BLACK AND WHITE and SHADES OF GRAY by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge (Spectra)

Kessler and Kittredge seem mostly to have written paranormal romance/urban fantasy previously, which made me wonder if these novels would be superhero romance. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that--by no means am I averse to romance, and I've positively reviewed a volume of superhero erotica before. Well, there are love interests and stuff, but no more than I've seen in, say, X-Men or Green Lantern. This is honest-to-God, straight-up superhero fare. One of Kessler's Acknowledgments is, "To my mom and dad, who gave me X-Men #94-100 in mint condition for my bat mitzvah present." "About the Authors" says of Kittredge that, "She once painted herself blue and went to a Halloween party as the X-Men's Mystique." So these authors are definitely fans, well-acquainted with the genre, and they're serious about writing within it.

They do break with superhero convention somewhat by setting these novels not in the present or nostalgically in the Golden or Silver Age, but rather in a mildly science-fictional near-future. There are hovercars and plasguns. Rising waters due to global warming have begun to impact cities like New York. Bizarrely--and very gratingly, to my ear--people say "Jehovah" and "Christo" rather than "God" or "Jesus Christ" when they take the Lord's name in vain. But the big, big difference is that fertility research has resulted in the births of superpowered "extrahumans."

Black and White opens with Jet, a dour superheroine with shadow powers, and Iridium, a Robin-Hood-esque heroine-gone-rogue with light powers, as implacable enemies. Jet's determination to bring Iridium to justice is rivaled only by Iridium's determination to bring down Corp-Co, the megaconglomerate behind the Squadron, a superhero franchise with a team in every major city. We alternate between their viewpoints, with Kessler writing Jet's chapters and Kittredge writing Iridium's. We also alternate between larger sections of "Now" and "Then." Jet and Iridium started out as roommates and best friends at Corp-Co's Academy, where young extrahumans receive training not only in their superpowers, but also in branding, marketing, merchandising, etc., with electives offered like "Battle Banter" and "Femme Fatale" (in which female supers learn, among other things, how to fight in high heels). The "Then" sections flash back to that time, and show how they grew apart until their ultimate falling-out. The "Now" sections tell how their paths converge to make them uneasy allies again to face a monumental common threat.

Shades of Gray also goes back and forth between "Now" and "Then," but it's a little different. In the "Now," it tells how Jet and Iridium deal with the ugly, increasingly violent aftermath of Black and White, and the "Then" chapters dig deeper into the backstory of their parents and mentors from those characters' perspectives. I wish I could spare the time to give these a closer rereading, because they feature complicated overlapping conspiracies. As suggested above, the pieces of the puzzle come from multiple viewpoints, in fractured sequence, with extra tidbits doled out in the epigraphs (framgents of journal entries and whatnot) that open every chapter.

Although I wouldn't go so far as to call these novels "deconstructive" in the sense of offering original critical metacommentary on superheroes at the thematic level, they reflect evident familiarity with such stories, and seem at least partly informed by that sensibility. The multi-generational dynamic seems inspired by Watchmen, and to serve similar narrative functions. Corp-Co's relationship to the superheroes reminds me a lot of Vought American from The Boys. In Doctor Hypnotic's Siege of Manhattan, we get a PR-sanitized clusterfuck with massive civilian casualties somewhat along the lines of the Seven's monumental 9/11 fuckup, also in The Boys. I would just chalk this up to Kessler and Kittredge independently finding similar angles to explore, but then again, one minor character in Shades is named "Garth McFarlane," so maybe Ennis did partly inspire them. In any case, they put these ideas to good use in building their own world, defining their own characters, and telling their own stories.

I have to say, these novels are the best examples I've seen yet of doing female superpowered characters right. I'd hasten to add that they're fine superhero stories, period, and they shouldn't be reduced to that, but it does strike me as their chief contribution to the genre. The most obvious factor in that achievement is the two women authors. But I also think Kessler and Kittredge had an easier time of it working outside the Big Two, and indeed outside the medium of comics altogether.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do superheroines right in Marvel or DC comics. But both universes have long, troubled histories that don't provide the most favorable, fostering conditions. We find mostly-male A-lists, and female characters entrenched in supporting roles. The weight of tradition and entanglements of continuity make these difficult to reshuffle. DC's lone A-list female, Wonder Woman, may be problematic right down to her very conception, in ways that are perilous for even well-intentioned writers to navigate. Other characters have accumulated problematic aspects along the way, such as rape retcons, oogie developments in their ongoing arcs, or they've suffered some particularly degrading (sometimes fatal) act of violence. One fairly petty but deservedly notorious recent example is the offhand "revelation," in Cry for Justice, that Hal Jordan had a threesome with Lady Blackhawk and Huntress:

I think Gail Simone has good reason to be frustrated when a throwaway gag like this undercuts her long cultivation of both female characters in Birds of Prey:

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.

