My WIFE Likes CRUZ

[Ωmega Man Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Ωmega Man]

The recent GL comics have kinda divided my house. While I'm reading GLC and staying faaaar away from GL's... I noticed my wife has got into Green Lanterns because of Jessica Cruz. My wife suffers from bi-polar disorder and anxiety [among other stuff] and she found herself a GL she can relate to. What a position she's put me in. Trust me when I say I don't wanna support GLs because it doesn't feature one of *my* Lanterns, but then the wife goes and gets her own GLs title.

Part of me thinks its just to piss me off, but she's actually becoming a fan. She doesn't care about Baz though, which kinda made me laugh.

Anybody else going through something like this?

~//V\\~

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

Well, I like Cruz morel than Baz.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

I hates them both! Yes I does my precious!

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

I hates them both!

I don't exactly like her myself. That is, if she disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't bother me. But I dislike Simon more.

And when it comes down to it, you have to hate one more too. If DC told you they'd kill off one of them, but not both, who would you pick?

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

That's...that's a hard question you're asking there SC.

I hate both of them based on their hooks, their little gimmicks that define their very existence. And I don't know which hook I despise more.

[Ωmega Man Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Ωmega Man]

I hate Baz more because he really doesn't bring anything new to the table other than a handgun. Cruz puts one more female hero out there and DC is kinda lacking in that department compared to Marvel, even before the PC era had them switching up every hero they could.

~//V\\~

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

When I look at Baz I see, "You THINK he's a terrorist, but a-HA...he's NOT! He's a misunderstood muslim who had the misfortune of being caught up in a bombing. So get on board or you are a bad person!"

When I look at Cruz I see, "She hides in the closet, doesn't leave the house, has severe mental issues, and is everything the ring is NOT supposed to choose. But SURPRISE! We are in a time of treating everybody with a disability as a hero! So get on board or you are a bad person!"

Apparently ANYBODY on Earth can become a Green Lantern now, you just need to overcome great fear. NO other qualities needed for the position. I hated that about Kyle's run (though they wisely undid that years later) and I hate it now. Guy, Hal and John were born to be Green Lanterns. Those are my kind of heroes.

Screw that. These characters offer nothing other than what their gimmick is that holds them back in life. The scenes where we see how kind-of Americanized Baz' family is just a hack job and eye rolling. I don't even remember Cruz' back story. She has a sister. Is the sister batshit crazy too? I forget. Hell, give her a colored ring too, who the f&#k are we turning away?

[IonFan Forum Member Find all posts View Profile Close IonFan]

hate to say this or be that guy but it may be time to get a new wife.............

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

I doubt anybody is looking to you for relationship advice, IonFan.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

[IonFan Forum Member Find all posts View Profile Close IonFan]

if they did they'd be happier

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

if they did they'd be happier

Or at least they'd have a lot less disposable income...

[IonFan Forum Member Find all posts View Profile Close IonFan]

OR they'd work harder (like having 3 jobs) so they wouldn't have to worry so much about "disposable income"

[Star-Lantern Weaponer of Qward Find all posts View Profile Close Star-Lantern]

Everyone I personally know who knows about Baz and Cruz does not like them, so no, I'm not in that spot.

About the diversity thing, I think Marvel and DC often (not always, but OFTEN) go about it completely wrong. Ideally, you should have diversity without stepping on other people's toes, and in a manner of speaking, forcing it on people. When you do those things, all you're going to do is cause friction about topics that are already sensitive and personal to people.

And really, this isn't beneficial to anyone, because despite Baz and Cruz being around and maybe getting some focus for what will probably be a limited time, a white dude is probably always going to rule the roost at Green Lantern and they'll wind up being underlings of his. So when the powers that be adapt Green Lantern for games, cartoons, films, and so on, chances are it's going to be a white guy and these other characters will be ignored, thus whatever new fans came along because of these new characters will likely be disappointed, and thus you have more disgruntled people, more friction, and so on... And in the event that these minority characters DO get adapted over the white character, it's World War III, and you, again, have fighting, disgruntled people, and so on, with this personal, sensitive topic at the core of it all.

After pondering on the issues and mulling them over for quite a while, I have come to the conclusion that isn't the way a creator/company/whatever should typically handle diverse characters, because it stands a large chance of causing problems. It can work if you revitalize a dead franchise/character with a minority character. For example, I don't think many people really cared about the original Mr. Terrific, so turning the character into a black guy didn't cause much fuss that I saw. Since few people cared, few people felt they were being deprived of the character they wanted to see when "Mr. Terrific" appears. Green Lantern is just about the worst place you could pull a stunt like this because of the amount of characters using the Green Lantern title, and the fact that a lot of those characters already have hugely passionate fans.

Green Lantern fandom was already a tinder box because DC had effectively divided the fandom numerous ways and set them against each other, and this latest stunt just adds a lot of fuel to the inferno. Speaking only for myself, it actually contributed greatly to me just de-investing myself from the whole thing. I'm not really all that passionate about it or the characters anymore, but just sort of look at all of it with an impersonal view these days.

Naturally, the way to handle all this properly with the least amount of damage or drama is simply to create new characters with their own names and mythologies that can be showcased without depriving fans of other classic characters. DC and Marvel have a few big problems with this, however. First, in this age of self-publishing and creators being able to own the rights of their creations, only an idiot would create a whole mythology and give it all to one of these corporations. If a creator does give up an idea like that for work-for-hire projects, it likely won't be anything worth a damn, and thus won't take traction. Creators will create new characters, yes, but they will stick them in mythologies that are already there and established (quite often by white male characters). The next problem DC and Marvel run into with this issue is that I'm not sure the audience DC and Marvel have want to see totally new ideas. Personally, I think the first problem is the real one. You create something new that's really good and you promote it right, and I think you can build a fanbase. It's just no one is willing to do that for DC or Marvel because they could potentially be screwing themselves out of billions.

So, what would I have done in light of all of this? I think if DC wanted a Muslim and scared Latina, okay, that's fine. Dig up two of the gazillion characters they have in their repertoire that they're not using and haven't used in a long time, and revamp those ideas using Cruz and Baz. Hire someone with good ideas and writing skills to write them, good artists to render them, and then seriously promote them.

DO NOT put them in an overcrowded franchise like Green Lantern, because it's just going to cause the people who already like Green Lanterns (which, as comics go, is a lot of people) to hate those characters, it's going to cause a lot of people to roll their eyes at diversity because it's frequently getting in their way, it's going to cause the new fans who do get into these characters to get upset when they realize that things will eventually default back to the white character (and they WILL), and then you wind up with a divided fanbase of people at each others' throats fighting over rather sensitive and personal issues... And as I said before, that's just not beneficial. This is comics. Not to trivialize the medium, but a lot of us are here just to have escapist fun, not to debate socio-political issues.

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

OR they'd work harder (like having 3 jobs) so they wouldn't have to worry so much about "disposable income"

Most people don't HAVE to work three jobs to finance a "relationship".