Scott (The Mad Thinker)’s blog

Those poor schmucks in the video above decided to disguise themselves during their break-in by scribbling over their features with a black marker. Shockingly, It didn’t work.

 

But dammit! This would have worked in a comic book! Hell, all you need a domino mask or a pair of glasses to fool your most intimate friends and family. Clark Kent worked around photographers and even as an anchor man for a while and no one spotted that he was also Superman who was constantly in the news!

 

Hell, you don’t even need glasses! Take a peek at the disguises of the original Flash and Doll Man!  The Flash’s disguise was a dopey metal hat that might keep the CIA from beaming their mind controlling messages into brain (Stop denying CIA! We all know that the Culinary Institute of America is really a front for our alien overlords!), but it would hardly fool people into thinking you weren’t who you are.

 

Doll Man’s disguise was short shorts! Granted, Doll Man’s legs might have been distracting and he was small, but I’ve been able to recognize dolls based on famous people I barely know, so I’m pretty sure I’d recognize my friend if he was doll-sized.

 

Of course, the worst is the original Black Condor who had nothing to disguise his identity except that his bare chest might have drawn the eye away from his face.  Additionally, when the Black Condor, Richard Grey, Jr., was unable to save Senator Thomas Wright, Richard just took over his identity and no one noticed. That’s right! Not only didn’t people notice that a U.S. Senator was replaced by some guy raised by condors, they didn’t notice that it was the same guy who was flying around the Capital Building even though he did nothing to conceal his identity except take his clothes off. One of the people who didn’t notice was Senator Thomas Wright’s fiancée, Wendy, who Richard also appropriated with the Senator Thomas Wright identity. I will remind you that the Black Condor was the hero of his comic and not repugnant identity thief and rapist.

 

So be proud scribble faced crooks! Sure, you were caught in part because you had no way to remove the indelible ink from you faces before you were confronted, but you stand in long and illustrious line of American heroes with terrible, terrible disguises! Things may look bad for you know, but remember, no one will recognize you as those dimwitted burglars when you get out of jail, clean faced, years from today!

 

But just to be on the safe side, I'd invest in a pair of glasses.

Ant-Man, the Wasp, Swarm, The Queen Bee, all of them control insects. And guys like The Bug-Eyed Bandit used mechanical insects in their nefarious comic book adventures. Now, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been working with University of California, Berkeley to create remotely controlled cyborg insects!

 

 

 

 

Electrodes were implanted into the pupal stage of a beetle. That beetle grows to a winged adult, and scientists could fly it around a room, controlling its direction with a lab top!

 

DARPA hopes to create a Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) using this technology that could carry ... who knows what? Tiny spying microphones! Electromagnetic field generators to scramble computers! Poison darts! It’s the Defense Department!

 

Read the story here!

This guy may be the best person you will ever see.

 

You may have watched Danyl Johnson’s audition for X-Factor, a British talent contest. It deservedly got loads of hits. It got me watching the show via YouTube.

 

So less deservedly on the show are a pair of Irish twins, who on diva week covered Brittany’s Oops, I Did It Again, which you can see above. Let’s for a moment forget the terrible singing and dreadful dancing and concentrate on the that weird segment where one twin presents the other with the diamond necklace from Titanic, arguably the most famous love story this generation. So are they saying they are in love with each other? Or because the song is about fooling some guy into thinking you are in love with him, is this suggesting that one twin is tricking the other into thinking he’s in love with him? Did they just feel they had to do it because it was in the original video? And what do the garment racks and motorcycle outfits have to do with the song or their romance? Is this supposed to be campy? I don’t know what the fuck it’s supposed to be.

 

But it’s not that innocent.

Unless you’ve been living on an alternate Earth where news organizations concern themselves with actual news, you are familiar with “Balloon Boy,”  a.k.a. Falcon Heene, the six year old who supposedly flew away on a flying-saucer shaped,  experimental weather balloon and disappeared before the balloon landed. As it turns out, Falcon was hiding in box in his garage and the whole thing may have been a hoax cooked up by his attention seeking parents. On one interview, Wolf Blitzer asked why Falcon didn’t come out of his box when he heard his parents calling for him. Falcon couldn’t hear Wolf, so Falcon’s father asked him, and Falcon said, “Umm, you guys said that ... mmm ... we did this for the show.” More than a little fishy, eh? And watch how dad hems and haws while trying not ask his son what he meant by that later. He is soooooo afraid of the answer.

 

Anyway, this story sounds a lot like a comic book origin except in a comic the reason Falcon wasn’t on the balloon when it landed would have been that he’d gained the power of flight from being exposed to cosmic rays or was mistaken for an alien by a race of bird people (Thanagarians?) who gave him flight powers and he had to battle Nazi zeppelins! Seriously, named Falcon and accidentally flown into the stratosphere on a flying saucer shaped balloon? You can’t get much more comic booky than that.

 

In fact, it’s very similar to the origin of The Ray. In that Happy Terrill was in a weather balloon when something went wrong, and Happy had to climb out onto the balloon. He was struck by lightning and voila! The power of flight and light control. Happy’s son gained the same powers because ... well, apparently Happy had lightning in his sperm or something, which sounds like something you’d see in the BDSM section of Xtube.

This ticked me off, so I’m going to write about it; even though, I know I shouldn’t. It’ll just cause grief.

 

OK, in a Spider-Man comic, a guy called the Chameleon disguised himself as Peter Parker and had sexual encounter with Peter’s female roommate that may or may not have been actual sex. When asked if sex between the roommate and the disguised Chameleon was rape because the roommate did not know that she was sleeping with the Chameleon, the author said:

 

My understanding of the definition of rape is that it requires force or the threat of force, so no. Using deception to trick someone into granting consent isn’t quite the same thing.

