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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 18, 2024 12:43:01 GMT -5
Yes. Shooter has an odd duality where he, on the one hand, seems to think he is a champion of female empowerment, and on the other does some really cringe-worthy stuff, both in comics and in real life (at least, if you take Ann Nocenti's word for it). I remember a graphic novel he wrote featuring an impromptu team-up of bunch of superheroines. One of the civilian characters in the story was an adolescent girl, and a caption at the end talked about what her future might hold; going from memory, the options were like ... "nurse, housewife, or superheroine." Um ... He's not alone in that. A lot of the writers of his generation talked the talk of gender equality; but, then you read a lot of their work, they tend to fall right into the same cliches of damsels-in-distress, assertive means "bitchy," overly emotional, traditional work roles, etc, etc. They were still products of their time and upbringing and not as enlightened as they professed. I think a certain percentage of it was them following the time-honored tropes of comic books, another percentage was generational, and the rest was down to probably never really having deep conversations about women's issues, with women, for any significant period of time. There are degrees, though, and Shooter and Michelinie, to me, always came off more on the neanderthal end of things. Well, maybe cro-magnon. Not every story or every character; but, more than many high profile contemporaries.. |
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 18, 2024 12:50:28 GMT -5
Maybe Ling wasn't trying to shoot the gun out of Big Jim's hand. Maybe she was aiming at his head but missed her shot because she was distracted by the others. Or maybe she's just bad with guns. Cei-U! I summon the miserable markswoman! Then she probably shouldn't have done the fancy forward roll before shooting!
Honestly, I think Layton felt he was making her look impressive in that sequence by skillfully shooting his hand. But in actuality, it makes her look incompetent. If she had killed the guy and a couple of others, she probably would have won. |
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 18, 2024 12:52:19 GMT -5
This was still in a world where people actually thought you aim for the hand with the gun. They still do today. When there's a police involved shooting, I always hear someone say, "Why didn't they just shoot the gun out of his hand?" TV, movies and comics have completely distorted people's perception of reality. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 18, 2024 12:52:55 GMT -5
Jim Shooter has had no problem with violence towards women, in comics, or mind control, or impregnating with babies that grow into adults Yes. Shooter has an odd duality where he, on the one hand, seems to think he is a champion of female empowerment, and on the other does some really cringe-worthy stuff, both in comics and in real life (at least, if you take Ann Nocenti's word for it). I spoke with Shooter once online. At the time, he was several issues into his Gold Key relaunch for Dark Horse and I was a massive fan. I dared to ask him about his treatment of the main female character in Dr. Solar, an uber-supportive romantic partner with no personality of her own, being serially raped by the villain as a plot device for the protagonist. He was incensed that I dared to even suggest there was something questionable about this. I find that very easy to believe. Between his own writings and interviews and those of others who worked with him and under him, I get the sense that his self-image is vastly different than how others perceive him. That's true for many people; but, I think he and others are very far apart, indeed. Rape is a touchy subject, for storytelling. It is a horrific act, which gives it great dramatic effect, which also makes it tempting to use in adventure and horror stories, both as a threat and a violent act, to shock and horrify the reader. The problem is both in how it is depicted and the aftermath. If it is sensitive to the survivor, what they are going through, how it affects them, their recovery and coping, then it can be a positive story. Too often in comics and film, it is about the male partner getting revenge for the act. Little thought is given to the woman, after the event, other than for them to demonstrate trauma to their partner, who then resolves to make the rapist pay. It ceases to be about the survivor. Kind of the same problem with Barbara Gordon, after Killing Joke, until Kim Yale and John Ostrander decide to tackle it straight on. Not just the physical aspect, but the psychological and emotional. John said Kim was incensed but how Barbara was handled there and after, and determined to show Barbara dealing with it and triumphing over it, like the hero she always was. Best reclamation of a bad decision, ever! |
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 18, 2024 12:56:02 GMT -5
Jim Shooter has had no problem with violence towards women, in comics, or mind control, or impregnating with babies that grow into adults Yes. Shooter has an odd duality where he, on the one hand, seems to think he is a champion of female empowerment, and on the other does some really cringe-worthy stuff, both in comics and in real life (at least, if you take Ann Nocenti's word for it). I spoke with Shooter once online. At the time, he was several issues into his Gold Key relaunch for Dark Horse and I was a massive fan. I dared to ask him about his treatment of the main female character in Dr. Solar, an uber-supportive romantic partner with no personality of her own, being serially raped by the villain as a plot device for the protagonist. He was incensed that I dared to even suggest there was something questionable about this. I've heard a lot of the criticisms about Shooter and I'm sure many of them are true. But, like Icctrombone, as a kid I loved his early work on Avengers so much, I admit to having a soft spot for him. |
