The Four Color Media Monitor

A radio host of a Hindu background from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia wrote about Marvel's contrived diversity for the New York Times, and while he have a dhimmified position on the Muslim Ms. Marvel book, he does not seem impressed with how Marvel's been going out of their way to cater to an audience that's no more interested than anybody else:

But it doesn’t take long — three issues or so — for Kamala to realize that her brown Muslim self is as potent as can be. All she needed to become super, besides a costume and a mask, was a strong sense of individualism, righteousness, a can-do spirit and a purpose. The superhero comic is an inherently egalitarian genre, even though its lead characters are exceptional: After a bout with a radioactive spider or some Terrigen Mist, it could be you or it could be me.

Which is why the recent push by Marvel and DC for greater diversity in comics doesn’t make much sense. Or maybe it does in the United States, where real-life anxieties about race, gender and identity politics are often played out in popular culture. Captain America is black. Thor is a woman. Iceman is gay.

But for some of us non-Americans, the genre doesn’t need to apologize for itself, no matter how quintessentially American it is. The superhero comic is the American dream illustrated, and by definition the American dream must be accessible to all. However monochromatic its characters, the superhero comic’s message has always seemed universal.

Not always does a superhero comic represent the American dream. Storytelling comes in many forms, including contrived steps that only represent a selfish, apathetic and unaltruistic goal. And that's what has been in the past decade or so, ever since "progressives" hijacked the medium.

It's pretty surprising that the NYT was willing to run an article by somebody who, while he sides with Islamism, was willing to admit that forcibly replacing established characters with "diverse" ones in the same costumes, or forcibly changing their sexual orientation, is ridiculous, not to mention insulting to the past writers and artists who worked hard to realize their own creations in the first place. Unfortunately, that's about all this writer's work is worth, as he's still quite a dhimmi unto Islam, doesn't consider its opposition to individualism, and he goes on to say the following:

The current Ms. Marvel is the most successful rendition of an Asian superhero. But Kamala is Asian-American, and her struggles to balance her duties as both a superhero and a good Muslim girl are merely another retelling of the classic American immigrant experience.

Sigh. I'm afraid not. It's just a whitewashing of a serious issue that remains vehemently dishonest about its components, and earlier issues went out of their way to imply that anybody concerned about "honor murders" was stupid, while simultaneously painting an ugly picture of rank-and-file Americans. Although, at the end, he says:

Try to adapt the superhero comic’s conventions to an Asian context and the genre collapses under the weight of traditional Asian values: humility, self-effacement, respect for elders and communal harmony. American comic book heroes also act in the service of the collective good, but they do so, unabashedly, out of a heightened sense of self. How can an Asian superhero take down the bad guy without embarrassing both the bad guy’s family and his own? How do you save the world and save face at the same time? The Asian comic superhero is a contradiction in terms.

We geeks out here in the Asian hinterlands have always readily bought into American ideals because the American comic book makes us believe we can be special, too. The Asian superhero, steeped in our cultural baggage, would only undermine the fantasy.

Taken with a grain of salt, that makes sense. If anything, the obsession with making the numero uno stars of a book "diverse" instead of creating separate characters, and making little or no attempt to try the same with co-stars, hurts the books. Of course, there's still the question of what Asians this guy's talking about. Even in the far reaches of the continent, "Asian" comes in many different races and cultures, and some follow better values than others. I can't say Malaysia, with its increasing Islamism, is a place I'd cite as a great to look over to for good values.

The writer also got a response from a webmaster writing on NBC news, who wasn't so happy at what he said:

In a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, Malaysian talk radio host Umapagan Ampikaipakan called into question the entire concept of an "Asian superhero." As an Asian person who has invested quite a lot in the idea of Asian superheroes, you can imagine seeing such a piece in the paper of record left me a bit bewildered — especially because this was the year that comics featuring Asian and Asian-American heroes had finally broken through.

