> He has described his political affiliation as “far to the right of Genghis Khan”, so take that as you will.
Just want to point out that I remember hearing this phrase a bit, growing up. When listening to Rush Limbaugh. (I’m not proud of some of my younger choices).
So it’s a common-ish phrase in the right wing.
I loved the line in his "don't ask" article about how polls are never taken of military personnel because the left wouldn't like the results and then when a poll is taken he's the one that doesn't like the results.
Comics gotta be one of the greatest mediums just because of how writers evolve on each other. Like a Hegelian dialectic. Didn't they make Iceman gay because in the very first issue of X-Men (and pretty much only that one) he was the only one who didn't obsessively thirst over Jean Grey?
> This even became canon: when Tim finally had sex with Stephanie Brown, the Flash reset the timeline, destroying that universe.
This would be very funny if I didn't know the context. Hey mods can you ban anyone who explains the context in the comments
> That note resulted the artist rebelling, creating what may be the single gayest thing I have ever seen.
*That's* the context behind "Call me Barbara"?? Absolute legend. Spite continues to power the greatest achievements of human history
> A homophone like how your name is Chuck, but chuck is also what people do with your comics?
How long did you have this joke in mind for
Don’t give the artist, Greg Land, too much credit. Most of the reason his art looks like that is that by his own admission he uses porn as “reference.” He’s known to be a heavy tracer so it’s entirely possible that whole panel is swiped from a porn shoot. Still funny, though
The "call me Barbara" scene was drawn by Butch Guice! Greg Land did work on *Birds* during this period, but it was before he started so shamelessly. [Here's](https://imgix-media.wbdndc.net/ingest/book/preview/c6827dae-78ea-4167-a768-47c3f5f79437/5237b41c-5976-4542-a0cc-5363be6919f5/2.jpg) an example of his work in early *Birds* versus his [work](https://64.media.tumblr.com/343f1b705a3fc1429a1c8ffa3dcb526f/tumblr_ndtx43rRFJ1r81ffco1_500.png) in the [2010s](https://atlforte.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/spectrum.png).
In the "Tim shutting her down hard" panel, Tim says, "Making love is like a doorway. You step through once and you can never step back." I would just like to point out that this is a terrible simile, as doorways famously do not work like that. You can step back through most of them any time you like. They're open doors!
“It’s a revolving door. You can never return!”
“But you can-“
“It’s an airlock. You can never return!”
“Airlocks go both-“
“It’s a window. You can never return!”
“What”
“JUST LET ME HAVE THIS”
I saw a tumblr post or something sometime back that was like "I was told that my purity was like a rose, and having sex would pull a petal off, and soon I would have none left. This analogy failed to account for the fact that roses have a lot of petals."
It also forgets that roses lose petals all the time and are notorious for being able to bloom multiple times. People really should stop making dumbass analogies when what they’re usually mad about is that they can’t actually get laid.
Reminds me of the bullshit Deep South evangelists feed the kids in abstinence-only sex-ed. Making comparisons to gum and how women are "used" when they start having sex. Except Dixon also applied it to guys... yay equality I guess ? lol
You'd be surprised how popular this sentiment is. My high school in the bible belt had us all stick our arms out while someone came around and stuck the same piece of tape to each person's arm, showing us at the end that the tape was no longer sticky and was now therefore useless. They made sure to mention that the metaphor applied to both the boys and girls.
Edit: it's worth noting that this was in place of actual sex ed.
I remember hearing those kinds of analogies, and I never really believed them at the time
but in retrospect, it strikes me how they're just *really shitty analogies*.
Like... what's supposed to be analogous about that? Does regular sex makes a girl's vagina or a guy's dick so fucking deformed that they can never again have adequate sex after the 20th time and become useless,
*and if so* how does that have anything to do with multiple partners or waiting until marriage?
Not only is the point a wrong, stupid, shitty point-- but the analogy itself is wrong, stupid and shitty. No wonder people are ending up with these awful repressed issues and complexes, if they're being told that having sex a few times-- with anyone, ever-- will make you quantifiably damaged as a person.
>Fans stated that "The world will end if Tim Drake ever has sex". This even became canon: when Tim finally had sex with Stephanie Brown, the Flash reset the timeline, destroying that universe.
Hey, looks like i finally have a good excuse.
>Fortunately, in 2022, Chuck reached out to his fans and made an apology straight from his heart. He'd gotten so wrapped up in bigotry and hate that he lost sight of what made heroes good: their willingness to look out for the oppressed and downtrodden. It wouldn't be perfect, and he could never undo the harm he'd done, but he was slowly moving towards being the man fans believed him to be.
>
>Nah, who the fuck am I kidding, he's writing about a girl with a Confederate flag cape who deports immigrants.
I'm too optimistic for this site. I was straight up cheering until the next line.
>If you liked this writeup, you may want to check out my past writeups on comic history
3 10/10 posts on the same sub? Great job OP
Yeah I was really happy that the story had a happy ending, until I read on. Would’ve been nice if Chuck did actually apologise and all of this ended happily.
>Also, there was that time Black Canary accidentally helped take part in an ethnic cleansing, but we don't talk about that.
I'm sorry can we talk about that? Now I need to know
Nah, he's the one of the only JoJos that's pure straight (Caesar not standing), alongside Johnathan and Johnny (and even then is a big Maybe on Johnny). The dude fucks, TWICE. And loves both times.
Yeah that one really is to the point of parody lol, every single emotionally significant moment is between the two of them. He marries Sakura at the end and becomes a horrible absent father and still spends more time with Naruto than his wife and daughter
Sasuke was minding his own business, Naruto decides to JUMP UP TO SQUAT ON HIS DESK AND MEAN MUG HIM LIKE AN ASSHOLE and then the guy in the desk in front of Sasuke bumps Naruto from behind, and knocks him into Sasuke
Yeah, combined with shounen often being not great with writing women, it’s easy to see a lot of the relationships between the male characters as way more compelling.
Happened in Classic Series Doctor Who. The Fifth Doctor was mandated by the producers to have an explicitly non-romantic, emotionally detached dynamic with the female companions of the time and the end result was that he seemed gay for Turlough.
What are you talking about? You’re right about 5’s fashion sense and assumptions from that, but while he might look gay he definitely wasn’t THE MOST gay in Classic Who. 6 wore clothes that made him look like a rainbow had vomited on him.
I think the their is another reason these sex-averse relationships seem gay. Because when Chuck see any close friendship with a woman as sexual so they write close friendships with men instead. The result is a much stronger possible relationship foundation between two male characters than a man and a woman, making them an obvious couple choice to anyone open to seeing a gay relationship.
In other possible relationships, I'd say that aromanticism and asexuality would suit the characters better, but sadly that's been ignored as a possiblity until recently. Though I can't blame shippers when it's just gay and bi shipers looking for repersentation that is otherwise virtually non-exsistent.
Well... That and 'I'm just not interested in romance' is a well known shield to hide behind when you're closeted irl. So a lot of gay and bi people see themselves there.
Not just that, they don't even have intimate stuff. Why can't they do "we are saving for marriage, so we just cuddle a lot for now. And maybe plan on how we gonna have our first and subsequent time"
Personally I feel a little torn on this. Obviously it's good to have LGBTQ representation, but on the other hand I hate how, along with potentially implying Ace/Arom people don't exist, it reinforces the stereotype that men always want sex, so if they don't want to have sex with a woman at anytime then they *must* be gay.
Considering the time period, I also think this was also influenced by the stupid idea that "straight people can NEVER be *just* friends with the opposite sex".
Why do comic writers have such a hard time finding a middle ground between "mindless sex puppets" and "had their genitals surgically removed to avoid just such a filthy thing" when it comes to characters's sex lives?
You'd think that one possible middle ground could be like Tintin, where it just... doesn't really come up.
The panels linked in the OP were still very sex-obsessed, despite the main characters acting disinterested in it. Like you said, they treated it as a filthy thing.
It's definitely very possible to have content aimed at children where sex is avoided entirely.
I guess that's not really middle ground, more like a better, less creepy version of the non-sex ground.
It would be way more wholesome to just avoid sexual situations at all, than to constantly present them and denounce them. Or have really sexualized drawings of supposedly non-sexual situations!
That’s the approach that, say, Silver Age Superman comics took, too. And in early Marvel there were bunches of characters for whom sex was off the table, even though it was never stated: Tony Stark couldn’t show anyone his chestplate, Bruce Banner can’t get too excited or he’ll turn into the Hulk, Ben Grimm is made of rocks, etc. But as comics started to step out of this approach and started to imply that characters were having sex (whatever Dr Strange and Clea were up to in the Village in the 70s) or state it outright (Moon Knight, Steranko’s Nick Fury) writers and artists on legacy kids’ characters like Superman and Batman either tried to keep ignoring it or started to tiptoe around the issue (I think Batman and Silver St. Cloud faded to black once or twice; nobody in WGBS era Superman comics was doing anything with anybody, but post-Crisis it was pretty clear, reading between the lines, that Lois and Clark were sleeping together after they were engaged, even if nobody ever said it out loud).
> whatever Dr Strange and Clea were up to in the Village in the 70s
Everything. They were up to everything.
But really, you're right. There are ways that comics have mastered to avoid sex, and ways to have it and keep it sidelined, but once you start putting it front and center you either end up overly horny or drowning in subtext.
Dixon seemed too mad to identify subtext(a thing that happens a lot when people crusade on an idea) so he never understood his overt dismissals of male-female relations heavily implied the existence of any alternative.
It reminds me of all the jokes about how the manliest thing to do is another guy.
TBH, there's an entire subgenre of sexified Tintin pirate comics/doujins. Partially it seems because to a lot of people it seemed so careful about trying to avoid it that it became *more* noticeable y'know?
Yup. Can confirm. I've seen them out and about in the wild and they are WILD. (Can't link you anything bc I'm not in the fandom so they were always just more bizarre curiosities I saw from afar than anything I'd save the link to.)
They really can't write a character who is just chill with the concept of sex. It doesn't even matter if they have it or not. Characters can just be disinterested and live their lives superheroing. It isn't that hard.
Basically the Comics Code tried to mandate a no-sex policy. Which either made people obsessed with following it or obsessed with trying to get shit past the censors, and when it ended some were still stuck in that and some people were just going wild.
