem. In fact, I don’t think it even does as good a job of re-imagining a Yellow Peril character as I’ve seen accomplished in other comics — Jeff Parker’s Agents of Atlas and Fraction and Ed Brubaker’s Immortal Iron Fist in particular. But what the Annual does do, and very successfully at that, is illustrate the fluidity of the continuity of superhero comics — the very fluidity that allows characters like the Mandarin to be updated at all.

The central conceit of the Annual is this: the Mandarin, looking to make a movie to glorify himself, kidnaps a renowned director and his girlfriend and forces the director to make a movie about the Mandarin’s “life story.” The director, Jun Shan, is Chinese, as is every other character in the story, which goes a long way toward mitigating the racist aspects of the central character. This is not the story of a white hero fighting an Asian caricature, as most Mandarin stories have been; instead, it’s the story of a Chinese hero fighting a villainous caricature who is also Chinese.

This basic setup reminded me of Jonathan Hickman’s story in the recent Astonishing Tales anthology, in which New Mutants Cannonball and Sunspot were captured by villain Mojo and forced to make films to please him. The two stories are almost polar opposites in terms of tone — the Mojo story is a comedy, while the Annual is most definitely a tragedy — but they’re alike in that they both serve as fascinating meta-commentary on superhero comics. In the Mojo story, this meta-commentary is more blatant — Cannonball and Sunspot direct a parody of Marvel’s Civil War story set during the actual American Civil War — but the Invincible Iron Man Annual, in its own way, is just as incisive.

When Jun is kidnapped by the Mandarin, the Mandarin’s first act is to throw acid on his face to demonstrate his control of the situation. This blinds Jun in one eye, forcing him to wear an eyepatch for the rest of the story. While the obvious comparison is to Tony Stark’s superhero origin (kidnapped, injured, and forced to work for the enemy), I was struck by the similarity to another comic entirely: Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek’s Marvels, the story of Phil Sheldon, a civilian photojournalist who captures superhero events in the Marvel Universe as they happen. Both men are outsiders who observe the events of superhero comics from behind the lens of a camera; both men are half-blinded for their troubles. But while Phil Sheldon observed heroes, Jun Shan observes a villain who is trying to present himself as a hero, and that makes the story a bit twistier.

As the Mandarin begins to relate his story to the terrified Jun, describing his childhood in loving detail, it becomes immediately apparent that he’s lying. In his version of events, he’s the son of an English woman of noble birth and a warrior descendant of Genghis Khan, raised in the finest boarding schools, and separated from his parents by their untimely death in a car crash. Carmine Giandomenico’s art, on the other hand, shows the real story: his mother was the last white prostitute in a Chinese brothel, his father is unknown, and he was forced to work in the brothel throughout his childhood.

From a character standpoint, the Mandarin’s revision of facts is fascinating. After all, the story he chooses — boarding schools, rich parents who die in a car crash — is Tony Stark’s backstory. The narrative here is intensely interested in exploring the Mandarin’s particular connection to Tony Stark and the ways he views him — while he expresses his hatred openly, and even kills an actor in an Iron Man suit out of anger, moments like this reveal the jealousy that underlies his villainy. However, while the character work is good, what really stands out to me is the nature of the Mandarin’s revision of history and how it relates to comic book writers’ own revisions and retcons.

Superhero comics as an art form must constantly rejuvenate themselves, walking a perpetual tightrope between respecting the past and making the stories accessible for the future. As such, origins must be updated (Vietnam becomes Desert Storm, for instance), racist and sexist histories must be revised, and characters must never grow older, despite having fought battles for untold numbers of years.

