Profile: Mantis

Mantis Khrul-Brandt
First appearance: The Avengers #112, June 1973. She was the daughter of a Vietnamese mother, Lua Khrul, and a German father, Gustav Brandt (Libra), who later became a terrorist, and was revealed to be the Celestial Madonna in Steve Englehart’s notable storyline from 1974-75. Her exact first name does indeed appear to be Mantis.* She later took up the pseudonym of Mandy Celestine when living in Connecticut.

Current status: not certain.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she had to give up custody of her child to her father’s people, and during her adventure in space with the Silver Surfer, she was struck by an explosion that caused her to literally split into multiple versions of herself, an effect that apparently had what to do with the powers she was developing, and she had to find all the pieces in order to set things – and her memories – right again. In 1995’s disastrous story, “The Crossing” she returned as the villainous bride of Kang the Conqueror, plagued with a lot of hatred towards the Avengers for telling her manipulative lies. This was later retconned by Kurt Busiek in 1998, when he wrote a story where it was revealed that it was actually a Space Phantom brainwashed into thinking he was Mantis.

What’s wrong with how this was done? “The Crossing” was one of the most awful ideas in the history of the Avengers that almost ruined a good character. That she had to abandon her child was probably also ill-advised, though he was still around, and later turned up again.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Kurt Busiek had a good idea to retcon the damage done in 1995, and in Avengers: Celestial Quest, Steve Englehart took up writing an Avengers story again in which he wrote that Mantis remerged with the remaining fragments of her personality that she’d split into, regaining a lot of her lost memory sections. During this miniseries, she and the Avengers traveled into space to find her son and save him from a clone of Thanos who was targeting him. It’s good that she got to reunite with her child in the end!

* Thanks to Kurt Busiek for providing some details on this.

Profile: Shrinking Violet

Salu Digby, Shrinking Violet
First appearance: Action Comics #276, 1961. She was one of the first members introduced of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th century, a native of the planet Imsk, and was co-created by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney.

Current status: she sometimes goes by the name of Atom Girl today.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she was once kidnapped by radicals from her home planet, and suffered a trauma from that. But she was also betrayed by Duplicate Boy, who hadn’t even tried to rescue her. In a story called “Battle of Venado Bay” in which she and her fellow Imskians were battling the home planet of Cosmic Boy, she had to save her fellow Legionnaire, who was badly injured, from her own fellow fighters. He was so crazy with pain that he didn’t recognize her and smashed her in the head, destroying her right eye and leaving a scar on her face. Shrinking Violet and Cosmic Boy reconciled later and she had her eye repaired, but left the scar intact. Prior to one of the relaunches of the Legion, she had one of her legs blown off and replaced with an artificial one.

What’s wrong with how this was done? I’d say the injury Salu sustained to her face was the most grisly thing she ever went through in her career as a superheroine. But as you can also see, she certainly did go through quite a lot of alarming injuries for a girl during the Bronze Age period.

An oddity: she’s got a fierce loyalty to Brainiac 5, so much that once, when Invisible Kid was spying wrongly on Brainiac, she beat him up but later forgave him. She seems to be quite comfortable with being taken for crazy.

Profile: Domino

Domino
First appearance: X-Force #11, June 1992. Curious thing about her was that the overrated Rob Liefeld was the artist who co-created her at the time, along with Fabian Nicieza. And another interesting thing about her was that, shortly before she officially debuted, there was an imposter who appeared before her! (in New Mutants #98, the series that preceded X-Force.) Her exact name isn’t certain, but at times, she’s been identified as either Neena Thomas or Beatrice Thurman, the latter used when once married to a man named Milo Thurman.

Current status: still a member of both X-Force and another team called Six-Pack.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in 1996-97, in the "Operation: Zero Tolerance" crossover in a lot of the X-titles, she was taken prisoner by the meta-human villain Bastion, and he and his cohorts tortured her, which affected her mentally and physically.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It was going overboard. It was sadistic. That’s the best that can be said about it.

She was also once brainwashed into attempting to kill Cable, her occasional boyfriend. It really wasn’t called for either.

Profile: Donna Troy

Donna Troy, aka Wonder Girl, Troia and Darkstar
First appearance: The Brave and the Bold, 1965. She was a founding member of the Teen Titans and first female member. When she first debuted, she was the adopted sister of pre-Crisis Wonder Woman, though their meetings and team-ups were rare at the time. Later on, in 1988, she got a new origin, where she’d been raised by the Titans of Myth during her childhood.

