![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficA Coffee Table Character is currently an endangered species in comics canon. It usually has no book of its own, if in an ensemble then it's one of the less flashier members, and may even be seen as slightly embarrassing by some. But nonetheless, the CTC provides a valuable service in making a universe seem real instead of just a world of swaggering, posturing badasses who get lots of panel-time.
Coffee Table Characters are rarely used, but nonetheless fans often want them to be in canon even when nothing is being done with them... hence, they're much like a book on your coffee table. This is justified, however, as all it takes is one author to raise a CTC out of obscurity and have some fun with them. Lonar was a New God that most had never even heard of, until he starred in a genuinely fun story arc in Blue Beetle. Most of the JLI were CTCs in modern times, though fans felt nice knowing that there truly was a happy ending for them (this was before they were all pointlessly killed off). Characters like Wolverine, the Purple Man, Bullseye, the Kingpin, and so many others were just filling up space in your local Handbook of the Marvel Universe, until someone like Chris Claremont, Brian Michael Bendis, or Frank Miller plucked them from the annals of canon to turn into A-listers. It's simple. The more characters there are, even seemingly silly ones, the more stories that can be told.
However, both of the Big Two subscribe to the belief that killing CTCs (or C-listers, if you prefer) contributes urgency and suspense to the far-too-frequent Big Honkin' Events. That belief goes like this:
Superman: Oh my God, they killed Bouncing Boy!
Batman: You bastards!
Wonder Woman: If a man with the power to be really fat and bounce around could die, what hope do any of us have against this new menace?
You can see the problem. It's that deaths need us to care about the characters for them to work, and it's hard to care when it's obvious that TPTB don't care. So instead of the death being meaningful, the majority that doesn't care about the character... doesn't care, and the minority that does care about the character is pissed-off that their guy got burninated just to make the situation seem more dire. CTCs are at high risk of becoming a Cause Célèbre Character.
To understand a Cause Célèbre Character, you first must know that it's not uncommon for a character to be killed and then to have a groundswell of adoration descend upon them. DC was counting on this when they killed Superman. Recently, Blue Beetle, Captain America, the Peter/MJ marriage, and many others have received this adoration. A Cause Célèbre Character is when the adoration is not for the character, but for the minority status they have.
Most fen are straight, white, left-leaning women who are at least privileged enough to have a computer and access to the internet. As such, they are burdened with the socially requisite amount of white liberal guilt. A Cause Célèbre Character is born when these women decide it's easier to help a fictional minority then a real one.
For instance, a few years back Stephanie Brown was killed off. You may have heard of this. Inspired by her (fictional) sacrifice, an organization sprung up to fight (fictional) sexism in all its myriad (fictional) forms. Their main demand? That Stephanie Brown be given a memorial, the same as Batman's other dead sidekick Jason Todd. Ignoring, of course, that Jason Todd died over twenty years ago and his memorial was handled by what amounts to an entirely different company (they even changed the logo in the interim) and ignoring the fact that several other male members of the Batfamily had died in the intervening years and received no memorial, including in that same story! (Yeah, where's Orpheus's snowglobe?)
The organization quickly gained momentum as people joined up, not because they liked Stephanie Brown per se, but because they disliked sexism. So, finally, DC decided to give in and bring Stephanie Brown back. They even made an event out of it, giving lots of little teases about her appearance, focusing a lot of build-up on her, bringing Chuck Dixon (her creator) in to write her return, and even giving her a miniseries.
So, obviously, once she came back there was an avalanche of fic celebrating the return of this beloved character.
Errr…
Not so much. No.
Lately, they objected to the death of Orca. Don't know who Orca is? She's a villain that appeared in precisely one story arc. That's right, three issues. She must've made quite an impression for people to object to her death so strenuously. Well, not really, as the reason people cried foul on her death was... she was a full-figured, plus-size lady. Yeah, that's right, because the character was a fatass, people wanted her to stick around. And it makes sense, because Orca was really fat.
