Totino's Presents: The Pride Month 2021 Post-Game Wrap-Up Show
Well, pals from all around the acronym, it would seem that, once again, our thirty days are up, and LGBTQ+ Pride Month is no more. As I take stock of everything that’s happened over those few weeks of June, I see the joyful celebration of our identities, brighter and louder than it’s even been before, in spite of the massive hellplague that should probably keep us apart for a few more weeks while vaccination is ongoing; I also see how much work is still ahead of us in the fight for everyone’s liberation against institutionalized evils like racism and transphobia, evils that are tolerated by far too many, even among those calling themselves our allies. But as ever, this is far too meaningful a discussion for this newsletter about cartoon bullshit, so let’s instead indulge in idiot garbage comic book discourse nonsense. Here are my takeaways from Pride Month in Comics, 2021.
CAN WE BE DONE WITH PSA COMICS FOREVER?
Because I’m just about done with those. Half of that Marvel Pride anthology is basically just comics explaining very basic concepts to a presumed cis straight audience, in a way that feels pretty hokey and lame. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that most people that would be interested in reading a queer comic book anthology understand ideas like “micro-aggressions”, or “being bisexual”, or “being trans”. The space you spend on another story of someone advocating for the base level of respect from a straight person is space that could be spent on a story where nazi vampires get kicked in the face, and as a bisexual man myself I know which story I would rather be reading. So let’s just be done with monetizing our own misery and instead let’s put the really cool shit out there, okay? Thanks.
REPRESENTATION IS IMPORTANT BUT YOUR SHIPS SUCK
Queer erasure, and all the ills that are associated with it, is still a legitimate problem. It’s our shitty inheritance from the Codes of decades past written by people who were deathly terrified of being cool. This, among other things, begat shipping culture. And now that we’re allowed to acknowledge that gay people exist in the world, shipping culture has reached a fever pitch, with people all around the world ready to fight to the death to get validation for picturing two people making out in their heads. Here’s the thing, however: sometimes these ships fucking suck and it’s got nothing to do with queer erasure. When you get out there, and say that DC needs to acknowledge that the Joker is gay for Batman, or else they’re hypocrites, you’re saying nonsense. They hate one another! He keeps trying to kill Batman! All he wants to do is hurt Batman! That’s not LOVE! Come on now!
THERE IS STILL A GOOD CHUNK OF THE WORLD THAT WANTS US DEAD
And not just the usual suspects, not just the loud and proud bigots, your small impotent fascists of KiwiFarms or your self-important terves of pretty much all British media. It’s the well-intentioned people launching twitter dogpiles off of their own inability to read and engage clearly with the work of queer artists that has me worried more than anything else as of late. The instruments we use to try and hold to account the people too powerful to hold themselves to account are big, loud and blunt, and so when they’re turned on people far less privileged they are capable of doing incredible amounts of harm. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not helping those that most need our help. I have to believe that there’s a better way to move forward. I’m not even going to pretend I have any idea what that might be, but it’s got to involve unyielding solidarity, especially with those that are institutionally victimized.
WE NEED MORE COMICS WITH NOH-VARR
I just think he’s hot!
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: NOH-VARR IS HOT
Pride Month is over, so I’m not going to pretend that X-Factor #10 was any good. In addition, contrary to what a lot of people on twitter seem to be doing, I’m also not going to pretend that the blame for this lays solely on Leah Williams’ shoulders. From the get-go, X-Factor #10 could only be a bad comic, because, as was the case with X-Men #21 by the way, it had to be several comics at once, all in the space of one regular issue, and none of these comics were weapons-grade foreshadowing in the way only Dragotta and Hickman can deliver.
The first job of this comic, obviously, was tying up any loose ends that were not resolved in the also-rushed previous issue. That means dealing with Prodigy trying to solve his own murder inside of a comic that does not have the time or the proper space to go into the very serious topic of violence against queer black men, or a way to make its inevitable resolution through the combined powers of a loving group of friends feel any less hokey than it is. I don’t know if Leah Williams, being who she is, could have been more thoughtful in telling this story. But I know she wasn’t given the chance, and I think I know why she wasn’t given the chance.
It is way easier to deal with the second job of this comic, which is of course, the Hellfire Gala tie-in. Bafflingly, all it does in that regard is give you glimpses of where the members of X-Factor were during the gala, which feels entirely pointless since, as the editors’ notes will remind you, all they’ve done is be plot points in the other series tying into the event. Books that, in all likelihood, you have already read, since they have already come out, and X-Factor is the final book of the event. If the point was to show that the characters you like would end up appearing in other books, it doesn’t work.
