I wouldn't consider myself a major
comics fan, but I've been known to pick up a book or two. Empowered,
Transformers, Morning Glories, Power Girl. A few others, here and
there. Mostly, though, I don't get drawn into that world too deeply,
because the big two so rarely put out the sorts of stories I want to
read. Things look good at first, but once you actually get into it everything sort of falls apart spectacularly.
Big Hero 6 is a pretty good example of
that.
Shocking, I know, but bare with me.
On the surface, it all looks solid. A
kid. A robot. A girl in high-tech armour. A giant monster. A dude with swords.
What more could you ask for out of a Japanese superhero team? And
the action starts off pretty well, too. The kid, Hiro, is attacked
at school by a trio of supervillains. When the rest of the team
arrives to rescue him and defeat the villains, it turns out they were
unwitting human pawns, possessed by some mysterious force. Worse,
they were just a diversion, a cover for the real criminals, men in
suits and ties who slipped into a nearby bank while everyone was
distracted and walked out with a mysterious and powerful artifact,
one piece from a set of six. With several other pieces already
missing, and a past connection between the artifacts and BH6's
mysterious commander Furi, the team is dispatched to America to guard
the the lab where the last of the artifacts is being studied. What
is the danger these artifacts represent? Who sent those three
supervillains? Why is the team called Big Hero 6 when it's only made
up of five people? All these questions, and more... are never really
answer.
BH6 starts off strong, with a good
fight scene, some nice teamwork, establishing moments for each of the
characters and their abilities, and a solid mystery hook. And then
it just absolutely collapses under the weight of its own terrible
plotting and a frankly baffling refusal to resolve anything. The
miniseries is kind of a perfect snapshot of why I'm so frustrated by
mainstream superhero comic books these days. The one thing I will
say for it is that it's not hair-pullingly decompressed. In fact,
this five-issue miniseries actually finishes (though not resolves,
mark) its main plot early enough that it needs to bring in a
secondary plot in order to fill out the space. Not that it actually
has any connection to the miniseries' overall plot, other than a
tenuous geographical one. But that's about it. The supervillains'
origin is revealed, but that only raises more questions, on the part
of both the characters and the reader. It's flat-out stated that the
person orchestrating them (who never even gets a name, nevermind a
real motivation or character) must be working for someone else, but
who, or to what ends, is never even suggested. The artifacts are
maguffins from start to finish. With absolutely no establishment
Furi's false eye suddenly gains a villain-defeating ability. And the
racial stereotypes, and the sexism...
Honestly, superhero comics are sort of
uncomfortable to read these days if you're even the tiniest bit
sensitive to things like realistic depictions of non-Americans or
fair-minded depictions of women. And BH6 manages to hit just about
everything. One of the team's members is Wasabi no Ginger, a sushi
chef who can use Qi energy and knows martial arts and constantly
wears a headband and a chef's overshirt. He also looks like he's
about thirty-five, which isn't a stereotype, but makes his going
undercover as a high school student particularly idiotic. And the two
young women, GoGo Tomago and Honey Lemon, are just... just...
Look. They're attractive young women
with power and confidence, so it's not unthinkable that they would
dress in a daring manner. But there's daring, and then there's just
having clothes defy physics in order to more completely and totally
hyper-sexualize a teenage girl. At one point GoGo is wearing a North
American school gym uniform whose shirt, in defiance of all the
memories frustrated teenage boys have of those years, the behaviour
of fabric under tension and the possibilities of cutting-edge bra
technology, manages to cling to both of her breasts. Simultaneously.
Separately. That is, up the outside of one breast, down to her
ribcage in between, and then back up the inside of the other.
Linkara coined the term 'boob-sock' for this sort of thing while
reviewing a Catwoman elseworlds, and there's really no better way to
put it. These are boob-socks with a neckline and sleeves; actual
shirts do not work this way!
One of these women can only be seen by people 18 and older with a valid credit card, and the
other by any schoolkid with some pocket change. Care to guess which is which?
And as for Honey Lemon? Her
tendency to go into battle wearing street clothes could almost, almost make sense, given
her lack of powered armour and reliance on her deus ex machina-generating magic purse (yes, a woman with a magic purse). Except that towards the end Hiro,
a total noncombatant, is given a lightly-armoured combat suit, that
in no way restricts his movement and provides at least some small
protection, right out of the blue. Making it clearly wasn't
laborious, since a second, minor character gets a similar outfit (but
she's a girl, so of course hers is pink) at the same time. So why
hasn't Honey been wearing any kind of protection at all, why has she been fighting in a pair of incredibly low-cut skintight pants and a bra masquerading as a shirt, given that
she's no more invulnerable than any other human on the planet?
Big Hero 6 was a pretty thorough
disappointment. Despite a strong start, it just collapses into all
of the worst excesses of modern comic books; non-Americans reduced to
national stereotypes, attractive young women drawn in the skimpiest,
most skin-tight, physics-defying clothing imaginable, a refusal to
tie up loose ends and adequately resolve plot threads within a
storyline, heroes who will fight each other at the drop of a hat, and
superpowered individuals nonsensically sticking it to The Man by
breaking the law and interfering with the police when it's completely
unnecessary. I'm glad this was just a miniseries, because at least
with a finite run there's a hard limit to the amount of fail you can
work into it.
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