Which is not to say it isn’t a horrible, evil, reprehensible thing that Chameleon did. He is a bad man.

He insults parapelegics[sic] and dips people in acid too.

 

Most people looking at the question seem to fall into two camps.

 

1. Those who say, “Sex by deception in NY does not constitute rape under NY law, so the author was correct, but the act was still despicably immoral.” (I would be in this group.)
2. Those who say “Even though NY does not call it rape and would not prosecute the act as rape, it is still a form of rape because it is sex without actual consent, no matter what the law says.”

As far as I’m concerned either stance is fine. Although I would absolutely take issue with someone saying the act was not immoral, no one appears to be saying that. Everyone is saying the act was despicable.

 

However, some people looking at responses say that the people responding in the first option above (“It’s not rape as it is defined but it’s still evil.”) are also saying one or more of the following:

 

1. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception is ethical
2. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception is not a big deal.
3. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception should not be illegal.

 

I haven't seen anyone support any of those "therefores," and I know I don't. I think the act, had it been real, would have been terribly unethical, a big deal, and should be illegal. Despite the fact that no one seems to be supporting any of the "therefores" hasn't stopped people from claiming that people support them. One of the people in the “You are claiming that therefore ...” camp is a person going by the name Seafire. Seafire writes:

 

kalinara: one last thing though, I am still not sure the place of legal analysis in this discussion.
I'd give 2 reasons:
1. Just b/c it doesn't meet the legal definition of rape doesn't mean that it isn't rape.
2. More importantly I find it pretty odd that we are willing to have a discussion/analysis on the issue. there have been so many murders in comics have they ever been legally analyzed? I doubt it.
I have a feeling that the only reason why the legal analysis is being used is to say, "Ah well its not legally rape therefore..."
And I would argue that this type of mixing and confusing of legal issues with moral issue that give lawyers the bad reputation that they have.

 

And continues:

 

Madthinker: okay so I give up: why the legal analysis? What purpose does it serve unless it is being used to somehow say, hey its NOT rape.
Why not a legal analysis of the different types of murder that have occurred in comics?
Why not a legal analysis of Black Cat's actions as a thief?
I love analysis of comics for new insights etc. But I am not sure what the purpose of the legal analysis of whether it was rape under the law was.
Okay let's contextualize this; an event occurs, that possibly is a crime. That happens alot in comics. The character has not asked for a lawyer, there is no court room involved, no police action... why the legal analysis?
Are you saying that the purpose of the legal analysis by various blogs of this comic was a lesson in law?
- Seafire, not attacking but genuinely perplexed

 Not attacking, she says. I’ll give you three guesses where this ends up. Keep watching:

 

Madthinker: And just to clarify, we are not even talking about an analysis that involves legal policy; i.e. should this type of situation be considered rape. This is plain and simple an IRAC analysis of a crime. If that is the case, why not IRAC other comic crimes? UNLESS the purpose of the IRAC analysis is to show legally it wasn't rape and therefore absolve Chameleon of his crime.
I personally am a little uncomfortable with the story-line but not as much as other ppl b/c it isn't a violent rape. As notintheface has mentioned in his blog there are other comic stories of this type of deceipt rape. And such stories are also common in folklore, fairy-tales and myths, so I beleive that they have a purpose and reason for existence. That being said I just find it perplexing that we are IRAC-ing this issue. Obviously ppl are not mad over whether it is legally rape or not but whether it is morally/ethically rape or not. And IRAC-ing it does not add anything to the discussion unless you want to make ppl aware about the law to
a. have ppl change the law
b. let ppl know that it wasn't rape and therefore ok
-Seafire

 

Not attacking, just saying that I’m OK with deceiving people into having sex. How could that be seen as an attack on my character? But wait, there’s more “not attacking” to come!

 

(For those of you not in the legal profession, IRAC is an acronym for a method of doing legal analysis that stands for:

 

Issue: this is the question you are trying to answer. In this case, under NY law is obtaining consent for sex by disguising yourself as another person with whom that person would give consent an act of rape?

Rule: this would be all the legislation, case law (decisions of previous cases that were similar to this one), legal definitions, etc. that fit the facts above. kalinara dug that law up, which included a case where a twin pretended to be his brother to have sex with his brother’s girl friend and that was found not to be rape. (Yeah, I was a little surprised too.)

Application: combining the facts of the issue with the rules that you discovered on the topic. In this case, looking at the facts of the Chameleon case and comparing them to the facts of the twin case and the legislation.

Conclusion: your answer to the question posed in the issue. As the facts of the twin case are almost identical to the twin case, one would have to conclude that the Chameleon would not be found guilty of rape in NY; although, he would in other states and countries where the rape laws are written differently.)

 

Seafire continues:

Now as to why this is so upsetting, well for me its upsetting b/c I am a law student. I know that lawyers have a reputation for being amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy, while other professionals such as say doctors who probably prorportionally have the same amount of ppl who are amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy, are generally viewed more favorably.

This is 2x in as many days that I have seen lawyers/law students use either legaleese or legal reasoning in what I personally think are inappropriate ways. In this situation we are having lawyers trying to prove that this "rape" does not fit the criminal definition of rape and therefore isn't rape. Thereby we are absolving the Chameleon of having committed "rape".

 

Not attacking just suggesting that we're contributing to the reputation that legal people have for being amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy. And then Seafire ends with this gem:

 

In the end you never responded why this issue is being IRAC-ed and not other issues in comics. Its because at the heart of it many guys hate rape issues and automatically take the stance it wasn't rape. And in this case a lot of guys want to absolve Chameleon of rape. Oh it wasn't rape it was lie.