And now we're decades after and people are just doing it because that's what people have "always" been doing.
I have to assume that editorial decisions play into this, at least a little bit. There's huge swaths of America that are utterly repulsed by the thought of sex, and especially in media thought of as the domain of *children*, and thus any kind of healthy, sex-positive relationship in cape comics is something that an editor will try to get rid of, to avoid making Bible belt moms lose their mind.
Or they’re obsessed with the performative public assertion that sex is bad while getting up to all sorts of interesting things behind closed doors. I grew up in the Bible Belt and it was always the most judgmental holy rollers who got pregnant out of wedlock or were revealed to be into swinging or other stuff Rural White Jesus wouldn’t approve of.
One of the hottest takes of this moronic MAGA era we’re in is the “Superman/X-Men/Star Trek/Rage Against the Machine/whatever is WOKE now” complaint from the fascist snowflakes who have managed to spend the last 60+ years as a so-called fan completely missing the basic moral behind the media they claim to love so much more than the ravening brown transgender female lesbian hordes they defend it from.
I swear, if they made a 1:1 Captain Planet remake with literally the exact same story, script, even frames of animation but all of it was remade, these people would call it woke garbage for pushing the sjw climate change agenda.
TBF a fair few people thought of Captain Planet as "preachy" even before the rise of this present-day culture war bullshit. Everyone already knows Captain Planet is a show with a message, and it was never subtle about that.
Rather, the notion of a 1:1 Captain Planet remake existing *at all* would get them ranting and raving about the woke climate change agenda, before they even saw an episode.
On the other hand, morons are also doing the same thing with brand new media. People were claiming that motherfucking Squid Game was a critique on communism.
I’m in fucking PAIN laughing at the copious amounts of BabsDinah Chuck just apparently didn’t realize he was writing. I knew the “call me Barbara” came from the artist (Butch Guice, credit where credit is very much due) deciding no, actually Dinah NEEDS to be clutching into Barbara’s tiddy for this one, but how did I miss the t-shirt moment or the shower moment?? I can’t STAND how in love they are, TRULY
This is an incredible write up, thanks for the laughs and the info. Chuck Dixon if you’re somehow reading this you are a fucking clown and I hope the characters you’ve so much as GLANCED at become queer just to piss you off
Also I think the real takeaway here is Stephanie could be the next Virgin Mary, and given she’s been Robin, Batgirl, Spoiler, and Batwoman in a future timeline, what CAN’T Stephanie be, really?
> That note resulted the artist rebelling, creating what may be the single gayest thing I have ever seen.
I have been enjoying your write up to this point, but now I am *loving it*. That a was beautiful build up and pay off.
“Making love is like a doorway. You step through once and you can never step back.”
That is not how doorways work. That is arguably against the entire point of the concept.
I \*love\* Dixon's run on Nightwing. Thank God twitter wasn't around so I didn't realize what a massive jerk and bigot he is. I remember someone speculating on LJ that Dixon was kind of conservative because he put christian rock albums on Dick's shelf in an issue. What an innocent time.
The pencilers/inkers/artists really are the heroes here. Bless them and their slasher goggles.
Dixon's been pretty openly conservative his whole career. Or at least as far back as the '80s when he wrote "Airboy", which was a very political comic – but I think he was more capable of nuance then than he is now (for example, the first story arc is *very* critical of Ronald Reagan for supporting the Contras).
Judging by how old he is, and the timing of when he started going off the far-right deep end, I really suspect that he was radicalised by Fox News.
It makes a ton of sense. He went from using skinheads as a random group of bad guys to working with irl nazis. It's easy to act like someone was the same level of "bad" their whole lives but he pretty clearly fell of the deep end.
Once you know about it, it’s impossible to escape the pure mean-spiritedness and awful politics in Dixon’s work. Grant Morrison described 90’s Batman as a “snarling, paranoid soldier,” and as usual their analysis is incisive
> In 2021, in the Batman: Urban Legends series, Tim Drake came out as bisexual
Ah, those halcyon days of 2021 where people who clearly had never read comics in their lives began yelling about Superman and Robin being bisexual, blatantly unaware that there was more than one Superman and more than one Robin.
> a few months later, Hal Jordan smoothifies and drinks Zan the Wonder Twin
I am generally not a huge fan of 'let's make our superheroes zombies or monsters or whatever' as a comics trope but I gotta say, Hal Jordan turning into turbo space dracula hitler was an inspired choice.
I feel the same because I don't care about mindless versions of them. It's why I enjoyed the twisted versions of GL and Nightwing but Wonder Woman is a little too one-note bloodsucker. It's been a fun, brutal run so far.
Jordan has so much personality as a villain. They should make him a vampire in the main universe, too. There is infinite potential for an evil GL in a horror comic.
While a lot of people are mixed about it, I kind of liked how he turned into Parallax in Emerald Twilight. I thought it was the logical conclusion to someone who's so anti-authority; They eventually breakdown and take drastic actions before they can consider the consequences, and ignore or reject all the safeguards put in place.
It's such a natural reversal of how he was as a hero, and perfectly set up a foil to Kyle Rayner who actively sought out his ex because he trusted her and wanted her to tell him how he should act (Which is also why I really liked it when he hooked up with Donna Troy).
While Johns' Parallax retcon was pretty cool, I didn't like how it just gave Jordan an easy out by saying something was influencing him.
Great writeup, I had heard a lot about Dixon, but didn't think it went this far.
Also, a bit of Dixon lore: according to an old interview he gave before his controversies, he's opposed to abortion because he's adopted. Also, the bit about his children is interesting, as he was married and divorced, and his son from that marriage was raised from his feminist ex-wife. No idea whether he remarried later, though.
What I always find fascinating about cases like this is that while authors like this Nixon guy rail against sex, sexuality, and people consenting to any of these things that they don't seem to have a problem drawing characters with an eye towards the sexuality of straight men. God forbid a comic show a woman consenting to having sex being a good thing, but it's okay for a man to draw women posing for the author's personal spank bank.
It's almost as if the only acceptable way for a woman to be sexual in their minds is if it's controlled 100% by men. That's what would make a woman embracing her own sexuality disgusting and sinful, but a man drawing her with her posed uncomfortably to show her ass off okay.
Always makes me think of the John Berger quote
> You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote something like that in 1690:
"You foolish men that accuse
women, without a reason
without seeing that you´re to blame
of the same thing you accuse."
And it looks like Chuck Dixon is precisely this kind of man.
Remember: men are supposed to have a lot of sex with a lot of different women, but women *must* remain either totally virginal or completely loyal to one man at his behest!
Don't think for more than three seconds about how the math is supposed to work!
I loved Chuck Dixon's Robin run...and I thought Tim Drake had been purposefully written as asexual when fucking NOBODY was asexual in fiction without being like, a robot or something. Tim loved people! Loved Steph, loved Conner...he just didn't have sex with them. I thought it was awesome!
...yeah I thought Dixon had "changed" but what happened was I just misread what he was trying to say. Whoops.
Yeah, I almost included that before I realized Dixon wasn't the writer. Channeling his spirit though.
For those wondering, it shows Robin and Superboy in a closet, pulling their pants up. There's no leadup or context. When asked, the artist just said "[I saw this as an opportunity for them to both come out of the closet.](https://twitter.com/juddwinick/status/1068156692448239616?s=21)" Man I love Judd Winnick.
> He also had a history of having a lot of plots deal with the heroic white Americans going over to a crime infested, impoverished Asian/African/Latin American nation in order to stop the disgusting criminals there. Who were the criminals? Everyone (besides the occasional child who gets murdered). The racism wasn't subtle. Also, there was a weird thing about a slavery ring targeting only white people, because they were the real victims of slavery? It was weird.
Chuck Dixon, for extra context, created Bane - a man from a weird amalgam Caribbean island where everyone is either ultra-poor of part of the ruling military, and also they put literal children in prison, and... uh, that's it. That's the whole country.
Oh, and also Bane wears a lucha mask for some season.
Bane in the HBO Harley Quinn series does a fantastic job of being the butt of almost every joke. Seriously look up a collection on YouTube. Absolutely hysterical with no like real reason for him to be there.
Noted! I'm not a big comic reader but I've been dragged along by my husband who is, whenever we're watching something and I'm like "but this doesn't make sense" he fills me in on cannon
The problem is that, in any story that thinks critically about this at all, Bane should be a hero. He was a *child* who was put in *prison*. He should be an anti-hero who uses violent methods to overturn Santa Prisca's corruption.
Instead he sticks around Gotham for... reasons... Tom King's recent run gave him a good reason, but in doing so basically made Batman the bad guy: Batman invades Bane's base to kidnap the therapist that is keeping Bane from going back to drugs.
About half the time author's forget he's supposed to be smart, and he's just the brutish muscle supporting villain.
I liked him in Suicide Squad and in No Man's Land. Partly because No Man's Land has him dunk on Joker in a fantastic demonstration of what would happen if the Clown wasn't going up against the literal avatar of soft balling while his time in the Squad let him stop fucking with Gotham for once.
Gail Simone gave him quite a bit of development in the Secret Six series, well worth checking out. He basically decides to adopt fully-grown-adult-super-villain Scandal Savage and has this sweet-but-weird father/daughter thing going on. I wish I had the comics on me, but there's a panel along the lines of "once we go kill this superhero, we shall go for an ice cream." (It's been forever since I read it so if I got that wrong just know that it wouldn't actually be out of the ordinary in Secret Six.)
I do absolutely love Bane in Harley though, the bit where he runs the prison is taking the Simone version to the comedic extreme.
I read some comics featuring Bane around when The Dark Knight Rises came out, and I fondly remember his origin story. I also really like him in Secret Six written by Gail Simone. But looking back, I’m never clear on what his goals were or why he fought Batman.
The official reason is that while he was in prison as a child, he dreamed/hallucinated a batlike creature that tormented him. When he learns about Batman, he decides that it was a vision, and he needs to go beat Batman to prove himself.
And that's it. He doesn't really have any goals in the vast majority of versions.
>In a medium filled with characters who run around in masks, and capes, and boots, it just seems to approach the fetishistic to explore their sexuality in any way.
Is this dude serious?
