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greenygalBreaking briefly away from work to post this, because, wow.
Found in a discussion of Alex DeWitt's death in GREEN LANTERN, posted by someone I know nothing about, who stated:
"As someone who worked on the WiR site let me just jump in and say, ALex was NOT the inspiration for the Women in Refrigerators site. The treatment of women historically in comics was the inspiration. One example being the horrible muddling of Donna Troy that continues to this day. There was even debate amongst those of us involved as to using the title and image because some involved felt Alex death was not "in vain" or a toss aside like many female characters recieved, but that it actually had lasting and believable ramifications on the character and book, and reducing it as such would be unfair to Ron Marz. It actually wasn't till AFTER talking with Ron and him saying he thought it would be a great idea to use it that we did so. Incidentally, one of the main reasons we decided to use is because we knew there were many people like yourself that reduced the scene down without looking at it's total influence. In a sense I guess you could say we were marketing to the LCD."
My initial two reactions:
1) I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell anyone who thinks Alex's death had believable long-term ramifications. Kyle had a nasty tendency to forget all about her, in fact, unless he happened to be standing in front of her grave.
2) He wanted them to use it? "Yes, go ahead and name your site on comic book misogyny after my story, that would be great!" *mind boggles*
And now I have a sudden urge to write about my thoughts about Marz and Alex and refrigerators (which are more complicated than I've probably given the impression of), and I really don't have time. Maybe on the weekend.
Found in a discussion of Alex DeWitt's death in GREEN LANTERN, posted by someone I know nothing about, who stated:
"As someone who worked on the WiR site let me just jump in and say, ALex was NOT the inspiration for the Women in Refrigerators site. The treatment of women historically in comics was the inspiration. One example being the horrible muddling of Donna Troy that continues to this day. There was even debate amongst those of us involved as to using the title and image because some involved felt Alex death was not "in vain" or a toss aside like many female characters recieved, but that it actually had lasting and believable ramifications on the character and book, and reducing it as such would be unfair to Ron Marz. It actually wasn't till AFTER talking with Ron and him saying he thought it would be a great idea to use it that we did so. Incidentally, one of the main reasons we decided to use is because we knew there were many people like yourself that reduced the scene down without looking at it's total influence. In a sense I guess you could say we were marketing to the LCD."
My initial two reactions:
1) I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell anyone who thinks Alex's death had believable long-term ramifications. Kyle had a nasty tendency to forget all about her, in fact, unless he happened to be standing in front of her grave.
2) He wanted them to use it? "Yes, go ahead and name your site on comic book misogyny after my story, that would be great!" *mind boggles*
And now I have a sudden urge to write about my thoughts about Marz and Alex and refrigerators (which are more complicated than I've probably given the impression of), and I really don't have time. Maybe on the weekend.
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Date: 2004-09-01 11:44 am (UTC)And I've got some great oceanfront property in Arizona if you can get anyone to buy that bridge. Long-term ramifications, my ass.
I'd be interested to read your further comments :)
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Date: 2004-09-01 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-01 09:44 pm (UTC)I too would love to hear yer thoughts.
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Date: 2004-09-02 10:32 am (UTC)I've heard all the arguements, for and against. I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing off Kyle's mom. The basic wrong to me is that it just wasn't done that well. She's just an idea encapsulated in ink, after all. It wouldn't bother me at all for a comic book reality switch to bring her and Hal Jordan and Barry Allen back from the dead. I'm beyond worrying whether the continuity makes sense.
I think my emotional distance is a result of the result of all the 'shocking' deaths on comic books lately. Jim Shooter, in his response to WiR, says that these writers were trying to evoke gut feelings in the readers. And they have. I downloaded and read John Ostrander's tour de force Suicide Squad the other day and the death, death, death just piled up on me after awhile.
When the series ended (another form of death), I just felt shell shocked. I found myself wondering if this was all comic books were about now, new ways to view death and ugly horrific violence.
