The Four Color Media Monitor

Entertainment Weekly's providing a look at their cover for this week's exclusive story about the upcoming Capt. America movie, and they include a little commentary from star Chris Evans:

Our story also brings you to the set of the London-based production, directed by Joe Johnston (The Wolfman, October Sky). During a break in shooting, Evans — on his second tour of Marvel duty, having played the Human Torch in Fox’s Fantastic Four films — explained he was reluctant to accept the call of Captain America, in part because he had already portrayed a Marvel-ous mystery man. Of course, he also worried about the potential cost of failure, but he also worried the potential cost of fame should the movie be a hit.

“At the time, I remember telling a buddy of mine, ‘If the movie bombs, I’m f—-ed. If the movie hits, I’m f—-ed!’” After declining the part three times, Evans took a meeting with Marvel execs and Johnston and was dazzled by their plans for the movie. He still felt wary about suiting up for Captain America — but then he had an epiphany. “I was just scared,” he says. “I realized my whole decision making process was fear based, and you never want to make a decision out of fear.’” Evans signed a six-picture deal with Marvel to play the character, and he has no regrets: “I can’t believe was almost too chicken to play Captain America.”

Trouble is, what if this earlier info turns out to be correct - suggesting the studio has acted out of fear - and Evans' decision to join really does turn out to be a career-damaging mistake, to say nothing of an embarrassment for a classic creation?

Labels: Captain America, marvel comics

Alas, even the comic-based TV serials can fall victim to time-wasting leftist propaganda, and as this Big Hollywood entry reports, Smallville, the Superman-in-youth series that's run a long time, is doing something not many TV programs of yore intentionally did decades ago: it's sold out to left-wing nonsense. For example:

...now, in its 10th and what is supposed to be final season, a definite political agenda has crept into the show. It started out fine with the season premiere episode, but in the second episode (entitled “Shield“) they introduced a character from the comics named Cat Grant. Here she was portrayed as a typical Conservative woman as seen through the distorted glasses worn by a Liberal: She was naive, arrogant, judgmental, and annoying as hell in a squeaky clean way. She referred to the fact that superheroes should “come out of the shadows (i.e. closet)” even though she thought they were obviously “bad.”

I was annoyed but thought, eh, maybe I’m reading to much into it.

The following episode, entitled “Supergirl” opened with an obviously “bad” radio talk show host (made to seem like Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, etc.) talking about the evils of these super-powered vigilantes (read: illegal immigrants) and how they must be stopped, etc., etc. He’s taken over by a super-baddie and fans the flames of fear and hatred against super-vigilantes. Oh, he’s religious, too.

Second episode in a row… maybe it’s NOT just my imagination.

Now we’re onto the next: “Homecoming.” In this episode, four minutes from the end, Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow) goes off full-on into a liberal talking points speech – talking about oil money greed and putting up a barbed wire fence to keep out people that just want a better life. Granted, the comic book character has always been portrayed as a Liberal, but he’s been on the show for 3 1/2 years and this is the first I’ve noticed it.

Yeah. Something is definitely up.

And last week’s episode, “Isis” – where I cringed at the return of Cat Grant who was her pleasant self once again. I suppose the writers figured that they were being too subtle for the typical Smallville fan, so in this episode they actually had her say “I will never understand liberals.”

Of course I’ve gotten into arguments with readers on my own site over this – but even some of those who at first were saying “aw, come on, you’re reading too much into this” are starting to say “What the hell – can they knock this political crap off?”

Luckily, the series is coming to an end this year. Yet it's very, very sad that as they near the end of the run, they stoop to this kind of rotten contempt. What is the use of deliberately making a show awful on its way out? I don't think it'll help the series long-term if they're hoping to sell it on DVD and other recorded formats in the video libraries. All it does it leave the series with a very bad afterstench, as it could be remembered as a series that sold itself out to political sewage water.