Okay so Chameleon came to Spider man in the form of MJ and had anal sex. Oh that's not rape, why its only a lie... Peter quit feeling violated. Its kind of cute when you get all upset over this thing. Aww look he's blushing. Poor Peter. Well at least you enjoyed it. And don't press any charges cause you are not going to win. What you want to kick his @$$. Ok Peter that is against the law, you are acting like a vigilante.. hold on let me get my law book out and IRAC it for you.

 

Totally not attacking my character, right?

Anyway, let me respond to Seafire’s question of why this issue is being IRAC-ed and not other issues in comics.

 

First, it was IRAC-ed because if you ask people involved in the legal profession something that looks like a legal question, we tend to respond with a legal answer. “Is this rape?” can be looked at as a religious question, a moral question, a semantic question, or a legal question. All are valid. Legal people, like me and kalinara (a woman who is generally opposed to rape in comics), will tend to give a legal answer.

 

Second, most murders and thefts in comics are pretty clearly crimes. There is no need to IRAC the Joker gassing people to death or the Black Cat steeling jewelry. The answer is clear. The thing speaks for itself.

 

Third, the premise that other issues are not IRAC-ed is absolutely false. Just off the top of my head I remember arguing all of the following comic book legal questions online:

 

1.  Would a confession obtained by Wonder Woman’s lasso be admissible in court? (I decided that it would not be, but given that she is not part of the government, other evidence that she obtained from the confession might be. Evidence based on that confession by agents of the government would probably not be admissible. However, it is entirely possible that a court might find that nothing obtained from the confession would be admissible, no matter who discovered it.)

 

2.  Was Wonder Woman guilt of the murder of Maxwell Lord? (Under laws in the US, I think she would have been. Although, Max made it clear that he would eventually get free to kill again, the affirmative defense of self-defense requires that the threat be eminent. Max was helplessly tied up, so the threat was not eminent so much as it was potential or even eventual. Wonder Woman would not be allowed to kill anyone she thought might pose a serious threat in the future, no matter how correct she might be)

 

3.  Would magical evidence be admissible in a comic book universe court? (The main opponent to magic evidence said that the thought it would be looked at as too suspect to be allowed. I think that magic is so common that it couldn’t be discounted entirely because there would be no way of clearly defining what “magical” even meant. For instance, could a person who had been raised from the dead be prevented from testifying because he was magically alive? Would elves be prevented from testifying? And then there was the problem of convicting people of committing crimes with magic. How could you convict a person of murder by magic if evidence of magic was not allowed in court? I decided that there could be no ban on magical evidence but that its value might be weighed in the same way other questionable evidence might be weighed.)

 

4.  Was Marvel’s Registration Act that sparked the Civil War storyline Constitutional? (I found that the government could draft people for all sorts of reasons, e.g. genetic traits (men but not women, and men registered but women didn’t), abilities (excluding people below a certain level of physical or mental fitness which would appear to allow them to draft people while excluding people below a level of super physical or mental fitness), skill (although I’d never heard of it, I knew there had to be law that would allow the govt. to draft people with medical skills because the govt. could draft regular folks and immediately give them those skills, and sure enough, there is; similarly there would in a comic book universe have to be a way that the govt. could draft people to fight threats that normal people couldn’t like magical or telepathic threats. Add in the fact that people who want to drive or use dynamite have to be registered to do so and it seems pretty likely that people who fly or summon volcanoes would also have to be registered. Some suggested that the deciding what was superhuman was too vague a concept, so it couldn’t be enforced and would be too vague to be Constitutional. I countered by saying that finding people disabled, i.e. significantly below norms of ability was Constitutional, so it seems that a similar system of finding people significantly above norms would also be. All in all, I couldn’t find any reason why people with superhuman abilities couldn’t be forced to register and be drafted into service. Having said that, it is illegal to use the military to arrest someone like a police force, so if super being were drafted into service, they would have to drafted into something that was not considered a branch of the military if you wanted them to be crime fighters. The question then becomes: can you draft someone into the FBI or CIA? And given that the Initiative would be battling mainly people breaking state laws, could these federal crime fighters be used? In short, it’s a very complex issue.)

 

Seafire’s conclusions of my character based on my legal analysis of a comic book are that I’m hoping to get away with rape and/or that I love rape loopholes. I’ll remind you that this is based entirely on my legal analysis of a comic book, not my rapey actions or any knowledge of my character beyond an IRAC of a comic book. Not only is this kind of judgmental attack on my character unjustifiable based on this scant evidence (which would also apparently stick to kalinara, a feminist woman who dislikes rape in comics), but one has to wonder why Seafire thinks I would support this loophole? Does Seafire think I’m hoping to develop shape sifting abilities so I can take advantage of this loophole? That I’ll get a clone or discover a long lost identical twin, who can pick up guys that I would fail at, and that I’d ditch my husband and piss of my clone/twin and his partner so I could get a piece of my clone/twin’s partner because I couldn’t be convicted of rape?

 

The staggering gall of Seafire’s accusation is mind-boggling rude.

OK, once more I want to look at the WiR article by Marron. But this is the last time, I assure you. This time I want to look at the theory that Marron espouses (and many people believe) that female deaths and other horrors for female characters tend to be more gruesome or less dignified than their male counterparts. In Marron’s article, she notes that Alexandra DeWitt was beaten, strangled to death, and then shoved in a refrigerator. And Marron is correct that that is a pretty gruesome death and having one’s body shoved into a refrigerator is awfully undignified. Marron then writes:

When drawing up a list of male characters who have had a hard time in the name of story advancement, it’s hard to even compare. Atom’s wife divorced him and wrote a tell-all book about their life. Captain Marvel died of cancer.

