Sunday, September 30, 2012 

ABC's Good Morning America reduced Wonder Woman to Superman's "sidekick"

I missed this initially, but as I now discovered on ScienceFiction.Com's review of Justice League #12, ABC's Good Morning America described Wonder Woman very peculiarly as Superman's "new sexy sidekick", as though she were never a famous icon in history:
The biggest gripe most Wonder Woman fans have is that this all seems to be an effort to strengthen Superman. Good Morning America displayed the graphic to the left where Wonder Woman isn’t even named, but refered to as Superman’s “New sexy sidekick.” Wonder fans are rightly outraged. Wonder Woman’s greatest strength is that she is Wonder Woman. Not Superwoman, not Batwoman, not She-Hulk, not Miss Thing (although, aside, I am delighted that a character by that name is coming), not the female derivative of a male character. She was created whole as her own stand-alone character, one of very, very few female heroes to be such. Even Black Canary debuted in Johnny Thunder’s strip and is widely known as Green Arrow’s longtime girlfriend, him being a headliner, her being a member of the Justice League/supporting character. Wonder Woman occupies a unique space in the world of super heroes… I’m desperately hoping she doesn’t become The Yoko of the Justice League.
Alas, with DiDio and Johns in charge, it's always bound to happen. The video of ABC's insult is over here (via DC Women Kicking Ass), and while I can't view it in my region, some of the comments on the sites I found it through tell that DC's staff told ABC that WW has been chasing Superman since 1988, even though she was far from doing that! It just symbolizes how the mainstream press cares zero about WW any more than the rest of the medium to the point where they'd reduce her to the status of a tagalong partner, which is very likely what all involved at DC were quite fine with doing.

Still, the recent sales charts show that sales for the issue remained pretty stagnant, so clearly not many were impressed with ABC's own distortions either.

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Saturday, September 29, 2012 

Stan Lee recovering from heart surgery

The Toronto Sun's reported that Stan Lee had to undergo heart surgery and get a pacemaker fitted; that was why he had to cancel several convention appearances recently. I'm glad to know he's okay.

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Friday, September 28, 2012 

Marvel/Fox studios hire Mark Millar to consult X-Men/FF movies

I can't believe this, but Fox Studios has hired Mark Millar to be a consultant for future X-Men and Fantastic Four movies. The press release they published says:
Marking an expanded commitment to some of its most important franchises, Twentieth Century Fox has brought on comics superstar Mark Millar to serve as a creative consultant on the studio’s upcoming projects based on Marvel Comics properties.

Millar wrote several celebrated Marvel books such as The Ultimates, Civil War and Wolverine: Old Man Logan, before moving on to found Millarworld (millarworld.tv), where he continues to develop existing film franchise titles Wanted and Kick-Ass, as well as newer comic properties The Secret Service, Superior, and Nemesis — the latter also in development at Fox. Millar will work with Fox on developing new avenues for its “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four” tentpoles.
I don't think they'd be very celebrated today. Civil War was one of the most needless, politicized crossovers of all time, and in the Ultimates, he dredged up the Hank Pym-as-spousal-abuser storyline just a couple issues into the series. Why would he be considered suitable for supervising the future movie adaptations they make? Even if his involvement didn't result in an R-rated bloodfest, he could still influence them to add alienating elements, even political. By the end of the day, what mainly matters is that with his resume, he's simply not the kind of writer whose name inspires excitement.

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Thursday, September 27, 2012 

Marvel staff gives Bendis a plaque he doesn't deserve

Once again, Marvel's modern staff has taken the self-indulgent, self-congratulatory route by awarding Brian Bendis with a plaque. All for 8 years on the Avengers:
The trophy/statue/plaque, given during a brief two day retreat in New York City, marks a changing of the guard at Marvel and a ideal vantage point to see all that Brian Michael Bendis has done. Although the writer is staying on with the publisher with new titles like All-New X-Men, and continuing his long-running Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Bendis’ run on Avengers is one of the longest in American comics history, joining the rarefied ranks of Chris Claremont’ s X-Men, Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier’s Groo, Dave Sim’s Cerebus and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four.
By sharp contrast, Roy Thomas has never gotten a company-based award like this for his contributions, has he? Alas, I don't think he ever did. Unlike Bendis, Thomas, along with Stan Lee, came up with much more memorable stories and characters, and never tried to forcibly change the book into the Defenders or Heroes for Hire. Yet it's a shameless writer like Bendis, what with all his contempt for characters he didn't create, who gets the prize that should've been given to Thomas.

This marks a leading example of Marvel's current editors going out of their way to pat themselves on the back over big, overrated nothings.

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012 

The sloppy marketing for the Dredd movie reveals a potential error made by Tinseltown

So the new movie based on Judge Dredd has tanked. Not that I care, really, because I was never impressed with the premise used by Britain's 2000 AD depicting the USA as a totalitarian police state. But Box Office Mojo's report about why it may have failed has something to ponder, suggesting the marketing efforts weren't all that different from how the comics medium itself does it:
In sixth place, comic book adaptation/remake Dredd bombed with just $6.3 million from 2,506 locations. That's less than one-third of Kick-Ass's $19.8 million, and only a little over half of the original Judge Dredd's $12.3 million (and that movie was considered a flop 17 years ago!). It's at least up on Shoot 'Em Up ($5.7 million) and about on par with April's Lockout ($6.2 million), though those comparisons suggest Dredd is on track for less than $20 million through its entire run. The audience was predominantly male (75 percent) and older (69 percent were 25 years of age or older) and they gave the movie a "B" CinemaScore. A 3D share is not currently available.

Dredd's awful performance is the latest example of how the Comic-Con/online fanboy crowd just doesn't make up a large portion of the moviegoers in this country. The movie came out of its Comic-Con screening in July with tons of online buzz and very strong reviews, and it maintained a 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes through at least its first 25 reviews (though it ultimately wound up at a more-reasonable 77 percent). As a result, the fanboy audience was very aware of this movie ahead of release, and anticipation seemed to be pretty high among this group as well. Ultimately, though, it's just not a big-enough group to drive strong business. For a good dissection of the hazards of targeting fanboys, check out this piece from earlier this year in The Hollywood Reporter.
Now it's true that the autumn release date was but one dooming factor. And the 3D effects could amount to another one. But it's also telling if the filmmakers saw more fit to promote this first and foremost to the comics fan crowd, rather than to market it to everyone and anyone who enjoys action fare. I think the error was that they had to market it based mainly on its being a comic book adaptation, rather than as a sci-fi action adventure; they could've sold it as "Assault on Precinct 13 in reverse". Why they chose to target the comic fandom audience more than the general crowd is puzzling. Then again, maybe they did so because the movie ultimately doesn't have much to offer beyond the apartment building it's set inside?

Regardless, this ought to offer a lesson to filmmakers that if they're going to adapt a comic into a movie, they shouldn't base their marketing campaign along the same lines as the comics medium, who do little or nothing to attract a wider following from people who don't officially read comics and graphic novels. Besides, the Comic-Con has long been less about comics and more about other forms of entertainment in the past 10 years, like movies, music, and computer games. So it's not like they're even marketing the movies to comics fans to begin with, since the comics fans might not even make up a sizable portion of the visitors to San Diego anymore. Just market the movie as an action fare, on its own terms, and not based solely on its being a comic adaptation. Will Hollywood get that message?

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Monday, September 24, 2012 

Some examples of violence-filled panels from Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern

I found several pictures from the 4th volume of Green Lantern that Geoff Johns wrote, plus a few from the GL Corps spinoff mostly written by Peter Tomasi, and thought it an idea to present everyone with an idea of just how unsuitable Johns is to be writing GL even on a simpler level of entertainment. For example:
I'm not sure what makes this different from the notorious scene in Green Lantern Vol. 3's 54th issue where Major Force stuffed Alexandra deWitt's corpse into the fridge after choking her to death, except for that the victim is a man this time, and the mangled body gripped in Shark's maw is in clearer view.

