Equitable Man Ass: Tony Daniel Sells Superman / Wonder Woman Badly At Toronto Fan Fest

Jesus Yammering Christ, is this what were reduced to now? Not just chasing that screeching tween Twilight dollar, but doing it hamfistedly and just fucking wrong?

All right, hold on; let me explain.

The Toronto Fan Expo was held this weekend. We did not attend this convention because we are still paying off our visits to the San Diego and Boston comic conventions (and are getting ready to pay our deposit for our emergency backup room for next year’s SDCC which, yes, we have already made reservations for), and because the nation of Canada has, based on a 1991 visit I made to Montreal, decided that my presence is so detrimental to their culture that even my American dollars don’t make up for it.

However, DC Comics was there, and as they do in most bigger conventions, they held a DC All Access panel to discuss upcoming books, such as Superman / Wonder Woman, written by Charles Soule with art by Tony Daniel and scheduled for a first issue release on October 9th. And Daniel was on that panel, and he addressed the impetus behind building a title around these two characters, who are two-thirds of a trinity of legendary characters created by DC.

And yeah: it turns out that that impetus wasn’t to tell legendary action stories. It apparently was to attract 11-year-old screechy girls and their sweet, sweet fistfuls of daddy’s cash.

It’s the perfect combination of what I wanted to do. They’re two of my favorite characters and I wanted to do Superman for a long time and I really wanted a much longer run than I had on Action. I just love Superman, Metropolis, you know, Lois Lane, his whole world. It’s funny, because in Chicago I was talking to Bobbie Chase and Bob Harras about making a book, I wasn’t referring to creating this book, but I mentioned maybe, can we create a book that targets a little bit more of the female readership that’s been growing. And maybe a book that has a little bit of romance in it, a little big of sex appeal, you know, something that would, for lack of a better example, that hits on the Twilight audience. You know, millions of people went to see those in the theaters because it has those kind of, you know, subject matter. The drama, the characterization with love triangles and forbidden love and things like that. Literally a month later they asked me, “Hey, what do you think of Superman/Wonder Woman?” And I think it took all of maybe three seconds for me to say, “Yeah, that’s great. Let’s do that.” Because that’s exactly what I was describing that we need.

Okay, look: this is actually not a terrible idea. After all, Twilight, if nothing else, demonstrated that there is a particular audience for romance stories in a genre setting. And it is okay to have those stories, not in spite of the fact that I am not the target audience, but because I am not the target audience. There should be a comic book for everyone; hell, there are literally dozens of comic books that I don’t buy or read every week, because they’re not the kind of story that I like, and that is fine.

There is room in the marketplace for a compentent romance / action story set in a superheroic framework… but the keyword in that sentence is “compentent.” And that becomes questionable after the panel started answering a question from an attendee named Liz, who had some reservations about the idea.

Liz: When you were talking about Superman/Wonder Woman, what caught my ear was, you’re making it romance and romantic to catch the women. My question is, that’s not all you’re doing, right? [Laughter and applause from the audience]

Daniel: Are you asking if you’ll see like, Superman butt shots? I’ll be sure to keep it even.

Butt shots? Of course! I mean, if there’s a single thing that either of our female writers have been screaming for in their weekly take, it’s copious amounts of man ass!

Cool Story, Rob!

Liz: I love reading you guys but sometimes it really feels like you’re not making anything that’s remotely comfortable for me. So how are you going to make…

Daniel: Well why don’t you wait until October and find out?

Lee Bermejo: Can I ask, what would you like to see?

Liz: I just want to see them be awesome.

Daniel: They will be awesome. [Laughter from the audience]

Cunningham: Does the cover imagery work for you? The stuff that we’re showing? I mean the…I mean I’m really curious. Like Lee asks, what you said, if that’s not what you’re looking for, what specifically are you looking for? Or is there anything specific?

Liz: Ok well for instance, I got into the New 52 and I’m like, “Hey, Catwoman has a title!” Catwoman, I don’t think I quite enjoyed where that went a lot of the times but see, I like Wonder Woman, I liked where that was going. But then I haven’t obviously seen this one yet so I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. But I know [sigh]

Unknown panelist: You’ll love it, don’t worry. [Laughter from audience] You’ll love it.

Cunningham: The good news is we got Wonder Woman right, that’s a big step. Because in my mind, as a reader myself, that’s always been an issue for me. And I think Azzarello/Chang had done an amazing job.

