Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "dc-comics"

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture
Glen Weldon (Author, Narrator)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Audible.com Release Date: March 22, 2016
ASIN: B01BPHJCXM
https://www.amazon.com/Caped-Crusade-...


Written by Wesley Britton for BookPleasures.com:

Glen Weldon is far from the first historian to explore the extensive Batman history in a full-length critical study. Perhaps the densest and best researched book on the topic, at least up to its publication date, was Bruce Scivally’s 2011 Billion Dollar Batman. Over recent years, the Sequart Research & Literacy Organization has featured many scholarly titles on various aspects of Batman’s place in comics, television, and films like its impressive essay collections on the 1966 Adam West television series, the work of Grant Morrison, and Julian Darius’s
2011 Improving the Foundations: Batman Begins from Comics to Screen. Now, Glen Weldon picks up the mantle, er, cowl, and takes us back to the beginning and brings us up to the present by tracing Batman’s evolving place in popular culture. Unlike other studies, he also focuses on the responses of “nurds” to the character and Bruce Wayne’s Gotham City milieu.

Naturally, the saga begins with the debut Batman stories created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in Detective Comics in 1939. Thereafter, Weldon looks at how and why Batman was a figure forever changing in re-boots, re-sets, re-moldings and re-framing in popular media. The first serious course correction for the character and comic books in general took place in 1954 with the publication of Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham. That book attacked the comics industry claiming it was an assault on the morals of youth. Were Batman and Robin homoerotic characters? Were the street fights with criminals too gritty for young readers? To deal with the cultural controversy, Batman became less a dark crime-fighter and more an out-of-place sci fi space voyager.
Then came the 1966 Adam West TV series where the battle lines were drawn between the nurds wanting their comic book Batman to not be bowdlerized by the TV nonsense and the “normal” viewers who really didn’t care all that much about the character. Ironically, as Bruce Scivaly noted in his 2011 study, the comic book Batman wasn’t really that “adult” before Adam West, although DC Comics had tried to tone down the more fantastical elements in recent years.

After the TV series’ demise, the “nurds,” by use of fan newsletters and letters written to National Periodicals, championed the return of their “Batman,” that is, a more adult-oriented, dark vigilante. In the main, the nurds got their way as comic creators like Neal Adams, Steve Englehardt, Frank Miller, Denny O’Neill, and Grant Morrison gave readers a more and more violent, grim and gritty brooding bad ass. Then came the surprisingly successful Tim Burton movies and the Fox animated series that could appeal to both “nurds” and “normals” while the comic books became tougher and tougher and far removed from the children’s stories of yore. Then Joel Shumacher reversed that course before Christopher Nolan got things back on track for both “nurds” and “normals” alike.

Weldon gives more or less equal time to the creators of Batman projects, the fans and their responses to each new twist and turn, as well as the marketing and merchandising shifts that had much to do with how Batman had to be reshaped for each new generation of readers and viewers. For example, Batman wasn’t the only character to be packaged in more and more garish covers during the heyday of comic shops and collector’s editions during the 1990s. The advent of the internet was tailor-made for a fan base of nurds already poised to debate, discuss, and champion their visions of just who and what Batman should be. This included, and includes, online forums, websites, blogs, games, and fan fiction. Not to mention cons and even Legos.

I have to admit, Weldon seems rather obsessed with the “gayness” of Batman. I sort of understand why, but this is an area in which he gets rather heavy handed. Obviously, the primary audience for The Caped Crusade is fans of Batman, the very sort of fans the book is written about. I also think that those interested in nurd culture in general would be interested in this exploration of one thread of who they are. I guess that includes me. And perhaps you.


Originally posted at BookPleasures.com on June 6, 2017:
goo.gl/24bCSW

Sequart Releases Moving Target: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow

Moving Target: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow is now in Current Previews Catalog
This collection is the definitive analysis of the Emerald Archer, from his Golden Age origins to his small screen adventures and beyond. Exploring overlooked chapters of Green Arrow’s life, and those of alter ego Oliver Queen, this book shows that Green Arrow has never been just one thing, but rather a perpetually moving target. Includes new interviews with Green Arrow creators from across the decades, including Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Chuck Dixon, Phil Hester, Brad Meltzer, and Jeff Lemire.

The book runs 338 pages and features a foreword by Phil Hester, in addition to the high-profile interviews mentioned above.

Please don’t assume that your comics retailer will order any copies; you should make it a point to tell him / her that you want one, using code NOV172163.

Official book page:
http://sequart.org/magazine/67197/seq...
 

Moving Target: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow
Richard Gray
Paperback: 338 pages
Publisher: Sequart Research & Literacy Organization (August 11, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1940589169
ISBN-13: 978-1940589169
https://www.amazon.com/Moving-Target-...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

Every time I review a new offering from the Sequart Research & Literacy Organization, I always feel obligated to provide a short introduction so potential readers unfamiliar with the publisher will learn this group is a top-notch contributor of scholarly looks into popular culture creations, especially comic book characters, like the X-Men, Daredevil, Batman, the Planet of the Apes, and now DC’s Green Arrow. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone could take these subjects more seriously than Sequart Research, especially their essay anthologies where they look at their specific topics through nearly every conceivable critical lens.

This time around, Moving Target isn’t an anthology drawing from a variety of authors and scholars, but instead relies on the research and devotion of Richard Gray. He’s clearly the planet’s foremost expert on the Emerald Archer. “History and Evolution of The Green Arrow” is an accurate subtitle as the book traces the story of Oliver Queen and his altar ego from 1941 when Arrow was essentially an imitation Batman to the present.

Gray presents the various origin stories given in DC comics over the years and gives us insights from interviews with the creators of the Green Arrow mythos over the decades including comic legends Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Chuck Dixon, Phil Hester, and Brad Meltzer. As a result, we see the Green Arrow story told in the context of the changing worlds of comic books over the years, mainly at the two major publishers, DC and Marvel.

There are some points in the saga that get rather repetitive. For example, Gray continually reminds us that the Green Arrow, usually seen as primarily a secondary character in the DC pantheon of superheroes normaly relegated to supporting features with his name rarely on a book cover on its own, became the conscience of the Justice League of America. In particular, as a human without special powers, the very liberal Queen wanted the superpowered Superman and Wonder Woman to see human, earth-bound problems to be just as worthy of their interest as much as galactic threats. Throughout his long association with Green Lantern, the Arrow again wanted the empowered Lantern to use some of his gifts to deal with contemporary issues like race, drugs, political corruption, and social inequality as much as the desires of the galactic Guardians that had given him that ring of power. Likewise, the Arrow’s long relationship with the Black Canary was often an education in feminism for the characters and we readers.

I’m certain we’ll ever again see an exploration of the Green Arrow as comprehensive and exhaustive as Richard Gray’s Moving Target. Clearly, any reader of the book will have to be an aficionado of that particular character, although diehard comics fans with no special interest in Oliver Queen might enjoy this trek into the realm of a character usually remembered for being the Everyman urban vigilante using trick arrows. Or fans of the TV series and its spin-offs may like insights into those series and reading the long comic book back-stories that preceeded the jump from comic panels to live action adventure.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Nov. 27, 2017:
https://is.gd/jSCZwS