Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice is out here in the Philippines in two days, and as much as the buildup to it and the trailers haven't been to my tastes and as much as I've never liked anything that director has done, I do have to say Wonder Woman, as played by Gal Gadot, looks awesome. I'm rooting for her in this movie, in part to shut up a bunch of sexist dicks on the internet, but also because this is Wonder Woman's first time on the big screen. I went through, a while back, all the common reasons given as to why Diana didn't have a movie, and also went issue by issue on the Wonder Woman reinvention by my favorite creator ever, George Perez.
So now I'm just going to treat your eyes, because in the mid-90s, Wonder Woman's covers were drawn by maybe the greatest cover artist (meaning his covers outnumber his interiors) of all time in superhero comics, Brian Bolland. So I picked 10 Bolland covers from his run and am putting them here. Enjoy!
Wonder Woman #0: Let's start with Bolland's take on an iconic image: bullets and bracelets. Dynamic stuff.
Wonder Woman #91: The first time Diana loses her costume and Wonder Woman identity to Artemis of the Bana-Mighdall has a cover that shows them fighting. In the age of pin-up covers, a cover like this looks great and tells us what's in the comic.
Wonder Woman #97: On the other hand, here's a pinup cover that still shows you what's in the comic.
Wonder Woman #88: And sometimes all you need is a guest star, and the pinup cover can show him, even when he has a terrible mullet.
Wonder Woman #63: Here's a pinup cover that was Bolland's first. It still works in context because the title had been on hiatus for a few months.
Wonder Woman #94: I like this one because it shows Diana in her non-Amazon costume and she's fighting two awesome supervillains, Cheshire and Poison Ivy.
Wonder Woman #74: Not really sure why I like this, but I do.
Wonder Woman #99: Costume aside, I think it's a powerful image. Having said that, how the hell did her hair just change with her costume? The moment she goes back to her regular costume, her hair's all curly again.
Wonder Woman #78: Cover's eye-catching, and it has the Flash. What's not to love?
Wonder Woman #72: Probably the most famous of Bolland's covers, it's had statues molded after it and may have been the inspiration for those iconic Jim Lee Superman and Batman images, which I'm pretty sure if you Google "Jim Lee Batman and Superman," are the first results.
EXTRA: Here's a cool pinup from Wonder Woman #50.
So there. Go see Superman V Batman: Dawn of Justice and remember four things: Diana is awesome, Superman can toss Batman into outer space in the blink of an eye, Ben Affleck will be the best Batman since Adam West, and Frank Miller himself has admitted that he'd have never written Superman the way he did in Dark Knight Returns if it had been a Superman story. And Diana is awesome.
I've been thinking a lot lately about Archie Comics. Specifically, the thoughts revolve around the following:
I love Mark Waid and think Fiona Staples and Veronica Fish are great artists. I also strongly advocate any efforts to revitalize any brands that companies deem to need it. But this new look Archie isn't working for me. It's weird that of all the things I'd be a grumpy old fan about, it'd be Archie Comics, especially since the bulk of the Archie reading I do is works by Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo and Samm Schwartz. All of those guys have long since gone to the great Chok'lit Shoppe in the sky, so really, I shouldn't care. I'm not the target audience. But it doesn't work for me, and somehow, I care that it doesn't work for me. (I feel the same way about the new CW show, Riverdale. I'm glad it's happening. I just can't get excited for it.)
Of the three artists I mentioned above, DeCarlo is the best in terms of just drawing crisply and prettily, Lucey is the best at conveying motion and showing slapstick, and Schwartz is the cleverest. All three did their best works with Frank Doyle on script. And I should be doing a Harry Lucey column soon, looking at the stuff he did in and out of Archie. Soon. Hopefully. I'm lazy.
Archie pretty much has a monopoly on teen dating humor comics now, but that wasn't always the case. There was a whole load of them back in the old days, including Suzie and Ginger and Patsy Walker and Millie the Model and Wilbur and such. I'm sure Archie has endured the test of time due mainly to three things: to the dynamics of the Betty and Veronica love triangle, Jughead Jones, and easily accessible and affordable digests.
Really, the teen humor comic property that can provide Archie Comics with any sort of semblance of competition is itself an Archie property. And I'm talking about these girls:
Josie and the Pussycats, made up of Josie James, Valerie Smith, and Melody Jones, is a pretty well known property inside and outside of comics fandom, and is one of the greatest fictional bands of all time. But that wasn't always the case, nor was it even the original premise of the strip. A redhead had to decide between two love interests, one of whom was nice and simple and the other one rich and spoiled. The redhead had two friends, a sarcastic brunette and a well-meaning, fun-loving friend who lived in a world of their own. And if that sounds like Archie and friends to you, well, really, that's basically the core of what it was.
