The Marvel mythology of Captain America (as I remember it from my years of comic reading) goes like this: During World War 2, scientists came up with something called the "Super-Soldier Serum", which could turn a sickly or ordinary man into a hero with super-strength, agility, speed, reflexes, and if not invulnerability, certainly a healthy share of toughness and resistance to sickness. Both the Allies and the Nazis were working on such a program; the Allies were slightly ahead. Steve Rogers, a young man who'd been turned away from military service because he was too scrawny/weak, was given the opportunity to test the Super-Soldier Serum. It worked, and he became Captain America, an icon of American patriotism.
It goes without saying that Steve Rogers was white, blond, and blue-eyed.
In 2003, Robert Morales (writer) and Kyle Baker (artist) put out Truth: Red, White, and Black, a story that adds a prequel to the Captain America mythology. The scientists were anything but infallible; they didn't create a serum and hit a home run out of the park on their first try. Instead, for years leading up to Rogers's successful experience with the Super-Soldier Serum, there were military experiments on black soldiers -- many of which were horrific failures, resulting in gruesome deaths. In the end, only a handful of soldiers survived the experiment, and that handful was quietly pressed into service, forced to carry out suicide missions, treated poorly, faced with relentless racism even from their fellow soldiers. Years later, even Captain America himself doesn't know the story of "the black Captain America" -- but when he discovers it, he goes looking for more information. And he's not going to let a forgetful, ungrateful government stand in his way.
Needless to say, comic fandom threw fits when this story was first announced. Comic fans are sticklers for their version of continuity, unable to tolerate it when something reboots or retcons a series. When one of their heroes turns out not to be a hero, they freak out and insist that he redeem himself. When one of their villains tries to seek redemption, comic fandom tends to resist it. Death, which ought to be the ultimate continuity-breaker (or continuity-definer, even) is treated as a mere inconvenience; living characters should stay living.
And a black Captain America wasn't in any continuity they'd ever dreamt of.
Never mind the likelihood that exactly that sort of experiment would happen; in real life, medical experiments on black people and black soldiers were absolutely fact, especially in the 1940s. Never mind the fact that the cover-up is exactly what would have happened -- even in the 1960s, popular black musicians were forced to put white people on the covers of their albums so they'd sell, because no one wanted black people to be visible. No one wanted black people to be heroes.
Much of the furor surrounding the original series boils down to the fact that in 2003, some people still weren't looking for that.
But Truth: Red, White, And Black is one of the most powerful, moving series I've ever gotten my hands on. It was reprinted as a trade paperback and has apparently just been re-released as a hardcover. You can probably also find it -- all seven issues of it -- in comic shops around the country. And it's well worth the read. This isn't just an adventure story about black men who got to play hero -- this is a well-written, well-researched, focused and driven story about the circumstances which made those men agree to serve in the military (in some cases, they were very much not volunteers), the lengths to which they had to go to survive both in the military in general and as part of the experiment, what the experiment did to them, and what happened to them years later.
It's a story that doesn't back off from the harsh reality of what it was like to be black in America in the 1940s, and it faces the ugly truth that many of the people who are heroes to the black community today are people the rest of the country has never heard of -- partly due to the fact that people who aren't black often go their whole lives completely unaware of the stories that inspire the black community, and partly due to the fact that there's a long-standing tradition of keeping heroes, and the definition thereof, in the hands of the people with the money and the power. And in the 1940s -- well, we all know who that wasn't.
There are historical events in this series I'd never heard of, and one place to read up on that history is Footnote Comics, which goes into detail about blacks in the military both before and during World War 2, human experimentation and informed consent (there's a link to Tuskeegee, which I had heard of), and Red Summer, which was shocking to me both because of the violence involved and because I had never so much as dreamed that such a time had existed. Reading about it in Truth was the first time I'd heard of it -- but there was no doubt in my mind, even for a minute, that it had taken place. The story is respectful, detailed, and well-told. If I had kids, it's one I'd absolutely read to them and use as a jumping-off platform for discussion and independent research.
Reviews of this story run from people like me, who think it's an amazing piece of writing that brings a valuable piece of history into the Marvel Universe, to people who hated it before they even read it, to people who, even while complimenting it, seem incapable of accepting it as part of the Marvel mythology. (In the Marvel universe, Truth is just that. It's canon. Calling it a "What If" story, even while giving it a five-star review, smacks to me of someone who doesn't even realize that phrasing it that way questions whether the events of the series really happened, someone who doesn't realize they're dismissing the story as no more real than "What If Spider-Man Had Eight Arms?" It is impossible to be respectful to black characters in the Marvel universe while still suggesting that it's up for debate whether their contributions really happened -- but that five-star reviewer probably doesn't even realize she did that.
