“Airboy” #2: A Discussion

We at Multiversity try to be an even handed bunch – sure, we get fired up about our funny books, but we always try to react to industry news or controversies with a measured response. So, when “Airboy” #2 got released, we wanted to comment on it, but we also wanted to do so in a way that wasn’t necessarily reactionary, but rather given some time to breathe.

As we were preparing for our San Diego Comic Con coverage, Alice W. Castle and myself began to talk about “Airboy” #2, and what we felt about the issue, and the issues it raised. Below is our conversation – we encourage you to join in on the discussion in the comments.

Brian: Alice, two weeks ago, “Airboy” #2 was released, and the internet – how do you say? – lit on fire with criticisms directed at writer James Robinson for what many considered to be some pretty awful comments tossed towards the transgender community. Robinson, to his credit, issued a heart-felt apology that showed his thinking, both in terms of crafting the story, and in terms of the way it was received.

This is obviously a complicated issue, and it comes from a complicated subject. Robinson has a history of being quite inclusive in his writing; I’m thinking especially of “Starman,” where there were characters of various races, sexual orientations, and planes of existence hanging out together, without much of a big deal made of it.

I also want to clarify early on that, much like Homer Simpson once said, “I’m a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me — no matter how dumb my suggestions are!” So, as a white, straight, cis, Catholic, married father in his 30s, I’m not exactly in the position to tell anyone how to feel about feeling oppressed.

So, let’s start at the beginning – what did you think of “Airboy” #2?

Alice: Before we get into my actual thoughts on the issue (both in terms of the comic and the surrounding controversy), I want to similarly preface this by saying that I am not a white man in his 30s like Brian is. Actually, I am a transgender woman in her 20s. I’ve tried to make this somewhat clear in my time at Multiversity this year, but as it rarely factors into my opinion on comic books you’d likely only know if you follow me outside of my writing here.

What this means is that the controversy that this issue sparked in how many viewed its treatment of the transgender community, particularly trans women, is something that hit very close to home. But before we get into that, what did I think of “Airboy” #2?

I was disappointed, but not in the way you might think. See, I loved the first issue of “Airboy”. What James Robinson and Greg Hinkle did was create an incredibly twisted version themselves trying to knuckle down and think up some ideas on how to reboot this Golden Age comic book character and, in doing so, bleed all of their insecurities and flaws onto the page. This comes to a head in the second issue as they are confronted by Airboy himself and have to try and figure out what the hell they’re going to do with him.

And then they end up in a bar full of trans women. Now, I’d read about the problems many were having with this issue before reading the issue itself and I was dreading this moment and it was as bad as I’d read. I honestly can’t grasp what Robinson and Hinkle was going for here. Where they trying to show Airboy as a fish out of water? Because there are probably a million other ways to do so that don’t involve him freaking out after meeting a trans women and most of them aren’t going to play into nasty, dehumanising stereotypes the community has had to endure for decades.

Sorry, I’m getting heated already. What did you think of “Airboy”, Brian?

Brian: That’s not an easy question to answer. As I said in my micro-review of the issue, I adore Hinkle’s art, and Robinson is maybe my favorite writer currently working in comics. I think that much of the issue worked quite well and – if we are being completely honest here – if I squint hard enough, I can see why Robinson wrote what he wrote. Or so I think. Let me take a stab at this:

Robinson is trying to present the worst possible version of himself on the page – he has, more or less, said this. There are a few shortcuts to doing this – it would be hard to show Robinson, for instance, being a less than doting husband – it is way easier for him to behave badly and say terrible things. In fact, if I were writing my equivalent of “Airboy,” I’d probably take a similar approach – present myself as a bigot in one way or another, show me throwing away perfectly good food, kicking a dog, etc.

So, in one sense, you have to take everything that comes out of the fictional Robinson’s mouth with a grain of salt – much like no one thought that Danny McBride really was a racist homophobe when he was playing Kenny Powers, Robinson is presenting himself through a funhouse mirror.

Now, that doesn’t excuse the situation in general. Here’s my bet: the bizareness of juxtaposing the most whitebread, dull character in the public domain in a transgender bar was a funny idea in Robinson’s head. For someone like Airboy, the idea of a transgender person would be something that would be completely misunderstood, if understood in the slightest. Again, in the book, Robinson and Hinkle are stoned out of their gourds, and are making terrible, terrible decisions, so ‘let’s go to a trans bar with a fictional pilot from the 40s!’ is presented as yet another bad idea.

