The world of the comic book has seen many changes over the years. Fashions and fads have come and gone. Technology has allowed creators to go from black and white line drawings to crude half-tone coloured images and now to today’s glossy computer coloured pieces of artwork. Story-lines have changed and evolved over time as well. Fans of the modern vision of Batman, full of grit and corruption (shaped mainly by the release of Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 publication ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.’ ) would be shocked by the sixties and seventies portrayals of the caped avenger. This was not the grim harbinger of revenge we know today, but a lighter, more knock-about, even camp, Batman, facing off against not-really-threatening invading aliens or the latest wheeze from the ‘twisted mind’ of the Joker, usually involving a giant violin or a brightly coloured funny car.
So why has DC comics latest reboot of their entire comic line, the New 52, caused such a stir?
I think that part of the reason is the wholesale nature of the changes that have been made. Every single comic in DC’s previous line-up has either seen its story-lines rebooted and rewritten or has simply been dropped completely. Some headline characters have been side-lined whilst others have been moved from their own titles to appear with others as part of superhero teams. Even the geese that lay the golden eggs for DC, Batman and Superman, have seen their titles rebooted, with their issues numbers, like all the others in DCs new line-up, being reset back to #1.
It is this disregard for continuity that has probably annoyed many of DC’s die-hard readers the most. A good example of this is the re-launch of the Batgirl title.
The story of Batgirl is one tinged with tragedy. The daughter of the chief of Gotham police, Barbara Gordon became Batgirl to fight crime when her father forbade her to sign up to join the police academy. Her time as a caped crusader however was cut short in the 1988 story Batman: The Killing Joke, when a bullet fired by the Joker severs her spinal cord and leaves her wheelchair bound. Barbara Gordon’s on-going story was one of a young woman’s resilience and of her over-coming the adversity of disability as she struggled to come to terms with her situation. Barbara Gordon goes on to reinvent herself as Oracle, an internet whiz that provides Batman and his allies with information to assist with solving crimes. DC had taken Barbara Gordon and had made her a positive character for readers and a role model for many who were wheelchair bound themselves.
However, following the reboot, she is now back up and walking and is once again donning the pointy ears to fight crime as Batgirl. Just like that… One day she just gets up out of the chair. Gone is DC’s disabled role model, to be replaced by just another vigilante in a cape and mask. (Although one that by rights should now be old enough to qualify as Bat-mother rather than Batgirl?)
To be fair to the writers, they do cover the shooting and subsequent disability in Batgirl #1, but now it is only three years after the shooting and ‘miraculously’ Barbara Gordon has regained the use of her legs.
Another reason the reboot has courted controversy is the noticeable increase in male titillation in some of the titles. The two that seem to have garnered the most scorn are Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 and Catwoman #1. Certainly in the recent era Catwoman has been portrayed as one of the more sexualised characters in the DC universe. Always being drawn with an athletic figure and (unnaturally) large breasts, she is usually seen clad in a tight leather cat suit with matching knee high boots and a whip. (It seems that Catwoman was almost designed to be an S&M fetishists dream come true?)
Also it is true to say that there has always been an underlying sexual tension between Catwoman and the Batman. But in the past it had been left to the imagination of the reader to decide whether there was anything more to it than that. (And, of course, the younger readers could enjoy the books whilst being none the wiser.)
In the rebooted Catwoman #1 though we start with several panels where Selina Kyle is half undressed, bright red bra clearly showing.
Then, by the end of the first edition we are left with no ambiguity at all with the comic’s final panel being that of Batman and Catwoman in a clearly sexual embrace.
(Oddly though, in my mind the drawing style of this new version of Catwoman is such that much of the prettiness of the character’s face has been lost.)
The second controversial book is Red Hood and the Outlaws #1. The story is based around the main character of Jason Todd who was initially introduced to the DC universe as the second person to act as Batman’s sidekick Robin. It was generally felt that Todd was never as popular as the original Robin, Dick Grayson, and so in a fairly daring move DC held a phone vote to decide this new Robin’s fate. The votes were counted and it seemed clear that the public had given this Robin the big ‘thumbs down’. Jason Todd met his grisly fate at the hands of, once again, the Joker in the 1988 story line ‘Batman: A Death in the Family’.
However, as the years moved on, tales were told of perhaps the vote not being as fair as initially thought. (It is said that many of the votes to kill off Jason Todd came from a single number believed to be an auto-dialler.) And so the writers came up with a way to bring Jason Todd back from the dead.
