Word Balloon: I think much of the pushback people have when it comes to representation and progressivism in modern comics is due to a lack of empathy, and an inability (and refusal) to occupy a different headspace.
Tini Howard: One thing I noticed is that we all read comics and we all engage with media differently. I’ve noticed that sometimes people prefer their version of a character over the realistic version of a character because their version might have been the version they fell in love with, might have been a little more streamlined for “comic coolness.”
Leah Williams and I are two of the first female writers to write about Betsy Braddock. We gave her a lot of interiority that to some people seemed like weird or foreign, but to Leah and I it’s like “this is always how we’ve read this character as women.” But a lot of people were like “Betsy Braddock is Psylocke, the badass ninja who doesn’t care about anything” and that’s fun. Everyone has their take on a character, but sometime when you want to do things like giving Betsy struggles that I’ve dealt with as a woman, that show her struggling as a woman, people are like “I don’t want to see her fail. She’s a badass. I don’t want to be remined that women fail.” But we do. We do fail. I like being able to write about that and that’s important to me. But some people resist. That is progressive. Letting women tell stories about women is progressive. Because of that, sometimes we want to tell stories about women suffering and failing and some people who have really held these characters up as icons are unwilling to occupy that headspace, unwilling to think about the fact that this character is in the hands of a woman who might want to say something about women. It’s not because I’m putting thoughts about women into the book for people to get mad at me about. It’s that I’m a woman. It’s my perspective. It’s part of me. It doesn’t make me different, but it does shape my views.
Word Balloon: It’s the struggles that make them stronger heroes and stronger characters as well. Sometimes people make judgments on a chapter two of a five-chapter story. Let the writer tell the story and then see how things come. I think it just makes them more real because we do fail in general. That’s something that’s part of life.
Tini Howard: One of the best things that Shelly Bond taught me is that a book doesn’t exist the week it comes out, it exists on the shelf forever. If you’re writing a book and people are like “I don’t get it!”, and you’re like “I know where I’m going!” Sometime you have to do that. Sometime you just have to log out of Twitter and let people freak out at you. Hey, I know where this is going and ultimately in 10 tears, you guys won’t be tweeting about this anymore, but it will be on the shelf with my name on it. Above all else, I have to stand behind it, I have to believe in what I’m doing. I’m so grateful that I feel like I have a lot of readers who are willing to do that with me. I’m very thankful for each and everyone.
Tini Howard: One thing I noticed is that we all read comics and we all engage with media differently. I’ve noticed that sometimes people prefer their version of a character over the realistic version of a character because their version might have been the version they fell in love with, might have been a little more streamlined for “comic coolness.”
Leah Williams and I are two of the first female writers to write about Betsy Braddock. We gave her a lot of interiority that to some people seemed like weird or foreign, but to Leah and I it’s like “this is always how we’ve read this character as women.” But a lot of people were like “Betsy Braddock is Psylocke, the badass ninja who doesn’t care about anything” and that’s fun. Everyone has their take on a character, but sometime when you want to do things like giving Betsy struggles that I’ve dealt with as a woman, that show her struggling as a woman, people are like “I don’t want to see her fail. She’s a badass. I don’t want to be remined that women fail.” But we do. We do fail. I like being able to write about that and that’s important to me. But some people resist. That is progressive. Letting women tell stories about women is progressive. Because of that, sometimes we want to tell stories about women suffering and failing and some people who have really held these characters up as icons are unwilling to occupy that headspace, unwilling to think about the fact that this character is in the hands of a woman who might want to say something about women. It’s not because I’m putting thoughts about women into the book for people to get mad at me about. It’s that I’m a woman. It’s my perspective. It’s part of me. It doesn’t make me different, but it does shape my views.
Word Balloon: It’s the struggles that make them stronger heroes and stronger characters as well. Sometimes people make judgments on a chapter two of a five-chapter story. Let the writer tell the story and then see how things come. I think it just makes them more real because we do fail in general. That’s something that’s part of life.
