Combining  "Mask for Mardi Gras" with another page of panels from the Graphic  Novel Prologue, this might be my favorite of the posters kicking off  Cat-Tales 10th Anniversary tomorrow.

Why Do We Fall?

Remember this moment? Remember this question? "Why
do we fall, Bruce?"

So we can lie on the floor stubbornly insisting we haven't?

So we can sit with our aching ass on the cold terrazzo insisting that gravity is a myth?

How about repeating like a politico's talking points that it's not the floor at all and we are, in actuality, on Dancing With the Stars foxtrotting with Jennifer Gray?

No. Why do we fall? So we learn how to get up.

I recently saw a piece on the 10 biggest WTF moments in comics. Not surprising which company took home the trophy for the big #1.

In 1998, DC made the mother of all WTF decisions when they opted to change the character of Superman. This character that had stood for 60 years, and had just been killed off a few years prior to show his utter importance not only to comics but to the world, was out the door...

A change of costume or marriage status is one thing, but completely altering everything that established the character as an American icon in the first place is something else entirely.

Several readers marked this as the first pock of the disease which has consumed just about all the characters now, the first blatant sign that those entrusted to write these characters have no understanding of what defines them or of their iconic significance in the greater world outside their Thursday To-Do list.

But not me. For once, I'm going to stand between DC and the ones throwing stones, because here's the thing: as soon as they realized the ground had given way under their feet and they were falling into a deep pit with a bunch of angry bats baring their teeth and hissing bat-spittle into their faces, they changed him back. The article itself admits "the explanation to get him back to normal was quite vague, probably a result of the severe backlash of comic book fans and their desire to fix the problem as quickly as possible."

They didn't tap Wizard to call it a giant step forward in comics, they didn't embark on a PR campaign to try and convince the terminally stupid that unsweetened lemon juice tastes just like water, they didn't figure there would be a new crop of gullible half-wits who would be coming along any minute to replace the 80% of their readership heading out the door. They didn't think up even worst things to do to Superman to punish the fans for not accepting the fiasco. They got up. That's why we fall. And if we can't get our asses out of that hole on our own, we scream for help before the rest of the ground gives and we fall farther.

Remember a few weeks ago I said The Reaper is out there, and DC's attitude that it's okay to mess things up further/they'll fix it (or not) next year was horrifically out of touch with the reality that there may not BE a next year? Anyone who thought I was being melodramatic, please turn and wave goodbye to Wizard. It's gone, as of yesterday. All staff let go. If a new online magazine transpires to replace it, the focus is to be on pop culture and the non-comics media where these characters still thrive. Not print comics.

Do I have your attention now, boys?

Fantastic Four is snuffing a major character today. What makes this different from past fan-inflaming stunts is that it's the first under Disney. That means if it doesn't work out (and by "work out" I don't mean by the comics definition 'people hate it' but the definition of everyone else on the planet), then those responsible are going to be introduced to a concept that is new to them but familiar to everyone else who works for a living: consequences. You make a bad decision, you piss off customers, you materially damage a company's assets, there are consequences. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's not going to be a pleasant adjustment. Growing up often isn't. But it's pretty much the only choice the medium has if it wants to survive.

Why do fall? Well, eventually to learn how to get up. For some though, there is an intermediary step: to learn to recognize the hole, and then to accept that the hole is not the place to be.

On a lighter note, it's a big week for Cat-Tales. The Dracula spinoff Capes and Bats releases its penultimate chapter today, and there's a plot twist that absolutely nobody saw coming--but which was right in front of us the entire time. I have to admit, I was floored when I read it. Scared the cat with my gasps of surprise. We're also less than 48 hours from the launch of a new feature to make life easier for our mobile friends. Work is underway on the new chapter of Trophies, while reviews continue to come in on À Bon Chat, Bon Rat.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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You're a fine one, Mr. Grinch

I never watched Glee, but I was in the room recently when a friend was watching the latest episode on Hulu. On headphones, I didn’t hear a thing apart from the occasional laugh, muted. Then there was a loud one. I looked up and saw this…

I didn't have to watch the show, I knew EXACTLY what they were doing. That's The Grinch That Stole Christmas, fondly remembered Dr. Seuss Xmas tale from all our childhoods. Later my friend talked about "how well they did it" and how they "did the whole thing" - from a character wearing the reindeer antlers and dog ears pulling the sleigh to plucking the ornaments off the tree.

