First page of Cry For Justice #2 for BoP readers.

[spark627]

I could see Lady Blackhawk, actually. Two pilots having some sexy fun, okay, I get that.

But I hate to see Huntress get branded as a slut again. The whole point of the Josh story was for her to realize she deserved better.

And I can't see them doing a threesome, that affects their friendship, and the Birds were ALREADY one of the very few books about female friendship which is so fucking rare in comics it might as well be moonbeans captured in mason jars. Not that friends can't have sex, but once again, this is all about the man, and "Well played, sir" is just, ugh.

I love James Robinson. But I really feel like most writers of mainstream comics get the sex thing all wrong over and over. It's all wink wink nudge nudge and women as trophies and thumbs up and it seems so weird and off-character to me.

But I haven't read it in context and I'm just the dumb girl anyway.

But James Robinson is a great writer, he's never written anything I didn't enjoy in comics and I still think Silver Age is an underrated classic. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. But it does feel weird that people can read bop and still come away with the impression that THAT Huntress and THAT Lady Blackhawk would get drunk and be someone's sad Penthouse fantasy.

It just shows again that Bop was an important book for a lot of reasons and its absence is keenly felt in the portrayal of female characters in the DCU. Not my bop specifically, just the book overall.

Thank you for so elegantly saying exactly what I feel! BOP was one of the only books to showcase real female friendships and to see it turned into the a sex fantasy is frustrating.

[Gail Simone]

In re-reading it, I do think the two guys are acting in character...GA being a bit of a dick, betraying his liberal beliefs as he often does (you can't be a feminist and still slap your buddy on the back for his vagina scoreboard), and GL trying not to talk about it seems pretty truthful to me.

It's a good scene, just wish they had used someone other than the Huntress. Zinda I can see, but together with the Huntress is really unfortunate for a lot of reasons.

[Gail Simone]

Thank you for so elegantly saying exactly what I feel! BOP was one of the only books to showcase real female friendships and to see it turned into the a sex fantasy is frustrating.

That's what sucks about Bop being cancelled...people tended to respect the characters a bit more while the book was running. It might well not have been because the book was so wonderful, but more just professional courtesy, in that you can't do something awful to Black Canary when she is the star of a monthly book written by someone else.

But man, all bets were off once that book went away and they have ALL had some really sad moments, in my opinion.

[Free-Man]

That's what sucks about Bop being cancelled...people tended to respect the characters a bit more while the book was running. It might well not have been because the book was so wonderful, but more just professional courtesy, in that you can't do something awful to Black Canary when she is the star of a monthly book written by someone else.

But man, all bets were off once that book went away and they have ALL had some really sad moments, in my opinion.

What, you mean like Judomaster being made into the "me no speaky engrish" joke of the JSA?

[spark627]

That's what sucks about Bop being cancelled...people tended to respect the characters a bit more while the book was running. It might well not have been because the book was so wonderful, but more just professional courtesy, in that you can't do something awful to Black Canary when she is the star of a monthly book written by someone else.

But man, all bets were off once that book went away and they have ALL had some really sad moments, in my opinion.

Exactly. It is sad to see Huntress and Zinda disapear (although Rucka has said he will be using Huntress in the Question feature, yay) and the deterioration of all your hard work on Dinah in GA/BC.

I think these characters are tricky to get right, especially Huntress. It takes a skilled writer to understand them and I haven't seen it done since BOP (and not just your run, Chuck Dixon and Bedard handled them very well).

As you said above, this scene is in character for GL and GA but why couldn't be three random women and not Huntress and Zinda?

[KevinTBrown]

I'm a HUGE Hal Jordan fan, but there's no way he'd do what's being alluded to.... At least, not now.

He's very much involved with someone in his own book. (No, not Carol.) Even though it hasn't been fully explored, it's a relationship that seems to be solid and what Hal wants in his life when he's not being GL.

[Flamebird]

What, you mean like Judomaster being made into the "me no speaky engrish" joke of the JSA?

Was that even supposed to be the same character?

I was honestly never sure, as I gave up on this last version of JSA fairly early on.

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

The return of Huntress's 'Hush' outfit the moment the ongoing ended was certainly a "give me a break"-moment.

[galactica]

I'm a HUGE Hal Jordan fan, but there's no way he'd do what's being alluded to.... At least, not now.

He's very much involved with someone in his own book. (No, not Carol.) Even though it hasn't been fully explored, it's a relationship that seems to be solid and what Hal wants in his life when he's not being GL.

There's nothing to suggest it's current. Whatever happened could have happened before Hal was in a relationship.

[K-DoG7p7]

... at what point did they say sex ?

I'm sorry but there could be a thousand funny situations he might be refering too..


you are all just a bunch of perverts

[Gail Simone]

What IS it about female friendship that is so scary or impossible to imagine that it's so rare in comics? Honest to god, and I"m not talking about this book here, but it's something I've thought of often, it's just utterly baffling to me how poorly female-to-female non-sexual relationships are realized.

We have tons and tons of historic bromances in comics, but I really had to invent a superhero female friendship for Diana because she didn't really have one outside of Donna. How dumb is that, in seventy years of stories? The Jla, the Avengers, all that stuff, hardly any lasting friendships between two women.

Once again, JLI was ahead of the game with Fire and Ice. But the vast majority of female team books are of the dumbass Charlie's Angels mode, where everything is about fake lesbian posery and talking about men, as if the characters don't exist without them.

When I wrote bop, we went almost five years with no serious romantic subplot quite intentionally, with the idea of showing that women can actually have real friendships and arguments and all of that range of emotion without having to connect it to guys for it to carry weight and validity. And I think it worked, I think people understood that Canary and Zinda and Babs and Helena loved each other, genuinely loved each other. I think that was the pure joy of the book, really.

Why is that such an unbelievably rare thing, not just in comics, but in all media?

It's weird.

I stress again, this has nothing to do with what James wrote here, and I don't throw James in with that group that apparently thinks female friendship doesn't exist at all. It's just something that frustrates me. I am dead set against the idea that women and minorities should be portrayed as flawless paragons of virtue in comics stories, but here we're talking about basic humanity...to take away the ability for female characters to be friends is to deny their basic humanity, and I do think a bit of that is still going on.

Quick, name some genuine, believable superhero female friendships of long standing, along the lines of, say, Power Man and Iron Fist, for example, or GA and GL.

[Kyuubi]

How long lasting are we talking about?



I can only think of Star Girl and Cyclone, but that's not very long.

[Gail Simone]

What, you mean like Judomaster being made into the "me no speaky engrish" joke of the JSA?

I haven't kept up on JSA but to be fair, I didn't really get the chance to give the new Judomaster much of a personality yet in bop, so it's understandable to have the character be fleshed out more when someone else picked her up, which I was glad Geoff did, because there is cool potential there.

[kid_mash]

Well there's Misty Knight and Colleen Wing but I acn't think of any others. Plus the interchangeable boyfriends thing undercuts it a bit.

[ryerye17]

Quick, name some genuine, believable superhero female friendships of long standing, along the lines of, say, Power Man and Iron Fist, for example, or GA and GL.

This is interesting I was actually thinking a lot and ended up a blank. The only people who come to mind would be Dinah and Helena. With Zelda and Babs too. Of course, Bea and Ice would be a nice second