The Comic Book Discrimination Dossiers

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Articles: 1, 2, 3

Record: Brad Meltzer
2006-12-18 09:32:03
But of course this big phony was going to be listed here sooner or later, as no matter how big or small his standing in the industry is, it would be foolish to leave him out. In practically but a single miniseries, he has managed to establish himself as a most serious offender. His list of offenses include: Making virtually all of the women in Identity Crisis into one-dimensional lemmings, panicky, hysterical, insane, needing to be coddled and calmed, unable to defend themselves from assaults by males, and acting totally out of character in contrast to past storytelling. Depicting Dr. Light out-of-character, and having him violate Sue Dibny in one of the grossest storylines ever, written in the ways of a bad fanfic. Depicting Zatanna being punched in the stomach by Deathstroke, also out-of-character. Depicting Deathstroke attacking Black Canary by?no, forget it. It?s just too sadistic. Even male characters do not emerge unscathed. Flash is stabbed by Deathstroke, who also ...
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Profile: Omen
2006-12-13 21:28:03
Lilith Clay, OmenFirst appearance: Teen Titans #25 Vol. 1, 1970Current status: deadWas subjected to the following act of discrimination: in Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day in 2003, she was slain by a Superman robot along with Donna Troy. Two years later, Brother Blood tried to exploit hers and other dead Titans? souls, for the purpose of getting Lilith to be his newest Mother Mayhem. After being thwarted, Lilith?s and the other dead Titans? souls just returned to the afterlife.What?s wrong with how this was done? This is symbolic of the unpleasant trend of late where, instead of trying to develop characters and breathing new life into them, the writers and editors can only think of killing them off. Just because Lilith Clay, until now, never really had an exact origin offered to her, doesn?t justify terminating her.To make matters worse, DC Comics has been trying to sweep the whole case of Lilith under the rug since then, and when the third and current volume of TT premiered in...
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Profile: Psylocke
2006-12-10 03:25:05
Betsy Braddock, PsylockeFirst appearance: 1976 in Captain Britain. She?s the twin sister of Brian Braddock, and at one point took up the role in his stead. In 1986, when she, along with kunoichi (female ninja) Kwannon, were captured by villainess Spiral, they had the essence of their bodies switched, and were even brainwashed as well, in one of the most bizarre storylines of the Bronze/Iron Age.Current status: prominent member of the X-Men.Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she was violently assaulted by the villain named Slaymaster (whom her brother Brian killed to defend her), and was blinded for a time. In 1996, she was gashed by Sabretooth, and it was thanks to the Crimson Dawn that she was healed. In 2001, she was slain by a villain named Vargas, all so that writer Chris Claremont could replace her with an obvious clone (in fighting style anyway), the former Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, in the pages of X-Treme X-Men (now cancelled).What?s wrong with how...
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Profile: Batgirl 1/Oracle
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Barbara Gordon, Batgirl 1/Oracle First appearance: Detective Comics in 1967Current status: today, she works as computer master Oracle, the info broker in the DCU for many superheroes and other crimefighters.Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in 1988, in Batman: The Killing Joke, she was shot and paralyzed by the Joker, who?d arrived at her apartment with the intent of striking at both Commissioner Gordon and his niece. After shooting her, he added insult to injury by photographing her in her helpless state.What?s wrong with how this was done? Some could argue that it was sensationalism gone amok. Perhaps additionally troubling is that DC decided to put the premise in actual continuity, when writer Alan Moore hadn't intended it that way when he first began it.Was there anything good to come out of this? The good news is that Alan Moore, when he wrote that special back in 1988, did handle it well, by providing Babs with her own viewpoint/voice, and handled it with ...
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Profile: Jade
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, Jade First appearance: All-Star Squadron #25, September 1983. A few months afterward, she became a team member in Infinity Inc, the teens-to-young adults series that starred the offspring of the Justice Society, which ran 1984-88.Current status: dead (?)Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: while she may have shone her metaphysically acquired GL?s light in Infinity Inc, where she was a team member when she first started out, in later years, she became a very underwhelmingly used (underused?) character. For example, in Green Lantern #111 Vol. 3, when she had a chance to really prove herself in saving John Stewart from the villainess Fatality, Jenny-Lynn instead finds her power running low, and it?s thanks to the fact that then paramour Kyle Rayner comes back from space at that very moment that?s she saved from being trampled by Fatality. She lost her powers again in the following issue, and while she did acquire some similar to those of her mothe...