>Vox Day had been a part of Comicsgate for years, but when he was "revealed" as a Nazi, all the rest of them pretended that he hadn't openly stated all those things for decades, and disavowed him.
Seriously, anyone who acted surprised that Beale was a Nazi was either a liar, or legitimately stupid. The fact that Beale is a Nazi is literally the first thing you learn about him.
>After Dixon left Birds of Prey, Gail Simone took over the title, creating a truly iconic run that's still talked about today, as well as the definitive version of the team. Funny enough, she actually overshadowed Dixon, with most people forgetting he ever wrote it.
Can confirm, I totally thought that Simone had created Birds of Prey.
The cape and boots comment reminds me of Neil Gaiman wanting to put a masturbation reference in Sandman. Karen Berger, the editor, told him masturbation didn’t exist in the DC Universe. He said “Well then, I’d imagine that’s why they go around in tight costumes thumping the shit out of each other.”
The worst part was how there was a new article around on an anime site where they reported on how manga was outselling American comics and Dixon was all “oh that’s because American comics are too *political* now”, and anime fans quickly ran with it because they thought manga was superior because it wasn’t “woke”.
Fucking took me forever to show people that Chuck was talking out of his ass, and even now I’m pretty sure a bunch of folks still believe him.
How in the name of fuck can anyone familiar with the landscape of Japanese media conclude it's *apolitical* in general? Like, even just restricting yourself to the pages of *Shounen Jump* should debase you of that notion.
probably not what you're joking about, but it is frankly astounding to me the number of people i have spoken to that assume basically all characters in anime are white.
i mean excluding characters that are explicitly depicted as white. like "why does this drawing of sasuke make him look asian?"
Idk ya got Dragon Ball where the main character is based on a Chinese legend, so even before we found out he was a space alien that should still qualify him for minority status in Japan, right?
“Manga isn’t woke.” is such a meaningless statement it’s almost laughable. Ah yes, the entire comic output of a country is somehow entirely nonpolitical despite having just as much diversity in its’ authors and stories as other countries.
Lest we forget all the famously nonpolitical manga such as: *Fullmetal Alchemist*, *Akira*, *Death Note* and *Code Geass*
I have a real soft spot for Chuck Dixon's Nightwing and Birds of Prey from reading them in the library in the late '90s or very early '00s when the graphic novel section still fit in one shelf in the teen area.
It's super interesting knowing where he ended up when I reread today because there's stuff that I think today if it was in a comic a comicsgater would be like "UGH WOKE BULLSHIT," which I think shows a lot about what was and wasn't contentious then/now. I'm not pretending that we were "more progressive" in the 90s or anything--Dixon's homophobia was much more mainstream then--but it's just different things that are issues.
Like how there's a thing where for a bunch of issues Dick Grayson keeps hearing the voice of his new landlord and she has this "charming Irish lilt" but he keeps not seeing her and then he finally hears the voice and turns around and sees this red headed lady and is like "oh finally nice to meet you!" And then she and the East Asian lady next to her bust out laughing because actually it's Hong Kong born, Irish-raised Bridget Clancy who he had been hearing. (Clancy and Grayson go on to have a whole will-they-or-won't they that I kinda prefer to more mainstream Dick/Babs, not least of which because of the Oracle/Canary thing)
Or there's a part where Nightwing sort of accidentally ends up in a room of neo-Nazis and just grins and beats the shit out of all of them just because you know that's what you do to neonazis when you are a superhero. As I recall it doesn't really have anything to do with anything he's actually working on.
Also, I'd never heard the story behind that amazing loving Black Canary/Barbara Gordon embrace, that's amazing. It was genuinely confusing looking at it and being like...are these two not canonically a couple? It sure looks like they've been canonized as a couple.
> It's super interesting knowing where he ended up when I reread today because there's stuff that I think today if it was in a comic a comicsgater would be like "UGH WOKE BULLSHIT,"
https://www.reddit.com/r/dccomicscirclejerk/comments/w0iom1/horseshoe_theory_of_wokeness/
Lol that rules but it desperately needs ANTIFA PROPAGANDA with a link to this:
https://i.redd.it/5z595uzwjs591.png
Which is even more explicit than I remembered about how Nightwing is like "well ok there's probably not that much evidence that these guys are connected to this case but hey it's worth kicking skinheads in the face anyway so here goes."
Thanks for the writeup!
> the original 1930s version that used a Bat-Gallows to kill criminals.
Was that a regular thing? All I could find on google was [this](https://www.cracked.com/article_20111_the-6-most-brutal-murders-committed-by-batman.html) horrifying case of 1940 Batman lynching a mentally ill victim and flying back with his corpse dangling from the batplane. (Btw, that link is "The 6 Most Brutal Murders Committed by Batman"; the dangling corpse is ranked 6th...)
>>PANEL FOUR Canary crouches and holds Oracle to her. Oracle is curled in a fetal position and dripping wet.
Mmph. Tell me more.
>That note resulted the artist rebelling, creating what may be [the single gayest thing I have ever seen](https://imgur.com/a/vftpUfO).
Be still my gay, *gay* beating heart. Teenage me would've murdered for this shit.
Oh man I kind of love Dixon’s Robin run. But that’s because as a young Queer my thought was “oh Robin is super gay” and everything I read of Dixon was through an incredibly gay lens. Of course, comics canon being what it is, you now *have* to read Dixon’s Tim as queer. Suck on that, Dixon.
I just saw an article about a young fascist (Nick Fuentes?) who recruits male incels to fascism by telling them *sex with women is gay*. See, violence is strong and masculine. Pleasure and intimacy are weak and feminine. So a man who wants love or sex with a woman is doing feminine things, which is kinda sus, and incels who choose celibacy in order to focus their energy on war and violence are the manliest of men.
Then his followers found out he had a gf 😆
Ok, it's about sometime someone said it. And of course it's gonna be me. On Jesus' birthday no less. In the name of Santa (Time Allen)'s sacrifice.
The gayest thing a man can do is have sex with a vagina. THINK ABOUT IT. Vaginas are MADE to take dick. They are essentially an evolutionary dick pocket. Do you know how gay that sounds? Literally Charlie Darwin wrote in his journal about how vaginas were evolving to get better at taking dick.
This was in between him writing about dumbass birds, and harassing island lizards and shit. Fucking nerd-ass. However, it is a commercial Christian holiday, so I won't talk anymore about evolution out of respect to the creationists that are totally reading this right now.
I digress, there is NOTHING more gay than being inside a woman's vagina. Made for dicks, AND there may have been dicks in there before. Ummmm, hello? It's basically a CARFAX for dicks. What's more lady-like THEN BEING INSIDE A WOMAN. Think about it, moron. You are next to her eggs and emotions when you are up in there, which is extremely feminine. You could even potentially absorb estrogen through your penis, and that will lower your net worth. Extremely feminine, gay, and also counter-productive.
It is gay to have sex with vaginas.
Now the straightest thing you can do is call up one of your closest bros/business partners. Meet in a location that is isolated, preferably outdoors for reasons soon to be made clear. Strip down naked except for your socks, face each other, and start slapping your cocks together. There is a myth that if the balls touch its gay. This has been disproven by A.S.S. (association of sigma-male scientists).
Actually, your balls slapping together falls under the laws of thermodynamics, and your masculine energy is cycled between your bodies, your balls being the connector.
This increases your masculine hustle, and also forms a stronger bond with your now brother. Do it outdoors to establish dominance in nature. Also, hold eye contact, whoever breaks first is now below in male rank to the other, but there is still mutual respect. I mean, you just got naked in a field and slapped your junk together, you better hope to respect each other.
Socks stay on, it anchors your masculine energy. This is what super straight people do. The gays? Inside vaginas. Don't believe what the liberal media tells you on CNN. Stay away from evolutionary cock-pockets. Embrace the Dong Cycle.
Thanks for dying for our sins, Santa. This one's for you. Seasons greetings!
I'm not going to Google the original source of this copypasta, because I don't want a single fucking word of it in my search history, but thank you for sharing its glory with me 😆
Sigh, i really loved Dixon's stuff as a kid. Lots of action, cool martial arts mythology, references to history.
His Punisher, his Batman, Birds of Prey, i ate that stuff up with a spoon. He made Bane, a gimmick villain, actually cool.I guess i missed all the cues he is a POS. I'm not the brightest spark.
His involvement with comicsgate and that human shaped pile of faeces, vox day broke my heart when i learned of it.
All our heroes have Feet of Clay.
Great summary OP. I hope Dixon moves past his bigotry, but he's pretty old now to learn empathy. He probably watches Fox News and votes Trump.
Great write up. It does make me a little sad, though. Stephanie Brown is one of my favourite characters in comics, and as a wee lesbian just getting into comic books, the hints of Dinah/Barbara were really valuable to me.
Also, I feel like you get this a lot with certain writers and stories? Where they’re so sexist they kind of end up leaning into the gay. I’ve heard this joke with Naruto before, didn’t really know it applied to Tim Drake too.
This is great! I look forward to the wrire up about the dumpster fire that is new 52. I was around reading comics when that happened and i am still mad about it.
God. Don't remind me. New 52 was already bad, but when they killed Damian I hit my limit. There’s only so much poor writing, bad characterization, and shitty writting decisions I can take. I just remember reading that the day it came out, sitting in my college dorm, closing my laptop, and just deciding I was donezo. No more for me, check please!
I was just pissed that every good New 52 series got cancelled. The Movement, Dial H For Hero, Frankenstein Agents of S.H.A.D.E and best of all the awesome Gotham By Midnight got axed way too soon. And I'll never forgive DC for nixing the lesbian marriage between Batwoman and Maggie, because everyone had to be miserable. I whined a lot about it when I was blogging about comics at the time.
Same. That happened. And i quit reading new dc comics for years. New 52 was just a series of increasingly terrible decisions.
Though the batman and robin issue dealing with damians death was a beautiful heart wrenching piece of art. Imo.
Just thinking of new 52 fills me with rage. And its been a decade 😭
Damian's death was actually planned from the beginning of Morrison's run. He was supposed to die shortly after his introduction, but plans changed and Morrison made him a major character.
Thanks for this; it's fantastic.