Current status: not entirely certain just now. She’d taken Diana of Themyscira’s place as WW last year in the third volume of her series, but that was largely botched due to writer Allen Heinberg’s astounding delays as scriptwriter, which led to his arc going otherwise unfinished. You could say that she’s become something of a counselor anew for the latest incarnation of the TT, and has certainly been getting involved again with her onetime boyfriend, Kyle Rayner, former Green Lantern.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: it’s odd, but, during a few of her first appearances under Bob Haney’s pen, she got knocked unconscious a few times by the crooks. Her initial premise as the adopted sister of Wonder Woman being erased and replaced by a different storyline was probably questionable, but what was really nasty was the time when, as Team Titans was beginning, she was pregnant with a child who in the future would become Lord Chaos, and had even come back in time to ensure that he’d be born. It was a really disgusting ordeal, both for her and the audience. The whole matter was solved, and her child became a normal one, but later on, fate would again raise its heavy hand. Her marriage to Terry Long fell apart and he took sole custody of their son.

Donna later had to undergo John Byrne’s disastrous run on Wonder Woman (circa issues #131-136) where he tried to rewrite her origin as being a mirror projection of Diana herself who’d been kidnapped as part of a plot to strike at Hyppolyta by making her daughter the one to suffer by being born into lives that would end in tragedy. And then, Terry and their son died in a car crash. Then, in 2003, she was seemingly killed by a Superman robot in Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day, one of the worst miniseries ever written, by Judd Winick, before being brought back to life again in The Return of Donna Troy in 2005.

What’s wrong with how this was done? The story that took place in Team Titans was awful, and almost reeked of sensationalism. The attempted rewrite in the latter part of Byrne’s run on WW was a grave error, because Donna, in contrast to Diana, was always meant to be born perfectly human, and that’s what made her work as a character, and also how her personality was built together. And as for the breakup of her marriage to Terry, that too was pretty forced. But it wasn’t Marv Wolfman’s fault. It was different writers who’d been assigned to write the story in which Donna and Terry split up, and also for when her former husband and her son were killed off, apparently because this is what was needed in order for her to become a single, more available girl again without too many obstacles to being an adventuress. And the miniseries written by Winick where she was momentarily killed off was very poorly written, depicting her incompetantly and not featuring a genuine enemy for the heroes to combat.

The story done at Byrne’s time has since been discarded, and the background written by Wolfman and George Perez in 1988-89 has been more or less restored. And her “death” in Graduation Day, as mentioned, has since been reversed, and she’s returned to being a notable crimefighter again.

Profile: Hawkgirl/Woman

Hawkgirl/Woman
First appearance: since this entry features at least three ladies to carry the mantle, it’ll feature the place of debut for all of them as well. Sheira Saunders first appeared in Flash Comics #1 in 1940, and became Hawkgirl two years later, becoming possibly the first woman in comics to take up a role originated by a male protagonist. The second one, Shayera Thal, first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #34 in 1961, and after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, her post-Crisis appearance was in 1989’s Hawkworld miniseries. The third one, Kendra Saunders, grandniece of the original, first appeared in JSA: Secret Files in 1999. She’s said to now be inhabited by the original Hawkgirl, for reasons I’ll try to give below.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in Action Comics in 1987, in a story written by John Byrne, she was almost completely ineffective against the villains invading a spaceship, and was even smacked across the face by Hawkman (was it an imposter?) during the story. In 1994, during the Zero Hour crossover, Sheira was killed during a kind of merging of the two Hawkmans. (Who were later sent into a limbo-like dimension, where Katar Hol gave up his life in 2001 so that Carter Hall could return.) It was later, as revealed in the pages of JSA, that Sheira had been reincarnated within her own grandniece, who’d tried to commit suicide at age 17.

Kendra herself and her mother had been near-victims of an attempted rape by two racist police officers in their native west Texas, as told in the Hawkman series that spun out of JSA’s Return of Hawkman story. In the JSA: Fair Play story, she ended up in the mere role of a hostage, drugged unconscious and chained to a wall in a makeshift jungle from where Hawkman and Sand could rescue her, and did not play a significant part at all.

