Okay, so that does sound pretty Prismatic…

It’s interesting to look back on Animal Man, now that we can see where it was all heading…I mean you couldn’t miss what the Coyote Gospel’s significance was in the book, at least by the end of Morrison’s run it was just all laid out for you there, and again it was all the seeing that did it…really to look at Animal Man again there’s a whole hell of a lot of “seeing” in it, there’s Buddy spying on Cliff for example, it’s really very orderly. And, Mirror Master — that’s no accident either, right? Grant looking for Foxy. Just all kinds of things. I can practically see the 3×5 cards in front of me. Sorry, I’m copying your style a bit here, Beast, because I’m also trying to listen hard to something as I type, hopefully it doesn’t read all distracted and blurry, I’m not really very good at it…

Anyway the seeing, yeah. But looking back on Morrison’s body of work for DC, Animal Man’s extra-impressive, because it really does make it look like he had everything planned from the very beginning. And maybe it’s the magic that makes such felicitous symmetries in Morrison’s work, that just pop up, saving the day…you think the thing’s about to take a nosedive and then WHAM! A perfect symmetry hits you in the face. And I think this is really where Moore and Morrison are most interestingly juxtaposed, because of course Moore is highly concerned with symmetries too — I mean he did a whole twelve-issue series about them, for heaven’s sake! — but there is something almost frighteningly jazzy about the way Morrison executes this sort of thing, no matter how tightly-written in 3×5 form it may be, there’s still a feeling that he’s dancing on the edge, and that it’s all going to blow up. And maybe that’s what SB3D is for, the blowing-up part? Or maybe it’s the crazy trumpet-solo part of the whole miles-long exercise. Maybe I should be thinking of these comics as jams, or anyway as albums. Maybe as songs on a big concept album.

Still doubt FC will have too much to offer me in this vein, though. I know, it sounds nuts, I mean this is what Morrison does! But really, what can even happen? Is it all just going to come down to a killer last page, last panel, last line? But what can it be?

I don’t know why I doubt. Morrison’s been exceeding my expectations for a really long time. But FC just seems like a song out of order with the other songs to me, like: here’s the big build-up, but wait…didn’t I already hear the climax to this a couple years ago, and then haven’t I just finished listening to that marvellous coda? So what do I want with the build-up?

Fully prepared to retract it all, should he astonish me once again. And I guess I can’t really specify my qualms after all.

But I dunno.

I can’t see how anything in Final Crisis, with its emphasis on in-story logical contingency, is going to better the height of that jump.

How so (not a prelude to argument, by the way – just curiousity)?

Love Bobsy’s Geo-Force, and I think I’ve got some sneaking fondness for the machine-schizoid Cyborg as well.

Fascinating second installment! Let’s have a third!

My personal take on dealing with misogyny is that we need to fight the little battles. Co-worker does something iffy, call ‘em on it; friend says something dodgy, ask them why they said it; Comic book writer routinely expresses deeply unpleasant personal opinions, don’t buy their fucking comics, and encourage others not to. Look, misogyny in comics isn’t going away any time soon, because it reflects a bleaker reality: that there’s a whole load of misogyny out there in the broader culture. I don’t kid myself that I’m going to change the world, I do, however, think that I should do my bit, and that I might just manage to make one or two people think a little harder.

The key is to figure what part the narrator’s taking in a story. For instance, let’s take the X-Men. We’re usually watching something happen to a female character through Cyclops, Xavier, and/or Wolverine’s eyes when she goes through a major change. Now, what’s interesting to observe is that most of the female customers I get at the comic book shop who aren’t into nerd culture already gravitate towards X-Men, yet so many female leads have really awkward, nebulous powers, like weather control, phasing, psychokinesis, ESP, Telepor-flying-magic, and those that do have very direct, physical abilities received them through something as passive as absorption. I mean, sure, we can get into Marrow, Joanna Cargill, and so on, but they aren’t major players. The comic book psyche still sees women as a symbol for the insubstantial and nebulous, rather than as real and direct as the male leads.

Anyhow, with properties and conventions created in a medium that has its roots in attempts to appeal to the young male demographic, it’s going to take a while to really break that. A person can rail against the exaggerations of the female form, but I don’t see many major male characters with receding hairlines or paunchy guts. The key to rallying against the misogyny would be to create a female character that doesn’t have to prove that she’s interesting, or even better, one that can be as funny and wisecracking as the sharp-witted comic relief characters that’re more often than not men. A “funny” female character tends to be some fashionista airhead, like in the Hellcat mini (which gave me a constant pre-migraine nausea upon reading), and if a creator could send that the other direction without having to call attention to it within his/her own work, then yeehaw!

Then again, I’m not smart enough to do it myself, so what do I know?