Now, I don’t think that Robinson saw the act of anyone going to that bar as a bad thing – the idea was bringing that particular person to that bar as a bad thing.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m defending the choices, I’m just trying to understand them. Does any of this ring true to you?

Alice: I can appreciate what you’re saying and that does certainly ring true with what Robinson said in his apology. Bringing Airboy to the trans bar does create a certain fish out of water vibe and it definitely shows the skewed thinking of the characters of Robinson and Hinkle that this is the first place they’d bring him. I can appreciate that and I think if this comic existed in a vacuum there wouldn’t be much else to say.

However, this comic doesn’t exist in a vacuum and that’s largely where the problems begin. The one right off the bat is how liberally Hinkle’s character throws around the word tranny. Now, my experience is certainly not going to ring true for everyone who reads this issue, but seeing that word show up multiple times was like a gut punch. To explain: I’ve been physically abused because I am transgender and had that word spat in my face. And I’m not the only trans person who will have experienced this. The closest comparison I can make is that scene from Louie where Rick Crom explains the connotations of the word faggot in order to explain to Louie that every time he uses that word as a straight man he has to live with the fact that someone will hear that and remember it being thrown at them in violence.

The problem with “Airboy” is that while it’s focus is showing the fictional representations of James Robinson and Greg Hinkle as the worst versions of themselves, it’s putting the trans community at risk by doing so. The scene where Airboy freaks out after receiving a blowjob from one of the women there before being asked to asked repay the favour may be funny to some, but the sad reality of that scene is that, as a trans woman, I read that scene and could only think of all the women who have suffered violence or have been murdered because of this same revelation.

I’m sorry for getting so heavy, but that’s the reality of living as a trans woman. As a community, we suffer so much violence that there is such a thing as the Trans Murder Monitoring Project that reported 1,731 murders of trans and/or non-binary people in the last seven years alone. That’s a scary number and it’s a number we live with.

And do when reading “Airboy”, that’s the problem. As a community, trans women become the butt of a joke in the issue, but it’s a joke that could very easily cost us our lives in reality.

Brian: Those numbers, along with your personal experiences of abuse, turn my stomach and make me really, really fucking angry. I’m so sorry that you have had to go through that, and it is a sad reminder of how fucked up and terrible some people are.

You said something I want to explore, and I feel it is important to preface it by saying that this is obviously completely hypothetical. The whole point of this piece was to give some nuance to this conversation, so let’s treat this as a purely academic question.

Where does the line between ‘artistic expression’ and ‘too offensive’ fall? This is something I think about a lot. There are plenty of examples of media where lines of ‘polite’ society are crossed, sometimes to make a point, and sometimes to illustrate a character trait. I can think of plenty of examples, from Tony Soprano to the aforementioned Homer Simpson, where bigotry and ignorance are so built into the character that they become an inescapable part of it.

Robinson and Hinkle obviously have a story that they want to tell and, as you said, if this existed in a vacuum, would be well enough (well, sort of – I really don’t need to see more illustrated Robinson dick). But at what point does it become okay to hinder artistic expression at the benefit of not offending anyone?

I know there are plenty of people who feel that the answer is ‘never’ – that freedom of speech is the most important freedom people have, and that it should be defended vigilantly. I also know others who fall on the other side of the spectrum – that if you’re offending someone, you’re doing it wrong.

Where do you fall on this, Alice?

Alice: That’s a good question and it’s something I’ve also been thinking about a lot as we see more and more instances of the internet being used as an outlet to express some level of offence at art. I think, personally, there’s no way to create art without offending anyone. There are billions of people alive on this planet, each with wildly different life experiences. As art is, at it’s base level, designed to illicit an emotional reaction, you’re going to get both positive and negative responses as well as pretty much everything in between.

I think what it comes down to is less of a personal context (ie “I am offended by “Airboy” because of how trans women are portrayed.”) and more of a societal context (ie “I think we need to talk about “Airboy”‘s portrayal of trans women because it falls into some very ugly stereotypes that dehumanise trans women and have subjected them to violence in real life.”). What I mean is that while Robinson and Hinkle have every right to tell their story and use it to show their fictional selves as awful people, the real versions of themselves should have been mindful of the societal context that comes with showing trans women in this manner.