Labels: dc comics, politics, Superman

An article in the Daily Yomiuri about American trained manga artists who've gotten special publications of their own distributed right in Japan.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

The website of Collider transcripted a few paragraphs from a Newsarama video interview with Marc Guggenheim, and he only reiterates some of the earlier info I'd gathered, again signaling that this will only be a variation on a horror thriller:

“We’re being true to the whole Barry Allen science police. We’re being true to those origins and updating them for the 21st century. I feel like in many ways the movie is three movies in one. It’s part thriller — that forensic, cool, Seven, Silence of the Lambs — part superhero movie, and part sports movie because there’s an athleticism to this character that other superheroes don’t have… And you get to see how all three of those elements inform each other and make the whole movie even better. It’s sort of like the way in Green Lantern we took a superhero movie and combined it with a space opera, here we’re combining the superhero movie with these other two genres and it’s just a blast.”

Oh no it's not. If all is going according to what he's laid out, this will not be worth the celluloid it's being filmed upon one bit. Granted, I am aware that Barry Allen played a little basketball a few decades ago, but any horror-movie elements injected here can only ruin that. And where does some of the influence come from besides that?

“We’re drawing I think a lot from a lot of different eras. Certainly Geoff Johns’ work has been an influence. Mark Waid’s run, particularly the stuff he wrote with the philosophy of speed and the philosophy of running has been a big influence. We’ve also tried to take our inspiration from the old Silver Age Barry Allen stories and imbue it with that sense of fun and wonder while still keeping that cool, slightly darker tone.”

So "darker" is cooler, and not brighter? I'm sorry, it does not compute, and if any resulting film they're making comes within even miles of the 2 thrillers Guggenheim mentioned, that's reason enough for me to be frightened away.

I wonder if the Green Lantern movie, which is already in production, will be anything like Se7en and Silence of the Lambs too? And even if they won't be, the sensationalism surrounding the hype is really maddening and alienating.

But I guess not much else can be expected from the writer who killed off Bart Allen in a very stupid, unimaginative way 3 years ago.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, violence

And under the helming of J. Michael Stracynski, it can only be as unimaginative as possible. The UK Daily Mail says that in Earth One's story, the Man of Steel:

...now has angrily smouldering eyes, a lanky build, straggly hair, low-slung baggy jeans and, according to his creators at DC Comics, 'realises he doesn’t belong anywhere and doesn’t fit in'.

Transforming that most clean-cut and all-American of superheroes into a moody, misunderstood urban youth is the latest example of comic book creators attempting to update classic characters for a new generation of readers.

And under JMS, guaranteed to be one of the most bankrupt.

In Superman: Earth One, the first in a series of comic books putting famous DC characters into a more modern setting, the character is now aged 21 and physically far less imposing than the lantern-jawed, muscle-bound hero created 78 years ago.

'We wanted to tell a story that’s hip, sexy and moody,' said Dan DiDio, DC Comics’ co-publisher.

And we've heard it all before too. Nothing great can be expected of this either.

Superheroes – traditionally white, male and heterosexual - have been through considerable updates over the years, often in the spirit of diversity and political correctness.

Exactly the problem! And it's been done so horribly often over the past 2 decades, it's nothing new anymore, and we can't expect any different from this JMS penned book either. I figure it'll just compete with his current walking-tour story in the main Superman series for which one is the worst written of JMS's current work.

Update: CNS News has published a report of their own about this (via Hot Air Headlines), and they tell a little extra:

The creators also portray the new Superman as politically correct -- refusing to become “an instrument of politics or policy” of the United States, saying things like: “I was raised in this country. I believe in this country. Does it have its flaws? Yes. Does it have its moments of greatness? Yes. Bottom line is, it's my home and I'll always carry those values around with me. But if I do what I can do just for the U.S., it's going to destabilize the whole world. It could even lead to war.”

Sigh. Do I detect a left-wing anti-war message about this? Try as they might, I don't think they'll be able to disguise that now.

Adam R. Holtz, senior associate editor of the youth culture magazine Plugged In, told CNSNews.com that the re-design was obviously spurred by the success of the movie “The Dark Knight,” which re-imagined Batman in a much darker way.

“We have to look at 'The Dark Knight' as sort of a template for what they’re trying to do with these superheroes,” Holtz told CNSNews.com. “Unfortunately, it seems like ‘dark’ and ‘brooding’ – and everything that goes with that – sells.”

Comic book characters both reflect and shape how we look at our time and culture, Holtz said. Disturbingly, the newly re-envisioned Superman is a good metaphor for this particular day and age in America, he said.

