Yeah, I Read Comics. So What? – Issue #2: (Batman) Beyond Reality

Often I’ve had fantasies of swooping down from tall buildings and scooping up crooks, chaining them to lamp posts and the like after I’ve beaten them silly for breaking whatever law they were ignoring and, thusly, meriting said beating.

Fantasy indeed, as I’m a big softie who doesn’t even like to honk a car horn after being egregiously cut off in busy traffic out of fear of some sort of road rage reprisal. I’ve also only been in one fight, a fight that ended with me and the other combatant weeping and apologizing to one another. I don’t like pain. I don’t like to run. I don’t like working up a good sweat even though sweating profusely is something my body does extremely well. I’m just not cut out for the superhero gig. I want to be, but I’m not. Physically, psychologically (another “cally” of some sort) I don’t think I could—maybe that’s why I read comics. I don’t know, (insert shameless late-nineties pop culture reference here:) I might be a coward, I’m afraid of what I might find out if I’m ever really tested.

I must admit, however, there have been times that donning a makeshift costume and scouring the streets for law breakin’ punks has been tempting.

How does a guy like me, with very few skills and waning testicular fortitude through aging and not wanting to do much at all besides read and write, have sudden urges to fight crime? It doesn’t make much sense. I could lie and say my dissatisfaction for the current processes of law enforcement is the cause, but I’d just be wasting my breath (and/or fingertip strength). I think we’ll have to take look back to the future for an answer.

In the late nineties (right about when I got myself into that fightlet I mentioned) a cartoon series was released chronicling the futuristic adventures of a new Batman (Terry McGinnis) who’s taken up the mantle after the original man behind the cowl (Bruce Wayne) had become too old to continue fighting the proverbial good fight. While it had to bear the stigma cartoons are often slapped with (kiddy stuff, not worth a damn), it won its fair share of accolades. A Daytime Emmy to boot!

Since the cartoon’s inception I’ve maintained a healthy (okay, healthy(ish)) obsession with the sleek, cape-less black uniform, and the blood red bat symbol emblazoned across the chest. Terry’s age may have played a part as well. Heck, he’s only, like, five years older than me! I used to think. My affinity for this Batman held precedence even over the traditional bat.

Always underwhelmed with playing sports (I stunk (hard)), over-entertained by what was (and is) available to the generation I was born into (um, everything), undisturbed by the jeers of dorkishness (okay, I was afraid of the taunting, but not enough to quit liking what I liked). I’d found my niche, my little place in pop culture that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Sprinkle in technological advances that were launching the mid-eightiers (folks born around 1985) into territories that looked shockingly similar to my favorite show, an imagination that plays itself out like a Jason Statham flick, a whole group of kids to interact with who were growing up with a flare for the dramatic, and dreams of being rockstars, astronauts, and presidents (obviously my dreams of being Batman weren’t all that outlandish) and here I am, thirteen years, a college degree and a receding hairline later, I still want to be Batman, and Terry’s come back (just this time in comics).

I did what every person who suffers from occasional bouts of obsessive behavior would do. I went to Best Buy with a wad of money I’d earned at my big-boy-job stuffed in my pants pocket and purchased the all three seasons of Batman Beyond. I then sped home and watched episode after episode after—well, you get the point. Terry’s adventures atop the gargantuan, futuristic (by futuristic, I mean neon) buildings that turned Neo-Gotham into a scene from Blade Runner were churning in my brain (sort of resembling Spellbinder’s costume if I were to toss some dorkdom into this piece). I was obsessed (as implied upon above).

Through watching the full run of the cartoon, reading the new comic series, and being completely entranced with everything Batman Beyond for months on end, I had an apostrophe (Hook, anybody? Hmm? Hmmmmm???). Lightning had struck my brain. My sizzled brain cells as a result fired several questions along my synaptic pathways, questions I’ve been grappling with since the credits of the last episode rolled. Questions I will now pose to you:

Can anyone pinpoint the moment in history when our real lives, the real world, suddenly began looking more like the science fiction we view as entertainment? Better yet, how is it the technology we use everyday has progressed and, in many ways, surpassed that of the marvels of the entire science fiction genre? Is it art mimicking life, or life mimicking art? Is art predicting life, or life predicting art?