Then I began thinking about the most emotional death scene I've ever read, from another Ostrander book: The Spectre (3rd series). Jim Corrigan's funeral and goodbyes are heartbreaking to me, even now. Not just because I had grown to love the character. But because death was the most loving evolution of the character there could be. It wasn't a shocking climax to a crossover--it was the culmination of Jim Corrigan's dreams.
That's the only death I wouldn't ever want overturned.
And damn Ostrander anyway, but Suicide Squad 44 made me fall hopelessly in love with Captain Boomerang, of all people, and I've got a bad feeling about his appearances in IC.
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Date: 2004-09-05 12:56 am (UTC)Still: I don't think Ron Marz believes there was anything wrong with his original story. He has a response up on the WIR site where he basically says that he was looking to generate a strong reaction, and he got one, so it must have been successful, mustn't it? I'm probably going to go more into detail on this, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that there are different kinds of reactions, and if he's calling up offended disgust instead of shock and grief, he might want to rethink his strategy.
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Date: 2004-09-05 01:03 am (UTC)Alex, on the other hand...well, not for nothing did Judd Winick establish that Kyle had actually subconsciously removed all his grief and rage over her. It explains a whole lot.
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Date: 2004-09-05 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-05 01:30 am (UTC)God, aren't they? It's amazing how the flames just never die. (Not that the current storyline is doing a whole lot to extinguish them...)
Thinking out things here, hope you don't mind.
Nope.
I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing off Kyle's mom. The basic wrong to me is that it just wasn't done that well.
Well, see, that right there is a big problem. In my reaction to GL #180, I noted that maybe a better writer could have pulled this off. Marz, unfortunately, is not a better writer, and he doesn't have any of the tools that might have made it bearable.
And I also think he would have to be Alan Moore to win me over to *repeating* himself so blatantly--and he's unquestionably not. I don't read this story and go "well, this is bringing the character full circle." I read it and hear Marz saying "Wow, wasn't this a neat idea? Didn't it get me a lot of attention? I know! I'll do it again!" It isn't even necessarily relevant whether I think it was a good idea to begin with--Spider-Man's origin is generally acknowledged as a classic of the genre, but find me someone who thinks that having that burglar come back and kill Aunt May would be a good way to end his story. There's a difference between paralleling an earlier story and just writing the same story twice.
(I have no idea if you've read the first story, and you may not be approaching it in that context. But it's clearly written as a repetition, and that's how I'm judging it.)
I have issues with what happened to Alex, and issues with what happened with Mrs. Rayner, and I really do want to talk about them. But no, regardless of how I probably sounded (I was really upset), not intrinsically wrong. Very badly done, though.
When the series ended (another form of death), I just felt shell shocked. I found myself wondering if this was all comic books were about now, new ways to view death and ugly horrific violence.
Interesting--that was not at all my reaction to Suicide Squad, which I felt was about much, much more than killing characters. (And also that it was not about killing characters so much as creating an environment where you believed characters could die--I know it's a thin distinction, but it's there.) The Apokolips story just broke my heart--I cried over a helicopter. That's what I want a story to do to me, when it kills someone. Even the death in Legerdemain, probably the most gruesome and shocking in the entire series, evoked different feelings in me than GL #180 (although I might want to consider why, since there are objective similarities).
I do understand your point, really, and in fact to a certain degree it's been operating for me on GREEN LANTERN--"Yeah, yeah, what disaster is going to hit him now?" I'm just commenting on my personal experiences. (And lord knows I can see where reading straight through five years of SUICIDE SQUAD in one day would be...overly intense.)
And damn Ostrander anyway, but Suicide Squad 44 made me fall hopelessly in love with Captain Boomerang, of all people, and I've got a bad feeling about his appearances in IC.
*winces* It hadn't occurred to me to put a target on that particular character's back...but I see what you mean. Come, let us light boomerang-shaped candles and pray for his welfare.
(Hey, I read #44 too. He's a jerk, but he's such a good one. Don't want to lose him.)