“Truth, Justice and the American Way are all under attack, pretty much however you would like to look at it,” Holtz said. “A lot of people don’t believe in Truth or Justice anymore, and the American Way used to be something that we would fight for, but now there are a lot of people who would say the American Way is inherently a problematic thing – and so it gets deconstructed in popular culture.”

And when it's deconstructed, so too is our culture, and the imagination. It brings to mind again how, back in 1990, when WB's television unit adapted the Flash for TV, Batman's vision infiltrated, and I do think that in retrospect, it doesn't hold up well at all.

Update: Big Hollywood has an article now mentioning this.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, politics, Superman

Trouble With Comics writes about at least 3 covers, one for Green Lantern and two others for Emerald Warriors, including the one I've posted here with a heavy heart, which aren't exactly something sensible publishers would want to use for marketing the movie planned for next year. As they say about this abomination:

To be blunt, this has simply got to be the worst superhero cover of the year. I look at it and wonder who would be enticed to purchase it. If someone has bought issues one through four, then I guess they’d buy it to ensure they haven’t missed an issue. But otherwise it’s worse than buying an issue of Playboy and reading it on a bus full of school children because at least then you could claim that you bought it for the articles and, look, there’s an interview with Philip Roth and short fiction by Tom Robbins. This cover, with the main character bleeding from his eyes and projectile vomiting towards something off-screen, is disgusting. It does not sell (or tell anything) about the comic. It is horrible beyond description.

Absolutely. It's also an insult to Guy Gardner fans, and makes me feel as sorry for him as I do for Carol Ferris, also mentioned in the blog post. And it actually makes me feel increasingly discouraged about the GL movie too. Any decent moviegoer who discovers the existence of obnoxious, mind-numbing covers like these might either be discouraged in turn, or will regret spending money at the box office. I also don't like the near-computerized approach many cover artists are taking these days, yet it pales in comparison to any stunt they pull with vulgarity.

This is not a great time to be a GL Corps fan, and hasn't been since 2004.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful artists, Green Lantern, misogyny and racism, violence, women of dc

Here's an article from the AFP about a new manga-based opera that's going on show in several European locations starting with Paris.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

ICV2 looked at September's sales, and even they have to admit that they're scraping bottom:

Now that the third quarter of 2010 is over, it’s clear that the negative trends that comic stores have been bucking for the last two years have finally taken their toll: sales of comics and graphic novels were down a combined 12% for the quarter. Comic sales were down 14% and graphic novel sales down 6%. This is the largest year over year quarterly decline we’ve seen since we started tracking these numbers in 2004.

September sales were a continuation of negative trends for the quarter, with a 12% decline in comic sales and a 2% decline in graphic novel sales.

[...]

Pricing may be part of the problem, but the real issue is a dearth of major hits. Like all entertainment businesses, the comics category rises and falls on the strength of its strongest titles, and the strongest titles just aren’t that hot right now, especially in the core superhero lines of the Big Two. Marvel took a break from major events this year (see “Interview with Marvel’s Dan Buckley, Part 1”) and hasn’t had any big PR successes for a while, and DC has seemed like it was moving through molasses for much of the year as its New York staff waited for the other shoe to drop in the company’s ongoing reorganization (it recently hit the floor, see “DC’s Move West to Affect 80”).

And why aren't they "hot"? Simply put, because they've enslaved their products to horrific editorial mandates and favoratism for specific writers (Bendis, Johns, to name but a few of the worst writers littering up their houses today), and I'm not sure they've abandoned crossovers altogether (the War of Kings "event" may still be waiting around the corner). But even if they have, they've already succeeded in turning off more than enough people with their pointless tactics and sensationalism, and as I've said before, Quesada and DiDio's names alone are likely what's scaring many away from associating themselves with the big two.

Here's the master list of last month's sales, and again, it looks very dire.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, dreadful writers, marvel comics, sales

And how do they go about doing this? By getting Marvel to draw and publish several covers for their own comics output that depict Marvel heroes as they would supposedly look in a computerized world. Wired has at least 10 scans of these. But ugh, do they look awful! Even the one with Ms. Marvel is simply dreadful. Though it does tell what the Disney Corp's real intentions are with Marvel, and that's to milk it for little more than insipid promos.