If there's any complaint I'd like to make about the series -- and this is one I'm not alone in making -- it's that Kyle Baker's artwork is exceedingly "cartoony", with all character images exaggerated for effect. Black characters are given enormous lips and jutting chins; white characters end up looking like the short, stumpy villain sidekicks in Disney movies. I'm pathetically grateful that Baker didn't draw any Asian characters, despite this series taking place in World War 2, because I really, really did not want to see Japanese or Japanese-Americans depicted with those awful slanted eyes and front teeth that jut past the bottoms of their chins. I would have loved to see these characters drawn by an artist who was adhering to realism, partly because I think it would have been a better fit for the story, and partly because the horror of some of the incidents is downplayed enormously by the cartoony look of the artwork. I think the series loses a great deal of impact by having artwork that doesn't appear to take it seriously.
The best thing I can say for the art is that, while I'm continually frustrated with comic book artists who rely on their colorists to differentiate between white and black characters (I love Gary Frank, for instance, but if there were no color overlays on his books, you'd never know who was white and who was black -- and black characters with predominantly European features just bug me, in the same way it bugs me to see Asian characters who have teeny squinty eyes, stupendously bright yellow skin, but European facial features and body shapes -- you'd be amazed how many Asian characters in comics clock in at 5'8" and above), certainly that isn't a problem in this series. But I'm not sure that caricatures of black characters are really what I was hoping for.
I really read this series as a prequel to the one I was extremely excited about, The Crew -- a 2003 series written by Christopher Priest starring one of my all-time favorite comics characters, James Rhodes. I'm so glad I read Truth, though. The World War 2 era is one where my knowledge of African-American history really fails, particularly in light of how much I do know about the experiences of a completely different American minority in that era (during WW2, my grandparents were in the Japanese-American internment camps), but every new story about life in the 1940s for any other race is a revelation to me, and one I'm grateful to have learned about, no matter how hard the story might have been to hear.
This has been, by far, the best thing I've read this year. Maybe the best thing I've read in more than a year. I highly recommend it.
Tags: comics, historical, people of color, reading
Well, here we are at the fourth and final book in the Velvet series. Was it any better than the first three?
Aughn. No.
In fanfiction, there's this style of writing that comes from a bunch of fen being really invested in a particular couple in the fandom--say, John and Rodney from Stargate: Atlantis--and instead of the author working to set up their relationship when they get together for the first time, one character will just swoop in and start doing sexual/physical/whatever things to the other.
Most people in fandom will just swoon and say, "Oh, how awesome, John knew that Rodney always wanted to be with him, they were MEANT to be together," etc., etc., and they don't mind that jumping-the-gun sense at all.
It doesn't work for me.
I like John and Rodney as much as the next person, but if I'm reading a story that purports to be about how two people fall in love and start a relationship, I want to hear about the falling-in-love process and the relationship process, not "and then the next day, after lunch, John spontaneously planted a hot one on Rodney while everyone cheered in the background." Written like that, it makes it sound more like the pouncing person is stalking the pounce-ee, or like the pounce-ee doesn't have any choice in the matter. It's not what I'd call good writing, though it has its share of devotees. (My guess is these are mostly people who haven't yet given up on the myth of mindreading, that someday their partner, or dream partner, will simply swoop in and give them everything they want without them even having to know they want it in the first place.)
Well, apparently that trope exists in romance novels, too, because this book is basically that trope in spades. Elizabeth Chatworth (we all saw that one coming) is kidnapped, stripped naked, rolled up in a carpet, and delivered to Miles Montgomery, the Montgomery brother who has the reputation for being a rake (the common rumor is that he made a deal with the devil and can now seduce any woman he wants, and that he has a hundred bastards to prove it).
Miles's reputation is slightly undeserved, but what does he do? He doesn't give Elizabeth clothes and send her home. No! Of course not. Instead, he keeps her with him, repeatedly lies to her and manipulates her, and eventually seduces her and convinces her "not to be afraid of men anymore".
ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
I think what's particularly awful about it is that Elizabeth doesn't start out the book behaving like someone suffering from PTSD and anxiety, as she does later in the book. At first, when she's dropped into a tent knowing full well she's naked and in the lair of her family's sworn enemy, she grabs a blanket and throws it over herself as best she can, and then she defends herself with an axe, which I think is completely justifiable and in no way symptomatic of mental trauma. Naturally, Miles doesn't see it that way, and so he begins Elizabeth's "retraining".
Cue the stalker-y, icky feeling. Miles turns out to be right, but there's no earthly reason he should have had any suspicion that Elizabeth's behavior is indicative of a fear of men--hell, one of the most vicious people in the feud is female! But because he does turn out to be right in the long run, I don't think we're supposed to feel that he's being a scary control freak. He's just trying to take care of her, even though she doesn't know, at first, that she needs it.
The whole book is like that, and all of Miles's tricks and schemes to get Elizabeth over her "fear of men" are manipulative, weasely, horrible things that read like nothing so much as brainwashing and Stockholm Syndrome to me. There are only three things that make this book better than the others:
1.) Elizabeth never goes through the Deveraux Moment Of Realization. She doesn't have one moment of realizing that Miles has been right about everything and she's been wrong about everything. She decides for herself that she wants to take Miles up on his offer to help her start to recover from her PTSD.
2.) There's been a definite trend in these four books toward women having more power in terms of initiating the sexual relationship. In book 1, we had a '70s-cliché "hero has to rape the heroine to prove his virility" scene. In book 2, the marriage was arranged, and the heroine, realistically, had no choice--but she did choose to have sex with the hero. In book 3, the heroine was interested before the hero came on to her, and she responded enthusiastically when he did. Now, in book 4, she actually initiates the sexual phase of their relationship. It's a neat progression, and you almost have to wonder if she was easing her publisher into the idea that women could make those decisions instead of men.
3.) At the end of the book, when the feud between the Montgomerys and Chatworths is solved once and for all, we get a fabulous section of the book devoted to all four of the Montgomery women working together and saving their collective husbands' asses. We finally get to see the women being powerful, competent, and confident in their abilities, and they all work through their issues and fears in order to do it. That is pretty fabulous.
And that rounds out the Deveraux books for now! I'm not sure how long it'll be before I get back to them, but I'm sure I'll get to some of them eventually. (Next on the list, I'm really curious about The Taming and The Conquest. I'm mostly intrigued by The Conquest, which is about a girl who's been disguised as a boy to keep her safe for the past several years, and if I remember right, the guy who falls in love with her is a sworn enemy or something. However, I would like to read The Taming first, so we'll see how that goes.)
Tags: historical, jude deveraux, reading, romance
At some point I'll be finished with the Deveraux reviews and I'll be able to talk to you about other stuff I'm reading, but that time hasn't come yet.
So! Velvet Song, by Jude Deveraux. It's the third in the Velvet series, and it stars Raine Montgomery (yes, the man's name is Raine. This starts to seem normal after you've read enough Deveraux) and a singer, Alyx, who manages to convince us that she may be the most talented musician in history, despite the fact that it's a book and we can't hear her. (I wonder what the audio edition is like -- they probably don't do anything cool with it.) Deveraux, one gets the impression, is quite the opera buff, and you can tell how much she enjoyed doing the research for this one.
In terms of the overall plot, this one continues the feud with the Chatworths and the Montgomerys, but when you get right down to it, the story is about excessive pride (as in, not just justifiable pride from being awesome, but being too proud to accept help or talk to people you consider "beneath" you) and how it gets in the way of relationships. There's only one Deveraux-standard moment of Heroine Realizes She's Wrong And Hero Is Right, and it's not so much that kind of moment as Hero Is Frustrated And Gives Heroine A Spanking (which I think is much better done in Outlander, but hey).
I actually didn't like this one as much as I remembered, though I liked it a bit better than the first two. It frustrates me now to see how powerless and non-impressive most of the women are in these romance novels--even most chick lit is better--and I hope to find more interesting female characters as time goes on.
Tags: historical, jude deveraux, reading, romance
After reading The Velvet Promise and discovering that my biggest problem with it (besides the '70s tropes) was that Gavin was dumber than a bowl of mice (and not lab mice, either), I wasn't sure what I'd think of Highland Velvet. I remembered that Stephen goes off to marry a Scottish laird, who turns out to be a beautiful woman, and that things go pretty well for them, but was it going to be full of more '70s tropes and stupidity?
