GraveSp

@Neverpraying said:

Wonder Woman says MY PARENTS ARE GODS! While Bruce and Clark say our parents are dead :(

lol

Green Lantern Green Arrow, very political book and a great story. Although I may only think that because my ideals aligned fairly well with the ideas being championed in the book. Although that may be because there is a difference between a political book and a social book. DC Universe Decides was a book about the politics in the DC universe, I thought that it was interesting read and good story, but not great.

Nice I'm excited for this .

The superman/Mohammad Ali thing was bad for some many many reasons. Daniel Craig in Buffy though is acceptable, just because I can't see Buffy being around long enough for the reference to be dated. Plus the TV show is going to keep it dated anyways

@SC: you make a good point that because they show her to be the strongest character so people think it balances out, it made me go back and look at her actual introduction. He first reference is Jason Todd talking about her tits, eh its Jason Todd he'll do that, he actual first page is HER KILLING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE IN TANKS. Now I could go into the argument of why violence is more acceptable in our culture then sex but I prefer to attack the heart of the arguments of this issue, namely that her portrayal is an injustice to her character. I do not remember her ever killing people, especially what amounts to 3 tanks worth. I remember her being sexual. To me the bigger out of character movie is probably the mass killing which I do not believe I saw anyone complain about.

Now I agree with your point about sex not being good for long term readership but it is an easy draw and you hope that people stick around. I'm sure that DC realizes that if lets say 10 people pick up issue one of a new book maybe half are going to stick around. Maybe they were hoping to draw the people who read The Boys in, they know there will be a drop but they hope that maybe they can get maybe a casual reader who doesn't read Red Hood books, or maybe a Marvel or Image reader who previously wasn't picking up DC books. Honestly I do not understand the marketing side of comic books, I know enough about business to know that it can be beneficial being a niche market.

@SC: You know I'm not really sure what the writing process was like but I like to believe that Scott sat down and wrote a character that he felt was real, fitting both with his idea of who Starfire is and how he believes that she would act. I also like to believe that the artists, editors and everyone else on the book saw it in the early stages and agreed with the interpretation and felt there was some truth in it. It is entirely possible that they sat down and asked "Starfire is an alien, how is she different than the humans? How does she see humans?" and those are good questions. Maybe they went the other way and said "Starfire has always been a very sexual character. How can we explain that?" Maybe the thought process was "screw Dick Grayson, lets have his ex sleep with people that will definitely piss him off, oh crap that makes no sense we have to explain it someway." but honestly that doesn't make a lot of sense. It takes a little bit of trust in the writer to hope that they have the characters best interest at heart, and at this stage I would like to believe that the person DC gave 3 books to knows what he is doing in the long run especially in modern comics. In the days where you can go back and pick up Batman and Son and see Zur En Arrh graffiti I like to believe that any aspect of a character can be studied later. Maybe not the first arc but I would not be surprised if after issue 7 we have an issue or subplot devoted to Starfire's attitudes towards humans. That got kinda rambley but I think the answer is in there somewhere

@vuviper: yeah I admit that the name element is doesn't fit as well, but one way to look at it is he doesn't ask if she remembers anyone named Nightwing, Aqualad or Cyborg so that could be another explanation.

@ForbushBug said:

So if we're supposed to stop supporting sexist comics per Eric Stephenson's suggestion then I guess I'll stop picking up Bomb Queen minis... which are put out by Image. Let me guess... he'll probably say that's different because BQ is supposed to be satire so it can show as much T&A. Nope, doesn't work. Skin is skin. Sorry, Eric... you don't get to bash another company's character for have a cleavage window when one of yours has her boobs actually falling out of hers. And don't get me started on the output of their partner, Top Cow. But thanks to Eric's hypocrisy I will stop supporting a company that panders to its audience... Image Comics.

Totally agree, Images makes Bomb Queen and Hack/Slash and they think that they can say that DC comics are exploitative

For a boycott to work it would have to actually effect the profitability of a comic which probably isn't going to happen because there seemed to be a lot of people who had positive things to say about the comics. Also even if it no longer becomes popular there are a couple reasons why it may continue to be published, if DC wants it to be a loss leader or they think that future gains will offset the current loses they will continue to publish.

EDIT: After rereading his actual blog post I see things a little differently. For one he says that people should stop complaining about the comics they don't like, it just draws attention to them. Red Hood and the Outlaws is probably going to get a boost in sales because its all everyone is talking about. I am not sure how I feel about his sexism with superhero comics it seems hypocritical when you look at some Image books but I like his idea to just ignore the comics that aren't for you, don't buy them but don't complain about them either. I do that with comics all the time, I buy a book and I don't like it I just stop getting it, at most I may talk to the guys at the comic book shop about it but I don't go farther. When I write reviews to talk about comics I usually write positive ones, there is one exception but that was because it seemed like every review at the time was positive and I wanted to offer an alternate view. But you know I agree with that part of the blog you don't like it you don't have to get it, and if it means you won't get to read one of your favorite characters that sucks but its comics. One of my favorite characters is The Creeper, I don't get to read him because he isn't in any comics.

I was kinda surprised that they would make Sandman, Y, and some of those Batman books as exclusive. I bet amazon offered them a pretty sweet deal for those

@Fantasgasmic: actually I was more thinking 86 with the Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. Although if you look back at the 70's with Snowbirds Don't Fly it wasn't appropriate for children. Honestly most of the comics that I like best the ones that I reread constantly I would not consider appropriate for kids, even if they are not super violent or sexual. I love Neil Gaiman's Sandman but I would not consider it an appropriate book for children just because it deals with concepts that they do not have enough exposure to and literary elements that they are not familiar with plus they would probably not know how to deal with it. And honestly I wasn't reading comics when I was a kid but when I go back and read comics that are more targeted "for kids" they ring false to me. "For kids" comics usually portray the world in a way which is almost nothing like ours, and for me a "good" comic is one that I can point to and say "I liked the exploration of that theme, because it is a theme that I see in the real life and it is something I have thought about."