Tini Howard: One of the best things that Shelly Bond taught me is that a book doesn’t exist the week it comes out, it exists on the shelf forever. If you’re writing a book and people are like “I don’t get it!”, and you’re like “I know where I’m going!” Sometime you have to do that. Sometime you just have to log out of Twitter and let people freak out at you. Hey, I know where this is going and ultimately in 10 tears, you guys won’t be tweeting about this anymore, but it will be on the shelf with my name on it. Above all else, I have to stand behind it, I have to believe in what I’m doing. I’m so grateful that I feel like I have a lot of readers who are willing to do that with me. I’m very thankful for each and everyone.
“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
55 comments:
I get where she's coming from, I really do. She said the same thing on that Cerebro podcast, that she has this wonderful payoff in mind, but Betsy has been struggling and failing for 20 issues now. Most of us ran out of patience a long time ago.
Okay so the fans are wrong? So essentially shes alluding that the people complaining MUST be male because she's writing from a woman's perspective as Betsy Jesus chrsit... you don't have to wrote a character from YOUR perspective you aren't the character she isn't your mouth piece. This isn't about being progressive or lack there of the problem is the character has been essentially destroyed and incompetent for nearly two years straight and we are supposed to be okay with it?
There's nothing she can do at this point in her run that would validate the last 20 issues of dragging Betsy through the mud
She’s literally such a hack, like people aren’t saying that Betsy can’t fail it’s the way she writes her like a complete idiot. Like Betsy has failed before, in my favorite run by Remender she failed multiple times but it’s not because she’s an idiot. Betsy like most people is flawed and complex she’s competent but can make the wrong decisions. Betsy acts like a complete amateur in Excalibur like all of her history is wiped away so Tini can self project onto her. Her basically saying people are sexist that’s why they don’t understand what she and her fellow hack Williams have done with her is just her trying to hide behind the fact that she’s a terrible writer. I can’t wait for the day when she and Williams are far away from the X-Line.
She’s literally such a hack, like people aren’t saying that Betsy can’t fail it’s the way she writes her like a complete idiot. Like Betsy has failed before, in my favorite run by Remender she failed multiple times but it’s not because she’s an idiot. Betsy like most people is flawed and complex she’s competent but can make the wrong decisions. Betsy acts like a complete amateur in Excalibur like all of her history is wiped away so Tini can self project onto her. Her basically saying people are sexist that’s why they don’t understand what she and her fellow hack Williams have done with her is just her trying to hide behind the fact that she’s a terrible writer. I can’t wait for the day when she and Williams are far away from the X-Line.
Doesn't seem like either are going anywhere even when they lose a book they quickly get a new one to write for xoffice
Betsy 'failed' and struggled for years, and fans loved it. Overcomign adversity is key to who Betsy is.
Tini Howard does not understand who Betsy Braddock is.
She's tried to lump Betsy with a bunch of hang-ups and issues that have no connection we have ever seen in the character previously.
That's the problem. Bad writing, and a complete lack of awareness of who the character is - and a complete refusal to want to learn who the character is!
But of course she has to play the woman/feminist card.
Oh, I don't get it, so if course it must be because I somehow hate women.
Fuck, Hellions isn't perfect, but Kwannon is being serviced a lot better than this.
Yeah there's nothing wrong with Betsy feeling vulnerable and self-doubt but after 20 issues we should be seeing her trying to overcome that and grow as a character. There's been no payoff whatsoever.
The only thing Tini got right was the relationship between Betsy and Kwannon.
What Tini Howard says for the women are weak and failures is wrong. Betsy and Ororo are two X-Men that never fail because they find ways to win at their weakest points. Betsy fought Sabretooth in high shoes with no ninja moves and was brave to defend other weak people. I don't know people who do that and are failures. Ororo fought without powers for most of the 80s and she wasn't afraid. Women are the most brave and useful heroes in Marvel comics and Betsy with Ororo were the successful leaders of the X-Men. Betsy saved the X-Men from extinction in Australia and Ororo was a better leader than Cyclops for many years.
Dani Moonstar was a great X-Men leader, Kitty Pryde was a leader Karma was a New Mutants leader, Rogue was a leader, Armor was a leader of the New X-men, Betsy and Storm were X-Men leaders more women than men. Tini Howard brings shame to Betsy because she was an independent woman with power in her Psylocke identity and female butterfly and she made Betsy take her brother's suit and depend on a male identity. Where is the female empowerment in this?
