The Comic Book Rack (Get It? It's a Pun!)

Upon learning the possibly fraudulent news that Marion Cotillard will be playing Talia Al Ghul in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, I had the following admittedly somewhat misogynistic thought: "But Talia Al Ghul is supposed to have big boobs!"

Immediately upon having this thought it occurred to me that, in comics, every female character has big boobs (or at least they are drawn that way; I have never seen a superheroine's cup size expressly referred to in either the dialogue or the narration of a comic book, or a supervillainess's for that matter) and yet I have never had this particular qualm about the casting of a female comic book character before.

I am perfectly OK with Anne Hathaway (whom I estimate to be a large B cup) as Catwoman, although I cannot imagine her being as good as Michelle Pfeiffer (an A cup) in the role. In fact, I have always said that Nicole Kidman circa Eyes Wide Shut would have made a perfect Poison Ivy, and her breasts are no larger than Pfeiffer's. I am in agreement with the rest of the internet that Kristen Bell (another member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee) would make a crackerjack Harley Quinn, and though I am unhappy with the casting of Amy Adams as Lois Lane in Zack Snyder's upcoming Superman project, it has nothing to do with her endowment or lack thereof (simply put: Lois Lane should have black hair. Did Snyder learn nothing from Bryan Singer's mistake in casting Kate Bosworth, a famous blonde, in the same role five years ago?).

So why then, in the case of Talia Al Ghul, did it matter? At first I thought it might have to do with her characterization in the comics as a sort of hypersensual Jungian earth mother-cum-femme fatale whose most powerful weapon against Batman—even more so than Poison Ivy, who it should be noted has only ever managed to seduce Batman through the application of specially cultivated pheromones, which when you think about it is basically the equivalent of slipping a roofie into his drink—is her femininity. After all, breasts, especially large ones, are the classic symbol of that attribute.

An intriguing thought to be sure, but one that ultimately amounts to pure bullshit. Some of the most devastatingly feminine sirens of the silver screen—indeed, some of the most devastatingly feminine women I have been fortunate enough to know in private life—have managed to become so despite the handicap of a modest bust size, proving, really, that it is no handicap at all.

No, I think the real reason is this: whereas Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Lois Lane all have other distinctive visual characteristics by which they can be readily identified (respectively: a pointy-eared mask, green skin and red hair, a black and red bodysuit with pigtail-like pompoms, and a Murphy Brownesque skirt-suit and tumbling raven locks inspired by those of none other than Joanne Siegel, wife of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, which is exactly what makes the thought of changing them now so positively blasphemous), Talia Al Ghul has no such physical trademarks. No garish costume, no disfiguring scars, no stylized insignia emblazoned on her chest. When she appears in the comics it is in any one of a wide variety of outfits ranging from black leather catsuits to elegant designer gowns to safari ensembles reminiscent of Indiana Jones. Even her hair color fluctuates randomly between red, black and brown (though, interestingly, never blonde; there are very few blondes Gotham City. Harley Quinn is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and even then her hair is covered up most of the time. What’s up with that?).

This is strikingly unusual for such a profoundly visual medium. The language of comics is a language of symbols, of iconography. It has to be. Styles change, artists come and go. We recognize Batman and Superman not by the features of their faces but by their coloring, their costumes and the symbols on their chests. After all, the features of their faces are largely uniform—which is why, when watching an episode of The New Batman Superman Adventures with my five year-old niece last week, she asked if Batman and Superman were brothers. Stick them in street clothes and you wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart. That is unless Superman was wearing his Clark Kent glasses, in which case you’d know straight away who was who. That’s why Lois Lane has been falling for the same cheap disguise for the last seventy years. The glasses make all the difference.

The same goes for the women; hide their hair under a baseball cap, apply a little concealer to Poison Ivy’s skin, and you couldn’t  tell the difference between Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn—or Harley Quinn and Catwoman, or Catwoman and Lois Lane, or Lois Lane and Wonder Woman, or Wonder Woman and Batgirl, or Batgirl and Zatanna, or Zatanna and Huntress, or Huntress and Power Girl, or Power Girl and Super Girl, or Super Girl and Black Canary.

See? Without the helpful little clues, you wouldn't know who was who, would you?

Luckily, in costume, which is how they appear 99% of the time, they all have their own distinctive visual characteristics, their own personal visual iconography.


All except Talia. As Forest Gump would say: “Talia Al Ghul is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”

At least, you never know what you’re gonna get besides a nice, big, heaving pair of breasts.

Or if you want to stick with the "box of chocolates" analogy: Mamelons de Vénus.

After being conditioned by years of reading comic books to latch onto exactly one distinctive visual characteristic for every character I encountered and then forever after to identify them by that characteristic, is it any wonder that, upon encountering a character with no consistent visual characteristic besides that of her extremely large breasts, I would come to think of that characteristic as being an integral part of her iconography, even if that was never the intention of any of the artists who depicted her that way, and even if there is, after all, no legitimate artistic or literary justification for my thinking so?

This leads me back to an interesting debate I once had with my sister: Would casting Beyonce Knowles, or another black actress, in the role of Wonder Woman, a character who has traditionally been depicted as white, be wrong?

I said yes. My sister said no. She argued that there was nothing inherent in either the character’s personality or her background that required she be white. I argued that, while that would be true had the character originated in film or television (in which case her race would have been an accident of casting) or prose (in which case her race, ignoring the hypothetical in which the plot of the short story or novel in which she first appeared dealt directly with the issue thereof, would have been irrelevant and probably left unspecified), the fact remained that she had originated in comics, which is not just a visual medium but a medium in which the visuals, by virtue of the fact that they are drawn, are determined every bit as much by design, and have behind them every bit as much artistic intention, as the story or the dialogue. Indeed, when you consider that a comic book without visuals would not be a comic book at all but a work of prose, whereas a comic book without dialogue or narration would still, assuming the visuals were arranged in such a way that they told a story, be a comic book, you could argue that the visuals are the single most important aspect of that medium, and by extension, of any character arising from that medium—including, in the case of Wonder Woman, her white skin and black hair.

