Some comic readers may have felt, "What's the point?" And while Betty & Veronica is not a title known for it's depth and shading of character, all you had to do was check out the X-Men titled on sale at the same time, "Dark Reign The List" to realize how needed the Betty & Veronica Spectacular was.
The X-Men are known for any number of characters but chief among them is Storm, Jean Grey (The Phoenix), Mystique, Kitty Pride and Carol Danvers. But there on the one shot, with five characters featured, was one low woman, far, far in the back. Matt Fraction (writer) and his editors apparently felt the "Men" in X-Men was non-inclusive but prescriptive. Which is how the tired and tiring Sub-Mariner, King Namor, became the most prominently featured "X-Man" on the cover -- this despite the fact thta this would-be Aquaman's tired act is so old, his appearances date back to WWII.
The death of a woman is played for drama, or at least for Namor to trot around holding her corpse. She's so unimportant that her death isn't actually portrayed as a blast hits a number of people who are underwater. But he drags her corpse to the X-Men and Dr. Nemesis, Cyclops, The White Queen, the Teleporting Pixie and Bestsy Braddock are on the job, among others. If you're thinking, "I count three women in that list," well, you're not mistaken. If you're thinking that the women get sidelined in the action (a common 'plot' development in films), you are mistaken.
The women are part of the battling forces. So what's going on?
Of the latest round of comics on sale now, the most arresting cover is Avengers: The Initiative, number 20. which features Yellowjacket and Wasp in a pose that recalls the final John Lennon and Yoko Ono Rolling Stone cover. The cover implies the kind of drama and, yes, melodrama, that drove Marvel's rebirth in the sixties and seventies. And there are some interesting developments. Such as when Hellcat guesses that Tigra (eating strawberries and pickles)
is pregnant. Trauma then illustrates a potential problem, if Tigra, like a cat, has multiple births, a litter. More worrying to her?
"Being Hank's girlfriend is one thing. But being the mother of his child . . . Being his wife . . . I just don't know."
Nor does she know that Hank is having a cozy dinner with Jan who wants to be sure that when he hit her, it was Skrull, and not Hank. Jan walks out when he says, "I'm sorry. That was
me. It's all on me."
Just when you might want to applaud Jan (and the comic makers) for a firm stand, Jan becomes Jocasta. She impersonated Janet as Hank's request to figure out how Jan would respond to the truth. And while except for that minor nonsense, the storyline was involving, it was nothing like
what was promised on the cover. We didn't see Wasp once.
World of WarCraft always seems like it's title should be H.L. Menken's WarCraft. And it always seems like the comic, drawn to appeal to the very, very young, exists to sell war. Issue #25, entitled "Armageddon," does nothing to reject those assumptions. On the plus side, women are
portrayed as the equal to the male characters . . . in blood thirst. The volume ends with Garona declaring, "I am good at killing. So together, Meryl and I will teach the Hammer how to die. But Cho'Gall -- the last being on Azeroth who held sway over me -- is no more. For now, at least,
we have won."
The very, very young (and those who enjoy cartoons geared towards that group) has enjoyed a plethora of riches of late. Looney Tunes #183, entitled "Pepe and Delilah," feature the French skunk in earlier times. "Three thousand years ago (give or take a week)," you're informed at
the start of the delightful romp. To defeat Pepe, they send in "Agent Delilah" -- and anyone who's watched Pepe's animated antics already knows this is the female cat whom he's always chasing, the, as he puts it, "Yin to my Yang, ze peanut butter to my jelly, ze Marcel to my
Marceau!"
Agent Delilah's task is to cut Pepe's tail off and thereby render him powerless. Cutting a tail, she whistles summing the army who are quickly defeated by the odor from the skunk's still-attached tail. Delilah cut off her own tail. The tale ends all too quickly and has many moments
to produce chuckles in all ages including when Delilah whistles to summon the military causing Pepe to flex and declare, "You whistle at your hunk of beefcake? I am flattered!"
A bad Elmore Fudd and Daffy Duck story follows. Bad? When the jokes depend on a variety of first-timers, not enough time has been spent appreciating the main characters. Daffy is much funnier in the final tale ("What Dis Country Needs") where he promises change and
a variety of other things as he runs for office. Bugs Bunny decides to take him down by working to get Tax elected.
"And just what makes you think that anyone's gonna vote for that drooling cretinous flea commune?" wonders Daffy but the race is on and where there are politics, there is Big Money and Big Corruption as well as Big Media.
Male host: Welcome to Droning On and On where we discuss politics till you can't take it anymore! Tonight the race between the Tasmanian Devil and Daffy Duck, pretty close at this point, isn't it Blaine? Female host: Absolutely, Mike, according ot the polls, there isn't anyone out there who'd vote for either of these candidates!
So a little truth enters the comics.
Batman: The Brave and The Bold also gears low or towards young readers -- depending upon your take. Badly drawn, the cover features Batman staring angrily at Plastic Man, Captain Marvel, Aquaman and Green Arrow who all have their own light signals in the sky. Battling the part ape, Sam Simeon, Batman is hurt and ends up in cast. Robin wonders "Who'd protect Gotham City then?" And that's the feeling in Star City (Green Arrow), New York (Plastic Man), Atlantis (Aquaman), Fawcett City (Captain Marvel) -- leading all the heroes to show up. As well as many villains, such as Penquin, Catwoman and Joker. Only Catwoman is written as the character you know. Joker's scenes might as well be Riddler's. It all ends with even more heroes showing up also dressed as Batman: The Atom, B'Wana Beast, Black Canary, Bronze Tiger, Guy Gardner and Red Tornado.
The badly drawn comic always looks like a bad episode of The 70s Super Friends TV show. So we checked in on the latest Super Friends or "Super Villians!" as the title tells you. The issue doesn't tell you much or offer you much. In fact, page 5 probably offers more of value in the ad
for the Emerald City Comicon taking place March 13 through 14th in Seattle, Washington (the Washington State Convention Center -- "FREE ADMISSION UNDER 7! KIDS PLAY AREA! AND SO MUCH MORE!")
We rounded out the survey with the latest Scooby-Doo! (#153). The Phantom of the Opal! plays out like someone watched Abbot & Costello's Who Done It? once too often but the drawings are worth noting. Drawn like the cartoon show, they still manage to show motion and bring the characters to life. And after the tokenism of Super Friends (Wonder Woman), it's always refreshing to see Velma and Daphne investigating.
If the last few months demonstrated anything, it's a disempowering of women in comics. At times it seems as though Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake The Laughing Corpse is about all you can count on.