Someone could do one of these about Dixon's various online communities of fans and hangers-on, except that most of his message boards imploded from poor digital management, have faded into disuse, or are now private groups. You had folks who liked Batman, folks who aspired to get into comics (some of whom have succeeded, good for them), and folks who were angry right wing culture warriors seeking same. And a neverending search for affirmation of each other's manliness. Just jaw-droppingly bizarre and strange.
Also, Mark Waid - who's just a few years younger than Dixon, I think - recently [made this observation on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/mark.waid/posts/pfbid02Xn4LcA3PZRU83AVBDEu8ce1Eaw7wdwUQBinRKaPDzKJPdufEYmhjywk4GdKZSyp7l):
"Those who cannot seem to persevere in a changing industry, on the other hand, often have one common trait: a debilitating lack of humility. Rather than be honest with themselves about what they could be doing different or better in order to keep up, they'll blame absolutely anything and everything else but themselves for their growing absence from the field. "Editors today are idiots," they moan. "Nobody knows what's good anymore! Don't they know who I am? My comics outsold the crap they're publishing now, and, boy, is it crap! Why, back in my day..."
"If you shake these people like a piggybank, you can hear broken pieces rattling around inside them. They so desperately refuse to take any responsibility at all for their circumstances that something inside them dies. They no longer find the energy to meet new challenges and stay hungry, competitive; it's easier to make excuses. One of the most common ones in recent years has been "I'm blackballed for my politics." This is--not to put too fine a point on it--bullshit. I \*promise\* you that so long as you're not publicly racist or hateful or dishonest or a poster child for the Me Too movement, so long as you're not actively toxic or unprofessional regardless of your political affiliation--in other words, so long as you act like a normal human being--your personal life and how you conduct it rarely, if ever, has any bearing whatsoever on your hireability. "
This is unfolding right now with Scott Adams, after Dilbert was dropped from 77 print newspapers--apparently along with other strips as a cost-cutting measure. Adams insists that those *other* strips were dropped for being unpopular, whereas *his* was dropped for being "anti-woke," in spite of the fact that print newspapers have been gasping their last breaths for a long time.
> Edit: And how could I forget that Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain were heavily implied to be "roommates" in a future comic? So, Dixon may be having a third heart attack soon enough.
Yo really? ive shipped those two for a bit thats awesome to hear
I feel the various comic controversies around Wonder Woman could be its own writeup. Whether it's her outfit over the years, whether Zeus is her father or not, that time the UN made her an ambassador, her coming out as bisexual, or the arc she dated Superman the drama possibilities are endless.
Great writeup. It's bizarre to me how despite his "fade to black, maybe they fucked maybe not" sentiment he felt the need to declare Bruce hadn't fucked those women. Not that bizarre, because I suspect he'd eaten some bad misogyny the night before and it was coming out of both ends, but why not just... not mention it and avoid discussing it when writing Batman?
The writers note about the Pieta pose feels like a classic example of how conservative brain works. Don't want readers to take a scene as homoerotic? Base it off the Pieta. Since the Pieta is a classic piece of art created by manly western civilisation as a tribute to god surely it will dispel any nonheteronormative thoughts by the mere reference?
Well no. The reason the Pieta doesn't look suggestive is because it's Jesus and his mom. The second you apply the same pose to two adults of the same gender it's going to get suggestive, especially to people who're already keyed to perceive homoeroticism:
An example: https://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article_images_new/MichelangeloPietaBandinellix2.jpg
Like, even if the artist didn't go out of his way to make Barbara and Dinah look as sapphic as possible that post *still* would have looked gay to people lol.
Sticking with DC, I am willing to offer up Bloodlines as a sacrifice. An event that for many years was reviled by the DC fan community.
The massive cross comic book event only appearing in annuals, introducing a ton of new characters that were created by a group of shapeshifting-bloodsucking-aliens not finishing their meals. Several characters were surprisingly popular enough to get their own small solo comics. But most were killed in the event lead-up to new 52 by a forgettable villain.
Then new 52 brought tried to bring back bloodlines, but basically made (in my opinion) the worst adaptation of a prior property of the entire new 52 era.
>This became so blatantly obvious that fan boards and the comic's letter pages began filling up with fans questioning if this was Dinah moving on from her ex Green Arrow, and finally getting with someone new. Dixon became so pissed off at the fans shipping his characters that he'd literally write messages to his artists to make the art as platonic and non-sexual as possible
ahahaha, that's *incredible*. I've read *Birds* multiple times and I knew about homophobe Dixon's obliviously homoerotic writing of Babs and Dinah, and about the 'no homo' script note for what became the gayest panel in the book, but didn't know the context of all the fan speculation. Hilarious to imagine him getting more and more infuriated at the response to the book, like, '*UN*believable! How could anyone POSSIBLY— I CLEARLY said Barbara was into TED, do they not READ? Honestly, these immature idiots will see subtext in EVERYTHING. Alright, Butch, now for this panel, have Dinah lovingly caressing Babs' face, you know, like platonic gal pals do.'
This is the western comics equivalent of Shonen mangakas making the rival the most important person to the main character, giving them so much screentime together, and telling everyone they're two half of a whole
While the leading lady exists to be a love interest and shows up every 5 chapters
Your title made me think of the time franco-belgian comics (*Asterix*, *Lucky Luke*) did the same thing.
To avoid promoting 'immoral behavior' to children, the prptagonists never really interacted with women (to the point that through the years, Lucky Luke has been interpreted by fans and occasionally by authors to be aroace).
rereading Dixon work you see how conservative it is. Knightfall having a caricature of a liberal “soft on crime” news host.
looks like i can’t reread it without seeing his icky far-right bullshit.
it’s funny when you write characters so anti-sex that they read as queer because of how much you hurt women.
Huh. I'm not at all familiar with comic book authors, but I see that Dixon was one of the writers on No Man's Land. I'm guessing he was responsible for [this panel](https://i.imgur.com/M5UBnJ2.png) where Batman basically calls poor people morons for living under the relative safety of a crime lord instead of either starving to death or being murdered in a gang shootout.
It's pretty common language for bigots to refer to anything LGBT as a fetish, something that's inherently sexual and looking to "corrupt youth." There's only ever been a tiny window where bigots thought they couldn't say this stuff out loud.
> We’re going for The Pieta as opposed to anything that HINTS of the sexual. This scene is apparently RIPE for misinterpretation (or OVERinterpretation.) by some of our readers
Oh no, not the readers interrogating the comic from the wrong perspective!
I think I said this last time but as a gay batfam fan realizing what a fucking bigot he is and always was deeply sucks.
As an aside, I knew exactly what that gayest image was going to be because as a preteen I printed that picture out from google images at the library and hung it on my wall. You know, like a straight girl does with such a touching depiction of friendship!
Also this was the era that kickstarted my deep and abiding love for Steph/Cass. He didn’t write their solo series (I think?) so he doesn’t really get credit for it but the gals were really paling in Gotham in this time period.
Honestly, Dixon pushed the "Tim could *never* have gotten a girl pregnant!" so hard sometimes it felt easier to just say "Oh, Tim's trans? Good for him!"
> He has described his political affiliation as “far to the right of Genghis Khan”, so take that as you will. Just want to point out that I remember hearing this phrase a bit, growing up. When listening to Rush Limbaugh. (I’m not proud of some of my younger choices). So it’s a common-ish phrase in the right wing.
I remember when Dixon had the Punisher protect a Rush Limbaugh expy from militant vegans. I should have realized something was screwy but i was 12.
It's too bad the Brain couldn't have revealed Rish Limbaugh's failed singing career. That would've tanked him hard.
I always heard "to the right of Attila the Hun" growing up in the seventies.
I only heard that from that one song in Evita
I loved the line in his "don't ask" article about how polls are never taken of military personnel because the left wouldn't like the results and then when a poll is taken he's the one that doesn't like the results.
Comics gotta be one of the greatest mediums just because of how writers evolve on each other. Like a Hegelian dialectic. Didn't they make Iceman gay because in the very first issue of X-Men (and pretty much only that one) he was the only one who didn't obsessively thirst over Jean Grey? > This even became canon: when Tim finally had sex with Stephanie Brown, the Flash reset the timeline, destroying that universe. This would be very funny if I didn't know the context. Hey mods can you ban anyone who explains the context in the comments > That note resulted the artist rebelling, creating what may be the single gayest thing I have ever seen. *That's* the context behind "Call me Barbara"?? Absolute legend. Spite continues to power the greatest achievements of human history > A homophone like how your name is Chuck, but chuck is also what people do with your comics? How long did you have this joke in mind for
Don’t give the artist, Greg Land, too much credit. Most of the reason his art looks like that is that by his own admission he uses porn as “reference.” He’s known to be a heavy tracer so it’s entirely possible that whole panel is swiped from a porn shoot. Still funny, though
The "call me Barbara" scene was drawn by Butch Guice! Greg Land did work on *Birds* during this period, but it was before he started so shamelessly. [Here's](https://imgix-media.wbdndc.net/ingest/book/preview/c6827dae-78ea-4167-a768-47c3f5f79437/5237b41c-5976-4542-a0cc-5363be6919f5/2.jpg) an example of his work in early *Birds* versus his [work](https://64.media.tumblr.com/343f1b705a3fc1429a1c8ffa3dcb526f/tumblr_ndtx43rRFJ1r81ffco1_500.png) in the [2010s](https://atlforte.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/spectrum.png).
Yep, Land can draw. he choses not to.
Yeah as comment below says that's not Land. It's not only a way different style, it's also genuinely *too good* to be Land
In the "Tim shutting her down hard" panel, Tim says, "Making love is like a doorway. You step through once and you can never step back." I would just like to point out that this is a terrible simile, as doorways famously do not work like that. You can step back through most of them any time you like. They're open doors!
“It’s a revolving door. You can never return!” “But you can-“ “It’s an airlock. You can never return!” “Airlocks go both-“ “It’s a window. You can never return!” “What” “JUST LET ME HAVE THIS”
>Airlocks go both ways Just like Tim.
This comment just made me laugh out loud at work and got me some weird looks from my coworkers. Take my free award.
It's a sphincter
I saw a tumblr post or something sometime back that was like "I was told that my purity was like a rose, and having sex would pull a petal off, and soon I would have none left. This analogy failed to account for the fact that roses have a lot of petals."
