Ah, Screw It

 

UPDATE: Very little progress on the series. At the moment I’m more focused on finishing the side project, which is almost at the end. This morning I killed an important character. I’ve known for weeks this was coming and I still cried over it. Luckily that scene is followed by a happier one which I’ll be writing later so I can put myself in a better mood. Then it’ll be done and I’ll have no choice but to work on the series. Or find (or create) another excuse not to. The drama continues…

***

I’ve been trying to write this blog over almost a week now. The problem was my chosen topic: character diversity in writing. It’s a touchy subject…so ultimately I’ve decided not to touch it.

Here’s the deal: when I conceived the series several years ago, I made the conscious decision that my heroes would all be straight white men. I had my reasons. In the current political climate, that right there is enough to get me cancelled. I recall there was a flurry of condemnation over the Throne of Glass series, where Sarah J. Maas neatly paired up all her major characters in traditional boy-girl relationships. Even the one who proclaimed on the page he was bisexual. Even the one a segment of the readership insisted should have been a lesbian, regardless of how Maas, the writer and creator of the character, saw her. (Upon reflection, she probably should have been a lesbian, or at least bi. Maybe even asexual. Their scenes together were awkward, to say the least. Those two had no chemistry at all.) Readers blasted Maas for promoting “the het agenda.”

Welp, too bad. She’s the author. That’s how she wanted to write it. Apparently the readership was good with it too, because Maas became and continues to be a best-selling author. Maybe not to a vocal minority of fandom, but you can’t please everybody. These days it seems like you can’t please anybody.

So I’m not going to try. I’m going to go ahead and write my books the way I want to, the way the story tells me it wants to go. Anyway, just because characters start out white and/or straight doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. I thought the side project’s cast would be solid Caucasian. Boy, was I wrong. Turns out one character was African-American, which changed the ethnicity of two others, all of them playing vital roles in the story. That’s the way diversity is supposed to work. I feel my book is better now. They added to the tale.  If having diverse characters makes no overall difference, if you’re putting (insert ethnicity/gender identity here) into your story just to check off a box, it’s tokenism and you’re short-changing everybody—you, your story, the readers, and the characters. It’s just as bad as exclusionism. And you’re going to get lambasted anyway no matter what you do, because there are always going to be people who scream just to hear themselves make noise. Please yourself. If your work has merit, it will find an audience.

***

Here’s how you don’t do diversity right. (Disclaimer: the following rant is based on rumors that may or may not prove to be true. Only time will tell. Given the players involved, I’m inclined to believe the worst. The rant is also personal opinion. I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong, but…)

If you’re a Marvel Comics fan and/or a fan of Disney’s MCU, you’re probably one of the hordes excited at the news that the X-Men will finally, officially be joining (rejoining?) the Marvel Universe. Years back, before Marvel started making their own movies, they sold off film rights to their heavy hitters to other studios—Spider-Man to Sony, X-Men and Fantastic Four to Fox. Then Marvel Studios opened for business, and built an empire on their B-, C-, and D-listers like Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Then Disney bought Marvel. And then they bought Fox. They couldn’t pry Spidey away from Sony, but they were able to do a crossover deal to get Spidey on Disney-owned screens. And now, thanks to Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, it looks like we’ll soon get the true Marvel versions of X-Men and the FF, now that they’re back where they belong.

Wellllllll….maybe not so much.

Over the past few days I’ve been seeing articles and videos pop up regarding Disney’s plans for the X-Men. According to rumor and alleged leaks, Disney wants to race-swap several if not all of the X-Men because…well, reasons weren’t actually given. Which made me and several commenters wonder if they were going to make Storm white. Imagine the shit-show that would kick up.

I mean, why? Sure, the originals from the ‘60s were WASPs, but after the team went international in the ‘70s reboot that wasn’t an issue any more. As the cast continued to grow, so did representation. At one point Storm, the African woman, was leading the team. The X-Men have been diverse for years. Hell, Nightcrawler’s blue. What more do you want?

