And so Saturday at HeroesCon after what had been a pretty miserably slow day for sales, I rode the exercise bike, took a long soak, wished I had more money for booze and then took a nap. Pre-nap I was stupid. I was considering quitting comics. I was calling myself a failure and hating myself and just getting super depressed. The lack of sleep had gotten to me. That nap saved me and the weekend. For one thing, it put me in a better mood, for another thing it prevented me from doing something while tired and delirious and it really set Heroes Con in place for me.

Last year when I went to HeroesCon with Joe Hunter and my friend Tim who doesn’t do comics, we chose to stay 30 minutes away from Charlotte to save money. I chose to not really drink. And I think it ended up being pretty sucky leaving at 11 or 12 each night.

That Saturday I stumbled into the city hungry. I had eaten Moe’s for lunch, a reclamation of my college day. Unfortunately it was 8:30, I was delirious and I couldn’t find the Middle Eastern place I wanted – I seriously could have just gone for a bunch of pita and hummus.

I stumbled into the food fair but without cash to my name and fearing the dark god of the atm, I ended up walking through without finding anything till 9 pm when I arrived at the CVS I’d seen earlier. I was personally hoping for frozen burritos and I wandered through eventually remembering booze would be cheaper here than at the hotel – I paid $7.50 for a cheap cocktail called the Hulk last night – it was sour and not very strong.

Jon got a sketch of Spam Ultron drawn like one of my French girls

Eventually Jon Hex called and decided to get booze. I asked my dad for beer advice (I prefer rum drinks and the liquor stores were closed) so when Jon arrived it was a decision between wine and beer. On my dad’s suggestion we got a 6 pack of Blue Moon and the holy artifact known as boxed wine – it was a red.  I also grabbed gum, an Italian sub with an inexplicably hard to open plastic wrapper, a bag of Munchies and Sierra Mist.

We got back, invited friends (few who came) and the long point of wondering what to do occurred. I nominated myself the bartender – since someone had to let people into the room for boxed wine spritzers. I popped on the Old Gregg episode of Mighty Boosh and ended up drinking about 6 of them before Ziah twittered to come down and be social.

The spritzers were weak but I was bored enough to come down and so began a night of getting twittered at to come down and hang with people.

What started with a simple hang out with friends ended up with me hanging out with Patrick Dean (indie comics master and all around excellent person), Jeremy Whitley (of Princeless and Action Lab), Chris Sims (mostly in passing since he hates me just enough to wish me to go to San Diego Comic Con), Dinesh Shamdasani of Valiant Comics and then finally I ended up at 2 am or so running into Jon as we took wine glasses from the bar and sat down with Jason Aaron. The Jason Aaron who I wrote that big Wolverine piece on.

Jason Aaron with wine, whiskey and beer

I remember little of the conversation. Big moments included our secondary host whose name I forget pouring wine and frequently saying semper fi – he was a Marine as was his father before him. I was quiet – mostly I just said “I really loved your Wolverine stuff. I read it all over a week”. In reality it was about 1 day but I didn’t want to be presumptuous and the wine there was infinitely more powerful that the spoiler grape juice that is boxed wine.

And that was the moment where I was like – You gotta have fun. You gotta meet people. You gotta spend more money than you should and have a fun time and just relax a bit because worrying about the convention and how poorly you do won’t help. Meet people, have fun and end up helping your friend back to the hotel room because he’s falling asleep on the table.

Of course I wasn’t much better the next morning.

Such a trooper. Perfect for your kids to talk to.

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The choice to make this series was a bit controversial with fans myself included because in order for its existence the previous Avengers cartoon Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was cancelled in its place.  However I have seen the first part of the one-hour pilot and I now believe this show can match the success of its predecessor.  It seems to be a continuation of the past series rather than an outright reboot.  The story first starts with a story-arc that will be very familiar to many of you which is the Death of Captain America and Captain America: Reborn.  While I do enjoy the current lineup of characters I truly hope that they expand it much like they did in the previous series.  These cartoons are the perfect way to generate more awareness for lesser-known characters to a mainstream audience such as Black Panther and Ms. Marvel who were quite prominent members of the previous series lineup.  The voice acting is all top of the line with Captain America sounding the best he ever has though I will say I feel like Eric Loomis was the best voice actor for Tony Stark in Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.  The first half of this pilot did end in a “dramatic cliffhanger” making me intrigued as to where the story will progress from there and I think Marvel has created another well made animated series.  I highly recommend you check out the pilot this weekend or at the very least DVR it because we all know we will be watching Arrested Development season 4 instead.