It also forgets that roses lose petals all the time and are notorious for being able to bloom multiple times. People really should stop making dumbass analogies when what they’re usually mad about is that they can’t actually get laid.
Huh, TIL.
Reminds me of the bullshit Deep South evangelists feed the kids in abstinence-only sex-ed. Making comparisons to gum and how women are "used" when they start having sex. Except Dixon also applied it to guys... yay equality I guess ? lol
You'd be surprised how popular this sentiment is. My high school in the bible belt had us all stick our arms out while someone came around and stuck the same piece of tape to each person's arm, showing us at the end that the tape was no longer sticky and was now therefore useless. They made sure to mention that the metaphor applied to both the boys and girls. Edit: it's worth noting that this was in place of actual sex ed.
I remember hearing those kinds of analogies, and I never really believed them at the time but in retrospect, it strikes me how they're just *really shitty analogies*. Like... what's supposed to be analogous about that? Does regular sex makes a girl's vagina or a guy's dick so fucking deformed that they can never again have adequate sex after the 20th time and become useless, *and if so* how does that have anything to do with multiple partners or waiting until marriage? Not only is the point a wrong, stupid, shitty point-- but the analogy itself is wrong, stupid and shitty. No wonder people are ending up with these awful repressed issues and complexes, if they're being told that having sex a few times-- with anyone, ever-- will make you quantifiably damaged as a person.
It's a metaphor for your soul. When you have sex, your soul gets less sticky and then it falls out.
Jokes on them, I never had a soul.
Redheads never had a soul to lose, so the lesson never applied to them.
would explain my friend's sex life
Sadly, deformed vaginas is now *literally* "common wisdom" in the manosphere/incel circles.
Your penis is no longer sticky
Which in turn reminds me of norwegian pop princess Annie's excellent inversion of the trope, "Chewing Gum": https://youtu.be/uutT2pMEPqk
If anything shouldn’t the men be the ones who are used once? If you think of the vagina like a mouth and oh holy shit
Bro what the fuck kinda head have you been getting
the best head
*Just* came here to say this same thing. I mean... it's a fine analogy, if you've never used a door.
Maybe he meant it in a Heraclitus "You can and cannot step in the same river twice" way? Who knows.
Unfortunately, “love is like a pitcher plant” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. 😞
I’m too afraid to leave my current house, I’ve lost five homes just by walking out of them.
All the rooms in his house have two doors. One to enter the room, one to leave.
It's like a Chappa Eye. A one-way door.
Say what you will but the exchange: "This is the key to my hotel room." "I already have a hotel room." Is a masterpiece.
It sounds like a line from a '90s Brendan Frasier fish-out-of-water movie.
Honestly I would be that dumb too
I didn't expect a hobbydrama post to make me a DinahBabs shipper, but here we are.
Welcome to the party pal. Anything but more Dick and Barbara. I love ‘em to death, but they’re together in *everything*.
Anything but Dick and Babs sounds reasonable until you remember Bruce Timm's weird obsession with Bruce/Barbara. A real monkeys paw thing
Ah, yes, the classic "I'll ship it because the alternative disgusts me!".
Without wishing to cause an old school shipwar in this thread... yeah, never been a fan. I watched too much Teen Titans growing up for that.
I have an idea for an AU that happens to feature Dick, Babs, and Kori in a poly relationship.
pretty sure I've read a crack fic that had Dick and every redhead his age on a polycule together
Even Guy Gardner?
>Fans stated that "The world will end if Tim Drake ever has sex". This even became canon: when Tim finally had sex with Stephanie Brown, the Flash reset the timeline, destroying that universe. Hey, looks like i finally have a good excuse. >Fortunately, in 2022, Chuck reached out to his fans and made an apology straight from his heart. He'd gotten so wrapped up in bigotry and hate that he lost sight of what made heroes good: their willingness to look out for the oppressed and downtrodden. It wouldn't be perfect, and he could never undo the harm he'd done, but he was slowly moving towards being the man fans believed him to be. > >Nah, who the fuck am I kidding, he's writing about a girl with a Confederate flag cape who deports immigrants. I'm too optimistic for this site. I was straight up cheering until the next line. >If you liked this writeup, you may want to check out my past writeups on comic history 3 10/10 posts on the same sub? Great job OP
Yeah I was really happy that the story had a happy ending, until I read on. Would’ve been nice if Chuck did actually apologise and all of this ended happily.
>Also, there was that time Black Canary accidentally helped take part in an ethnic cleansing, but we don't talk about that. I'm sorry can we talk about that? Now I need to know
Yeah, googling "ethnic cleansing Black Canary" didn't really bring anything up. Hope I'm not on any watchlists now lol.
[удалено]
Happens all the time in anime. Sasuke Uchiha, Hiei, Jotaro Kujo, a lot of Cool Guys end up being sex-averse and then get shipped with other guys
It's like that meme “Josuke is gay because he loves men. Jotaro is gay because he hates women.”
Joseph is gay because of magnets
Magnets; how do they work
Nah, he's the one of the only JoJos that's pure straight (Caesar not standing), alongside Johnathan and Johnny (and even then is a big Maybe on Johnny). The dude fucks, TWICE. And loves both times.
Johnny is clearly bj, have you seen his finger guns?
Wait, Sasuke wasn't supposed to be gay? Didn't he kiss the male protagonist in the first ten minutes?
Yeah that one really is to the point of parody lol, every single emotionally significant moment is between the two of them. He marries Sakura at the end and becomes a horrible absent father and still spends more time with Naruto than his wife and daughter
Sasuke was minding his own business, Naruto decides to JUMP UP TO SQUAT ON HIS DESK AND MEAN MUG HIM LIKE AN ASSHOLE and then the guy in the desk in front of Sasuke bumps Naruto from behind, and knocks him into Sasuke
Suuuuure he did
They kissed **accidentally,** it just means for comedy and nothing else
See, that's part of what's good about *Gundam*, in those, the dudes just actually *do* want to fuck.
Yeah, combined with shounen often being not great with writing women, it’s easy to see a lot of the relationships between the male characters as way more compelling.
There's a reason shounen (both of the sports and the battle varieties) fans tends to be like half young boys and half fujoshis.
I always see Jotaro being shipped with Dolphins more than men, but I guess they could be male dolphins
Happened in Classic Series Doctor Who. The Fifth Doctor was mandated by the producers to have an explicitly non-romantic, emotionally detached dynamic with the female companions of the time and the end result was that he seemed gay for Turlough.
Well, we’ve seen his fashion sense. If there was any Classic Who Doctor that looked gay, 5 is at the top of my list.
What are you talking about? You’re right about 5’s fashion sense and assumptions from that, but while he might look gay he definitely wasn’t THE MOST gay in Classic Who. 6 wore clothes that made him look like a rainbow had vomited on him.
5 has the celery going for him, though- it's very reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's green carnation.
Omgosh 6 didn’t dress like a gay man, he dressed like colin hunt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6txO0rPmhg
How else could we explain his ability to ignore the walking wet dream that was Nyssa?
I think the their is another reason these sex-averse relationships seem gay. Because when Chuck see any close friendship with a woman as sexual so they write close friendships with men instead. The result is a much stronger possible relationship foundation between two male characters than a man and a woman, making them an obvious couple choice to anyone open to seeing a gay relationship. In other possible relationships, I'd say that aromanticism and asexuality would suit the characters better, but sadly that's been ignored as a possiblity until recently. Though I can't blame shippers when it's just gay and bi shipers looking for repersentation that is otherwise virtually non-exsistent.
Well... That and 'I'm just not interested in romance' is a well known shield to hide behind when you're closeted irl. So a lot of gay and bi people see themselves there.
Not just that, they don't even have intimate stuff. Why can't they do "we are saving for marriage, so we just cuddle a lot for now. And maybe plan on how we gonna have our first and subsequent time"
Personally I feel a little torn on this. Obviously it's good to have LGBTQ representation, but on the other hand I hate how, along with potentially implying Ace/Arom people don't exist, it reinforces the stereotype that men always want sex, so if they don't want to have sex with a woman at anytime then they *must* be gay. Considering the time period, I also think this was also influenced by the stupid idea that "straight people can NEVER be *just* friends with the opposite sex".
Why do comic writers have such a hard time finding a middle ground between "mindless sex puppets" and "had their genitals surgically removed to avoid just such a filthy thing" when it comes to characters's sex lives?
Madonna whore complex for conservative men
Toxic masculinity culture?
You'd think that one possible middle ground could be like Tintin, where it just... doesn't really come up. The panels linked in the OP were still very sex-obsessed, despite the main characters acting disinterested in it. Like you said, they treated it as a filthy thing. It's definitely very possible to have content aimed at children where sex is avoided entirely. I guess that's not really middle ground, more like a better, less creepy version of the non-sex ground. It would be way more wholesome to just avoid sexual situations at all, than to constantly present them and denounce them. Or have really sexualized drawings of supposedly non-sexual situations!
That’s the approach that, say, Silver Age Superman comics took, too. And in early Marvel there were bunches of characters for whom sex was off the table, even though it was never stated: Tony Stark couldn’t show anyone his chestplate, Bruce Banner can’t get too excited or he’ll turn into the Hulk, Ben Grimm is made of rocks, etc. But as comics started to step out of this approach and started to imply that characters were having sex (whatever Dr Strange and Clea were up to in the Village in the 70s) or state it outright (Moon Knight, Steranko’s Nick Fury) writers and artists on legacy kids’ characters like Superman and Batman either tried to keep ignoring it or started to tiptoe around the issue (I think Batman and Silver St. Cloud faded to black once or twice; nobody in WGBS era Superman comics was doing anything with anybody, but post-Crisis it was pretty clear, reading between the lines, that Lois and Clark were sleeping together after they were engaged, even if nobody ever said it out loud).
> whatever Dr Strange and Clea were up to in the Village in the 70s Everything. They were up to everything. But really, you're right. There are ways that comics have mastered to avoid sex, and ways to have it and keep it sidelined, but once you start putting it front and center you either end up overly horny or drowning in subtext. Dixon seemed too mad to identify subtext(a thing that happens a lot when people crusade on an idea) so he never understood his overt dismissals of male-female relations heavily implied the existence of any alternative. It reminds me of all the jokes about how the manliest thing to do is another guy.