Marvels completely ignores this necessity — in fact, it actively rejects it. Phil Sheldon and his family age in real time over the course of the superheroes’ origins, from the Golden Age of the World War II era through the Silver Age of the 1960s. This works, to a point, but, had the story continued past the Silver Age, problems would have arisen. The heroes would have had to age; characters created in later decades could not be written as their peers. Even the recent sequel, Eye of the Camera, had to fudge dates and ages in order to include 1970s storylines in the narrative. Sheldon, in Ross and Busiek’s imagination, was observing an objective and immutable truth, and therefore everything had to fit together realistically and naturally. For a self-contained, out-of-continuity miniseries, that worked just fine. But for modern, in-continuity superhero comics like those Matt Fraction writes, this is an impossible, and even undesirable, goal.

So Jun Shan does not document hard fact, like Phil Sheldon does. Instead, he’s forced to document the Mandarin’s wholly fabricated life story, a life story that frequently contradicts itself even as the Mandarin tells it. And even in his quest for hard fact — a quest he attempts to carry out by talking to villagers who knew the Mandarin and filming a second, “truer” movie behind the Mandarin’s back — he’s faced with the limits of filmmaking, of recreating history accurately in a world where so many other factors (supervillain or otherwise) influence what you can and cannot include in your art. This mirrors Fraction’s own difficulties with taking an old character and trying to remain true to the spirit of his origin while simultaneously revising him for modern use.

In fact, most of the scenes of “truth” in the comic — the art that’s found between the panels of the Mandarin’s made-up story — have never been seen in a comic before. The recounting of Iron Man’s origin in particular matches up more with the movies, complete with a “Robert Downey Jr. in tanktop and arc reactor forging iron” panel. And while the movie origin is similar to the one used in past comics, this is the first time the movie version of the origin has been introduced in its entirety to the comicsverse. The “truth” that Jun finds and films, therefore, is just as much a revision of history, meta-textually, as the history that the Mandarin himself recounts. “Truth,” Jun says, “is just the story that gets told loudest and last.” His tone is disdainful, but as far as superhero comics go, he’s absolutely right.

At one crucial point, Jun snaps at the Mandarin, “There’s what we hear — what we know — and what you choose to tell us. That’s it. That’s all.” The Mandarin, while angered, does not disagree. For while the Mandarin is clearly the villain of this piece, he’s also just as much a stand-in for Fraction himself, and all comic book writers, as Jun is. “But Tony Stark is alive!” Jun protests, when the Mandarin claims they’ll be filming his death. “Not in my film,” the Mandarin replies. “In my film he dies. Get used to the idea.” And so, too, must readers “get used to the idea” of all of the revisions in this and every other comic. Even when they don’t make sense. Even when, as Jun colorfully notes, “the timeline of this guy’s lives looks like a Mondrian painting.” Because in the world of comics, there is no one truth, no objective facts for the Phil Sheldons of the world to document. There is only the story the creators choose to tell, the revisions they choose to make at any given time.

It’s up to the editors — and the fans, voting with their wallets — to decide if those revisions are more akin to the Mandarin’s insane version of his life history, or Fraction’s thoughtful, considered reinterpretation.

By Jennifer Smith
E-mail: Jennifer@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: throughthebrush

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments:

What comic book characters should go on a road trip together?

Anika

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”

I imagine Clare Boothe Luce is a personal hero to Carol Danvers. Carol, like Clare, has worked as author, journalist, editor, politician, and diplomat and Carol, like Clare, never stops working unless her body makes her.

Or unless one of her best girlfriends makes her. And where Carol has a few best girlfriends to choose from (and best boy-friends at that) a return to the days of MJ and CD is absolutely in order. It would, in fact, make my year. I love Mary Jane and she is the perfect person to get Carol away from it all. She’s so sparklingly down to earth and willing to roll with the punches. She gets it but she doesn’t let it get her. I picture a 4 part special. There would be an Avengers-related mission (Carol really wouldn’t just go off on vacation and even if she would they’d never make a comic of it) but it would be the ROAD TRIP with an old friend that would drive the story. Carol would say it was silly, she can fly! And MJ would say she can’t and she’s not going to put up with being carted across the country. And she’s the only one who can do {plot here} so suck it up, CD, and hey, you might even have fun! And basically it would be the Best Comic Ever. If Brian Reed is too busy, I can totally make myself available to write this.