Really? That’s what Marron could come up with? Did she really consider those to be the worst things to happen to male characters in comics? Either Marron did no research whatsoever or she just didn’t want to mention some other deaths or events that were particularly gruesome and/or undignified. I mean seriously, a tell-all book?

 

Below are a few that I recalled off the top of my head:

 

The Angel: Warren's wings were  mutilated by Harpoon, which would have killed him but Thor's intervention saved his life. When the wings developed gangrene, Cameron Hodge willfully signed the paperwork, against Angel's wishes, to have Warren's crippled wings amputated. Suicidal over the loss of his wings, Warren escaped the hospital and commandeered his private jet, which exploded in the air in an apparent suicide. After events that included mind control and murder, Warren got his wings back only to have them torn off by a crazed werewolf girl. If Marron had written X-Force (vol. 2) #4 where that happened, she could have added this dialogue, “Oh god! The pain of having my wings ripped off is excruciating! Only having a tell-all book written about me could be more horrifying!” And remember Marron’s theory that men would not want to see a man defeated because they’d find it emasculating? Now, think about this: limb that is the source of his power ripped off by a girl. And remember when Warren was Callisto’s crucified boy toy and he was saved by Storm, who won him in a knife fight? Emasculating much?

 

Black Condor (Ryan Kendall): killed by a beam fired by Sinestro in an ambush by the Secret Society of Super Villains. His body was strung up on the Washington Monument. In Nightwing #140, a mystery villain was shown to grave rob Ryan Kendall's body and later showed up wearing his arms (his arms!!!) and wings.

 

Goliath (Bill Foster): Foster is killed by a clone of Thor (which is bad enough) during a battle between the Secret Avengers and the pro-registration forces. His death was predicted by Deadpool, who, described Goliath as "deserving of death and worse." Goliath's last words are "Get ready for the shortest comeback in history, Thor!" before having a hole blown through his chest. Tom Brevoort, editor of Marvel's Civil War, added to the indignity by stating, "Having died at giant size, and with the biological changes that go on in a human body after life has left, such as rigor mortis and the like, Goliath's body could not have been returned to its normal size by Pym Particle exposure again without destroying it-- it would have torn itself apart under the strain. They could perhaps have done so later on, but by that point it would have begun to smell" Foster is buried as a giant in thirty-eight burial plots required to accommodate him. In Mighty Avengers #24 Norman Osborn has dug up Foster's grave and removed his clavicle, hoping to use the Pym particle residue to track down Pym's Avengers.

 

Human Bomb: In one of the most brutal deaths in comics, the Human Bomb was beaten to death by the fists of Bizarro. Sound effects illustrated his bones being shattered and his flesh being pulped. Even after his death, Bizarro kept beating him, hoping to see more pretty explosions. His body was strung up on the Washington Monument.

 

Jack of Hearts: got tired of having to be in a containment room for 14 hours a day (Does that really sound so bad when you consider that about 8 of those would be when he was asleep?), so he shot himself into space and blew himself up ... and took a child molester along with him. Jack’s costume was blown off him, so he’s drifting naked in space. Then a mystically created zombie copy of him was created by the Scarlet Witch to kill his friend Ant Man and destroy much of the Avenger's Mansion, which really gives your rep a beating. 

 

(I have yet to discover a female superhero who just gave up on life and killed herself. I’ve certainly not discovered a female character who even considered suicide because she could only spend 10 hours a day outside. The closest female equivalent I could think of was Jean Grey nobly allowing herself to be blasted into oblivion when she realizes that the Phoenix force will eventually overwhelm her again and she’ll kill worlds of people again, not unlike other divine-ish male characters who flipped out over their power and then allowed themselves to “die” like Max Faraday, Thor, the Spectre, etc.)

 

Robin (Jason Todd): handed over to the Joker by his own mother! Ouch! The Joker brutally beats him with a crowbar. Robin is soon lying unconscious in a pool of blood, which the Joker complacently remarks is "a bit messy". The Joker then leaves him and his mother in the warehouse with a time bomb. They try desperately to get out of the warehouse but are still inside as the bomb goes off. Marron mentions in the comment section that the death part was voted on by the fans and acts as if it was the fans not the writer/editors who killed the character despite the fact that they were ones who put the death up to a vote, and of course, they came up with the crowbar part. One might also wonder if Marron thinks being tortured and beaten with a crowbar and being locked into a room with a bomb with your mother and having the bomb go off, nearly killing you and killing your mother, wouldn’t be as bad as having a tell-all book written about you. Apparently, a tell-all book about Marron would have some extraordinarily embarrassing details.

 

Skin: crucified and left hanging on the lawn of the X-Mansion, along with the Jubilee and Magma, and Bedlam. Only the female characters, Jubilee and Magma, survived the crucifixion. Later, he is dug up from his grave because the owner of the cemetery didn’t want mutants buried there.

 

Tasmanian Devil: In mini-series Justice League: Cry For Justice, it is revealed that Tas was killed and turned into a rug by the villain Prometheus. It is perhaps worth noting that Tas was in far more comics than Alex DeWitt. His first appearance was in 1977, so he’s appeared in comics for over 30 years and was a member of the Justice League, but his death was barely mentioned. Perhaps the worst kind of death for a superhero is one that does not even appear on the page ... and then you appear as a rug for your killer.

