Corporate Stupidity: Exhibit A - DC Comics

[Umbran]

Umbram, Its not a matter comic book creators "getting the point." They have gotten the point.

I didn't say that had to "get the point". I said they had to "get with the program". As in, they must keep abreast of social issues that are relevant. Marvel and DC have both had gay characters. But Marvel, seeing current trends, now has a gay marriage. So, yes, DC has to act to stay socially relevant too.

What DC did in the past isn't relevant, as they are *NEW* 52, with new backgrounds. If they want some gay characters in the current spread, they have to state it explicitly.

 

[Relique du Madde]

But they *don't* have to explicitly state that the rebooted original Green Lantern is gay. They could have had the retcon be revealed when the issue was bought liek what happened back in March when Hulking proposed to Wiccan in Young Avengers: Children's Crusade #9.

HOWEVER, unfortunately, the Alan Scott mass media reveal is all about sales since DC wants to out-sell Marvel's hyped up Gay Wedding. Believe me, if Marvel didn't hype up Northstar's proposal, the would world have discovered about Alan Scott's sexuality on the moment the first comic book shop owner opened up their shipment of nuDCU Earth 2 books cracked one open and posted "OMG! Allan Scott is Gay" on social media.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So what if it's primarily about sales? DC Comics is a business, and attempting to steal your competiton's thunder is (generally) a good strategy.

Hamhanded? Perhaps. But I'm not going to call them on it.

Now, if they had had Martian Manhunter retconned to wearing a rainbow cape and acting like Shore Leave from The Venture Brothers in his secret ID as John Jones*, I'd have a problem.








* does he even have that secret ID anymore?

 

[Mercutio01]

So what if it's primarily about sales? DC Comics is a business, and attempting to steal your competiton's thunder is (generally) a good strategy.

Hamhanded? Perhaps. But I'm not going to call them on it.

You don't think marginalizing an entire segment of the population and paying lip service to equality while playing the half-assed safe bet for the sole purposes of increasing your bottom line* is something to be called out on?

When Dr. Pepper 10 calls out "Not for women," are women wrong to call that out as being completely sexist, reductive, and ridiculous?

This says to me that DC doesn't give two craps about the homosexual population of America and is merely using them to pad out the bottom line. This has nothing to do with being even-handed or fair, and everything to do with unfairly taking advantage of an entire subculture and co-opting a legitimate political discussion to line investor pockets.

Note that I don't have any problems with this move as I believe in capitalism the free market, but let's call it what it is: the cynical use of a subculture to increase the profit margin.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You don't think marginalizing an entire segment of the population and paying lip service to equality while playing the half-assed safe bet for the sole purposes of increasing your bottom line* is something to be called out on?

Marginalizing? More like mainstreaming- they see homosexuality as a potential selling point as opposed to something that could cost them sales.

That they made a big press splash about Scott's sexuality doesn't marginalize homosexuals, it's treating them the same way as other minorities and women get treated in advertising: as a leverageable selling point for their commodity.

Equal treatment, baby. Sometimes, it isn't pretty.

Again, they have not portrayed Scott in any kind of stereotypical fashion. All they did was a press reveal.

Compare this to how major female, Black, Hispanic, Asian and even other gay characters have gotten rolled out in serial fiction. Some got fanfare, some simply appeared.

How many months before a single episode aired was the news released that Starbuck in nBSG was being played by a woman?

When Dr. Pepper 10 calls out "Not for women," are women wrong to call that out as being completely sexist, reductive, and ridiculous?

Nope, but that is completely different. The DP10 campaign is just dumb sexist marketing. Nothing about Alan Scot being gay is being used to say his books are exclusionary to straights.

 

[Alan Shutko]

This says to me that DC doesn't give two craps about the homosexual population of America and is merely using them to pad out the bottom line.

That's OK. They don't give two craps about anyone else and are merely using the rest of the population to pad out the bottom line.

 

[Mercutio01]

That they made a big press splash about Scott's sexuality doesn't marginalize homosexuals, it's treating them the same way as other minorities and women get treated in advertising: as a leverageable cselling point for their commodity.

Equal treatment, baby. Sometimes, it isn't pretty.

Again, they have not portrayed Scott in any kind of stereotypical fashion. All they did was a press reveal.

Compare this to how major Black, Hispanic, Asian and even other gay characters have gotten rolled out. Some get fanfare, some simply appear.