What a pathetic "writer"
"What Tini Howard says for the women are weak and failures is wrong."
To be fair, that's not what she said; she said that some readers want their heroes to always succeed, and that women sometimes fail (just like men do), and that it's okay. She's not wrong about that.
The problem is, I don't think most of Betsy's fans have any problem with her failures; in fact, some of her best stories have her failing a lot: Remender's UXF has her trying to save Warren only to be captured by his henchmen, be brainwashed and need to be rescued by her teammates. Then in the final arc, once again she's completely defenseless against Shadow King and only manages to escape thanks to Fantomex sacrificing himself.
The difference is that in these stories, she eventually managed to overcome the obstacles, getting to put the Dark Angel down and imprisoning Shadow King. Excalibur, on the other hand, has already had 20 issues and we still didn't get any payoff for everything she's been through. Okay, so the Captain Britain Corps is now modeled after her - so what? That doesn't feel as any kind of victory.
And the indication randybear pointed out in her speech that the readers complaining must be male and thus can't relate to her perception of how a woman should be pictured feels wrong as well. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Kiki is a woman, right? And she's probably the visitor in this blog who complains the most about Excalibur - and I don't blame her at all. Plus, there are plenty of female writers who did an excellent job portraying female characters, like G.Willow Wilson, Gail Simone (I LOVE her Birds of Prey run in the early 2000s!), Marjorie Liu (whose X-23 felt very relatable) and so on.
"Her basically saying people are sexist that’s why they don’t understand what she and her fellow hack Williams have done with her is just her trying to hide behind the fact that she’s a terrible writer"
I don't think she's a terrible writer; I just feel the Excalibur team isn't the most indicated for her to write. One thing I noticed after years following the X-Men is that some writers fit better with certain characters: for instance, Bendis did a great job with the Avengers, but his run with the Uncanny X-Men was quite boring. Fraction's Cyclops was annoying, but his Emma was pretty good; Liu did a wonderful job with X-23 in her solo book, but I hated how she portrayed Northstar and Kyle as a whiny couple in Astonishing X-Men (their wedding issue was amazing, though).
Howard did a good job with Apocalypse, perhaps even better than Hickman did. And that seems to be the issue: I often get the impression that she was only interested in writing Apocalypse, and everyone else in the book's roster just happened to be there because the editors said so. And now Apocalypse is no longer in the book, so... yeah.
True same vibe. She admitted she pitched a book for Apocalypse but editorial molded it into Excalibur ughh she clearly got to tell her redemption are of Apocalypse and now that thats done shes just collecting a check shitting out scripts for Excalibur
Translation: "Im a woman so my perspective on the character is superior. My book is good really, you are all stupid oh and sexist, dont forget sexist."
Chris Claremont is male and he wrote and created some of the greatest females in all of comic history.
Shes essentially saying all previous writers got the character wrong. So im REALLY curious... if she ever got her hands on say... Storm or Kwannon... how would they be written? Weak failures? I'm beyond confused by her moronic logical being used to validate her shit run on Excalibur. Girl go home you ruined a classic character you done enough.
I am the usual Tini defender here and I always try to find reason behind her writing. Lately I find a lot to be desired like plot holes and a rushed end product as time progresses. The Apocalypse-Rictor bond and apprenticeship in sorcery had little panel time to be justified as a big emotional loss. The tenth issue with the English Krakoan warfare and the creation of the Captain X-Men corps by Jamie had little story impact. The Externals and their sacrifice for the gate to Arrako was treated like an afterthought similar to the hunt for the Mojo Warwolves who can somehow procreate even though they are artificial. Until now we haven't been told how Saturnyne revived to rise to absolute power and who her zodiac servants are. I'm referring to Ryl, Quo and Sinner Temple twins as well as the creature they retrieved from a solar system. The Psylocke story after Betsy shattered with the cameo appearance of Kwannon was forced to let bygones be bygones without properly restoring Betsy's confidence and her butterfly signature as the rightful owner of her powers and iconography. Some of you noticed that in Hellions Kwannon can still use the butterfly despite Betsy's return in her original body and be able to display the butterfly and her telepathy normally in the Disassembled run all incidents prior to Dawn of X. I can't forget the tests Apocalypse ran on Morgan le Fay and her whereabouts. Also how anticlimactic the duel of Betsy and Isca was and how ridiculous the trials of Saturnyne were.