Daniel: You’re going to be really surprised. I mean, that’s if, you know, that’s what you’re not expecting to be blown away or something, I think you will be blown away. She’s very strongly written, she’s not, you know, I mean she holds her own. And you’re going to like the interaction between Superman and Wonder Woman and as well as their private lives, Diana and Clark. I mean, we have a lot of fun with their interactions and we’re going to have that drama. And on different levels, there’s a lot of layers to it that make it, you know, a little bit more of a more enjoyable book for me to draw and I’m sure for Charles [Soule]. We’re both doing something kind of new with this so it has a perfect recipe I think and it’s something I really want to do. I really think you’re going to like it a lot. Let me know. Just get on Facebook, let me know.

Okay, look: I am willing to take Daniel’s “man ass” comment as just a dude being a dude, playing to a crowd of mostly other dudes, trying to play down the fact that he, the man who wrote The Joker tearing his own face off, is now drawing a romance book. It’s certainly tone deaf, but I don’t really think that we’re in for a book full of Superman rocking the brokeback pose. Or at least I hope we’re not.

The first thing that bothered me about these comments, and the general idea behind this series, is that if you want to produce a romance genre story geared toward pre-teen girls… maybe the best people to do it aren’t a couple of guys who are probably in their 30s or 40s.

I mean, speaking as a guy in his 40s, have you even tried to talk to a pre-teen girl? It’s like speaking to a creature from another planet. A creature with a limited attention span and unlimited scorn for everything you say, think or believe. Jesus, if I have to talk to a woman in her early 20s, it’s like I’ve done a hit of low-grade mescaline; spending too much time talking to a pre-teen girl is like taking DMT and watching a film with subliminal messages that the best thing you could do for everyone involved would be self-immolation.

What does someone like me know about what pre-teen girls want? Twilight was written by a 30-year-old woman who had dated the same dude since she was four years old, and therefore probably knew as much about common, modern adult romance as she did quantum mechanics. I will cop to not having read Twilight or having seen any of the movies, but it is a big enough cultural phenomenon that I know the jist of it: it’s a story about a teenaged girl who is so special that everyone loves her on sight, including beautiful, androgynous, sexless men with superpowers. Men who will patiently wait until marriage before demanding any physical sex acts. And that’s a fine story for a kid who screeches at One Direction videos and thinks sex parts are icky, but it’s not a mindset that any adult male can have without imitating it from something else.

And further, I’m gonna be a little sexist here and assert that guys are not the best people to write a romance meant to appeal to women. Because men have a very different idea of romance than women. A guys’ idea of romance involves things like going out to dinner (at a place that serves steak), relatively gentle sex where he thinks about baseball for as long as he can hold out, a tossed quarter over the wet spot, and oh yeah: giving her his real name. Believe me: if we knew what women wanted out of romance, we would be able to fake it better. Or, honestly, fake it at all.

And most importantly: who the hell says women of any age really want a superhero romance comic? After all, we have had them, and we have seen the Big Two cancel them. Superman and Lois Lane had a romance that lasted 68 years and progressed from love from afar to honesty to a long-running marriage. Same thing with Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson… and in the past five years, both Marvel and DC have whacked them to make the series’ heroes single again. You know, to make the books more palatable to young men. And I never heard anybody complaining in the aftermath that they lost all their female readers… or if, in fact, that they actually gave a shit if they had any female readers.

And besides, I have been to a ton of comic book conventions, and I have heard conversations that go, “You know what would be awesome? If Superman and Wonder Woman were banging!” Those conversations were, of course, held by guys; the most well-known similar one coming between Brody and Stan Lee in Kevin Smith’s Mallrats. Nobody at all has been screaming to see two superheroes having sex, and if they have, they have Axel Braun’s porno parodies to fall back on. And yes, I am using “fall back on” as a euphamism.

The more I think about this comic book, the more it sounds like a comic nobody was asking for. It’s being pushed as a book for an audience that the creators can’t possibly be the best choice to serve – hell, Twilight was lightning in a bottle created by someone who can only be described as having a unique background that you can’t replicate by wishing for it. And a book like that isn’t geared toward most more adult female readers – it isn’t just guys who were carrying the “Twilight Ruined Comic-Con” placards at SDCC, you know – or, frankly, any male readers.

And hey, I could be wrong. It certainly sounds like Daniel has some enthusiasm for the book, and God knows that nobody sets out to do a bad comic book. But Superman / Wonder Woman, based on the hype we’re hearing, sounds less like an organic idea and more like a cynical attempt to reach a demographic. And even if that’s not the case, that’s sure how they’re selling it.

Jesus. I never thought I’d see the day when a major comic creator would try to sell a comic based on its percentage of man ass. Who the hell is that for?

(via The Mary Sue)