Even Kyle Rayner is subject to visual abuse:
I sometimes had the feeling the people in charge of DC then and now, didn't like their own creation in Kyle Rayner no matter what they thought of Hal Jordan, and it certainly shows here if this is how they're going to treat him.

Speaking of Kyle, here's something else that further enforces the perception they have it in for their own character:
(Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special #1 (fb, BTS)) - Sinestro sent Despotellis to Earth to infect Kyle Rayner’s mother. She eventually succumbed to the virus and Kyle blamed himself for not being able to save her.

(Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special #1) - Sinestro gathered Despotellis and the Sinestro Corps on Qward. Sinestro laid out their mission of using fear to make the chaos of the universe bend to their will, and to replace it with law and order. Their first step was to burn anyone thst would oppose their plan, so they had to destroy the Green Lantern Corps. They brought Kyle Rayner to Qward and stripped him of the Ion entity. Sinestro needed Kyle to feel fear, so he revealed that Despotellis killed his mother, and that none of the loved ones of the GLC were safe. As fear overwhelmed Kyle Sinestro infected him with the Parallax entity.
Ugh! As though the finale of the 3rd volume weren't bad enough, with Major Force pretending he'd murdered Maura Rayner (and Kyle momentarily surrendering his power ring), Johns added insult to injury by killing her off in one of the Sinestro Corps War specials. Yet the Guardians saw fit to elect this alien warmonger a member of the GL Corps again?
Another reason why Sinestro's overnight acceptance as a reinstated GL is preposterous: he does what he accuses them of, violation, by crushing their skulls against metal bars, in GL #8.
And here's an example of how bloody Johns has made fight scenes. They don't even seem to trade dialogue while clashing anymore.

Here's some monstrosities that appeared in GL #21-25 and GL Corps #14-19:
Just bloody knuckling, stabbings of the disgusting kind, and even a crude joke made with what must be Superboy of Earth-Prime about eating uranium. This isn't a Green Lantern comic, it's a rejected Friday the 13th screenplay. Combat and death in the GL's world are one thing, but gore is entirely another, and is ill-suited for the series.

And so, there we have an example of just how low Green Lantern's sunk under Johns (and Tomasi), and instead of being a fun comic, it's been drowned out by sensationalistic bloodshed that has no place in escapist entertainment.

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Sunday, September 23, 2012 

Buffy comic gets a gay vampire hunter

In more news about left-leaning Joss Whedon, his Buffy comics are going to soon have a gay vampire slayer added to the cast. What Whedon and his staff are doing isn't really new; the TV series had a woman named Willow who was a lesbian introduced around the middle of the run, and for the comic series, it may not be that new either, but it's certainly a snoozer of an idea by now, and doesn't take much to figure out that it's just another tired addition to the already cliched insistence on "diversity" in comics. First it's abortion issues they just had to concern themselves about, and now this cliche. It's getting very old of tooth.

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Saturday, September 22, 2012 

Joss Whedon's "business aspect" for directing an Avengers sequel

Joss Whedon gave an interview to Fast Company's network (via Science Fiction and Geek Tyrant) where he said something strange at the end about why he's signed on to direct a sequel to the Avengers movie:
“There’s a business aspect to it and I would be disingenuous not to say that, but the question for me is, Do I have another story to tell about these people? So we worked on the business side of it and I didn’t think it was going to happen--I was like 'I’m never going to do this again.' But once they worked on the business aspect of it I thought that seems fair and cool, so, the question was, Do I have another thing to say? I was in London and I went to a pub and had some fish and chips and a pint and started writing in my notebook. I’m writing if I was going to do this what would I say and 40 minutes later I filled the notebook. So I text my agent and said to make the deal. I’m so in love with that universe and the characters and they way they were played and I have so much more I want to do with them. I know I can’t match the success of the first one but I can try to make a better film and that’s what I’m excited about, that’s the new room of fear I’m entering now.”
Does this mean he's entering it for the money involved?!? And is that also why he agreed to develop a TV series based on S.H.I.E.L.D? And this was the guy who blabbered at the SDCC against capitalism a few months ago! So where does he stand, really?

Yes, he says he loves the MCU, but the suggestion he's in this more for the dough overshadows his good intent. Why did he have to make such a scene of himself during the SDCC panels then?

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The attempted gang-rape in the new Amethyst story

According to this, the new take on Amethyst has 3 high school hoodlums threatening to commit a gang rape of another female student at a school. Although there was a similar scene in the original miniseries from the mid-80s, with 2 ogres tasked with either bringing Amethyst to Dark Opal or eliminating her altogether trying to do that before she fought them off with her amulet's power, this is so "real-world" by contrast that maybe it doesn't belong, because it gets in the way of the fantasy themes.

But the main problem, I think, is the reaction of the girl who was almost a victim:
Back on Earth, Amy turns up at the football field to, sure enough, she finds Beryl attacked by Tyler and two of his buddies. Amy puts her training to good use and drives them off, but Beryl, in a panic seems to blame Amy for what has happened.
I think that's the real problem here: she's blaming the savior rather than be angry at the aggressors and the lying leader. All the writer, Christy Marx, is doing is a poor job with a serious subject when the girl herself seems to realize what could be about to happen. And do they really have to be so obvious in what they'll recreate from the original?

Update: Tangognat has some better pictures available from both the old and the new miniseries, and there's quite a contrast to how things were done then and now. Good grief, Marx and company had to go that far, unlike the original, which was much more restrained? This is a dismay.

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Friday, September 21, 2012 

Greg Rucka tells why he's quitting both Marvel and DC

Here's an excerpt from Clint magazine that's run by Mark Millar, where Rucka explains why he's one of the stable of writers now bolting from the big two's employment:
I’ve reached the end of my Work For Hire rope. I’m enjoying The Punisher, but that’s not mine, it’s Marvel’s, and l knew that going in. I have spent a lot of my comics career in service of other masters, – and I’ve had enough of that for now. I’m sick to death of the way the Big Two treat people.

I gave seven very good years to DC and they took gross advantage of me. That’s partially my fault, but not entirely. At this point, I see no reason why I should have to put up with that, I can sink or swim on my own.

You are seeing a grotesque Hollywoodisation of the two main companies. There was at least a period where I felt that the way they wanted to make money was by telling the best story they could; now the quality of the work matters less than that the book comes out. There is far less a desire to see good work be done.

Dan DiDio has gone on record, and this is the same man that said Gotham Central would never be cancelled as long as he was there, telling people what a great book Gotham Central was, but it never made any money.

Well, take a look at your trade sales! That book has made nothing but money as a trade. What I’m now being told is, ”lt was never worth anything to us anyway.”So, you know what? They can stop selling the Batwoman: Elegy trade and stop selling the Wonder Woman trades and everything else I’ve done, because clearly I’ve not done anything of service and those guys aren’t making any money off me.

Right now, where the market is, I have no patience for it.

My run on Punisher ends on #16, and we are then doing a five-issue mini called War Zone and then I’m done. That’s it! The Powers-That-Be at Marvel, without talking to me, decreed that he’s going to join a team on another book.

That’s their choice, they own him, but I don’t have to be happy about it. I am glad I had the opportunity to work on the character and I’m proud of the work I’ve done.

Despite what the publishers say, their interest in the talent is minimal now, the interest is only in promoting the financial worth of their properties. That was not the case as of two or three years ago, when there was an ‘Exclusives war’, but that’s all gone by the wayside now. Ultimately, they are saying, “We don’t need you,’ because they can get a million more just like you.