 

Vigilante (Adrian Chase): As the series progressed Chase became ever more conflicted over his role as Vigilante, the violence he engaged in, and the harm he caused to those around him. He also became increasingly mentally unstable—alternating between bouts of enraged violence, paranoia, and terrible remorse for his actions. Near the end, he even resorted to murdering innocent police officers who got in his way. His mounting guilt culminated in the final issue of his series where, after contemplating the course of his life, Chase committed suicide. This is another suicide that was not a heroic, save the universe, but a guy who just gives up on life.

I wanted to look at this Women in Refrigerators (WiR) article again.  Last time, I looked at the idea that men get better after being hurt and women don’t as seen through the lens of Barbara Gordon. This time I’d like to look at Marron’s theory that male characters (i.e. dudes) are not used in the role of “in distress” like damsels are, that dudes aren’t created to be killed as often as female characters are. Marron focuses on Alex DeWitt’s murder, which plays a role in shaping Kyle Rayner’s Green Lantern character. Here is the section of the article that I want to examine:

 

As the ultimate woman in a refrigerator, Alex DeWitt’s untimely death raises a lot of questions. At the very top of the list is the question: is this right? Alex DeWitt was a character that was, according to her creator Ron Marz, destined to die from the beginning. She was created with no purpose other than to be murdered by Major Force. While Marz argues that it’s more a case of tragedy befalling a supporting character rather than specifically a woman, he also makes the point that title characters are more often males and supporting characters female.

 

The question remains, however, if this sort of behavior and plot device should be considered acceptable. If Marz created a character that he knew was going to die from the beginning — a woman who was sentenced to death in order to advance the plot and transition Kyle Rayner from his old life to his new life as Green Lantern — why not a man? Why not Kyle’s brother, for instance? His father, his uncle, his best friend? The fact is that, more likely than not, this has to do with the male-female dynamic — along with common misogynistic misconceptions about women. Alex DeWitt does not go down without a fight, but it is made apparent throughout her entire struggle with Major Force that she is weak and frail compared to her murderer, a powerful and muscular man.

 

If there had been a male character in Alex’s place – an actual Alex instead of an Alexandra — killing him off might not have been so easy. It’s all but inconceivable for a male writer — especially in the comic book industry — to fit a male character into the role of “damsel in distress.” Is it any less conceivable for a male character to be overpowered by a huge muscular monstrosity like Major Force? Or would such a thing emasculate a male character along with killing him? The idea that a female character would be fragile, defenseless, and all but helpless in this situation is more comfortable for male readers than the idea of another man not being able to defend himself in a fight.

 

There are three sub-theories in there:

 

• Male characters are almost never used in the distressed mode like female characters are.
• Male supporting characters (e.g. brothers, fathers, uncles, best friends) are almost never created to die to motivate the hero.
• Men are uncomfortable seeing men beaten up, a theory that not only flies in the face of comic book reality were the vast majority of characters, heroes and villains, who are beat down are male, but also seems to ignore completely the fan base of boxing and mixed martial arts.

 

To explore the validity of these theories, I looked at origin stories (and pretty much only origin stories) of DC characters to see if there were male characters in distress, if male characters appeared to have been created to die to motivate heroes (male and female), and if comic readers would appear to be uncomfortable with violence against male characters. I looked mainly at what would consider major characters (i.e. characters who had their own series or where members of groups that had their own series), but I tossed in a few others because I thought they were fun. Also because Marron noted this in her article --

Dinah Lance will never be able to have children

--  I pointed out a few male character who similarly are unlike to have children. I left out the dead dudes.

 

 

1. Batgirl (Barbara Gordan): took to the cape after saving Bruce Wayne from a kidnapping.
2. Batgirl (Cassandra Cain): became Batgirl because she murdered a businessman when she was eight years old and is atoning for that murder. (What does this say about the theory that male readers not wanting men look weak when this man is taken out by a little girl?)
3. Batgirl (Stephanie Brown): receives the Batgirl costume from Cassandra Cain who is disillusioned by the death of Batman.
4. Batman (Bruce Wayne): takes to the fighting crime when his father, Thomas Wayne, (and mother, Martha Wayne) were murdered. In most retellings that I recall, Thomas goes down pretty much without a fight, always far less of a fight than Alex DeWitt put up.
5. Batman (Dick Grayson): becomes Robin after his father (and mother) are murdered. Becomes Batman after Bruce is apparently murdered.
6. Black Canary (Dinah Drake Lance): had been trained by her father, Detective Richard Drake, and intended to follow in his footsteps on the Gotham City police. She was turned down by the force, however, and her disillusioned father (unable to use his connections to change the decision) died of heart failure shortly thereafter. Dinah was determined to honor his memory and fight crime and corruption.
7. Black Condor: father (and mother) killed, later uncovered a plot to kill United States Senator Thomas Wright but was too late to save Wright from assassination, and so decided to take Wright’s identity.
8. Black Lightning: his father had been murdered and he was appalled by the public murder of Earl Clifford, one of his more promising students, so he took up crime fighting!
9. Blue Beetle (Dan Garret): inspired to fight against crime when his police man father was shot and killed.
10. Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes): received the super scarab when the wizard Shazam was killed and the Rock of Eternity destroyed.
11. Blue Beetle (Ted Kord): became the new Blue Beetle when his friend, the old Blue Beetle, was killed.
12. Bronze Tiger: When he was only 10 years old, he saw a male burglar attacking his parents (which includes his male father, of course) and he proceeded to murder the burglar with a kitchen knife. In an effort to control the rage inside him, he turns to martial arts.
13. Bulletman: Jim Barr was the son of a police officer who was killed and as a result took it upon himself to fight crime.
14. Cameron Chase: developed her disgust of the costumed set when her father was murdered by a supervillain, Dr. Trap.
15. Captain Marvel: after Billy says the wizard Shazam's name and transforming into Captain Marvel, Shazam is crused beneath a large stone that had been suspended by a thread above his head.
16. Captain Marvel Jr./Shazam: Freddy got his powers after he and his grandfather were attacked by Capt. Nazi. Freddy is crippled and his created-to-die grandfather is killed.
17. Captain Triumph: Lance got his powers from the ghost of his twin brother, Michael, who was murdered and died in Lance’s arms. (For some reason, I've always thought Captain Triumph had a cool origin, and I think it would be fun if there was a Captain Truimph/Dr. Voodoo (nee Brother Voodoo) crossover, ghost brother v. ghost brother.)