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Profile: Robin 1/Nightwing
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Dick Grayson, Robin 1/Night wingFirst appearance: historically speaking, Dick Grayson first debuted in 1940 in Batman, though by today?s standards, that would be regarded as the Robin of Earth-2, who, while he grew up, he never took on a different codename for himself, and has since been written out of continuity. If it?s the Silver Age we?re talking about, that?s a good question. I would say that the Dick Grayson we know today debuted in the mid-1950s. He took up the role of Nightwing in 1984, at the time taking his name from an old Kryptonian legend, later on just thinking of the name himself in post-Crisis years.Current status: still a member of the current Outsiders, though whether you could call him a leader with the way it?s being written is remains in question.Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in Nightwing #93, he was raped by a villainess called Tarantula.That does sound hard to believe, doesn?t it? But, in the age of the internet, little seems hard to swa...
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Profile: Batgirl 2
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Cassandra Cain, Batgirl 2First appearance: Batman #567, July 1999, during the No Man?s Land crossover.Current status: believe it or not, not only did she abandon the path of goodness that the Masked Manhunter?s Gotham family tried to help her find, ditto her secret ID, she?s now become the leader of the League of Assassins. Yes, that very League that Ra?s al Ghul founded back in the Bronze Age.Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: her [illegitimate?] father, ganglord David Cain, never taught her real vocal or written languages. Rather, he just taught her how to study body languages, for the purpose of making her an assassin. When she joined up with the Bat-family, she did learn more about how talk and communicate, yet she still remained very limited in dialect, and was unable to accomplish much in mathematics, if at all.Batman is also guilty on his own end regarding his personal failure to provide Cassie with an education (it appears that no Bat-writer to date has w...
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Record: John Byrne
2006-12-02 15:18:05
John Byrne may be well known as the writer and artist of many Marvel and DC series and characters, to say nothing of his being a ret-con machine (Marvel Two-In-One #50 may have been a precursor to what he really ended up doing in subsequent years as a ret-conner), but he may also be known for a lot of discrimination against women in whatever he?s worked on as a writer, even subliminally. Between his debut in comic books in the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, there were quite a few books he wrote where sexism had a presence, even if you couldn?t always see it. To enjoy any of his works can often require big doses of salt. Here is my own list of discriminatory acts Byrne included in his own writing resume in years past:In Fantastic Four #232, when Byrne first began his five-year stint on the FF, Sue Storm got a short tomboy haircut. (A throwaway citation, to be sure, but what the heck, I'll put in it anyway.) Which may have been a precursor for another detail to be described here later. ...
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Record: The MSM Hall of Shame
2006-12-02 15:18:05
?MSM? is an acronym for the Main-Stream Media that can be found as a reference to it in many places across the blogosphere today. Like, say, to the New York Times, Boston Globe, CNN, Washington Post, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and other assorted bastions of dishonesty in reporting the news. That dishonesty in news reporting, let me tell you, can and does extend to comic books as well. I?ve seen more than enough dumbed-down, sleazy, sensationalized, double-talking and extremely dishonest newspaper and TV articles on comics over the years, and this, a topic that can be expanded if and whenever I find something worth filing here, is where I?ll be posting some of the worst quotes I can find or that I know of from the loathsome MSM, with boldfaced linings included to emphasize the propaganda. Now, let us take a look at some of the biggest stinkers we have in store here, all courtesy of our real life versions of J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle.First, there?s this treacly st...