Tron was actually a very dull movie when it was first produced in 1982, and the special effects didn't help. If anything, it was a precursor for movies that overindulge in FX (I'd sooner get bitten by a Texas rattlesnake that be lost in The Matrix again. I made a big mistake viewing that film almost a decade ago). I certainly don't see what the point is of making a sequel to it now.

I think this very blatant misuse by Disney just shows how their purchase of Marvel is really turning out to be a bad thing, and variant covers this bad are only going to precipitate their downfall.

Labels: marvel comics

The website of Blastr features their choices of at least 7 of the worst resurrections of all time in comics. Their number one selection is none other than Aunt May Parker's from 1998, ruining one of the best, most simple passings ever thought of in 1994. We have Bob Harras to thank for that, of course. (Also Howard Mackie, because he didn't know when to quit as writer and save his reputation.)

Strangely, the article does seem to get a few things inaccurate: Gwen Stacy was Peter Parker's college sweetheart, not high school. And it was in Spider-Man #98, not #75, where this took place (during the "Final Chapter", one of Spidey's poorest moments). And I think both Mary Jane Watson and her Aunt Anna were present with Aunt May and Peter during what should've been her real demise.

The second choice is Jason Todd's. They cite how Superboy-Prime, a Mary-Sue if there ever was one, made for one of the most idiotic excuses for how to "justify" the history changes DC editorial mandate made during Infinite Crisis. Todd's resurrection has since proven pointless. Blastr does make a worthy point though of the hows and whys of Todd's original demise:

I seem to recall that Jason was fairly popular when first introduced, and equally unpopular once he'd morphed into the "total douche" version of Robin after the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (or "Ass-Hat-Robin," as he was known at the time). But rather than just "improving the writing" (a tactic abandoned in a number of comics throughout the nineties), DC had a phone-line poll to see if the brat lived or died.

I have to admit that there's a valid point signified in this. Here they had a chance to just scrap whatever unappealing traits he'd been given for no good reason and provide Todd with a personality easier to accept. Instead, they turned him into a pawn in a game of death, setting a very poor example of how to deal with a character whose depiction is dreadful. Sure, it could have some upside in retrospect, like being a variation on Elektra's original death at the hands of Bullseye in 1983, something that was undone just a few years later. But long term, it may have unintentionally set a very disturbing trend for how to deal with a character whose characterization is terrible: instead of fixing that, the answer is to just kill them outright. Does that really help? Nope.

Update: here's an old item from Mania's Comicscape (formerly part of Cinescape) from about 2005, where they discuss the subject of Jason.

Labels: bad editors, Batman, dc comics, golden calf of death, marvel comics, Spider-Man

The AFP reports that the comics industry in the Philippines, which used to be very big, has dwindled dreadfully, in a way that mirrors the USA's own industry:

MANILA — Philippine comic books have nurtured talent for international TV and animation blockbusters, but the once-mighty industry is fighting to survive as it comes up against the Internet and other new media.

Comic books that dominated the Philippine publishing industry just a couple of decades ago are now largely relegated to photocopied titles sold in a few specialty stores and at conventions, lamented veteran artist Rico Rival.

Who knew that the US comics industry wasn't the only one suffering such a huge drop? Even in Asia, as this tells, there's a very surprisingly similar situation.

Labels: Europe and Asia

He slammed Marvel's heroes in the movie biz, which I don't think is a good idea:

At the New York Comic Con this weekend, The Superman SuperSite reports that DC Entertainment Creative Director Geoff Johns reiterated Nelson's comments while adding his personal feelings about Marvel Studios.

"I'm going to speak frankly," Johns told the crowd. "I think our characters are bigger than Marvel's." Johns continued that DC would work on building up the individual characters in their comic book movie universe, rather than "smashing them together."

I'm afraid that's taking a risk there of sounding like Bill Jemas when he was Marvel's exploitative manager. Yes, DC's creations are great, but then so are Marvel's, and it's really not in good form for one company representative to put down the other's. But I guess we really can't expect much else from a writer who's got little respect for the DCU cast he's been allowed to work on, and who's done more to smash them apart, in contrast to his whole argument against smashing "together".

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, marvel comics

I was looking around on the Dixonverse board, and discovered that left-liberalism has found its way into the Justice Society, when a reader informed of the following:

I was going to pick this up today with my books, but, after reading the 'Afterschool School Special/Degrassi Next Generation' on abused, alcoholic Gay Adoption superhero, I quickly put it back and saved $5.99. Still, I want to thank DC for putting this story first in the issue, they could have buried it in the back and I may have been duped into buying what I thought was a superhero book.