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 18, 2024 13:04:39 GMT -5
I remember a graphic novel he wrote featuring an impromptu team-up of bunch of superheroines. One of the civilian characters in the story was an adolescent girl, and a caption at the end talked about what her future might hold; going from memory, the options were like ... "nurse, housewife, or superheroine." Um ... He's not alone in that. A lot of the writers of his generation talked the talk of gender equality; but, then you read a lot of their work, they tend to fall right into the same cliches of damsels-in-distress, assertive means "bitchy," overly emotional, traditional work roles, etc, etc. They were still products of their time and upbringing and not as enlightened as they professed. I think a certain percentage of it was them following the time-honored tropes of comic books, another percentage was generational, and the rest was down to probably never really having deep conversations about women's issues, with women, for any significant period of time. There are degrees, though, and Shooter and Michelinie, to me, always came off more on the neanderthal end of things. Well, maybe cro-magnon. Not every story or every character; but, more than many high profile contemporaries.. I hadn't noticed that in Michelinie's work before and, honestly, absent further evidence, I would have to lay most of this at Bob Layton's feet. I'm assuming the decision to have Ling not actually shoot anyone but to show Stark shooting people and to graphically show Ling's beating were all by him given what I know of the "Marvel method." I have no idea what his history is or if he's done this before. But I'd say you're right in that he was a product of the era and it never occurred to him that he was depicting any kind of double standard here. And I might not have even noticed any of these things individually but taken as a whole, I think they kind of reflect the thinking (or lack of thought) by comic creators in that era.
By the way, is there a way to quote multiple posts in the same reply, besides just copying and pasting? I didn't want to clog up this thread with separate replies to every single post. But good comments by everyone who chimed in.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 18, 2024 13:05:43 GMT -5
This was still in a world where people actually thought you aim for the hand with the gun. They still do today. When there's a police involved shooting, I always hear someone say, "Why didn't they just shoot the gun out of his hand?" TV, movies and comics have completely distorted people's perception of reality. Anyone who is trained with firearms is trained to aim for the center of the chest. It's way easier to score a hit and take down an adversary. Forget the head shot BS, that's for expert marksmen, with specialized weaponry. With a pistol, at a range less than 50 yards, you are aiming for center mass. Even with body armor, it will slow an opponent down, from the kinetic energy. That's also often what you don't see, in film and tv; it still hurts to be hit in the chest, by a bullet, even when the ballistic vest stops it from penetrating. Broken ribs, severe bruises, impaired breathing, etc. Shooting the hand, even compared to the head, is trick shooting and would probably have a less than 50% success rate. Unless they are The Lone Ranger.  |
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 19, 2024 16:30:47 GMT -5
They still do today. When there's a police involved shooting, I always hear someone say, "Why didn't they just shoot the gun out of his hand?" TV, movies and comics have completely distorted people's perception of reality. Anyone who is trained with firearms is trained to aim for the center of the chest. It's way easier to score a hit and take down an adversary. Forget the head shot BS, that's for expert marksmen, with specialized weaponry. With a pistol, at a range less than 50 yards, you are aiming for center mass. Even with body armor, it will slow an opponent down, from the kinetic energy. That's also often what you don't see, in film and tv; it still hurts to be hit in the chest, by a bullet, even when the ballistic vest stops it from penetrating. Broken ribs, severe bruises, impaired breathing, etc. Shooting the hand, even compared to the head, is trick shooting and would probably have a less than 50% success rate. Unless they are The Lone Ranger. But most people aren't actually trained shooters so they have no idea the difficulties involved. Having done a good amount of pistol shooting, I'd say your chances of intentionally hitting someone in the hand in gunfight, even at very close range, is actually way less than 5%. Head shots are possible if you're a very skilled shooter, particularly with a red dot optical. But the other part of this is that people watch movies and think someone instantly goes down from one shot. Someone on drugs or in a crazed state can take a fatal shot to the chest but still keep attacking you for another 10 seconds, sometimes more, before they drop. And that's a long time for you to be fighting off a homicidal attacker. Those who haven't shot handguns much really don't understand how hard it is to shoot with a combination of accuracy and speed, even in practice. In a gunfight where someone is shooting back, simply hitting them in the chest quickly is incredibly difficult. Just ask all the innocent people the cops accidentally shot here: www.yahoo.com/news/shooting-near-brooklyn-subway-station-200506776.htmlAs for poor Ling, if she just hadn't been such a show off and had shot those guys in the chest instead of the hand, she might have come out of that without a scratch. I take it back. It wasn't Layton or Michelinie's fault. It was all on Ling. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 19, 2024 17:21:13 GMT -5
In 1999 four New York City police officers (who we have to assume were trained in the use of their firearms) fired 41 rounds at Amadou Diallo and hit him only 19 times. Witnesses say that many of those shot were after Diallo had fallen to the ground.
