snap judgments

The above phrase should have been taken down in a statement to the police on why I had to strange a woman who came into the store with her young daughter and son.  You think this kind of thing wouldn’t happen; I’m fairly obviously a female behind the counter of a comic shop and so therefore, any arguement that comics are “just for boys” seems retarded.  But as I approached this woman holding on to her daughter’s hand as if she were going to be pursesnatched, I was perfecly polite to ask her if she needed any help.

We got a good customer service thang going on at Metro, or at least we give it the old college try.  Some people jump back in fear, some give me a condescending look and others are just silent as they point to their curious child making a mess of our action figure selection and explain that “Oh no, we’re with him.”  And that’s okay.  I can’t make you be interested in what your child likes and after 7 long years of working at my comic shop, I’ve come to terms with that.  I can go over to that small child and normally find a great conversation on how awesome Batman is and who that action figure is and might actually come away with a good sale from time to time.

But what I can’t understand, and don’t even want to, is disparaging the store IN FRONT OF ME.  When I asked this woman if she needed help finding anything, she begged off any comment explaining that she and the little girl would be going to Old Navy across the street and were giving her son ‘equal time’.  She could have even stopped here and we’d be cool!  What elementary school aged little boy wants to hang out with his mom while she and his sister look at t-shirts and other boring clothing things?  That’s awful kind of them to try and get him a book so he can be entertained, right?

But no.

This woman went on to say with a smirk that he needed time in a, and I quote, “ugly boys’s store”.

Now, I know you can think of your own witty retort, but at the time, I was struck dumb by her … dumbness.  Was she really trying to tell me that this store, my store, was ugly and for boys only?  She didn’t just call her son ‘ugly’ in front of me?  Was this bitch for real?  I repeated her words and she didn’t back down, realizing how far her foot had gone into her mouth, but tried to get me on her side by adding, “Well, you know…”

No, lady, I don’t!  I don’t know!  AUGH!

Still aghast, I choked out something about how comics promote literacy and have a wide variety of stories to tell and how there are Classics Illustrated based on major works of literature. “Well, it sounds like you read a lot when there’s no one here,” she cheekily replied and steered her daughter from the counter.

I left them alone.  When they left, I said thank you and turned to my fellow co-worker and we took a moment.  I thought I was going to burst a blood vessel.

So remember folks:  there are people who think comics are just for kids.  There are people that think comics are just for adults.  And then there are those who would rather be assigned on what to think and what to read purely based on gender.

Okay, I didn’t want to get into this because quite frankly, I’m sick of it.  The very idea of “Who Do You Trust?” bothers me immensely because I’m one of those namby-pamby little girls that wants to believe that heroes do good the majority of the time and since Civil War, it’s been hard to hold on to that belief.   It’s edgy not to trust in your authority figures and that’s why Cyclops has dark ops teams and Iron Man is a villain because he supports government control.

BUT!  I make exceptions.  While I will try and be Secretless here at Snap Judgments (mostly because my snap judgments is “Argh!  Freakin’ Skrulls!  Smells like retcon!”), I will give a shout-out to a few ideas kicking around the ol’ skull.

Like the fact that the current Beast in … whatever X-Men book he’s in right now?  Which is it?  Didn’t he get an off-handed mention in Uncanny as going to look for Xavier?  Man, that guy is a hard travelin’ hero!

And he’s a Skrull.

I can’t say I have a lot of facts to back up this judgment, snappy as it is, but I did remember that Joss “All Shall Love Me and Despair” Whedon wanted to change Beast’s look back when he started on Astonishing X-Men (ALL THOSE YEARS AGO) and was told that he had to keep him lionesque because there were plans for that.  He’s been very unused aside from exposition and … well, let’s just call it a gut feeling.  Not as gut-y as my ‘Black Bolt better be a Skrull because Silent War was lame’ feeling, but something like it.

I’ve been absent over in this neck of the woods because somedays, you read the Avengers and get his moment of existentialism. You look at the story and ask yourself, “… why? Why, Bendis? Who are these people? Who made their rent check by producing this book? Is it the guy who runs the machine that puts in the staples?

I’m starting to understand I take Bendis way too seriously. Something about his previous work and seminal stories makes me think that when I pick up something with his name on it, I’m in for a dramatic work. Something with meat on its bones that will tell me something new about the human condition or flesh out the way people speak from a word-bubble perspective. He and Loeb both, honestly, and I think it’s because of their awards and praise. Start holding things up as the best ever and you start to overthink your funny books.

And there is just no thought in Mighty Avengers. Things just explode and people fight. Remember when it was a general consent that Bruce Jones was far too boring (among other things) in his tenure on Incredible Hulk and he just sort of threw in a bunch of stuff at the end as out of spite? I feel like someone told Bendis he’s took talky and bland over on New Avengers and that they should be more four-color and Bendis just went, “OH YEAH?” So we just see them fight people infected by a Symbiote Virus that apparently Doom was responsible for so they run off to go fight Doom and basically blow a big hole in Latveria, ARREST HIM and then go home to deal with Secret Invasion.

