Read the BC article here.

While I'm not a big Red Sonja fan(the Brigitte Nielsen movie still haunts my dreams),this might be worth checking out.

I haven't seen a good RED SONJA done since Frank Thorne's run in MARVEL FEATURE. And the unofficial more pornographic version in Warren's 1984/1994 magazine (boy would Dr. Freud have a lot to say about that anthology).


You'd think more guys would get excited about the prospect of drawing an attractive redhead in a chain-mail bikini.

Two other immortal versions are (of course) the Barry Smith-illustrated first appearance in CONAN THE BARBARIAN 24. And a story by Estaban Maroto in SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN 1.

Its a curious tactic, isn't it, to put an articulate female writer on a T&A title. Its how Birds of Prey gained respectibility.

Articulate?

BoP was a Whedon-esque PoS.

Simone's one of the most overrated writers ever conceived. The only reason she got any positive attention is because she's a younger female writer who simply chose not to rock the boat as much as Grayson did.

But the reality is that they weren't that different from each other. Grayson was just more open about the fact that she was using the character she was charged with to push a personal agenda. Simone did the same, but no one spoke up about it since rearranging Barbara's character wasn't as severe as turning Dick into a glitter boy.

I found BoP a slightly guilty pleasure. It wasn't spectacularly writing but there was some decent characterisation in it.

No idea what Grayson did with Nightwing as i have no interest in the character and the small exposure I had to Grayson I didn't enjoy.

Secret Six rawked, I'll probably follow Simone forever after that (she even got me to read the new Batgirl).

i tried the secret six because of simone and everyone's nerd love for the books. ...but i hated every series. i also did not enjoy her nightwing stuffs.

buuuut, her birds of prey run a few years back was awesome. and her current batgirl run is nearly as good.

So Rob likes the cheesy Whedon stuff and Mxy likes the contrived soap opera crossover stuff. Both ala Simone.

Roger.

I like Red Sonja stories in recent years where she looks like she's going to give me a lapdance.

Which brings up another issue: I've never read Red Sonja, but it strikes me as a, principally, TnA comic in a similar vein as Tarot (someone correct me if this is inaccurate). And it occurs to me that-that would compound the issue of putting Gail Simone on....anything.

I mean, I can just imagine putting someone like Simone on a character who's a Tarot cousin. Why the fuck would anyone want to buy that? Her approach would totally defeat the book's purpose.

pariah likes roger!

to my knowledge, i've never seen a whedon book, movie, or episode, outside of the avengers flick. and that movie was fun, but nothing more. i defy anyone to relay what any plot point was! but, hey, 60+ minutes of fight scenes? i'll take it.

with the old BoP and new batgirl series, i just like simone's take on barbara gordon; her relationship with her spice-girl-power team, with batman, with her father, as the hub of the batfamily, as the hub of the justice league, etc. barbara is like this amazingly interonnected, yet sorta forgotten, character in the DCU. in the simone books, she became interesting. she wasn't just "wheelchair girl, who is now the 1960s batcomputer", which was the standard characterization. it's light, but solid, in a BTAS style.

the new batgirl book continues in the same vein. good continuity without crazy baggage, a sensical inner dialog, and a hero that doesn't always win. i imagine the current book isn't too dissimilar to the archtype feel that spider-man put out 30-40 years ago.

I guess the only follow up question I could ask is how would you define the essence of "interesting"? I mean, suppose for a minute, you replaced Gordon with, say, Jean Paul Valley. According to the parameters I can extrapolate from your post, his presence on panel--by virtue of being written about--is "interesting".

Obviously, I don't think that's what you mean, but I have a feeling that you're attributing more admiration to Simone's treatment of Gordon rather than Gordon herself.

Simone has openly admitted that she was pissed off to high hell that she inherited Barbara as a cripple since she desperately wanted to write about Batgirl. Cleawrly, she was not a fan of the Killing Joke. As such, when she got a hold of BoP, she glorified her as much as possible. But obviously, this had more to do with her own bias towards the character rather than any inherent value the character objectively held. Sales, quite frankly, did not speak up for Barbara in that department: if Moore had wanted to straight up kill her off, he would have gotten his wish (that would have been fucking awesome).

Aside from pointing out that you settle way to easily, I can't really critique your enjoyment. But I don't think that you can identify "interest" by virtue of exposure. Perhaps the real truth is that she was never interesting, and Simone just tried to market her as such for the sake of her own concessions.



Not fight scenes in general, buuuut...Imagine the Black Widow interrogation scene played out over and over again throughout every episode of every season, and you'll have a pretty good picture of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Serenity/Firefly.

A sassy female or feminine lead being over-indulgently exhibited as much as possible with a bottomless bag full of quips. Her parts were the biggest weakness of that film for a reason.

I think this whole argument simply boils down to Pariah's hatred of women.

