Designated Sidekick

An open letter to a few points, debates and blogs around the internet.

Girl-Wonder.org is a collection of sites dedicated to females in mainstream comics. Our goals are to foster an attentive, empowered audience community and to encourage respect and high-quality character depiction within the industry.

Point 1. Slash fiction is not mainstream, nor is it mainstream comics. In fact, it’s a small breakaway movement on the internet that’s largely more self congratulatory than it is noticed by the outside world. As an art form, it’s also old news - Kirk and Spock slash fic is credited as the big break through moment for the sub genre of fan fiction.

In short, slashfic is not mainstream comics. It’s not actually on our watch.
Point 2. Feminism, and girl-wonder.org, are not the borg. As part of Girl-Wonder, I am allowed to hold opinions that differ from other Girl-Wonder staff, and the CEO. This is what makes Girl-Wonder an interesting place. It’s also so far obvious that we’re not the Borg that I have to give back my latex body suit and laser pointer eyepiece before I’ll be allowed in the group photo for the annual report. We can differ in what we do, think, read and write.

Point 3. Girl-Wonder’s mission is to be a clearing house of related themes, starting out like a local store, and maybe one day being the Wal-Mart sized megalith of comics critique work. Maybe. We don’t know, because maybe we won’t need to expand beyond the core of dealing with women in mainstream comics.

Point 4. If you want to start up a site that deals with the portrayal of male or female characters in fan-fiction, you should do that, and you’d probably get a few supporters from fanfiction, mainstream industries and some of the people writing here and reading here might join you. However, the role of Girl-Wonder.org does not currently include fan-fiction. Maybe in the future, maybe not. Right now, Girl-Wonder deals with women in mainstream comics

Point 5. Portrayals of hyperviolent women who castrate men, published under an X-Rated publishing company are outside of the Girl-Wonder gambit, definitely don’t come into Project Girl Wonder, and really, not what we’re dealing with here at Girl-Wonder.org where we deal with women in mainstream comics.

A point of personal opinion. I don’t read slash. I don’t read yaoi, yuri, femmeslash or any other form of slash. That said, I regard slash as a form of fandom, and one that I plan on actively encouraging when I get my fiction writing published. I plan on having a slashfic/fanfic license agreement built into my novels because I regard the fandom (and fanon) as an interesting exploration of the text. I don’t read Harry/Draco or Bruce/Jason because I don’t read any slashfic.

That said, I don’t regard slash fiction (or fanon) as mainstream comics. In fact, I really don’t worry too much about non-mainstream comics here at DS, because I accept that niche markets will serve niche interests. I don’t have to agree with the interests to accept that they exist, or even personally support those interests (personally, I find the whole XXX porn comic industry to be bizarre. Black and white, difficult to hold in one hand? That’s meant to be art isn’t it?).

My reason for wanting to see an improved lot for female characters in mainstream comics has been documented before here on DS. Whether or not my fellow bloggers, my CEO, my readers or anyone else produces content for niche non-mainstream markets doesn’t matter a rat arse to me.

In fact, my response is this - so?

I joined Girl-Wonder.org because I want to contribute to improving the portrayal of females in mainstream comics. What anyone else from this domain does with anything else in their life is their life, and I don’t give a damn whether you like that, agree with that or what you think. Because so long as they’re pulling their weight on this project, kicking some arse on their end of the cause and being willing to let us disagree and be different people outside of the G-W.org work, then I’m damn glad to call them allies, friends and fellow travellers. The world ain’t black and white, it’s a full spectrum of gray scale, and that’s the gorram point to it all.

People can and do hold contradictory positions on issues. It’s human nature. So teh_no? I’m over here if you want to fight me about that. Except that I can accept you can have a different opinion. Can you handle the fact I’m not agreeing with you?

Machine of Death: Short Story Anthology Competition

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words “DROWNED” or “CANCER” or “OLD AGE” or “CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN”. It let people know how they were going to die. …

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR?
The premise of the anthology is covered in the book’s introduction, above. Your mission, as a writer, is to come up with the best possible story that fits in the world described in the introduction. The only major difference between THAT world and THIS world is that people in THAT world can undergo a cheap and easy blood test to find out how they are going to die. So the stories that we’re interested in are those that somehow explore that idea in an interesting or entertaining way.

I have but one thing to say - I lack time and opportunity to write it, but I would love to see a story where the machine says “EDITORIAL MANDATE” contest for a spot in the anthology.

Consider this a call to arms, undead helper monkeys of the G-W.org universe.

Go on. It’s a chance to (make fictional characters) die for…

Catching up on my blog reading recently, I noted Feminist Allies: Gender Identity in the Comics post about (and it’s early, so I direct quote)

“I think comic strips are an interesting place to see how gender is reinforced in our daily lives, and how that reinforcement often affects us all negatively.”

it’s an interesting piece, and one that’s noticeable in a quick scan of the black and white single panel to three panel dailies. Gender roles are reinforced or if broken, are broken as the form of a punchline.  “So MaleRole was done by A FEMALE *cue audience guffaw*” Oh Beetle Bailey, how wacky art thou! I mean, I gave up reading Cathy years back because it started to grate raw nerves with me. Don’t get me started on the creep out inducing stuff that goes on in For Better or For Worse (for worse actually) since there’s enough other people on the internet covering that watch.  There are problems in the funny pages that reflect society and show both comic and society needs work.
What got me thinking was jeff’s last paragraph….

