So, Variety announced today that Gal Gadot has been cast as Wonder Woman in the upcoming “Man of Steel” sequel, that will also feature Ben Affleck’s debut as Batman.
This has been confirmed by director Zack Snyder, who said “Not only is Gal an amazing actress, but she also has that magical quality that makes her perfect for the role.”
Look, I’m just gonna jump right into my reactions, if you don’t mind.
THE GOOD:
Well, obviously, WONDER WOMAN IS GOING TO APPEAR ON THE BIG SCREEN, FINALLY. And, the casting of an Israeli actress is pretty awesome, it’s great to see a non-white woman get to show some Wonder.
I know a lot of people were reacting with “WHO?” when Gal’s name came up, but I think that’s a plus. Even Lynda Carter herself once advised Hollywood to “cast an unknown.” I like having an actress without anything iconic to compare her role as Wonder Woman to.
THE BAD:
Wonder Woman is making it on screen, yes, but as a supporting role in a movie primarily focused on Superman and Batman. She’s not even being mentioned in the tentative title while the two boys are. It reeks of sticking her in the movie to appease audiences without having to do the “risky” thing and give her a solo origin movie because, everyone knows, female-fronted action movies with well-established characters are doomed to fail.
Oh, by the way, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” has made $297 million in two weeks and broke a Thanksgiving weekend record previously held by “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
Also, there’s the big question of Zack Snyder being at the helm again. Snyder’s record with female characters isn’t necessarily great. The man made “Sucker Punch” for crying out loud and defended it as “empowering,” proving that he has the most tenuous, superficial, male-gaze friendly grasp on the concept of female empowerment possible.
THE EH, MAYBE:
While I’m all about Gadot’s casting, I’m seriously hoping she plans to put on some muscle before filming begins. I don’t think it’s impossible, look at the transformations of Seth Rogen and Chris Pratt for roles in action movies. Wonder Woman is first and foremost a warrior, and I don’t care what nationality or color your actress for the role is, if she doesn’t have notable muscle tone, I can’t buy her as an Amazon.
Really, this is just all knee-jerk reactions to the news. We won’t know anything for awhile, and I’m waiting until we see the first leaked set pictures, promo images and trailers before I really decide on anything. And the truth is, I’m probably not going to flock to theaters for this, no matter how much I want my Wonder Woman fix. I still want her in a solo film, giving her the spotlight and letting her show the world the wonder that she truly is.
Ashly is an IHO Geek writer and is trying to be rational about this casting news. You can try to ruffle her feathers on Twitter @newageamazon.
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I’ve spent a large portion of my life wanting to be Buffy Summers. While I have Faith Lehane’s tattoo emblazoned on my upper right arm, Buffy was my model. I know I’m not alone in this, I know a good deal of my generation grew up with the same goal: to someday be Buffy Summers.
What most people seem to remember about Buffy Summers: she wins a lot.
What most people seem to forget about Buffy Summers: she lost a lot.
Now, it’s not that people don’t remember these plot points, obviously they do. But they don’t seem to remember what loss means. What it can do to a person. They don’t remember that even as she is winning she is often losing. They forget that, because we are limited to an hour of Buffy each installment, we don’t see the full effect of the loss on her and those around her.
We don’t see Buffy really suffer because it’s not “good TV.” Genuine reality rarely is.
Buffy loses friends and allies and the mourning is brief. Buffy is forced to literally send the man she loves to Hell because, even if he’s good again now, he has been bad. He comes back and the problem is apparently solved (good TV), but Buffy’s pain over all of this is truncated. Buffy is nearly raped by someone she’s come to trust and the backlash against him is unbelievably portrayed (good TV?). Buffy dies, twice, and she comes back.
Real life for those of us who walk the path of Buffy does not have the convenience of “the network wants another season.” We have to live the fight in real time.
Maybe all you see from us is the equivalent of an hour a week. So when we cry or when we show pain, it’s unusual for you. Maybe it’s unbelievable. Strong women don’t DO that, Buffy cried in montages, why can’t you cry in montages?
We get told we’re “strong enough to handle this.” And we are. Trust me, we are. But even strong girls are defeated. Even strong girls hurt and cry and we need to be allowed to do it, no matter how uncomfortable that thought might make you. We need to suffer our losses, and we will.
This is our fight. Buffy never fought because she wanted to, in several cases she tries to stop fighting only to find out she can’t. Buffy fights because she has to. And we fight because there isn’t an alternative.
The dark things out there will always out number us. They will sometimes win. There will be cases where there is nothing we can really do, we don’t have the power to do it (Season 5 reminder: Buffy doesn’t kill the Big Bad that season. Giles has to do it for her because Buffy has limits imposed on her that he doesn’t). We can’t always just roundhouse kick the problem and pun and walk away. Not just because this is the real world, but because even within Buffy’s world that’s not always possible.