If she respected Besty as a woman, she would have let her keep her identity and not put her in a costume that is a derivative of a male character that she will always be compared to. I mean, that's setting her up to fail maybe?
Betsy had a strong identity, and one that needed to be re-established in her natural body, but we never got that as they quickly took away her signature powers and made her some weaker version of her brother. I mean, where the empowerment there? It's like she left one body that wasn't hers and was forced into another.
For me, I'm not too fond of Betsy in shiny armor and a cape or the high-profile leader of a team. I like her much better as a wild card scrapper working under the radar.
Wjats worse is there's no sign of the book ending anytime soon and meanwhile it's being dragged out with breaks between issues... we are truly suffering and I think its the end of Betsy IMO. Who can salvage her and who wants to commit to Betsy when she's new bound to CB mythos and OW. Shes in a very specific box that not all writers will find enticing.
"If she respected Besty as a woman, she would have let her keep her identity and not put her in a costume that is a derivative of a male character that she will always be compared to. I mean, that's setting her up to fail maybe?"
That's actually not her fault; if I remember correctly, turning Betsy into the new Captain Britain was a decision from the Marvel editors, so that they could keep both her and Kwannon around.
And that's one problem whose solution may be harder than it seems: while I like the idea of Betsy becoming Captain Britain, I can understand the complaints that it feels like she's using someone else's identity - but if she stops being CB... what will her identity be? Let's face it, Kwannon won't leave the Psylocke identity anytime soon. And unlike Betsy's new identity as Captain Britain, Kwannon has actually become quite a cool Psylocke (as much as it hurts me to admit it), keeping the mysterious psychic ninja vibe while also bringing a personality of her own to the mix.
If Betsy stops being Captain Britain, I'm afraid she'll have to get a new identity from scratch. And while it could turn out great, it could also hurt her image even more...
Betsy could have just stayed in her Asrar look and formed Excalibur with Brian and called herself Lady Braddock or just Betsy Braddock ala Rachel Summers, Jean Grey etc She doesn't necessarily NEED a codename her name Betsy Braddock is recognizable to most comic readers and would help indicate she IS Betsy and Psylocke isn't.
Good point, but since Dawn of X, doesn't everyone in Krakoa have a codename now? Jean is Marvel Girl (despite being in her 30s), Rachel is Prestige, Kitty (now Kate) is Red Queen, and so on.
I do like the idea of her codename being "Lady (...)". Lady Britain, maybe? Lady Butterfly (assuming she'll eventually get her psychic butterfly back, even if Kwannon also gets to use it)?
Whatever identity she gets, though, it will take some effort from Marvel to properly establish and consolidate it.
"If I remember correctly, turning Betsy into the new Captain Britain was a decision from the Marvel editors, so that they could keep both her and Kwannon around."
@FSaker That's not how it happened exactly.
First, Tini pitched an Apocalypse-centric, magic-based book.
Second, Hickman and Jordan D. White suggested that she turned it into an Excalibur book.
Third, they all decided Betsy should be Captain Britain because they wouldn't have a human (Brian) lead a Krakoan-era mutant book.
Last, Bryan Hill, who was obsessed with ninja Psylocke as a kid, realized he could turn Kwannon into Psylocke and pitched Fallen Angels.
Funny thing is. I'm a black man who writes women in comics, and they struggle and fail, and win. It's like she doesn't get the essence of the character, and only the Starbucks version.
I write horror about a female protagonist, a Psylocke comic, and comics about female detectives. People that read them, know the characters, and respect what I've been able to do with them.
I think if someone else were to write them, they'd be able to see their past, and respect the source, while not totally reworking the characters.