Also, Peter Parker’s head might just explode at the idea. Adorably.

Caroline

It’s not much fun to be a Teen Titan these days. Every time you turn around it seems like a member of DC Comics’ second generation is being mauled by dogs, having an arm chopped off, or taking on the identity of a (possibly) dead mentor. But the Titans used to know how to enjoy themselves, and nobody so much as my favorite green-skinned motormouth, Garfield Logan, aka Beast Boy. Lately, things with the ladies in his life have just gone from bad to worse, and he can’t stick with a superhero team to save his life. That’s why he needs to re-team with his more level-headed, laconic buddy Vic “Cyborg” Stone and go for a drive. . .well, anywhere really. Maybe to outer space. Just somewhere the Titans can reconnect with the concept of fun.

Also, Beast Boy should turn into a pterodactyl at some point. Just because.

Jennifer

I firmly believe that road trips — in fiction, if not in real life — make everything better. Throw two characters in a car together and make them argue over the radio and the steering wheel, and you are guaranteed entertainment, no matter WHO those characters might be.

To test this theory, I propose a road trip comic about the two most useless characters I can think of off the top of my head: The Sentry and Wonder Man. Individually, I have no interest in reading about either of these characters (Jeff Parker’s Age of the Sentry and Peter David’s most recent Wonder Man miniseries notwithstanding). But if they went on a road trip? I would absolutely eat that up. I imagine a running gag where they stop at roadside diners and Wonder Man tries unsuccessfully to hit on waitresses who are way more interested in Bob, no matter how many B-list films and celebrity pals Simon namedrops. Then Bob goes and cries in a corner, unable to deal with the attention, and Simon stops sulking long enough to feel bad and try to convince his new classically-handsome BFF to try his luck in Hollywood.

Hilarity, of course, ensues.

Sigrid

Um.

I’m pretty sure that I have written fanfic, at least in my head if not searchable on the internet, about almost every pair or group of characters I would want to see on a road trip. If I haven’t written it, I have certainly read it.

But I think one group I haven’t yet read would be Kate Kane and Renee Montoya on a vacation across the Nevada desert, picking up a sullen, hitch-hiking, Katina Choovansky. Katchoo is, of course, on the run from Darcy Parker. Retrieval specialists converge to get Katchoo back and Kate and Renee are caught in the mess. Too much alcohol is consumed. Too many bullets are fired. There is kissing, which leads promptly to argument and accusations. (I’m not picky as to who is kissing whom, or what the fighting is about.) Cars are crashed. Identities are hidden. The sun beats down on everyone, leading to really great outfits consisting of shorts, tank-tops, hats, and fantastic lace-up hiking boots.

And now you all know WAY too much about the inside of my head.

Still, if that could ever be published, I would buy and read the hell out of it.

What comic book characters should go on a road trip together?

Our good friends over at Alert Nerd put out a semi-regular pop culture ‘zine called Grok, and this month they’ve released Issue #6.

While Grok is ALWAYS a great read, this time it’s especially great, since three of your very own Fantastic Fangirls have featured articles, all of which touch on comics in some way.

In the first, An Open Letter to the Total Stranger Who Scolded Me About Political Awareness on Facebook, Caroline writes a letter that’s just as much about Batman as it is about politics and social media.

In the second, Strong at the Broken Places, Anika discusses her identification with fictional characters, including Carol Danvers.

And in the third, Avatars, Cultural Appropriation, and Chris Claremont’s GeNext, Jennifer shares her thoughts on the use of Hinduism in comic book plots.

So be sure to head over there and download the PDF, in which you’ll find these three articles and a ton of great fiction, comics, humor, and musings from the rest of the awesome contributors.