That's beside the point!

This conceivably could end with Red Sonja scissoring with another chick. What does Simone's ability have to do with any of this?

Weeelll.......Hmmm....

i do not know the author's backstory or personal bias. she expressed barbara's frustration with being paralyzed - maybe that was simone's character. ...whatever it was, it worked. nothing too cliche or too depressing; just little stuff, like how she trained her upper body more, and even worked with therapists on gaining sensation back in her feet, etc. progress and evolution in the character, mixed with weaknesses and vulnerabilities. again, nothing too heavy, but... made for good reading.

there was a deeper analysis of her relationship with bruce and the batfamily, as a whole. not just a partnership, not just an anger (with occasional references to killing joke), but all of it. there were visits from nightwing. there were clashes with her team members. there was the constant presence of her relationship with the commish: he, a super-hero-type cop, meeting with her, a master strategist and informational outlet to heroes... then just become father and daughter. and not just father and daughter, but a slowing older man and a lovely handicapped child.

there were details to her character that became "interesting" to me. which i said in quotes there, just in case you disagree at a future date. it wasn't just because she was in the book, but because the author took the time to flesh out and create new details ... of interest.

i dont think jean paul valley ever recevied that. he had a few moments of interest, but generally just played the same note over and over for a few years. in many of those same stories JPV co-starred in (not just knightfall era, but those after, like cataclysm and fugitive and legacy) JPV and barbara were often written as flat side-characters. no interest.

no one took JPV out of that (at least as far as i could see) but simone elevated barbara WAY out of that.



i do not want for this.

Verily.

I'm expecting a lot of Batman-type preparedness, explaining how a chick in an armoured bra can repeatedly kill large, battle-scarred Conan-types. Through smarts. Chick smarts. Yes.

Which has some appeal to me, to be honest: a lot of what I liked about Birds of Prey, and indeed Mike Carey's Lucifer, Morrison's Batman in JLA, and certainly Warren Ellis' Simon Spektor and Planetary, was the ability of the protagnoists to outthink their often more powerful opponents. As Carey wrote in Lucifer of Lucifer's defeat of The Basanos, "It is possible to have a good hand and play it badly." So, I'm half expecting that Simone's Red Sonja would involve a lot of the character playing a bad hand well.

Whether it is a poor cousin to a T&A book like Tarot, or indeed that dreadful thing published by Broadsword Comics, or whether Red Sonja is just Conan the Barbarian with tits, is neither here nor there. Any franchise can be saved by good writing (Alan Moore's Supreme is a great example of that).

That's my problem with simply making characters smarter or more prepared for their tribulations: the idea that, by virtue of exhibiting intelligence and resourcefulness, you make either the writing or the character better--or you somehow "save" them.

If that's not his or her character, and that's not the writing, then you're not really saving the book so much as you're just turning it into a completely different, more marketable piece of writing.

If the principle idea of a book or character is flawed and less than marketable for it's purposes, then it stands to reason that you go back to the drawing board. Not turn it into another Batman.

Tarot, by comparison, wasn't as marketable from a mainstream perspective by shear virtue of being a more niche book, but it was still marketable for it's purposes. Supposing her character were to get the same treatment that I believe Simone is going to give to Red Sonja: regardless of how mainstream she'd become, she'd be operating completely outside of her parameters. It wouldn't make any sense.

TAROT by Jim Balent is unashamedly a T&A book, with no real pretense of a plot beyond that. It's in the same category as PENTHOUSE COMIX, or Wiched Wanda or Honey Hooker. I can't imagine anyone reading that book to follow the storyline or characters.
The nudity I think vastly narrows the market for that book.
Add to that the Satanic/Wiccan pentagrams and ocult themes, that probably further narrows the audience.

Even Budd Root's CAVEWOMAN, beyond its good-girl art, has a plot and themes near and dear to the writer/artist's heart (mostly pop-culture horror as seen in FAMOUS MONSTERS, Classic Hollywood horror movies, E.C. and Warren magazine horror, 60's pop culture, the Beatles, and silver-age Marvel comics.


I'm sympathetic to your point about completely changing the personality of a character, either for sales/marketing reasons, or just on the whim of the creators involved.

One character that stands out for me is THE QUESTION. Created by Steve Ditko with a very conservative Ayn Rand philosophy, I cn't imagine Ditko is pleased at all with the left-wing Zen-Bhuddist direction O'Neil took the chacter in with the 1987-1991 series.

Although I've praised the series on these boards, he's definitely not the same character Ditko created.

For that matter, neither is the Batman character that O'Neil wrote in the 1970's, the sophisticated, in-control, but relentless detective, the same character that O'Neil himself edited in the late80's and 90's, who became an intimidating out-of-control jerk who doesn't play well with others.
My only guess is that either O'Neil wanted to do this stuff in the 70's but was restrained by editorial control, or O'Neil himself changed considerably in the intervening years. Or --along the lines of the discussion here-- O'Neil just made an editorial decision to completely change and re-invent the character for the new market of that late 1980's era.