But Tini and Leah were like, Let's put everything about us, on certain people.
Like Leah and Betsy' body image issues, she just made up.
"I’ve noticed that sometimes people prefer their version of a character over the realistic version of a character because their version might have been the version they fell in love with, might have been a little more streamlined for “comic coolness.”
Wow. Big ego energy. Reads a lot like only her version matters and everything we've come to know from previous writers is wrong.
Well, she won't be writing for Betsy forever, but it could be a long wait for us fans.
Guys,
I would suggest copying and pasting your great responses you wrote here and sending them to Officex@marvel.com with the heading like "We want Dissassembled Betsy Braddock back" or "Tini doesn't understand Betsy".
A heading that gets their attention.
Nothing will change unless we are proactive about it and vocal to the right people :)
First, I would say I think Tini just doesn't get Betsy or her fans.
Watching Betsy fail is not the issue, it's completely altering her personality and giving her issues that she never had.
The woman who walked around in lingerie a lot of the time and posed nude for Colossus had body issues? Come on.
I actually think Tini take on certain things is pretty bad messaging. A positive message people have heard for years is "its what is on the inside that counts"
That's why I loved the minute Betsy was back in her original form, she still contemplated killing Magneto almost instantly (cause the writer understood it was still Betsy in either form). Or in Disassembled she took Storm and Warren down because she felt it was for the "Greater Good" and was her "action junkie" self doing it.
Betsy has evolved since her first day of being an X-man. She still has the experiences of everything she's gone through as "ninja Psylocke", therefore her getting her original body back shouldn't make her act as if she's as inexperienced a fighter to even before she wore her cloaked hoodie and armor, and even before then she still had an fighting attitude and wit about her that we are seriously missing.
Betsy couldn't have gone through all the crap she's been put through and still be the same person she was when she first appeared.
That's what Tini isnt getting imo. In either body, Betsy should still be the same person/fighter, because the outside doesn't define her, "it's what is on the inside that counts". She shouldn't be back at square one.
That is what a lot of Betsy fans are annoyed at. Ignoring all the history, experiences, and growth Betsy has had all these past years. Betsy has failed multiple times. What was appealing was how that never stopped her from getting right back up.
Imo Tini comes off as either very confused or willfully ignorant in this interview, and either way she appears to be dismissive of a huge chunk of Betsy's fanbase.
A lot of us that have issues are both Fans of British Psylocke and Ninja Psylocke and it wasnt because she was just "cool and didn't care about anything".
Actually I can add her being insulting to other writers to this list based on that statement lol.
What a lot of us (including me) didnt like was that Betsy was forcibly stuck/trapped inside someone else's body.
The story that Tini could & should have told (and would have been great from a woman's perspective) was the body violation of Betsy and being looked at as not a woman, but as a plaything to revive another woman (for a man's happines).
She could have delved into the trauma that occurred from that incident and as a woman did it from that perspective
Instead there was a stripping of a name that was hers given to Kwannon, powers given to Kwannon that Betsy had first, initially giving credibility to the implied Victim blaming Bryan Hill started, and getting Brian's "sloppy seconds" as Captain Britain. That is what is annoying.
In addition to that her writing is disjointed. It's like she's capable of good writing but refuses to embrace it lol. Like when Betsy and alternate Kwannon teamed up, that was a glimmer of our Betsy. Using her psionic powers, martial arts, cool calm and collected in combat, then next issue she's a shrieking mess until Kwannon "saves her", but it never explains how she's level headed and fine in one issue, then a mess in the next. Again the issue isn't Betsy "failing" in that case either. Its the writing.
The reason I did find the interview to be a win though, because they inadvertently revealed the Betsy fans are being vocal and they are being heard. Enough for Tini to have to address them if she's still hearing it, and if she's hearing it, then TPTB are hearing it too.
That's why I am suggesting for everyone to send these great comments in :)
I emailed them a couple months back do leave the rest up to you guys 😆
It's just plain old misogyny. Remember that a brainwashed Betsy was abducted, violated and experimented on only to further Matsuo's goal to ressurrect his braindead girlfriend. It was Betsy who had her body stolen, not Kwannon. Once Matsuo succeeded, he raped Betsy.