But Josie, or She's Josie, as the strip was then called, did deviate enough from that template to stand on its own. Josie and Archie were, for sure, both protagonist redheads who were average teenagers, but Archie continually chose rich and spoiled Veronica Lodge over simple and devoted (and kind of psychotic) Betty Cooper, while Josie eschewed rich and spoiled Alex Cabot for her simple and unassuming Albert.
It's a little too nerd-friendly for me to really buy into it — I'm not really a fan of stories where the nerdy guy gets the hot girl with no real believable explanation, since it's a little too much of a wish fulfillment thing for me and actually does hurt my suspension of disbelief more than the premise of a guy getting powers from a radioactive spider — but Albert wouldn't really last long.
The frustrating thing, for me, about Albert is that for all his dorkishness, he not only had Josie after him, but Midvale's answer to Veronica Lodge, Alexandra Cabot (Alexander's sister), as well.
I think it's safe to say I'm not a fan of Albert.
Another difference is that the brunette in the original strip wasn't Valerie, but a white girl with glasses named Pepper, who was sassy and sarcastic and every bit the kind of character that would thrive today.
Pepper was pegged as the brainy one, but aside from having glasses, I didn't really see her as brainier than Josie. She was more clever than booksmart, but I guess they wanted to go for a brains-and-brawn couple when they introduced her boyfriend, a musclebound guy named Sock, short for Socrates.
Rounding out the cast was Melody, the dumb blonde. And when I say the dumb blonde, I mean she's dumb, and she's blonde.
In fact, Melody's the kind of character who either gets crucified now because she was really just an excuse for Dan DeCarlo to draw a sexy woman in revealing clothing, or gets to be a fan favorite among all demographics because they handle it in such a tongue-in-cheek way, and she uses that sex appeal to her advantage. A running gag is Melody just walking around town and men getting into accidents because they're too distracted by her. In other words, she'd either be hated on Facebook/Twitter or loved on Tumblr. My money would be on the latter, kinda like Harley Quinn or Bruce Timm good girl art. I honestly think Dan DeCarlo would have been the kind of cheesecake artist that everyone loves.
This is what really gets me about Melody, though. The joke is that she's so much sexier than Josie and the rest of the girls, and in-story they would say it was because of her figure. But look. They have, if not the same, at least very similar figures.
Melody's sexiness and Pepper's sass and Josie's confidence all come from different poses and different configurations of body language. Josie has the same figure as Melody, but she would never be posed like this while walking down the street in a revealing outfit. She'd be shyer and trying to cover herself up.
She's Josie and, later, Josie, was a fun book, but sales must have been unimpressive, because they started resorting to frequent guest appearances and cameos by Archie and the gang. At one point they even brought in the star of Archie's Madhouse, Clyde Didit, and went trippy. (And yes, I know it was the 60s, so this is kinda tame by "trippy" standards.)
As fun as the book was, the thing was that at the end of the day, it didn't differentiate enough from your standard teen fare. Sure, the main characters were girls instead of guys, but Archie even at the time was already putting out Betty and Veronica. What was needed was a reinvention, and it started by giving the girls a gimmick and then introducing new characters as well as repackaging some old ones. The gimmick was simple: make the girls a band called The Pussycats, complete with matching costumes. It's a simple hook, and while the Archies at the time had a real band named after them with a legitimate album out (including the hit single "Sugar Sugar"), an all-girl band with themed (and obviously sexy) costumes was much less heard of. In other words, gender-switching the basic premise of Archie, not enough differentiation. Gender-switching the Archies and then giving them matching outfits, enough differentiation.
Alexandra Cabot also got a different gimmick. To match her new look, with a streak in her hair, she also got magic powers.
And Alexander Cabot III became the band's manager, also complete with a new look: shades and a jacket.
The visual reinvention of the Cabots says a lot to me about the importance of iconography. While they were, for sure, well drawn before the shades and white streaks, they didn't have distinguishing features, even ones as simple as Josie's short hair or Melody's white hair. It's such a simple change, giving them a visual cue, but it's enough. (A good example in superhero comics is Abby Arcane from Swamp Thing. There was really nothing special about Abby Arcane other than the black streak in her white hair, but that's enough to distinguish her and keep her in the book until Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben found stuff for her to do.)
Albert was gone, replaced by Alan M., who made so much more sense for someone like Josie (and Alexandra) to pine over. He's built, he's good-looking, he's talented, and he's a legitimately nice guy who doesn't spend his time creepily stalking Josie. There is a mutual attraction that is believable and feels genuine. And Albert was never seen again, because thank God, he sucked.