That actually would be consistent with how Red Sonja was portrayed in the first Thomas-Smith story, in CONAN 24, back in 1972.

Jim Balent: that's right. He ran Broadsword. I figure after 5 years on Catwoman with his cheesecake art making that book a success, he decided he'd rather pocket the cash himself by relying upon boobs to sell glossy paper.



Just trying to understand what you're saying here...

1. Character is flawed
2. Go back to the drawing board, writer
3. Don't apply a commercially successful formula which you've applied many times before, writer, because that doesn't match the character's premise

I think what you mean is, come up with something original which incorporates the essence of the original premise.

like Red Sonja wearing a chimp as a chainmail.

Basically.

Kiteman wasn't a failure of a character because he was written wrong. It's because he was written correctly. Writing him wrong for the sake of selling him wouldn't really save his character. It wouls just change it.

Similar, but different.

The Question's character wasn't gutted and left in the dust for the sake of selling the franchise "The Question". It was because Denny O'neil was uncomfortable with the premise.

It's the exact same thing Morrison wanted to do to Rorschach: "I love this character! And that's why I'm going to redefine him".

I'm not finding a problem though with that proposition of change.

Company has an asset. Asset has some notoriety but essentially sucks. Fix asset to make it not suck thereby make money from what was a flawed asset.

That is what businesses do. Lets step away from comics for a moment. Look at the Bourne trilogy of movies. Faded concept, revitalised. Jason Bourne was a bloody ninja in that movie. I read the book: no ninja moves. Or the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, which was essentially Batman Begins (murdered parents, big mansion, cave, Alfred character, car with tricks, Joker-esque enemy). Bond isn't Batman, in essence, But this seemed the best way of vitalising an asset.

No.

This isn't about profit......Well, not short term profit anyway. Mediocrity can only be so profitable. Originality, on the other hand, is a long term investment. And a new character doesn't have to be like an older, already successful character, to sell well.

Two things that I'm aware of are notorious for breeding mediocrity. The first one's novelty, and the second one's repetition. Both might ensure a steady stream of profit for a relatively decent amount of time. But that won't maximize profits, nor will it promote quality.



The first Bourne film, and the concept it introduced, was decent. The second and third films--as well as their spiritual sequel Green Line--were trash (and I'm not even going to mention the Bourne Legacy). In my view, it was their attempt to try and sell the weak ideas of the sequels with fight scenes that best illustrated the franchise's lack luster premise.

I can't really comment on Skyfall. Aside from Tomorrow Never Dies, I find just about every Bond film boring as fuck.

Skyfall was epic, and I hate James Bond movies.

You obviously have never heard of the auteur of mediocrity, Michael Bay.



You're talking about originality with a character that was made to be the female Conan.




Let me introduce you to this thing called 'comic books'.




Of all the Bond films out there, Pariah likes the one where the villain is Ted Turner.

Well, that wipes out most pop culture. And as someone who deals in stolen ideas for a living, it strikes me that most commercial success is built on the back of a tried and true method. (Which is why when Gaiman did Sandman it was a crashing success - "crashing" as in the noise, because it was genuinely original and no one had really thought of doing a moody fantasy piece aimed at literati and, by accident, broadening the genre.)

William Gibson's Neuromancer is leaps to mind in this regard. Cyberpunk? Already well explored even by 1983. Bad girl with knives? Done since Hitchcock's Vertigo, and the aforementioned Red Sonja, if not before (gun molls in the 1930s?). AIs? Really well explored in the Golden Age of Science Fiction with Asimov. But Gibson used some snappy writing, fused some well explored concepts together, blatantly stole themes form his friend Bruce Sterling, and as a result won two big literary prizes, made millions of dollars, and fueled his career for the next 30 years with one of the most well-known science fiction novels ever. There's not much originality in it though.

Curiously enough, Gail Simone is doing signings at my local comic shop this Sunday. She's travelled a long way to get here for 90 minutes of signatures.

Dave. Dave, you have to tell her she makes Larry's pee pee tickle. Please.

Um. OK. Why?

because she really does.

Tsk, Dave. It's only been a decade since the JQ forum raid.

http://www.rkmbs.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=...true#Post131312

I totally forgot about it.

You and Dave apparently skipped this:



Mediocrity is useful, but it's certainly not ideal. As such more profit could be made that simply isn't.



I'm not totally sure what to call this argument, but it overstates my position. Most of these examples just refer to popular genres. Not necessarily recycled tropes that permeate media across the spectrum of film and literature classifications.

