#me talking about the state of comics and sanitization + respectability of mainstream media u kno how it is

[jesncin]

These are such great additions!

I think another thing to consider is that bigger stage productions are insanely expensive investments. And because of that, a lot of humbler productions who make their way to larger venues often have their edge and bite sanitized off for mainstream. Coupled with how Broadway is in-accessible to a majority of people in the world through price and lack of pro-shoot recordings for international viewers- theater has its own hierarchy problems.

The Wait in the Wings documentary goes over this, but part of Ride the Cyclone's struggle was that it covered a taboo subject, and that it was born out of a punk, counterculture environment. While the show was gaining prominence and publicity, people recognized Ride the Cyclone's value. But by the time it was getting close to entering mainstream, all people could talk about was how incompatible it was with Broadway. Which to me, is like criticizing an indie comic because it would never fit in traditional publishing. That's a terrible metric for quality and resonance.

It wasn't until Gen Z got a hold of Ride the Cyclone through slime tutorial recordings, did Ride the Cyclone find the audience it truly resonated with; one that was constantly exposed to death through growing up with a pandemic and exposure to news via social media. The humor and out-of-the box music just clicked with younger people.

American Superhero comics has suffered from a history of self censorship, and the changing attitudes of who they're for. They're constantly struggling between broadening their audience or relying on the same old white guy readership to get by. For DC, The New 52 was all about edge, so Rebirth is meant to be a return to form. But for the most part, we've entered a performative era.

Cape comics want to be more inclusive, but not to the point it would deter its conservative readership and lose money from that audience, so they'll never commit to consistently go that far. There's outliers (SSTK, Alan Scott Green Lantern, etc.) but for the most part they play it frustratingly safe and market it as groundbreaking.

Vertigo comics began as an imprint of DC comics so the creators could explore more mature topics with adult content that would've been restricted under DC comics. That's how we got so much social commentary and politics out of works like og Hellblazer. It only makes sense that when John Constantine is assimilated into the bigger, restrictive world of DC comics that his radical roots end up sanitized to fit a superhero mold- walking pride ad and quippy MCU style remarks galore.

Yet even modern stories that feel like a return to form such as Spurrier's run and Dead In America have that layer of respectability on top of everything. Sure Spurrier's Hellblazer will talk about racism, but he'll portray Rural Country Bumkin White People as the racists because that's the most comfortable people to portray as racists. And American cops. Only them though. The British cops are noble people of color. They'll include Noah, a Black disabled character who communicates through BSL, but not include nuances specific to Deaf/HOH culture and how that intersects with Blackness. They can't even draw people facing him when he's signing.

Whenever I read stories with John Constantine in them and they feel lackluster I always outwardly ask myself "are we really going to be outdone by a bunch of white guys writing Hellblazer in the 80s??" because come on. There's so much more diverse talent and perspectives in the industry since then but they can't shine because it still has to sell to a mainstream audience in the end.

I'm pretty sure your experience with Spirit World and Xanthe Zhou is reflective of most people's experience with the character. At first people are impressed by the novelty of the representation, but then they move on and forget about it. Xanthe's tag hasn't been active since their debut year with Spirit World. I finally got into Spirit World because I'm friends with a Xanthe superfan haha.

It's easy for the comics community to dunk on whatever new thing Tom King is writing, or talk up a fantastic comic! But stuff like Spirit World burns bright for a second and withers away because it really was lots of theatrics and little substance. At the end of the day, loving or hating something means you care about it. Something that is mid though? Even if you enjoyed it, it doesn't stay with you.

And it's a shame because I think characters like Xanthe should have critical discussion! At least for representation alone, I don't want a Chinese non binary character to (ironically) be forgotten and sidelined. Yet I also don't want this character to stagnate the way they're written right now (and just have fandom say "read it! It's important! Because representation!"). The beauty of these characters is the potential for another writer to come along and do something great with them. But with the state of comics being nothing burger now? Those chances are slim.

It's why I think Ride the Cyclone has a big piece of what Xanthe's missing. It may not have the backing of mainstream musicals, but something about it resonated in the younger generation especially. It was willing to have an uncomfortable conversation about death and dying at a young age, when a generation was exposed to death on the regular. Meanwhile Spirit World is a weird comic about death that wants to talk about death as little as possible. Outside of saying "you take nothing with you when you die, so you better remember people!" it's squeamish about the subject. So all we get is just "you should read Spirit World because representation, some popular characters cameo in it and uh, yeah that's it." That's a story for no one.