What’s wrong with how this was done? The Byrne story from 1987 was simply dreadful, one of the examples of negative attitudes that turns up in his work of yore as a writer. Perhaps Shiera’s de-facto killing off was needless too, just like a lot of Zero Hour itself, which seemed to exist only for the sake of killing off various JSA veterans such as the original Atom and Dr. Mid-Nite. And Kendra's depiction as a pawn rather than a player in Fair Play was pretty lamebrained too. Here, just when they had a chance to show how talented a young lady she could be in figuring her way out of a danger, they turned her into a mere hostage instead.

Was there anything good to come out of this? The background story for how Kendra came to be was well handled, but Rags Morales being the artist of Identity Crisis all but puts a cloud over it – since his role in that miniseries damages his credibility.

In fact, this reminds me of another very glaring flaw in IC – where was Sheira herself when Dr. Light violated Sue Dibny in the JLA space station in orbit? That she herself was absent and that Hawkman may have kept the incident a secret from her is one of the most insulting and offensive things about the miniseries.

Record: Chuck Austen

Here it is, just the entry we could use, a little listing of some of the worst writing acts of a since forgotten hack writer whom both Marvel and DC had the gall to hire to write some of their most high profile books, how about that! Austen, as far as I know, was an animation producer for King of the Hill in the past decade, and surprisingly enough, he even penciled a few of the issues of the otherwise abortive Elektra series that ran under the now defunct Marvel Knights label. But it’s as a scriptwriter that he really played foul. For example:

• He made Polaris into one of the most annoying characters in Uncanny X-Men. Really irritating dialect, and for a comic book, alarming too.
• He wrote an affair between Archangel and Husk, a very questionable act too, since Husk, if memory serves, is underage (around 16-17 years old), and so, this was really going overboard.
• He was even allowed to write Action Comics, probably the last insult to his record, but still one of the worst, and wrote a sappy rekindled affair between Clark Kent and Lana Lang. He may have even written a few issues under the pen name of “J.D. Finn” to avoid further embarrassment.

Austen is now gone, and if forgotten, it’s probably just as well. As a writer, toiling away with his half-hearted writing between 2002-2004, he was unusually bombastic, and didn’t even try to hide his contempt for the audience. He did at least one interview with Newsarama in which he sunk into victimhood, one of the biggest mistakes for a writer today to make, and he sure won’t be missed.

Profile: Huntress 2

Helena Wayne/Bertinelli, Huntress 2
First appearance: originally during the pre-Crisis era in All-Star Comics #69 and DC Super-Stars #17 in December 1977, where she was first known as Helena Wayne, daughter of the Earth-2 Batman and Catwoman. In her daytime job then, she first worked as a lawyer. Her first post-Crisis appearance was in her own-titled series, The Huntress #1, in April 1989. This time, she was the daughter of an Italian mafia don who was murdered by a rival gang, and grew up with relatives in Sicily, later returning to the US to live and work as a high school teacher, and with her martial arts training, she took up the nighttime job as the Huntress.

Current status: member of Birds of Prey's cast.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she’d been sexually abused as a child, and later on, in Batman’s No Man’s Land crossover in the late 1990s, she did not fare very well, if at all, in combatting the villains.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Her post-Crisis origin, which told of the abuse she suffered, was well handled. However, the misuse she underwent in No Man’s Land is another matter altogether, and a distasteful one at that. Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler, clearly wasn’t the only one who had problems in that weak item.

Huntress does fare a lot better now in Birds of Prey, where she’s become a leading ally to Barbara Gordon in crimefighting.

Profile: Marlo Chandler-Jones

Marlo Chandler-Jones
First appearance: The Incredible Hulk #347, 1988. She met Rick Jones, whom she’d later marry, through her first meeting the Hulk at the time he was rendered gray-skinned, in Las Vegas, where she worked as a call girl for a friendly casino owner who’d hired the Hulk as a security agent (under the name "Joe Fixit"). She also became a good friend of Betty Ross-Banner’s.

Current status: working as a talk show host(?)

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in 1992, she was murdered by Jackie Shorr, a psychotic woman posing as Rick’s mother, who’d once worked at the orphanages he’d lived at when he was a teenager, who was planning on killing him in her basement, but was later brought back to life when Rick made one of those Faustian deals, this one with the Leader, Sam Sterns, to use some technology he’d built in order to revive her. It worked, but she remained mindless for at least a few weeks before returning to full normal.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Not that much, except for the fact that I find it awfully annoying when they depict a woman as being the master planner behind what led to all this in the first place, namely Shorr, the former employee at Rick’s orphanage in Arizona. It really irritates me whenever that kind of a stereotype is featured. Are there not men who’re psychotic, and could do things like that too?

