tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post3929776641088462710..comments2024-03-21T22:36:54.451-04:00Comments on HISTORIES OF THINGS TO COME: DCU Continuity for Terra: Part 2.2 - The Elemental: Terra in the 1990sLC Douglasshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04250961297714038453noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post-69255139119755252262016-10-27T04:10:45.139-04:002016-10-27T04:10:45.139-04:00Hi Anon, I completely agree. This was the period i...Hi Anon, I completely agree. This was the period in comics - which has continued to the present day - when certain storylines and offensive ideas were deliberately pushed to sensationalize comics and drive up flagging sales. That would include sexism, violence, racism, shiny covers, death of Superman ... . I wrote this series on Terra in part because I was so young when I read the original stories in the 1980s and could not articulate what I thought was wrong with them at that time. I did not read comics in the 90s or 2000s, and only returned in the 2010s to reconsider some of the stories I remembered. These comments on the 90s were based on my back-reading of 90s stories, read during the 2010s. While I tried to give stories from the 90s and 2000s their cultural contextual consideration (that is, I did not force them to conform to 2010s values - they are products of their time and place), what struck me was the decline in editorial and writing attitudes, values, and creativity. Cynicism and willingness to exploit inflammatory ideas, mass death of heroes, fridging of female characters, ugly storylines that had sensational impacts in the moment - all of it to make a buck and keep sales up. That has been the grimdark story of comics, with some few bright spots and innovations from creators, through the whole period. So what you are talking about is true and valid. I didn't mention it because it wasn't part of the main focus of this series of comments on this character. But how Terra was created and treated as a character is part of the same trend as the one that depicts Qurac in a racist, offensive way. My other posts on comics talk about the mass death of heroes, and the degradation of heroism.LC Douglasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04250961297714038453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post-456117205629776742016-10-26T06:00:56.253-04:002016-10-26T06:00:56.253-04:00Fair point about the entire period being bad, thou...Fair point about the entire period being bad, though I think the Qurac thing continued to be offensive for many years after.<br /><br />For years, and years, absolutely EVERYONE in Qurac was depicted as EVUL(also ugly because the artists thought the readers were morons) from the rebellion fighting against the Goverment to the civilians themselves.<br /><br />If a white nation is under a dictatorship, its the fault of one bad man, and his followers. IF a brown nation is under a dictatorship, its the fault of the entire race for having bad genetics, and nuclear genocide is an acceptable solution according to the writers for those stories.<br /><br />While nuking a nation of brown people is forgivable, and anyone who holds a grudge over it is a bastard, raping one WHITE woman is utterly unforgivable.<br /><br />Sorry if that was a tangent, but all the writing on Qurac was incredibly offensive.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post-21900459798151226282016-10-25T20:13:19.415-04:002016-10-25T20:13:19.415-04:00Sure, Anon, thanks for your comment. Because this ...Sure, Anon, thanks for your comment. Because this continuity is focused on Terra, and to a degree, Changeling/Beast Boy, and how their story was told, I tried not to get into extended remarks on the storylines, including whether I found the stories offensive. The mid-90s was a rock bottom period for this franchise at DC, when they were trying to be invert the Titans' characterizations and narratives, and make them as broken, anti-heroic and nasty as possible.<br /><br />Prior to the 90s, Wolfman had made many political comments about certain characters and parts of the world (see his dislike of Kid Flash's midwestern conservatism, or his depiction of Zandia). His comments often went over the heads of his very young readership. He apparently explained his underlying message about Terra to Brad Meltzer, who only then finally accepted what was done to this character. But Meltzer did not elaborate on what that underlying message was. I suspect it has to do with the Holocaust and the way Central and Eastern Europeans turned on and helped murder their Jewish neighbours up to and during WWII, or at least looked the other way as their former friends, colleagues were shipped off to concentration camps. There are Nazi messages around Terra and the Markovs' whole story. Before she dies, Terra justifies her betrayal to Logan in a speech that is not irrational (the superficial explanation) but pathologically supremacist. So IMO the character was forced by the writer to become an object lesson against supremacist fascism. I get why Wolfman would do that. <br /><br />But I felt at the end of the day, the long resilience of the character showed Wolfman had created a character that was bigger than the lesson Wolfman was trying to teach. And that resilient part of the character had been brutally mishandled and abused by her creators. It is a really interesting creator's problem; so I was looking at how Wolfman and Perez walked that line, and where they succeeded, and IMO, failed.<br /><br />The 1994 Qurac issue was written by later writers, Jimenez and Jensen. I don't know how much these writers were under editorial dictates at this low point in Titans' history. Generally, the material in this franchise went downhill after about 1986-7 and never really recovered, except for the occasional issue here or there. But as for my opinion on Qurac. Is it offensive? Yeah, it is. But this whole period was offensive. I made that point generally and almost all the storylines I noted from that period support that overall argument here.LC Douglasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04250961297714038453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post-17071504743484864292016-10-25T02:16:40.853-04:002016-10-25T02:16:40.853-04:00No mention of the offensiveness of Qurac, or the r...No mention of the offensiveness of Qurac, or the racism in how Cheshire was easily forgiven for nuking it because somehow every single resident was a terrorist?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com