Mountains and Molehills
Some might say I’m trivializing gender stuff by focusing on a small segment of pop culture–comic strips. But again, these are solid parts of our day-to-day lives (ok, of my day to day life, and I think this is where a lot of the work on recognizing gender norms and how they might negatively affect us can be done.

In short, I think jeff’s nailed the importance of this in a nutshell.  This is reality, real life, day to day, common touch ordinary people territory - the funny pages.  I’m an academic, I hang with an elite crowd at work, teach at a university (highly ranked one at that).  I don’t run with the average person in a lot of respects, but I do read the same comics in the paper as they do.  It’s the one point where I can say that I intersect with a lot of other people.  Sure, I read Cathy in preference for the Phantom, but still, I could talk about the Phantom to the other boys at school.  It’s more real to a lot of people than big issue changes like social reform or equity or equality of wage, or domestic violence shelters or war in Africa.  It was a common ground, and a part of people’s real daily life (go on, tell me that reading the comics isn’t important because it’s done by ordinary people)
The so called small issues are places where you can intersect with the real life of people, yet we’re forever on the defensive about whether we’re trivialising the big picture by addressing these smaller real life issues. So this got me thinking about the “But you’re trivialising…” concept in other contexts, namely the fact that I’m in the process of moving apartments.  Did I trivialise the apartment moving by packing the small objects before moving the bookcase?  Or was it a hell of a lot easier to move the bookcase once I’d dealt with the raft of smaller objects, freeing me up to take on the bigger issue of the bookcase as part of the biggest issue of moving the entirety of my possessions?

Tackling what we can, where we can, and bringing about incremental improvement in all areas of society isn’t trivialising the major cause.  Assuming that the only change is big change is that none of us can really ever feel that we can acheive is to make what we work for into something of little significance or value.  Getting to people’s self interest in small ways each and every day is much more significant, and a hell of a lot more valuable.

That, if you want to take Answers.com’s second meaning of trivial, is the whole point of well constructed social change - taking it from the unachieved and unachievable and making it something ordinary and commonplace (and achieved) is the endgame scenario.

Change enough of the smaller parts, and the composition of the bigger picture alters. If making a better big picture isn’t significant and valuable, then what is?

TALKING GRIFTER & MIDNIGHTER WITH CHUCK DIXON

Oh man. The levels of issue I have with this interview is long. Very long. I know what Dixon is thinking he’s saying, and what he’s actually saying aren’t meshing up. I know there are Chuck Dixon fans, and Chuck Dixon himself on the Internet. That said, I don’t have any problem going to the dance with anyone who wants to to reply to me here and discuss my reading of the interview and my interpretation of the chasm between wanting deniability and stating support for the sexual orientation or existence of relationship between two characters. If you want to write for the deniablity, then in my view, you’re not writing for the support of the existence of ANY aspect of the character.

Onto some quote by quote work after the jump

(more…)

In summary, I wish to say this… My trolls are lame. Where am I going to get the XP if I can”t get a decent set of trolls to vanquish? GRC practically levels every second post, and I’ve been farming for months without a hint of something koboldian. Stupid orcs.

Slightly More Serious Note: Success or Failure?

So, it’s the end of 2006, and there’s no Robin-in-jar for Stephanie in the Batcave - does this mean Girl-Wonder has failed?

No.

One of the things I realised when I signed onto this gig is that my day job as a marketer meant that I was rather useful for the cause, if nothing else, for the fact that I really don’t expect to see name recognition achieved inside 18 months, and substantive shifts in marketshare inside of 10 years. Girl-Wonder’s name recognition alone is fabulous success.

Girl-Wonder isn’t a year old yet. That people know of the existence of the site, that the first letter campaign was met with letter writing and letter responses is a success. This roadshow is on track for the timelines that commercial marketers use for judging success. Y’all can have variable mileage on what you expect by what date - I’m just going to cheer on the success that we’ve had in the short time frame we’ve been operating.

Bumps in the Road: Looking forwards

At some point in the next 10 years, several of the crew at G-W are going to leave. This is because 10 years is a long time, and any organisation will turn staff over in that ten year period. My prediction of G-W is that one staff writer/blogger/contributor/hard-core poster to the board will leave in a manner akin to a slam-the-door-I-quit! resignation. This to me is par for the course. Every organisation has these moments. In the world o’ privilege where I operate, this is so par for the course that you worry if you hit year five of ten without a stomping of the feet from someone on the squad. When it happens here, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief. It’s life as usual.