For every person who passes on the opportunity to write Spider-Man or Superman, I guarantee there are 5000 hungry writers who would give their eye-teeth to do it. But just because they want to do it, it doesn’t mean they are capable of doing it. It comes down entirely to Warner Bros. realising what they owned but had not exploited. At the end of the Harry Potter franchise, they went “Oh, crap, we need something else fast’, looked over at Marvel’s very very successful film program.

DC are playing catch up with Marvel, because of things like The Avengers breaking six hundred million domestic. That’s a lot of money, I don’t begrudge Warner Bros wanting to make bank it would be like blaming a shark for eating, but l do think that the pursuit of that financial windfall bears a detrimental effect on the creative and artistic side.
Yes, but so does forcing quite a lot of liberal politics and diversity down the throats of the audience, and Rucka was no exception, what with his exploiting Renee Montoya for turning her overnight into a lesbian and then making her a replacement for Vic Sage as the Question (they're reverted back to the Vic Sage rendition recently and seem to have dropped Montoya out of their universe altogether lately), and he introduced a new lesbian protagonist for the role of Batwoman, Kate Kane, all for the sake of diversity in the Bat-world too. And, he was also one of the writers who willfully participated in killing off Ted Kord and defaming Wonder Woman for breaking Max Lord's neck.

And what talent did they really seek this past decade? Very little, if at all, because if they're going to allow so-called writers like Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis to run amok with their obsessions with shock value violence, sleaze and increasingly blatant leftist politics, and hire overrated "screenwriters" and "novelists" like J. Michael Stracynski and Brad Meltzer to write publicity stunts like the Identity Crisis, Sins Past and One More Day disasters, and hire rock bottom artists like Rob Liefeld to litter their art departments, then there's no real talent involved at all. The same goes for Rucka.

There's a lesson to be learned here that no matter how left-leaning Marvel and DC are, and no matter how much Rucka himself is (I won't be surprised if his liberal politics show up in the Punisher volume he's written too), that doesn't mean they'll be totally respectable of his creative freedom even within that framework, nor will they consider him for a top role in their inner circle. At least he's beginning to understand some of that, so maybe he'll at least devote some more of his own time to creator-owned work as Marvel and DC both fall into decay and one day are bound to come to a sad but understandable end.

Though hardly a loss, Rucka's departure from Marvel just like he did previously from DC does suggest quite a few writers have become tired of working for them too, and are bound to set a good example by focusing on their own work and not lending themselves to destroying famous fantasy universes now under the dominance of managers with no respect for the original visions.

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Thursday, September 20, 2012 

Brooklyn Daily fawns over the mess made of WW

The Brooklyn Daily's written a puff piece about Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's drastic changes to Wonder Woman, with Chiang the one interviewed here:
Her unlikely origin story began with polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston, a feminist theorist and psychologist with an apparent bondage fetish, who invented the Amazon warrior princess with the blue eyes and ample — ahem — ringlets of hair. And for eight decades since her creation, she has been wrestled into submission and tied up by one-too-many alterations, leaving her with a dearth of fans, despite the way she turns fanboys’ heads when she snaps a villain’s neck.
Is that supposed to be a reference to the 2005 story where she broke Max Lord's neck prior to Countdown, one of the most offensive things they ever published? What really made it horrible was how, as out-of-character and forced Lord's turn to a villain was (including his repellant slaying of Blue Beetle Ted Kord), the mind-control job he did on Superman to force him into acts of destruction could've been a lot worse if WW hadn't done something about it, yet Supes and Batman both disapproved of saving not just the former from disaster but a whole lot of the public too. For trying to stop a villain from controlling a hero into committing violence, she's villifed by the World's Finest and the public. Where the logic in that? Greg Rucka, who penned that embarrassment, should be ashamed of himself.
In this past Wednesday’s release of the “0” issue, Diana of Themyscira finally gets an origin story that is cogent and concise, has a bold 1960s Marvel art style, and presents a clear theme: when a coming-of-age hero is taken under the wing of Ares, she must decide if death is necessary for justice.

“It’s not a standard origin story where we show how she left Paradise Island, but it is about her character and a specific moment of how she grows into a hero,” Chiang said. “The ‘0’ issue deals with Wonder Woman’s childhood. We hint at it not being as rosy as one might think. She’s a princess in a culture that prizes skill and achievement, so she’s always had to prove herself worthy of the title.”
She becomes a disciple of Ares, who was usually a warmonger just for sport and other wrong reasons in past renditions? No chance this'll be rosy at all, I'm sure.
“Our job for ‘The New 52’ was explicitly to reinterpret the classic Wonder Woman story in a way that would be accessible for new readers and exciting for long-time fans,” Chiang said. “We’ve made some people angry, but we’ve also gained a different audience that had never picked up a Wonder Woman comic before, and I think that speaks to the strength of what we’re doing.”
Well it's been nearly a year and with examples of retconning like turning the Olympians into a mafia and changing the Amazons into lurid savages, I don't think they've made it accessible or exciting, and whatever new audience they have isn't reflected well by sales. All they've done is as they say - make everybody angry and discouraged.
And in reintroducing the woman warrior to new audiences, Chiang didn’t feel as though he was tasked with redeeming the character — just doing what it took to get her right.

“We’ve been given a fair amount of artistic license in interpreting the designs, and for me, it was about simplifying and streamlining, and making her feel distinct and believable as an Amazon warrior. Her height and build, her big Mediterranean hair, the cut of her shorts, those were all things I had to consider carefully. She couldn’t look like a runway model, or a swimsuit model. You have to believe this woman can take down a monster,” he said.

Love it or hate it, people are talking about Wonder Woman, and that hasn’t happened for a while.”
And then he falls back on the now classic insult, implying that even negative buzz is a wonderful thing, when real, dedicated writers (and artists, as in Chiang's case) hope for positive responses, not negative ones. All they did with that license was blacken the image of the Amazons and Olympians, and they certainly aren't redeeming WW or her community and background with those kind of retcons.

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A bad type of graphic novel about economy

The Nashua Telegraph is fawning over a new graphic novel about economics that's got at least one fishy thing inside:
Michael Goodwin hasn’t just written a great graphic novel – he has written one that should be required for every school, newsroom and library in America.

“Economix: How Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t Work) in Words and Pictures” (Abrams ComicArts, $19.95) condenses and explains how modern economies work, from roughly the beginning of capitalism to the present.

In the process, Goodwin explores the great works, models and philosophies of a lot of economists we’ve all heard of, but never understood, including:

Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations,” 1776.

Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” 1848.

John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Affluent Society,” 1958.

Milton Friedman, “Wealth and Freedom,” 1962.

Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalization and Its Discontents,” 2002.
Whoa now, what's Marx's propaganda got to do with this? Just how is the work of a man who set the stage for socialism, communism, atheism, and even Marxism "great"? And what makes it "required reading" for every common school system? The following doesn't give reason to expect this book to be positive in its outlook either:
...one problem for “Economix”: It skewers a lot of sacred cows on the right of American politics, such as free-market fundamentalism and trickle-down economics.

Is Goodwin worried about a conservative backlash?

“I should be so lucky to become big enough that they have to respond to it,” he said with a laugh.
Well we'll all be lucky if it doesn't, and it probably won't anyway. It all sounds more like something whose goal is to advocate the kind of socialist economic policies the Obama administration's been pushing, and while I hardly know enough about financial issues, I do know enough about Karl Marx to know his socialist visions were a bad lot, and if Goodwin is promoting his dreadful ideas, that's reason enough to avoid this graphic novel, which most definitely should not be welcomed at educational centers anywhere. The children of the world should not have marxist philosophies forced down their throats by a shameless graphic novelist who's even blatant enough to signal he doesn't like conservatives.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2012 

Ultimate Capt. America becomes president in the Ultimate universe

So Marvel's idea of how to exploit the current electoral climate is to have the alternate world take on the Star-Spangled Avenger become First Citizen of the USA. But if I'm seeing correctly, there's some definite bias lurking in the story:
Sometimes, desperate times call for politically disparate measures. So Marvel Comics — in a story line laced with comment on the current climate — will elect the First Avenger as the country’s next commander in chief in Ultimate Comics Ultimates No. 15-16, a story arc that hits stores and shelves Wednesday. In the alterna-universe of the Ultimates, the star-spangled “Cap” (a.k.a. Steve Rogers) is a non-campaigning write-in patriot who. despite the electorate’s deep fissures, wins by a landslide and agrees to answer “the people’s call.”