Marvel Comics famously published "Ms. Marvel" starring Pakistani American Kamala Khan and "Silk" with Korean American Cindy Moon, and just this month, longtime sidekick Amadeus Cho graduated to lead hero status as the new Totally Awesome Hulk. Moreover, two of Image Comics' highest profile titles in 2015 were "RunLoveKill" by Jon Tsuei and Eric Canete and "Monstress" by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda — both books featuring all-Asian lead characters and all-Asian creative teams.

And, for the last year and a half, I've been advocating for Marvel Studios to cast an Asian American actor as the lead for its upcoming Iron Fist series on Netflix, a cause that has been gaining steam in recent weeks. Perhaps Ampikaipakan's editorial is the beginning of the backlash?

Oh good grief. So this other guy's basically advocating for something that's become far too commonplace of recent, all at the expense of the prior protagonists, some of whom aren't even given respectable exits? On the positive side, Image's offerings are perfectly fine, if they were created as their own agencies and not cases of established white protagonists forcibly shoved out in favor of "diverse" casts. And if Silk is a new creation, that in itself is okay too, but doesn't equal good writing (and neither would the Image products if all that matters is the racial background). But the Muslim Ms. Marvel and "Totally Awesome" Hulk are examples of forced diversity written at the original heroes' expenses, and his failure to acknowledge this is sad. Likewise, if he's unconcerned about whitewashing a noxious religion, that's no good either.

The main thrust of Ampikaipakan's op-ed is that the comic book superhero is a wholly American invention that upholds ideals and values like truth, justice, and the American way. This is not untrue. Characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman have transcended their pulpy roots to become the closest thing Americans have to homegrown mythology. I mean, there's a reason why these heroes all wear spandex in the primary colors of red, white, and blue.

There's just one little problem: has the guy writing for NBC taken a look at DC's heroes lately? In the comics, some of their colors have been removed (Superman's red tights, to name one example), or their costumes have been made to look absurdly like plastic armor. This is even more noticeable in the movies, where Man of Steel muted the costume's colors, and in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, it looks like Wonder Woman's wearing a grayish-black outfit with no red, white or blue. That's hardly paying tribute to what the superheroes stood for, or how. But, he's right about something the first writer missed:

Ampikaipakan also asserts that any time other cultures have tried to mimic American superheroes, they ultimately fail. More than that, he specifically calls out the failure of Asian superheroes, pointing to Japanese manga as being nothing more than derivative and, in the process, completely dismissing the work and influence of legends like Go Nagai and Osamu Tezuka.

But it's telling that "Astro Boy" and "Devilman," the examples of American comic book "rip-offs" Ampikaipakan cites, are 60-plus and 40-plus years old, respectively. I'm assuming he has also never seen "Sailor Moon" or "Gatchaman" or "Super Sentai" — known in the U.S. as "Power Rangers" — or "Dragonball Z" — which itself is an adaptation of one of the most "Asian-y" superheroes of all time: the Monkey King.

Yes, some of these examples were successes in their time, although I'll have to note that Tezuka did once write political attacks against the US in Astro Boy during the Vietnam war. The rest is worthy enough for citing though, as products that were successful with their own local audiences for starters, and Sailor Moon was a success overseas too. I guess Malaysia's got restrictions on a lot of these anime products, so that could suggest why the first writer may not be so familiar with them, and thus wouldn't understand much about what success manga's had anywhere else.

The idea that straight white males are the center of the universe not only permeates comics; it's an idea that drives most of pop culture and it's why a push for diversity is necessary in the first place.

If that's what the Malaysian was saying, of course that's ridiculous in itself, though I don't see why "straight or gay" has to be dragged into this whole mess. But if the other guy's saying it really does permeat comics, then he's missing the boat. There have been Asian creations before, such as Sunfire. The only problem is that they were never given the promotion they could've used, or no good writing accompanied them before.

And I think the guy doesn't realize that there have been white females before, with Sheena, Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl some of the earliest heroines or adventuresses in comicdom. I also think he's missing something with the following:

Here's the thing: superheroes aren't the sole domain of white people. And they haven't been for quite some time, despite what some might think. Take the "original superhero," born in 1938 from the minds and pencils of Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, who happened to be sons of Jewish immigrants: Superman's adventures in Action Comics was the source code for all superheroes to follow.

