“That’s the good news. The bad news is that the ‘Batman’ serial is racist”: The LA Times has a short piece about a screening of the 1943 Batman serial, which depicts the Japanese in ways that are…well, less than enlightened. The LA Times loses 50 points for using “Holy zombies, Batman!” as the lead to the story.
“Kurtzman was the spiritual father of postwar American satire and the godfather of late-20th-century alternative humor”: Steven Ellis reviews The Art of Harvey Kurtzman for the New York Times, and finds it hard to overestimate Kurtzman’s influence on our culture.
Fall can’t get here soon enough: Tom Spurgeon has a list of many of the best looking books coming out in the latter half of the year, or, as he puts it, “A Potentially Astounding Fall.” You know, even if I still had summer vacation and start a new year of school in the fall I think I’d still be looking forward to the end of this particular summer, if it meant we’d start seeing some of these books.
“I have finally accepted that, although I can enjoy the Wonder Woman comic, I have no interest in Wonder Woman as a character”: 4thletter’s Esther Inglis-Arkell just isn’t that in to Wonder Woman, and explains why. Once again it sounds to me like many of the problems with the Wonder Woman character are problems with today’s Wonder Woman (and the Wonder Woman from the last, oh, fifty years or so now). The original Wonder Woman? None of these problems. See DC, this is why you need a Wonder Woman Chronicles reprint project stat!
Until we get a Doll Man Archives collection, these will do: Here’s a big post full of the little hero’s adventures, courtesy of Golden Age Comics Stories. Ray Palmer and Henry Pym wish they could make that outfit work like Darrel Dane could. (Link stolen from Dirk Deppey)
“Apparently, Marvel’s doing something with the Ultimate universe…”: Comics writer and blogger Kevin Church takes a look at an Ultimates—or is it Ultimate Comics: The Avengers now?—cover, and shares his thoughts about it. I kinda hope he’s on to something with his observation about Hawkeye’s costume.
A thought has occurred to me since my original reaction to Hal Jordan sexing with half the Birds of Prey: How old is The Huntress supposed to be now? And how old is Hal Jordan supposed to be? (Hal should be in his early 40’s, if Green Arrow sired Green Arrow II and Black Lightning had Thunder and Lightning by the time they were being superheroes, but whatever). Because Huntress also slept with Dick “Nightwing” Grayson and Roy “Arsenal-at-the-time” Harper, and those guys were both just teenagers when Hal Jordan was already a full-grown man Green Lantern-ing about. So, there should be at least ten years between Hal and the grown-up teen sidekicks, if not closer to 20. So was Huntress robbing the cradle with Dick and Roy, or robbing the grave with Hal? (And is it made extra-gross by the uncle/nephew relationship Brad Meltzer was depicting between Hal and Roy during his Justice League of America run?)
August 10th, 2009 at 7:26 am
I think Hal is young again, isn’t he in a new body?
The Wonder Woman Chronicles will start this winter. (Don’t have the link right now, but check upcoming Amazon listings.)
Cheers,
B
August 10th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I don’t know if I’d classify the portrayal of Japanese in the batman serial (indeed, in all film of that era) as “racist”, tho I’d certainly (I hasten to add) classify it as “wrong”.
There were just as many films that showed Germans as horrific stereotypes, yet those are not tagged with the racism flag. It’s rather weird that Nazis are like the last bad guy that it’s safe to show as unflinchingly evil – with all others we must be reminded that these are “real people” and not beasts.
A lot of the way these nations were portrayed is explained by the fact that we were at war with them. If Scotland was on the side of the Axis, we’d have seen films dealing with evil Glaswegians left and right. We saw the same kind of thing during the cold war where all Russians were protrayed in the same simplistic way. It’s been standard practice throughout history to portray your opponents as almost subhuman, making it easier to hate and kill them. It’s still being done today in the famous war on terror, it’s just slightly harder to do because we’re not fighting any one country we can point to on a map and say “THERE is the enemy”.
So while we did some horrific things to Japanese in this country during the war, I’d ascribe it to nationalism more than racism. Yes it’s certain that we came down harder on Japanese than Germans (they were easier to find), but I’m certain German families can tell plenty of stories of their grandparents getting treated like dirt for having a Prussian-sounding name.
One thing I found interesting in the article was the fact that some were offended not only by the fact that there were evil Japanese spies, but by the fact that they had all-white henchmen.
“It is almost as if they are completely emasculating the Japanese spies because they have white henchmen,” says (program director Jordan) Peimer.
So they’re racist by having a Japanese guy in charge, AND by not having enough representative Japanese among the working spies? I’m sorry, this is another case of digging too deep. From a narrative point of view, it makes perfect sense to have local people do the dirty work to avoid arousing suspicion. And again, we were at war with these people. Post-war, there were plenty of films that portrayted both Nazis and Japanese as more conpassionate.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I got your answer about the ages of Huntress/Hal Jordan – Huntress is about 31 and Hal Jordan is physically 43 but should be 48 unless I am misreading what it says here : http://dcu.smartmemes.com/DCTL_8_TL.html
Yes – that is the greatest website ever and I honestly believe DC should hire the guy who made it to maintain their continuity.