Friend: And just when you're thinking "There should be a Cindy Lou Whoo"...

I mention this because there is a misconception out there among some big names in comics that people are "bored" with the very elements that MAKE THE STORYVERSE WHAT IT IS. That's why there is a wail of protest every time they announce the next big stunt that will fuck up the comics for another year and postpone the return to what it is SUPPOSED TO BE. Because these core things they are changing are not repetitive and boring, they are ritual and reassuring.

Bruce Wayne is Batman. Joker is his nemesis. Catwoman is his adversary/love interest. Jason Todd is dead.
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Batman.

"Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it?" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't perform A Christmas
Carol.

"Face it, Tiger... you just hit the jackpot!"

Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Spiderman.

"It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope." Nobody is looking for reinvention here. They got it right the first time, and that's why these stories last.

When it's right, don't reinvent, recapitulate:

Here endeth the lesson.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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( . )( . )

I’m pretty sure the most popular entry in this blog is the one from late April: Women Lacking Complexity—For SCIENCE! about blogger Jen McCreight’s initiative Boob Quake.  Wow, who would have thought it?  The most popular blog was about tits. 

Yes, there are two big issues looming when it comes to women and comics.  Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical flourish, there are two.  Let’s deal with the D-cups first, because there is a reason they go on the cover.  Men like breasts.  A couple months ago, Warner Bros posted screencaps to Arkham City, the sequel to the Arkham Asylum computer game. 

The gullible souls who bought into the Brubaker/Cooke scam and continue to think flat-chested and short hair are the hallmarks of a dynamic empowered woman started frothing at the mouth:  Look at those breasts!  How can it be!  It is the goggle-whore costume we have all been trained to defend as practical no matter how nonsensical the word is as applied to any costume in any comic including the one this displaced.  It is black and not purple, she has no long flowing hair cascading luxuriously out the back of her cowl, how can she have breasts that can be seen without special lenses?!  It does not compute.  The horror, the horror!  How dare they defame the good name of Catwoman by giving her a figure men will enjoy looking at!

I really had hoped the Iranian cleric that started the whole Boob Quake thing would have woken those silly women up.  Because if you buy into the idea that boobs are bad and there is something wrong with men who like them, then you’re standing with Fahas Ahardtime Acceptinghalfthehumanrace-majad.  That doesn’t strike me as very enlightened or feminist, ladies, but hey, you don’t see the problem with the whore either, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. 

For those who aren’t irrevocably committed to the doctrine of Men Suck, let’s briefly revisit why the male of the species like the breasts.  I’m sorry Notting Hill fans, there is a reason and it’s not “because they’re stupid.”  It’s because we’re primates.  For a long, long, long, long time, the male approaching a female for mating purposes is looking at a rump.  Now fast forward a few million years.  We're all walking upright. What in the general vicinity of the new eyelevel looks like that? There’s nothing perverse about it.  Men notice cleavage.  Put it on the cover, they’ll notice your cover.  That’s not an automatic sale, but it gets their attention.  What you do then is up to you.

Which brings us to the second issue when it comes to women in comics: who they are as opposed to how they look.  Let’s start with a quote from a creative writing forum, which was sent to me after the recent blog on Fridging:

“As it was explained to me by a comics professional years ago at a convention panel on the topic, the vast majority of comic writers are men who simply don't understand women. Since they don't understand women (and earn more by churning out stories as quickly as possible), they save time by reducing women to cliched roles as either the girlfriend or the victim.”

