gwenfrankenstien

(I apparently missed a lot of discussion about DC's racefaily nostalgia, which sucks because I had totally planned to make this post last week but I was ridiculously busy getting ready for the steampunk con.)


Green Lantern: John Stewart has been a member of the GLC since the early 1970s. He was a major character in the Justice League and JLU cartoons; there's a generation of kids who think of John when they hear the name "Green Lantern." John is one of the less terrible examples here, in that he is alive and active right now, but he doesn't really have a book to appear in. GLC is mostly concerned with Guy and Kyle and sometimes the nonhuman Lanterns. John is supposed to be on Earth right now, so theoretically he should be in the main Green Lantern book, but there's no way Geoff Johns is going to let anyone take away from Hal Jordan's spotlight.

Green Arrow: Connor Hawke replaced his father and lived up to the name. And, while artists consistently forget it, he was definitely not full of Rich White Dude liberal-guilt the way Ollie is. He was a legacy character that wasn't a carbon-copy and it was great. Then people decided that wasn't interesting enough, I guess, and he got nearly killed, put into a coma, and woke up with total amnesia, leaving the Arrow family as whitebread as they'd been throughout the seventies and eighties.

Batgirl: Cassandra Cain was a wonderfully complex character with an interesting backstory that set her apart from all the other Batfamily characters. Oh yeah, and, she was the only Batperson so far that wasn't a white kid. And she was fucking badass. She could outrun bullets and she beat Lady Shiva at hand-to-hand combat more than once. And then she was evil, or crazy, or drugged. And then she quit and passed the Batgirl identity on to Babs 2.0 Steph Brown. Steph has been working closely with one former Batgirl, but as much as I love Steph and Babs, Cass' absence is kind of noticeable...

Blue Beetle: Now, I'm a Ted Kord fan. I initially resisted picking up Jaime's comic. But it was seriously too awesome to ignore. I love teenage superheroes and Jaime is one of the best. And, unlike pretty much every superhero ever, teenaged or otherwise, he had a good relationship with his parents. As with John Stewart, Jaime Reyes is actually doing comparatively well right now. Sure, his book got canceled twice, but he's appearing in team books! At least he isn't dead! Which brings us to...

The Atom: Okay. Seriously, folks. Does anybody care about Ray Palmer? He's definitely got a place of pride in my list of Least Exciting Superhero Characters, is what I'm saying here. Ryan, on the other hand, was a pretty cool dude! He was smart, he was funny, he had an amazing supporting cast. I know his book never sold very well (and I feel sort of guilty there; I never bought it myself. Because Ray bored me so much that I thought there was no way even Gail could make the Atom interesting.) but it had a lot of really great moments. And now he's been killed off just so a new team of villains can prove how awesome they are. Because Ray's back now, so Ryan is just disposable.

Hawk: I know I've mostly been talking about race here, but I think this is still relevant and still part of the same regressive/nostalgic pattern. Holly Granger only was in a handful of books, or at least, only in a handful of books I read. But I loved what I saw! It always frustrated me that Hawk and Dove went from being a violent dude and a peaceful dude to being a violent-masculine dude and a peaceful-feminine lady. But here was a violent lady! I loved her just for breaking stereotypes. But yep, the new-old Hawk and Dove team does not include her. (Or Don.) Back to gender conformity!

The Question: I know, I know. Renee is fine right now. But she's one of my favourite characters ever in any medium. I loved her in BTAS, I loved her in No Man's Land, I loved her in Gotham Central, I love her now that she's wearing a mask. But let's face it, she's a lesbian of colour replacing a straight white dude hero. She was Rucka's pet character and he could be counted on to protect her, but he's left the company. Looking at the pattern, it's only a matter of time before she gets killed or otherwise erased to make way for Vic's Charlie's Vic's triumphant return.