On one level, jaded real-life Americans might see the election of Ultimate Captain America as another narrative stunt intended to juice comics sales like so much Super-Soldier Serum. Yet on a creative level, having a superhero assume the presidency allows Marvel to amplify, on a wild fantasy-scape, some points of contention and dissension on the election-year landscape.

“We wanted to dramatize an extreme version of what we see in America today,” Ultimates writer Sam Humphries says. “In the face of all [this] divisiveness, what do we have in common? What does it mean to be an American? What can we agree on? And what makes America the place that it is?”

And what are the consequences, Humphries asks, of “the nation dissolving in front of our eyes?”

“This is a United States that’s being torn asunder by special interest groups — by opportunists looking to divide and conquer,” Marvel Entertainment Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso says in an exclusive to The Washington Post. “This is a metaphor for what goes on in real life, but on steroids.”
And how do we know this isn't going to be another subtle assault on conservatism? I know that the Ultimate Cap has been said to be what they won't allow the 616 universe Cap to be today - a patriot and a possible right-winger. But if that's how they characterize Ultimate Captain America, what if that signals that this'll turn out to be quite an embarrassment? For all we know, Alonso could be hinting at the Tea Party with his comments, and given how disrespectful they've become of the heroes whose books they publish, it wouldn't be surprising if this turns out to be quite a dismay of a story.

On the surface, they'll surely try to make it seem like they're not taking sides, but past efforts have shown why we shouldn't be fooled.

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Morrison blathers while telling why he's moving away from superheroes

The New Statesman interviewed Grant Morrison about why he's leaving the superhero genre for now, and he seems to be trying to claim that he didn't actually tell Playboy that he thought Batman was "gay", or is he?
“There always is, isn't there?” Morrison laughs. “There's been such a reaction over the last year to everything I've said or done!”

He's not joking. One particular interview, published in Playboy, not only made the newspapers around the world, but resulted in Morrison being denounced on Brazilian television. It was that now infamous soundbite, in which he said Batman -

“Is gay!” he finishes. “But the thing is, it was the opposite of what I said. But Playboy had it in as the most sensationalised version, they didn't take off the bit at the end... Because it was all from the book, it was from an interview I did last year for Supergods. And basically I said what I said in the book, that you can easily dial up the black-leather-fetishistic-night-dwelling aspects of Batman, and the masculinity of Batman, and get a pretty good gay Batman. But as I said, ultimately he's not gay because he has no sex life, really. All he is is an adventurer.. sometimes they show him with girls, sometimes he never seems to be going out with girls.

“But they just took off the cool sound-bite which is 'Batman is utterly, utterly gay, says Morrison'! That was it, I had to deal with that – people were really fucking mad at me for that one.”
We're not really mad at him at this point, we're just bored, frustrated, and ultimately feeling sorry for him for how he's rambling and bragging and can't seem to decide what he thinks. And isn't he the one who's sensationalizing everything by telling the MSM things they're surely love to hear? If he has a problem with that, it's really his fault, not theirs, for craving 15 minutes of fame.

Furthermore, his comments about Batman having no sex life doesn't make sense either. I recall that back in the late 70s, there was an issue where it was implied he'd done it with Catwoman (at which time they sure knew how to handle these things far better), and it sure happened recently when either Judd Winick or another writer came up with a fetish scenario for the sake of controversy. Furthermore, if he's had romantic relationships with women, with Silver St.Cloud making for one of the more unusual affairs, does that not prove he's heterosexual? Good grief. Morrison's comments are also unfair to Bob Kane and Bill Finger, who'd surely find his statements embarrassing.

Oh well, let's leave that for now and see what he/they say about his departure, along with several other writers, from DC's contributing staff:
His move away from superheroes is not entirely unexpected, then, but it has surprised many that the biggest champion of superhero comics is stepping back. Has Morrison simply done what he set out to do when he first hit the Batman big time with Arkham Asylum back in 1989?

“Yeah, it just felt like I’d said a lot, you know,” he says. “I knew I was coming to the end of Action comics in [issue] 16, I knew I was coming to the end of Batman in issue 12, of Batman Incorporated, and it just seemed like I had all this other stuff building up that was completely different from that, and it seemed like a really good time to stop doing the monthly superhero books. And also having to work with so many artists on Action Comics, it's not that the artists are bad but I’m sometimes working for three or four guys at a time, which means you’re writing issue 14 before you've written issue 12 and then you're sending in six pages of issue 13 to someone else. So it was just too hectic. I just didn't want to do it any more. And since things were reaching that natural end... It wasn't like an announcement but it was treated like an announcement, because I think I’d already said I was leaving these comics at that time.

“But yeah, it fits into this general kind of script that's going now where we're all leaving and moving on to do creator-owned work, like we've never done it before. [laughs] So I’m just going along with that.”

There has been a recent exodus of writers and artists from the DC stable, some slipping out quietly, others angrily, and a couple leaving in protest at various ethical concerns. Morrison is keen to point out that he is leaving on good terms with DC, and still has work in the pipeline with them for the next year.

“We have disagreements,” he acknowledges, “but to me disagreements are things that you deal with, problems are things you solve, and everyone stays friends, and negotiations are done. So I kinda felt that.. it just began to feel too unpleasant to work within a comic book fan culture where everyone was mad at you all the time and giving you responsibility for legal cases and things that I have got honestly nothing to do with in my life and will shortly have zero connection with.

“But I felt that. There was a sense of, a definite sense of the temple was being burned down and it was time to run away.”
Well at least we won't have to worry about people like him littering the mainstream titles anymore. They still have more than enough awful writers around who can write as badly as he can, if not more so. But if he's got a problem with people being furious at him, then why would he ever make all those sensationalized comments and write all those alienating plot elements in his books like the allusions to drugs? If he'd avoided that, he could've saved himself a lot of frustration and at least maintained a better reputation that what he's got.

He's certainly quite pleased with the Image book he's planning called "Happy":
Morrison's other upcoming projects are mostly shrouded in mystery and will be published through Vertigo, DC's adult imprint, and Image Comics, the favourite of many an independent creator. The long-awaited third instalment of Seaguy is the only announced title thus far, along of course with the series that starts this month, Happy. The latter looks like dark fare, borne from Morrison's observation that those who create things, the actors and singers of the world, are constantly put down no matter how hard they try.

“It was the notion of all these people dancing for us and everyone just going 'neh,'” he explains. “You know, everyone being judged on their stupid little dances and their croaky little voices. And I thought, well let's just kinda concretise that in this story, where it's like the worst possible world that I can imagine, this super crime noir, everybody's a bastard, everything's shit, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong, everyone will be hurt.”

And then Happy the horse wanders into this existence, a super sweet little cartoon character of eternal optimism. His appearance is a closely guarded secret, with Morrison describing his design as “like a special effect”. I get the sense that the writer has put a lot of anger into this book, a purging of sorts. Even with a Christmas theme, the amount of swearing makes Bad Santa look like a Disney film.

“It's the most offensively sweary book I think I’ve ever written,” Morrison grins. “It gets to like, you're just thinking, I cannot read the word fuck again. Please do not put the fucking word fuck back in this comic, and you're only on page 3 and there's twenty four pages. It's actually exhausting!”
And he clearly thinks bragging about it is going to make a best-seller of all time that goes through the roof, I guess. But all he's done is show why he's a writer with a very limited appeal, and that's why he shouldn't have been working in American mainstream comics in the first place. Well, at least he's moving to someplace where he won't be too much of a concern, the creator-owned market.

