Damnit Dixon (and Company)

Okay, so Scans Daily's got a scene from the Newsarama preview of Batman and the Outsiders up here. I've swiped and re-uploaded it for my own convenience.



(Click for a larger image.)

Okay. Um, I know I'm incredibly behind with Outsiders (I hadn't bothered with anything past the Checkmate crossover) but...what the fuck?

I'm not actually talking about the homophobic implications in the way Dixon's got that dialogue working. "Special"? Even if that's not intended to be insulting, a character like Batman would know full well how a character like Anissa would take that. It's pretty fucking offensive. Thanks, Dixon.

That's not actually my issue here today, though. My issue here is something that may or may not actually be Dixon's fault but it pisses me off nonetheless.

Why the hell is Anissa Pierce being treated like a fucking incompetent? Has she been spun around and replaced by Stephanie Brown when I wasn't looking? This is the girl that Nightwing, in an admittedly dickishly out of character move, sent in to a dictator to distract/seduce/spy and she performed the job as well as anyone could have expected. (Boy I would have liked to see Jefferson find out about THAT bit, and take it out of not-Dick's hide.)

(Devon blogged about that bit last year if you need the memory refresher.)

Anissa's been on this team for two years now! She started as a newbie, sure, but she's never been incompetent. She definitely pulls her own weight. She's a character who defied her very, VERY formidable ex-hero father to be a hero herself, undertook dangerous missions and while she had a lot to learn, she was learning it!

I give Winick a lot of guff about what I see as a general trend of poor portrayals of female characters, but I really really liked Anissa. I wasn't much of a fan of how her relationship with Grace was introduced (I liked their chemistry and wanted them to get together, but the execution didn't do much for me) but I can't fault him for creating one of the few likably portrayed characters on that team.

I didn't read the versus issue, I'd imagine she lost. And maybe I'm misremembering the run of Outsiders, maybe she did suck, but who the hell is Batman to kick her off a team that she's served on and bled for for two years. I get that this is supposed to be a redux of Batman and the Outsiders, but these people are not his fucking team. They existed LONG before he got involved.

And you know what? Grace SHOULD get a say in whether Anissa's on a team. "Special relationship" or not. Grace was ALSO a member of that team for two years or so before Batman took over. Hell, Batman wouldn't have any ties to the team at all if Roy didn't swipe his old crony-group's name for it. And his old sidekick.

But yeah. Grace is a member of that team. She's been a member of that team for longer than Batman's been running it. She, and the other teammates, should be the ones choosing who they fight beside. Not some dick in a batsuit.

And I get that this is set-up, I do. Anissa's going to be part of the team, and very likely, this is going to end up some kind of early Tim Drake redux, wherein the plucky young sidekick denied by Batman, defies him to save her friends, and thus proves herself to him.

I get that.

But I'm still annoyed. Because Tim did have to prove himself to Batman. He was inheriting Jason's costume and Dick's name, but Batman had every right to judge his readiness for the role. That he wasn't really ever going to give him a fair shake is beside the point, it was still Tim's job to prove himself worthy of the role.

Anissa isn't trying to prove herself worthy of being Batman's sidekick. She's going to end up "proving herself worthy" of the team she's been on for years. And Batman's humiliating her further by making her watch, to show her why she can't do the job, as a favor to her father.

Damnit. I haven't been so irritated by a page of a comic preview in a long time.

I guess I'm just annoyed because I really really like Anissa. I do. I like that she's smart and educated, that she went to college (wasn't she pre-med or something?). I like that she's not one of the legion of young white blond girl superheroes that are nigh interchangeable appearance wise. (I like those characters, sure, but if you consider how many active non-limboed white, blond, blue-eyed teen/just-post teenaged girl heroes versus how many active non-limboed non-white girl heroes of similar age we have, it's pretty fucked up.) I like that she's the daughter of a hero who wants better for her...even if we never had any indication that she existed before Winick decided to drop her in. I like that she made a promise to her father to not take up superheroing until after she finished college and then the very day after her last course, she put on the wig and costume. I like that she did her best and was fairly competent and sensible aside. I like that she's a lesbian, or bisexual, even if I thought Winick played it more for titilation. It's still nice to see a wider range of sexuality portrayed.

I like the wig too. I've always liked when superheroines wore wigs, because hair color/style/length does do a lot when it comes to the shape of the face and what people see when they look at you. And that color/length is so eye-catching that it's even more likely to distract attention away from the face.

I didn't like a lot of her plotlines, but I always liked the character herself, so I really really don't like seeing her in this sort of undignified and humiliating position. Hmph.