Apparently, what Disney doesn’t want is straight white men. It gets worse: according to the leaks and rumors, the plan is to deliberately lure fans in with the white versions we’ve already seen in the Fox movies (like Patrick Stewart’s cameo in MoM) then ease those versions out in favor of more racially-diverse ones. Why Bishop—who’s been black in the comics from Day 1—continues to be absent from the roster I can’t say, and it seems that neither can Disney. Do we really need a black Rogue (already hinted at)? Or an Asian Cyclops? Iceman’s already gay; maybe they’ll leave him alone. But what’s the point?

Here’s my theory, my personal opinion based on these unfounded rumors: it’s not about inclusion, or story, or upgrading characters to reflect the modern era. It’s about money.

For decades comic book writers and artists were work-for-hire. They freelanced for the companies. The characters they drew and the stories they wrote became property of the company. This was true for Marvel and DC, at any rate. I assume it was true for Harvey, Charleton, Fawcett, and the other companies. That was the industry. Comics were cheap, disposable entertainment for kids. The idea that some dweeb in tights would bring moviegoers into theaters worldwide to the tune of billions of dollars was undreamed of.

Enter Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton’s take on Batman. There was movie gold in them thar capes. The writers and artists who’d written those stories and designed those capes, costumes and characters naturally wanted a piece of the action. The companies said no, they owned the rights, they were entitled to reap the financial rewards.

Legal battles sprang up. You may have noticed the dearth of new, original characters from the Big Two over the years, and the growing number of independent publishers. Nobody wants to pour their efforts, let alone their heart and soul, into a character that could end up earning millions not just from movies or TV but from merchandising, for some corporate suit while the creators are scraping by on mac ‘n’ cheese. Things have gotten better over time, with more creators getting screen credit and therefore additional checks. But corporations run things now, and there are ways around doing what’s right.

Which is why I believe Disney is planning to race-swap, maybe even gender-swap, the white characters out of the picture. Those are the ones created by those hard-working writers and artists all those years ago. The people now demanding their fair share. But wait. Thor’s a woman now. That’s not who you created. This is a different character, derivative of yours but not your creation and therefore you don’t get any money. Sorry, writer/artist person, looks like you’re SOL. (Google Gerry Conway, Alan Brennert or Paul Dini with the key word royalties and let me know what you find. Or Jim Starlin, creator of Thanos, to find out where the real money in movies is for comics creators.)

And that’s why we now have a gay Superman (who’s not Clark Kent), a black Batman (who’s not Bruce Wayne) and why we’re liable to have a black Prof. X in the future. Because corporations are greedy and cheap. They’ve got 50 years’ worth of stories and characters to mine for gold, and they don’t want to share even a penny with the prospectors who discovered the mine. At least, that’s my take. When I sell the film rights of my series, I’m going to include a clause in the contract that they can’t race- or gender-swap any of my characters without permission. The series is erotic romance, with threesomes and foursomes and people doing it with vampires and werewolves, so I’d think race would be the least of their concerns. Stay tuned…    

 

 

Creationism

I wasn’t planning on watching Fox’s new crime show Lucifer. And not because I have any moral objections to the Devil being portrayed in a positive light. Bad guys are usually the most interesting characters in any given fictional story (see: Darth Vader). My problems with the show stemmed from the pilot, where Lucifer confronts a dying shooter who’s just murdered an old friend of his and fails to ask the most obvious question: Who hired you? Yeah, the show would have been over in the first ten minutes, but that’s no excuse for a lapse in common sense. Besides, I prefer the version of Lucifer on Supernatural, where he’s a deliciously over-the-top bad guy. Currently Misha Collins is playing him, doing his best Mark Pellegrino impression, which only adds to the fun. Last week we got both Misha and Mark, playing the same guy. Wins all around.