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“Honestly I think the AR boxes are really great for bringing people into the comics,” said Joe Quesada. “It gives the reader something to do and it stands out on the page enough so you can’t ignore it. And we got a brilliant team together to come up with all sorts of content for the new books.”

:In the Spider-man: The Death of Gwen Stacy trade, you’ll be able to hear the physics of what caused her neck to snap! It’s a five minute video but with her death in the next Spider-man movie a lot of people will be into that.”

“And I mean, I loved Nextwave personally but I wanted to know how robots could impregnate people so I hired some science students to make a video on it. It is pretty mind blowing to be honest.”

“And for the death of Bucky, we brought on all of the past Captain America writers we could to give brief words about how this moment worked for them! And we have this to balance out the robot pregnancy talk.”

“And Secret Wars – we have an hour long video going into the making of every page from Shooter’s notes to whoever illustrated the book. It is going to be like the DVD extra features – but for comics!”

“And I get that some people already have copies of these comics digitally so they don’t to rebuy the books so we’ll be replacing all digital copies with this new AR versions and by our estimation in 2014 all of the books in our archives will have AR moments.”

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Mutants have very frequently been used as a metaphor for minorities of all types in America and persecuted minorities in general. The shame put on “mutant”(long used as a general qualifier such as “straight,” “gay,” or “tall”), makes it seem as Havok hates to be recognized for what he is and hopes people just accept him as a baseline normal, a practice known in reality as “passing.”

This situation could just be a case of a writer being unaware of how his work could be taken by others. Remender is a white male and his experience as such means he wouldn’t have to face the challenges of a minority in society. But instead of acknowledging his difference of perspective, Remender chose instead to dismiss anyone who had a problem with the connotations of his work and denied the minority metaphor of mutants he himself brought up in interviews before the series debuted.

I had an occasion to question Remender’s approach to diversity in his writing a few months ago: www.nerdcenaries.com/my-problem-with-rick-remender/

At the time, I asked Remender via Twitter about his lack of ethnically diverse characters and this was the conversation:

I held off sharing this, thinking the way I asked may have come off as an attack. Now, I can see Remender’s rebuttals are flimsy excuses at best. He makes the assumption that I not only didn’t read his Doctor Voodoo series, but also that I haven’t read ANY series starring a POC character. Nevermind how he addresses me in his first reply, but Remender fails to address why POC characters aren’t present in the books I name. He chooses instead to blame the popularity of white characters and offer up the culturally diverse characters he has created, all of which are villains and one group that are robots.

The main point I came away with from this discussion is how Remender believes since he tried a POC starring book once, and it failed, there’s no market in them at all. DOCTOR VOODOO, mind you, was scheduled for cancellation by Marvel before the release of the first issue.

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But another issue is the one of legacies coming into play. Batgirl, Batwoman, Hawkgirl, Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk are all named for preexisting characters who their legacies come off from, but why keep the name? Should they keep the name? This isn’t an issue that is easy to bring up.

I think on one side there is a positive side to being called the She-Hulk. She is being compared to the Hulk. She is being defined in terms of one of the strongest singular forces in the universe at the time. It isn’t as if she is being called a lady doctor or a female golf, she is being compared to the only thing that accurately defines her powers and the source of her powers. Is the name problematic, yes, but it is necessarily demeaning? Possibly?

At the same time Ms. Marvel now Captain Marvel defined herself in terms of how she received her powers as well and as a somewhat comparison of her abilities. She struggled with the idea of taking the mantle in the most recent series and it literally required the original Captain Marvel to die for her to consider that. But let’s not forget Monica Rambeau, who was the first woman to take the title Captain Marvel decades earlier, and Phyla-Vell who took her brother’s name – though that brings up a few similar concerns.