That said, it’ll be taken as an omen of dark times and gloom, spawn countless OMG!TheEnd! posts, and it’ll be a bit like finding out the drummer is leaving Matchbox20 - tragic at the time, but later we’ll wonder why we thought it was the end times.

Things I can pretty much expect to happen next year

• Somebody will say there’s no point to the Girl-Wonder.org mission.
• Failure to deliver radical and long lasting change in comics will be deemed to be the fault of Girls Who Dare To Suggest Things Could Be Different (ps: That title free for a blog)
• Some male comic book readers will defend their comics with impassioned outbursts against feminists who want comics to be decently written, well drawn and not traced from porn
• Some female comic book readers will defend the same comic books for different reasons
• Somebody will notice that not every woman is agreeing with the female bloggers and declare this to be proof of something. The fact that I’m around as a guy disagreeing with other men will be ignored for being inconvenient .
• At least one person who’s working hard for our side of the argument (ie the argument you, the reader, cares about) will have some self reflection and doubt. At least one person on the other side of the argument will do likewise. Blog posts from both parties will be treated in diametrically opposite statements of “The cause has failed” and “The cause has succeeded”.
• Greg Land will draw Sue Storm with a porn face.
• Greg Land will draw Black Canary as Sue Storm as Black Canary as Sue Storm.
• Transformers:The Movie will lack any decent female characters, spark a rift in the fandom between those who saw their childhood trashed by the new movie, those wishing it was possible for a Transformers franchise in 2007 to include positive portrayals of women, and those people who wrote massive tracts of Optimus/Megatron.All claims on ruination of childhoods will be met with “We called dibs on that issue” by Star Wars fans. In conclusion, another fandom will feel the pain that is X-men3.
• Marvel, DC and Dark Horse will produce one or more “For Women” comics special events. Marvel will make it pink, DC will sell special issues with a refrigerator on the front cover, and nobody will notice Dark Horse.
• At least one male character (deceased) will return to life. To redress the balance in the force, six female characters will be killed. Two of those characters will be created for the express purpose of being killed. One of those characters will be killed onscreen at the end of Marvel’s Crossover-a-thon, and one will die at the end of DC’s next crossover arc.
• DC will admit that OYL was a bad idea. Plans for One Really Long Year (ORLY) will be launched.
• Dan Didio will hate the player (Dick Grayson) not the game (Crossoverarama).
• Designated Sidekick will be fined by the Internet Bureau of Blogging for excessive word counts and sentenced to actually pay attention to his day job.

On reflection: Playing with the Full Privilege Deck

One thing that I have encountered over the past few months being involved in G-W, and then by extension feminist blogging has been the issue of privilege. Thanks to Karen (GRC) and the remarkable patience of arielladrake, I’ve been working on dealing with the fact that a lot of my responses are privilege based because I’m playing with the damn near full deck of privilege cards. I am middle class, highly qualified, work in an elite end of an elite industry, live in a nice suburb in the national capital and I went to a nice elite all male school. In theory, I’m one of the poster boys for the patriarchy on paper. In reality, I’m blogging for Girl-Wonder.org.

Along the way, I’ve noticed various things that I freely admit confuse me, and then when I start unpacking the whole thing, it quite often “Okay, so that’s the non privilege position” which is followed often by me saying “The privilege position of going “Yeah, and?” seems a bit easier”. The longer I stay in this role, the more I think I’ll come to terms with the difficulties faced by those operating from a non privileged position. It’ll take time, and it’ll take effort, and I’ll get it wrong on the way. But that’s just reason to try again, not reason to give up (and that my friends, is an interesting statement - I assume I have a right to succeed through trial error and effort. Not everyone feels that way do they?)
I came into the DS role because I also knew that having one of the bloggers operating from a white male privilege position gives the G-W squad a set of options that wouldn’t be available without my presence. In 2007, if there’s any time anyone on the G-W (or comics feminism) extended allies network thinks that a message coming from the Designated Sidekick would hit harder than from the other members, drop me a line. At the risk of going Boromir here, it’s an option, let’s use it if we need it.

Why I still want the Memorial Case

It’s been a while since Stephanie Brown died through editorial mandate. I have many reasons for wanting her recognition in the Batcave, but for now, I want to focus on one reason. As a young boy reading comics, I believed in what the characters stood for, believed in the notions of heroism, and the acceptance of personal risk for the greater good. Robin was an iconic role model for me, and I found myself identifying with him (and with Green Arrow).
I want the future young male readers of the Batman comics to know that there was once a female character, a girl of their age who believed in the things they believe in, who fought for the things they would want to fight for, and who was killed because she stood for what they believe in. I want them to know that when faced with the choice of owning the mistake, Stephanie Brown stood her ground and didn’t walk away.

I want the young male readers of the future generations to have the chance to honour Stephanie Brown because she was a Robin, and she stood for those things I believed in when I read those comics, that they believe in when they read those comics, and to know that yes, being willing to sacrifice safety, security and self for the greater good isn’t just what boys would do -it’s what heroes do.  Heroes like Stephanie Brown.
I want them to have a chance to know firsthand that capes aren’t just for boys.