Speaking of Birds of Prey, most of those heroines derive in some way from higher-profile male heroes. On this point, Lisa Paitz Spindler notes, "With Black and White, Kessler and Kittredge definitely filled a void for me by creating female superheroes who stand on their own and aren't connected to existing male superheroes." Starting from scratch, the authors freely build a world not pre-dominated by male icons or weighted down with the kind of baggage outlined above.

As for the difference it makes that these are prose--not graphic--novels . . . in general, I'd normally say that prose is just about the worst medium for superhero stories. There's a reason superheroes thrive in comics in a way they don't in any other media. Only comics permit the fine balance between visual immediacy (which prose lacks) and iconic abstraction (for which live-action film is too photo-realistic) that can bring the fantasy of the superhero to life. The most vividly described imagery in prose will simply never rival the visual experience of actually seeing costumes and powers on the page, especially not when the mainstream style of art has evolved to the impressive degree it's reached for maximizing the impact of superheroic spectacle. Kessler and Kittredge deliver some intense, exciting fights, but when you're used to seeing scenes like that depicted with awesome splash-pages and spreads, it's hard to read them and not feel something's missing. By their very nature and design, superheroes are indulgently visual stimuli, so without the art, in a medium like prose that's only indirectly visual at best, the experience of them is bound to seem qualitatively diminished.

Having said that, the visual nature of comics and the particular aesthetic that's come to define mainstream superhero art exert pressures that Kessler and Kittredge were probably better off not having to deal with in this case. Douglas Wolk says of mainstream superhero art:

But what is that default style, exactly? You know it when you see it, but it's hard to pin down. Here's a stab at it: it's designed to read clearly and to provoke the strongest possible somatic response. You're supposed to react to it with your body before you think about it. Most of its characters, especially the heroic ones, are drawn to look as "sexy" as possible--wasp waists, big breasts, and flowing hair on women; rippling muscles on men. People and objects are partly abstracted and partly modeled, but always within a framework of representation. There's a lot of foreshortening, for the somatic excitement of seeing something right in front of your face. The style gives a sense of even the most everyday actions and interactions being charged with sex, power, and beauty. Most of all, generic mainstream drawing is doggedly quasi-realistic--or, rather, it's realism pumped up a little, into something whose every aspect is cooler and sexier than the reality we readers are stuck with. It's meant to provide an escape route into a more thrilling world than our own. (Reading Comics, p. 50)

And Michael Chabon's incisive remarks about superhero costumes are worth reading at length, but here's the gist that's most relevant for this discussion:

[A] superhero’s costume is constructed not of fabric, foam rubber, or adamantium but of halftone dots, Pantone color values, inked containment lines, and all the cartoonist’s sleight of hand. The superhero costume as drawn disdains the customary relationship in the fashion world between sketch and garment. It makes no suggestions. It has no agenda. Above all, it is not waiting to find fulfillment as cloth draped on a body. . . .

One might go farther and argue not only that the superhero costume has (and needs) no referent in the world of textiles and latex but also that, even within its own proper comic-book context, it can be said not to exist, not to want to exist—can be said to advertise, even to revel in, its own notional status. This illusionary quality of the drawn costume can readily be seen if we attempt to delimit the elements of the superhero wardrobe, to inventory its minimum or requisite components. . . .

Here is a central paradox of superhero attire: from panther black to lantern green, from the faintly Hapsburg pomp of the fifties-era Legion of Super-Heroes costumes to the “Mad Max” space grunge of Lobo, from sexy fish-net to vibranium—for all the mad recombinant play of color, style, and materials that the superhero costume makes with its limited number of standard components, it ultimately takes its deepest meaning and serves its primary function in the depiction of the naked human form, unfettered, perfect, and free. The superheroic wardrobe resembles a wildly permutated alphabet of ideograms conceived only to express the eloquent power of silence.

The example Chabon cites is a male superhero, the Silver Surfer:

So we are left with, literally, nothing at all: the human form, unadorned, smooth, muscled, and ready, let’s say, to sail the starry ocean of the cosmos on the deck of a gleaming surfboard. A naked spacefarer, sheathed in a silvery pseudoskin that affords all the protection one needs from radiation and cosmic dust while meeting Code standards by neatly neutering one, the shining void between the legs serving to signify that one is not (as one often appears to be when seen from behind) naked as an interstellar jaybird.