Is he saying Jews aren't white?!? Well then, he's lost me right there. So I guess I'm not white either, huh? And alien or not, I guess Kryptonian Kal-El's not white either. Some of the most famous superhero creations were products of white Jews, who either wrote, drew or edited them. And these various heroes were white too. Maybe he doesn't think so, but he's taken the risk of degrading many Jewish creators who went to such pains to develop their ideas, and might even be risking making them out to be bad guys. Of all the cheap nerve. As somebody coming from a Jewish background, I obviously take special issue with this assertion, and emerge feeling quite indignant. The writer on NBC has only made things worse.

With his flowing red cape and perfectly coiffed spit curl, Superman is the embodiment of the American ideal. But if you take a closer look, Clark Kent's origin story parallels the experiences of many immigrants to the United States. And as an Asian American, those parallels are too powerful to ignore.

Ahem. Superman was hardly an immigrant in the same sense. He was rocketed to Earth from a destroyed planet (Krypton), and needed a home and moral compass badly, which he got in the form of Jon and Martha Kent (and I've read some of the Golden Age material which gives these origins). He certainly wasn't a refugee from a country ravaged by war as many Chinese immigrants were at the time of the Rape of Nanking. An otherworldly infant's sojourn to a different planet that doesn't involve the exact same politics as real life immigrants on Earth cannot be described the same way.

And later on in the op-ed, he says:

Which brings me back to the idea of an Asian American Iron Fist: maybe all of the arguments we've made for why an Asian-American character can and should exhibit all of the traits of a traditional (read: white) superhero touched a nerve. Maybe somebody will point to this op-ed and say, "See, Asians can't be superheroes."

Oh for heaven's sake. OF COURSE they can, and there have been some that never got the push or talented writing they deserved. But what can be said is that it's insulting to many writers all the way back to Siegel and Shuster to say that a Clark Kent or a Peter Parker can't work in the roles of Superman and Spider-Man anymore, because racial background is suddenly more important, and if I were of Asian background, I'd be embarrassed at how Marvel and DC's staff, otherwise dominated by white liberals, are going out of their way to cater to PC advocates in the name of folks who never asked that white protagonists be thrown out of their respective costumes in the worst ways possible for the sake of casts who're only being emphasized based on their racial background. I once said before, and will say again, that if a Jewish protagonist were put into the costume of an established hero who got ejected in a terrible way, I'd be very angry, because I don't believe a character's coming from a simple white background makes them illegitimate.

Those of us who really respect past creators do not try to tamper with their work for the sake of directions that aren't developed with a true emphasis on talented writing. If we're serious, we create new roles for new characters, and don't try to hijack old roles to suit agendas. Besides, what may be considered brilliant by today's "progressives" has become very old hat mighty fast.

Labels: Batman, Captain America, dc comics, Europe and Asia, islam and jihad, manga and anime, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, Thor, Wonder Woman, X-Men

I found an interview Indiewire ran with the novelist who concocted A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of several novels which the Game of Thrones TV show draws from, written nearly 2 years ago, and honestly, I can't feel very impressed with Martin's narrow view of the Big Two, where he praises Marvel almost entirely at DC's expense, when he brings up his comic reading from childhood (via Adweek):

Sorry DC Comics, but Martin is a Marvel Guy
Martin wasted no time searching for an answer when asked what the most inspiring piece of literature he ever read was. "The Marvel comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s," he claimed proudly. "I had been reading DC comics before that, from Superman to Batman and The Flash, but when Marvel came along Stan Lee broke all the rules. Nothing ever happened in the DC comic books. They were circular. Superman would have an adventure but by the end he would finish in the same place where he started. Batman would have an adventure and come right back to where he was before. Nothing ever changed. There was no conflict. There were good guys and there were bad guys."

Martin singled out the Fantastic Four as a major reason Marvel was so influential for him. "Those early issues were amazing. Heck, one of them was a monster, The Thing! That was just unheard of at the time. Here you had this guy who didn't like being what made him special, and he was really angry at Reed Richards for making him The Thing and not being able to cure him. There was even a romantic triangle in those early comics where The Thing was interested in Sue Storm but she was interested in Reed."