The point is policemen trained in the use of their pistols missed over half their shots. The idea that anyone can shoot a pistol from another persons hand and have it be anything but pure luck is ludicrous. Another trope that needed to be retired centuries ago.
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Post by berkley on Sept 19, 2024 23:54:16 GMT -5
On shooting a gun out of someone's hand: yes, absurd beyond a doubt, but I can accept it along with many other absurdities as part of the anything-but-realistic fantasy world of superhero comics. Like you say, it's more annoying in other genres like cop shows, spy thrillers, westerns, etc - which are all fantasies of their own in one way or another but at least make some gestures towards not being totally unbelievable.
More generally, I think one of the things that throws readers off is mixed signals: like a superhero comic that tries to be ultra-realistic in some ways and yet continue to be a superhero comic, which means being ultra-unrealistic in so many other ways. The issue of violence against women is a good example: in superhero comics, one of the conventions is that there are super-powered women who are physically equal or superior to super-powered male characters, and any long-time superhero comics reader will be used to long fight scenes with males and females pounding on each other and will have no problem with that.
But if you suddenly introduce into this fantasy world of female/male physical equality the very real fact of male violence against physically weaker and therefore vulnerable females, I think that's neither a good way to address this very serious real-world issue and nor does it make a good basis for a superhero fantasy. There's a contradiction between the fantasy and the real-world problem that is so fundamental that I think it could only be resolved if the writer made that contradiction itself the point of the story and addressed it explicitly - which I think would take some doing and therefore some writer.
I think that's one of the problems with such stories as the infamous one with Janet and Hank Pym (which came out after I had stopped reading the Avengers, thankfully) or the one Yasotay was talking about in this thread.
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Post by berkley on Sept 20, 2024 0:41:35 GMT -5
I've been trying not to post this very obvious and therefore bad joke but resistance has once again been futile so here it is:
"1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ... now there's an odd sequence."
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 20, 2024 1:05:56 GMT -5
In 1999 four New York City police officers (who we have to assume were trained in the use of their firearms) fired 41 rounds at Amadou Diallo and hit him only 19 times. Witnesses say that many of those shot were after Diallo had fallen to the ground. The point is policemen trained in the use of their pistols missed over half their shots. The idea that anyone can shoot a pistol from another persons hand and have it be anything but pure luck is ludicrous. Another trope that needed to be retired centuries ago. The idea that police officers are well trained, expert shots is almost as bad a trope in entertainment as shooting the gun out of someone's hand. In theory, the New York City Police Department mandates that officers have to requalify by shooting 50 rounds twice a year. Other than that, I don't think they're given any training ammo. And from what I've been told, in practice, due to staffing and budget problems, many officers only shoot 50 rounds once a year. How good would you be at any skill if you only practiced it once a year?
The people in law enforcement who are good shooters have done it all on their own purchasing their own ammo and paying out of pocket for classes with expert instructors, often involving travel. This costs them thousands of dollars a year. These are the guys who usually end up in specialized units like SWAT or undercover narcotics. The rest are about as good as anyone who learns the basics of a skill and then virtually never practices it for years until one day they suddenly have to use it out of the blue in a pressure-filled, life and death situation. Talk about a recipe for disaster.
