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beccaelizabethIt's always about the first gens.
Which pulls the heroic age ever further into the modern era and distorts our place in history.
It's like they're saying nobody before this ever thought to make a stand. Sure there's Captain America, but he gets like two hours in the past. Everyone else is origin movies, set in the moment of production. However many times they have to reboot a title, it's always origin movies, because movies are about the most important day of your life and that seems definitive to movie makers. Which is bull, because there's a lot of most important days. Sure there's the day you choose your career, but there's also the day you choose your wife, your partner, your children, your successor.
When I was reading comics the first time I identified so hard with Robin. Because he's not even the first Robin. He's stepping into a role held previously by giants and martyrs, and he has to make it work, because Batman needs a Robin. Robin at that point held himself responsible for Batman's mental health. He was pretty sure Batman couldn't go it alone. And I internalised that so much that I watch the movie versions of Batman and they're all crazy, they're just Lone!Dark!Bats! and he's off doing his thing alooooone like dark vengeance is a life sustaining thing, and he does it for years. And that was never true in the comics. He was alone only a very short time before he met Robin and realised that was the light he needed to keep him balanced. He needed someone to protect as well as someone to avenge, he needed someone at his back while he fought so many people trying to stab him in it. He could not do it alone.
Movies? Lone!Grim!Dark! ... or bat nipples. I realise that series went rather wrong, but it was not the simple presence of Robin that did it.
My favourite legacy characters are Blue Beetle. I never read much about Blue Beetle the first, he's from a much earlier era. He was a college teacher and his student took up the mantle when he died. Ted Kord wears a different uniform, with more modern materials, but when he dreams and in the back of his mind he's always wearing the heavier chainmail of his predecessor. And then Ted dies, and the next person to find the Beetle steps into the role and has to learn about the legacy. He puts up a banner, what would Ted Kord do? And much as I love Ted, I love that someone picked up this name, this in-universe at best B list name, and realised it was a legacy to live up to.
Reading comics I always identified with the young ones stepping into their elders role, but growing up I got to see the even younger ones coming up behind them, aspiring to be them, however much of a hot mess they might feel sometimes, determined to do better this time.
That feels like a more respectful role. Because there has always been someone before us, standing for what we believe in, dedicating their lives to some level of the good fight. And we have to hope there will always be someone after us, maybe not having to fight, but just as dedicated.
Movies? Erase history. To make their hero stand out.
Getting real tired of that.
Batman wasn't even first gen in the comics. He was inspired by the Justice Society before him, or by Zorro, or a million other things. But he's more famous and more useful as a leader and mentor, his skills multiplied over a whole Bat family.
As the MCU goes on it is doing something interesting with legacy and history, but mostly by showing it has been deliberately erased in universe. Ant Man makes it clearest, where he has to call himself a propaganda trick, and pass the skills on to someone new. But even Tony Stark never knew the work his father did, and generations of SHIELD happened in the shadows, erasing the contributions of, thus far, women, disabled people, people of color. Which is interesting, but really depressing.
I want to see the legacies. The multi generation inspirations. Especially the women who inspired women, Black Canary like her mother before her, or the people of color who have been fighting the good fight since forever.
Because otherwise they're doing the same thing to superheroes as gets done to women in science fiction, to pick just one of a bazillion fields of achievement, where each generation of writers is new! strange! different!, having ignored everyone before. It makes each 'new' person of diversity prove themselves from scratch, as if the white guy default really was the only one that ever stood there. And they never have been. They're always standing on the shoulders of giants, and those giants didn't look like them.
Give me that universe, the one where we've always been there, just like here.
And let the stories unfreeze, cause you can't hold back the rest of the world by propping up your white boys.
Which pulls the heroic age ever further into the modern era and distorts our place in history.
It's like they're saying nobody before this ever thought to make a stand. Sure there's Captain America, but he gets like two hours in the past. Everyone else is origin movies, set in the moment of production. However many times they have to reboot a title, it's always origin movies, because movies are about the most important day of your life and that seems definitive to movie makers. Which is bull, because there's a lot of most important days. Sure there's the day you choose your career, but there's also the day you choose your wife, your partner, your children, your successor.
When I was reading comics the first time I identified so hard with Robin. Because he's not even the first Robin. He's stepping into a role held previously by giants and martyrs, and he has to make it work, because Batman needs a Robin. Robin at that point held himself responsible for Batman's mental health. He was pretty sure Batman couldn't go it alone. And I internalised that so much that I watch the movie versions of Batman and they're all crazy, they're just Lone!Dark!Bats! and he's off doing his thing alooooone like dark vengeance is a life sustaining thing, and he does it for years. And that was never true in the comics. He was alone only a very short time before he met Robin and realised that was the light he needed to keep him balanced. He needed someone to protect as well as someone to avenge, he needed someone at his back while he fought so many people trying to stab him in it. He could not do it alone.
Movies? Lone!Grim!Dark! ... or bat nipples. I realise that series went rather wrong, but it was not the simple presence of Robin that did it.
My favourite legacy characters are Blue Beetle. I never read much about Blue Beetle the first, he's from a much earlier era. He was a college teacher and his student took up the mantle when he died. Ted Kord wears a different uniform, with more modern materials, but when he dreams and in the back of his mind he's always wearing the heavier chainmail of his predecessor. And then Ted dies, and the next person to find the Beetle steps into the role and has to learn about the legacy. He puts up a banner, what would Ted Kord do? And much as I love Ted, I love that someone picked up this name, this in-universe at best B list name, and realised it was a legacy to live up to.
Reading comics I always identified with the young ones stepping into their elders role, but growing up I got to see the even younger ones coming up behind them, aspiring to be them, however much of a hot mess they might feel sometimes, determined to do better this time.
That feels like a more respectful role. Because there has always been someone before us, standing for what we believe in, dedicating their lives to some level of the good fight. And we have to hope there will always be someone after us, maybe not having to fight, but just as dedicated.
Movies? Erase history. To make their hero stand out.
Getting real tired of that.
Batman wasn't even first gen in the comics. He was inspired by the Justice Society before him, or by Zorro, or a million other things. But he's more famous and more useful as a leader and mentor, his skills multiplied over a whole Bat family.
As the MCU goes on it is doing something interesting with legacy and history, but mostly by showing it has been deliberately erased in universe. Ant Man makes it clearest, where he has to call himself a propaganda trick, and pass the skills on to someone new. But even Tony Stark never knew the work his father did, and generations of SHIELD happened in the shadows, erasing the contributions of, thus far, women, disabled people, people of color. Which is interesting, but really depressing.
I want to see the legacies. The multi generation inspirations. Especially the women who inspired women, Black Canary like her mother before her, or the people of color who have been fighting the good fight since forever.
Because otherwise they're doing the same thing to superheroes as gets done to women in science fiction, to pick just one of a bazillion fields of achievement, where each generation of writers is new! strange! different!, having ignored everyone before. It makes each 'new' person of diversity prove themselves from scratch, as if the white guy default really was the only one that ever stood there. And they never have been. They're always standing on the shoulders of giants, and those giants didn't look like them.
Give me that universe, the one where we've always been there, just like here.
And let the stories unfreeze, cause you can't hold back the rest of the world by propping up your white boys.