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Record: Chris Claremont
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Unlike most others, I don?t participate in the Clar emont-bashing that?s cropped up in the past several years. Well, not for the same reasons most others do anyway. But that doesn?t mean there isn?t anything that I don?t hold against him in complaint; there is sadly some things, and while it may not be that long a list, here?s a few things on his resume which really anger me. The Phoenix story, which first appeared in X-Men in 1979. What is it exactly that disgusts me about it? Is it that IMO, it runs the gauntlet of stereotyping a women as a mass-executioner? Well, that could be one of the problems I personally have with it as of today. But I certainly am furious about it because of all the imitations it?s led to! Which will come up next. Some time after Jean Grey had been absolved of the Phoenix fiasco, along comes another story in which Claremont recycled the story again, this time involving one Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean whom Scott ended up marrying for a time before bre...
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Profile: Jesse Quick
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Jesse (Quick ) ChambersFirst appearance: Justice Society of America #1, 1992Current status: may be slated to officially join the JSA in time.Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: Geoff Johns didn?t exactly make much use out of her when he wrote the Flash from 2000-2005, and in the middle of the run, in issue #200, he wrote that she put all her energy into Wally West to fight the new Reverse-Flash, but as a result of doing so, she knocked the exact connection she has to her father?s special speed formula, which she first began taking at a young age, out of place, and couldn?t access it properly.What?s wrong with how this was done? Her act in and of itself may have been with noble intentions, to help stop a demonic fiend, but it doesn?t excuse the fact that Johns seemed to have done it simply as a way of all but writing her out of use, instead of trying to make some real use out of her as a character.Was there anything good to come out of this? Yes, in that Johns at lea...
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Profile: Mockingbird
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Bobbi Morse, Mock ingbirdFirst appearance: Astonishing Tales #6, June 1971Current status: deadWas subjected to the following act of discrimination: at the end of West Coast Avengers in 1993, where she?d been a longtime member, she was shot in the back and murdered by Mephisto. Hawkeye/Clint Barton, her husband for several years, became a widower.What?s wrong with how this was done? Yet another pointless offing of a female character, and what really made it bombastic was that, as far as I know, Mephisto had never been interested in actually killing anyone before. Put another way, it wasn't like him to try and take anyone's life for real.Since then, there?s been one story in which she turned up as a corpse in a plot conceived by the Grim Reaper to destroy the Avengers. Yet, she remains dead, with no clear way to tell if she?ll ever be revived to full life again or not.
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Profile: Betty Ross-Banner
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Betty Ross-Banner First appearance: 1962 in the Incredible Hulk #1 (first volume. The second one grew out of Tales to Astonish)Current status: deadWas subjected to the following acts of discrimination: her first husband, Glenn Talbot, had dealt her quite a few beatings when he realized that she loved Bruce Banner, the Hulk, more than she loved Glenn, she was even turned into a creature called Harpy at one point by MODOK, she went through at least one miscarriage, and then, in 1998, to cap it all off, she was secretly poisoned to death by Emil Blonsky, the Abomination.What?s wrong with how this was done? The Hulk?s own world may be a dark one, I?ll admit to that. But they still went way too far, capped off with the death Peter David put her through in 1998, which may have been done as an act of revenge upon Marvel?s own editorial for some complications they?d caused him earlier. Why couldn?t Betty have some children and at least lead a good enough life, as a wife, mother, and even sid...
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Profile: Pepper Potts
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Virginia "Pepper " PottsFirst appearance: Tales of Suspense #45, 1963. She was executive secretary for Tony Stark/Iron Man and his business firms. She?d been married to another of his employees, Harold ?Happy? Hogan for a time, but later divorced.Current status: working in other businesses today, she still maintains some connections with Tony Stark.Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: the only storyline I know of where Pepper was given the PC treatment was in Iron Man #52-54, when she was brutally beaten by a woman of Muslim background (!) from a Chechnya-like country named Ayisha with whom Tony had a brief affair with at one point, who fell victim to the effects of one of Tony?s own inventions, a ?living? form of armor, and because it was preventing her from maintain any proper life, and also making it hard for her to commit suicide, so she sought to try and push him over the edge by going to Pepper?s house and assaulting her, and, worst of all, terminating a pregna...