No, you just seemed to have skipped this:



Bay constantly shits out mediocrity in celluloid form and continues to rake in billions of dollars for it. His Transformers movies alone have raked in over a billion dollars. That's more money than the Transformers franchise made in TV and comic book deals in the twenty years before he date raped the concept. That's only box office take. It doesn't include the toys and other merchandising that went through the roof.

As far as your quality argument goes, you're grasping at straws there. Mediocrity by its definition doesn't promote quality. You're just throwing words out there to try and bolster your argument. If something sells and sells well, companies don't give a shit about quality. They care about the money. You have as of yet prove that mediocrity doesn't make companies a shitload of money over the long run (hello, Geoff Johns) compared to quality books that few people buy and get cancelled quickly.

The question here is "sells well compared to what?" Not "what sells well according to this climate?"

Patronage and sales for comics and film have continually spiraled (and still do) for decades. And from what I can tell, the downward trend is proportionate to an escalating lack of originality. While I acknowledge that originality is not necessarily conducive to quality, I maintain that, through originality, you're most likely to churn out a greater number of balanced, cohesive, and interesting stories since authors and film makers won't have to concern themselves with recycling quippy heroines, charismatic/genius villains, sparkling vampires, and martial arts exhibitions (outside of popcorny Kung Fu flicks).

What's more, if the general viewership had a more apparent frame of reference by which to distinguish the mediocre from the well written, your example of "sell well" would assuredly decrease in dollar amount. Unfortunately, we only have so many true professionals per generation. And even when you have them, that doesn't guarantee they have the opportunity or resources to flex their artistic muscles.

From my point of view, you're correct insofar as the media authorities would want to discourage quality in favor of making it indistinguishable from mediocrity and thus make a media standard that's easier to package for a quick buck. But that doesn't make mediocrity the most effective money machine. Just the most seemingly efficient one.

No Country for Old Men, great, quality movie. Box office receipts are a pittance compared to Transformers. Crazy Heart, awesome film that explores the life of an old, drunk, has-been country singer that was better than anything else out in theaters at the time. It made no where near the bank that Twilight did. I can also rattle off about a dozen or so TV shows that were cancelled despite their quality because they couldn't get ratings.

As much as I hate Bay and how he holds the craftsmanship of film making by the hair, forcing it down face first into a rusty tub of water until the bubbles stop, his movies and movies like his make money. You and I may want quality in our entertainment, but the masses at large settle for shiny, polished, gilded turds.

I don't think the downward trend is atrributable to mediocrity: I think the downward trend is atributable to consumer dollars being pushed in different directions.

it's being pushed in the direction of my sphincter!

Sphincter? Damn near kill 'er!

Good examples (except for Crazy Heart, which I didn't see). But I think it leaves out stylistic qualities that have to be taken into account. I agree that a movie shouldn't have to be shiny or gilded to reach an audience. But I consider polish to be a presentational must.

For all the shit I give the Coen Bros. and Bridges over their arrogance in how they tried to sell the True Grit remake (as though their rendition was more faithful than the original film), I admit that it was a very decent film that most audiences could be attracted to. It was neither shiny nor gilded (due in large part to its genre as a dark and grainy western), but it was finely polished.

A better example is perhaps Game of Thrones. Everything about it screams quality, but it's also complemented by polish. And incidentally, its following is huge.

What I think we agree on is what people will generally flock to right off the bat. However, I don't think that necessarily means there'll be a lasting interest (with Twilight being an irritating fringe exception). In the case of Transformers for instance, everyone I spoke to who went to see it admitted that it sucked. Despite this, they'll still go see the sequel in theaters again. But it was pretty clear they'd never buy the film. What we learn from this is that, regardless of a film's quality, it still needs to sell itself--like Nolan's "Batman" filsm for instance *wink wink*. In which case, I'll chalk up the failure of good films to stunted marketing--which may or may not be compounded by an all-audience friendly rating (as is the case with Twilight and Transformers).

I used to think that for a long time as well, but s couple studies my macroeconomics teacher rattled off in class apparently showed that entertainment has a history of being an outlet for an economically depressed populace. People still generally find time and a budget for entertainment (mostly families) despite money woes.

It's the budgets for vacations and clothing that take a beating more so than annual recreation.

That was certainly true of the 1930's.

The movie industry thrived, perhaps as a needed outlet of escape from reality of the times.

in the 1930s if you wanted to see a movie you had to go to a theater and pay per person. Today, you rent the movie at redbox for a couple of bucks (or obtain it through other means) and the whole family watches for a single price.

With a chimp.

That's a terrible thing to say about our president, Dave!

I'd agree that it's easier now for the family to do that, at a much lower cost.

My point was that when we didn't have broadcast television and all the inexpensive movie options we have now, people still made a priority of cinema movies in the 1930's, even when they had far less options and had to pay full price. I thought it was interesting that it was one industry that never suffered in the depression-era.