Dear DC Comics, please die in a fire

[james_davis_nicoll]

At DC Comics, rape makes everything better.

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

So, you see the kind of rape depends on what you pay.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

(I played Hucklebee in high school.)

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I think most modern productions cut that song entirely.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The authors rewrote "It Depends on What You Pay" and the relevant lines to read "abduction" and "raid" rather than "rape" for the 2006 revival. Lyrics here. The dance number is now called "Abduction Ballet".

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Cools! A little more Googling gave me this charming NPR interview with the lyricist, discussing the various alterations he made over the years.

[michael a. davis (from livejournal.com)]

I would feel better if I thought DC would suffer negative consequences for this. At least the TV series doesn't pull crap like this?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

They probably would pull crap like that if the networks would stand for it.

Or maybe not- TV (and movies) seems to draw a better class of writer. Well, maybe not better, but at least more engaged with the world outside.

[michael a. davis (from livejournal.com)]

It's tough to say, Nathan. Andrew Reeves borrowed the salient observation that the TV shows are generally made by writers with the expectation that people will watch them, while the comics are made by fanboys with the assumption that no one will read them.

It doesn't apply to this particular case, given Christy Marx's writing credentials, but it's still a shame.

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

That doesn't work; you'd just end up with DC coming back as a muck-encrusted mockery of a comics publisher.

(Insert "how would you tell the difference" joke here.)

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

Whose touch would burn all who knew morality.

--Dave, at least Matt Cable escaped to Sandman

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Plenty of YA and kid fiction which manages to include some adult level grit without resorting to threats of rape. Excluding this from the narrative toolbox would lose nothing. Although from the description of the backup strip, this isn't aimed at the YA audience anyway.

Someone points out there was a rape attempt in the original series as well. In the comments, Dan Mishkin almost apologizes and says he went over the line.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=1zwg391&s=6

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind so much if writers used rape because they actually wanted to say something intelligent about rape. But 99.9% of the time it's a means to an end: we need to motivate somebody to be angry, or establish somebody as a bad guy, or what-have-you, and once that end is achieved the writer isn't interested any more.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

While both of them are bad cliches, I think they're actually different bad cliches. The old one is the basic adventure-movie "fate worse than death" threat; it's upping the ante at the climax of some dangerous fantasy situation. The new one, with rapists in the mundane world who get their clocks cleaned by the heroine, is more like a stab at "realism": see how edgy and mature we are!

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Mr. Mishkin indicated his intent in the first series was kind of as you describe, but admitted the dialogue and art ended up crossing the line. Which I think was kind of big of him to acknowledge, especially doing so in blog comments.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

I assume when Leifeld loudly flounced out of DC's employ last month, they ended up with all this excess SUCK they had to spread around the comics that weren't being written and drawn by pedophobic idiot man-children.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I find it odd that he's asking how the editorial staff could approve this at the same time he's complaining about this being used in every single comic they publish.

[invunche.livejournal.com]

Well that's a very good point, I thought, until I got to this weird part:

and to be fair, one of the very first comics I ever read involved Robin kicking a drug dealer off a balcony to his death after the dealer beat his girlfriend so bad that she committed suicide. I was six, and it made me a lifelong fan of the company and their characters

That's a very strange note to hit. It reminded me what it actually was like to be six for a moment.

And, it made me see the candlestick between the two faces of what his point actually was, which I had somehow missed even though he'd been repeating it over and over: the problem with rape is that it's monotonous. Gaze long enough and DC Comics gazes into you also.

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

/headdesk

So glad that women are only defined by their helplessness to men

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Ah, but is it *legitimate* rape?

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I commented over on the Project Eternity kickstarter, mentioning that it would be really nice if they could give a "no rape" guarantee. Because I had several female friends who would LOVE to play a CRPG of this sort if they could be sure it wasn't going to gratuitously push that particular button.

It took about five seconds for the predictable "it's MATURE CONTENT so how could they possibly rule out rape?" idiot to crawl out from under his rock.

Stupid thing is, the designers behind that project have already produced several excellent games that were both mature and rape-free, like "Planescape: Torment", so clearly it is possible. But since they also brought us "Arcanum", I cannot take it for granted.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

I imagine there's a "[ ] days without mentioning rape" sign somewhere at DC for which they've lost all the hanging numbers except 0.

I mean, why else would they ensure it never reaches 1?

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Why does it ALWAYS have to be rape?

I mean, I'm not even a superhero and I never ever have to deal with supervillains, and even so way worse things have happened to me in my relatively sheltered life.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Compared to my own experience of being raped, I mean. I hate hate hate hate hate that it is the inevitable and only Big Bad for unimaginative sexist "creative" types.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

This. Why not someone trying to steal your purse? (Or your lake, for the powerful yet stupid supervillains.) One rape can be a useful plot point; by the hundredth it becomes monotonous.

[frilled-shark.livejournal.com]

I'm now thinking of Monty Python's spam sketch, only with rape:

CUSTOMER: Have you got anything without rape?
DC: Well, there's rape, boobs, grimdark and rape, that's not got much rape in it.
CUSTOMER: I don't want ANY rape!

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Maybe it's just my reflexive dislike of vigilantism, but I think the sequence would've been much edgier if it turned out the demure nerdy girl was actually into sexual experimentation, asked the football player to set something up with his friends, and the superhero, going on a half heard conversation and her own prejudices, drew a false conclusion and sent three innocent guys to the hospital.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that could work well. It also sets up the headstrong heroine to Learn An Important Lesson about thinking first, not jumping to conclusions, or whatever needs to be taught. That wouldn't be nearly as stereotypical, requiring some thought on the part of the author and maybe even the reader.

[michael a. davis (from livejournal.com)]

Is this like your thing where American Jews during World War II were the real fascists?

Anyway, that would require the writer to be interested in significant sexual agency for young women without being punished for it.

[liabrown]

Once again I post purely to use this icon.

[brett-dunbar.livejournal.com]

To be entirely fair to DC in this, it is pointed out in the comments that there was an attempted rape in the first issue of the original comic as well.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

As was also pointed out in the comments, just because something sucked twenty years ago doesn't make it suck less now. Especially after twenty years of repetition.

[michael a. davis (from livejournal.com)]

What's fair about that, Brett?

[selidor]

And to think I just saw the cover of this in the comic shop not three hours ago and thought 'O, a new line that's kickass and not boobalicious, what a nice change'.

At least there's still Batwoman.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Gah, that's terrible. The ugly nerdy girl only garnering rapey-prankey attention and never actual attraction trope screwed me the hell up as a girl. And that page is playing right to that, knowing the trope is so easily identifiable that everyone knows what's waiting for Beryl.

The storytelling is so weak, though. Chris is right to ask why Beryl isn't warned by Amy beforehand and why Constantine just watches the whole thing. The latter will probably play out as characterization, but the former... no excuse. Especially in conjunction with the "yeah, I just busted up another gang rape" phone call.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Behold, yet another reason Comics gives me for never needing to waste my time on comics again. Thanks, Comics!