Dear dear dear. Looks like this ultra-lefty nonsense has struck again, I can guess, with Obsidian, whom they "outed" out of nowhere in recent times, maybe even before Renee Montoya underwent the abrupt change to lesbian in 2003. This sounds vaguely reminiscent of Alpha Flight's embarrassingly bad story with Northstar in 1992, written by Marvel's hack writer Scott Lobdell, one of a few books he wrote at the time that wasn't officially X-related. And they wonder why they're failing?

Reading this also brought to mind how, in the past year, I'd come across a handful of leftist message board posters and/or bloggers who were attacking DC Comics as "conservative", including one who was using the abominable Cry for Justice miniseries as an excuse to attack Glenn Beck! Why would anyone think DC Comics is "conservative" when a simple inspection under a microscope would show they're anything but? Besides, taking out their anger against the right won't solve any of the current problems at stake, and will only allow DC's rotten apple staffers to get away with the bad things they're doing, no matter what their political positions.

And isn't this the company that, when officially run by DiDio, fired conservative-leaning Chuck Dixon altogether after all the good he tried to bring them?

One more item that's worth noting on the same thread is this:

I love Golden Age characters in general and the JSA in particular, but I think it's time for DC to put them away for a while. DC has gotten so wrapped up in the whole legacy thing that they're forgetting to just tell stories. Never mind the fact that, for most of them, it's just ridiculous that they're still running around at all. DC should have employed a sliding timescale with the JSA so that they were always 20 years older than the JLA, but instead they chose to keep them tied to WWII (which is no more integral to most of them than it is to Superman and Batman, unlike Captain America, for example). Personally, I'd rather see a revived All-Star Squadron set back during WWII, and see the JSA (and the Freedom Fighters, and all the other Golden Agers) in their prime.

Trouble is, even that would surely undergo leftist indoctrination, including vicious anti-war propaganda! Seeing how DC handles their output these days, I wouldn't put it past them.

Labels: dc comics, Justice Society of America, politics

Here's a short article in the Asheville Citizen-Times about a visit Denny O'Neil of Batman writing fame made to the Mars Hill College.

Labels: good writers

KC Carlson at Westfield Comics writes about DC's dropping at least 2 pages along with the cover price for several comics - and Marvel's possibly doing the same - and says it's could only be a grave error:

While I think that the $2.99 cover price is obviously a much more attractive price point for a 32-page comic book than $3.99, it’s the dropping of the two story pages that is really the bigger issue — when you consider the historical context. I think that decision is actually going to be a colossal mistake. Plus, it’s a sure sign that folks at DC don’t remember their history.

More of which can be read about in the rest of the article. For now, I can say that, in today's very editorially mandated and badly scripted atmosphere, the loss of pages won't matter much. I'm not buying the new books of today's DC and Marvel; the people in charge today have only been interested in destroying my childhood, so the loss of pages won't make any difference, as the writing will still be very, very bad. And the people in charge can only blame themselves for their failure to draw in new crowds while losing the old ones simultaneously.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, sales

On the Too Busy Thinking About Comics blog, the post tells all about the colossally overrated J. Michael Stracynski's run on the Mighty Thor, and how any women featured in the book were depicted in a very peculiarly trivial manner, shoved into the background, or just not even an essential part of the story, with Sif one of the biggest victims, as she was, courtesy of Loki's nasty tricks, stuck in the body of an elderly woman who was dying. Even Jane Foster didn't come off well: she's divorced her husband and let go of her child, all in hopes that Thor would come back to her! How insensitive can the writing get?

If that's how JMS wrote his rendition of Thor's world, then I can only start to further doubt his defense that he really didn't want to go along with Joe Quesada's alleged doctoring of his "original" plans for Sins Past in Spider-Man. He's nothing more than a hack who takes apart years of hard work and makes a mess out of it, as he's already doing with Superman and Wonder Woman.

