Profile: Inza Cramer Nelson

Inza Cramer Nelson
First appearance: More Fun Comics #55, May 1940
Creators: Gardner Fox, Howard Sherman

History: Inza Cramer is the girlfriend/wife of Kent Nelson, alias Dr. Fate, the sorceror who debuted in his role during the Golden Age, and she assisted him in his various adventures. She was written as being a university archaeology student, and a descendant of a ship captain named Ezra Hawkins from New England. After the Fate stories ended in 1944, they both went into limbo for 2 decades, and Inza reappeared around the mid-60s, now established as Kent's wife. She'd also make appearances in All-Star Squadron. Thanks to the magics of Fate and what she herself could learn, she remained youthful for a time. And she took up the costumed role herself at least once.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: during the long notorious Zero Hour crossover, Extant forcibly turns both Inza and Kent aged, and senile, and they were among those knocked off into the afterlife at the time.

What's wrong with how this was done? A lady character with potential, as much as her magical husband, was thrown to the winds for the sake of a PC direction that went nowhere, and all for the sake of introducing another protagonist, Jared Stevens, who took the Fate role in the mid-90s, yet was wiped out himself in the equally pretentious 1999-2006 JSA series written by awful scribes like James Robinson, David Goyer and Geoff Johns.

(Earlier, in the late 1980s, Kent and Inza were put in death limbo for a few years to be replaced by Eric & Linda Strauss - who took up their roles in the 1988-92 ongoing Doctor Fate series for half its run before being wiped out as well - then returned, but both characters were shoved into the afterlife yet again by editorial mandate of the aforementioned crossover, in a precursor to what Johns did with Hector Hall/Silver Scarab and Lyta Trevor Hall/Fury in JSA the following decade.)

Some of the worst story ideas and ingredients at DC in the 90s came as a result of the crossovers they vehemently refused to stop relying upon so heavily. Inza was but one of the biggest victims.

Profile: Dian Belmont

Dian Belmont
First appearance: Adventure Comics #47, February 1940
Creators: Gardner Fox, Ogden Whitney

History: Dian was a girlfriend to Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds (who to me is the only true Sandman character in the DCU, and NOT the one concocted by the disgraced Neil Gaiman, which was supposedly based on Greek mythology's Morpheus). She was portrayed as a socialite and freelance investigator, the daughter of a district attorney named Lawrence Belmont, but Dian vanished from the Sandman strip after about a year. Sandy Hawkins, later established as a nephew of hers, replaced her in the strip, and IIRC, was created by Mort Weisinger, though Jack Kirby and Joe Simon took over the writing for the remainder of its run. (And during their run, the concept of Wesley using sleeping gas pistols was curiously abandoned in favor of grappling hook tools.)

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: in All-Star Squadron, written mainly by Roy Thomas, it was established in the 18th issue that Dian was murdered by National Socialist agents while wearing a Sandman disguise during WW2, and they mistook her for Wesley.

What's wrong with how this was done? Fortunately, little, since it was self-contained, not written in gruesome shock tactic terms like much of what came down the pike in the early 2000s, and Thomas was a talented writer who did have a good enough idea how to handle such a storyline in a way that could be used to provide Sandy with some motivation.

Was there anything good to come out of this? The aforementioned motivation provided for Sandy the Golden Boy, which was handled organically enough back in the Bronze Age when they did it. However, much as I'd like to think the later Sandman Mystery Theater series from the mid-1990s Vertigo imprint was a great way to rework her background in a tale that might've been an alternate continuity, I will decidedly recommend avoiding that series altogether, because it appears to have some connections to Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, and based on what was discovered about him and even his writings, that's why, if Sandman Mystery Theater drew inspiration from Gaiman's atrocity, it's best forgotten.