Was there anything good to come out of this? Marlo has since regained her life, little the worse for wear, and continued with a career she and Rick took up working on talk show hosting.

Record: Greg Rucka

Nope, even he’s not going to evade criticism here, as I’ve concluded. Because he too seems to have a few errors in his writing portfolio, not the least being that he can’t seem to resist working for money (or so it would seem). So, what examples can I dish out for him? Let’s see:

• Sasha Bordeaux was his creation, if I’m not mistaken? Seems that she was intro’d simply for a few worthless reasons: so that she could be framed for the murder of onetime Bat-cast member Vesper Fairchild, and then suffer in jail at the hands of other violent inmates, as Bruce Wayne initially thought of abandoning her there(!). This was in order to create a rift between the two, as Sasha then is approached by some special agents for Checkmate, who offer her a job, and then fake her death as a way of slipping her out of prison. Batman eventually finds out, but after a heated discussion with Sasha, leaves her in peace.
• There’s something very odd about Rucka’s leading us to wonder if Ares is doubling back on his bad ways again in Wonder Woman, but then, it’s Hera herself who ends up causing injury to the Amazons via their magical fountain when she gets angry at how Zeus is de-facto cheating on her with his voyeuristic scans of Themyscira. Why, when I think about it now, do I start to feel very unpleasantly annoyed at that?
• Rucka was also involved in co-writing Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and in blasting Ted Kord, aka Blue Beetle, to death.
• In the OMAC Project miniseries, Sasha is turned into a cyborg, though this is reversed later on in Infinite Crisis. (But don’t think that makes it any better!)

Rucka, as I’ve concluded, while he may have some credible writing in store, also possesses some very stupid and foolish examples as well, and may not be as worthy of handling any DC or Marvel books he’s writing as one might think.

Record: Judd Winick

I don’t own any of his books, and there are many stories he wrote that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. And here below are a handful of examples of what’s wrong with him, not the least being that he’s what’s come to be known today as a moonbat:

• In 2003, he wrote Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day, in which he killed off Donna Troy and Lilith Clay, the latter who’s been largely swept under the rug by DC since, and let’s just say that the women in that would-be miniseries virtually all come off badly there. It was one of the most rushed and worst items ever made.
• In 2005, he co-wrote Countdown to Infinite Crisis, in which Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, was killed off in gruesome, excessive fashion.
• When he took up writing Green Arrow, he wrote that Mia, who became a new Speedy, was infected with HIV in a forced storyline. Maybe not as bad as what Kevin Smith, when he intro’d her, did, but still uncalled for.
• In the 57th issue of GA, Dr. Light gloats about the “joys” of rape. This issue was actually credited to a different writer(?), yet is written in a vicious manner not unlike Winick’s own forced manner of writing, to the point of where one can only wonder if what he did was hand a plot he’d done over to another writer in order to dodge any criticism on his part?
• And speaking of vicious and forced, that could describe even his approach to writing on Green Lantern, Outsiders, and even Green Arrow too.
• The lesbian subplot featured in the One Year Later storyline in Outsiders involving Thunder and Grace Choi was contrived and exploitive.

Winick is a very shameless writer whose works, when studying some of them more closely when possible, seem to have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He’s really not worth anyone’s time.

Profile: Jarella

Jarella
First appearance: The Incredible Hulk 140, 1971. She was the queen of a magical kingdom on a subatomic planet called K’ai.

Current status: dead and buried

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in The Incredible Hulk #205 in 1976, she was killed by a falling slab of concrete from a damaged building while the Hulk was clashing with a robot called the Crypto-Man while saving a little boy from the same fate.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Nothing at all, really. It was pretty well handled in its time. Jarella died heroically while saving an innocent life from harm’s way.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Jarella’s story made for a very good one in its time. Even after her death, there was still much to be wrapped up, as the Hulk had to return her to her home planet where she could be given a decent burial, as was done in 1980.

It’s an all but overlooked story that, if and when published in trade paperback, would be quite worthwhile to try out.

