itsinthetrees:gailsimone:itsinthetrees:My issue with the...

itsinthetrees:

gailsimone:

itsinthetrees:

My issue with the Sonia Sato Judomaster (since I can't speak to the Asian representation issues) was that there was already a legacy to the original — his son Tommy Jagger, a great, stereotype-defying gay character in Checkmate. Checkmate avoided the problematics of -calling- him Judomaster or putting him in the flagsuit, but he was still clearly a legacy and it was weird to me to have an unrelated character introduced afterward claim the legacy when he already existed.

I mean, I was generally annoyed about Tommy Jagger's steady marginalization after a strong introduction — and introducing a new Judomaster felt like yet another aspect of it.

I like Tommy, but I am not certain I would say he was a legacy character in the sense that is traditionally used in comics. No use of the name or costume, for one thing.

And he's still a white American dude, so it's not like the issue of cultural appropriation in his father's case goes away.

Sonia and Tommy would have been very, very different characters splitting the Judomaster legacy in very different ways. One is his father's son without the name or costume, the other has the traditional trappings of the outfit without the blood relation. 

I mean again, I'm not defending the Rip Jagger character's cultural appropriation. I just felt that as soon as a 'real' Judomaster III showed up, Tommy Jagger completely disappeared from use. I'm not trying to pit Asian representation against gay representation here at all. It just felt as a reader like there apparently wasn't room at DC for both of them, which is unfortunate when both are minority characters.

Understood, but I suspect it's more BECAUSE Tommy didn't have the code name or costume that Judomaster was in use in JSA instead of him.

It's unfortunately hard to get new characters to take off, particularly in a book as heavily identified with one author as Checkmate was.  I loved Checkmate, I referred to it often, and when Etta came around in Wonder Woman, I asked Greg Rucka if he was cool with her having been an agent in that organization. Greg was not only okay with it, he had a bunch of great suggestions.

But it's simply factual that a more traditionally superheroic character is likely to find more places for placement in a world where superheroes are the stars of almost every book the company puts out.

I'd like to see Tommy again. One of the bummers about the relaunch is that a lot of legacy characters we haven't had a chance to miss yet are really going to be difficult to bring back. :(

As it is, I suspect if there is a Judomaster in the new 52, it will likely be a new character altogether, and then hopefully they can get her, or him, a new design. I actually like a lot of elements of the original Judomaster design, but I'm less entranced with the one shown here on this page. And it still feels wrong to have a white military dude in that outfit.