“Yay! Representation!
#Science
#ScienceisUhmazing
#DiversityInComics
…
Have I gone far enough down that people can skip this review? The actual text?
Is it safe to post this as a summary of the book?
Truth be told this is not a 5-star book for me. But I recently learned a lesson about being a white dude who has feelings about comics that feature characters who are not white dudes. And that lesson is: don’t.
Well, I SORTA learned my lesson. I now hide my feelings behind a 5-star rating and hashtags, writing them out below because I still have opinions, but I kind of think that when someone sees my stupid mug next to a low-star review of a book with a black female character, they tend to react strongly to that combo. So, I will bury my feelings deep within myself, several lines below the fold, for those intrepid readers willing to trudge on. #I’mDeadInside
The truth is, this is like a 2-star book for me. While it’s a thumbs-up on the representation side, I can’t really say there was much else I liked about it.
I think it’s fair to give a book a thumbs-up for diversity and still talk about why it wasn’t so good, and to rate it as a book. It’s not the diverse aspects that drove me away from the book. I read the damn thing, and I wanted to enjoy it because, frankly, I thought it would be about a little girl with a giant, super dinosaur, and what’s not to like about that?
A few things, it turns out.
Let’s do it.
I think a lot of people would argue that this book is for kids, and that gives it a pass in terms of being enjoyable by adults. BUT, why then do we have Moon Boy (the original pal of Devil Dinosaur) BEATEN TO DEATH in the first issue? With blood and everything? That seems like an odd way to kick off what seems to be a fun, kid-oriented series, to me. There wasn’t much else I found objectionable, content-wise, so why put that up front?
On the other hand, the content seems to be written as very affirmational towards a younger crowd:
“Fooling everyone was too easy. People see what they want to see. And most people never wanted to see me as anything but a normal little girl. But I have big ideas.”
“Doing my best…Fitting in…Doing my best isn’t fitting in.”
There’s a heavy amount of this type of internal monologuing. The tone of which smells, to me, of adults telling kids that they can be great and they can achieve, which they CAN, but the truth of the message isn’t really done justice by the delivery. I feel like these moments really reveal the grownup behind the curtain and conflate good messages with good storytelling.
If I may, let’s move away from this book for a second. There’s this free comic online called Avengers: Saving the Day. It’s about the Avengers learning how to use things like savings accounts.
Spider-Man: I can’t believe how many different papers the bank uses!
While I think it’s totally a good idea to have a savings account, I can’t stand behind this comic as a good comic. Is it a good message? Yes. Is it good to take a shot at spreading the word about financial responsibility? Totally. Am I pissed off that someone made an attempt at putting a positive message into the world? No way! Should this comic be canonical and should Spider-Man now be educated on how to use a bank and never again run out of web fluid for financial reasons? Yes, for the love of god, yes.
But does all the goodness, does the intent make it a good comic? No. It’s not a good comic. Avengers: Saving The Day is not a good comic. I’m VERY confident in this stance.
And that’s how I feel about this volume, though without the confidence because of the other issues at play. It’s got great intentions, representation and making kids feel empowered, but my feeling is it’s not a great comic.
There’s a lack of flow between the scenes and storylines. It feels really disjointed. There’s almost no reason that Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur have teamed up, that I can tell. Moon Girl seems fairly non-plussed by a giant red dinosaur, and her parents are even LESS shocked, mostly concerned with her running around out of the house, not so much by the presence of an inexplicable, giant read dinosaur. Thugs capture a dinosaur and put him in a giant cage…in the back room of a museum? The dinosaur rampages through the city and just sort of gets away? Twice? There’s a weird Amadeus Cho Hulk scene where I feel like all characters are very off-character (a teen supergenius patronizing a pre-teen supergenius? Wha? Why?). Moon Girl’s genius seems to be expressed by making Inspector Gadget devices (count ’em. I count boxing glove thingie, mini helicopter, AND springs in the shoes. Go-Go-Gadget Copyright Infringement Suit!). I don’t mean to make a laundry list, just to say that there were a lot of elements that didn’t really click into place.
I don’t mean to be overly hard on the book, and I don’t endeavor to say this book or its message have no right to exist. It’s just my opinion that it’s not a super enjoyable book if you don’t enjoy books by imagining the positive message they convey to young people. If I picture a young lady reading this and feeling good and positive and having a great time, then I feel like a dick for disliking this book. On the other hand, I don’t think there are any science genius 9 year-old kids reading my comics reviews, and therefore they will never know I didn’t dislike this book. If there are, if you’re out there, give me a shoutout. In fact, if you’re a science genius OR 9 years old, give me a shout.
Wait, scratch that. If you’re 9, stop reading my reviews. And do not contact me on the internet or in person. Jesus Christ, where are your parents?
I think, overall, what I see happening in comics from time to time is something that happened in video games for a while. Video games wanted to be seen as legitimate art, but whenever issues of sexism or representation came out, when feminist critique of games grew more prevalent, these angles were cast off because, “Dude, it’s just a game.”
Many people wanted video games to be taken seriously, but only when it was beneficial to them. Only when it elevated games to the status of “art.” Only when it was positive.
But when games started being critiqued as art and culture instead of as “just games,” there was a lot of backpedaling.
This is something I’ve started to see in comics as of late.
“It’s for a younger crowd, so it’s not fair to criticize it.”
“You’re critiquing reality in a story in which people have superpowers.”
“Ms. Marvel is the greatest thing ever and any opinion otherwise is objectively wrong.”
Comics are an art. There’s no doubt about it. And as an art, I think they’re open to critique. Even when they’re doing good things, they’re still open to critique, as comics. The same way a video game that’s just unplayable isn’t a good game even if it has good goals and spreads a good word.
And as an art, the only way I know to critique comics currently is by delineating the objective and subjective. The only way I know how to talk about them without sounding like a monster is to do it this way:
Objectively, this comic fulfills the goals of bringing diverse representation to the world of mainstream comics in terms of race, age, and science-ness(?)
Subjectively, the experience wasn’t enjoyable.
And overall, I would love to read something that fulfills the objective goals just the same or better while also being a better subjective experience.”