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Sunday, September 16, 2012 

Stan Lee's 2nd Comikaze convention

The LA Times Hero Complex section writes about the second Comikaze convention Stan Lee is holding in LA, and Neal Adams and Marv Wolfman are among the guests.

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Saturday, September 15, 2012 

Ron Marz goes to work on comics from India

The India Times says that Ron Marz is going to work with an Indian publisher on a comic sci-fi series called Aveon 9. It's probably the best path he could take. When he's worked on comics from the Big Two, he's usually gone in lockstep with the editorial mandates to the very end, but when he's worked for smaller publishers, he's shown some better creativity. Maybe he's the kind of writer who's more suited to working in indepedent projects.

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Friday, September 14, 2012 

Smaller publishers are increasing their sales

According to this analysis on The Outhousers, independent comic publishers like Dark Horse and IDW have been making gains this year, accounting for at least a quarter of the overall sales. I think this signals how, as DC and Marvel distanced themselves from their audience, it's led some of the audience to realize that the time may have come where it'd be a good idea to check out some of the output of smaller publishers more. In a way, this is a good thing if people spend their hard earned money more on independent productions than on companies now dominated by people with no respect for the legends they're in charge of. But the question also remains if it'll ever send a message to the majors that the way they're handling things is failing.

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Brevoort and company can't do an "event" without resorting to shocks

MTV interviewed Tom Brevoort, Brian Bendis and Axel Alonso, who try to sound like they know everything it takes to make a great crossover, but they don't. Brevoort said in reply to the following query:
...we asked the obvious question: is death really necessary to a big, capital E, Event Comic? Can you have an event without a big death? All three were pretty much in agreement on this point. “Of course you can, so long as enough other things of importance take place,” said Brevoort. “But a death always has a strong sense of finality and change to it, as it's the end of the story. Death’s ultimately waiting for all of us one day.”
Translation: they don't have faith in themselves to at least do it the way Secret Wars and Acts of Vengeance were done, since those weren't built upon heroes and supporting casts dying, but rather, on the fun of watching the heroes figure out how to thwart the baddies and their schemes.
Continuing, Brevoort said that, “You make it matter by making it emotionally true, by making the characters and by extension the readers feel it. I hate all of those too-cool-for-school comics that handle death in a Meta way, with the characters reacting like it's only a matter of time before the deceased returns. That's not human, and it’s not genuine--nor is it even clever. It's poor storytelling.”
Then why did they bring back Johnny Storm in such a hurry? And if bringing them back so soon isn't "human", then how is a mentor dying at the hands of his own student any more so? Why couldn't Xavier just pass away from natural causes? Didn't they ever consider that if they'd tried something simpler like that, audiences would probably be a lot more accepting? To have Cyclops kill off Xavier, even under Phoenix influence, is poor storytelling, and very, very dumb too.
“Our intention was never to create a black and white situation,” added Alonso. “Our intention was to create one with pathos, and nuance, and readers can come out of this scene feeling different things. Who was right, who was wrong, and was anyone right or wrong?”
Nobody was right to fight each other to begin with; they were all wrong, but nowhere nearly as wrong as the writing staff that put them - and the audience - through such a horrible experience to begin with. And by having the Avengers and X-Men fight each other, and by killing off Xavier at the hands of his own student in a scene laced with rejection of mentor, they did create a B&W situation, simply by resorting to a tactic that's become pretty common lately.
What about the other characters in the Marvel Universe? How will they react? “There are some people who are going to say, Scott murdered Xavier, and I will never forgive him,” said Bendis, echoing what’s probably going through a lot of fans’ heads today, too. “Or some people will say, he wasn’t in his right mind, that’s not who he is. He was under the influence. And then some people will say, yes, but he put himself under the influence. What did you think would happen? And then there will be some people who will wonder if Xavier didn’t sacrifice himself, towards his goals... Will he succeed in his goals in Death?”
Maybe, but the goal that won't be successful is long-term sales for any of their books. And Bendis' suggestion that fans could or will blame the character instead of how he was written is also offensive, and a weak attempt to pretend he's not to blame himself for coming up with such an awful, stunt-driven story.

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Thursday, September 13, 2012 

When did Marvel lift the restrictions on smoking in their pages?

Back in 2001, when Joe Quesada made his unwelcome takeover of Marvel, one of his first acts was to prohibit smoking by all the heroes in all their output, a short time before Michael Bloomberg began doing things like that in NYC, including the Thing, Wolverine and She-Hulk, who've certainly had their share of smoking. It was a pretty hypocritical move on his part (and just a short time after they dropped the Comics Code), because while smoking cigarettes is bad for one's health, physical violence and gore is much worse, and those kind of horrors continued unabated, even in series and stories where it didn't fit.

But as this picture of Spider-Woman Jessica Drew holding a cigarette suggests, he may have quietly dropped the whole ban on smoking in the pages of Marvel a couple years later. I think this picture comes either from the Avengers or Ms. Marvel's second solo book, possibly circa 2006. I don't like smoking myself, but I don't see the point in just censoring it altogether. What they could do is find a way to depict it negatively without having to make such a fuss over its very existence in any book, story or scene.

And then again, who knows if even a year or so after Quesada left and Axel Alonso took over, they really quit that forced censoring of cigarettes in their output? If Wolverine, She-Hulk and the Thing haven't been seen smoking cigarettes (or in Ben Grimm's case, big cigars) in at least a decade, then one could assume they're still going on with it when there's plenty of better alternatives they could try instead.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012 

Here's how Geoff Johns didn't do real research

On a comics site called Fanboy Buzz, I found an entry by a contributor who actually lives in Dearborn who has the courage to call out Geoff Johns on the dishonesty of the portrait he delivers in the Green Lantern special:
...as a citizen of the town he portrayed in Green Lantern #0, there are very little truths regarding the city of Dearborn in there.

I’ve lived in this town outside of Detroit my entire life, and it was an interesting day on 9/11. On that day, Dearborn Muslims were cheering in the streets. Now, there were probably Muslims who found the actions of Al Qaeda horrific but the majority of the Muslim population in my city was cheering. Now, I found that major detail lacking from the comic which featured the new Green Lantern Simon Baz.

As a White Dearborn resident, I found Johns’ portrayal of us a bit offensive. While I’m sure there’s been racism shown towards them, I can honestly tell readers I have never experienced Muslims being treated that way nor have I participated in such foul behavior. I have some Muslim neighbors, and there have never been any quarrels between any of the other White families and them. I actually have seen our neighbors all get along together quite well, and continue to contribute to the neighborhood.

White Dearborners have actually been nothing but accepting of our Muslim neighbors. Dearborn Public Schools actually teach Arabic to students who are not as accessible in English. A recent federal mandate also has given Dearborn the ability to provide interpreters for Arabic students or parents who do not (or again have trouble speaking) English. I say that’s nothing but generous to the families in this city, and there are no benefits like that given to other racial groups in the city.

My main criticism of Johns was that in portraying a city he grew up near, I would’ve expected him to do more research. I mean he should’ve contacted other members of the community such as White and Black Americans in the city who have also been getting along peacefully. He went to the Arabic American National Museum for research on a city that’s a bit more complex than he realizes I think. [...]

All races get along in Dearborn since I’ve grown up here. We have never had any racial problems like the major city Detroit has. If you ever come back to Dearborn Mr. Johns, please do your homework. I think we would all benefit from that.
But alas, I doubt he will. This story pretty much marks where he's come out into the open about where he stands politically, and is a clear sign of jaw-dropping weakness on his part. He should be really ashamed of himself for going so far to align himself with the Muslim community that he'd even draw such a dishonest picture of what Dearborn is like.

