50 Shades of Superman - про БДСМ-ные картинки, которыми некоторое время зарабатывал на жизнь создатель Супермена. Да.
The detail is at times lovingly and so disturbingly precise—reminiscent of Robert Crumb’s own obsessively rendered female figures of the following decades. The best here easily exceeds the rawer material he rushed off for Action Comics. Joe was getting more out of Nights of Horror than a paycheck. Так, ну а теперь не столь (или более. кому как) скандальное, но гораздо более близкое моему сердцу: плевки в сторону Before Watchmen.
Потому что слишком жёсткой критики Before Watchmen существовать не может по определению.
Who Whitewashes the Watchmen? Part 1 - нелюбви к Дарвину Куку пост.
Чем Дарвин Кук заслужил нелюбовь? Ещё раз: Before Watchmen.
Whereas Moore was interested in demolishing heroic stereotypes in order to explore the humanity beneath, Cooke is more interested in reinforcing stereotypes in order to prescribe for humanity what is and isn’t heroic. Under Cooke’s revision, a critique of heroic constructs has reverted to a defence of heroic constructs. This makes Minutemen and Silk Spectre, in my opinion, a diverting misappropriation at best and a grotesque travesty at worst. ...
Ещё цитатыIn other words, Moore’s attempt to shake up the genre by challenging readers to take notice of the kinds of gay characters they wouldn’t expect to see in a superhero comic is sabotaged by Cooke in favour of a hetero-friendly paradigm about hot-looking lesbians and hot-blooded straight men.
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Cooke has rehashed almost every negative gay stereotype in his jaundiced revision of these characters. Nelson is a nincompoop, a publicity whore, a drama queen, a pillow biter; Hooded Justice is a sadist, a murderer, a rapist, a suspected serial paedophile. Cooke has no interest in exploring or understanding these men’s history, relationship and psychology. Instead, every book puts forward sensational scenarios to consolidate their corruption, hypocrisy and monstrosity.
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The introductory vignettes seem a minor quibble compared to what Cooke does next to exonerate Eddie: retelling the attempted rape of Sally to call into question whether it was an attempted rape.
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In contrast to Moore’s hyper-masculine psychopath who found his true element in the killing fields of wars, Cooke’s Eddie is portrayed as an innocent soldier poignantly losing his innocence in a contrived scenario worthy of any military tearjerkers.
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Cooke’s version of Sally really has no reasons to hate Eddie except that their consensual relationship didn’t work out the way she wanted. So, trauma, anger, shame, guilt and emotional dependency which are the complex symptoms of an abuse victim are reduced to stereotypical female neurosis and jealousy that Eddie is just too much of a stud to settle down with her.
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On the whole, the portrayal of Eddie is so favorable in the franchise that one wonders if DC had given an editorial mandate to redeem his character. The whitewashing is equally evident in Brian Azzarello’s six-issue Comedian, which elevates Eddie almost to a symbol of America’s troubled conscience by charting his Kurtzian descent into the heart of darkness. Significantly, none of the books mentions the rape of Sally or the murder of the Vietnamese woman—surely a glaring omission considering that Eddie’s yearning for Laurie is psychologically explainable as an outcome of his guilt about murdering his unborn child in Vietnam.
Who Whitewashes the Watchmen? Part 2 - и ещё пост нелюбви, теперь и про Аманду Коннер. Особенно мне нравится та часть, где первая воодушевляющая читателя победа Лори над преступником визуально является переделанным пересказом попытки изнасилования Салли Комедиантом! Серьёзно, я ненавижу Before Watchmen.
Cooke’s decision to frame Laurie’s story as a rebellion against Sally is especially worthy of comment. In the original, Sally’s and Laurie’s relationship gives a rare and important focus to women and rebuts the criticism that the female characters are only relevant in terms of how they relate to the male characters... In Cooke’s revisionist take on Laurie’s story, this sensitive, observant, psychologically believable focus on a mother and daughter working through their difficult relationship gives way to a chest-thumping, pedantic valorization of men and fathers. ...
Ещё цитаты Being a man, according to this ideal, is about being chivalric to women, and the plot validates this by presenting a male-affirmative fantasy in which the hardship of women is articulated by a man and the rift between a mother and daughter is healed by the intervention of a man.
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In Cooke, no wrong exists which isn’t rightable when it comes to good old Eddie. Force and aggression only enhance his worth and efficacy as a father. He is the trump card and secret weapon Sally summons in an emergency to sort out Laurie’s problems.
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Cooke may do all the talking he wants about respecting female characters and Conner may present herself as a champion of her gender in a male-dominated industry (e.g. Zalben, “FanExpo” pars. 4-7); but to take the most well-known rape scene in mainstream comics and turn it into a celebration of the rapist’s progeny bespeaks gross insensitivity and moral blindness, not to mention being deeply offensive to the spirit and intelligence of the original Watchmen.
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In Moore, Sally’s and Laurie’s relationship is the primary focus that saves the story from being mostly about men. In Cooke, Laurie’s relationship with men is reinscribed as a primary focus even in a story that is supposed to be mostly about her.
Homosexuality Will Make Your Comic Real - некоторое... возможно не оправдание, но пояснение, которое заодно затрагивает использование гомосексуальности в литературе реализма (знаю, знаю. но "реалистической литературе" было бы хуже, честно)
The hints of homophobia in Moore/Gibbons, then, seem like they’re tied not (or not only) to unexamined stereotype, as my brother Eric suggests. Rather, they’re a function of the book’s realist genre tropes.
Which perhaps explains why Darwyn Cooke, infinitely dumber than Moore and Gibbons, ended up, in his Before Watchmen work, with such a virulent homophobia. William Leung in that linked article suggests that the homophobia is part of Cooke’s retrograde nostalgic conservatissm — which is probably true to some extent. But it’s probably more directly tied to Cooke’s effort to match or exceed Moore/Gibbons’ realism. Portraying gay characters as seamy and despicable is a means of showing ones’ unflinching grasp of truth. In this case, again, realism does not allow for the portrayal of homosexuals so much as (homophobic) portrayals of homosexuals creates realism.