Allies are hugely important. But they’re ALLIES, they’re not directly in the fight, and sometimes they need to back off and let us fight. Sometimes they have to let us cry and be weak and not belittle the very, very real shit we live with every day. Xander was sometimes a total asshole and needed to shut his fucking mouth, okay? He was important, sure. However, while it was a fight he profited from, it WASN’T. HIS. FIGHT.
I have done my best to be Buffy Summers. Even in that I know I’ve failed. But I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, about my power, about power in general, that having power isn’t the same as being able to use it wisely, that it’s not about strength or weakness but about humanity and all the things that come with it.
I am strong. I know how to be strong. I have to keep fighting. Don’t you tell me what strength is.
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I’m sorry, DC Comics. It’s not you, it’s me.
Okay, that’s a fucking lie. It is you, it is totally you, it has been you for years and years and we keep trying to make this work and it just doesn’t. We’ve tried a trial separation and I came running back when you offered me flowers and chocolate and Gail Simone. We tried an open relationship and, well, I hate to break it to you, but even considering all their faults, Marvel is just BETTER than you.
And now I think we just need to break up. For good.
Let’s not concentrate on how it’s ending, with your editorial team deciding at the last second that Batwoman couldn’t show Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer getting married, causing the creators to walk off of the title. No, hush, that’s just the straw that’s breaking Batman’s back. It’s a well documented list of failures in recent years, showing that you don’t value you me as a reader and, more importantly, you don’t respect me as a partner.
DC, we’ve had some good times. Remember Final Crisis and how much that meant to us? Remember MINX and how you really tried except you really DIDN’T try and it all ended in fire and flames and I STILL want the last two Janes books by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg? And while you deny it, constantly, our time together with Stephanie Brown was fun. I enjoyed it.
But it’s over, DC. It’s over and it’s best we just say goodbye. But one thing I can tell you, any time I hear the wind blow it will whisper the name “DC.” And so let us part with a love that will echo through the ages.
-Ashly
PS: Come get your fucking stuff out of my house, I am sick of looking at it.
Ashly is a single female looking for a new comic in her life. She’s a Scorpio who enjoys red wine, horror novels and fully-realized characterization. You can find out more about her on Twitter at @newageamazon
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I’ve been going on this tirade on Twitter and generally raging about it for a day or so, and now I’m just gonna suck it up and run it here. In this article, I’m going to talk about Mark Millar’s recent statements, meaning there’s going to be some pretty frank discussion of rape, sexual assault and rape apology. I just want you to be aware in case any of these things might trigger you.
So, with that out of the way? Mark Millar just needs to shut the actual fuck up.
Comics Alliance has a really good summary of the actual situation, said in a fairly calm and professional manner, so I’m going to direct you to them for that angle on things.
From me, you’re about to get a profanity-laden rant about Mark Millar and how he needs to shut the actual fuck up.
It is sad that I had to breathe a sigh of relief when I read that Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who I have this crush on that I don’t even completely understand, was relieved that the gang rape scene from the comic Kick Ass 2 doesn’t appear in the film version. It is sad that I have to be proud of a guy for not wanting to portray a scene showing his bad ass villain, among others, forcibly fucking a teenage girl in order to get to her superhero boyfriend.
Because it is fucking sad that Mark Millar has written a fucking comic portraying a teenage girl being gang raped by villains.
I’d like to introduce some of the real world here: Steubenville, Ohio. A group of high school football players gang raped a girl, took video of the event, and bragged about it. There is a question about whether or not any punishment would have occurred towards the rapists had national hactivist group Anonymous not stepped in and leaked information to the public, garnering public attention. Even better, once an actual investigation was launched, coverage of the story from major news sources actually sympathized with the rapists, talking about what a shame it was that their dreams of playing college football were ruined by their silly little decision to rape a girl at a party and act like it was something to be proud of.
Millar said that “The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know?” The problem is the real world doesn’t agree with him. The real world doesn’t automatically see the rapist as the villain, doesn’t see it as the ultimate horrifying taboo act. They want to see how far they can push the idea that the victim is actually the issue here: how drunk was she, what was she wearing, well, that’s what you get for dating a superhero, honey.
For every Ariel Castro case (where, thank goodness, that sick fuck will spend the rest of his natural life in jail) where people turn against the rapist almost immediately, you’ve got a situation like USC, where a victim was told she wasn’t really raped because her rapist “didn’t orgasm” and where women are bullied into not actually reporting their rapes. More and more details are rolling in from campuses around the US, revealing that their policies are in place to protect the rapists, Millar’s supposed villains, rather than the victims of “the ultimate act.”