Actually, it's not, which was a pleasant surprise. In fact, most of this book revolves around the problems too much pride can cause (and I'm not talking about simply having pride in one's abilities, but rather the stubborn type of pride that makes people refuse to ask for directions or refuse to tell other people why they're hurt or upset -- both of which happen in this book). Stephen and Bronwyn have a surprisingly easy courtship; it's easing into marriage that gives them difficulty.
This is one of the better Deveraux books in terms of female competence. Like Judith of The Velvet Promise, Bronwyn grew up with the expectation that she could and would make her own decisions, as well as taking responsibility for many people other than herself. She does a really good job of it, and it's rather startling when held against the example of Jura from The Maiden. Bronwyn's purpose isn't to support her mate, it's to be the laird of her clan -- Stephen has to fit in around that.
There are some misunderstandings and miscommunications, but they happen on both sides. There are some problematic moments from a feminist perspective -- a female character we haven't seen much of ends up being little more than a plot point to convince us a character is bad when we already knew that, and Bronwyn has what I'm coming to understand is a Typical Deveraux Heroine Moment Of Realization (in which a woman realizes that the guy she's with has been Right All Along and she's been Wrong All Along, and to make up, she has to go grovel) -- but they don't make up the bulk of the story.
(It occurs to me that if that Typical Deveraux Moment were left out of most of her books, I'd still be okay with them as an adult. As a 13-year-old, I didn't much see the problem with it, but women having to grovel to men who are acting like selfish, jealous jerks does not sit well with me now.)
I'd thought I might go on to a different book at this point, but I believe I'll finish the series first. It's nice having books to read that are so quick (I only just started this one two days ago), and events happened in this book that pushed the series further along in its ultimate overarching plot (the conflict between the Montgomerys and the Chatworths). I can't completely remember where that's going, but I'm very curious, and I won't mind padding my book totals for the next couple of days! I'm at 96 books for the year -- unfortunately, there's very little chance I'll finish four more in the next three days, no matter how easy the reads are. I'd have to pick up really short books, which seems a bit like cheating.
Tags: historical, jude deveraux, reading, romance
When I was a kid, my mom was in the hospital for a procedure (she was fine!), and one of the things she asked for was a copy of the newest Jude Deveraux book, A Knight In Shining Armor. I was about twelve, and I read everything that wasn't nailed down, from cereal boxes to Sweet Valley High. When Mom was done with it, I picked it up.
I think my reaction was something like "ZOMG!!! Romance novels!!! AWESOME!!!" (Well, except for the fact that the acroword "ZOMG" hadn't been invented yet.) I was totally hooked, Mom was hooked, and we both started reading pretty much everything Jude Deveraux had put out. Recently I've started to get interested in re-reading some of those books -- I'm not entirely sure why unless it's to get into the historical aspects, as I've been interested in various historical eras lately -- and after re-reading Twin of Fire and Twin of Ice (technically "Ice" comes first, but I like it so much better that I always read it second), Wishes (still one of my favorites, though I laugh really hard at the idea of a 5'6", 160-lb. woman being considered "fat"), The Maiden (ugh! Y HALO THAR ANTI-FEMINIST THEMES), The Awakening (not as awful; major emphasis on migrant workers and unions, very interesting perspective, definitely brilliant research), and The Princess (how did I like either of these characters for even a split second when I was a kid? They're both horrible!), I thought I'd go back and read the first series Deveraux wrote, with the first instance of the Montgomerys (kinda; one of the progenitors of the Montgomery family shows up in her very first book, The Black Lyon).
It's been really interesting going back and reading these books, because I'm never sure what I'll make of them. I remembered The Maiden as starring a strong female character, someone wicked cool awesome, because she could physically fight at her husband's side, but after the last 20 years of watching movie after movie, book after book, TV show after TV show (etc. etc. etc.) prove that the only kind of "strong female character" they know how to write is one who's strong physically, I totally don't give that any extra credit. A female character needs to be able to do more than beat the crap out of people to be a character I can respect -- and the female lead in The Maiden is treated so badly I was disgusted on her behalf. She definitely doesn't qualify, and it's not entirely her fault; it's pretty easy to blame the author (or perhaps her editor) for that.
As far as the Velvet series is concerned, I remembered liking the first, second, and third brothers a lot, but finding the fourth hard to sympathize with. After re-reading The Velvet Promise, I have to say that I like Wife #1, but I'm not so sure about Brother #1...
Tags: historical, jude deveraux, reading, romance