Posted on

Why does this not surprise me? Ian Sattler at HeroesCon.

Ryan Choi is Atom
My bias: Ryan Choi was the greatest Atom. &!$%, Ray Palmer and Silver Age nostalgia.

From my “favorite” person and DC Senior Story Editor, Ian Sattler at HeroesCon:

A serious topic came up about how characters who are minorities who happened to be legacy characters like Ryan Choi are killed off so their caucasian counterparts can return and how they feel like they are being cheated or sidelined out of their roles. Sattler took a more serious tone. “It’s so hard for me to be on the other side because it’s not our intention. There is a reason behind it all. We don’t see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters. We have the Great Ten out there and I have counter statistics, but I won’t get into that. It’s not how we perceived it. We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters.”

Read more about the panel here.

Oh, Mr. Sattler, what am I going to do with you? I already blogged about Ian’s foot-in-the-mouth at Emerald City, re: Liam Harper’s death and diversity in DC’s writing staff.

First, green, pink, and blue characters are NOT characters of color. For example, Martin Manhunter (green) is in the majority on his planet and written the same way they’d write a white human dude. There’s no institutionalized racism for green, pink, and blue characters. There’s no history of oppression. There is no racism. It’s incredibly, jaw-droppingly offensive to say otherwise. Do NOT argue with me on this point, instead please read White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.

Second, I want to see your counter statistics. I want to see your blog post on DC.com. I don’t believe your so-called statistics (that you can’t provide) given statistics that fans have put together. For instance, Chris Sims has a great post about The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling, concerning the same relaunch of legacy DC characters. (Also, I didn’t even know who the Great Ten were. That’s how many books they’re in, and I even read one of them.)

Third, let’s address, “It’s not how we perceived it.” Of course, you didn’t. Stop being defensive that everyone’s calling you or your colleagues racist. We know that DC writers (read: Geoff Johns) love Silver Age characters and that’s why they brought them back. But the heart of the problem is with your (and the rest of the staff who agrees with Sattler) perception. Our perceptions as human beings are often flawed due to our personal biases. That’s why those stats you mentioned above and the perception of others, who are not like you, are important.

Fourth, I’m sorry, but are we women being too whiny for you? (To see what Sattler says about women, see the Emerald City ComicCon post.) Just because you hired the fabulous Gail Simone, doesn’t mean everyone forgot about the stats of her Women in Refrigerators project. Finally, some stats.

Fifth, why do they still let Sattler talk in public as a representative of the company?

Dear comic book reader, before you start pledging yourself to Marvel, don’t forget they had their own race fail when Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort addressed a question about why characters of color and women weren’t leads on their teams or starring in their own books:

“Because we’re an American company whose primary distribution is centered around America, the great majority of our existing audience seems to be white American males … whenever your leads are white American males, you’ve got a better chance of reaching more people overall.”

Time to start voting with our dollars. Take a look at your pull list next time and ask yourself how diverse are the books you’re reading? Are there minority and women characters in them? How do they treat the minority and women characters inside the pages? How diverse is the creative team? And so on. Because I guarantee those in accounting and sales crunch the hard numbers.

Posted on

How DC Loses with Greg Rucka’s Departure

Batwoman in Detective Comics
Yesterday at WonderCon, writer Greg Rucka announced he’s off Batwoman and finished at DC Comics. As a big fan of Rucka’s work and someone who’s particularly in love with his Batwoman run, I’m incredibly sad. Rucka will, of course, keep producing comics under his label Oni Press, as well as continuing to write novels.

While I won’t speculate on what went on behind closed doors between Rucka and DC Comics, I do know this: DC has lost a great talent. When I look at my own DC-reading, Rucka’s really the writer who made me read more DC Comics. With the exception of Batman: The Animated Series, a cartoon not book, I’ve always been more of a Marvel fan. Not due to any brand loyalty or rivalry or something equally ridiculous as pumped by marketers. But in that many ways, I’ve consistently found Marvel Comics more accessible story-and-continuity wise and my buy patterns reflect that. When I look at my DC Comics shelves, 40% of my DC Comics were penned by Greg Rucka. I won’t deny that I’m an author follower when it comes to my reading choices — probably a byproduct of my Creative Writing degree.

The biggest loss to DC Comics is the way Rucka made 70+ years of comic book continuity accessible to everyone. I started off reading Gotham Central by Rucka and Ed Brubaker. In Gotham Central, the themes and tone I’d so enjoyed in the children’s cartoon were actualized into an adult comic. Like the brilliance of the cartoon, I didn’t have to know Batman’s entire history. I didn’t have to know every villain or every character’s origin. Rucka and Brubaker brought individual characters to life and explored their stories, which is how both new and old readers got to know those characters. In this title, Rucka wrote the storyline “Half a Life” the best coming out story I’ve ever read — and I’ve read far too many — which featured Renee Montoya. Interestingly enough, Renee originally appeared in the cartoon, but was brought over, like Harley Quinn, to the main comic continuity. Rucka gave me and other readers a favorite character.

Then years down the road, Rucka created Kate Kane, the new Batwoman and ex-girlfriend of Renee. Kate came onto the scene with a ton of press surrounding her being a lesbian. DC got another diversity notch on its belt, but even better, they got an amazing character created and shaped by Rucka. With artist J.H. Williams III, Rucka took Kate center stage in Detective Comics, the longest continually running America comic book, and they put out what I consider to be one of best comic book runs of all time. And I’m nothing if not a bitchy, snobby reviewer. But then, for whatever reason, DC editorial changed their minds and pulled Kate out of the book early. There was an announcement about a solo Batwoman title with Rucka and Williams, but that’s currently not happening.

What the hell, DC? You really lost.

The second major loss I see for DC is the presence of Rucka as a thoughtful writer on panels and in the press. Last month at Emerald City Comic Con 2010, Rucka was suspiciously missing from the DC panel. I blogged about some of the atrocious shit coming out of Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler’s mouth in relation to the treatment of Lian Harper in Blackest Night and women-in-comics in general and how the panel clearly missed the presence of the-token-woman-in-residence Gail Simone, who’d canceled at the last minute. (Simone, her writing takes up another 20% of my DC Comics.)

Looking again, Rucka’s presence was also missed. Missed in that he’s thoughtful to women and women characters. Missed because in every other DC panel I’ve sat witness to either he or Simone or both of them are the ones to answer questions about women characters. Instead, this panel had Sattler and his boy’s club rhetoric and James Robinson’s unapologetic inability to write women characters, except as motivation for men. Good thing no one asked Geoff Johns why the Star Sapphires still wear less clothing than strippers. I don’t think I’ve witnessed such sloppy, offensive answers since San Diego Comic Con 2007 and to keep things even, that was a Marvel panel.

If I was DC, I’d be pulling out all the stops to retain Rucka as my top talent. And maybe DC did — no one knows how negotiations went — but somehow I don’t think they did.

Everyone keeps talking about how to retain readers and how to grow the comic book audience. How to get more women and minorities reading comic books. How do you do that? You retain talented and thoughtful writers such as Greg Rucka and hire more like him. You support the creation and growth of characters like Kate Kane and Renee Montoya. You support characters who that audience, that market-share you seem to want so badly, identifies with because those character look like them and act like them. You can’t talk the talk if you aren’t willing to walk the walk.

I know Rucka will continue to write wonderful characters, and I’ll keep reading his comics. Hey, and maybe someday, DC will look up and realize what they’ve lost. Because they are the true losers here.