Profile: Elektra

Elektra Nachios
First appearance: Daredevil #168 Vol. 1, 1979

Current status: wandering the globe, not knowing what to really do with herself, certainly not the writers.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: murdered in bloody fashion by Bullseye in Daredevil #181 Vol. 1, 1983, one of the most vile acts of his career, but was resurrected in four years later (or was it in DD #190?). Since then, she has reformed, but has found little purpose, artistically anyway.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Elektra is a rather complicated matter. It’s not that there was actually anything wrong with her being offed by Bulleye in the first place, unless you were to count that it was meant to influence Matt Murdock’s own development rather than hers. But while resurrection in comics, certainly for females, is something that’s actually welcome, in her case it’s fairly questionable, since the writers who took up tasks of working on her since then have not been able to figure out much else to do with her. In the late 1990s, there was a brief series produced in which she got assistance from Dr. Strange on some cases she’d been working on, but that didn’t amount to much. Then, a few years later, when the Marvel Knights line was still around, she got another series, but not only did that not last long either, they didn’t even try to come up with a solid direction for it either. It went through as many as 4-5 writers and no one seemed to be able to make any lasting impression on it, or didn't try to.

Was there anything good to come out of this? That all depends on anyone’s POV. Decidedly, I’m not going to really object to her being resurrected, but, if they can’t offer a steady direction for the femme fatale either, then they shouldn’t be trying to launch an ongoing series for Elektra. I figure in fairness that it was probably Joe Quesada’s fault in part, since he seemed only interested in cashing in on her “bad girl” appeal. So, that could be what caused the problems of recent.

Profile: Golden Glider

Lisa Snart, Golden Glider
First appearance: The Flash #250 Vol 1, 1977. The sister of Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, she was co-created by Irv Novick, who gave her a costume design almost similar to one worn by Talia al-Ghul that he drew for her in the Batbooks.

Current status: dead

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: Mark Waid, when writing the 1992 Flash Annual, reverted her to her criminal status, after all the time when, since Barry Allen had died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, she’d reformed, not having any further purpose for being a criminal – the Flash was her only reason for being one, as she held him responsible for the death of her boyfriend, the Top, and wanted to seek revenge upon by targeting his loved ones, whether they be Iris West Allen or Barry’s parents. Then, in 1996, after being largely out of the picture for four years, Waid revealed her having been frozen to death by one of the Chillblaines she’d recruited as her crime partners/boyfriends.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Contrived, forced writing, for the purpose of bringing back an adversary who’d been effective in the time that Barry was around (her first three storylines were dynamite), but afterwards needed no more use as a criminal character. I remember reading Flash #18 Vol. 2, where she’d had a memorable role in the party the Rogues Gallery was holding as part of a reunion with a few other villains as well, and Waid decidedly didn’t respect what was done there by predecessor William Messner-Loebs. And then, after Waid had reverted her to being a criminal in the Flash Annual, he didn’t even make any more use out of her, and subsequently killed her off at the hands of one of her Chillblaines in 1996, when the latest one turned out to be smarter than he looked. Captain Cold later tracked down and killed this last one in 2002.

I know that with Iris West Allen returning to the picture in 1994, it’s not like Lisa Snart could’ve been a regular cast member or a friend of the main players so easily, since Iris had the most definite grudge against her and would no doubt have wanted to break her neck, but that doesn’t mean that they had to turn Lisa back into a crook again, even one who operated behind the scenes. That’s what’s come to be known as lazy writing, pure and simple.

Profile: Talia al-Ghul

Talia al-Ghul
First appearance: Detective Comics #441, May 1971

Current status: a villainess, thanks to possible manipulation by ways of both her father Ra’s al-Ghul and half-sister Nyssa.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in Batman: Death and the Maidens, she was captured and brainwashed by Nyssa as part of a revenge plot against Ra’s, but was actually part of a larger plot in which Ra’s plotted to convince or brainwash both daughters into accepting roles as leaders of his League of Assassins, and the Demon gang. She disavowed her love for Batman during this time and turned against him as a result of the torture she underwent at the hands of Nyssa (who appears to have since been killed by Cassandra Cain).

What’s wrong with how this was done? They ruined one of the best anti-heroines in comics, and one of the best recurring characters in the Batbooks. All of this was apparently done to coincide with “events” leading up to Infinite Crisis, and as a tie to Villains United. That could explain in part why I wouldn’t buy that miniseries even if I were paid the money for it.

The whole premise involving Nyssa, while we’re on the subject, is decidedly offensive, since it depicts her as even more one-dimensional in her whole notion of revenge than Magneto, who, like her, was also written as a Holocaust survivor. And something tells me that the reintroduction of Talia and Bruce Wayne’s son, Damian, into continuity in “Batman and Son” was also ill-advised.