Spider-Man was another. "Spider-Man went through all these girlfriends and he was in high school and then he actually graduated. He was with Liz Allan and Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy!" he said with excitement. "That kind of thing never happened in DC! It was just Louis Lane and Superman for 30 years, and it was just always going to be Louis Lane and Superman. They never had any progress in their relationship and they never broke up. Sometimes Jimmy Olsen would become a giant turtle boy, but then he would stop becoming a giant turtle boy by the end of the episode and you'd be right back where you started. The idea of comics where something actually happened was tremendously powerful to me."

Say, I notice Mary Jane Watson wasn't cited in the list of Spider-ladyfriends! Any particular reason? Is it because MJ was later embraced so strongly by Spider-fans, and she and Peter Parker were married in 1987? As for the misspelling of Lois with a letter U smack in the middle, is that his goof or the reporter's?

And I don't think he's any better on DC history than you or me: what about Lana Lang, and the mermaid Lori Lemaris? Clark and Lois may never have broken up per se (as if everybody literally wanted that to happen or thought Lois was worthless), but Superman did have affairs with a few other women in the 70-plus-year history of the Man of Steel. Yet Martin has chosen to obscure any of that, sticking with a mentality that I consider a hazardous influence - going gaga over Marvel, all at DC's expense. By his logic, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, along with their successors, should never have crafted lady co-stars who could go on to attain an iconic status, and not serve any inspiration for the female audience. IMO, that's what he's insinuating. And since when didn't anything happen in DC's tales? There wasn't action, adventure, fisticuffs and gunfights? Bruce Wayne had several girlfriends over many years, and that doesn't count?

He's nailed in the 1960s with an otherwise narrow, overly-demanding viewpoint that won't even accept entertainment on a simpler level. How do I make this any simpler? There's many ideas that start out small, and later become big. If DC's products weren't worth squat in Martin's mind, then how can we truly appreciate Marvel's? Even if I were exclusively a Marvel reader, I would never dare to put down DC as he's done. To do that would be an insult to many decent folks all the way back to Siegel and Shuster. They went to all that hard work just to produce something that could entertain (and even inform far better than modern output is), and this is how Martin thanks them? I'm sorry, but I cannot and will not approve of his ungrateful vision. People who can't thank some of the more basic ideas in entertainment and recognize how their existence helped inspire future products aren't qualified to shine shoes. To think that so many past veterans like Max Gaines, Julius Schwartz, Mort Weisinger, Gardner Fox, John Broome, Bob Haney, Ramona Fradon and goodness knows who else from a time when contributors weren't insulting their audience or courting controversy for the sake of it, put out all these great adventure tales, only to have men like Martin reject them because they didn't suit their overly-demanding visions.

And he shows no interest in what changes DC did make by the late 60s to catch up a bit with Marvel, as they tried to add new relations and other interactions between various cast members. I'm betting he never even read the Teen Titans, or he'd know the adolescent cast may have received more character drama than the adults did. This became particularly emphasized by the time the New Teen Titans was launched. Unfortunately, Martin's comments suggest that for somebody allegedly thrilled over Silver Age Marvel, he lost interest soon after, and may not be happy Reed and Sue married by 1965. Speaking of which, it's funny that for somebody who supposedly thought DC casts lacked personality, he doesn't seem to notice that one could've made the same argument about Mr. Fantastic: both Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm were given these impressively wisecracking, gung-ho personalities. Even Sue Storm had significant persona. Yet depending on one's viewpoint, Reed Richards was far less fleshed out, and that led to some situations years later where some writers may have tried too hard to "fix" the image of a kindly scientist working for the good of humanity, by making him raging and angsty, like in Mark Waid's run on FF, where he travels into an afterworld to smash Dr. Doom in revenge for all the agony he's caused to the rest of the FF at that point. And you know what? I think that went too far. As if it weren't bad enough that Waid's left-wing politics were seeping through already.