Labels: dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, women of marvel

In what's clearly a desperate move to salvage themselves, DC has announced they're going to lower their prices by a dollar for several titles that are 4 dollars, and even drop backup features. But there's one little problem:

The move to the lower price will mean a decrease in story pages — from 22 pages to 20 in a standard 32-page comic — as well as the loss of co-features in eight titles, including Action Comics, Adventure Comics and Detective Comics.

Oh, so what good is it then? All that means is there'll be less story room, and considering how bad they've become, it won't make much difference to anyone already disillusioned with their shattered universe. And 2 of those 3 titles above have lost their main stars - Superman and Batman - one more reason why they've lost audience.

(Nearly a decade ago, Marvel began dropping at least one story page in several books too, all for the sake of a kind of summary page that wasn't really needed.)

As for Marvel, they're only lowering prices on new books in January, and it doesn't sound like they're going to lower the prices on their flagship titles. But even if they do, they'll probably follow suit with DC, which won't make much difference since even their storytelling has been limp for years now.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, sales

News Real Blog writes about how, in the movies, for example, the Man of Steel needs to reclaim the American Way, and the choice of Christopher Nolan and Zach Snyder to put the next movie together. They might be the perfect team to do this if they can combine their best traits, but it's still easier said than done.

Among the things they're going to have to avoid is politicizing the movie the way Superman Returns was, and that includes avoiding the ridiculous notion that the American Way phrase must be omitted from the movie because it'd supposedly bother potential moviegoers. Otherwise, all they'll be doing is alienating and dividing the public opinion, and that's something they'd do well to avoid this time around, if they really want to make money.

Labels: dc comics, Superman

This panel on the side is from Hawkman #30, September 2004, at the time Jim Palmiotti took over the writing, and seems to confuse Hawkman's mask with religion instead of secret identities for personal safety, all for the sake of a potential attack on security measures at airports that could require being allowed to identify who's behind an Islamic niqab. Yes, this is sadly an example of how DC, just like Marvel, can inject ridiculous politics post-9/11, and jumble up superheroics with "cultural sensitivity" issues.

Another problem is that, at this time 6 years ago, they may have even abruptly contradicted the earlier premise that Carter Hall's ID was no longer a secret; a blatant example of how DC can be quite disrespectful with their own continuity.

Labels: dc comics, islam and jihad, politics

Book Publishing Report features a press release from Simba Information telling that the audience is growing old with at least a quarter over 65. Yet it's only superficial, and as Comics Alliance tells, little more than bait for store retailers by claiming that comic-based movies will actually bring them big bowls of cash. Sorry, but that myth's long been dispensed.

And the really sad part is thinking about how the audience for this medium is growing old.

Labels: sales

ICV2 interviewed Marvel's publisher Dan Buckley, who's long proven himself just as bad as Joe Quesada, and he babbles that:

It’s another pretty good year. The industry’s a little bit softer year over year, but considering the turmoil though that our economy’s gone through over the last three years experiencing softness the third year into it (single digit softness) is pretty good. I think everyone, the publishers, retailers, and creators, have performed very admirably in tough circumstances.

Yeah, right. Sooner or later, those pamphlet and periodical sales are going to really tank, and then he won't be so high and mighty - and boastful - anymore. His take on the price hike to $4 isn't much better:

I think it’s the appropriate price point for the entertainment value and quality that we offer in the books. The $3.99 price point was already the price point for limited series and one-shots before we moved some of our regular series up, and we still have several regular series that are at $2.99. If we want to continue to have the talent and the quality that we offer in those books, it’s a price point that we had to explore. What we offer from an entertainment standpoint is pretty solid and I think we should be proud of that.

Again, all he can offer is laughter at his sheer ineptness, when that 4 dollar price has only led to further decline. "Talent" and "quality"? My foot. And obviously, it doesn't occur to him that if they'd maintained better writing and not gone for terrible publicity stunts over the past decade, they wouldn't be at this low level today.

Buckley is another alleged businessman who's only going to bring about the ruin of the company he works for, and will go down in history alongside Quesada as someone who singlehandedly destroyed Marvel.

Via Comics Beat.