Tha narrative that mean, white privileged woman stole the body of poor Asian victim is simply absurd. Of course those annoying gays from X-Twitter don't care, they're more than happy to trash the "colonizer white woman". Pff
Thanks Psi-Girl :) Matsuo or even Mojo too.
Spiral technically participated in this as well for his sheer entertainment.
A whole bunch of women involved in this act in various different ways, for men's happiness if we really think about it.
Tini had all the material to make an actual compelling story about women's victimizations for a man's happiness if that is what she really had her heart set on lol (though I still argue Kwannon kinda made out in this in some ways, but overall it wasn't her choice), instead Tini gives Betsy "failures" for problems she has never even had lol. Smh.
The Hand colonized Betsy's body. They took Yellowface in to another level. Marvel chooses to gloss over Mandarin and the Hand changing a white woman into Asian.
Those are annoying trolls. I doubt many of them are even real. Though I would just leave at that personally, imo labeling a specific group of people and judging them isn't what we are going for whether they are white women or gay.
Jmo!
Exactly @psigirl.
Awesome @Randybear. I e-mail them every few months. Usually after I read her writing something I disagree with or an interview I don't like lol.
Does anyone know where Excalibur normally ranks now in sales? I cant imagine it has not fallen drastically the usually consess is most people recognize the writing is bad or the book is just boring, which both are correct 😆
I knew she was projecting her failing self to Betsy. She fails as a writter. We need a good writer man or woman but a good one! Betsy always fails with her as a writer. She as adopted Tini's frail , insecure, complaining, always right, failing personality. Sad. And sge dares to inult every other writer saying "ninja betsy was always writen as a doesnt care about anything character" clearly she didnt read all of her ninja body comics/sagas. Sad. Betsy r.i.p. This woman is marvels version of WB when fans ask for the Snyderverse for DC they just dont se their brains. They think they are right and all the fans are wrong. Shes the same. Nobody wants her and she is just blind about it. Shes right all the fans are wrong. She excuses herself in feminism and progresion the only good thing Ive seen with her is that Betsy isnt jumping from bed to bed from man to man to clones to alt reality beasts to gay male characters to danger room holograms to underage minors. Shes basically not a promiscous character and I thank Tini for that. Thats all. Everything else can go please.
Sorry maybe I got a little over the edge here. I didnt wanted to disrespect her as a person but O am just so frustrated with her version of our favorite character!
@Finn It seems we all are at this point :( not much we can do she seems cemented as betsys author and title doesn't seem to be ending. I would not be shocked if they gave her a solo CB series at some point 😒
Do you guys think there's any chance that the book can become better from now on, at least? I mean, this year, Howard did show Kwannon finally acknowledging that Betsy was as much a victim of the body swap as she was, ending the idea of Betsy being guilty of that. That's one step in the right direction.
Yeah, this book still needs A LOT more steps in the right direction... but who knows, if she at least makes the characters more likeable (she managed to do it with Kwannon, after all, and that's tough to do after Kwannon's extremely unlikeable self from Fallen Angels, so I guess she CAN do the same to the Excalibur team - of course, the issue is whether she'll DO IT or not) and capable of working as a TEAM, it would be great.
I guess we'll know whether Excalibur is salvageable or not with the Hellfire Gala issue.
No the book needs to end yesterday. We shouldn't need to wait for a book to improve 20 issues in.
Good point. Still, it doesn't seem that Marvel plans to cancel Excalibur anytime soon...
According to the CBR insider retailer, Excalibur sells worse than X-Men, Wolverine, Marauders and X-Force but slightly better than Hellions, New Mutants, SWORD, X-Factor, COTA, etc.
I guess this won't end anytime soon.
Thank you!
Why are people still buying this book? Everyone stop!! 🤣🤣🤣
My guess is because Excalibur has mostly favorable/positive reviews from critics according to the https://comicbookroundup.com/ aggregator. And casual readers probably find it inoffensive.
It's us the hardcore Betsy, Rogue, Gambit & Jubilee fans that don't like it at all. So we're screwed xD
Post a Comment