I think there are issues at looking at names solely from a non-canonical view. It is similar to judging people by the names they are given at the time, almost like looking down on women who allowed themselves to be called lady-doctors at the time. Is it wrong to do that today? Yes, because their gender proceeds importance over the fact that they save lives. Same with male nurses or male flight attendants, though those is more derogatory in context. Still they were making major movements back then by being doctors and joining the workforce as they did.

Jenn Walters, Queen singing lawyer is totally different from Hulk. from She-Hulk by Dan Slott and Juan Bobilio

Ultimately it comes down to the writers to make the characters good or bad, sexist or not, feminist or not and separate from their namesakes or not. I think for the most part, the writers on these books, Captain Marvel and She-Hulk, have done a better job balancing the characters and making them their own people. She-Hulk might have adventures with the Hulk once in a while (at least one of them does) but they all stand alone. Jennifer Walter, Betty Ross and Lyra are all very different characters from the Hulk and even each other, even though the often share the same moniker.

Would it do better to change their names to something else, it totally could be, but then to a degree it denies a positive legacy – the characters often exist because they can connect to the readers, because there is a truth, because the names mean something. They can transcend the names and whatever aged connotations there are. If they end up changing the names – is it worth abandoning a name and possibly launching into a series of other names?

Or what about taking the Green Lantern route? Why can’t all of the Hulks be called Hulks like all of the Green Lanterns are called Green Lanterns and are referred to by their names? There are already multiple Captain Marvels and multiple Hulks, why not gender neutralize them all to Hulks and Captain Marvels? It equates them all while putting their identites as the focus on the character. We refer to Green Lanterns as Hal or Kyle or Guy, why not call the Hulks (Hulk) Bruce, (Hulk) Ross, (Hulk) Jennifer, (Hulk) Betty and (Hulk) Lyra?

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Last Tuesday the online Gender Through Comic Books class started and since I’ve devoted easily 15 hours in the first week to reading and studying and working, I would be highly remiss if I didn’t report on it in some factor. The first week dealt with the topic of gender – what is it ultimately, what defines it, who defines it along with how it is different from sex and where sexuality comics in. It is a pretty intense question but it is one I came in knowing the answer to, though it was a weird journey where webcomics were my biggest guide to not just understanding gender but also dealing with homophobia.

I used to be a fearful kid. I’d refuse to watch R-rated films even if I could get away with it. I have distinct memories of asking my parents if I could watch TV-14 shows with my brother in the basement despite the fact that they would have never found out otherwise. I will admit that my parents did a pretty good job raising me 95% of the time.

But I have this vividly felt memory of being 10 or so at some east coast vacation town. My family was heading home for the night after whale watching (or something to do with boats) and my parents were panicked. That made me panicked. And the highly flamboyant gay community having a pride parade was the cause. My parents weren’t opposed to gay rights to any degree but bringing three kids for a family outing and suddenly being confronted by burly men in sun dresses is something they found hard to explain. This correlation of gay people and fear stayed with me for ages. I haven another vivid memory of a gay pride parade at ComFest in Columbus where I’d moved and I just felt uncomfortable from there being gay people at all. This one time incident had rubbed off and made this illogical homophobia.

I was lucky though because the Internet broke that down and thank god that it did. I’ve seen the people that children who had those first experiences without exposure to reality. They become sad people, they become hateful people, they become people who I’d just rather avoid. People who grew up in the same white suburb that I did are still convinced there is some homosexual agenda beyond “get up, get to work, spend time with loved one, go to bed, repeat.”

Honestly I have to thank webcomics for that. I mentioned before that webcomics got me into comics more than Dilbert, Far Side and Zits collections ever did. Webcomics lacked editorial fears so they dealt with gender issues head on. They were free to make mistakes, they could be horrible comics artistically, they could get gender identity completely wrong – but they tackled the ideas and made me tackle them too.

I’ll admit I used to read some comics that I feel bad about reading now (and some I feel bad about denying that I read them). Stuff like Misfile, The Wotch, El Goonish Shive and a few others. They came to me via friends or links to what other comics read and these comics dealt with sex and gender. These comics made me reconsider my views. These comics made me see gay people as people.

Some of these comics based on my memory weren’t good. They were hated on blogs and forums, partially for dealing with gender and sexuality, for challenging views (and sometimes for not being very good). But damn, they made me consider gender and what is was (how one person identifies themselves, male, female, both, neither, other) and sex (what we are essentially born as (and yes there are more levels and definitions and divisions but that distracts from the point)).