I mean, not only are we progressing technologically at a rate that makes even the most creative science fiction writers second guess themselves, but we live in a post-9/11 culture and that event’s aftermath has altered the world around us so profoundly that William Gibson (the father of the cyberpunk sci-fi offshoot) has gone on record to say that he is unable to write about a distant future because of how much the devastation and the technological progression has altered the path we all were on. He finds it difficult to write speculative science fiction because we, as a culture, are no longer on any particular path. We’ve essentially derailed ourselves (to use a Vonnegut-ism, we’ve become unstuck in time). It’s almost as if art and life have no desire to reconnect, to even be in the same room with one another any longer. Of course we could look at this point in history as a chance for infinite progress or the possibility of imminent destruction. Both have thousands of potential paths that could branch off like the limbs of a tree.

Try and predict the outcome of a football game without knowing a single thing about the rules of play, about the players, without seeing the statistics or the records. It would be a toss up, a fifty-fifty gamble. Let’s try to spice this metaphor up a bit more, shall we? Let’s say we throw one hundred different types of sports teams on a football field. We now have a game that could have an infinite number of outcomes. Now, take the rules of each respective sport out of the picture. Toss a couple hundred pucks, balls, and other sportly accoutrements onto the field. Place the goal posts, bases, and nets on conveyor belts so they never stop moving. Now try and think of at least one thing that could happen. Besides, mayhem, there’s nothing else. Predicting anything at all about what could take place there would simply be a waste of time.

Prediction or speculation regarding art and life is now, in a way, irrelevant due to the fact that what we live with currently is a blend of both. The oversaturation of every facet of artistic media has soaked the shoes of reality, making the goals we strive for into fantasies. That consequently resulted in reality becoming, for lack of a better word, absurd due to our overexposure to every source of media on a constant basis. We’ve made the word “art” hold little to no value. It’s become sheer whimsy.

And here we are, living cartoon characters. Caricatures of, well, ourselves, really.

I’m not sure what I’d be if I wasn’t defined in someway by my interests, if I had to strip everything away but the bones, blood, guts and skin. (Technically speaking I’d be nude and no one wants to see that. So I’ll keep myself all gussied up.)

There are advantages, however, to living in a time where Mr. Spock has mind-melded us to our media. For instance, Japan is developing a robot to perform house-hold tasks (Rosie from The Jetsons), robots to fight war (The Terminator (okay, that could fall into the disadvantages column)). Theoretical Physicists can prove (mathematically) that parallel universes exist. This is, of course, theoretical but so was the idea the earth was round. They cracked that mystery wide open by sailing a boat. We just need an interdimentional boat that’ll sail us to parallel world so we can talk to different version of ourselves (just as every single DC and Marvel comic character has at one time had a conversation with an other-universely counterpart.)

I’m going to go on the record and say that while I love comics and sci-fi and escapism of all kinds, I’m grounded in reality. I’m not some nut. However when the United States Armed Forces went ahead and officially named their new one-man-army project, Project Batman, I started realizing that “being grounded” means precisely nothing. They’ve made lightweight Kevlar bodysuits that can withstand gunshots and knife-slashings, and wing-esque parachutes that allow men to glide to the ground safely after hurling themselves from the tops of buildings. Simply put, we live in an amalgamated world. The rules have changed and this stuff is real.

All of it is completely absurd.

But it’s real.

Could it be that my childhood (adulthood) fantasy is an actual possibility? Could I become Batman? I mean, even if I don’t become the Batman, will some devoted soul take on the responsibility of a symbol that frightens the wicked into piddling their pants?