18. Chemical King: there is probably no character more created-to-die than this guy. His first appearance was a memorial statue to his death in Adventure Comics #354, which was a story about the Legion as adults. The character didn’t appear alive until Adventure Comics #371. He died of radiation poisoning while stopping WW VII, just as his memorial statue said he would. Interestingly, Shadow Lass, a female character, also had a memorial statue in Adventure Comics #354 but did not die as that issue foretold.

19. Citizen Steel: gets powers when he kills the man who killed his brother (and mother.)
20. Congrilla: Congo Bill meets Congorilla, a strange golden gorilla. Bill's friend, the witch doctor Chief Kawolo who Bill has rescued but who is dying from a fall, tells him that he can control the gorilla by way of a mysterious ring, which allows him to change minds with the gorilla. Shortly after Kawolo tells Congo Bill this, he dies. Later, Bill’s human body dies. (Unlikely to have children.)
21. Creeper: Jack got his powers from the kidnapped Dr. Yatz, who was then immediately murdered. Jack, btw, was also shot up in his origin story.
22. Deadman: was himself murdered.
23. Dr. Fate (Hector Hall): became Dr. Fate after dying and living in a dream dimension. He inherited the title when the guy with the Dr. Fate artifacts before him was killed by Mordru.
24. Dr. Fate (Kent Nelson): the son of an archaeologist, Sven Nelson, who died discovering the tomb of the ancient mystical being, Nabu, when poison gas was released from the tomb. The orphaned boy was trained by Nabu in the arts of magic.
25. Dr. Mid-Nite (Charles McNider): was called to remove a bullet from a male witness who was to testify against the mob; however, a mobster threw a grenade into the room, killing the witness and blinding McNider, who later found he could see in the dark.
26. Firestorm (Jason Rusch): got his powers from the death of the first Firestorm and while he was learning about his new powers, he killed a guy he knew (iirc, "friend" might be too strong a word) by merging with him for too long. A significant part of his character development involves the fact that his father lost his hand.
27. Green Arrow (Connor Hawke): Took up the role of Green Arrow when his father (Green Arrow I) sacrificed himself in an explosion.
28. Green Lantern (Alan Scott): the local villagers in fear and as punishment for what they thought sacrilege killed him the guy who created the green lantern.
29. Green Lantern (Guy Gardner): was chosen as backup Green Lantern by created-to-die male alien Abin Sur, whose spaceship crashed on Earth.
30. Green Lantern (Hal Jordan): was given the power ring and battery by a created-to-die male alien named Abin Sur, whose spaceship crashed on Earth.
31. Green Lantern (John Stewart): got to be the backup Green Lantern when Gardner was critically injured when hit by a bus.
32. Hawkman (Carter Hall): murdered by priest.
33. Human Bomb (Roy Lincoln): Ray's created-to-die father was killed by Nazis as they forced their way into his lab. Roy swallowed his father’s explosive formula to keep the Nazis from getting it. As a result anything he touched exploded. (Unlikely to have children.)
34. Huntress: becomes crime fighter after her entire family, including the male members, are killed at a wedding.
35. Tommy Jagger: diven by the murder of his father, the Judo Master, to fight evil, specifically to fight Bane, who killed the Judo Master by breaking his back. That's Bane's thing. BTW, Bane is running around loose and is kind of a hero in The Secret Six, written by Gail Simone, who came up with WiR. You may remember that Marron stated that if the killer escaped justice later, it made the murder meaningless ... well, meaningless when it happened to a female fictional character.
36. Kid Quantum (Jazmin Cullen): took the role of Kid Quantum after her bother, the original Kid Quantum, was murdered. Her brother was created-to-die so that there would be an explanation for why the Legion didn't allow members who got their powers from devices.
37. Manitou Dawn: received her mystic mantle of power while grieving the murder of her husband.
38. Martian Manhunter: pulled to earth by a teleportation experiment by Dr. Erdel, the shock of the encounter kills the created-to-die Dr. Erdel.
39. Negative Man: highly radioactive thanks to experimental aircraft. (Unlikely to have children.)
40. Obsidian: raised by an abusive father.
41. Phantom Lady (Sandra Knight): decides to become a costumed adventurer after saving her father from assassins.
42. Plastic Man: shot by his cohorts and dropped into vat of acid.
43. Ragdoll (Peter Merkel, Jr.): suffers from mental illness and disfigured himself to please his criminal (and possibly insanely abusive) father. He had several operations to alter his body including radical castration.
44. Ragman (pre-Crisis): Rory had grown up helping his father, a junk man who owned a pawn shop. While drinking with his friends one night, his father discovered 2 million dollars stuffed inside an old mattress that had been pawned. He and his friends decided to hide the money for Rory, since they were too old to truly benefit from it. The money turned out to be the loot from an armored car heist and when the hoods came to the shop one night to get it, they shot down some electrical wires and used them to torture Rory's father and his friends into revealing where the money was hidden. Rory arrived soon after and seeing his father in agony attempted to pull him free from the wires. A final shock of power ran though the old men and grounded out at Rory, knocking him unconscious. When he woke his father and friends were dead and the hoods responsible were gone.
45. The Ray (Ray Terrill): becomes a superhero after learning the truth of this life at the deathbed of his created-to-die uncle who Ray thought was his father.
46. Red Robin (Tim Drake): takes the role of Robin upon figuring out that the murder of the previous Robin (Jason Todd) is causing Batman to become more violent. Major turning points in Tim’s life include the murder of his father (which causes him to change his costume), murder of his best friend (Superboy), and murder of his mentor (Batman) which led to him taking the name Red Robin.
47. Resurrection Man: gains his powers through dying, frequently in horrible fashion.
48. Rex the Wonder Dog: Rex spent his early years in the U.S. Army's K-9 Corps, alongside his brother, Pooch. Even early in his training it was apparent that Rex had great potential, which resulted in Dr. Anabolus selecting him as a test subject for a super-soldier serum. Dr. Anabolus was shortly thereafter killed by a Nazi spy. Yes, even dogs have created-to-die guys in their origin stories. Pooch was wounded multiple times and received the honorary rank of sergeant. He perished alongside the Losers near the end of World War II.
49. Robotman (Cliff Steele): a race car accident destroyed his body so the Chief placed Cliff's intact brain into a robotic body. After the operation, Cliff suffered from frequent depression because he viewed himself as less than human. (Unlikely to have children.)
50. Robotman (Robert Crane): brain was placed inside a robotic body after he had been fatally shot. (Unlikely to have children.)
51. Sandman (Sandy Hawkins): takes on the heroic role when the original Sandman died, also took the name Sand after being trapped in a pertrified mineral body for years.
52. Simon Dark: created from the bodies of 20 dead boys.
53. Spectre (Crispus Allen): while examining the murdered body of his male informant, Allen was shot and killed by another police officer without a fight.
54. Spectre (Hal Jordan, Spirit of Redemption): gains supernatural powers after being driven insane and killed.
55. Spectre (Jim Corrigan): murdered by being put into cement and thrown into the water by a crime-boss.
56. Starman (Jack Knight): took the role after this brother, the previous Starman, was shot and killed by an assassin. Again, no fight.
57. Steel: inspired to become a superhero by the death of Superman, who had once saved John.
58. Superman: father (and mother) killed when Krypton explodes.
59. Supermen of America: the group was formed in response to the death of Superman and had the created-to-die character, Psilencer, who died in short order.
60. Swamp Thing: burned to death.
61. Terry Berg: a created-to-die character who ended up only being severally beaten.
62. Unknown Soldier: volunteers to become a special agent after he is disfigured and his created-to-die brother is killed by a grenade thrown into the foxhole they share.