As if Doom’s just some guy; he and Stilt-Man hang out at the Bar with No Name and plot their next nefarious scheme, but I digress.  Later we can talk about how lame villainy is these days and how the best plans have to come from the hero end of things, but right now: Avengers.

So, Mighty is a overly quippy, obnoxiously thought-bubbly (I MEAN REALLY NOW BENDIS?   Give the artist some room!) slugfest.  Is there anything wrong with this?   Maaaaybe.  At heart, it’s a grand idea and a good start for four-color action and fun.  Heck, Marvel Adventures: Avengers is a four-color slugfest and I adore that book!  I think part of my distaste comes from the fact that Bendis is considered to be a seminal writer that has set the tone of the Marvel Universe at large, so when Earth’s Mightiest Heroes turn out to be a little… well, empty and hollow, then you start to look around you and realize that a lot of the really good books step outside the major influences of the ol’ MU.  It seems to be a symptom of a much larger problem.

New Avengers has slowed down as to be nigh-glacial in its stories, partly because Bendis works best in slow, introspective stories where we learn a little something about ourselves and each other, but mostly because the publishing schedule got flamingo’d up.  One book has to wait for the other while the other has to kill time to match up with Secret Invasion, all of which Bendis is writing making me wonder what sort of crazy cybernetic implants Geoff Johns has in his brain that allows HIM to plan major mega-events with his books and not Our Man Bendis.  Or our editing staff.

So all you need to know?  Secret Invasion is coming, guys!  Everything’s going to make sense then.  Or so we hope.

Is it just me or are the Daughters of the Dragon really cool?

And not in a ‘Any minute they might make out!’ kind of way. But in an action-adventure, kung-fu way, the kind of story that makes me wrack my brain for another example of Local Girl Does Good without particularly extravagant super-powers. Take Misty Knight for example: she’s just a tough NYC cop who just so happens to have a bionic arm. Is the rest of her bionic? No, just the arm. Can the arm shoot rockets? No, it’s just an arm. It stopped Sabretooth from biting her once, I think, but that’s really her ‘super-power’. How about Colleen Wing? Well, she knows kung-fu. Can she make her fist like unto iron? No. Is she the Master of Kung-Fu? Nope. She’s just good at what she does and has some sort of ancestral link to the samurai class.

These two chicks fight crime. Not as Avengers, but detectives on the street, entrepreneurs in a way. Wikipedia tells me that:

Later, Knight’s right arm was severely injured by a bomb explosion and was amputated. Colleen encouraged Knight to rise above her depression and return to an active role in life.

The two became fast friends and went on awesome blaxploitation kung-fu adventures. Misty has been dating Danny Rand and hey! Wikipedia also tells me Colleen was an item with Scott Summers for a time! She dated a mutant! How progressive. A quick check of Women in Refrigerators shows that they’re not listed as having been ‘killed, raped, depowered, crippled, turned evil, maimed, tortured, contracted a disease or had other life-derailing tragedies’ which is remarkable and awesome.

Sure, they’ve gone through bad fashion fads, a few bad romances and at least one assisted resurrection, but all in all these two seem to be pretty solid characters from the ’70s in the era of the revival.

Now let’s take a look at the front runners of the title of Marvel Poster Gal: the woman with the company title in her name, Ms. Marvel is a bit of a wreck these days, fighting of insecurities and alien invasions into her body, being a pushover as the ‘leader’ of the Mighty Avengers, she hired a publicist to improve her image in the public which infuriates me for reasons that are far too long to go into right now, but yet she’s on the cover of everything and is sort of the House of Ideas go-to gal for covers and exposure. Spider-Woman? Oh lord. Tell me she’s not the heroine I have to look up to? She doesn’t even know who’s side she’s on! Dare I even mention Tigra? How about one of the Avenger’s finest chairpersons, the winsome Wasp? She’s… awfully in the background of Mighty Avengers and … is still having the same arguments with her ex-husband that’s she’s been having on-again, off-again for the past how many years…

Folks, go read the Immortal Iron Fist. Support the Daughters of the Dragon.

Or maybe you shouldn’t.  The last time they were spotlighted in their own mini-series it came at a Kill Bill cost and then led to that horrible Heroes for Hire series that started strong as a Civil War tie in then ended in a miserable mess of crying over a mercy kill on Humbug and putting Moon boy into SHIELD custody and Colleen Wing getting her first entry on the Women in Refrigerators list for her suffering and crying under the Hulk Invasion and Misty Knight taking far too much responsibility for the failure of the Heroes for Hire in the epilogue book and gah.  Maybe that’s the trick, you shouldn’t promote your favorite characters but let them coast in supporting character roles in really fantastic books, under the radar.  Matt Fraction said at WizardWorld that he’d be keeping the Daughters of the Dragon for as long as they’ll let him, and they are eight shades of fun in that book, kicking ass and getting the REAL Heroes for Hire back again…

So forget what I just said.  DON’T support the Daughters of the Dragon.  Just keep reading the Immortal Iron Fist and share that little wink with me.