That said, it strikes me as peculiar that this guy implies that Arabs aren't white. They are, and they're just as caucasian as the average white American.

Johns went to the Arab-American National Museum a few days ago, and he said something rather odd while there:
Diversification isn't a new concept in the comic book world, in the 1970's several characters were created during the blaxploitation era that reach most of the decade's pop culture.

Most of comic characters of that era are looked upon poorly by modern audiences. Johns said that he doesn't think Baz will have that type of legacy.

“I'm working with the Arab American Musuem to make sure the scripts are as real and as made up as possible,” he said. “I just don't think that is going to happen. I hope it doesn't happen.
First of all, I'm not sure whether it was Johns, the interviewer or both who said minority members of the 1970s are looked down upon today, but I completely disagree there. Some of them are very good, and had some very good stories provided during that era, like Power Man [and Iron Fist]. And, they were introduced plausibly and in their very own roles too, and still have their legions of fans today. So if he's implied that black heroes of those times are antiquated, I think that's a really dumb thing for him to say. And, as the guy writing for Fanboy Buzz has indicated, the script by Johns is more contrived than real. And after the horrifying massacre at the Libyan and Egyptian embassies yesterday, that even cost the life of US ambassador Christopher Stevens, I'm not sure Baz will find much of a legacy, if at all. We're facing a war with Islamofascism, and this is what he's concerned about coming up with? Sigh.

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Cyclops kills his mentor Prof. Xavier

The New York Daily News has saved everyone a lot of time and money by revealing who dies in Avengers vs. X-Men: Professor Charles Xavier:
Marvel Comics is bumping off Professor X — the founder of the superhero group, the X-Men, and a character who’s been around for 50 years — in a comic book landing in stores Wednesday. And in a development that what will get readers worked up, it’s his own prized student, the fan-favorite Cyclops, who delivers the death blow in “Avengers vs. X-Men #11.”

“I got a little teary-eyed when we were scoping out the moment in the room with the series’ writers and editors,” says Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso.

He needed to be the casualty in this story. There’s no more oh-sh-- moment that you can bring than having a son killing his father.”
Oh, I'll bet he was "teary-eyed". Sure. When their idea of how to kill off Xavier is by having Cyclops tell him he's not his father, strongly hinting he rejects his mentor? I don't think so.
Even as the character was ready for his closeup in the movies — played by Patrick Stewart and later James McAvoy in 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men” franchise — he was becoming anachronistic in the books. Wolverine and the team are now too old for lectures.

“He was this thing that was just floating around the X-books, with not the same amount of gravitas that he once had,” says Brian Bendis, who wrote the issue. “I did point out that he would matter more in death.”
Even if Cyclops was under Phoenix-based influence, as this article tells, the sight of him telling his mentor he's not his "father", another way of signaling rejection, and then killing him, is despicable and no more acceptable than Green Lantern Hal Jordan wiping out scores of other GL Corps members in the notorious 90s storyline. So, this isn't going to go over well with X-fans who care.
It doesn’t take a mind-reader to see Xavier’s end is a means to put one of the publisher's popular super heroes through the ringer.

“The moment is shocking, and certainly will be talked about by message boards forever and ever, but it’s really about what you get afterwards,” Bendis says. “What Cyclops has to do now, is dig himself out of the biggest, deepest hole in the history of comic books.”
This is just why nobody should be buying it. Besides, the article does mention that the back door may have been left open, so anyone who understands that this is merely just another forced, contrived idea of how to leave a hero stricken with guilt and embarrassment, should refrain from wasting any time on yet another crossover with no real reason for being. It's just a limp excuse for dredging up the Phoenix story, this time for the sake of heaping the force's powers on other characters besides Jean Grey.

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Tuesday, September 11, 2012 

DC's writing staff were actually told to write in fanfiction style

Who would've believed that DC Comics' editors could really think so juvenile? At the Baltimore Comic-con, it was discovered by an attending fan that:
When the New 52 began, writers were told to "write as if they were writing fan fiction."
And,
Though the numbering was reset, DiDio says that DC will recognize when Action and Detective Comics hit their 1,000th issue.
Proving perfectly how this is a publicity stunt in the extreme. And,
To the whole "Was Tim a Robin?" confusion, DiDio says that Tim called himself "Red Robin" out of respect to Jason. DiDio was unclear whether he began with the Red Robin costume, or adopted that later in his career.
Comics Should Be Good already noted that it appears as though they changed the premise so drastically to make it look like Tim Drake was never just "Robin" and called himself "Red Robin" for much longer. No doubt they did this to throw much of what was established about Tim out the window and disregard Chuck Dixon's developments completely.

When they start telling their writers to actually take a fanfiction approach to writing, it's clear that they no longer value good writing, though they already went that route with Identity Crisis in 2004 - the way it was structured, it was very much like a crude, vulgar fanfiction story, and quite a few of the books published during and afterwards were too.

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Monday, September 10, 2012 

Nashua Telegraph puts down older Aquaman stories all for the sake of it

The Nashua Telegraph's trying to tell people what to think of past Aquaman history, and acting as though Geoff Johns' take on the material is better in every way:
Let’s start with Aquaman, a character almost everyone’s heard of – and made fun of at one time or another.

Conceptually, it’s deserved.

Aquaman debuted in 1941, a cheap knockoff of another sea king, the popular Sub-Mariner over at Timely (now Marvel) Comics.

But whereas Prince Namor had a volatile and interesting personality, Aquaman was as bland as mayonnaise.

And where Namor was incredibly strong, bounced bullets off his chest and could fly, Aquaman could only … well, all together now: Aquaman swims fast and talks to fish.

All of which has dogged the Sea King ever since. He became a household name thanks to cartoons in the 1960s, but nothing could ever overcome his essential boringness.
Oh for heaven's sake. By that logic, even Superman would be "boring". Just because Sub-Mariner was an anti-hero almost ever since he began, does that mean that Mort Weisinger's making Arthur Curry a goody-two-shoes by contrast was wrong? I think not, and given that Aquaman's first official series ran during 1962-71, there was clearly some audience that enjoyed it, and also liked co-stars Mera and Aqualad.
Now, as you’d expect, DC Comics has made numerous attempts to make a potentially valuable trademark such as Aquaman more popular. But as long as all he did was swim fast and talk to fish, that wasn’t really going to happen.
How ridiculously superficial can they get? If Aquaman fought villains like sea smugglers, modern day pirates, the Ocean Master, Black Manta and so on, he obviously did more than just talk to fish!
And so it is, at long last, DC has reached the conclusion I did back in the 1960s: For the Marine Marvel to hold his own in a world with Superman, Green Lantern and Mera in it, he had to be more powerful.

And, lo, so it has come to be. DC’s chief creative officer, Geoff Johns, took a crack at the character when DC relaunched all of its superhero titles last September, and one of the first things he did was make Aquaman strong enough to throw an armored car across several city blocks … and bounce bullets off his chest.
In other words, he's not much different now from Superman; I get it. If memory serves, Sub-Mariner may have had high endurance against bullets, but he's never seemed as invincible as Superman, considering that plenty of Marvel's superheroes fought him during the Silver Age, even if they didn't win, and that includes Daredevil at the time, and later ever Hercules during the mid-80s.

In any case, after all the horrific violence that Johns has flung like mud upon even Aquaman lately, that's why I've already long written him off as someone to avoid like the plague.
Even more interesting, Johns tackled the Aquaman-as-joke idea head on, with the Sea King facing snark from surface-dwellers about talking to fish and being “nobody’s favorite superhero.” Aquaman crushes that idea pretty early on in this new series, and convincingly so.
Not given Johns' track record, I'm afraid. Besides, I've appreciated the creation of Aquaman and Sub-Mariner alike long before Johns got his mitts on Arthur Curry, and I'm certainly not wasting my time to see just what kind of shock tactics take place in the Sea King's book that this sugary slop of an article is unwilling to mention or describe.