There is nothing inherently wrong with just keeping a personality, such as it is, on an easygoing level. Sometimes even that can count as wish-fulfillment, which I thought was what Superman was supposed to represent in some way or other. And if we don't respect the past, how can we really appreciate the future?

All that aside, from what I know about Martin, he's not very appealing, either as a novelist or as a political commentator. Let's consider his would-be masterpiece, the Game of Thrones series and TV show, for starters. It's flooded with gore galore, gruesome murders, and to make matters worse, it relies quite a bit on sexual abuse, and what's really chilling is that the women's viewpoints may not matter here:

Even if you accept Sansa/Jeyne’s rape as canon, the way that the scene was shot left many uncomfortable. As Sansa’s being attacked, her friend Theon Greyjoy watches. The camera focuses on his horror rather than Sansa’s pain. [...]

Some fans have interpreted those moments where female characters experience sexual violence as opportunities for them to overcome adversity and become stronger for it. Even if you accept that as a valid argument, though, it’s tough to defend when we’re made to think that the people being most traumatized by the experiences are the men witnessing it.

I think there is a valid complaint there: some of the most violent moments in Game of Thrones, from what I've researched, sound awfully sensationalistic, and while it's better if we don't view the rape act directly, if only the men's personas and development matter, and not the women's, then little or nothing is achieved, and no educational value to be found. I'll have nothing to do with this cesspool, and thinking back on this now, it makes me wonder if this explains why Martin doesn't seem to place a very high value on the female casts of either Marvel or DC.

And anybody who says men like Martin were influenced by superhero comics makes me sigh and shake my head in disappointment at how inaccurate that is. Most of their flagship offerings are far from jarringly venomous as Martin's product is, and anybody who says people like him were influenced by superhero comics, if anything, are running the gauntlet of framing superhero comics as more of a horror show, and giving them a bad name.

Then, politics-wise, there's his grimy attacks on Republicans to ponder. He accuses them of being vote-suppressors, being "racists clad in dead elephant skins" and that's just a few of his most reprehensible acts. There's even his pointless hatred of the Sad Puppies campaign that's bothersome. He clearly doesn't want competition from anybody who holds a political perspective different from his. I guess he wants to hog all those Hugo awards for himself.

In the end, I don't see much of anything to like about George R.R Martin. I think the only "song" he has to sing is one of sub-zero icicles.

Labels: dc comics, Fantastic Four, Flash, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence

At the end of this column on Arcamax, talking about history items and such, they bring up a new book about Will Eisner that's written by Paul Levitz, and says:

This book doesn't have the Kidd touch, but it has something better: It was written by Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics for much of my adult life. Levitz knows his bones, especially when it comes to comics history [...]

He may know a thing or two about history, but he sure doesn't know much about modern marketing, recalling that he was a prominent executive by the 1990s, and did nothing on his part to ensure DC and other such publishers would have wider recognizability and availability, instead allowing comicdom at the time to exclude themselves largely to the specialty stores, and it took a while until they made a return, and by then prices were rocketing much higher, and pamphlets selling much lower. Nor did he do anything on his part to respect the works of past writers, recalling all the Green Lantern botch jobs of the times. Worse, he even stood by silently as Dan DiDio and his own clique manufactured Identity Crisis, and collaborated with the Kuwaiti propagandist who concocted "The 99", and that only made clear Levitz lost his moral compass.

On which note, as if it couldn't get any more tasteless, I discovered that Brad Meltzer wrote the introduction to Levitz's biography of Eisner. Needless to say, all that does is lower my respect for Levitz even more, and confirms where he stands on the notorious 2004 miniseries. Hence, Levitz is another of many writers whose work I now find myself forced to separate from the writer and take with a grain of salt.

As I've said at least once before, there was a time when Levitz had talent, as with the Legion of Super-Heroes. But he's long done his darndest to make it difficult to appreciate that, and it's very sad.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence

I spotted some tweets by the disgraceful Muslim convert now writing propaganda at Marvel from a few weeks ago when the San Bernardino tragedy took place. Predictably, she tries to separate the issues by making it sound like it's 2 different belief systems here:

You export terrorism when you know you've already lost the battle for hearts and minds.

