Ugly American Report Column 7: Fired Up!

I’m pretty fired up today about a number of items, all of them involving Marvel in one way or another, which should come as no surprise to anybody paying attention.

Amazing Spider-Man # 699.1
I’m not even going to spend much time talking about how stupefyingly backward and
inane the whole “point one” concept is, because I’ve trodden that ground so often the grass won’t grow back any more. Suffice to say that this super awesome “jumping on point and paving the way forward” for new readers does no such thing at all.
In fact, this isn’t even a Spider-Man story, which would be a fairly odd thing to do at any point in the chain of an Amazing Spider-Man title, but an unforgivably and galactically stupid thing to do IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR EPIC SPIDER-MAN SWAN SONG.

Just to be clear, Amazing Spider-Man is “ending” with issue # 700, and Dan Slott’s purportedly earth-shattering final arc started with # 698. I won’t give you any spoilers, but so far, the grandiosity has been well earned. Big things are happening in the title, and I’m here to tell you that 699.1 moved that story forward not one inch.

In the beginning of the book, it replays a scene from #699 from a different perspective, and you get a little more information about The Lizard and his current status, but again, the main plot thread is not advanced a micron. Then the comic dives headlong into a tedious and overly drawn out origin story for Morbius, who just happens to have a new title coming out next month. I’m sure that’s all coincidence, but in case you missed it, there’s a giant ad for it at the end of the issue.

If this were a television show, it would be the equivalent of stopping 2/3 of the way through your season finale to run a 30 minute commercial for another TV show. If this were a retailer, there would be grounds for a “bait and switch” law suit. The people who purchased that issue were expecting a continuation of the “Dying Wish” story they were reading, not an ad for the upcoming Morbius comic.

I get it, Marvel. Why not use the massive surge of interest in your flagship character to try and drive eyes toward a book that might otherwise suffer for attention? Here’s why – because it’s dishonest, and sleazy, and leaves people who were probably enjoying Dying Wish with a foul taste in their mouth. That’s why. It’s perfectly emblematic of the current Marvel philosophy of chasing this quarter’s numbers by destroying good will with their customers and slitting their own throats long-term. Good luck with that.

Brian Michael Bendis
Question: what’s the difference between Brian Michael Bendis and a guy who simply doesn’t know or care what anybody else has written? I’m asking because I can’t find one.

In All-New X-Men, which by the way comes out about every 38 minutes at $3.99 per, these words actually escape the lips of Emma Frost:
“I’m thinkin’ maybe you and I shouldn’t be anywhere near each other anymore.”
And
“I appreciate the bust-out, fellas, but I’ll see you in another life.”

Now, Emma Frost has one of the more distinctive voices in comics. She’s faux British. She’s a high class, high maintenance, high heeled bitch on wheels with a penchant for elevated snark dipped in acid. She probably doesn’t ever use the term “bust-out”. No way in hell does she refer to anybody as “fellas”, and at no point in any time or universe does Emma Frost drop the “g” from the word “thinking.” Doesn’t happen. Ever. A 12 year-old having read one issue of Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men would know that.

Now, if you want to take the character in a different direction, fine. Use your writerly skills (you do have those, don’t you?) to concoct a character arc that addresses the change organically. (See Daredevil: Waid, Mark) But that’s not what Bendis does. He just does what he wants and expects you’ll fold under it, because goddammit, he’s Brian Michael Bendis.

He did something equally inexplicable in the Avengers with Wonder Man, who just appeared out of the blue with blood in his eyes for…..no reason whatsoever. There was nothing in continuity that would explain his rage, but that’s what Bendis wanted, so that’s what he did. And at the end of the story, Wonder Man just gives a half-assed apology and the Avengers roll with it in exactly the manner the audience is expected to. It makes no sense, and frankly, it’s lazy.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that an editor steps in and informs Bendis about the obvious – that his characters and stories have no relationship to things other writers have put down, and therefore jarring and confusing to readers who have read those stories. I can imagine there was a day when he was the go-to guy on every event book when that conversation might have been uncomfortable.

But take a good look at the landscape and ask yourself - why would editorial kowtow to this madness? Avengers and New Avengers are sitting under 60,000 units, Ultimate Spider-Man is under 40,000 units, and the bloom is off that rose. Partly I would think because the rose thinks he has carte blanche to directly contradict everything that’s come before him with an undeserved sense of impunity. Note: you might want to back off that bit, work on your craft, and absorb what’s going on around your imaginary throne.