If you’ll excuse a tangent, I have a story that better illustrates this. Over this past weekend, I attended Glasgow Comic Con with a friend and my friend came across a book at one of the tables that had a cover showing women with unrealistically large breasts. My friend commented on this and how ridiculous it was and it turned out the writer, who was behind the table, agreed and explained to us that the cover and the depiction of women was meant to satirise how comics are generally thought of as depicting women. The problem with this is that, despite the fact that is satire, without the societal context of how ridiculously women have and are portrayed by artists in comics, this comic falls into the exact same trap by portraying women that way. It’s said that good satire punches up. In this case, it was towards artists who depict women unrealistically and have bred a comic book culture that is only just moving past a phase of excluding women. However, while good satire punches up, you have to take care in minimising the collateral damage on the way.

In the pursuit of telling a story about themselves as horrible people, satirising the comic book industry and the nature of reboots and even themselves, they have inadvertently used trans women as a prop for that satire and put them at risk because of this collateral damage.

Brian: Well, that leads me to an interesting place to maybe begin to wrap this up. Without saying “they shouldn’t have set the scene in a trans bar,” what, if anything, could Robinson and Hinkle done to walk the satire/fiction line better?

Alice: Honestly, all I can ask for is the same thing I always ask for: respect. This was an unfortunate case where a scene came off as tone deaf because it fed into a lot of ugly stereotypes that have been used against trans women (that we’re just men in dresses and therefore not quite women.) I never read any ill intent into the writing of this scene, and Robinson’s statement on the matter did feel genuine, but, and it pains me to say this, I can only think that if he really does love the trans community the way he says he does then he should have known better. All I can ask is to be a little more mindful of the crossfire that can happen when you’re trying to create a satirical book like this.

And I think I’d like to end by saying that there have been people who, as always, have claimed this isn’t a big deal. There are probably going to be people who think this discussion is unnecessary. To them and everyone else, I’d like to make it clear that respecting people who are LGBT and part of the community does not begin and end at the big things. It is not encompassed by the big issues like marriage. It extends to the little things and the only way we will be respected is to eradicate these kinds of microaggressions by talking about them. Because when we ignore them, that’s when they really do damage.

Brian: I’ll say this – I think it is totally possible for Robinson to love the trans community and still make a mistake – I love my daughter, but I fuck up being a parent constantly. Of course, the microscope isn’t on me – people don’t get to see my mistakes because I’m not a public figure. He is a writer with a history of inclusion, and seems genuinely upset by this.

I will also push back slightly on the idea that he was saying that all trans women are just ‘men in dresses’ – obviously, there is at least one character in the book that can be seen that way (the one who has a dalliance with Airboy in the stall), but I don’t think having casual sex take place in a bar is something that is limited to a trans bar – hell, in “Airboy” #1, he and Hinkle solicit casual sex in a non-trans bar. I certainly see how there are aspects of the scene that are tone deaf and unfortunate, but I wouldn’t paint Robinson with a brush of intolerance or intentional disrespect.

And I guess that’s where I come down on all of this – I think that, today, it is far too easy to both vilify and crucify folks for small situations that, over time, don’t mean much. This past week, more than half of my Facebook friends changed their profile pictures to be rainbow colored, in support of the legalization of same sex marriage in the United States. Showing support for the LGBT community is a fine thing, but people being celebrated as heroes for clicking a button on Facebook is as absurd as criticizing someone for not doing it. I think Robinson knows he didn’t handle this well, and will seek to do better in the future. Isn’t that what we all want from this situation?

In closing, thanks, Alice. I really appreciate your perspective on this, and I’m proud to call you my friend.

Alice: Oh, I think there was a misunderstanding here too. I wasn’t trying to imply Robinson or Hinkle think of trans women as a men in dresses. I was simply trying to say that the way Airboy’s reaction was written feeds into the stereotypical joke of finding out a woman is transgender is somehow a cause for disgust and having the character freak out like that is an unfortunately well worn joke that has painted trans women that way in the past. Hell, even The Hangover Part II did it and I don’t think anyone would want to be lumped in with that.

But, at the end of the day, yeah: all I can ask for is for Robinson and Hinkle and anyone who has seen this whole situation play out to learn from it and be more mindful in the future.

Thank you, Brian, for letting me say my piece on this. It’s been a pleasure to discuss this with you.