The marginalization comes in at least two ways. First, the marketing promised a major character with the implications being a top-tier mainstream character, and what they delivered is a second-tier character who is neither daring nor particularly interesting. The second comes in the fact that they appear to be using the character's sexuality strictly to stir up controversy and drive sales.

That's OK. They don't give two craps about anyone else and are merely using the rest of the population to pad out the bottom line.

Again, I'm not saying that DC shouldn't have the right to do this, but to try to frame the conversation as a heroic stand for gay rights or, indeed, for anything else other than marketing gimmick it is, is as disingenuous as the gimmick itself. This isn't a noble cause to drive the public conversation. It's a deceitful (Alan Scott /= major superhero) marketing ploy marginalizing the homosexual community and using them for selfish purposes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The marginalization comes in at least two ways. First, the marketing promised a major character with the implications being a top-tier mainstream character, and what they delivered is a second-tier character who is neither daring nor particularly interesting. The second comes in the fact that they appear to be using the character's sexuality strictly to stir up controversy and drive sales.

1) Do you know that Alan Scott is intended to remain a "second tier" character? Perhaps DC has big plans for him. Isn't he in his own title? Wolverine started off as a throwaway foe for The Hulk; The Punisher, as I recall as a villain for Spidey; Deathstroke as a Arden Titans villain. Boba Fett was just another bounty hunter. All grew over time. Perhaps DC Comics intends for Scott to be more high profile than he's been in decades.

2) Stirring up controversy and driving sales with his orientation this way is not marginalization, it's mainstreaming. His being gay is being sold as a positive, not a negative.

 

[Mercutio01]

1) Do you know that Alan Scott is intended to remain a "second tier" character? Perhaps DC has big plans for him. Isn't he in his own title? Wolverine started off as a throwaway foe for The Hulk; The Punisher, as I recall as a villain for Spidey; Deathstroke as a Arden Titans villain. Boba Fett was just another bounty hunter. All grew over time. Perhaps DC Comics intends for Scott to be more high profile than he's been in decades.

Well, no, not in his own book. As for the second tier - he's on Earth 2, not the primary DCU. The role of Earth 2 was specifically a place to try out different things without corrupting the main continuity. Thus, anything that happens in Earth 2 can be easily ignored if that choice turns out to be a bad one.

2) Stirring up controversy and driving sales with his orientation is not marginalization, it's mainstreaming.

If you use a narrow segment specifically for the purpose of marketing, you are not mainstreaming that segment. You are holding it out as different, as "the other" and implying that its value is only in its otherness. Alan Scott becomes not the Green Lantern who happens to be gay, but rather the gay Green Lantern. That in itself is a marginalization of the character. The former implies that gay is not his defining trait, nor that it makes any difference whatsoever in his daily life. The latter makes him into a one-trick pony and is a singular reduction of an otherwise complex being.

A look at The Midnighter and Apollo from the Authority would go a ways to proving that homosexual comic book characters can exist apart from their identity as "gay" and that a mature look at the characters without the cynical hype can do more to mainstream the movement. Also look to Watchmen and Hooded Justice and Silhouette for ways to give characters dimension and inclusion without making them into cardboard cutouts.

Maybe Alan Scott's reincarnation (he's literally a different character now from the one established in the 1940s) will be more three-dimensional than I'm guessing, but the marketing surrounding the revelation and the relegation to an alternate universe version of a true top-tier character, one who already addressed homosexuality in comics through his relationship with his gay son (and all of that erased) serves only to call him out as a token.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you use a narrow segment specifically for the purpose of marketing, you are not mainstreaming that segment.

Not as far as I- a black Catholic in the southern USA with an MBA in Sports & Entertainment Marketing- am concerned.

When you start using the inclusion or highlighting of minorities of any kind as a positive marketing tool, you're saying by your actions that they will not be seen as a detrimental association for your product with your targeted markets.

As for him being a token, please realize that tokens, for all their negatives, have a positive role in the earliest days of a change in society. They pave the way. They desensitize the masses to the controversy of inclusion.

And make no mistake, we are still in the early stages of having gay superheroes.

There have only been a handful of gay characters in comics so far, and arguably, he may be one of the highest profile ones of the entire bunch. So what if he's not the top-tier GL or from Earth 1- he's still a character that's been around for, what, 50+ years?