But let's face it--much more often, it's the female super costumes that are little more than body paint, and little enough of that. In some cases, a costume is outrageous enough that the writers go ahead and lampshade it right in-panel:

Now, anyone familiar with this blog knows I don't mind sexy female characters. In fact, to be perfectly honest, my taste in such fare is probably a looooong way further out than most mainstream comics readers, male or female, would be comfortable with. But I don't think female superhero fans are broadly opposed, in principle, to sexy female characters, either. Valerie D'Orazio illustrates the point that sexy can be done in ways that aren't sexist. Rising star artist Nicola Scott likes to draw "hot chicks." And in the Birds of Prey panel above, that's Gail Simone putting words in Huntress's mouth justifying how much skin her costume reveals.

On the other hand, I don't think anyone was shocked by Hope Larson's recent report, from the findings of her informal survey, that, "The hypersexualization/objectification of female superheroines makes female readers uncomfortable." Nobody's saying dial it back to zero, but clearly some balance and restraint are called for.

Prose, being so visually impoverished, neatly moots this whole minefield. It simply isn't beset with anything like the visual pressure in comics that results in, for example, Star Sapphire costumes. It permits and fosters a different set of emphases and considerations in costume design. Whatever I'd prefer to look at on a splash-page, it just reads better when a character gears up in Kevlar rather than slinking into a midriff-baring top and thong before a big fight. You can see the difference in the cover art to Black and White, because artist Juda Tverski followed the description of Jet's costume quite faithfully (I think leaving it in black and white was a mistake, though--I know, the title, I get it, but that makes it look more like a convention sketch than like a finished piece suitable as cover art for a trade paperback about superheroes).

If prose's lack of visual immediacy allows pragmatic costume design to trump sexy once in a while, even more importantly, it demands much greater attention to character. Poorly-handled characters in prose never have the safety net of eye-popping art to make them appealing anyway. They're engaging or not because of their point of view, voice, behavior, thoughts, relationships, the stories they inhabit and drive, etc. This is where Kessler and Kittredge, as female authors, make the greatest difference. Shana Mlawski trenchantly describes a trap many male creators fall into, when dealing with female characters:

Some movies nowadays go even further. They pile up one awesome trait after another on top of this sexy female character, thinking that will make them “stronger.” For instance, consider Rachel Taylor’s character in Transformers, who, Megan Fox claims, is an intelligent, Strong Female Character. Of course! She’s a 23-year-old, model-thin super-attractive super-genius hacker who is SO SMART that everyone in the Pentagon spends the whole movie looking at her dumbly because she’s just SO MUCH BETTER THAN THEM AT EVERYTHING. Or, as A.O. Scott said in his Wall-E review, this is the female character (like EVE) who is “a supermodel who also happens to be a top scientist with a knack for marksmanship.”

This Super Strong Female Character is almost like a Mary Sue, except instead of being perfect in every way because she’s a stand-in for the author, she’s perfect in every way so the male audience will want to bang her and so the female audience won’t be able to say, “Tsk tsk, what a weak female character!” It’s a win-win situation.

Except not.

Mlawski goes on:

I think the major problem here is that women were clamoring for “strong female characters,” and male writers misunderstood. They thought the feminists meant [Strong Female] Characters. The feminists meant [Strong Characters], Female. . . .

Good characters, male or female, have goals, and they have flaws. Any character without flaws will be a cardboard cutout. Perhaps a sexy cardboard cutout, but two-dimensional nonetheless. . . .

So what flaws can female characters have? Uh, I don’t know. How about the same flaws a male character would have?

These novels pass this test as easily as they pass the Bechdel. There's not a whiff here of what Mlawski complains about, or Mary-Sue-ism, either. Kessler and Kittredge deliver a balanced dose of what Hope Larson's survey respondents say they want: "Either relatable, realistic characters (like the misfit X-Men) or “kick-ass” wish-fulfillment characters." Jet and Iridium are "kick-ass" wish-fulfillment characters by virtue of their powers, independence, and the respect they command, but they're also relatably and realistically flawed in the ways Mlawski calls for. It's abundantly clear why their friendship is so difficult, even their strengths come with downsides, and they make mistakes that get themselves, each other, and other people hurt.

Interviewing Hope Larson about the survey, Kelly Thompson rants:

I'm not trying to be all "I’m so right!" but literally #1, and #3 through #10 on that list (and I'm working on a post about #2) are all things I've talked about in this column - and seen many others talk about - so if columnists, critics, fans, and a survey of about 200 women and girls that read comics are all saying similar things - why do big mainstream comic companies act like trying to address getting girls to read mainstream books is like unknowable rocket science? Any ideas? Because I'm fresh out!

Well, Kessler and Kittredge have made it that much easier, having shown, in prose and in their own made-from-scratch universe, how to get female superhero characters right.