Orca was so fat when she stepped on the scale it said "To be continued." She was so fat, one time she wore a Goodyear hat and people mistook her for the blimp! She was so fat, when she laid around the house, she laid around the house, ya know what I'm sayin'? She was so fat, when she backed up, ya heard "Beep! Beep! Beep!" She was so fat, when she jogged, the Richter scale went "Hold up!" She was so fat, the Blob couldn't move her! She was so fat, when she cut her leg shaving, marshmallow fluff poured out! She was really, fucking, fat!
Other examples of Cause Célèbre Characters would (depending on who you ask… don’t flame me) the awesome Martha Jones, the antagonists in any sci-fi series with a species of Others (Cylons, Wrath, and I’m sure someone is planning a meta about how the Yuuzhan Vong are just misunderstood), and pretty much everyone on Heroes.
Coffee Table Characters are rarely used, but nonetheless fans often want them to be in canon even when nothing is being done with them... hence, they're much like a book on your coffee table. This is justified, however, as all it takes is one author to raise a CTC out of obscurity and have some fun with them. Lonar was a New God that most had never even heard of, until he starred in a genuinely fun story arc in Blue Beetle. Most of the JLI were CTCs in modern times, though fans felt nice knowing that there truly was a happy ending for them (this was before they were all pointlessly killed off). Characters like Wolverine, the Purple Man, Bullseye, the Kingpin, and so many others were just filling up space in your local Handbook of the Marvel Universe, until someone like Chris Claremont, Brian Michael Bendis, or Frank Miller plucked them from the annals of canon to turn into A-listers. It's simple. The more characters there are, even seemingly silly ones, the more stories that can be told.
However, both of the Big Two subscribe to the belief that killing CTCs (or C-listers, if you prefer) contributes urgency and suspense to the far-too-frequent Big Honkin' Events. That belief goes like this:
Superman: Oh my God, they killed Bouncing Boy!
Batman: You bastards!
Wonder Woman: If a man with the power to be really fat and bounce around could die, what hope do any of us have against this new menace?
You can see the problem. It's that deaths need us to care about the characters for them to work, and it's hard to care when it's obvious that TPTB don't care. So instead of the death being meaningful, the majority that doesn't care about the character... doesn't care, and the minority that does care about the character is pissed-off that their guy got burninated just to make the situation seem more dire. CTCs are at high risk of becoming a Cause Célèbre Character.
To understand a Cause Célèbre Character, you first must know that it's not uncommon for a character to be killed and then to have a groundswell of adoration descend upon them. DC was counting on this when they killed Superman. Recently, Blue Beetle, Captain America, the Peter/MJ marriage, and many others have received this adoration. A Cause Célèbre Character is when the adoration is not for the character, but for the minority status they have.
Most fen are straight, white, left-leaning women who are at least privileged enough to have a computer and access to the internet. As such, they are burdened with the socially requisite amount of white liberal guilt. A Cause Célèbre Character is born when these women decide it's easier to help a fictional minority then a real one.
For instance, a few years back Stephanie Brown was killed off. You may have heard of this. Inspired by her (fictional) sacrifice, an organization sprung up to fight (fictional) sexism in all its myriad (fictional) forms. Their main demand? That Stephanie Brown be given a memorial, the same as Batman's other dead sidekick Jason Todd. Ignoring, of course, that Jason Todd died over twenty years ago and his memorial was handled by what amounts to an entirely different company (they even changed the logo in the interim) and ignoring the fact that several other male members of the Batfamily had died in the intervening years and received no memorial, including in that same story! (Yeah, where's Orpheus's snowglobe?)
The organization quickly gained momentum as people joined up, not because they liked Stephanie Brown per se, but because they disliked sexism. So, finally, DC decided to give in and bring Stephanie Brown back. They even made an event out of it, giving lots of little teases about her appearance, focusing a lot of build-up on her, bringing Chuck Dixon (her creator) in to write her return, and even giving her a miniseries.
