Personal Lives (Checkmate #12, Cover Date April, 2007)

Characters Main Heroes: Fire, Thomas Jagger
Minor Heroes: Mr. Terrific, Sasha Bourdeax

Major Villains: Amanda Waller
Minor Villains: Bane, Colonel Computron
P'Shat

After a brief flashback of young Beatriz training in gymnastics with her father, and current Fire visiting her invalid father, we quickly get into the plot. In the country of Santa Prisca, an election has gone horribly wrong. The anti-American candidate, backed by Bane, received the most votes, but vote rigging led to the pro-American candidate getting the most votes. Aware of the cheating, Bane has declared martial law and taken over. We quickly learn that the vote-rigging was planned by Waller through an intermediary, leading to the ironic result of Colonel Computron, the vote-rigger, tries to get help from Checkmate to escape from his employer, not knowing that his employer is really Waller.

Mr. Terrific immediately suspects Waller, and wants to send two Knights to rescue Colonel Computron. Waller's Knight is out, obviously, and Thomas Jagger is also excluded since his father was killed by Bane, making him questionable in this nominally pro-Bane operation. When Mlle. Tautin is struck down by a Deus-Ex-Appendectomy, though, the only two Knights left are Fire and Jagger.

Black King and Thinker are working on a clue -- Carvalho -- that regular readers only know is something Waller is using to blackmail Fire. Ben Talib figures it out, but it is too late to abort the mission. As Jagger and Fire "rescue" Colonel Computron, Fire immediate turns on him and fries the Captain.

Drash

As I mentioned in this Checkmate post, Fire and Jagger are the only characters who have been given any personal history in this book so far, and here they are on a mission together. Jagger is actually given some much more important character development here. He is the son of the original Judomaster, Hadley "Rip" Jagger, but was told by his father not to follow in his path. So when Judomaster was killed by Bane in Infinite Crisis #7 (in his patented "Broken Bat" move), Jagger consciously chose to go his own way with Checkmate rather than become the "new Judomaster."

Now, as fate has it, chosing his own path leads him back onto his father's as he inevitably will have a showdown with Bane.

Of course, the most interesting part of this Jagger-centric story is that it's completely not at all about Jagger being gay. The new Diversity Guy always has to beware the Scylla of having monthly "Gay-Themed Adventures" and the Charybdis of quickly dying or turning evil. I am therefore happy to see Jagger's first post-"out" adventure involve confronting his father's killer, which is a perfectly normal thing for a comic book hero to do, and doesn't revolve around his sex life.

Meanwhile, I love ambiguously-evil Amanda Waller as a complex character, but come on now! Eventually, someone's going to stop trusting her with upper level administrative responsibilities. There are only so many times that the White Queen can re-construct the Suicide Squad or divert a United Nations agency to her own nefarious ends before they take away your keys to the international-executive washroom.

In my internal fan-fic, she leaves office with Lex Luthor, they get married, and she becomes a new Supervillain. Amanda Waller-Luthor could be even more dangerous than Lex.

To The Victor Went The Spoils (Checkmate #5, Cover Date October, 2006)

I have been thinking about the (lack of) diversity in the new Birds of Prey #100, but I'm not quite ready to write at length about it yet. Instead, I'm going to approach it obliquely by thinking about another story that was not quite as interesting, but addressed diversity issues much better. Then, I'll get to Birds of Prey a little bit at the end.

Characters

Main Heroes: Sasha Bordeaux, Jessica Midnight
Minor Heroes: Mr. Terrific, Alan Scott, Count Vertigo

Major Villain: Amanda Waller

P'Shat

There is a contest to replace Black Queen's Knight Jonah McCarthy, who was killed in a previous issue. Four finalists are chosen. One is eliminated for giving up to Count Vertigo on a mountainside, one is eliminated for giving up under torture, and the last is eliminated during a fist fight among the final two contestants. The winner is Josephine Tautin, who is to be the next Black Queen's Knight.

Meanwhile, Alan Scott has gotten all of the non-U.S. Security Council members to veto anyone other than Mr. Terrific for the job of White King. Also, Amanda Waller threatens Fire regarding some dark secret regarding "Cavalho".

Drash

The Checkmate designations are interesting. Under Checkmate's "Rule of 2", every "level" of the organization must be staffed by two individuals -- one human and one metahuman. This is necessary for appropriate oversight and checks and balances. Beyond that, however, there are other "Twos" that are not explicitly in the rules, and it is interesting to see how they are either upheld or not. Specifically there is male/female and white/other dichotomies that are frequent issues in comics.

The organization is headed by the White King and Queen, who are in charge of administrative and organizational issues, and the Black King and Queen, who are in charge of operations. Now, the King and Queen have, to date, been staffed only by gender appropriate individuals (the Kings are all male and the Queens are all female). There has been no explicit requirement, though that the Black Queen, for example, has to be female.