Mark Millar, you dumb fuck. If you don’t understand rape, and you pretty clearly do not understand the intricacies involved in it, in our victim-blaming culture, in the emotional and psychological damage it does to a victim that can’t be solved by her super boyfriend beating the shit out of the guy who touched His Woman, then you shouldn’t write it.
But Mark Millar, you won’t. You will keep putting gratuitous rape in everything you write.
Because you are a fucking hack and you can’t do anything else at this point. I’m full on saying it: you are a one note hack writer who honestly can’t think of anything to drive his fucking plot aside from taking a female character and basically making her entire story arc “victim of Bad Guy’s Penis, will be avenged.” And it is sick that Hollywood will keep shelling out money for your bullshit when they’ve got more than enough other writers who will use the same fucking trope (I’m not for one moment going to pretend this is limited to Millar, or to comics or to movies). It is sad that your limitations as a writer (which, our limitations as writers are what we’re supposed to work to overcome, not lean against and say “Hey, the best I can do is RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE”) and whatever pathological issues you have with women are paying you more money than I will ever see in my goddamn life.
Mark Millar?
Shut. The Fuck. Up.
Ashly is an IHO Geek staff writer who would really just like Mark Millar to consider his words a bit more carefully and show some empathy for victims of sexual assault. You can find her on Twitter @newageamazon
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This week, Andrew Garfield caused comics fans to literally (LITERALLY) explode when he asked a simple question to EW: What if Spidey was gay?
The actual full quote: “And I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”
Good question, Andrew Garfield. Why can’t Peter Parker be gay? Well, I’ll tell you why.
Because after this article hit EW.com, the comments immediately started crying out against the idea. Because you “don’t change an established character like that,” or something. Because it’s promoting AN AGENDA to make Spider-man gay. Which agenda? I’m guessing the one that insists that gay people are a lot like straight people and don’t deserve the shit they get socially and legally and when it comes to the media.
It’s also because when Marvel ran an innocent image of Hulking and Wiccan from Children’s Crusade, showing the openly gay teens about to share an intimate moment, the Facebook comments blew up claiming Marvel was, once again, promoting an agenda. Or worse, corrupting youth by showing them gay superheroes and encouraging them to emulate them. Or something. Bonus points to all of the people claiming they were only going to buy DC comics in the future because DC wasn’t “shoving gays down their throats.” Here’s a tip for those people: start your new-found devotion to DC by reading Batwoman.
In short, Andrew Garfield, the answer is simple: there is no good reason that Spider-man CAN’T be gay.
Because all of these arguments are bullshit. “Purity” of the character? So, characters who were created in a different generation should never evolve and grow with the times? You want Superman to act and talk and look exactly how he did in Action #1?
No, you don’t. You probably love Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns which took a new look at the character. Or Extremis which changed the status quo for Tony Stark. And if you don’t want a gay Spider-man but are okay with the ending of Man of Steel, I hate you. Your call for “purity” of the character is bullshit.
As for “agendas,” what you mean by that is “doing things for the sake of selling comics.” Because this is a recent thing designed to destroy comics for straight men who love comics, because it’s only because of the feminists and the gays that this could happen. It’s not like Dick Grayson was introduced as Robin in order to sell comics. Or Jean Grey returning from the dead. Again.
Get over yourselves. Here is a fact: COMICS ARE A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE. THEY ARE A BUSINESS. THE POINT OF THE COMICS INDUSTRY IS TO SELL COMICS. I mean, this doesn’t necessarily apply to indie comics, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about DC and Marvel and they want to fucking sell you things to make money off of you. This is not punk rock, this is not about keeping the message in the subculture, this is fucking comics. And here’s a fact you have to deal with as well: gay people buy comics. So do women. And they deserve to see themselves represented not just as minor characters or sidekicks.
So, what if Spider-man was gay? What if, straight male comics fans, you identified with a gay character? What if you could understand him and relate to him just the same as a gay or bi or bicurious character as you can when he’s written as straight?
What if identifying with a gay character means you might be gay?
What if you start thinking that you’re a little further along the Kinsey scale than you previously thought?
What if you realize you’re not totally turned off by the idea of kissing another guy, though maybe you’re not gonna go out looking for a chance to do so?
What if you’re asked to challenge your culturally and socially ingrained sense of masculinity and sexuality and it means you have to re-examine yourself and a lot of beliefs or stereotypes you didn’t even know affected you?
Now, lemme ask you again: Why can’t Spider-man be gay?
Ashly is an IHO Geek staff writer who wants you to keep things civil in the comments but isn’t necessarily holding her breath. She can also be found on Twitter (where she is more than willing to use the “block” function) @newageamazon
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