Look, ten years ago I used to sneak a couple CDs and my Discman into my backpack every morning before school without my mom’s permission. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t see it and think I was shirking my scholastic responsibilities. That was only a decade ago. Now I have my entire record collection on a hunk of metal that sits comfortably in the palm of my hand.

Never expected that, did we? And that’s just a device used for entertainment!

Terry McGinnis never thought he’d live up to anything in life, he became Batman; just we have an uncertain and dangerous future ahead and there could be many Batmen striking fear into the hearts of criminals. There could be robots fighting wars to cut down on loss of human life. We’ve got books without pages, music without CDs, phones without cords, cars without gasoline, we’ve got, well, we’ve got whatever we can think up.

Fantasy and fiction are real. Reality is now fantastical and our technology has made real life seem fictional; hyper-real. The cliché “anything is possible” has become a literal truth. And as to what path we’ll choose when looking into a future with an infinite number of options, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Yeah, I read comics. So what?

Yeah, I Read Comics. So What? – Issue #1: Power (Girl) Over Men

I am a man. It’s true. I am equipped with certain…attributes; attributes that can clearly prove that I am male. I also am able to identify with typically masculine things (beard growing, spitting, hairline recession, crotch adjustment, thinkin’ ladies are purdy, ya know, the basics). I say “typically” because there are folks other than men who have first hand experience in those fields of expertise, but I digress.


I recently have found myself becoming increasingly interested in reading superhero comics that feature women as the title character. Now while at first this is certainly a progression in my taste for all sorts of characters and stories, why do the female characters I enjoy reading about have to have such large…attributes? It’s certainly not a requirement of mine in life outside of comicbookian realms. And while I thoroughly enjoy reading books about mousy, introverted women attempting to find new ways of coping with their midlifeishness in New York City (see The New York Four by Brian Wood for more!) I do tend to have just a teensy bit more fun when reading about scantily clad ladies soaring over the skies of metropoli (yes, I made that word up), and beating the living hell out of criminals.

Is that a crime?

If it is, will a scantily clad lady come beat my ass?

In that case, I’m a bad, bad man.

Okay, now that you’re all thoroughly creeped, I’ll continue: I am referring to one heroine in particular who caught my proverbial eye. This woman is very much a woman. Very much so, indeed. I’m talking about Power Girl, folks. Power Girl, the stranded cousin of a Superman from another universe, stuck in the DCU proper and attempting to recreate herself (just as the creative brass from DC is attempting to revitalize the character) in the Big Apple (hmm, not so different from the young lady, Riley, from NYF). Her defining trait, however, isn’t so much her attempt at reinvention, so much as it is her voluminous…

Let’s just hold on for a second.

Power Girl (Karen Starr) is heading up Starr Enterprises, a research and development company whose mission is to solve environmental and sociological issues across the globe through promoting intelligence, human self-awareness, and progress. A pretty fantastic, fantastical venture, yes?

Do most blonde jokes begin with “So the CEO of Starr Enterprises walks into a bar…”?

No, sadly they don’t.

Karen Starr is certainly not the prototypical big dumb blonde we hear about in limericks and jokes. She is, however, a big blonde lady who wears a white leotard with an opening in the chest that shows off her enormous, gigantic…attributes. She towers over most people, yet she’s quite the lady. She’s brilliant, yet you could bounce a quarter off her buns n’ bust. The duality of her character is right out there in the open for everyone to see.

Don’t freak out, I’m not saying there aren’t any brilliant, beautiful women on our Earth. But show me one who’s six feet tall, can fly and fight crime without a nipple popping out of her uniform, only to go to work afterward at a company that holds a patent on nanites that can rebuild a car from spare parts. Then we’ll talk, okay?