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments. This week, our question was submitted by reader Aaron Kimel:

What is your favorite comic book romance that should have happened?

Anika

The social structure of bats varies, with some bats leading a solitary life and others living in caves colonized by more than a million bats. The fission-fusion social structure is seen among several species of bats. “Fusion” refers to the grouping of large numbers of bats in one roosting area and “fission” is the breaking apart and mixing of subgroups, with individual bats switching roosts with others and often ending up in different trees and with different roostmates.

The “Bat-Family” is so named because Batman is the sun they all revolve around. Batman does not allow himself to have a personal life ostensibly because it interferes in his mission but in reality, or so I believe, because emotionally and psychologically he is stuck at 10 years old. However, the Bat-family IS a family. Bruce claims to be alone, and to prefer it that way, but he does allow himself to have a “family” in Alfred, Dick, Tim, Lucius, Barbara, Jim, Cass, Selina, Clark, Diana. . . He has personal relationships despite his stance on a personal life. He just doesn’t really know how to deal with them because he’s stuck as a tween boy and the only part of life worse than tween boyhood is tween girlhood because it is when we learn how to build relationships outside of the provided family/social structure (remember how in elementary school you are required to give everyone in class a Valentine but in middle school you may choose who to give them to?). Bruce doesn’t know how to do that and he uses “Batman” as an excuse not to bother learning.

Zatanna is a performer, a superhero, and a Gothamite, and as such she knows, and can deal with, both Batman and Bruce. She understands having a dual personality, she was raised with the mindset, and she can and has stood up to Bruce’s “I am Batman and nothing else” mentality. Unlike a civilian, she can take care of herself, and she’s neither criminal nor crazy. This puts her ahead of the great majority of Bruce’s long list of love interests. She has a non-superheroing career that would grant him space when he (or she) needed it and the juxtaposition of a idealistic rationalist with a pragmatic magician would keep everyone on their toes. Finally, Zee befriended him before he was Batman. She’s the tween girl to his tween boy and all the years in between serve to make the connection stronger. She is perfectly poised to reach him. . .

. . .if he ever let her.

Caroline

Fans of the X-Men do not have a whole lot to thank writer Chuck Austen for, but I am a fan of the way he took Northstar (Jean-Paul Beaubier, the famously, openly gay superhero) and gave him an important role on an X-Men team. Austen didn’t stop there. He also gave Northstar a crush on founding X-Man Bobby “Iceman” Drake. Just a crush, of course. It couldn’t ever amount to anything because — as JP was fond of dramatically wailing — Bobby was straight. Bobby, meanwhile, professed never to notice that Northstar was gay — which, since Northstar’s characterization in this period largely consisted of, “Hey, I’m the gay X-Man! Look at me, over here, being gay!” seems like an amazing act of what lawyers call “willful blindness,” even for a comic book character.

Someone in this scenario might have been protesting too much. That’s all I’m saying.

Any Northstar/Iceman possibilities in the Austen era died when Jean-Paul did. He’s alive again these days, though (no I don’t remember how or why), he’s back with the X-Men, and I’d kind of like to see Marvel take a stab at this ‘ship for real. (Yes, he’s been portrayed as having a steady boyfriend, who may even have a last name by now, but as Anika is fond of saying, “My pairing is more meaningful than canon.”) As for Bobby, the character has been around for a lot of years without having an overly-explored inner life. He’s had a few relationships with women, but nothing, I think, that would preclude an interpretation of the character as bisexual or even closeted. Jean-Paul’s recent stories have hinted that he’s growing from self-promoting arrogance into a more mature social conscience, while Bobby’s have often been about growing up and exploring the potential for power and self-discovery beneath the surface of his boyish playfulness. There would be a lot to explore in a story about these two personalities, particularly in the context of how the mutant metaphor reflects both being out and being seen as different.

Plus, you know, they’re both really cute.