I include the elaborate provenance – that this is something told to a reader in a con/panel situation—because there is always the possibility that it is simply not true.  That it was given in the context of “Look, we don’t serve up all these rapes and murders because we’re sad little trolls who can only feel like men by bringing down women.”  If that was the tone of the panel, then this could have been presented as a simple expedient.  Rather than debating if there is any palpable difference between murder of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis and the murder of Duncan in the Scottish play, the above quote diffuses the situation quickly without controversy by playing into the widely held preconception of comics writers as arrested adolescents.

The irony is if that's true and not an invented excuse, it’s completely unacceptable.  Women are 53% of the population.  You can’t be a professional writer in any medium and “simply not understand” half the human race.  You’re going to embarrass yourself, embarrass the idiots who hired you, and you’re going to fail—over and over and over.  So let’s cut these guys a break and reveal the key to writing women that both men and women in the audience will love.  Then everybody can do it and that removes "I don't understand lumpy people" as an excuse.  The following has been said elsewhere, but never as well as by the late Harold Ashman:

“In every classic musical, one of the first three songs belongs to the heroine.  She comes downstage, often sits on a convenient planter or bale of hay, and sings about what she wants from her life.  And the audience falls in love with her… and they spend the next three acts rooting for her to get it.”

It is, honest to god, that simple.  And that complex.  Start with what she wants.  If Cattitude succeeds where others have failed, it is because it is grounded in what Catwoman wants from stealing: a restoration of the love and safety she felt as a child, which she came to associate with the wealth and comfort she knew in her parents’ home.  I cannot accept that the ability to pee standing up somehow short-circuits the ability to understand that simple human motivation.  What we want is seldom a function of gender.  The best art and jewel thief in the world comes from privilege and not poverty because the root associations make sense.  If any man wants to step up and explain what in his anatomy would screw with anything that shampoo simple, I would be fascinated to hear it. 

Food, shelter, love, freedom, a sense of self-worth.  None of them have anything to do with reproductive plumbing.  If you “simply don’t’ understand” women, then you simply don’t understand people and if that’s the case, you have no business writing at all. 

Now, if you don’t get a particular subset, join the club.  Twilight fans, the gals who take the Sex and the City bus tour, the Real Housewives of anywhere… Don’t ask me, fellas, I’m as confused as you are.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Cleaning out the Hell Mouth (Not a Metaphor)

Writing is a more complicated process than most people think.  Many readers certainly come to the conclusion that there is a lot of me in my Selina, and of course there is.  It doesn’t stop there, however.  There’s a lot of me in Bruce, in Alfred, in Eddie and Harvey, in Talia, Whiskers, Sly, Luthor, Ivy and Ubu.  All the characters come out of the 9th circle of the Dee brain. 

One of the details I do share with Selina is a hell mouth closet.  It is not a metaphor, it is – or was – all too real.  Last week, I cleaned it out.  Again, this is not a metaphor.  This was a very real exercise in sifting through clutter, throwing out stuff, and sneezing a lot.  I am happy to say I have a hell mouth no more.  Yay for the nice walkable path down the center of the storage bins, which could be thinned a little more if I want to spend a month on ebay, but I don’t.  So for now, we’re good.

Except for one thing: comics.  All the comics remain out here in the non-closet world.  Those from the closet and those that were never returned to it after being pulled for reference in this fic or that.  They’re going to be here for a week or two.  Some to be filed or refiled, some to get broken down into smaller boxes.  Some will be going into their first box from the land of “stack and drawer”   It’s going to be interesting.  When it’s over, there’s another smaller closet I have my eye on (not a hell mouth, we’ll just call it Jersey).  Once the comic boxes are arranged, I’m hoping to purge its contents and put the boxes in there. 