This time though he would not become Robin, but would be portrayed as an anti-hero called Red Hood. (Ironically named after the original persona of the criminal who went on to become the villain that originally murdered him, the Joker.) Like his name-sake, Red Hood is a merciless killer and has faced the Batman on more than one occasion. In this new rebooted story arc, the Red Hood is joined by failed Green Arrow sidekick Roy Harper and a red skinned female alien called Starfire. Starfire is, like Catwoman, drawn as your typical female comic book character type – athletic and with unfeasibly large breasts. However, even more so than with Catwoman, Starfire seems to be constantly clad in as little clothing as possible. Initially we see her in her ‘superhero outfit’ and then a few pages later she is depicted in nothing more than a skimpy bikini.
However, it is not just Starfire’s outfit that has upset many readers. To many fans Starfire is a character best known from DC’s animated series Teen Titans. Aimed at younger viewers, and shown on Cartoon Network, Teen Titans told stories about a group of young superheroes battling the forces of evil and helping each other overcome the kind of problems that middle-aged business men in lofty offices imagine all teenagers face. In the animated series Starfire was a young girl, helpful and supportive of her team mates. But in this rebooted comic book, Starfire is portrayed as a grown woman with some serious character flaws. She has now been given a more alien character, one which struggles to tell humans apart. Worse, Starfire now seems to be an amnesiac, promiscuous pleasure seeker, happy to indulge in meaningless casual sex.
The internet has been ablaze with people complaining at this sexualisation of the character. A couple of good examples of this outrage can be seen in comic form and equally famously here in a post to the io9 website, where a seven year old girl bemoans the changes made to her favourite superhero. However DC have been quick to point out that the Red Hood and the Outlaws comic book is rated T for teen, meaning it is aimed at readers over 12 and “may contain mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes.”
Yet the thing that really struck me about all of this is the fact that whilst everyone is getting all ‘internet upset’ about the near nudity and promiscuity in these books, there has been nothing said about the extreme violence that is equally inherent in these stories. Catwoman is shown clawing at a man’s face, drawing fountains of blood. And in the first few scenes of Red Hood and the Outlaws I counted over two dozen men being bloodily slaughtered by our plucky heroes. Yet this seems not to warrant even a mention on the internet and it is this seeming hypocrisy that saddens me the most. I am not going to pass judgement on these comics and I am far too old to be excited by pneumatic women or extreme violence, but I confess I was somewhat surprised by the lack of subtlety show in these comic books and DC’s seemingly blatant targeting of some supposed market made up entirely of hormonal teenage boys.
So, why has DC courted this controversy with the rebooting of their universe?
The simple truth is that comic books sales are in decline and DC obviously felt that they had to do something to revitalise their market share as it would be fair to say that the hay-day of comic book sales has long since passed. It is also important to recognise that DC Comics have done this kind of thing before. The late 1980′s saw the launch of the maxi-series called Crisis on Infinite Earths (giving rise to what is now known as the modern age of comic books) that affording DC the chance to rewrite back stories and streamline their output.
They also tried to fight off the various sales slumps of the 1990s with story-lines that included the death (and eventual rebirth) of Superman and the crippling (and subsequent road to recovery) of the Batman. However the effects of these circulation boosting story-lines were temporary and seemingly nothing could halt the slow slide of sales. My belief is that it is for this reason that this reboot has taken place. I’m sure that DC are hopeful these latest changes will help boost their flagging readership but one could suspect that some of the decisions made, and some of the directions that have been taken with characters, will do more to alienate customers and lose DC sales rather than gain them.
Equally important is the simple fact that we now live in a very digital age and whilst the sales of electronic editions of comic books is becoming an increasing important sector of the market (DC even include the ability to purchase their latest printed comic books with special codes that allow reader to download electronic versions) comic book publishers are now facing the modern-day truth that electronic versions are easier to duplicate and subsequently harder to protect from piracy. Smartphone and web applications such as those developed by Comixology are helping keep the market buoyant but as the music industry is slowly finding out, D.R.M. heavy files do nothing in the long run to help sales and serve to simply annoy the consumer.
The reality is that technology has now reached a point that even printed copies of comics can be easily and quickly scanned and distributed on the internet. The sad fact is that there may be nothing that can save the comic book industry, in its current form, from long term decay. The future may be in producing primarily electronic editions of existing creations or new forms of web-comics that are free to read but reliant on merchandise sales and advertising to generate a profit?
But for the main players in the printed market, it may be that just concentrating on telling good stories and creating interesting characters can stave off the inevitable for some time to come. And maybe investing in some more clothing for Starfire? The poor girl could catch a cold dressed like that…