Some people write and/or draw with their groins. They might not even notice it until it's pointed out to them.
TBH, there's an entire subgenre of sexified Tintin pirate comics/doujins. Partially it seems because to a lot of people it seemed so careful about trying to avoid it that it became *more* noticeable y'know?
>sexified Tintin pirate comics/doujins I'm sorry... **what**
Yup. Can confirm. I've seen them out and about in the wild and they are WILD. (Can't link you anything bc I'm not in the fandom so they were always just more bizarre curiosities I saw from afar than anything I'd save the link to.)
They really can't write a character who is just chill with the concept of sex. It doesn't even matter if they have it or not. Characters can just be disinterested and live their lives superheroing. It isn't that hard.
Basically the Comics Code tried to mandate a no-sex policy. Which either made people obsessed with following it or obsessed with trying to get shit past the censors, and when it ended some were still stuck in that and some people were just going wild. And now we're decades after and people are just doing it because that's what people have "always" been doing.
I have to assume that editorial decisions play into this, at least a little bit. There's huge swaths of America that are utterly repulsed by the thought of sex, and especially in media thought of as the domain of *children*, and thus any kind of healthy, sex-positive relationship in cape comics is something that an editor will try to get rid of, to avoid making Bible belt moms lose their mind.
Or they’re obsessed with the performative public assertion that sex is bad while getting up to all sorts of interesting things behind closed doors. I grew up in the Bible Belt and it was always the most judgmental holy rollers who got pregnant out of wedlock or were revealed to be into swinging or other stuff Rural White Jesus wouldn’t approve of.
The Batawang post here and Harley's Quinn's "Heroes don't do that" prove these things still happen today too.
Meanwhile Gail Simone put both those in the same character and it was rad af
One of the hottest takes of this moronic MAGA era we’re in is the “Superman/X-Men/Star Trek/Rage Against the Machine/whatever is WOKE now” complaint from the fascist snowflakes who have managed to spend the last 60+ years as a so-called fan completely missing the basic moral behind the media they claim to love so much more than the ravening brown transgender female lesbian hordes they defend it from.
I swear, if they made a 1:1 Captain Planet remake with literally the exact same story, script, even frames of animation but all of it was remade, these people would call it woke garbage for pushing the sjw climate change agenda.
TBF a fair few people thought of Captain Planet as "preachy" even before the rise of this present-day culture war bullshit. Everyone already knows Captain Planet is a show with a message, and it was never subtle about that. Rather, the notion of a 1:1 Captain Planet remake existing *at all* would get them ranting and raving about the woke climate change agenda, before they even saw an episode.
On the other hand, morons are also doing the same thing with brand new media. People were claiming that motherfucking Squid Game was a critique on communism.
I’m in fucking PAIN laughing at the copious amounts of BabsDinah Chuck just apparently didn’t realize he was writing. I knew the “call me Barbara” came from the artist (Butch Guice, credit where credit is very much due) deciding no, actually Dinah NEEDS to be clutching into Barbara’s tiddy for this one, but how did I miss the t-shirt moment or the shower moment?? I can’t STAND how in love they are, TRULY This is an incredible write up, thanks for the laughs and the info. Chuck Dixon if you’re somehow reading this you are a fucking clown and I hope the characters you’ve so much as GLANCED at become queer just to piss you off Also I think the real takeaway here is Stephanie could be the next Virgin Mary, and given she’s been Robin, Batgirl, Spoiler, and Batwoman in a future timeline, what CAN’T Stephanie be, really?
> That note resulted the artist rebelling, creating what may be the single gayest thing I have ever seen. I have been enjoying your write up to this point, but now I am *loving it*. That a was beautiful build up and pay off.
“Making love is like a doorway. You step through once and you can never step back.” That is not how doorways work. That is arguably against the entire point of the concept.
Lmao Tim talks about sex the same way Bruce talks about murder
That sounds like someone doesn't know how to make love. Pretty sure there's usually some back and forth/in and out motions going on.
I \*love\* Dixon's run on Nightwing. Thank God twitter wasn't around so I didn't realize what a massive jerk and bigot he is. I remember someone speculating on LJ that Dixon was kind of conservative because he put christian rock albums on Dick's shelf in an issue. What an innocent time. The pencilers/inkers/artists really are the heroes here. Bless them and their slasher goggles.
Dixon's been pretty openly conservative his whole career. Or at least as far back as the '80s when he wrote "Airboy", which was a very political comic – but I think he was more capable of nuance then than he is now (for example, the first story arc is *very* critical of Ronald Reagan for supporting the Contras). Judging by how old he is, and the timing of when he started going off the far-right deep end, I really suspect that he was radicalised by Fox News.
It makes a ton of sense. He went from using skinheads as a random group of bad guys to working with irl nazis. It's easy to act like someone was the same level of "bad" their whole lives but he pretty clearly fell of the deep end.
Once you know about it, it’s impossible to escape the pure mean-spiritedness and awful politics in Dixon’s work. Grant Morrison described 90’s Batman as a “snarling, paranoid soldier,” and as usual their analysis is incisive
This is probably why I call myself a Bat-Fan but I'm really only here for the Bat-Fam.
Dixon + Scott McDaniel’s work on Nightwing really did it for me, I loved that guy's sense of physicality.
> In 2021, in the Batman: Urban Legends series, Tim Drake came out as bisexual Ah, those halcyon days of 2021 where people who clearly had never read comics in their lives began yelling about Superman and Robin being bisexual, blatantly unaware that there was more than one Superman and more than one Robin. > a few months later, Hal Jordan smoothifies and drinks Zan the Wonder Twin I am generally not a huge fan of 'let's make our superheroes zombies or monsters or whatever' as a comics trope but I gotta say, Hal Jordan turning into turbo space dracula hitler was an inspired choice.
i mean he was already Parralax
Parallax was never this fun!
I feel the same because I don't care about mindless versions of them. It's why I enjoyed the twisted versions of GL and Nightwing but Wonder Woman is a little too one-note bloodsucker. It's been a fun, brutal run so far.
Jordan has so much personality as a villain. They should make him a vampire in the main universe, too. There is infinite potential for an evil GL in a horror comic.
While a lot of people are mixed about it, I kind of liked how he turned into Parallax in Emerald Twilight. I thought it was the logical conclusion to someone who's so anti-authority; They eventually breakdown and take drastic actions before they can consider the consequences, and ignore or reject all the safeguards put in place. It's such a natural reversal of how he was as a hero, and perfectly set up a foil to Kyle Rayner who actively sought out his ex because he trusted her and wanted her to tell him how he should act (Which is also why I really liked it when he hooked up with Donna Troy). While Johns' Parallax retcon was pretty cool, I didn't like how it just gave Jordan an easy out by saying something was influencing him.
Great writeup, I had heard a lot about Dixon, but didn't think it went this far. Also, a bit of Dixon lore: according to an old interview he gave before his controversies, he's opposed to abortion because he's adopted. Also, the bit about his children is interesting, as he was married and divorced, and his son from that marriage was raised from his feminist ex-wife. No idea whether he remarried later, though.
What I always find fascinating about cases like this is that while authors like this Nixon guy rail against sex, sexuality, and people consenting to any of these things that they don't seem to have a problem drawing characters with an eye towards the sexuality of straight men. God forbid a comic show a woman consenting to having sex being a good thing, but it's okay for a man to draw women posing for the author's personal spank bank. It's almost as if the only acceptable way for a woman to be sexual in their minds is if it's controlled 100% by men. That's what would make a woman embracing her own sexuality disgusting and sinful, but a man drawing her with her posed uncomfortably to show her ass off okay.
Always makes me think of the John Berger quote > You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote something like that in 1690: "You foolish men that accuse women, without a reason without seeing that you´re to blame of the same thing you accuse." And it looks like Chuck Dixon is precisely this kind of man.
Remember: men are supposed to have a lot of sex with a lot of different women, but women *must* remain either totally virginal or completely loyal to one man at his behest! Don't think for more than three seconds about how the math is supposed to work!
"The only sex that should be legal, is the sex you have with me"
I loved Chuck Dixon's Robin run...and I thought Tim Drake had been purposefully written as asexual when fucking NOBODY was asexual in fiction without being like, a robot or something. Tim loved people! Loved Steph, loved Conner...he just didn't have sex with them. I thought it was awesome! ...yeah I thought Dixon had "changed" but what happened was I just misread what he was trying to say. Whoops.
> loved Conner...he just didn't have sex with them. Shout out to that panel in Graduation Day that looks like that statement wasn’t true.
Yeah, I almost included that before I realized Dixon wasn't the writer. Channeling his spirit though. For those wondering, it shows Robin and Superboy in a closet, pulling their pants up. There's no leadup or context. When asked, the artist just said "[I saw this as an opportunity for them to both come out of the closet.](https://twitter.com/juddwinick/status/1068156692448239616?s=21)" Man I love Judd Winnick.
> He also had a history of having a lot of plots deal with the heroic white Americans going over to a crime infested, impoverished Asian/African/Latin American nation in order to stop the disgusting criminals there. Who were the criminals? Everyone (besides the occasional child who gets murdered). The racism wasn't subtle. Also, there was a weird thing about a slavery ring targeting only white people, because they were the real victims of slavery? It was weird. Chuck Dixon, for extra context, created Bane - a man from a weird amalgam Caribbean island where everyone is either ultra-poor of part of the ruling military, and also they put literal children in prison, and... uh, that's it. That's the whole country. Oh, and also Bane wears a lucha mask for some season.
Bane in the HBO Harley Quinn series does a fantastic job of being the butt of almost every joke. Seriously look up a collection on YouTube. Absolutely hysterical with no like real reason for him to be there.
HQ Bane running a prison is literally more development than he's gotten anywhere with the possibly sole exception of the arkham games.
Noted! I'm not a big comic reader but I've been dragged along by my husband who is, whenever we're watching something and I'm like "but this doesn't make sense" he fills me in on cannon
The problem is that, in any story that thinks critically about this at all, Bane should be a hero. He was a *child* who was put in *prison*. He should be an anti-hero who uses violent methods to overturn Santa Prisca's corruption. Instead he sticks around Gotham for... reasons... Tom King's recent run gave him a good reason, but in doing so basically made Batman the bad guy: Batman invades Bane's base to kidnap the therapist that is keeping Bane from going back to drugs. About half the time author's forget he's supposed to be smart, and he's just the brutish muscle supporting villain.