What does any of this mean for Cat-Tales?  Well, there could be an upswing in silver age influence if I get to reading as I work.  I don’t think Selina will be cleaning out her hell mouth again.  She says once was enough for that kind of thing.  So long as Catwoman has one and only one origin, she sees no need for more than one voyage of discovery into that closet.   That just leaves the sneezing.  Some character sneezing his head off could have enormous comic relief possibilities, but it’s unlikely I’m ready to see the funny since it was only about 72 hours ago I was the one doing the sneezing.  Still, one of these days, somebody… probably Oswald.  Heh.

So that’s the art follows life side of the equation.  Life also follows life, and there is going to be some metaphorical closet cleaning too.  Because the long, hot summer is drawing to a close and not only are we a little backed up on Cat-Tales, there is a certain backlog on blogging.  I’m hoping to get them all out of the way in a few quick entries. 

You have been warned.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Harvey Pekar Dead at 70

One of the real annoyances with the fustercluck that is DC Comics of the last decade-plus is the scope of their wrong ideas.  It wasn't just a particular writer here or a specific storyline there.  It was an all-encompassing atmosphere of WRONG, a virtual monsoon where ALL decisions and attitudes were doomed to fail because they were built on core principles that were faulty.  

A perfect example was Will Pfeifer's passive-aggressive attempt to paint any alterntaive to the East End goggle-whore excrement as boring.  It went something like "Panel 1: Selina pours coffee.  Panel 2: close up on the handle."

Telling example, as that cup of coffee is certainly an emblem of real life, an aspect of storytelling which eludes the year long crossover crowd.  "Realism" is not making everyone a psycho, a pedophile, a prostitute, or a serial killer. Realism is drawing those links between the fictional creation on the page and the living people reading it.  Bruce Wayne shaves in the morning.  It doesn't negate the fantastic larger-than-life stuff, it grounds it in something we can all relate to.

Harvey Pekar is dead at 70.  He wrote the autobiographical comic American Splendor, but more than that, he saw potential in the comic medium to tell stories beyond pulp horror and fantasy.

Pekar felt that the medium could be put to wider use, and he played with panels as a storytelling vehicle for more than a quarter of a century.

Without men like him, we'd be nowhere.  Without those who stretch and explore, who fiddle with the dials and see what something can actually DO beyond whatever we've been doing, without those guys, we'd be absolutely nowhere.  We'd still be in the trees.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The week... Oh for Bast Sake! NOW WHAT?

Okay then, so much happened in Cat-Tales last week I didn’t even manage to get a blog out. I had another chance to play my friend’s Lego Batman game, and as Classic Catwoman, I opened a can of whoopass the goggled pretender—not once but many times, shocking my friend with the violence of a purple cat crossed. It would have been a very cute and entertaining entry, but nobody got to read it because I was more than occupied prepping for the big rollout over the weekend. In case you haven’t seen it:

• The website got a makeover, including some spiff video wallpaper that did not shoot or edit itself.
  
• Armchair Detective and Not My Kink are out for Kindle and Mobi. 
  
• Cat-Tales opened a virtual Visitor Center in Second Life (otherwise known in these parts as the TBA that ate Tokyo).
• Shane Sahr, the rockstar bartender at Seattle’s famous Tini Bigs Martini Bar, released a quartet of Cat-Tales Cocktails that are too sinfully indulgent to be believed. 
  

Now, that’s a lot to get ready, particularly when one of my clients had a press thing and needed a little extra web-work himself. Pulled it off though, got everything together, produced the triple launch without a hitch. Got some nice screenshots of the visitor center, got a new headshot of myself as a pixilated person IN the visitor center, got pictures of the criminally indulgent Cat-Tales Cocktails that should have you all on a plane to Seattle just to order one of these babies. I was all set to get up this morning write up a killer entry about the whole thing when…

Sean Hayes… dressed as Spiderman… singing Don’t Rain on My Parade

Picture a close-up on Chris with a strange little twitch above her right eye. "That’s… Sean Hayes… That’s… Radio City Music Hall… That’s…"