So, obviously, once she came back there was an avalanche of fic celebrating the return of this beloved character.
Errr…
Not so much. No.
Lately, they objected to the death of Orca. Don't know who Orca is? She's a villain that appeared in precisely one story arc. That's right, three issues. She must've made quite an impression for people to object to her death so strenuously. Well, not really, as the reason people cried foul on her death was... she was a full-figured, plus-size lady. Yeah, that's right, because the character was a fatass, people wanted her to stick around. And it makes sense, because Orca was really fat.
Orca was so fat when she stepped on the scale it said "To be continued." She was so fat, one time she wore a Goodyear hat and people mistook her for the blimp! She was so fat, when she laid around the house, she laid around the house, ya know what I'm sayin'? She was so fat, when she backed up, ya heard "Beep! Beep! Beep!" She was so fat, when she jogged, the Richter scale went "Hold up!" She was so fat, the Blob couldn't move her! She was so fat, when she cut her leg shaving, marshmallow fluff poured out! She was really, fucking, fat!
Other examples of Cause Célèbre Characters would (depending on who you ask… don’t flame me) the awesome Martha Jones, the antagonists in any sci-fi series with a species of Others (Cylons, Wrath, and I’m sure someone is planning a meta about how the Yuuzhan Vong are just misunderstood), and pretty much everyone on Heroes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 06:24 pm (UTC)Isn't that being done in the Legacy comics right now? Or was that just rumor?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 03:28 am (UTC)Let me amend that to say it's only a matter of time until J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek features the Borg, who turn out to be not that bad after all.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 06:30 pm (UTC)Heh.
The context of my own Martha Jones love can be distilled to a few points:
1. She was the sort of character I most prefer to see as a companion to the Doctor - intellectual, independent, willing to challenge him, but able to banter with him, like Liz Shaw, Sarah Jane Smith and Romanas I and II - in stark contrast to the type of character that I'm willing to accept as a companion (depending upon the quality of the scripts and the acting), but I don't feel especially saddened to see leave - ie. Pygmalion-style companions, like Jo Grant or Rose Tyler (Leela is an exception to this, because in her own Jungle Queen way, she was Emma Peel to his John Steed).
2. I disliked the increasing Mary Sue-ification of Rose's character, but I liked the idea of the Doctor being allowed to have a sex life, so to my mind, the best solution for both was to have the Doctor get involved with his new companion in just as intimate a fashion as he had with the previous one, to show that he truly does "love them all."
3. Even though I'm a straight white guy, a lifetime of being a nerd means that I identify way more with "outsiders" than people who belong to the majority, so as shallow as it sounds, it's a lot easier for me to identify with a brainy black girl than an average white girl.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 07:23 pm (UTC)1. Chuck Dixon don't roll like that.
2. If she were an imposter, why give her a miniseries?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 08:57 pm (UTC)While there aren't a lot of her coming back to life fics that fit into canon there have been lots of AUs over the last couple years and those that just deny her death completely.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 03:34 am (UTC)...and I know there aren't a lot of "canon-response" fanfic because most fic seems to be set in a period of late 90s/early 2000s before Identity Crisis or even earlier, or even movieverse (which makes it really weird to read older fanfic where there's a 1-to-1 faithfulness to canon. You see references to No Man's Land and such in a way that you just don't with Countdown and World War III)...
But you'd think there'd be a big rush to write out "Steph's come back, now what?" before it gets Jossed. I mean, come on, I can't be the only one who wants to see Steph meet up with Outsiders!Cass.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 03:48 am (UTC)Tim: That proves it! This can't be our Steph!
Cass: *koff*
Dinah: *koff*
Barbara: *koff*
Tim: Oh, come off it! We all know you like dick.
Dick: It was a threesome. *koff*
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 10:47 pm (UTC)WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS?!?!?!