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Post by Yasotay on Sept 20, 2024 1:35:40 GMT -5
On shooting a gun out of someone's hand: yes, absurd beyond a doubt, but I can accept it along with many other absurdities as part of the anything-but-realistic fantasy world of superhero comics. Like you say, it's more annoying in other genres like cop shows, spy thrillers, westerns, etc - which are all fantasies of their own in one way or another but at least make some gestures towards not being totally unbelievable. More generally, I think one of the things that throws readers off is mixed signals: like a superhero comic that tries to be ultra-realistic in some ways and yet continue to be a superhero comic, which means being ultra-unrealistic in so many other ways. The issue of violence against women is a good example: in superhero comics, one of the conventions is that there are super-powered women who are physically equal or superior to super-powered male characters, and any long-time superhero comics reader will be used to long fight scenes with males and females pounding on each other and will have no problem with that. But if you suddenly introduce into this fantasy world of female/male physical equality the very real fact of male violence against physically weaker and therefore vulnerable females, I think that's neither a good way to address this very serious real-world issue and nor does it make a good basis for a superhero fantasy. There's a contradiction between the fantasy and the real-world problem that is so fundamental that I think it could only be resolved if the writer made that contradiction itself the point of the story and addressed it explicitly - which I think would take some doing and therefore some writer. I think that's one of the problems with such stories as the infamous one with Janet and Hank Pym (which came out after I had stopped reading the Avengers, thankfully) or the one Yasotay was talking about in this thread. This is along the lines of the discussion we had about the utility of kung fu in the Master of Kung Fu comics. And similarly, I'd agree, if the comic book universe says normal people can shoot the gun out of someone's hand, they can. And you're probably right, it's more pernicious in TV and movies, where people come to believe this can be done and then question why police couldn't just shoot the gun out of a criminal's hand rather than kill him.
As far as this story in Iron Man and the whole treatment of women, violence toward women, etc. goes, there's so many issues here and I'm conflicted by a lot of it. My problem with the Iron Man story, as I said, was how they went from unrealism in having the female protagonist not shoot anyone, to realism in having her severely beaten, to realism in having a male protagonist shoot someone. It struck me as not even a double standard but more like a triple standard which made no sense and I was hoping someone might have some insight on what the creators thinking was. But maybe it was just Bob Layton trying to be too clever drawing the comic and not even thinking about any of the issues involved. I don't think that would have been unusual for comic creators back in 1980. My understanding of the Pym fiasco was that the artist inserted the slap because he had trouble drawing Hank just brushing her off. If that's true, it shows he wasn't thinking about how a man slapping his wife would look to people either. I don't think that necessarily makes the artists bad people, just short sighted maybe.
Add on top of this, there is definitely a level of titillation involved in the whole "women in peril' theme that young males (and some older males) find in reading these things and a history of exploring/exploiting those themes in mainstream comics. And then the point you bring up of delineating peril featuring female superheroes and that featuring ordinary women. Plus standards and morays change over time. There are things that were taken for granted 50 years ago which many people cringe at nowadays. But how many things are common nowadays which people will cringe at 50 years from now? So I won't be too quick to cast stones at anything.
I think comics could address a lot of these issue but you're correct that it would take a very good writer.
I've been trying not to post this very obvious and therefore bad joke but resistance has once again been futile so here it is: "1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ... now there's an odd sequence." 2, 4, 6, 8... EVEN worse! |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Sept 20, 2024 2:18:19 GMT -5
Yes. Shooter has an odd duality where he, on the one hand, seems to think he is a champion of female empowerment, and on the other does some really cringe-worthy stuff, both in comics and in real life (at least, if you take Ann Nocenti's word for it). I remember a graphic novel he wrote featuring an impromptu team-up of bunch of superheroines. One of the civilian characters in the story was an adolescent girl, and a caption at the end talked about what her future might hold; going from memory, the options were like ... "nurse, housewife, or superheroine." Um ... If you mean the Aladdin Effect, that one was plotted by Shooter but scripted by Michelinie. |
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Post by mikelmidnight on Sept 20, 2024 11:33:58 GMT -5
I remember a graphic novel he wrote featuring an impromptu team-up of bunch of superheroines. One of the civilian characters in the story was an adolescent girl, and a caption at the end talked about what her future might hold; going from memory, the options were like ... "nurse, housewife, or superheroine." Um ... If you mean the Aladdin Effect, that one was plotted by Shooter but scripted by Michelinie. Thank you, now I know who to blame! The Aladdin Effect (Marvel Graphic Novel #16) |
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