Sock vanished as well, maybe because Pepper also disappeared. The brunette in the trio became Valerie, who effectively replaced Pepper. But it's weird for me to say that she did replace Pepper, because aside from having black hair and being the clever one, they weren't replaceable with each other. Their brands of cleverness were different, and if anything, Valerie was a bit more headstrong and tomboyish, a little more like Betty Cooper than Pepper was, when Betty Cooper wasn't busy being a crazy Archie stalker.
Valerie is a genuine groundbreaker, too. GeekGirlCon says she's the first ever black character to ever show up in Archie, predating Chuck Clayton by a couple of years. Decades later, she would have a romance with Archie Andrews himself that is, if not the first, the first high-profile interracial romance in the comic.
And when Josie and the Pussycats got an animated series soon after, after a three-week argument between the network and the producer, Valerie Smith became the first ever regular character in a cartoon.
I think there's a sentiment that thinks Pepper should have been the bassist for the Pussycats, and while I like Pepper as a character a lot, I honestly don't see her being a Pussycat. Like I said, I don't see them as interchangeable, even though they clearly fill the same role in the dynamic. Their personalities are different enough that I do not see Pepper as one of the Pussycats, even in an alternate reality where she stuck around.
Josie and the Pussycats was cancelled in 1982, but the characters stuck around and permeated pop culture consciousness that they could never be kept down for too long. They had a movie in 2001 starring Rachael Leigh Cooke, Rosario Dawson, and Tara Reid, and they continually got new stories in the comics, including, as mentioned, the high-profile Archie/Valerie romance. They broke ground then, as all-girl groups were relatively rare, and if you believe some accounts, they helped inspire and, in a way, pave the road for real all-girl bands (they predated the Runaways, arguably the first truly famous all-girl rock band, by six years). These days, they continue to reflect reality further and break ground further by introducing more diversity. Aside from interracial romances with Archie, Josie has been cast in the new Riverdale TV show as Ashleigh Murray, who is black, and rumors swirl that the Pussycats in that universe will all be women of color, a casting choice that reflects how far we have come, as such a thing would have been unheard of outside of very specific genres of music back when the Pussycats were first created.
Really, there's a lot to be learned from the reinvention of She's Josie into Josie and the Pussycats, including the importance of visual iconography and the power of diversity. But perhaps the most important thing, at least in my eyes, is that taking a premise and then changing it a teeny tiny bit isn't enough. You can start there, but then you need the right gimmick and hook, and then the right dynamics and characters to go with it. Fortunately for the Pussycats, they have three of the legitimately most fun and dynamic characters, especially in humor comics, ever. And all three of them, as well as their complementary pieces, are a perfect fit. It ook them a while to get tot hat perfect fit, but they got there and that's what matters.
That was fun. To close this off, I'm going to give you this awesome Fiona Staples rendition of the Pussycats.
Welcome back to the Comics Cube, and to Bullet Points, where I take a series and call out one thing per issue. Today's series is Gen13 by John Arcudi and Gary Frank (and sometimes Jeff Moy), which ran from the 25th issue of the first volume to the 41st. Let's get started.
Issue #25: Gen13 made its name as a fun, tongue-in-cheek book with a lot of cheesecake, and was drawn by one of the greatest cheesecake artists of the modern era, J. Scott Campbell. That's what sold the book and they were always aware of it, poking fun at it whenever they could. There's nothing wrong with that — it was what it was, and it sold to whom it sold (including me. I don't consider it a guilty pleasure. It was fun to read.).
So of course the first thing Arcudi and Frank do is put them in wintertime New York and bundle them up.
That's pretty ballsy. That right there says "We know what made this book sell, and we're going to show you that what we're bringing to the table is going to be just as good as those things." We're seeing it more and more in recent years as more and more superheroines who have previously been dressed in more revealing costumes have been covered up (something I personally think should be executed and judged on a case-by-case basis; I get it for Spider-Woman and Carol Danvers, I do not like it for Wonder Woman or Power Girl. We can discuss this elsewhere, like in the comments or on our Facebook page.), but here's Gen13, doing it back in 1997 near the end of the Bad Girl era.
Y'gotta admire it — and of course it wouldn't work if Gary Frank weren't a good artist. I've always liked Gary Frank, and I like both the clean style he displays here in a different way than I like his current, more sketchy style, but I like them in different ways.
That one shot up there really captures the personality of the entire team. Grunge is playful with Roxy, his girlfriend, who lets him be playful. Bobby (aka Burnout) likes Sarah, and cares, but he knows she doesn't swing that way so he keeps his distance. Sarah in general is the ice queen of the group anyway, and here she's freezing. And leading them is Caitlin Fairchild, tall, confident, and walking with purpose.