Record: Tom Brevoort

Tom Brevoort began working as an editor for Marvel as far back as 1989, and later oversaw titles and series like the Avengers and some of the solo superhero books whose stars appeared in the Earth's Mightiest Heroes series. But since the early 2000s, whatever talent he may have offered as an editor went straight downhill, as he proceeded to subject the comics he oversaw to some of the worst misuse possible, and here's a few examples of what occurred when he was editor for Avengers-related titles post-2002:

• In Geoff Johns' run on Avengers, there was a scene where Whirlwind licked the face of the Wasp, in one of the grimiest, creepiest and most repellent moments from Johns' writing portfolio. And Brevoort actually allowed that? Shameful.
• During Avengers: Disassembled, which was written by the overrated Brian Michael Bendis, Hawkeye was written telling Hank Pym, "don't you have a wife to beat?" It was bad enough that a storyline as questionable as what the late Jim Shooter produced in 1981 - where the 1st Ant-Man slugged Wasp to get her to stop protesting at a scheme he was trying to get back in the good graces of his costumed colleagues - had to remain canon for many years. But what Bendis wrote and Brevoort allowed was repulsive, and throughly ignored how it's never a fictional character's fault for how or what he/she was depicted doing in a fictional story. It's the writer's fault. And that includes Bendis. And arguably, even the editors and artists have some accountability to shoulder there. Including Brevoort.
• Making matters worse was how Scarlet Witch, in what's already become the most notorious part of Disassembled, turned out to be the culprit in weird attacks occurring to Avengers, including apparently Jack of Hearts, who was depicted blown to smithereens in the loathsome story.
• Later, in the House of M crossover, the misuse of Wanda continued as she was depicted as draining mutants of almost all their powers, topped off by saying "no more mutants", in what was a contrived notion for how to eliminate an allegedly too-large-list of mutants in the Marvel universe.
• There was a storyline in Bendis' "New" Avengers where Tigra was assaulted by a villain called The Hood, in another example of the editor allowing a repellent direction to go ahead with another notable lady.
• It's also worth noting that Brevoort's had at least a few projects in his editorial career where he depicted heroes fighting each other far more than battling villains. And that's pretty telling too. Not a very creative editor at all.

Brevoort, for all we know, is one of the most pretentious editors ever employed by Marvel. He may not have been the worst contributor when he originally began his career there, but post-2000, he certainly proved he'd worn out his welcome. And the resulting damage to Marvel's cohesion and morale has been pretty apparent since.

Profile: Colleen Wing

Colleen Wing
First appearance: Marvel Premiere #19, November 1974
Co-creators: Doug Moench, Larry Hama

History: a native of Japan whose mother was descended from a family of samurai, and whose father, Lee Wing, was an Asian history professor in the USA, Colleen too was taught the ways of samurai and martial artistry by her grandfather, Kenji Ozawa. She befriended Iron Fist and became a close ally on various cases he took up along with Power Man, and also Misty Knight, who'd become her best buddy.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: she was one of plenty of Marvel cast members who were misused in the Civil War crossover, siding with the superhero registration act. In the Shadowland story, her mother's background was apparently retconned forciby (not a surprise in the era where Joe Quesada became EIC) to one where she led a group of crooked swordswomen affiliated with The Hand, and it was told that Wing's mother was later assassinated by a rival group.

What's wrong with how this was done? It's another sad example of how modern Marvel's overlords took apart all the hard work of past contributors for the sake of directionless positions. Or in this case, making the legacy of a notable character look like an embarrassing mockery. And the chances the people responsible will ever apologize are next to nothing.

Profile: Princess Projectra

Princess Projectra
First appearance: Adventure Comics #346, July 1966
Creators: Jim Shooter, Curt Swan

History: Projectra, a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, was heir to the throne of the planet Orando in the far future, and her power was the ability to generate illusions that could affect all 5 senses of the body. In later years, she fell in love with and married Karate Kid.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: she was erased from continuity/existence during the notorious Zero Hour crossover of 1994, in another example of modern editors treating other people's hard work like tissue paper or less, and replaced by a similar character named Sensor (Jeka Wynzorr), which was the name of a disguise she took up during the mid-1980s for a brief period. It's one thing to create a new character, but doing it at the expense of the original was simply unacceptable. Geoff Johns also allegedly "reintroduced" the pre-Crisis Sensor Girl in the Justice Society series he was writing during the mid-2000s, and under his type of writing, it's definitely not worth the paper it was printed on.

