MorningSwan

Green Lantern (1990) #58

I'm not even getting into militant activisim and mutual aid despite the treasure trove about stories on heroism and wanting to help and commity with this stuff but even without those, DC just doesn't care about the massive amount of everyday actors who are actually essential to any kind of matter of justice. Obviously, DC always had a problem with that, but it feels like it has gotten so much worse recently with the erasure of civilan casts.

And before you tell me "it's not the genre!" John Constantine. John doesn't fight his battles. John is some kind of manipulative PI from hell. Oracle!Barbara doesn't fight her own battles. What the fuck is stopping us from having an investigation journalism mystery Lois Lane where she, with all her contact network and her own actual damn skill, navigates a work of action and mystery and takes down supervillains and fights can happen but victory isn't ensured by who punches the hardest but by the legal consequences of the revelations she publishes?

Wonder Woman was an actual ambassador for ages. I made a post about how I wanted to hear about the paperwork and actually just see her do diplomatic work and I thought I was just being a nerd but people reacted to that and actually you know what we do really much want to see stories about Wonder Woman as an Amazonian diplomat!

Damian having a solo run where he is a medical first respondant who uses the skills he learnt as fighter/vigilante to get into dangerous places and combat zones etc. to rescue and heal peoples caught in the crosshairs of whatever fight or catastrophe is going on. It would rock. It would be awesome.

Don't get me wrong I love cool badass fights, there are some genres and contexts in which I would actually want there to be more cool badass fights. But DC's universe is currently running on practically only that, in such a varied great universe and that's why they're running on steam and keep making dumb changes to try to keep the stakes high because they worry they're boring now. They're constructing a world where no matter what they claim, the only efficient force at play in any conflict is violence. They have no other angle and they're panicking because they're aware that it's turning them boring and they're flying forward because all their solutions to try and keep things entertaining keep erasing the richness of their universe in order to try and make things more thrilling because they do not understand the gold they are working with. Don't get me wrong, DC is big and we do still have writers pulling cool shit, but DC editorial is having an identity crisis. They're not even writing detective stories anymore!! Their name is Detective Comics. Why should we care whether or not Batman is the greatest detective in the world if Batman's number one hobby right is physically fighting aliens...

Remember that time Nightwing killed the Joker?

Their blonde wife who's also a superhero named after a bird

Their also gay adopted child who used to be their sidekick then joined other superhero teams