There has been no similar racial or diversity requirement -- a Black Bishop does not have to be Black -- but in this case this does not result in an all-White cast, as one would expect. Quite to the contrary, with the nomination of Michael Holt (Mr. Terrific) to be the White King after Green Lantern Alan Scott was blackballed out of the job, the "White" Royalty (Holt and Amanda Waller) are both Black and the Black King and Queen are both white (if Taleb Beni Khalid, the Black King and an Arab Israeli, qualifies as "White", which I guess is a question of perspective).

Of the 11 active principals however (2 Kings, 2 Queens, 4 Knights, and 3 Bishops), there are currently 5 women and 6 men. There are also 4 or 5 minorities (again, depending on how you count Khalid, plus Waller, Holt, Fire, and Shen Li Po). Put together, with Alan Scott and Jonah McCarthy gone, there are only 3 White Men (King Faraday, Thomas Jagger, and Count Vertigo) among the principals.

This is real diversity. The kind of rare diversity where, when we were faced with the four finalists for Black Queen's Knight -- two men, two women, and a variety of races -- there was never a moment where you thought, "This group would be more representative if they replaced Jonah with a ________ (insert minority group here)." The winner turned out to be a white female, but it could have just as easily been a Hispanic male or a white male or a Laotian hermaphrodite, and diversity would not have suffered. There was just no one I was "rooting for" on diversity grounds.

As I said above, I wrote this analysis to contrast it with my still percolating thoughts on Birds of Prey #100. The analysis on this thread and this thread seem to be that, while more diversity would be nice, how could you complain about Barda, Manhunter, and Judomaster? Well, I have the complete run of Manhunter, so don't question my Kate Spencer cred! And I would have had no problem at all, if they were added to Checkmate, or maybe the JSA or JLA, or some other group that did not begin with a "diversity problem". But when the only three regulars are Caucasian females, I don't think it's a sufficient response to merely point out how awesome Barda is.

When Villains Defend the Nuclear Family (Checkmate #7, Cover Date December, 2006)

Characters

Main Heroes: Mirror Master, Jewelee, Icicle, Tattooed Man
Minor Heroes: Tattooed Man, Bronze Tiger, Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Plastique, Checkmate

Major Villains: The Government of Myanmar (Burma)
Minor Villains: Calculator

P'Shat

Ney, a Burmese meta, has been captured by the government and forced to supply energy that the government is selling to China to fund their regime. Meanwhile, the Suicide Squad had their cover blown, and the guards at the energy plant ambush them as soon as they arrive. Issue #6 ended with the claim that Punch (of Punch and Jewelee) had been killed, and in #7 that is confirmed. The Squad fights through the guards, and Mirror Master figures out that they have been double-crossed by the Tattooed Man, who tipped off Calculator in order to get in the Society's good graces. He was promised that he'd be spared, but the guards were trying to kill him as well, so he un-defected. Icicle doesn't accept it, and freezes the Tattooed Man, while Jewelee shatters him for his role in Punch's death.

The Squad frees Ney, and escapes back to America, where he is granted asylum. The Suicide Squad is disbanded. While the Checkmate leaders try to determine why events unfolded just as Waller predicted, Waller intimates that she intends to get involved in active operations in the near future.

Drash

From heartbreak to farce in seven panels or less. Here is Jewelee crying through a firefight outside the Burmese prison over Punch's body:

No baby no won't leave you I won't leave you . . .Who's gonna laugh at my jokes . . .? Who's gonna teach our baby . . .?

By the next page, Icicle has convinced her to re-join the fight, telling her "Your boy needs his mama at least, you hear me?" Jewelee responds:

No, baby needs two parents. But one will do for now.

She quickly moves on trying to replace her still-warm husband.

Mirror Master: 'Tween yer holographic jewel and me own mirrors, we're making a fine team, lass.
Jewelee (trying Punch hat on Mirror Master): Hmm . . . I'd have to hem it . . . YOu won't be interested in . . ?
Mirror Master: Wearin' this thing? Not one wee bit.

And later, to Icicle:

Right, you're right, my boy needs parents, after all . . . so this thing you have with Tigress . . is that serious?

A common argument against no-fault divorce (and more recently, to a lesser degree, against same-sex marriage), is that a child needs "two parents" -- a mother and a father. But is it better -- the other side asks -- for parents in even abusive relationships to stay together? Is the presence of a really bad father really better for the kid than being raised by a single mom?

This is the concept being lampooned by Jewelee who, suddenly a single mother after Punch's death five minutes earlier, is suddenly trying to pick-up every other Supervillain in the Suicide Squad because a child needs a mom and a dad.

So, which is it? Is a baby best raised by ONE supervillain or TWO supervillains? Whichever is the case, I don't see Jewelee have much of a solo career. Her shtick clearly works best as part of a pair.