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Record: Ron Marz
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Ron Marz ? talented writer or just a hack for hire? You decide. But while his work at CrossGen was good while it lasted, there?s still a few things during his career since the early 90s that are worth questioning, and one act that most definitely requires scrutiny. Here are a few examples as follows: In 1992, in Silver Surfer #75, he killed off the Human Torch?s onetime girlfriend, Frankie Raye, who?d become a herald for Galactus several years earlier. In 1994, he took the task that DC gave him ? he turned Hal Jordan into a villain (Parallax) and slew the GL Corps, including female members like Arisia. His most notorious step, and the one that serves as the leading example over on WIR, was the murder of Kyle Rayner?s original girlfriend Alex at the hands of Major Force, who slaughtered her and then stuffed her corpse into the home refridgerator in 1996. And the big defeat in all this was that Kyle did not have the guts kill the villain himself. Instead, Guy Gardner had to do i...
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Profile: Lois Lane
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Lois Lane First appearance: Action Comics #1 in June 1938. Note that this entry could refer to all incarnations of her, including as a resident of Earths One and Two, and today.Current status: now married to the Man of Steel, and ever the crusading-for-justice journalist she?s always been.Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: Lois has been through many situations that do raise questions and certainly are telling of the times in which she?s lived. In the Golden Age, she?d actually had to make do with put-downs from her boss, Perry White, among others who argued that certain jobs were more fit for a man than for a woman, and which may have included Superman himself (when Roy Thomas wrote All-Star Squadron in the 80s, he didn?t make things all that different. At least, not in how I saw him doing it in the 1984 annual). During the Silver Age, we had absurd slapstick situations such as those seen in Superman?s Girlfriend Lois Lane, in which she got turned into ?The Fattes...
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Profile: Starfire
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Koriand'r, Star fireFirst appearance: DC Comics Presents #26, 1980Current status: looks like she?s joined Adam Strange on a space adventure!Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: following her sister Komand?r?s vicious attempt to put her to death in a gladiator-like battle, and betrayal of their home planet Tamaran, Koriand?r was sold into slavery, abused by the many slavemongers who kept custody of her, before being, along with the evil sister who?d betrayed her, subjected to an experiment by a race of alien scientists who performed a light-energy experiment upon the two of them that gave the two sisters their starbolt powers. In 1993, in the 100th issue of New Titans, Raven disrupted the wedding planned between her and Nightwing, injecting an influence into Starfire that made her decide to take a flight off into space.What?s wrong with how this was done? There was nothing wrong with how Koriand?r?s origin was done, but there was with how the botched wedding was. It...
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Profile: Storm
2006-12-02 15:18:05
Ororo Munroe, Stor m First appearance: Giant-Size X-Men #1, 1975Current status: prominent field leader for the X-Men.Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she?d almost been raped when she was twelve and was trying to flee from Cairo, where she?d grown up most of her life. She killed her attacker with a knife in self-defense, but swore never to take another life. In the mid-80s, for about two years, she took on a ridiculous mohawk hairstyle. Later on, Henry Peter Gyrich, the Avengers? unlikable UN liason, shot her with a Neutralizer device that drained her powers from her in Uncanny X-Men #185. It took until issue #227 for her to have her powers properly restored, when Forge, then her boyfriend, built an anti-Neutralizer to help reverse the effects.There are also times when she?s gone insane from anguish, but which are too hard for me to find and compile together as examples just now.What?s wrong with how this was done? That depends on what we?re talking about among th...
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Profile: Jean Loring
2006-02-23 22:13:00
Jean LoringFirst appeared in: Showcase #34, 1961Current status: was possessed by the Eclipso diamond, and then paralyzed in orbit(?).Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in The Atom and Hawkman #45, Oct-Nov 1969, the last issue of the Silver Age Atom series, she was brainwashed/tortured into insanity by a subatomic race called the Jimberen, who thought her to be a descendant of an old queen of theirs, after they used a radiation-based device with which to brainwash her (see this page from Darkmark's Comics Indexing Domain for details). She was fully cured of these effects in Justice League of America #81, June 1970, with Hawkman?s help there too, when he took her to Thanagar for treatment to cure her. She later fell prey to a similar situation in Super-Team Family #11, June-July 1977, when there too, she was brainwashed by more alien menaces. In 2004, after an absence of 4-5 years, she was turned into a plot device, just like Sue Dibny, in Identity Crisis: she was...
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