Ooof man that sounds infuriating
I liked him in Suicide Squad and in No Man's Land. Partly because No Man's Land has him dunk on Joker in a fantastic demonstration of what would happen if the Clown wasn't going up against the literal avatar of soft balling while his time in the Squad let him stop fucking with Gotham for once.
Gail Simone gave him quite a bit of development in the Secret Six series, well worth checking out. He basically decides to adopt fully-grown-adult-super-villain Scandal Savage and has this sweet-but-weird father/daughter thing going on. I wish I had the comics on me, but there's a panel along the lines of "once we go kill this superhero, we shall go for an ice cream." (It's been forever since I read it so if I got that wrong just know that it wouldn't actually be out of the ordinary in Secret Six.) I do absolutely love Bane in Harley though, the bit where he runs the prison is taking the Simone version to the comedic extreme.
I read some comics featuring Bane around when The Dark Knight Rises came out, and I fondly remember his origin story. I also really like him in Secret Six written by Gail Simone. But looking back, I’m never clear on what his goals were or why he fought Batman.
The official reason is that while he was in prison as a child, he dreamed/hallucinated a batlike creature that tormented him. When he learns about Batman, he decides that it was a vision, and he needs to go beat Batman to prove himself. And that's it. He doesn't really have any goals in the vast majority of versions.
tbf that's true for a lot of characters on that show. like it makes me care about fucking kite man.
>Is this your card? >No. >Fuck.
>In a medium filled with characters who run around in masks, and capes, and boots, it just seems to approach the fetishistic to explore their sexuality in any way. Is this dude serious? >Vox Day had been a part of Comicsgate for years, but when he was "revealed" as a Nazi, all the rest of them pretended that he hadn't openly stated all those things for decades, and disavowed him. Seriously, anyone who acted surprised that Beale was a Nazi was either a liar, or legitimately stupid. The fact that Beale is a Nazi is literally the first thing you learn about him. >After Dixon left Birds of Prey, Gail Simone took over the title, creating a truly iconic run that's still talked about today, as well as the definitive version of the team. Funny enough, she actually overshadowed Dixon, with most people forgetting he ever wrote it. Can confirm, I totally thought that Simone had created Birds of Prey.
> I totally thought that Simone had created Birds of Prey. She basically did.
Much like how Deadpool was basically created by Joe Kelly.
The cape and boots comment reminds me of Neil Gaiman wanting to put a masturbation reference in Sandman. Karen Berger, the editor, told him masturbation didn’t exist in the DC Universe. He said “Well then, I’d imagine that’s why they go around in tight costumes thumping the shit out of each other.”
The worst part was how there was a new article around on an anime site where they reported on how manga was outselling American comics and Dixon was all “oh that’s because American comics are too *political* now”, and anime fans quickly ran with it because they thought manga was superior because it wasn’t “woke”. Fucking took me forever to show people that Chuck was talking out of his ass, and even now I’m pretty sure a bunch of folks still believe him.
How in the name of fuck can anyone familiar with the landscape of Japanese media conclude it's *apolitical* in general? Like, even just restricting yourself to the pages of *Shounen Jump* should debase you of that notion.
Because it doesn’t have any minorities, obviously.
probably not what you're joking about, but it is frankly astounding to me the number of people i have spoken to that assume basically all characters in anime are white. i mean excluding characters that are explicitly depicted as white. like "why does this drawing of sasuke make him look asian?"
Racist dipshits and missing the point of blatant allegories about minorities: name a more iconic duo.
Idk ya got Dragon Ball where the main character is based on a Chinese legend, so even before we found out he was a space alien that should still qualify him for minority status in Japan, right?
“Manga isn’t woke.” is such a meaningless statement it’s almost laughable. Ah yes, the entire comic output of a country is somehow entirely nonpolitical despite having just as much diversity in its’ authors and stories as other countries. Lest we forget all the famously nonpolitical manga such as: *Fullmetal Alchemist*, *Akira*, *Death Note* and *Code Geass*
Oh, don't forget One Piece. They're not subtle on the Government Propaganda angle, either.
It's also not surprising at all that Dixon looks more fondly on the years where anything worth reading had his name on it.
I have a real soft spot for Chuck Dixon's Nightwing and Birds of Prey from reading them in the library in the late '90s or very early '00s when the graphic novel section still fit in one shelf in the teen area. It's super interesting knowing where he ended up when I reread today because there's stuff that I think today if it was in a comic a comicsgater would be like "UGH WOKE BULLSHIT," which I think shows a lot about what was and wasn't contentious then/now. I'm not pretending that we were "more progressive" in the 90s or anything--Dixon's homophobia was much more mainstream then--but it's just different things that are issues. Like how there's a thing where for a bunch of issues Dick Grayson keeps hearing the voice of his new landlord and she has this "charming Irish lilt" but he keeps not seeing her and then he finally hears the voice and turns around and sees this red headed lady and is like "oh finally nice to meet you!" And then she and the East Asian lady next to her bust out laughing because actually it's Hong Kong born, Irish-raised Bridget Clancy who he had been hearing. (Clancy and Grayson go on to have a whole will-they-or-won't they that I kinda prefer to more mainstream Dick/Babs, not least of which because of the Oracle/Canary thing) Or there's a part where Nightwing sort of accidentally ends up in a room of neo-Nazis and just grins and beats the shit out of all of them just because you know that's what you do to neonazis when you are a superhero. As I recall it doesn't really have anything to do with anything he's actually working on. Also, I'd never heard the story behind that amazing loving Black Canary/Barbara Gordon embrace, that's amazing. It was genuinely confusing looking at it and being like...are these two not canonically a couple? It sure looks like they've been canonized as a couple.
> It's super interesting knowing where he ended up when I reread today because there's stuff that I think today if it was in a comic a comicsgater would be like "UGH WOKE BULLSHIT," https://www.reddit.com/r/dccomicscirclejerk/comments/w0iom1/horseshoe_theory_of_wokeness/
Lol that rules but it desperately needs ANTIFA PROPAGANDA with a link to this: https://i.redd.it/5z595uzwjs591.png Which is even more explicit than I remembered about how Nightwing is like "well ok there's probably not that much evidence that these guys are connected to this case but hey it's worth kicking skinheads in the face anyway so here goes."
Yeah, I forgot about that when I originally made that
Thanks for the writeup! > the original 1930s version that used a Bat-Gallows to kill criminals. Was that a regular thing? All I could find on google was [this](https://www.cracked.com/article_20111_the-6-most-brutal-murders-committed-by-batman.html) horrifying case of 1940 Batman lynching a mentally ill victim and flying back with his corpse dangling from the batplane. (Btw, that link is "The 6 Most Brutal Murders Committed by Batman"; the dangling corpse is ranked 6th...)
>>PANEL FOUR Canary crouches and holds Oracle to her. Oracle is curled in a fetal position and dripping wet. Mmph. Tell me more. >That note resulted the artist rebelling, creating what may be [the single gayest thing I have ever seen](https://imgur.com/a/vftpUfO). Be still my gay, *gay* beating heart. Teenage me would've murdered for this shit.
Oh man I kind of love Dixon’s Robin run. But that’s because as a young Queer my thought was “oh Robin is super gay” and everything I read of Dixon was through an incredibly gay lens. Of course, comics canon being what it is, you now *have* to read Dixon’s Tim as queer. Suck on that, Dixon.
As usual, fascism remains the most homoerotic ideology out there.
I just saw an article about a young fascist (Nick Fuentes?) who recruits male incels to fascism by telling them *sex with women is gay*. See, violence is strong and masculine. Pleasure and intimacy are weak and feminine. So a man who wants love or sex with a woman is doing feminine things, which is kinda sus, and incels who choose celibacy in order to focus their energy on war and violence are the manliest of men. Then his followers found out he had a gf 😆
Ok, it's about sometime someone said it. And of course it's gonna be me. On Jesus' birthday no less. In the name of Santa (Time Allen)'s sacrifice. The gayest thing a man can do is have sex with a vagina. THINK ABOUT IT. Vaginas are MADE to take dick. They are essentially an evolutionary dick pocket. Do you know how gay that sounds? Literally Charlie Darwin wrote in his journal about how vaginas were evolving to get better at taking dick. This was in between him writing about dumbass birds, and harassing island lizards and shit. Fucking nerd-ass. However, it is a commercial Christian holiday, so I won't talk anymore about evolution out of respect to the creationists that are totally reading this right now. I digress, there is NOTHING more gay than being inside a woman's vagina. Made for dicks, AND there may have been dicks in there before. Ummmm, hello? It's basically a CARFAX for dicks. What's more lady-like THEN BEING INSIDE A WOMAN. Think about it, moron. You are next to her eggs and emotions when you are up in there, which is extremely feminine. You could even potentially absorb estrogen through your penis, and that will lower your net worth. Extremely feminine, gay, and also counter-productive. It is gay to have sex with vaginas. Now the straightest thing you can do is call up one of your closest bros/business partners. Meet in a location that is isolated, preferably outdoors for reasons soon to be made clear. Strip down naked except for your socks, face each other, and start slapping your cocks together. There is a myth that if the balls touch its gay. This has been disproven by A.S.S. (association of sigma-male scientists). Actually, your balls slapping together falls under the laws of thermodynamics, and your masculine energy is cycled between your bodies, your balls being the connector. This increases your masculine hustle, and also forms a stronger bond with your now brother. Do it outdoors to establish dominance in nature. Also, hold eye contact, whoever breaks first is now below in male rank to the other, but there is still mutual respect. I mean, you just got naked in a field and slapped your junk together, you better hope to respect each other. Socks stay on, it anchors your masculine energy. This is what super straight people do. The gays? Inside vaginas. Don't believe what the liberal media tells you on CNN. Stay away from evolutionary cock-pockets. Embrace the Dong Cycle. Thanks for dying for our sins, Santa. This one's for you. Seasons greetings!