So I figured I wouldn’t be tuning in to the crime-busting, semi-good guy version of Satan any more, unless I heard the writing got better. Then another week rolled around. I wanted to watch TV and nothing better was on. The writing hadn’t improved by much, but the actor’s cute and he has a British accent. That’s enough to rope in most women, me included. Though I still prefer Supernatural’s Satan. Maybe the networks will do a crossover.

While we’re waiting for that, allow me to clue you in on a little something I noticed about the show’s credits, and who’s getting paid—and who probably isn’t—for this.

Fox’s Lucifer is an adaptation of a DC Comics/Vertigo title. Yep, the Lord of Lies had his own comic book series for a while. He was HQ’d in Vegas in that one, which makes more sense for the Devil than the Los Angeles of the TV show. I didn’t read the comic, so I don’t know who came up with the idea, or who the originating writer and artist were. (Note: It was writer Neil Gaiman who introduced Luci in the Sandman comic. Thank you, Internet!)

Familiar with how comic book creators tend to get the shaft when characters they created get the big-screen (and big-bucks-earning) treatment, I kept a close eye on the opening credits. There’s the usual cluster of producers, the episode writer and the director. And a single “Developed for TV by” credit for somebody. No “Lucifer created by” credit for the original writer and artist. Not even a “Based on the comic created by” or “Inspired by” credits anywhere I could see. Maybe the acknowledgement to the original creators is crammed into the closing credits, which flash by at Warp Factor 12. There’s an eyeblink shot of the DC and Vertigo logos right at the tail end of the closing credits. That’s the only hint you get that the show started life as a comic book.

Something tells me the original writer and artist aren’t getting paid for this. That happens a lot in the industry, especially now that comic book adaptations into movies and TV have turned out to be so lucrative. All those billions of dollars generated by Supes and Bats and Spidey and all their amazing superfriends have to go into somebody’s pocket, and somehow it never seems to be the creators’.

Which could be tricky in Lucifer’s case, seeing as how he was created by God.

Maybe that’s the excuse they’re using. “We can’t pay you for creating the comic because you didn’t create the character.” True. Lucifer previously appeared in another famous book. The Lucifer in the Vertigo comic is too derivative of that character to earn royalties for his creators. (This excuse was actually used in regards to the Barbara Kean character on Gotham. Here’s what Babs’ creator, Alan Brennert, has to say about it.)

So that’s why there are no creator credits on the show. Though a “Lucifer created by God” credit would have been polite.

Which leads to other problems. You get on-screen credit, you’re owed money. That’s why these credits are so important. If God created the show’s lead character, shouldn’t He be getting a cut of the take? Where would you send the royalty checks? The Vatican? Does the Lord have direct deposit? We know for a fact He’s got tons of cloud storage, but what about a bank account? There’s also that Lucifer on Supernatural. Is God double-dipping with his characters?

But aha, say the corporate lawyers. The Bible was produced before copyright laws. The Bible and all its contents are in the public domain. This particular version of Lucifer is copyrighted and the property of Time-Warner. We can do whatever the hell we want with him, pardon the pun, and we don’t owe You a cent.

So God, creator of everything, doesn’t get jack squat. He winds up in a bar on the outskirts of Hollywood, where Alan Brennert buys Him a beer. “Welcome to the world,” says Alan.

Now that’s true evil. You don’t suppose Lucifer is on the board of directors at Time-Warner, do you?

I know for a fact he works for Disney. Everybody works for Disney.

Now the question arises: what happens if Lucifer gets cancelled? Will it trigger the apocalypse? Will the world end? Will Mark Pellegrino and the guy who plays the Devil on Fox have to fight it out? Either way, the writers and artists and deities who created the heroes and anti-heroes we’re watching won’t see so much as a dime. Remember, kiddies, always read a contract all the way through and make sure you understand all the clauses before you sign your rights away. Don’t let this happen to you.