 

So there you have it. You be the judge.

 

Does it look like male characters are almost never used in the distressed mode like female characters are?

 

Does it look like male supporting characters (e.g. brothers, fathers, uncles, best friends) are almost never created to die to motivate the hero?

 

Does it look like men are uncomfortable seeing men beaten up?

 

Do I need to do the same with Marvel characters? I just looked at DC here, but Captain America, Iron Man, the Wasp, Spider-Man, Tigra, Hawkeye, Daredevil, the New X-Men, the Black Widow, Electra, Wolverine, Warpath, etc. etc. have deaths of created-to-die male characters in their origins.

 

Over here, another blogger, Marron, is pushing the Women in Refrigerators (WiR) meme, i.e. that women characters are killed, crippled, etc. with greater frequency than male characters in comics.  Marron makes some statements specific to Barbara Gordon that I think work in opposition to the goals of feminist comic readers like me and people would would just like to see more female characters in central roles in comics. I'll get to those, but let me grouse about some stuff from the blog first.

 

Marron makes a number of unsupported statements that fly in the face of reality like this one:

 

It’s all but inconceivable for a male writer — especially in the comic book industry — to fit a male character into the role of “damsel in distress.”

 

It’s as if Marron is completely unfamiliar with the histories of major characters who have been around for decades like Robin, Jimmy Olson, Bucky, Steve Trevor, Foggy Nelson, and Rick Jones, who seemed to exist only to be in distress, not to mention male characters created to die like Uncle Ben Parker, “Battling” Jack Murdock, and Thomas Wayne, whose deaths where the impetus behind the superheroic careers to some of the biggest characters in comics today. Marron acts as if Lois Lane never saves Superman, that the Invisible Woman never saves the male FF members. For Marron, those characters, these situations are “all but inconceivable.” If Marron's theory were true, women shouldn't read comics, but the theory is plainly false. So why paint a worse picture of comics than the reality and drive women away more than they already are?

 

When Marron does recognize that bad things happen to male characters, the idea is qualified thusly:

 

I will be fair, here. Men in comics have taken their fair share of abuse in the name of plot and story, but not to the extent that women have. Some male characters stay dead, but most of them make their way back — and are better and stronger than ever, whereas the only way Alex DeWitt is coming back is possibly as a Black Lantern in Geoff Johns’ Blackest Night event. Barbara Gordon will never walk again, Dinah Lance will never be able to have children, and, well, let’s not even talk about Jean Grey and the handling of the women of Marvel. Women in comics are treated much more brutally than their male counterparts — main character, supporting, or otherwise.