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Sunday, September 09, 2012 

GL's zero issue reeks of 9-11 trutherism

The more info that becomes available, the more this zero special for GL is beginning to look like an embarrassment. In this review on ComicBook.Com, the answer to who may have built the explosive device found in the van Baz stole is given:
There’s not much else here in terms of meat for the story, other than the not-particularly-shocking revelation that Amanda Waller may be behind planting a bomb on Baz, or is at least somehow messed up in his life before the ring ever came and found him.
And Amanda Waller is a government agent, and was depicted as the director of the program for running the Suicide Squad in the series of that name that ran during 1987-92. However, at that time, she was anything but a villainess, and there were a few heroes who'd worked with the Suicide Squad who got along better with her than the villains did. Why did I get the feeling I was not going to like the revelations of just who put together the bomb? This is basically an allusion to some of the most tasteless notions of Trutherism and anti-American conspiracy theories, that the government is responsible for terrorism and not jihadists.
The story is going to be accused of pandering, and that’s a fair enough accusation. The fundamental problem there is that mainstream comics don’t depict many Arab characters, and so when they do, the temptation is always to go straight for 9/11. When you do that, though, it reduces the character’s identity to something emblematic of race or culture, rather than that of an interesting individual, and it feels like you’re trying too hard to make everyone know “he’s just like everybody else! Really!”, which is the kind of thing that really shouldn’t need to be explicitly explained.
Well if they'd characterized him as a Christian or any non-Muslim background, then it would be a lot easier to say he's like anyone else, and to accept his introduction. That he's of Arabic descent is not the problem at all; it's just his religious beliefs that really are.

The AV Club's article about this mess is more biased than the previous one, and tells the following:
The title of this issue’s story is “The New Normal,” and if this is going to be the defining tone of the next year of New 52 stories, the DCnU is about to become an even darker place. There’s no joy in this comic, beginning with a series of scenes showing how difficult Baz and his family’s lives have become since the 9/11 attacks. After the opening page featuring a young Baz watching the second plane hit the World Trade Center, there are three panels set five years apart: 1) Baz as a child, washing graffiti off the Islamic Center of America the day after 9/11; 2) Baz fighting to protect his sister when they’re attacked on the street; 3) Baz undergoing a “routine” inspection at the airport. That last one is especially important, as one of the security guards asks the now-adult Baz, “What are you afraid of?” The idea of an Arab-American being chosen as the Green Lantern because he’s able to overcome great cultural fear is an inspired one, but the majority of sympathy for the character is condensed in two pages so that Johns can set up Baz as a suspected terrorist.

Baz is a resident of Dearborn, Michigan, home to more Arab-Americans than anywhere else in the United States and a major hub of the American automotive industry. Baz is a car thief, but he’s doing it to help his sister and her son after the death of his brother-in-law. For some reason, Baz has decided to steal an oh-so-desirable plain white van, which just so happens to have a bomb in the backseat. Upon discovering his explosive cargo, Baz calls his sister, who works in the Dearborn Office of the Secretary of State, directs her to a stash of money in a safety-deposit box, and begins to apologize for his involvement in the death of her husband. That’s when the police start ramming the vehicle from behind and Baz decides to drive it into the closed automobile factory, jumping out of the van so that he can be arrested and detained at Guantanamo Bay.

#0 is certainly successful at reinvigorating the Green Lantern title, which has been enjoyable but becomes increasingly bogged down in its own mythology: Every plot development seems deliberately geared to be provocative and Important-with-a-capital-I. It gets to be a bit much when Baz gets a bag put over his head and is brought to a room to be waterboarded, but luckily that’s when the Green Lantern ring shows up to break Baz out of prison.
Just what we need for a leftist-leaning bias, an allusion to criticism against "torture" and even waterboarding at Gitmo! That aside, it's hard to understand why we're supposed to feel sorry for or excuse the lead for becoming a car thief to support a sibling who's already got what's usually a well-paying job in a government office. There certainly is quite a bit of hostility, subtle or otherwise, to security procedures at airports here, and implying that non-Muslim Americans are literally violent. On top of that, I'm not sure why we're supposed to view a man who resorts to car theft as someone who's overcoming fear, why he's doing something that could cause trouble for his family if he's caught for it, or why the police try to ram the back of a stolen vehicle.

So as these further clues given tell, this story is pretty negative to Americans, one of the most blatant of its kind to date, and worse, it even has traces of Trutherism injected for bad measure. So Johns really has gone off the deep end from a political perspective.

As far as I know, the reason why Baz's brother-in-law died was because Baz took part in a street racing derby and had an accident that caused the in-law's death. It sounds peculiarly reminiscent of the story from much reviled Emerald Dawn miniseries, where Hal Jordan went for a drunk drive and got his own brother paralyzed. Johns sure seems to be drawing some influences from some of the worst moments in GL history as non-inspiration for the setups he's using here.

Update: Five Feet of Fury's Kathy Shaidle spoke with Menzoid Mornings on the Canadian Sun TV network about this story:

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Saturday, September 08, 2012 

Jim Starlin says Marvel's opened a dialogue with him on Thanos

In this interview on Comic Book Therapy taken at Dragon-Con, Thanos creator Starlin's said Marvel's staff has been speaking with him on the subject of the royalties they owe:
I didn’t know Thanos was going to be in the [Avengers] movie until a couple weeks before and so there were some mixed feelings on that. Marvel and I are now talking. I can’t say anything more than that at this point about it. [...]

Things are doing much better, but you know we’re not done yet and will be eventually.
I hope they will complete their discussions soon and guarantee that he gets a satisfying payment for what he provided them. It's about time.

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Friday, September 07, 2012 

Actor Jason Biggs shouldn't be associated with Ninja Turtles franchise

This past week, the actor Jason Biggs posted some offensive Tweets against vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan's wife Janna Ryan, and he even targeted Ann Romney. And this actor is whom Nickelodean's hired to do voice acting for a new cartoon based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. They've allegedly condemned his vulgar language, yet they're still keeping him on the voice cast for the production they've planned.

Biggs doesn't belong anywhere near products based on a famous comic book parody series, and if only Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman still had the rights to their creations, they could probably have put a stop to this abuse and desecration of the Ninja Turtles, and I'm sure they would want to. But they sold off the rights a couple years ago, and the executives of the Nickelodean cable channel have pretty much signaled they have no respect for the franchise's reputation.

The Colorado Rockies have already announced they're cancelling their Nickelodean Day in the wake of Biggs' nasty cracks (also via Big Hollywood). The network would do well to get that horrid "comedian" off the voice cast of the new cartoon. For all we know, they may have doomed its ratings already by continuing to stand by him.

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Thursday, September 06, 2012 

Bendis never bothered to read past history of Avengers/X-Men

Marvel ran one of their own inside interviews with Brian Bendis, and he tells a little something that under better editors would disqualify him for the assignments he's getting:
Marvel.com: With the history of the Avengers before you, what did you—

Brian Michael Bendis: Wait, was there history? I’ve never read any of it [Laughs]. It was funny, I tweeted the other day, that I’ve been reading X-Men for 30 years of my life but doing research on the X-Men is like the DaVinci Code. You have to do a lot of deep research. And someone goes, “I never once saw you tweet anything about the Avengers about that. Did you read anything about Avengers before you started writing it?”

My point is that AVENGERS was one book in a straight line—it was much easier to read it all the way through. X-Men is more of a labyrinth.
And his stories are more of an insult to the intelligence. I'm sorry, but what he says is no excuse for the tommyrot he's bound to write when he takes up the X-Men next year. Besides, people like him are the ones responsible for turning X-Men into a labyrinth. Up to 1992, most X-Men history is competent enough; it was after Chris Claremont left that it really went into tailspin and some of the characters were saddled with bad writing and too many spinoff series were launched. But I wouldn't trust him to research even the history up to that period and make something good out of it.