Issue #26: Saying they were going to cut down on the cheesecake didn't mean it was going away entirely. Sarah Rainmaker, a Native American who just so happened to be one of the first lesbians in mainstream superhero comics, had made a pass at Roxy Spaulding, also known as Freefall, in the second issue of the series, and it freaked Roxy out. They wouldn't really get along after that.
Roxy's homophobia, such as it were, to me dates the series, and that's a good thing. She and Sarah would eventually become close, and well, freaking out over things you don't understand is a part of the process of acceptance, both as individuals and as a society.
Issue #27: This issue features the only appearance of Terese, who shows up in two pages as someone Sarah instantly falls for. Why does she never show back up again? I wonder if there were plans to have her come back that maybe got vetoed. In any case, Sarah's crush on her is something she and Roxy eventually bond over.
Issue #28: Doing my bullet points for this, I realize now my favorite characters are definitely Roxy and Sarah, since those are the characters that stick out to me each issue. In this issue Roxy finds her stepmom. Searching for their parents is a big thing for the Gen13 crowd. At this point in the story, Bobby's found his dad — or rather, he learned that their mentor, John Lynch, was his father all along — and Caitlin's found her dad.
Later on, someone in the letters pages would ask why Roxy and her stepmom looked so alike, and the editors would respond with "Coincidence?" But of course it wasn't, since this was done on purpose and Gloria Spaulding was Freefall's actual biological mom. So you know, if you ask people working on a book to give up a plot point, don't be mad if they lie to you.
Issue #29: For all the quiet moments I've shown so far, Gary Frank could really lower the boom if he needed to. Needing to infiltrate a building that's protected against just about every weapon on Earth, Gen13 sends in their weapon: Caitlin Fairchild.
In a nice contrast, here's Freefall demonstrating her powers.
Issue #30: The team moves to the Florida Keys and the cheesecake comes back. Frank isn't as crowd-pleasing as Campbell, but the humor is still intact.
This is also the first appearance of John, the conspiracy theorist who just so happens to see everything weird Gen13 is doing. Take a look at his really 90s conspiracy list.
Issue #31: This is a fun story where Roxy goes gambling by making lizards race, and gets Sarah to loosen up. Their bonding issue, almost 30 issues overdue.
Issue #32: Lots happen in this issue, specifically a typhoon happening concurrently with a fight that Lynch has with Alex Fairchild, but the thing that sticks out to me is the framing of this panel, which made it, on reading, just a bit more powerful than it probably should have been.
Issue #33: This was a very fun filler issue where Caitlin, Bobby, and Grunge run into a scientist who, in an effort to stop the aging process, ended up reversing it, turning him into a giant baby. We need these crazy ideas in the world.
Issue #34: Roxy runs back to her mom, and it's in this issue that we pretty much see that she's Caitlin's half-sister. Alex is also her dad.
I've always liked Roxy's general look, even though I'd have to search my brain hard to remember what her costume actually is. But that was part of the fun of her character. Even without a costume, she was visually distinct with the pink highlights and, quite frankly, just being the most animated of them all.
Issue #35: Gary Frank used to draw Supergirl (in fact, I think that was his assignment directly prior to this), so we get a quick Easter egg.
Issue #36: John the conspiracy theorist is one of those characters you can't think too hard about. He's fun, but a character like that pokes al sorts of holes in the story if you let it. Lynch and Alex Fairchild are supposed to be experts at hiding, and here John is, able to spy on them all the time and from far away. It's fun. You just can't think too hard about it.
Issue #37: Missiles get thrown at Gen13, about to hit the Fairchilds. When the dust clears, this is what we see.
And Caitlin, the most pacifistic of the Gen13ers, gets pissed.
That's intense.
Issue #38: It's the start of the last storyline, "Death and the Broken Promise," and it starts off innocently enough, with the team surprising Alex Fairchild with dinner. It's a cute moment, and stands in stark contrast to the attacks they're about to endure afterward and everything that's about to happen.
Issue #39: Sarah Rainmaker: Badass.
Issue #40: These are the first and last pages of this issue. The last page is a resonant callback to the first. And somehow, some way, when I got to the end, I realized I wanted Alex Fairchild to live. Arcudi and Frank somehow took these characters from what had previously just been a fun popcorn book and made me care about them. I'm not sure when it happened. But it did, in there, somewhere.
Issue #41: First of all, this is a beautiful cover.
The last page of this book is Fairchild remembering the last moments of the dinner — and it's not even how it really happened. She's remembering it as she chooses to remember it. She chooses to remember her dad this way despite not having had much time with him at all.
Very powerful stuff by Arcudi and Frank.
Good night, Cubers.
Want a series covered for Bullet Points? Let us know at comicscube(at)gmail(dot)com.