Avengers Arena # 1 (Caution: Unavoidable Spoilers Ahead)
I’m not sure how I feel about this comic yet, I need it to play out a bit further before I can really assess it. The premise is that Dennis Hopeless has Arcade abduct a bunch of young B and C Listers and makes them battle to the death Hunger Games

style. It could end up being empty garbage dependent on the idea that the reader is actually invested in the idea that “deaths” in comic books matter for its gravitas. Sorry, that ship sailed a while back. It could also end up being something really cool with steely balls where Hopeless is free to really rip on the drama because Marvel doesn’t have to worry about their toothpaste license if they make Kid Britton a stone prick.

The first issue played out with an Achilles heel shared by many books written by New Schoolers like Josh Fialkov or Nick Spencer – they often build around a single splashy moment that makes the rest of the book feel like empty calories. Like I said, after one issue I can’t assess it. Let’s just say the first issue was intriguing to the point where at $2.99 I’m willing to give it an issue or four of rope to hang itself or blossom.

But that’s not what jammed me up at all. I get to the internet and observe that the punditsphere is already whining about racism inherent in Avengers Arena’s first casualty, Mettle. The leveled charge? Only a racist kills the black guy first. (insert slapped forehead, deep and painful sigh here)

Yes, Arcade turns Mettle into a thick juicy spray at the end of the first issue. Yes, he’s kind of a black guy. Most of the time, Mettle actually looks more like a Toyota than anything, but sure…underneath all that, he’s still a black dude. Fine.

What’s the message, if any, in killing him first? I don’t get it. Are the people offed third more awesome? Psychologically speaking, the concept of primacy says that in any string we tend to remember things that happen first – wouldn’t that place extra importance on the first victim? Do the criers mean to suggest that being the first victim implies a lack of competence, and if so, could that possibly hold true to all or even most of the examples of this “tired trope?”

I don’t know, and I don’t think the whiners know, because all of this is steeped in a healthy base of bullshit. Once upon a time there was a cat named King who dreamed of a day when all human beings were judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Granted, this was a cat that cheated on his wife pretty regularly, so I’m not sure how much stock we should put in his moral philosophy. But the idea has had some traction, or at least a lot of us pay public lip service to the idea, so we’ll roll with the notion that a just and good world would treat Mettle fairly as a human being and not elevate or denigrate his status based upon skin color.

What would that comic look like?

Well, let’s take a look at what Dennis Hopeless (who is impossibly white)

actually did with the character. Imagine you’re writing Avengers Arena, and you’re plotting out the first issue. You want to lead with some action and really establish the “anyone can go at any time” element of the book, because if you burn slow, many of your potential readers won’t be there for issue # 5. Does that make sense?

So you get all your captives together right away and let Arcade start bullying them. You know you want to get rid of one of your leads so that people understand how serious you are, but who and how? It’s not dramatic to eliminate a character without building an empathetic rapport, and that takes time. You can make a martyr…but does altruistic sacrifice translate in 2012? Maybe…but probably not. How do you make that sacrifice believable and pay off emotionally?

What Hopeless did was take a romantic couple, Hazmat and Mettle.

He had Hazmat get lippy and rambunctious with Arcade, which is perfectly organic to the character and her history. And then he had Mettle sacrifice himself for his love, which is perfectly organic to that character and his history. He created a moment that stood a chance of resonating with the reader. We can believe that a good man might lay down his life for the girl he loves, and we might be really pissed at Arcade for doing that. Jackpot. That’s a perfectly reasonable strategy for a writer to approach a difficult situation, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with race, it has to do with craft.

Now, does it seem more plausible to you that Dennis Hopeless treated Mettle fairly as a character to create drama in the natural context of writing his “eliminator” story, or do you think he just doesn’t like black guys? Do the whiners actually think about these things at all? Are they really absorbing the stories? Because what made it onto the page was a scene where the black character demonstrated the most nobility in the group. That’s the world King dreamed of, isn’t it?

The ugly truth is that it wouldn’t have mattered if Mettle had died first, or fifth, or ninth, there is a contingent that would have cried racism. That’s what they do, regardless of the facts, the evidence on the page, or common sense. That ugly truth is that racism is in fact alive and well, because if a black character died, then it must have been because the White Guy is a bigot. Good luck with that, hypocritical comics punditsphere.