— G. Willow Wilson (@GWillowWilson) November 14, 2015

They are fighting for a dead ideology. They attack so viciously because they know they will lose. The future is a foregone conclusion.

— G. Willow Wilson (@GWillowWilson) November 14, 2015

Unfortunately, the ideology she speaks of is still very much alive, and still practiced; the same one as she practices. All she's doing is parroting the same kind of narrative George W. Bush used, about Islam being "hijacked". And that kind of approach can be very misleading and undermining.

She even attacked the Republicans:

I guess Republicans finally know what it feels like to watch in horror as a warped, extremist wing of their ideology comes to represent them

— G. Willow Wilson (@GWillowWilson) December 8, 2015

Oh, what's this? Moral relativism, I presume? She predictably ignores why any of their members want to keep these Muslim "migrants" out of the USA now: because of the Paris and San Bernardino bloodbaths. They're trying to act in the interests of the public's safety. Not that any of this matters to somebody as dishonest as Wilson is, unfortunately.

Labels: Europe and Asia, islam and jihad, moonbat writers, politics, terrorism, violence

The Philadelphia Inquirer spoke about the gradually vanishing newspaper strips, which have been declining in readership - but also in quality - for over 15 years now, starting with Edge City. However, this article gives an idea why even that comic strip lost impact:

They broached topics not found elsewhere in the comics, hosting a bar mitzvah and a seder, introducing a same-sex romance, and weaving in a Holocaust story inspired by Patty's work with survivors.

"For a while," she said, "we were like, How far can you push the comics?"

If the gay affair was presented positively, I'm afraid it was much too far. They just had to spoil everything by making that nonsense equivalent to the other topics. Besides, I'm sure Doonesbury already dealt with LGBT subjects, so that wouldn't be new.

When all these PC issues are mixed in, they shouldn't be surprised that newspaper strips end up losing audiences today.

Labels: comic strips, msm propaganda, politics

The pretentious comics columnist now working for the Hollywood Reporter listed his picks for 2015, and thinks the remake of the far superior 1983-86 DC series is a classic:

Tom King and Barnady Bagenda's reboot of the obscure space opera property is, in many ways, the anti-Guardians of the Galaxy: an unapologetically complex political thriller in which the good guys aren't above implanting explosives in the necks of those they hope to recruit and the bad guys genuinely believe they're fighting the terrorists. It's all the better for that, as well; unlike any other superhero book at DC or Marvel, it makes for fascinating, grim and utterly compelling reading — and Trevor Hutchison's covers make it one of the best looking books on the stands.

"Complex"? I'd say it's more like a distorted reflection of both good and evil. It reeks of all the most twisted liberal fantasies you could find out there. How can we sympathize with "good guys" who threaten to murder would-be recruits? And why is the side "fighting the terrorists" supposed to be "bad guys"? It's just madness in a new outfit.

As for the older 1983-86 series being obscure, that's because DC's never tried to give it the recognizability it deserves, by reprinting it in archives and promoting it as space adventure with metaphorical themes alluding to real life. I don't think they've ever reprinted the original Outsiders either (and McMillan isn't even asking them to). And if they won't respect the older material, what's the point of doing all this new nonsense?

Labels: dc comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, terrorism, violence

KPBS in San Diego wrote about a local comics store opening an extra branch in town, and along the way, they cite a problem from history that's still quite relevant:

Comic books were once the Rodney Dangerfield of the literary world. Not only did they fail to get any respect, they also came under attack. There were comic book burnings in the late 1940s, and in 1954 a Senate committee was formed to consider if there was a link between comics and juvenile delinquency and if the government needed to step in and regulate the industry. Comics survived that wave of moral panic to face new challenges and stereotypes.

"For longest time people only thought of comics as juvenile fare and nothing that you’d want to read once you were past 13 or 14, and recently we have seen that to not be the case," Robert Scott said.