Spirit World, Ride the Cyclone and Death. A weird comparative analysis

Gonna combine my musical nerd and cape comics fixation together for a rambling meta thought. I've been reflecting on how taboo the topic of death is in media after getting into Ride The Cyclone (highly recommend watching the slime tutorial and Waiting in the Wings' documentary on it) but also contrasting that musical with how Spirit World handled similar topics.

Both stories cover characters whose lives were cut short from a tragic circumstance, but while Cyclone directly talks frankly about how each character uniquely grieves over their lost life (and eventually accepts death)- Spirit World uses death as largely an aesthetic to a generic fantasy superhero adventure.

[spoilers for Ride the Cyclone and Spirit World]

Spirit World is about non-binary, half dead half living Envoy Xanthe Zhou, as they go into the Spirit World with John Constantine to rescue Cassandra Cain Batgirl. They eventually go toe to toe with the spirit of a bitter dead poet.

Ride the Cyclone is about 6 choir teenagers who die in a roller coaster accident in their small town. In the afterlife, they are given the chance to vote which one of them they believe should be resurrected.

For Spirit World, do we even know how Xanthe feels about being "half dead"? What does that even mean? They died as (what looks like) a 3 year old, and have clearly aged 15 more years since then. So they can age? Do they need to eat or drink (they're seen with a drink in a Pride comic)? Xanthe keeps mentioning they're half dead and half living, but the comic doesn't seem to want to discuss what that means. How would Xanthe feel that they were essentially given a job as an Envoy the minute they died as a very young child? Was this even a choice?

We've already covered the numerous plot holes in Xanthe Zhou's poorly thought out backstory so I won't go over that again. But honestly apart from the thematically loose "the dead shouldn't be forgotten" moral, a lot of how death is presented in Spirit World feels so superficial. When Xanthe is formally introduced as this cool character with a giant sword hanging around a gravesite, fighting all these hopping vampire creatures... this scene would play out the same if you swapped the setting with a forest and zombies as bad guys.

The Spirit World is less an afterlife for the spirits to move onto and more an MMORPG setting for our superheroes to travel across and fight generic evil beings and encounter eviler, bigger, boss battles at the end. Then there's the poet clout villain whose problems are just easily solved by Xanthe promising to remember her. I've already covered what a lost opportunity thematically this character was in my last Xanthe essay, but this time I want to contrast her with Ride the Cyclone's Jane Doe. I also want to compare Xanthe with Noel Gruber afterwards.

Ride the Cyclone's musical numbers follow each character performing a song reflecting their wishes, and musings on life (this sounds depressing but the musical handles all this with comedy and wit), hoping to prove themselves as worthy of a second chance at life. Of the characters, Jane Doe is the mysterious odd one out. The accident decapitated her, leaving her to enter the after life with no memories and the people of the living unable to identify her.

You might see where I'm going with this. So in Spirit World, Wan Yujing was this famous poet mourned by an entire empire. She only goes monster mode when a handwave-y "time erodes all" happens in the Spirit World and she is eventually forgotten- so she becomes desperate to demand to be reincarnated by the Jade Court. Because her clout ran out. Again, I already made the critique in my previous essay that this villain would better link to our protagonist if she was a queer poet whose poetry was being purposefully straight washed as an act of queer historical erasure. But I want to bring up how truly unsympathetic this villain is. She gets Shakespeare levels of clout but still demands more because she isn't getting reincarnated fast enough. Xanthe promises that as an immortal "half dead half living" person that they will remember Wan Yujing, so she too can be immortal in some way.

I think about all the Jane Doe-s in the Spirit World who don't get to be famous poets that have Empires remembering who they were. People who died anonymously without a past. In Cyclone, the main character chooses Jane Doe as the person who should be brought back to life. Our cast of teens come to terms with the fact that while it's tragic that their lives ended shortly, they conclude "to say that if one dies young, they die needlessly... that is to discount the years we had. We had a life, she didn't. That's my vote." Since Jane Doe has no memory of who she is, it's only fair that she is given that second chance.

I get that Spirit World is choosing these "larger than life" characters as villains, but it's at the expense of their own supposed themes. Of all the people to die and face off our hero as the villain, a character who's essentially an influencer but somehow has an entire empire forget about her anyway feels thematically hollow.

Modern Superhero comics are suffering from a specific problem right now; they're not really about anything. Characters don't feel like people with interior lives informed by the context of who they are. Class, race and bigotry are only touched upon as lightly as possible. Queer characters are now Pride ads with no personhood or flaws. They punch gentrified crime and fight for no one in particular. Even recent adapted media such as My Adventures with Superman and Caped Crusader follow this. Superman fights white-washed xenophobia, while Batman fights gentrified, white-washed classicism. It's why comics like Superman Smashes the Klan, Catwoman Lonely City and Alan Scott Green Lantern stand out so much. It's been a while since these characters talked about anything that matters. Don't get me wrong, slop that's about nothing exists in every industry. But when these characters and worlds historically used to have more bite- it's especially obvious.