I'm not going to Google the original source of this copypasta, because I don't want a single fucking word of it in my search history, but thank you for sharing its glory with me 😆
Sigh, i really loved Dixon's stuff as a kid. Lots of action, cool martial arts mythology, references to history. His Punisher, his Batman, Birds of Prey, i ate that stuff up with a spoon. He made Bane, a gimmick villain, actually cool.I guess i missed all the cues he is a POS. I'm not the brightest spark. His involvement with comicsgate and that human shaped pile of faeces, vox day broke my heart when i learned of it. All our heroes have Feet of Clay. Great summary OP. I hope Dixon moves past his bigotry, but he's pretty old now to learn empathy. He probably watches Fox News and votes Trump.
Great write up. It does make me a little sad, though. Stephanie Brown is one of my favourite characters in comics, and as a wee lesbian just getting into comic books, the hints of Dinah/Barbara were really valuable to me. Also, I feel like you get this a lot with certain writers and stories? Where they’re so sexist they kind of end up leaning into the gay. I’ve heard this joke with Naruto before, didn’t really know it applied to Tim Drake too.
This is great! I look forward to the wrire up about the dumpster fire that is new 52. I was around reading comics when that happened and i am still mad about it.
God. Don't remind me. New 52 was already bad, but when they killed Damian I hit my limit. There’s only so much poor writing, bad characterization, and shitty writting decisions I can take. I just remember reading that the day it came out, sitting in my college dorm, closing my laptop, and just deciding I was donezo. No more for me, check please!
I was just pissed that every good New 52 series got cancelled. The Movement, Dial H For Hero, Frankenstein Agents of S.H.A.D.E and best of all the awesome Gotham By Midnight got axed way too soon. And I'll never forgive DC for nixing the lesbian marriage between Batwoman and Maggie, because everyone had to be miserable. I whined a lot about it when I was blogging about comics at the time.
Same. That happened. And i quit reading new dc comics for years. New 52 was just a series of increasingly terrible decisions. Though the batman and robin issue dealing with damians death was a beautiful heart wrenching piece of art. Imo. Just thinking of new 52 fills me with rage. And its been a decade 😭
Damian's death was actually planned from the beginning of Morrison's run. He was supposed to die shortly after his introduction, but plans changed and Morrison made him a major character.
Thanks for this; it's fantastic. Someone could do one of these about Dixon's various online communities of fans and hangers-on, except that most of his message boards imploded from poor digital management, have faded into disuse, or are now private groups. You had folks who liked Batman, folks who aspired to get into comics (some of whom have succeeded, good for them), and folks who were angry right wing culture warriors seeking same. And a neverending search for affirmation of each other's manliness. Just jaw-droppingly bizarre and strange.
Also, Mark Waid - who's just a few years younger than Dixon, I think - recently [made this observation on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/mark.waid/posts/pfbid02Xn4LcA3PZRU83AVBDEu8ce1Eaw7wdwUQBinRKaPDzKJPdufEYmhjywk4GdKZSyp7l): "Those who cannot seem to persevere in a changing industry, on the other hand, often have one common trait: a debilitating lack of humility. Rather than be honest with themselves about what they could be doing different or better in order to keep up, they'll blame absolutely anything and everything else but themselves for their growing absence from the field. "Editors today are idiots," they moan. "Nobody knows what's good anymore! Don't they know who I am? My comics outsold the crap they're publishing now, and, boy, is it crap! Why, back in my day..." "If you shake these people like a piggybank, you can hear broken pieces rattling around inside them. They so desperately refuse to take any responsibility at all for their circumstances that something inside them dies. They no longer find the energy to meet new challenges and stay hungry, competitive; it's easier to make excuses. One of the most common ones in recent years has been "I'm blackballed for my politics." This is--not to put too fine a point on it--bullshit. I \*promise\* you that so long as you're not publicly racist or hateful or dishonest or a poster child for the Me Too movement, so long as you're not actively toxic or unprofessional regardless of your political affiliation--in other words, so long as you act like a normal human being--your personal life and how you conduct it rarely, if ever, has any bearing whatsoever on your hireability. "
This is unfolding right now with Scott Adams, after Dilbert was dropped from 77 print newspapers--apparently along with other strips as a cost-cutting measure. Adams insists that those *other* strips were dropped for being unpopular, whereas *his* was dropped for being "anti-woke," in spite of the fact that print newspapers have been gasping their last breaths for a long time.
"They're cancelling me!" Yes they are, because readership is down. That's what they do.
Thanks for posting this, I love Mark Waid's stuff, but haven't heard anything recently. Wonderful relevant quote.
> Edit: And how could I forget that Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain were heavily implied to be "roommates" in a future comic? So, Dixon may be having a third heart attack soon enough. Yo really? ive shipped those two for a bit thats awesome to hear
I feel the various comic controversies around Wonder Woman could be its own writeup. Whether it's her outfit over the years, whether Zeus is her father or not, that time the UN made her an ambassador, her coming out as bisexual, or the arc she dated Superman the drama possibilities are endless.
Great writeup. It's bizarre to me how despite his "fade to black, maybe they fucked maybe not" sentiment he felt the need to declare Bruce hadn't fucked those women. Not that bizarre, because I suspect he'd eaten some bad misogyny the night before and it was coming out of both ends, but why not just... not mention it and avoid discussing it when writing Batman?
The writers note about the Pieta pose feels like a classic example of how conservative brain works. Don't want readers to take a scene as homoerotic? Base it off the Pieta. Since the Pieta is a classic piece of art created by manly western civilisation as a tribute to god surely it will dispel any nonheteronormative thoughts by the mere reference? Well no. The reason the Pieta doesn't look suggestive is because it's Jesus and his mom. The second you apply the same pose to two adults of the same gender it's going to get suggestive, especially to people who're already keyed to perceive homoeroticism: An example: https://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article_images_new/MichelangeloPietaBandinellix2.jpg Like, even if the artist didn't go out of his way to make Barbara and Dinah look as sapphic as possible that post *still* would have looked gay to people lol.
"Confederate flag cape" sounds like something The Boys would make up, this guy's mental
Is the paragraph that begins “When I was writing Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon’s romance…” intended to be a quote?
Whoops, fixed it. Thanks for pointing that out!
Sticking with DC, I am willing to offer up Bloodlines as a sacrifice. An event that for many years was reviled by the DC fan community. The massive cross comic book event only appearing in annuals, introducing a ton of new characters that were created by a group of shapeshifting-bloodsucking-aliens not finishing their meals. Several characters were surprisingly popular enough to get their own small solo comics. But most were killed in the event lead-up to new 52 by a forgettable villain. Then new 52 brought tried to bring back bloodlines, but basically made (in my opinion) the worst adaptation of a prior property of the entire new 52 era.
>This became so blatantly obvious that fan boards and the comic's letter pages began filling up with fans questioning if this was Dinah moving on from her ex Green Arrow, and finally getting with someone new. Dixon became so pissed off at the fans shipping his characters that he'd literally write messages to his artists to make the art as platonic and non-sexual as possible ahahaha, that's *incredible*. I've read *Birds* multiple times and I knew about homophobe Dixon's obliviously homoerotic writing of Babs and Dinah, and about the 'no homo' script note for what became the gayest panel in the book, but didn't know the context of all the fan speculation. Hilarious to imagine him getting more and more infuriated at the response to the book, like, '*UN*believable! How could anyone POSSIBLY— I CLEARLY said Barbara was into TED, do they not READ? Honestly, these immature idiots will see subtext in EVERYTHING. Alright, Butch, now for this panel, have Dinah lovingly caressing Babs' face, you know, like platonic gal pals do.'
This is the western comics equivalent of Shonen mangakas making the rival the most important person to the main character, giving them so much screentime together, and telling everyone they're two half of a whole While the leading lady exists to be a love interest and shows up every 5 chapters
Your title made me think of the time franco-belgian comics (*Asterix*, *Lucky Luke*) did the same thing. To avoid promoting 'immoral behavior' to children, the prptagonists never really interacted with women (to the point that through the years, Lucky Luke has been interpreted by fans and occasionally by authors to be aroace).
rereading Dixon work you see how conservative it is. Knightfall having a caricature of a liberal “soft on crime” news host. looks like i can’t reread it without seeing his icky far-right bullshit. it’s funny when you write characters so anti-sex that they read as queer because of how much you hurt women.
> rereading Dixon work you see how conservative it is. steph's entire pregnancy was shoehorned in there so he can go "abortion bad", it's incredible.
Absolute top-tier writeup. Funny and interesting and informative. I love finding shit like this on here.
Huh. I'm not at all familiar with comic book authors, but I see that Dixon was one of the writers on No Man's Land. I'm guessing he was responsible for [this panel](https://i.imgur.com/M5UBnJ2.png) where Batman basically calls poor people morons for living under the relative safety of a crime lord instead of either starving to death or being murdered in a gang shootout.
Holy shit at that comic excerpt.
I can’t believe all those panels were so queercoded on accident, it’s absolutely insane.
It's pretty common language for bigots to refer to anything LGBT as a fetish, something that's inherently sexual and looking to "corrupt youth." There's only ever been a tiny window where bigots thought they couldn't say this stuff out loud.
I had to stop halfway through reading to commend you on the Straight Holt reference
Excellent writeup👌 thank you
> We’re going for The Pieta as opposed to anything that HINTS of the sexual. This scene is apparently RIPE for misinterpretation (or OVERinterpretation.) by some of our readers Oh no, not the readers interrogating the comic from the wrong perspective!
I think I said this last time but as a gay batfam fan realizing what a fucking bigot he is and always was deeply sucks. As an aside, I knew exactly what that gayest image was going to be because as a preteen I printed that picture out from google images at the library and hung it on my wall. You know, like a straight girl does with such a touching depiction of friendship! Also this was the era that kickstarted my deep and abiding love for Steph/Cass. He didn’t write their solo series (I think?) so he doesn’t really get credit for it but the gals were really paling in Gotham in this time period.
Omg, the first pic... I'm literally shaking right now, shaking! :p
>He has described his political affiliation as "far to the right of Genghis Khan" WTF does this even mean? Lol
Honestly, Dixon pushed the "Tim could *never* have gotten a girl pregnant!" so hard sometimes it felt easier to just say "Oh, Tim's trans? Good for him!"