I’m a theatre-gal, folks. Remember
Reputation?  It takes a certain kind of mind to come up with an idea like "Cat-Tales: An Evening with Catwoman", and that’s a mind who’s spent an awful lot of time backstage. I’m also hip deep in comic book superheroes. Sean Hayes hosting the Tony Awards, covering Streisand, dressed as Spiderman, that’s not something someone like me can me can just IGNORE!  For the love of God and Stan Lee, that’s like… for 30 years we’ve all assumed the ’66 Batman was lightning in a bottle, a product of time and place that, if there is justice in the universe, should never be attempted again. But Sean Hayes? Don’t Rain on My Parade? CAMP LIVES, folks. Superhero Camp is alive and well and heading for the Lunt-Fontane.

And y’know what? I’m fine with it. Perhaps the most resilient aftereffect of Miller on the Bat mythos and comic books in general is this overblown seriousness. Maybe it’s not as corrosive to the soul as the other stuff, but it is every bit as damaging to the genre as a whole. It simply isn’t necessary to take this all so f-ing seriously 24/7/365.  It is permissible to lighten up and have a little goddamn fun, and by NOT doing so, a lot of people who would be fans are shoo'd away - because unlike the fanboys who keep enabling this crap, we demand our our entertainment make us FEEL GOOD. The new Brave and the Bold cartoon gets that.  The DC vs Marvel guys on YouTube certainly get it.  Hell, even the uber-realistic Nolan movies get it.  Look at Liam Neason’s face when Bruce finally makes his costumed entrance in Batman Begins. They get it.  They ALL get it.

Perhaps that's why Batman can thrive in movies, in cartoons, in games, and (humbly) in prose fiction, in everywhere EXCEPT the comics medium where he began, is because those guys are the only ones locked into this mindset that Batman is a serious-fucking-business. Maybe if we can just get them to unclench, to embrace the lip twitch and all that it implies, there’s hope.  If not, we can just keep showing this:

and get days of free entertainment watching them try to prevent their heads from exploding.  That could be fun too.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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From the mailbag: Just trying to help

I don't think it's betraying any confidences to reveal that some of the fans who email me have a less-than-flattering opinion of today's comic reader.  The general consensus is that anyone who would part with actual money for /insert the atrocity of your choice/ needs to be told things that, in our day, were considered too obvious to mention.  To that end:

Do not...

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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When you wish upon a star...

I was once a little girl who went to the movies and saw that big, gilded storybook opening at the start of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  I grew up with all those classics where, political correctness be damned, a Prince Charming arrives in the final reel to right the wrong, slay the dragon, save the princess and generally bring about the Happily Ever After. 

As I grew up, I’ve become as cynical as most adults about those childhood tales, but every few years the godspark of great storytellers weaving great stories worked their magic.  The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story (Yes, I knew it was more Pixar than Disney), Wall-E (Ditto)… I was pixie-dusted all over again.  But losing myself in a great story is different from still believing in the fairy tale rescue of a Prince Charming.  Until today.  Prince Charming is wearing mouse ears…

First look: Marvel Comics' 'heroes will be heroes again'
Marvel superheroes are leaving the dark side.

After seven years of grim and grimmer story lines, including a superhero "civil war" that pitted Iron Man against Spider-Man and the death of Captain America, Marvel Comics will usher in a more optimistic "Heroic Age" approach in May.

"Heroes will be heroes again," says Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada. "They've gone through hell and they're back to being good guys — a throwback to the early days of the Marvel Universe, with more of a swashbuckling feel."  --Full story, USA Today 

Anyone who wishes to believe Joe Quesada, the man who mandated the Peter Parker/MJ split (since y’know, happiness isn’t realistic), that this sudden appearance of a storytelling sensibility in a medium where it has been lacking for more than a decade has nothing at all to do with the new player in town, have I got a deal for you.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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