Profile: Magik

Illyana Rasputina, Magik
First appearance: She was first seen as a child in Giant-Size X-Men #1, but her first actual appearance was Uncanny X-Men #160. She’s the younger sister of Piotr Rasputin (Colossus), and like him is also a native of Russia. (In English, her last name does not include the letter A at the end, but that appears to be how they spelled it not just for her, but even for her mother!) She was a member of New Mutants and a good friend of Kitty Pryde.

Current status: dead

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: held captive by the villainous Arcade and his assistant Miss Locke to use as a pawn in attacking the X-Men, held captive by a sorceror named Belasco in the Otherplace (Limbo) dimension, where he turned part of her soul demonic, used it to conjure up bloodstones, and even made her look part vampiric before she finally beat him in a battle and drove him out of his own realm, regaining her human form again. However, she later became infected with the Legacy virus, and died from it, which had the effect of sending Colossus over the edge and into Magneto’s Acolytes for a time.

What’s wrong with how this was done? It’s the fact that they killed her off that is. Instead of developing her character full time, they chose to kill her off, all for the purpose of a storyline that focuses on the effects this had on her brother, who for a time turned criminal. Another story wherein the female’s death serves as a catalyst for a male, instead of one where you can focus on the female’s personality, a much better idea.

And while her brother has been revived from a death of almost four years (in Astonishing X-Men, written by Joss Whedon), she still remains in the grave.

Record: Grant Morrison

He’s overrated, and his criticism of Frank Miller on Newsarama was in poor taste, one more reason why his work will do quite well for scrutiny. So, what did he do that makes the list here? It’s mostly from his take on X-Men that this comes from.

• He regurgitated the Phoenix farrago, had Cyclops utter a nerve-wracking sentence as if Jean were the Phoenix, warning her that she could “lose control” again, then started giving Jean Phoenix-style powers again under the claim that it was a “rogue manifestation”. Boring! Also uncalled for.
• We get a stereotypical villainess in Cassandra Nova (and why did she have the codename of minor superhero Richard Ryder?). If you don’t know how she sliced a scientist named Trask to death, you won’t want to know even now. Filthy!
• Morrison’s depiction of Magneto was one of the most obnoxious, crass abuses of an already misused character I’ve ever seen. It’s bad enough that Magneto may have caused tons of deaths in the early 1990s when he disrupted the earth’s magnetic fields, but this was going way too far.
• At the end of his run, Morrison then “kills off” Jean, while turning her into the Phoenix again. The scene then shifts into a future time where some astronauts on the moon find a “phoenix egg”. Is that supposed to imply all hell breaks loose? And Cyclops seems to disavow his love for her too.

As far as his work on X-Men is concerned, I don’t like it at all. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that some comics writers from Britain (Morrison, Millar, Jenkins) are not really to my tastes (2000 AD was never my cup of tea either), but rather, that his whole idea of what mutants, metahumans, aliens or any other kind of lifeform are supposed to behave like or be like is numbingly wrongheaded. The same goes for his regurgitating of storylines we don’t need anymore.

Record: Kevin Smith

Once upon a time, I wrote upon a message board where another poster said that, while Kevin Smith may be a good filmmaker (well, I guess that can be debated), he’s a pretty awful comic book writer. And after some of the examples I’m about to give here, I’m beginning to wonder the same thing.

• Smith began the second volume of Daredevil that ran under the now defunct Marvel Knights label in 1998, and in issue #5, Karen Page came back into Matt Murdock’s life, tricked into thinking she fell ill with HIV only to be killed by Bullseye, instead of installing new life into her as a supporting character.
• In Green Arrow vol. 2, he starts off his story with a crime kingpin about to sodomize a young girl (Mia?), before Oliver Queen comes in to save the day. Pretty excessive, if I do say so myself.
• And then, most notorious, and most sloppy of all, for more reasons than one, was his Black Cat miniseries, which got stalled halfway through in 2002, but not before we were left with a cliffhanger leaving us wondering if a gangster is going to rape poor Felicia, and then, when it finally picked up almost two years later(!), even if she evaded that repugnant fate, we still get hit by an artificial retcon claiming that Felicia Hardy took to becoming the Black Cat because she’d been raped in college! Ahem. She took to becoming the Black Cat in 1979 – and initially, a burglar – because she was inspired by her late father’s own criminal career as a professional thief. The miniseries has since been written off by many in the audience, with good reason.