If I could be playfully conspiracy theory-like for a second; I believe Xanthe Zhou was pitched so that DC Comics can buff out their Pride Anthology or AAPI anthology with a new younger character. The company will give this character one limited series, but that's it. Xanthe will appear in the larger DC universe whenever big magic plots happen, but that's it. Maybe they'll get a YA graphic novel. I would love to be proven wrong, but the problems with Xanthe are baked in the dough.

Because they don't feel like a person, Xanthe feels more like an industry planted Pride ad. They're designed to be the most palatable and marketable image of Asian androgyny. They literally have no flaws to grow out of, and their backstory makes no sense. They weren't built to be a sustainable solo character.

So I want to contrast Xanthe Zhou against Noel Gruber from Ride the Cyclone. Because they're both queer characters whose lives were cut short at a young age.

In a dramatic lament, Noel Gruber expresses how if he had a chance to live, he'd want to live the horrible cinematic messy life of a French sex worker woman in post-war France. He struggled as the only gay boy in a small town and never got to kiss a boy before he died. It's a look into a queer life that could've been lived, one with all the messy texture and self destruction Noel couldn't have but desires. We get to see how death and queerness intersect into rich, unflattering, gender-messy themes. "I want to be that fucked up girl." Noel sings.

But what's Xanthe's deal? They died as a 3 year old, got brought back, avoided their family at all costs for 15 years, and then had a transphobic confrontation with their family when they're invited to dinner way later. If Xanthe grew up in a transphobic household, how did they ever figure out they were non-binary when they were 3? Could they even verbalize it? Or did they instead figure out their queerness after they died? But how is that possible when they already held a level of familiar resentment towards their family's transphobia as if they've had several fights about it? It's hard to picture a 3 year old having multiple heated debates about gender with their parents for this level of resentment to make any sense.

Details aside, how does Xanthe's queerness intersect with themes of death and grief? Well, it just doesn't. This scene ends with Xanthe's sister telling them that she bothered remembering them even though their parents moved on from their death (which makes no sense since the parents wanted to have dinner with a random 18 year old they correctly assumed was their long dead "daughter" but whatever). Honestly, the only reason queerness exists in this family drama is so that Xanthe has a tense relationship with their family. The story would be exactly the same if Xanthe was a troublemaker that brought shame to their family. Who they are isn't specific to whatever grief exists in the comic.

When people give the critique that modern Superhero comics aren't about anything anymore, we usually think of these comics as "lacking political bite and commentary". We don't often think of something like Death to be political. And even though it is in many ways, it's also a social taboo to talk about. Death is an uncomfortable thing to confront, even in the safety of fiction. It's what made Ride the Cyclone such a difficult stage musical to market.

So how does a modern mainstream comic like Spirit World fit into that? It just sits there in this non-committal way. Yes, this is a story about a trans teenager who died, but only in a cool Superhero Origin Way, not in any way that would make readers uncomfortable. Bury Your Gays is a stereotype after all, so we can't talk about how queer people feel about death. We don't get to know how Xanthe feels about death as a non-binary Asian American. Especially if it's messy. It's the reason why Wan Yujing's character can never commentate on themes of historical queer erasure. God forbid superhero comics be about something.

I think about how, in the original Hellblazer run from the 80s, John Constantine had an elderly gay friend who was diagnosed with AIDS but was killed by a homophobic hate group. The comic openly talks about the sheer amount of gay people dying of the epidemic, a looming threat that informs John's queer life. It's such a culture shock, to contrast these early comics with how John Constantine is written in Spirit World. A character stripped of his own queer history and is at the mercy of incessant slutty bi jokes. Where is the desire to talk about how death informs a queer person's life? The mourning of a lost generation to the AIDS crisis? Something John lived through?

How about how any of this intersects with being an Asian American queer person? Queer people of color are often erased or purposefully excluded from queer history and communities. As a Queer Asian American, what does it mean to have identities that are often perceived to be in conflict with each other? Would your queer Asian ancestors even be remembered? Cultural differences with how you'd mourn your communities? But answering any of these questions means an uncomfortable conversation for Spirit World. For Xanthe. It threatens to be about something.

Which makes it all the more silly that, of the two stories, a musical about teenagers dying from a rollercoaster malfunction is more willing to have that uncomfortable conversation. You should ride the Cyclone.