To this my sister rebutted that whenever she thought of Wonder Woman, the visuals that occurred to her were not her white skin and black hair but her golden tiara and silver wristbands—which was, even if I do suspect she was lying, a fair point. After all, if Beyonce Knowles were to appear before me right now wearing nothing but said tiara and wristbands, it would take me exactly zero seconds to identify which character she was portraying, regardless of whether or not I happened to approve of her portraying that character (and to say nothing of the other feelings that image would arouse).

It was at this point that my sister, who does not share my taste for debating, declared the subject closed, and stated that she would rather simply agree to disagree, it being perfectly OK for different people to have differing opinions, and an important skill in life being that of encountering people with differing opinions without feeling the need to convince them of the wrongness of their opinions and the rightness of your own, because really there is no so such thing as rightness or wrongness, all things being, when you come right down to it, matters of opinion, and opinions being very subjective and personal things, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Truth be told, the frustrating lack of closure I routinely experience in debating with my sister was a major impetus behind my creating this blog. Case in point: she loves Twilight.

‘Nuff said.

Had she been willing to continue with the debate, however, what I would have said then is this: while it may be true that Wonder Woman’s tiara and wristbands are the more iconic of her visual characteristics than her white skin and black hair, her white skin and black hair are still, nevertheless, iconic, meaning that, since it was announced that a Wonder Woman project was in the works, the public has quite naturally been expecting the producers of the film to cast a white-skinned, black-haired actress in the eponymous role. Therefore, were said producers now to cast a black-skinned, black-haired actress, the public would Take Notice. And Taking Notice, they would Make Inferences as to the producers’ Motivations. And the Motivations the public inferred the producers had would doubtless be that the producers wished to Make A Statement. And the Statement that the public inferred the producers’ wished to make would just as doubtless be that a black woman can be just as strong, brave and heroic as a white woman. And the public would be right. And all of this would be a distraction from what the most important issue really is, which is the effectiveness of the movie as a piece of entertainment. And I don’t like my politics, however commendable they may be, mixing with my entertainment.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The above statement is absolutely true. Of course a black woman can be just as strong, brave and heroic as a white woman. Indeed, a black woman can be just as strong, brave and heroic as Wonder Woman. She just can’t be Wonder Woman.

Why? Because Wonder Woman is white. That is simply a fact, established empirically by seventy years worth of drawings. Yes, yes, the period of time during which she was conceived was a period of time when most people would probably have disagreed with the statement that a black woman can be just as strong, brave and heroic as a white woman, and that is a shameful thing, and I am glad to be alive during a time that is much more enlightened, but the comics industry has since atoned for that sin by creating many new, original black superheroes and –heroines, and if none of them has quite managed to attain the pop-cultural status of Wonder Woman, well then it is surely not because they are black but because Wonder Woman came first, a fact which, barring the invention of time travel, it is simply too late to remedy.

The most eloquent expression of a comic cook character’s essence will always be that character’s image. No story, no essay, no performance by any actor or actress, black or white, will ever come close to conveying as much about who that character is, what they represent, and what they have come to mean to their fans, as that. It is, after all, to the image of these characters that we fans are most devoted. It’s why we hang their posters on our walls, why the average comic book fan will be able to name many more artists than he can writers, and why we argue endlessly over which artists have done the best job of rendering them over the years, whose version is our favorite.

And it’s why we argue just as endlessly over who should be cast in the roles when those characters make the tall-building-spanning-leap to the big screen. Perhaps you’ve noticed, if you’ve ever browsed through the comments section of a website like comicsalliance.com and comicbookmovie.com, that we don’t, for better or worse, seem to care very much about things like acting ability or level of celebrity.

No, what we really care about is does the actor or actress look the part. That’s the reason we go to see these movies: to see those posters on our walls come to life. Sure, Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight was brilliantly nuanced and psychologically complex, and all those lines in the script like “I’m an agent of chaos” and “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object” and “You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars—I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it!” were nice (and of course the pencil trick ranks among the greatest anarchic Joker moments of any Joker story in any medium) but do you think we would have cared about any of that if he hadn’t looked right?

Green hair, white skin, red lips. That’s all we ask. We didn’t even mind when they changed his origin story (really, eliminated it altogether) or made his green hair, white skin and red lips mere makeup as opposed to the results of chemical scarring—just as long as he still had them.

Likewise, I couldn’t care less that the current incarnation of Wonder Woman, as played by Adrianne Palicki and penned by Ally McBeal scribe David E. Kelley for NBC, has her back story changed from “Amazonian princess” to “corporate executive" because I’ve seen this:

And just so you don’t think they forgot about the silver wristbands:

See? There they are! Right there!

She looks great! In fact, what upset me far more than hearing about the change Kelley had made to her back story for the TV series was hearing about the change—or redesign, as such things are called—that artist Jim Lee had made to her costume in the comic books, replacing her star-spangled blue bikini bottom (or skirt or loincloth, as they were sometimes drawn depending on the artist and era) with long, skintight black pants, changing the color of her wristbands from silver to gold, and covering her previously bare arms and shoulders with a black leather jacket:

Of course, these things happen from time to time in comics and I’m sure that she’ll be back in her vintage threads in no time. My point is that when it comes to superhero mythology, the costume is more important than the identity of the person inside it—and as much as it may not be politically correct to say so, hair color and, yes, skin color, are as much a part of a superhero’s costume as the color of his or her cape and tights.

Though I admit cup size may be taking things a bit too far.