Really Geek Thoughts: Like A Canary In A Mineshaft

I tend to be the kind of person who spends a lot of time trying to make sense of things that on the surface are either terribly simple or just don’t make any sense. Oftentimes when I do this I just come away with a headache. However every once in a while I actually come up with something.

Recently I’ve been thinking about comic book characters who act out of character, needless death for shock value, and decisions made at the editorial levels that seem to make lies of all the things they claim in public.

A while back there was a character who started off as a supporting character/potential love interest for Tim Drake (Robin), her name was Stephanie Brown aka Spoiler. For about a minute and a half she was picked as Tim’s replacement when he decided to retire. Then she made some bad choices and was “fired” by Batman. Desperate to win back her place as Robin she attempted to put into motion a scheme she found in the Batcomputer. Because Bats trusted her with the password to the mainframe but not the full truth about his many alternate identities, she didn’t know that the whole plan hinged on his alternate id of Matches Malone participating. As a result a huge gang war broke out. In trying to help stop it Spoiler is injured badly. She is then let to die by a character who for years was established as a paragon of virtue and moral fortitude. To give Batman a wake up call.
I don’t think you could have started a bigger fire if you had used a match and gasoline. The death of Stephanie Brown, the out of character actions of Dr. Leslie Thompkins, the failure of anyone to bring Batman to task for his failings that led to her death pissed off a whole lot of people. What pissed them off even more was when the powers that be at DC claimed that her death was meant to shake up the DCU and have far reaching effects. Only problem? The death got forgotten almost as soon as it happened. Most characters never even talk about her including Tim who went back to being Robin. For all intents and purposes the character might as well have not existed.
However as is sometimes the case just because a character is made to disappear from within the confines of the fictional universe doesn’t mean that they don’t continue to be very important in the universe out side the pages of the comics.
In this case Stephanie Brown has become a rallying point for a lot of fans of superhero comics, especially female ones. Her treatment has resulted in a lot of debate. Some of it healthy and informed. Some of it sadly merely angry and ignorant.
But I think that what happened to the character of Spoiler was actually akin to a dead canary in a mine shaft.

I think the deeper problem is one of a failure of perception.
The notion came to me when I was reading for what seems like the billionth time about how Nightwing, was supposed to have died during DC’s Infinite Crisis. How Dan Didio had to have it explained to him how important Richard Grayson is both to the fans and to the DC Universe. It should have hit me right away but it really didn’t.
He just doesn’t get it.

And I’m starting to suspect that a great many people who work in the superhero genre especially at the editorial level don’t get it. Sadly though many of the writers don’t get it either. Or they do get it but have to toe the company line to keep getting work.
What is the “it” that they aren’t getting?
These are not characters. They are not icons, or archetypes. Not plot devices or metaphors.
They are us.
Hopelessly geeky I know, but true never the less.

Back when it was decided that to boost sales a new Green Lantern was needed and that the best way to clear away all the “clutter” was to all but destroy all the things connected with the current incarnation of the character, the way they chose to do that was to have then Green Lantern Hal Jordan, go insane and become a villian. Fan reaction was violent. At the time there really had not been anything like the outporing of anger over the treatment of a comic book character. And because it’s not fashionable to say so, the complaints were dressed up in rhetoric about destroying a heroic legacy, and such. Such sentiments weren’t untrue, but they were a way of talking around the truth. If we fans had been more honest we would have said this, “When I read Green Lantern I see a piece of myself or how I would like to be within its pages and to see Hal Jordan do the horrible things he’s been made to do feels as nauseating as if I were watching myself do them.”
The same is true for Stephanie Brown. When she was used by Batman to win Tim Drake back to his side. When she was killed trying to rectify a mistake that she never would have made in the first place if Batman had trusted her fully. When she was allowed to die for no other reason than plot, and then her death was forgotten about, the people who connected with her, for whatever reason, weren’t reading about a fictional characters death. They were reading about their own.
And it’s something that I think either you understand at your core, or you don’t. For the ones who don’t, there’s really no way to explain it. I could cite countless examples of material by writers who do get it. Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman, comes to mind. Likewise countless examples of material by writers who do not get it. Frank Millers All Star Batman and Robin come to mind. But in the end either these characters have a depth and resonance for you that is intensely intimate, deeply personal, and goes far beyond merely being fictional characters, printed on paper or they don’t.

Sometimes, our nature as Geeks, gets us hung up on debating details. Some of the things that have been done to female characters in recent years is a good example of that. There certainly is a value in shining a light on maltreatment of female characters. Even a value in discussing from whences such things come. But it is I think equally important to not lose sight of the fact that regardless of why an action is taken, someone who will take an action to the detriment of one kind of character, cannot be trusted not to take the exact same action with any other kind of character.

Therefore I want to call on all fans of superhero comics. Let’s start using the power we have to try and effect change. When a character is destroyed either by actually being “killed”, or by being turned into something wholly unrecognizable for no reason other than because the powers that be said so lets make our collective voice heard. Lets be heroes for our heroes.

Towards that end I will be maintaining a list of the “Fallen”. Anyone who knows of an instance where a character of any gender, orientation, race etc is killed, violated, de-powered, or written radically out of character, please send it to toriach@gmail.com and I will post it here. Ideally I would like to know the specific issue in which the incident took place, or failing that story arc, and a bit of detail about what was done to them. I’ll start with a small list in this article.

Stephanie Brown (Spoiler, Robin): Killed as a plot device.
Dr. Leslie Thompkins: Turned into a child murderer.
Captain America: Gave up the fight against a fascist movement.
Tony Stark: Turned into a megalomaniacal fascist.
Reed Richards: Turned into one of Tony Starks cronies.
Sue Richards: Abandoned her children.

As I said this is a very small list. I’d like to think it won’t grow, but sadly I know better.

Peace
And
Long
Life

Toriach