Trouble is, if you know where to look, many still do. And as I've written before over the past year, and come to realize, there's still a serious problem with SJWs who'd gladly commit book burnings today, and for now are certainly enjoying both yelling for censorship of sex-positive storytelling elements while enjoying the backing of a complacent comics press that's been throwing well regarded artists under the bus by trying to shame their art designs. I hope the store proprietor they spoke with understands that. In a way, it all began with the cases that led to the Gamergate campaign, but video games obviously aren't the only product of the entertainment medium that became a target of such pathetic SJWs.

However, this same article also contains something that bothers me:

T.J. Shevlin manages the Comic Art Gallery and said his new neighbors prove one thing: "Brick and mortar comic shops are never going to go away. Comic book stores are special. They don’t sell anything that you need; they sell something you want. And it caters to that desire."

Hitting that niche market is part of what drives the success of a comic book store.

"We have a specialized product that has a fan base that is highly motivated to seek it out, so that helps," Scott explained. "It also comes out on a regular basis. We have new issues every week, whereas if you are a book reader and you have three or four favorite authors you might see a book a year."

I wish that were true, that the stores sell what you want, but that's not always the case. Or, what a certain crowd wants is not what it actually wants to read, but rather, store in plastic in hopes it'll become monetarily valuable someday. And it's that speculator crowd that's been turning the industry into a joke. The customer isn't always right, and if I were a speculator, I'd be wrong to focus my attention solely on buying various comic pamphlets just for profit and not for reading and entertainment value.

And even the part about publishing basis bothers me. Pamphlets are outdated, and paperbacks/hardcovers make a far better way to convince people to take the art form seriously, yet no arguments are raised on why it's better to make the shift. I don't know how many authors there are overall in comicdom, but even comics in paperback and hardcover form can debut every week, so it's not like there wouldn't be anything to buy and read. There's also no mention here of whether cover prices have gotten too big for anybody who does believe in reading value, and if this could discourage new readers from trying out pamphlets, even though, as mentioned, they're decidedly an outdated format.

That's the problem with some comics store managers. They don't seem to consider the long term effects for the medium, and how to make improvements for the better.

Labels: msm propaganda, politics, sales, technology

While announcing a series of variant covers Marvel's publishing featuring some of their most notable superheroines (which does not equal good storytelling and only costs more money on cover artwork), two so-called news sources opportunistically exploited the moment to incite against a certain artist by implying he's "disrespectful" to women:

As Comics Alliance astutely noted, the list of commissioned artists includes female artists and male artists known for treating female characters with respect. AKA, there’s no Frank Cho.

Whoa, did you see that? Just what do they mean? Are they saying that drawing babes sexily is synonymous with making women out to be "peabrains"? Tsk tsk tsk. Not to mention their insinuation Cho's some kind of monster is unbecoming and disgraceful, and for people supposedly arguing about respect, they sure don't seem to have the same for Cho. No mention that he made a contribution to a women's shelter group either, I see.

If there were a valid issue to take with Cho, I'd say it would have to be over this incredibly dumb allusion-to-nudity joke he and Greg Pak wrote in "Totally Awesome Hulk". The PC diversity pandering aside, I just don't think that's amusing, and above all, it's actually disrespectful to their own creation, which has to be the ultimate irony about all this diversity mishmash: they're not very respectful to the cast of characters replacing the white protagonists.

Drawing a woman gorgeously is not a crime. In fact, according to a Chicago university study, it was discovered that women with large breasts were a lot more intelligent than previously thought. So all these two crummy comics sites are doing is insulting beautiful women by implying they're "stupid". If the sites have a problem with graphic nudity all done for cheap sensationalism, that's fine. But tasteful illustration along the lines of what you might see in Sports Illustrated - which is usually a lot tamer than Playboy's centerfolds - is nothing to complain about, and I think the two sites at the very least owe Cho an apology for their petty insult. I guess we won't hear them complaining about the crappy joke in the PC-laden Hulk or how that might be construed as insulting to men, especially Asian men, by contrast, huh?

Labels: Hulk, marvel comics