Reply With QuoteOne of the great things about Doctor Who when Russell T. was in charge was how normalised homosexuality was. Not just in name characters, but everywhere. It's sad how straight the Who universe became after he left.
Exactly. Nowadays, I don't NEED gay or bisexual characters to relate to, though I want to. But when I was a teenager? Having a masculine, confident, secure and capable LGBT character who was seen as just as much a hero as Wolverine or Spiderman - that would have been amazing.Originally Posted by t.c.johnson
One of the great things about Doctor Who when Russell T. was in charge was how normalised homosexuality was. Not just in name characters, but everywhere. It's sad how straight the Who universe became after he left.
People say I'm in a world of my own. I call it Planet Karen.
Again, voice of privilege, but I kinda think seeing homosexuality "normalized" is really no more or less realistic or no more or less noble than seeing the opposite sex sexualized.
It's a kind of thought porn. Same goes for anything where being smart is "normalized," being dark is "normalized," being funny is "normalized," being sexually enticing is "normalized."
There's not a total absence of gay people post-RTD. But RTD showed gay people at a rate higher than the population. Milestone showed minorities at a rate higher than the population. Gail writes female leads at a rate higher than the population. Seth MacFarlane showcases stupidity at a rate higher than the population. These may counter disproportionately low portrayals elsewhere in media but, really, having 50 gay characters on one show to make up for the 200 shows that have no gay characters is nothing but separatism and ghettoization, even if the ghetto in question is an upscale ghetto.
It's a kind of ideology porn.
I prefer RTD for his wackiness. But Moffat has strong portrayals of homosexuality and tolerence. He just doesn't have an unrealistic number of them.
Can you explain this one?Milestone showed minorities at a rate higher than the population. Gail writes female leads at a rate higher than the population.
The second half is pretty self-explanitory, but the first half is pretty much what you'd expect. You know the disparity that exists in the mainstream DC Universe when it comes to white versus non-white superheroes? The Milestone Universe reversed this trend: almost every superhero in Dakota was black, with a few hispanics thrown into the mix. There were pretty much no Caucasians. And it looked every bit as ridiculous as the standard version of this trope.
I can see this looking back at it but to be honest, as a white kid reading Static & Hardware when they were coming out, I just liked the characters. It never clicked that Milestone was meant to be the "black characters line".
I think T.C. was asking for an explanation of BoP using higher than the representative popular for characters.
With women at 51 percent of the population, all you need for BoP to be representative of society is for about half the characters showing up to be men. Like, say, Hawk. Or Jim Gordon. Or Batman. Or the bad guys. The bad guys count.
BoP is a lot more reflective of our society AS IS than many other superhero books on the market. Like, say, JLA with one out of five. (WW, Supes, Batman, GL, Flash, Cyborg.) That's the comic that's completely *misrepresenting* our current society, not Gail's BoP run.
Women are not a minority.
Phoenix Legacy is a wonderfully entertaining rollercoaster read that conjures up the fantastical worlds explored in comic books yet provides a romance between unconventional characters.--review of Phoenix Legacy at Night Owl Reviews.
I never really read the Milestone line of comics, except during the "Worlds Collide" crossover event. I noticed the racial disparity as a teenager and found it unusual, but didn't really care, much like you. The only thing I found strange is that Dwayne McDuffie apparently got annoyed by the fact that people kept referring to Icon as "a black version of Superman". I mean...he's an alien sent to Earth as a child in a spaceship following a devastating explosion that killed his family and dresses up in a cape and spandex to fight crime with powers beyond those of mortal men. It's not exactly hard to understand why people would come to that conclusion. :P
Well, for roughly first half of the original run, the Birds of Prey was a two-woman operation: Black Canary and Oracle. It's been a while since I've read Chuck Dixon's run, but the only significant male superheroes/supporting cast members that I remember showing up during that time were Nightwing and Blue Beetle. So it was pretty much a 50/50 split. When Gail came on board, she began bringing in a lot of female characters, which, to be honest, didn't bother me in the slightest. Honestly, considering that every team in the DC Universe is a sausage fest, I felt that an (almost) all-female super-sorority was more than fair.
Last edited by Lunar Archivist; 06-16-2012 at 01:00 PM.
Exactly. It frustrates me to such an extent it was the main reason I couldn't get into the current run.
To make matters worse, that image of the JLA was the prevailing New 52 marketing image and it really turned me off.
What, you mean the completely hollow first story arc with everyone on the team being dicks to each other wasn't enough of a turn off?
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