Karen’s a head turner, a looker, if you will. An eye pleaser. She more than likely makes boatloads of money more than most men. And that’s just her day job. She’s also in the business of saving the world from man-apes (metaphor? maybe!), alien chicks who party too hard (an older sisterly figure looking to show younger ladies that brains really do matter? great!), even a fella trying to forcibly repopulate his planet by battling monsters to impress earth-ladies enough that they’d be willing to copulate with him (satire of masculine prowess? excellent!)

Of course, with every busty blonde in this or any other medium, in spite of her intelligence, there are going to be boob jokes. Boob jokes that Power Girl simply brushes off as the weakness of men. She even goes as far as to say, If men want to degrade themselves by staring, let them.

She makes a solid point.

Men, however, can indeed be prone to their own degradation.

Yes, we tend to stare.

As a man, I’m sorry to say, it’s true. We do. However subtle men think they are, we all know, deep down, we’re not. Men can be the most obvious creatures on the planet. Easily amused. Easy to please. Many of us, however, are harmless but complex. We feel lucky when women shed a shining light of attention on us for a brief time.

Knowing these things as we do, we’re able to be analytical about the subject of sexuality in the commodities we consume (some of us anyway (I apologize again in saying that some men are, well, men.))

Is the presence of Power Girl in the medium of science fiction and fantasy comics just a cheap ploy to sell books to lonely man-children? Is it the further exploitation of the female form, another innovative way to sell sex? A celebration of the female form? Perhaps an example of a strong female lead character in an industry almost wholly dominated by male, godlike heroes?

Let’s face it, okay? Comics have got to sell if we expect to see them in print or at all in the future. Yes, writers, artists and editors must attempt to appeal to both men and women. Give the male heroes hairless, bulging pectorals; give the women big boobs, wide hips and skimpy clothes. That’s simply the reality of the medium (and every other medium for that matter). Comic book publishers need to make money, subsequently they make their mainstream cast sexy.

Now for this next part, you’ll have to open the book to discover the other half of “telling stories with pictures”, the half that is often forgotten by comic naysayers: The content! Yes, the content! Ya know, those weird symbols we can assign sounds to and form words with.

Using what we learned about Power Girl just minutes ago, taking the goddess and making her human by giving her human characteristics (fears, thoughts, doubts, hopes, humor) and writing her as a character with actual charm and charisma aside from the obvious lady parts, you find a self actualized positive female role model who is proud of herself and her body.

If you were to strip it down (pardon the expression), remove all the fluff, you’d find a fun, sexy book about a young woman who could potentially rise to become as archetypal a trope for women as her cousin from a parallel universe (Superman, in other words) is for men. With powers almost identical to Superman’s own, Power Girl is the female counterpart of the platonic embodiment of good. Give that goodness a healthy sense of humor about her physique, and a mind that suggests her body isn’t to be utilized, but honored, and you’ve got the Power Girl we see on the comic stands every month.

Yes, I am a man, as I’ve said before. I am attracted to the female form. Perhaps I was initially attracted to Power Girl because of her sexiness (in spite of the creepy fact that she is (sadly) not real). But, who hasn’t ever bought a book because of the cover when they’ve had two to choose from? Judgment based on initial magnetism is a human trait (throw Power Girl’s tall, firm and full, ass-kicking body into the mix) and, frankly, despite the warnings, sometimes gut trusting pays off in big ways.

Call me sexist if you will. Call me a pig, a disillusioned fool with false sense of woman and her form. But after you've finish with my chastisement, ask yourself a question, “Is $2.99 too high a price to give a funnybook a shot, or is it too low to compromise my own ego and point of view?” Do yourself a favor, read the book before writing Power Girl (and ALL comic book characters) off as trashy boy stuff. Trash she is not.

I’ll tell you what, though, if she were the guardian of my city, I’d be doing one of two things, (1) Regularly hurling myself from buildings and in front of planes, trains and automobiles so good ol’ Pee-Gee would come save me, or (2) rob every person, bank and store in the area just hoping that she’d kick my ass through a wall.

Yeah, I read comics. So what?