Can Someone Get Me Off This Planet, Please? Episode # 1,793: White Guilt

So, I don't even know why I do this any more, but I'm looking at CBR and see that Comics Should Be Good decided to review all 52 of the new DC books.  I decided to take a peek mostly because I'm leaning toward trying out Supergirl but I'd like a couple of outside opinions before I plunk down the money for it.  Fine.

Greg Burgas reviews the books, and then at the bottom of each review, and I swear to you I'm not making this up, he fucking counts speaking parts for minority characters.  As though that were something any healthy human would be interested in.  As though that were something anybody wanted, needed.  As though that were beneficial in any way. 

Someday you'll atone, Greg

And just so you know, a couple of minorities get top billing, and the rest of us can go fuck ourselves, I guess.  If you're black, or hispanic, or have a uterus, or you're known to be gay - than you ma'am, are a precious commodity.  You get your own count.  Now, I'm a white guy, so I'm tallied as well, but not for the same reasons.  As usual, I'm the unspoken but well understood evil mastermind holding the rest of you back, which is why the counting is necessary, right? 

I'm pretty used to that bullshit, by the way, so that's not really what has me upset.  I just don't understand what the Burgas agenda is.  Was it mandated that way from an editor?  I guess he thinks somewhere out there Immanuel Kant is collecting karma tokens for him, and maybe this will help pay off some of the evil he was saddled with when he had the audacity to be born white.  Who can say?

I don't know if he recognizes how pointless, counter-productive, and ridiculous it is to spotlight a couple of sects worthy of our current pity and attention, while the rest get prodded into the "other" cattle car.  If you're Jewish?  Fuck you, your pain don't rate.  You're in the "other" box.  American Indian?  Nah, that's old news.  The ol' Trail of Tears goes in the "other" crate, with the rest of the has-beens of Pity City. 

SUPER.

How about fat people?  Nope.  Fuck you, too.  We're hyper focused on race, sexuality, and gender at the moment, so if you'd just be a sweetie and park your fat ass in the "other" box for now?  If you can fit, I mean.  Thanks.  Thanks so much.  I doubt Burgas was even counting fat people when he did his charting.  He must be a raging Body Typist, (insert horror here!) and I a very holy figure for mentioning it.  Yes, that sounds right.

The whole thing is so ludicrous, and tired, and weak, and banal, and is it getting us anywhere?  I think I could live with being The Real Bad Guy every day of my life if I thought it might make a difference.

Not Super - DCs rampant glassesism!

How about people with glasses?  I don't remember too many of those in my new 52s.  I guess Clark Kent does, but when he goes Super, he's glasses free.  Shit.... I wear glasses.  Does that mean that I'm not super?  Is DC telling me that I'm not super in their super secret agenda of hate and intolerance? Am I under-represented as well?  Could I... please be a victim, too, huh? HUH?   Please?  Please?  PLEASE CAN I?  I'd like to paint myself as a victim like everybody else, that sounds ever so healthy.

Let me get this straight.  The operating philosophy is that we'd like to create a world which recognizes only the sublime ineffable special snowflake inside of us, and leave that extraneous and superfluous skin stuff behind.  How shall we create that world?  I know - lets hyper-obsess over the extraneous and superfluous skins stuff, and count speaking parts for a handful of Premier Gold Club minorities!  That should work, right?  I mean, we didn't completely subvert our entire philosophy by jamming attention into the exact area we claim to disavow, did we?  Oh...we did?  Ah.  Shit.

You can't do that chart right, folks.  In order to do it right, you have to shed your crocodile tears for all the minorities, and what will become painfully obvious in the process is that everybody is a fucking minority for some reason or another.  Life sucks.  Things are tough all over.  You don't like it?  Good!  That's called....wait for it....being human.  I'm human, too.  I know that's hard to recognize over my vitriol and the fact that you've been trained from the cradle to hate me, and I've been trained from the cradle to hate myself.

It's not helping.  White Guilt sounds awfully good until you get to the fine print where it doesn't work.  DC isn't keeping you down, folks.  Can we let that ridiculous fantasy go, please?  In 2011, DC will give you whatever you will buy, in whatever flavor.  That's the truth.  Buy the books you like and stop making check marks and putting people into stupid boxes, will you?  You're killing me over here.  Yeesh.   

- Ryan

DCnU: Preliminary Returns!

I walked into Hot Comics in New Hope today with yearning anticipation in my heart, which is unusual for me.  Usually it's just quiet rage.  Now, I wasn't expecting Geoff Johns to hand me a slice of pizza or anything like that.  This is flyover country, not Midtown Comics.  I get that.

But maybe, just maybe, I thought I might find a small avalanche of people inside.  Or old regulars, even.  Hot Comics is the joint where Baby Mike used to participate in Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club, you know?

Instead what I found was Rasul, Mike, and one other customer.  Rasul had the Thundercats playing on his laptop, and other than that it was quiet as a grave in there.  There were plenty of copies of Justice League # 1 on the rack, sans poly-bag.  I don't know if that means that DC ditched the poly-bag idea, or if Hot Comics just removed them.  Either way, I think it was a fantastic idea to have that bright cover showing and not a sheaf of plastic.

Granted, this one tiny comic shop just outside the City That God Forgot is not an indicative microcosm of the larger world.  But still, I couldn't help but feel the wind come out of Schrodinger's Cat this morning.  I walked in there at 11:15am, they'd been open for an hour, this was not only Wednesday, it was goddamn NEW DCnU WEDNESDAY, {BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!}and it was just business as usual.  Or less.  Probably less.

I asked Mike and Rasul if they'd seen any new faces in the shop looking for that JLA book.  They saw one guy..  "And he didn't end up getting anything."  Yikes.

Muy disapointante.  I'm not going to comment on either the Justice League # 1 or the Flashpoint finale yet, because believe it or not, we will be discussing these when we record Chronic Insomnia # 201 tomorrow night.  So.  Stay tuned for that - should be available bright and early on Friday morning!

- Ryan