He even says about Daredevil:
DAREDEVIL had a pretty strong statement at the time because he was [being] outed.
A strong stench is more like it. I can't remember if Matt Murdock's secret ID did become full public knowledge at the time or if it lasted, but that was one story done with the Man Without Fear that should never have been greenlighted.

And on the Avengers itself, he says about character casting:
Then Dan Buckley came up to me and said, “You can do whatever you want as long as Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, and Iron Man are in that book that you pitched. You can fill the other slots with Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, whoever you want.” So I said, yeah, I think I got it.

And then I said, you know what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna blow up Avengers Mansion. I thought I was being cool, when all I was doing was going up to the playground and smashing other kids’ toys. I didn’t see it at the time, I thought I’ll blow up the mansion and everyone will go “Whoa, he blew up the mansion on the third page!”

“Disassembled” was this disaster movie starring the Avengers, which I thought was awesome. Other people thought it was awesome too, and other people were very, very angry at me. They’re still angry at me as if it happened yesterday.
But he doesn't mention why exactly. It's because of how he wrote it all at Scarlet Witch's expense, turning her crazy over the children she didn't get to raise (who were brought back in the "Children's Crusade"), and making her the sole menace at the time. It makes no difference if he finally reversed that particular plot point, because looked at on its own, the story was in very poor taste, with Hank Pym's smack at Janet Van Dyne from 1981 regurgitated in a most insulting way, and he added insult to injury when he wrote that Jan was killed during Secret Invasion. Ms. Marvel came off very badly too back in Disassembled.

And he even falls back on the same sleazy bragging he used a few years ago when he acted as though breaking other people's toys is a great thing to do. Nor does he show any real feeling for the core cast of the Earth's Mightiest Heroes, not even the flagship heroes he brought in all because, as he says, Buckley wanted it, which tells that he obviously didn't have the faintest idea how to market the book on its own terms without them.
Marvel.com: You’re talking about changing the status quo. We’ve heard your last issue of AVENGERS also changes the status quo; you’ve done it once, how do you do it again?

Brian Michael Bendis: Well, many years have gone by. This status quo has been around for eight years. It’s quite a lengthy amount of time for any status quo in any comic of any company. So it’s certainly a good time for me to wrap up certain story-lines, to make my final statement on some of these characters. Some characters will be moving on to a new chapter in their life, and other characters will be deciding what it means to be an Avenger. Not all the characters will survive this last story.
And that's why even the "finale" to his tenure should be avoided just as much as the beginning. I'm sure it does change the status quo, and not for the better at all. Just like I'm sure the next writer to take charge isn't bound to make any improvements.

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It really is that wretchedly biased

Inside Pulse has written the first review I could find of Green Lantern #0, and it's just as biased as we could expect:
Who is Simon Baz? An Arab man living in America, who was a child when he and his family watched the World Trade Center towers fall on September 11th, 2001, and who has felt the pain of being an Arab in America ever since. Well, no, now he feels the pain of being a car thief who completely ripped off the wrong van. Yeah, he’s no boy scout, but his heart is in the right place. By the way, why did I say wrong van? Because there was a bomb in it, and why is he a good person? Because he makes it a point to send that bomb on a one way trip to a place with no collateral damage once he discovered it. Unfortunately, again, Arab in America, Baz winds up in Gitmo pretty much instantly. Because an Arab guy blowing something up instantly means terrorist.
I thought that was "Muslim guy". Why can't they get their facts straight? It's just like how in the articles I looked at previously, Geoff Johns and the interviewers seem to think "Muslim" and "Arab" are completely interchangeable.
There is some straight forward racial profiling done for his interrogation, and honestly, as much as I hate to say it…yeah, this is what would really happen. His honesty would be ignored in favor of trying to label him an extremist in an excuse to interrogate him. I stress honesty, by the way, he holds nothing back and answers every single question they ask him, only to have his answers ignored in favor of painting him as a mad bomber working with more bad bombers. It also makes for a great moment where, with nothing to lose, Baz fights back and becomes worthy of the ring that we’ve all known he was getting for a good while now. Unfortunately, everyone who really shouldn’t known about this event happens to know, which means that governments, secret governments, and Justice League’s all known about the suspected terrorist who just got the most powerful weapon in the universe.
It sounds like pretty much what we could expect, a potential assault on Gitmo, and more so an attack on racial profiling. There's more told in at least one comment written in reply on the page itself:
Here's my problem with the issue. While the actions of the feds in are terrible it's not hard to understand why they wouldn't believe him. I mean if you didn't actually see the story unfold there is no way anyone would believe his story. You, a Muslim American, just happen to steal a van that has a bomb in it. Of all the terrible luck. Then you drive it to your old place of work you were fired from recently and blow the place up. I mean really who would believe that? Obviously the feds are supposed to look unreasonable but really they really only become unreasonable when they start with the torture because the truth is so unbelievable.

Also, wouldn't it have better to not tie the first Muslim green lantern to a bombing or being a car thief. Even though it wasn't his fault he's still connected. What if he was just a regular guy with a regular job that had the courage to survive discrimination in the wake of 9/11? Why make him a criminal that accidentally bombs a building?
The story as described certainly is ludicrous, if he drives the van onto the same property of a company he used to work for and totals the place, which is little different from what he allegedly was trying to prevent. If this is accurate, then "Baz" is guilty of destroying private property and trespassing, to say nothing of potentially jeopardizing other people's lives. I'm sure there's plenty of empty lots on the outskirts of Detroit he could've driven the van to if he wanted to keep it from endangering innocent lives (assuming it wasn't a time bomb hidden in the van), or he could've just called out to everyone to run for cover since there was a bomb in the van and called the police and urged them to cordon off the area it was in and send the squad to disarm it. The story structure certainly is bizarre and ill-advised.

Interestingly enough, there's one more story Johns recently put in Aquaman #7 that one could figure takes a pro-Islamic stance involving a Muslim woman who was killed off at the hands of Black Manta named Kahina the Seer:
As we see here, Black Manta offs Kahina in an unsurprisingly vicious manner for a story written by a writer as pretentious as Johns. And what easily makes this story an intellect-insulter is that - depending on how you view it - it technically makes the black man look like the real threat here (he even threatens to terminate her family), and the Islamist the one to be sorry for. In other words, Johns came up with a really clever piece of subtle propaganda, whether he knew it or not.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Johns about the zero issue of GL, and as expected, his answers aren't really that at all:
An Arab protagonist seems timely since there is this swirl of social issues that Muslims in post 9/11 America have to deal with.

True. As fantastic as the concept of “Green Lantern” is of an intergalactic police force, the comic has had a history of grounding in the now and dealing with modern characters and concepts and Simon Baz is that. I wanted to create a character that everyday Americans have to deal with.

When 9/11 hit, he was 10-years-old. His family was devastated, just like every other American. He’s grown up in that world. It’s just part of the daily life, the new normal.

The fact that the color green has a historical connection with Islam is probably coincidental but will religion play any part in future stories?

The background is in the DNA of who he is but it doesn’t define who he is. It’s more about a compelling character than anything else.
But as the Pulse review/reader comment signals, all the signs are that it will, certainly in the story setup. It's an insult to the intellect as it pulls what's surely a classic gimmick by now, to make Islamists look throughly "misunderstood" (and who knows if we'll ever learn who the villain was who actually built the bomb he disposed of?), and the authorities look completely like the baddies. (And was Naser Abdo "fighting back" when he injured a county jailer's arm?) Which is truly offensive, and smells of an anti-authoritarian bias too. And Islam is hardly a "modern" concept if this is what it's going to stoop to.

What an embarrassment Johns is becoming from a political perspective.

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About me

  • I'm Avi Green
  • From Jerusalem, Israel
  • I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.
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