Labels: marvel comics, sales

Movieline's website has picked up info that the Flash movie in the works has a writer on it who says he'd like to make it like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. He told Superhero Hype:

Green Lantern is always a bit lighter than that on earth but mixed with a twinge of the space opera, which has its own epic qualities to it. Flash as we’re getting into it is interesting, too. Though Barry Allen was a little lighter in the comic, I think because of the nature that he was a CSI and moved in this world of crime before this stuff happened. I think it’s tonally somewhere in between GL and Dark Knight. It’s actually a little bit darker than when we were working on Green Lantern, because you’re dealing with somebody who is already a crimefighter in a world of those kinds of criminals and that kind of murder and homicide. I find you talk a lot about different films when you’re working on a film, and we spend a lot more time talking about Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs as we construct that part of Barry’s world, then I thought when we got into it. It helps balance a guy in a red suit who runs really fast.

Wow, I am so NOT looking forward to whatever they have in the works, if all they can think of for Flash - and even Green Lantern - is the horror-thriller genre. He gets it completely wrong where Flash stands, which is more between Superman and Green Lantern, whereas the Emerald Gladiator is more in between Superman and Batman; that is, between brightness and darkness. For Flash, it's more in the direction of Superman.

This reminds me of the abortive Flash-based TV series from 1990-91, which came close on the heels of the Batman movie of the time, and the angle for the TV show was very likely influenced by that 1989 movie (and the music score for both came from Danny Elfman!). When I see what chilling ideas they have for the Scarlet Speedster now, which are probably even worse than what the TV show built its premise upon (hero's older brother is murdered by a vicious gang of motorbike thugs, led by a disgraced, disfigured - are you ready for this? - ex-policeman!), it makes me like that old TV series less and less, as I suspect it could've played a part in where the original comics have ended up now under Johns and DiDio.

And the screenwriter gets it fairly inaccurate about what kind of role Barry Allen played as a scientist: he worked in the lab, wasn't officially active out in the field, and I never got the impression he was actually into solving murders, just robberies, burglaries and hijackings, which can use the talents of a guy of his standing too, for heaven's sake. This has to be another serious problem with how Barry is being spoken about these days: they're taking his scientific background out of context, describing it only in a way that suits their politically correct idea of what a police forensics scientist is meant to be.

And if the story turns out to be as grisly as Silence of the Lambs or Se7en, I certainly won't be hurrying to the theater, where the darkness of the auditorium in use will only make things even more depressing.

Labels: dc comics, Flash, Green Lantern, violence

I guess it was only a matter of time before Kuwait's comics propaganda, which has been making inroads into animation as well, showed up in the US on a cable TV station. Family Security Matters has a whole article about the propaganda that even Barack Obama, disturbingly enough, has endorsed. The Hasbro toy company is going to launch a new cable channel with Discovery and:

The new media outlet, called The Hub, will officially start airing on October 11, with veteran broadcaster Margaret Loesch running the schedule. And on the schedule of The Hub network will be an animated series called “The 99”, which will bring to life the Islamic cartoon superheroes. This is the first time that I am aware of where a religious cartoon series has been broadcast and aimed at the general viewing public.

South Park is hardly a children’s cartoon show, but its incitement of rage from the Islamic world has set a precedent in broadcasting. In July 2001, the 68th show depicted Mohammed the prophet as a super-hero, joining forces with Buddha, Moses and others to fight evil, in an episode entitled “Super Best Friends.” When this episode was broadcast, there was no uproar. Subsequent depictions of Mohammed in South Park have led to deliberate censorship by Comedy Central, and angry reactions from Muslims. Most recently , when Mohammed was depicted, hidden inside a bear suit, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were subjected to death threats.

In such a climate, where adults in America and the West cannot be allowed to see Islam’s main character in cartoon form, it seems to be in decidedly poor taste to have superhero avatars of Allah depicted for children. It seems like indoctrination, an indoctrination made more blatant by Obama’s totally inappropriate promotion of The Ninety-Nine.

It's also symbolic of the [left-wing] politicization of entertainment, one of the biggest reasons why showbiz has been floundering so in the past decade, because they're repeatedly stuffing this propaganda down everybody's throats, making it impossible to find any escapism.

The best way to respond to this latest needless nonsense is to avoid the new Hub network, and save tons of money on the TV electric bill.

Update: more on this subject at Jihad Watch and Weasel Zippers.

Update 2: women's rights activist Phyllis Chesler has written about this subject for FOX News, and the disturbing double-standards to be found in this whole mess.

Labels: islam and jihad, politics, terrorism