America Chavez!

HAWKEYE - Kate Bishop & America Chavez

America Chavez (Summer)

Keeping the summer stuff going, (I got almost the next month planned so how could not include a few more Young Avengers alumni)

“Together we can fix the world!” – America Chavez

Cover art for Ultimates Vol. 3 #016

America teams up with her grandmother in America #6.

So yeah, we find out Madrimar is America’s grandmother, I suspected as much.  Other than that the issue is a very simple and quite old-school superhero story, that gets elevated with an addition of very warm and very human interactions between America and Kate, Madrimar, and Magdalena. You know, often in comics it’s very hard to convey that characters are tearing up inside due to overwhelming positive emotions. This book pulled that off.

If I’d name a flaw it’s that the book promises so many guest appearances on the cover and none of those characters are in the issue. And that instead, we get as the villain that piece of shit Arcade….

If I wanted to name a flaw. Because quite frankly, I need to get a bit off topic here about something. Am I the only one who noticed how much hate this book is getting around the Internet? I’m not talking on just places that have a shit community like 4chan (although that one letter printed in this issue was a low blow even for /co/) but even supposedly healthier online communities seem hell-bent over on hating this title. 

If anyone knows a dialogue I’ve written on my personal blog -I’ve seen America be that third story in this scenario, being simultaneously attacked by people accusing it of being pandering because it supposedly doesn’t do anything with America being latina Lesbian and because it supposedly “cannot shut up about it”. By two different people, but neither of them had any problem with the other’s argument and they somehow were in agreement despite holding opposite views. 

I’ve also seen people accusing the book of being incomprehensible and once somebody argued it has a simple, easy-to follow the story, they would immediately flip and claim the story is so simple it’s shallow. And when I see behavior like that it’s very transparent to me what is REALLY happening. That some people are so determined to “prove” this book sucks it will not matter to them which argument wins or convinces the other person, as long as any does so at all. It tells me very clearly that the decision to declare this series bad in some people’s minds before it even came out. And they will now bend over backward to justify their hatred.

Now listen, I don’t think this book is perfect. By all means, it has its flaws. I could talk about them at length, others could as well and already did. But…I no longer want to. Because when I see people like this swarming over a title that honestly does not deserve it (because let be honest - even if America would be a bad book, it would be relatively harmless and not comparable with many actually terrible titles that did not receive such hatred) it makes me afraid to actually even try any legitimate criticism. I know any argument made will be taken by those jerks and then exaggerated to make it look like the most horrible offense a comic book could commit. I’ve seen the same being done to other diverse books published by Marvel (Invincible Iron Man is a frequent target of such behavior), especially ones with woc leads. Which gives quite a hint as to WHY this is happening (if somebody doesn’t get it, I’ll tag two blogs as a hint: @fandomshatepeopleofcolor and @fandomshatewomen . I don’t know a good blog dealing with fandom homophobia, not one dealing only with it, but I think @fandomsandfeminism speaks against it often enough to consider tagging them).

By all means, America has its flaws. Every book does. But does it deserve the hate it gets from the online community? I strongly disagree.