Projectra's co-creator, Jim Shooter, may have reintroduced her during the "Threeboot" era of the mid-2000s, when he was hired to again write some Legion stories, but it was far too late, and took place when one of the worst editors DC was ever under, Dan DiDio, was in charge. He may be gone from their employ now, but the damage has long been done, and even for Princess Projectra, it'll take ages to repair whatever damage was done to her.

New template

After many years, I decided to add a new template to the blog, for as long as I'm still using it, this being the Minima Black template, that I thought might fit the purpose even better than the last one. There are still, to be sure, some parts I'll want to smooth out. But for now, I think I've got most of the important parts in place, and so, I'll see how well I can manage with the new one now, and hope it'll be comprehensive enough for everybody, and easy to navigate.

Record: J. Michael Straczynski

No doubt, it's not every writer who's as polarizing a figure as J. Michael Straczynski, the writer who's worked in both comics and films since the mid-to-late 1980s, and has credits in animation in some form too, along with at least one Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, for Thor. But seriously, he's one of the most overrated writers of his era, particularly since the turn of the century, and his work on Spider-Man stands out as some of his worst, most pretentious assignments in comicdom. And the way he treated some of the women in his work was nothing short of despicable. That editorial interference may have played a part in his writings is no excuse either.

So now, here's the best possible list of examples of what he did wrong as a writer in his career.

• When Straczynski got the writing job for Spider-Man, he went along with Joe Quesada's mandate that initially did not allow Mary Jane Watson to reunite with Peter Parker. And JMS even made hilariously absurd claims he was trying to "get inside Peter's head" in his writings, as though that's possible with a fictional character who doesn't exist. And when Peter and MJ were subsequently reunited in the 50th issue of the relaunch of Spidey's series at the time around 2003, the story was ruined by a plotline that was sympathetic to Doctor Doom, who was apparently portrayed as a stand-in for Saddam Hussein.
• Even before that, JMS' special interruption of his run for the sake of a September 11, 2001 issue of Spidey, in issue 36, became a left-wing diatribe that blamed the victims. That was simply reprehensible, though what much else could you expect from such a boilerplate leftist from Hollywood?
• And about a year after Peter and MJ were reunited, JMS continued to make things horrific with the Sins Past storyline in late 2004, where Gwen Stacy was implausibly made to look like she'd been cheating on Peter with...Norman Osborn?!? And had 2 children with him? And MJ was made to look like a liar when she was depicted as having kept a secret from Peter all those years. The whole storyline was so embarrassingly bad, gave sex a bad name, and only made clear why it would've been better if Marvel had closed down in the early 2000s. Did I mention how the story was not verbatim to the original 1973 storyline where Gwen was unconscious, if not completely dead, when the Green Goblin knocked her off the George Washington Bridge in NYC? Whatever justifications JMS had for altering the history in such contrived and forced manners was utterly stupid.
• When the One More Day embarrassment came about, and Peter "sold" his marriage with MJ to Mephisto for the sake of reversing Aunt May's injury from a mobster's bullet, JMS basically went along with the Quesada mandate that dictated the story being told.
• During his brief Thor run, he depicted Loki causing Sif to be put in the body of a geriatric woman, and women's roles in the story were minimal. It was only at about the end of the run that Sif was finally put back in her own regular form.
• I could even add that his Superman storyline where the Man of Steel went on some kind of "walking tour" was pretty lazy to boot, and didn't amount to much of anything. He left the writing assignment pretty early too.

From what I can tell about JMS' career, it doesn't seem like he has much talent for how to portray women in his writings, and not many of his other writing assignments for ongoing series seemed to last long. He's little more than the kind of leftist who's gotten as far as he did based on his leftist politics alone, and today, while he unfortunately still continues to get occasional jobs with Marvel/DC, he is more or less a has-been, and I decidedly won't finance his creator-owned projects either like Rising Stars.

Update: I hadn't paid enough attention of recent, but I wrote another, similar post about Straczynski 16 years ago, and didn't notice, apparently because I'd misspelled the post at the time. Still, for as long as I'm still writing here, I guess it could be worth writing an extra post about some of the subjects, if not all.