I could have stayed that fearful kid but comics and webcomics made me look deeper. They made me look at problems in other ways and I am gracious for that. Now there are better comics for dealing with gender and sexuality, some of those old webcomics have improved, some haven’t but despite quality, despite content, despite whatever strange legacy they have, they made me a better person.

And for those wondering my parents did loosen up and are pro-gay rights. They know they acted irrationally and while I can somewhat appreciate the fear, I am glad that we all learned better.(And this isn’t meant to be a pat on the back give-me-a-cookie for being less horrible deal.) This isn’t as much of a review of the class as much as it was a personal story but it was on my mind, it was important and it was true and if you wanted to know what goes on in the class you could have joined it.

Next week: Gender and Culture!

The post Gender Through Comic Books Week 1 Report – What Is Gender? appeared first on Nerdcenaries.

The first ERAS story, ERAS Parrish is something I’ll totally regard as a failure on my part. I didn’t get a second opinion till it was done and that opinion hated it. Parrish ended up focusing too much on a dramatic story with issues of masculinity and white knighting that suddenly changed into a horror story with monsters in it in the last 2 pages. Not very good on my part – the balance was off like a seesaw with a boulder on one side.

With ERAS Fung I realized I needed an actual story to wrap the issues around, instead of issues to base a story on. I needed to lay the bricks before pouring the paint. Luckily the story came more easily since the artist wanted to do the drug/murder mystery based on Dr. Fung and my loose pitch of that.

Dr Fung from the comics with Dan Barrister

The original Dr. Fung was your overly stereotypical Chinese detective – that “ancient Chinese secret” brand of racist detective. I didn’t want to completely abandon that since the Fung himself was a good person and there was some value in the horrible stereotype but I wanted to paint the effects on the future of what that stereotype does and so ERAS: Fung focuses on his son, Marvin (though Dr. Fung appears).

Art by Brian Wolf – I am super excited about the art for this book.

Marvin is a good person unlike Ted Parrish. Marvin can be abrasive and rude but in a lot of ways he earned it. He’s gone through a lot of adversity before the comic even started. He graduated med school at an early age despite several racist teachers who were against it. He made himself his own person instead of following his father’s footsteps.

But he has this tie to his family and the people in his community in San Francisco that he loves that is he weakeness. He cares about his father, he cares about the widowed Nancy Asner (who is tied into another ERAS story) and he cares about using his gifts to help these people instead of moving ahead in his own life. He is an altruistic good person because there aren’t enough plainly good heroes in the comic. He studied what magic he could post med school because he needed to and now works as a magic consultant for the police but mostly as a detective for various people in town with – arcane problems.

Contrasting him is Dan Barrister. The original Dan Barrister was Dr. Fung’s teenage sidekick, the brawn to balance out Fung’s brains. So Barrister went on after Dr. Fung retired to be a father, because of old age, because of many things, to become a police officer. But this is San Francisco in the 60′s and there is still a lot of racism, especially towards the Asian community (and towards the gay community – where is Dr. Fung’s wife and Marvin’s mother?). Someone who hung out with an old Asian man fighting crime – that doesn’t sound like someone who’d make it on the force. So Barrister got mean, he acts racists and slowly that is who he becomes – this racist and hateful person. He starts to create these fake memories that allow him to justify his hate (were he and Dr. Fung closer than he’d like to remember?). Soon that boy who helped an old man solve his mysteries is the Police Director and he is a monster. And when forced to deal with things he doesn’t understand while wrestling around with inner problems – who he is, what he lost and he drinks and eats the problems away.

And then you have the Summer of Love. All of these hippies in town passing out drugs and sleeping around. Dan has been cracking down because he can, because he likes the taste of brutality in his mouth a bit too much. But then the wrong kid overdoses (a cameo role that could be you!) and Dan knows something isn’t kosher about the drugs. Dan knows that there is magic involved and Dan finally can’t ignore the magic stuff so he has to call in Marvin, the son of the man he lead him to hate just by being a good person.

This is the world I’ve built with ERAS: Fung and I’d like you to come along on the journey and see where it leads, sticking a new generation together tacking hate, magic and drugs in San Francisco.

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