Jennifer

My dislike of Emma Frost is well-known. So is my dislike of her relationship with Scott Summers. But the one time I actually liked Emma — beyond the excellent character writing Joss Whedon gave her in Astonishing X-Men — was when she was involved in a flirty, high culture-based almost-relationship with Hank McCoy, the Beast.

Hank’s crush on Emma was one of the more intriguing parts of Grant Morrison’s run on the X-Men. He was attracted to her wit and intelligence, her love of opera and fine wine and education and good books; they were a good match, as far as interests went. And, since he wasn’t on the X-Men team during the bulk of her villainous years (the 70s being his Avengers and Defenders days), he didn’t have the same level of justifiable resentment toward her that many of the other X-Men had. Hank and Emma’s friendship was a solid rock amidst the chaos of the Morrison years, and when the psychic affair between Scott and Emma was revealed, Hank’s first instinct was to bring Emma flowers and wine and a book to comfort her. And when he entered the room and, instead of a distraught friend, found her diamond form shattered in a million pieces, he immediately set out on an impossible quest to put her back together.

Whatever issues I may have with parts of that storyline (including Hank’s bizarre decision to comfort Emma when two of his best and oldest friends were going through a messy breakup of which she had been the partial cause), it’s obvious Hank was in love with Emma. And I think that the two of them together might have been really good, and really interesting. Hank is probably the best boyfriend in comics, considerate and romantic and charming, and his willingness to accept Emma without judging her would allow Emma to let down some of her many, many shields. Emma with Hank would be happy, and his influence might soften her — not so much that she wouldn’t still be Emma, but enough that she wouldn’t be so bitter and resentful, taking her aggressions out on students and teammates alike. Hank, meanwhile, would have a girlfriend with whom he could share his cultural passions, and one with whom he could, conceivably, engage in intimacy on the astral plane, where he wouldn’t have to be a furry blue cat. A Hank-Emma relationship would benefit both characters, and I truly wish we’d been able to see their chemistry evolve into something more.

Sigrid

Sometimes I have a great deal of trouble remembering that certain romantic and sexual relationships in comics have not taken place. This is due, in large part, to reading comics in the 1980s. During this time period gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters were not visible in Marvel and DC comics. They were present, but were coded. You could see what you were looking for, if you knew to look for it. Moreover, sexual relationships of a dark or disturbing nature were also hinted and coded, perfectly deniable in an official canon. But the writers and artists put things in that raised eyebrows to those with a mind to see the hints.

So, that said, my favorite comic book romance that I am CONVINCED happened, and if pressed will start hauling out old issues of comics and waving them about in a vaguely disturbing manner as evidence, is Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers of the X-Men. It’s the stuff of movies, or at least myth.

In Rachel’s timeline, Kitty Pryde saved Rachel’s life. Rachel, emotionally stunted and damaged by her childhood as a Hound, fixated on Kitty as a trusted person. When Rachel slipped back and over to our timeline Kitty was the person she most trusted. Rachel would have done anything for Kitty, and in fact did some things that were pretty bad ideas. Rachel’s love for Kitty was not that of a whole person, not healthy. And I am pretty sure Kitty wouldn’t have returned it at that point. But the two of them lived and worked together for an unspecified period of time during the run of Excalibur. Rachel grew, well, not completely better, not whole, but less broken and more functional. Their relationship developed into one of mutual trust and care and respect. I think it’s perfectly clear that the two of them likely shared some sort of romantic or sexual relationship at this point, though probably not a very serious one. Much later, after Kitty’s rescue of Rachel from Bogan in X-Treme X-Men, Kitty was out to herself as bisexual. (After the events of Mechanix.) The two of them occupied the mansion after the team shake-ups, living in nearby rooms while working on different teams. It’s during this timeframe that they were clearly dating.

Like I said. Don’t ever get me drunk and ask me about the relationship between Kitty and Rachel, because I’ll tell you about it. At great, great length.

What is your favorite comic book romance that should have happened?