What little it adds, it adds in its final two pages. It’s the big headline event spinning out of this big headline event. It’s the dead body of the Pretender, Wanda Maximoff, lying on the floor, with nothing that could even hint at the part that comes next. It comes out of nowhere, and it’s got nothing to do with the comic preceding it (you’ll find more clues in S.W.O.R.D. #6 than you would reading this). It’s the least graceful part of an already pretty graceless comic.
In the final analysis, I probably liked X-Factor more than most people, and this comic just bummed me out. It’s bad enough that I can understand why people are lashing out, even if I don’t approve.
After thinking it through for a good long while, and having consulted friends and family, I can now officially drop the officially sanctioned HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS take on the upcoming Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings: this film looks like it’s gonna suck! The action looks like the boring version of a Jackie Chan movie, with some bad wuxia thrown in there for good measure! Simu Liu has been a total drip in the menchies of some of my good buds! I don’t see how anything good can come out of it!
Wholly unrelated to the previous paragraph, however, is the fact that Dike Ruan and Gene Luen Yang have been doing Shang-Chi comics at Marvel for a hot minute now, and these comics completely rule. Case in point: Shang-Chi #2, which is a cool-ass comic. At the heart of it is a narrative proposition that brings out the best of the character. It goes like this: Shang-Chi was raised from the moment of his birth to be an ice-cold killer supervillain kung-fu master, and for most of his life he was fighting against his father’s criminal empire. In the 2020 miniseries that immediately precedes this run, he inherited said criminal empire, and now he has to juggle being a hero in a world of international supervillains.
The themes of family, culture, and inheritance are still there, but now it’s mixed with stuff like “making small talk with M.O.D.O.K. at an auction for illegally obtained artifacts” and “wondering what to do if your brother is really into doing villainous machinations”. Putting him at odds with most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe also allows the book to deliver another side to action comics, and because that side is drawn by Dike Ruan, it absolutely rules. For my money, he’s the best penciller doing high kicks in comics right now, thanks to an impeccable sense of physicality, which makes the dynamism of his compositions really shine.
It works together, to me, because really it’s working off of the same idea: it’s about taking the cool part of the character, and leaning into it further than ever before. Every character deserves that, and I’m really happy that Shang-Chi got it. It’s been real good for a while, I’m glad I finally get to talk about it, please try it out.
June being a month with five Wednesdays, DC Comics saw it fit to drop a couple of annuals, which do some pretty interesting things. The Catwoman annual is a very strong character piece that, due to it having almost nothing to with Catwoman except for a couple of pages, would feel massively out of place in the main ongoing. That one is self-evidently good, so instead I’m gonna talk about the Teen Titans Academy 2021 Yearbook, because this is my newsletter and I cannot help but be who I am.
You see, I like Teen Titans Academy more than most people you’ll find dropping takes online. I like it precisely for the reason most people don’t: it’s overstuffed with plotlines and mysteries that don’t always get the time to fully sink in, and the characters don’t have that much room for any depth. But this week’s annual, as well as last week’s Steve Lieber illustrated interlude, feel like attempts at meeting readers that want a more traditional teen hero book in the middle, pushing a lot of the intrigue in the background and focusing on characters, and one big question.
The annual in particular does it by having multiple stories and multiple artists at work. Rafa Sandoval is excellent as ever, but it is a joy to see Bernard Chang, Darko Lafuente and Marco Santucci hit different moods, from something that is more angsty and expressive, to something that’s more goofy and cartoony, or even the big epic melodrama that’s been hanging over the book like a Future State shaped sword. It’s a great sampler platter kind of book, and I think that it can get you in tune with what Tim Sheridan has been doing.
Being late enough as is, I can’t spend as much time talking about the Green Arrow 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super-Spectacular as I’d like to. DC’s current lineup of heavy hitters manages to make stories that hit just as hard as the fan-favorite teams that showed up for the celebration, and the final story, a wordless tribute to the all-time great Denny O’Neil is as graceful and beautiful a tribute you’re ever going to read. A thesis that resonates through the whole book is the idea that Oliver Queen is, at heart, a dreamer and an optimist, and not only is it completely right, it’s also a thing that there should be more of in the world. I fucking love Green Arrow, and if you’re reading this I’m gonna assume you do as well.
Well this week put me through the ringer, but I did it! I did another one of these! Because I love it! And I love you! So subscribe! Tell your friends! Sorry again I’m so late! I don’t promise anything! Maybe I’ll even release on Friday next time! We play it by ear! We play it from the heart! All you have to do is feel it! All you have to do is HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!