 

I could counter all the points above by mentioning several male characters who are unlikely to ever have children (Robot Man comes to mind immediately) or that male characters have died and come back to life several time like Jean Grey (e.g. Immorto, Immortal Man, Mr. Immortal, whose entire shtick revolves around returning from brutal deaths), and center mainly at Barbara Gordon because I think there is something really significant about the character.

 

The first thing I want to note about Barbara is that most people don’t seem to want her to be walking again. I’ve seen polls and discussions on this with people who consider themselves feminists and who are opposed to the rampant killing/maiming of female comics characters, and most people seem to like the character better as a disabled woman who must use her wits to beat her opponents. Most people seem to have really enjoyed the evolution of the character and point to it as one of the better character evolutions in comics even if (and maybe especially if) they aren’t fond of The Killing Joke, which began Barbara’s character evolution toward the Oracle persona. Oracle stayed essentially paraplegic while Gail Simone (the creator of the WiR theory) wrote the book for years. So the idea that Barbara staying paraplegic is somehow evidence of sexism or WiR is really weak in my book.

 

And the theory just gets weaker as we look at male paraplegic characters who will never walk again despite Marron's theory that comic guys tend to get better.

 

 

Professor Charles “Prof. X” Xavier: I’ve looked at his character bio at Wikipedia and it looks as if he has been healed and re-crippled something like 5 or 6 times and is currently using a wheelchair again. My guess is that any subsequently healings will be similarly undone by walls that fall on him that conveniently (well, not for him) cripple him in exactly the same manner that he had been before as was the case the first time his spine was healed. Imagine what would be said about the misogyny/WiRing of Barbara if writers kept healing and crippling her, if every few years the Joker shot her in the spine again. Remarkable about Prof. X’s continued paraplegia is that he is in frequent contact with mutants who have the power to heal, and yet, there he is in that chair.

 

 

 

Dr. Niles “The Chief” Caulder: What I love about The Chief being unable to walk is that he created a robot body for a guy who was reduced to being only a brain (i.e. Robot Man) which allowed this disembodied brain to walk, but somehow he can’t figure out how to get himself to walk. (BTW, Elasti-Girl is one of the many female characters who have came back to life that Marron doesn't think come back to life.)

 

 

 

Takashi “Wiz Kid” Matsuya: Another inventive genius who can’t get himself walking.

 

 

 

Quincy Harker: Takes on Dracula while confined to a wheelchair! The guy had guts. And by “had guts” I mean that he doesn’t have them anymore because they were splattered all over the walls of Castle Dracula when Harker detonated a suicide bomb in his wheelchair in an failed attempt to kill Dracula. Marron makes the following point related to deaths that don’t result in punishment for the bad guy:

 

There are people who would argue the point and say that Alexandra DeWitt’s death is no different than that of a victim on one of the many popular crime drama we watch on TV. What’s the difference between a woman in a refrigerator and, say, a murdered woman on an episode of Law & Order? In Law & Order the murderer is arrested, tried, and punished; in the case of Alexandra DeWitt’s murderer, Major Force was made immortal and then thrown into space — ten years later. He eventually dies, but it’s not as a result of justice served for his murder of Alexandra DeWitt; in a way, that makes her death even more meaningless and shallow than the idea that she was created specifically to die.

 

One has to wonder what Marron thinks of Quincy Harker’s meaningless death that left the immortal Dracula unrepentantly killing throughout the Marvel Universe. Come to think of it, The Chief was crippled by General Immortus, who is also immortal and presently running free in the DCU.

 

 

 

Roger “Box” Bochs: will never walk again ... or breathe again for that matter. He too is dead, dead, dead. I should mention that he was briefly given the power to walk by the flesh manipulating mutant Scramble (Lionel Jeffries), but Scramble created Bochs’s new legs from the flesh of dead human bodies. Bochs’s legs eventually began to decompose. Bochs found out what was going on, and he was driven insane by this most grotesque of experiences. Bochs was then bodily subsumed/absorbed by Scramble to form the combined being called Omega. Omega (and thus Bochs) was then killed, never to be seen again ... which means he can’t have children. The Roger Bochs story puts the whole “can’t have kids” tragedy in perspective, right?

 

Barabara Gordon is not worse off than any of the guys above who will also never walk (among other things) again. Barbara Gordon should be a feminist icon that gets more women into reading comics. Suggesting that she is an example of sexism that is reflected in WiR does nothing to help get more women into reading comics or more female characters into lead roles in comics. All it does is discourage women from reading comics and discourage readers from enjoying the character, which hurts her chances of being a popular female character.

 

In the comments section of Marron’s blog, Marron suggests that there will be more Women in Refrigerators columns. Let’s hope that some research is put into those because this kind of research-free claptrap does nothing to advance feminist goals in comics.

Listen to the speaker, especially to his opening!

 

 

 

“Ah, Wally, my family came over here, one side of my family, on the Mayflower. The first winter was rough. But they didn’t have their hands out looking for somebody to support them.”

 

Oh and then the applause.

 

The speaker is correct that one side of his family didn’t have their hands out looking for someone to support them that first winter. And by that I mean they didn’t have to look because they knew who was supporting them. For its first two-and-a-half years, the economy of Plymouth Plantation took the form of a communal system. There was neither private property nor division of labor. Food was grown for the town and distributed equally.

 

That’s right. Those Mayflower folk that this speaker thinks would be opposed to socialist health insurance, doesn’t seem to realize that they weren’t just your garden variety socialists. No, sir! They were full-blown communists, living in communal homes. There was no need to look for someone to support you because he lived in your communal home. So if this speaker is suggesting we follow the roots of his Mayflower ancestor, he’s suggesting we all go red!

 

Congratulations, you Teabagger, you! You’ve made the opposite point that you wanted!