Kevin Smith, clearly, does not have the talent it takes to write a good comic book, let alone a good movie, and I should hope that the comics companies won’t hire him again, no matter how many comics his name alone can sell.

Record: Rags Morales

Even artists have their share of faults and blame (someday, maybe I’ll let you know what I think of Dick Dillin for 2 or 3 nigh-offensive panels he drew in Justice League of America in the early 1970s), and in Mr. Morales’ case, he certainly hasn’t done himself much good by taking one positive item he drew, and then damaging his credibility upon that with another. What exactly am I referencing here? Well, that’ll come up in just a moment:

• In Hawkman Vol. 4, we get the background of Kendra Saunders, current Hawkgirl, who, when she was around 13 years old, had been out with her mother Trina in the west Texas countryside where her mother, a skilled landscape painter, was spending the day working on her talent, when two racist patrolmen came along and took the two of them hostage at gunpoint, with the intention of raping Mrs. Saunders out of a hate crime (Kendra and her mother are of Hispanic background). Kendra fought back against one of the two policemen, whose name was Nedal, killing the second one, Darryl Jenkins, who came running up to them (and may have grazed the first with his own weapon). What made this storyline work was the fact that you did get a female viewpoint here, via Kendra herself as she reflects upon that ugly moment in her life, and it was neither excessive nor sensationalized in execution. Plus, Morales even drew it in black and white.
  
• But then, Morales, as the artist of the above example, went along and ruined his credibility on that by drawing one of the ugliest, most poorly written examples of molestation in Identity Crisis, Dr. Light victimizing Sue Dibny, that in sharp contrast to the prior example, bore no female viewpoint whatsoever. Not only that, but he even told the AP Wire, "If nobody really cared, that's an insult to us. . . If they hate it, that's great. If they love it, that's great. But if they are like, 'Ehhh. . .So what? No big deal,' those are the ones that would bother us." Meaning in other words that Morales doesn’t want a following of fandom? It would almost seem that way.

This may not be a really long line of examples so far, but, it can serve as an important example of how a artist or a writer does something credible the one moment and then tosses it out the window, splattering all over the pavement, the next. As of this writing, either I haven’t heard of anything Mr. Morales has worked upon lately, or I just haven’t cared enough to pay any attention. Not that it matters, really. But I figure he does deserve to be written off and shunted into obscurity for being as rude as he was in his actions.

Profile: Jean DeWolff

Jean DeWolff
First appearance: Marvel Team-Up #48. She was a NY police captain and frequent guest star for a time in Spider-Man’s adventures, proving a most helpful ally many times.

Current status: dead

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: she was terminated by her ex-lover Stan Carter, alias Sin-Eater.

What’s wrong with how this was done? I think it was a case of needlessly tossing out yet another cast member of Spidey’s world with potential. Jean had some very good moments, and why not give her some more?

Was there anything good to come out of this? That it may have had some dramatic impact and value to it. The story can be found today compiled in trade format, in Amazing Spider-Man: The Death of Jean DeWolff, co-authored by Peter David and Rich Buckler. It was revealed that her feeling towards Spidey may have been even warmer than what she may have usually indicated.

Profile: Ice

Tora Olafsdotter, Ice (also Ice Maiden 2)
First appearance: Justice League International #12, April 1988. She was the daughter of a king of a tribe of magical ice people in Norway, and at one point she even took up the longer name of a predecessor, Ice Maiden, who’d first worked as the Global Guardians’ representative from Norway before her, that being Sigrid Nansen. She was also loved by Guy Gardner.

Current status: turned up alive, in a state of suspended animation, in the pages of Birds of Prey.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: she was killed while turning against the Overmaster, who’d offered her a power-up, in Justice League Task Force #14, July 1994.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Apparently, it was all part of an editorial mandate, something which, in fact, had originally been intended back around the time when she debuted. But when she started catching on with readers and received a much-deserved following, that’s what kept DC editorial from killing her off initially. Unfortunately, in 1994, the fate first intended caught up with her.

Mark Waid later said that regretted killing her off. But this may have just been a few years afterwards that he came to that conclusion. Given that this is comics, it may not be too late to fix these mistakes, but even so, he should’ve known better, as should DC editorial. And given that he’s been going along with the Identity Crisis debacle since 2004, it’s become hard now to credit his statement from the late 90s about what he did to Ice.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Now, the death has been reversed in Birds of Prey, where she turned up alive in a suspended animation storage.