The Four Color Media Monitor

The Comics Buyer's Guide wrote some really boring fluff for the year's end reviewing some of this past year's matters. Where it really starts to become insulting to the intellect is when it gets to the part about Kevin Keller in Archie, and a certain Golden Age hero who's been desecrated because DC thought it would be easy:

One of the most amusing non-stories occurred in March when the laughably named “One Million Moms” — an adjunct of the ultra-conservative American Family Association — tried to mount a campaign against Toys “R” Us to remove from its shelves Life with Archie #16, the issue in which Kevin Keller marries his boyfriend. What happened was amazing: Archie Comics stood up for gay rights. Toys “R” Us stood up for the First Amendment. And the One Million Moms — who don’t number anywhere near a million, and many of whom probably aren’t Moms — slunk off quietly.

What does this mean? Could the media be growing up? Might America no longer need scapegoats? Naw. My theory is that Avengers made buckets of money, and, as Stephen Colbert says, “the market has spoken.” Big business loves to make money.

But one group involved has changed: the comics industry, itself. Ever since 1954, publishers have almost fetishized being non-controversial, keeping a low profile, and abasing themselves before any group that complains about them. But in 2012, comic books were on the front lines of gay rights.

Whether you’re for or against those rights, it’s inarguable that the comics industry has taken a wide turn on the subject. For example, the future Kevin Keller not only married his boyfriend in Life with Archie, but the teenage Keller has been awarded his own comic book by a publisher that at one time was single-handedly keeping the Comics Code alive. At DC, the revamped Alan Scott (created in 1940) is now openly gay, while the equally openly gay Batwoman headlines her own title. And at Marvel, of course, Northstar’s marriage to his boyfriend in Astonishing X-Men #51 (Aug 12) was promoted as a major event.

Well well well, isn't that subtle. That's all we need to know that they're clearly quite fine with DC taking someone else's childhood and corrupting it because they think something already so cliched is "cool", "bold" and "edgy". Not so at all. It's just snooze-inducing by now.

The way they speak about 1 Million Moms and obscure their concerns about Archie's potentially marketing Kevin Keller's state to children as a positive role model is insultingly crude, while the way they mention Northstar's case is sensationalistic. Hardly a way to make anyone take comics news coverage seriously.

I notice they also brought up one thing - but not another - involving Rush Limbaugh:

Oh, but wait: We can still count on one media outlet to remain irresponsible: Rush Limbaugh announced a cunning liberal scheme on his radio show that only he and The Washington Times dared to address: that The Dark Knight Rises was actually a political attack on Mitt Romney.

While CBG, by contrast, does not dare to address that the movie was very much an attack on the mindset Occupy Wall Street went by, so I don't see what their point is anyway. Another interesting story they chose to ignore was when the NY Times's film critics wrote a negative op-ed about the Avengers movie. How odd that when an ostensibly conservative news outlet says something negative about comics, they're allegedly mad about that, but when a liberal paper does the same, they're perfectly fine and say nothing. That's all it takes to realize they've never really cared about the art form or its translations into other mediums. And when CBG suggests they have no problem with taking someone else's childhood and corrupting it with an ultra-liberal vision of what famous figures like the Golden Age GL should really be like, that's all it takes to know that they've never had any respect for people like Bill Finger and Martin Nodell either.

Labels: Archie, Avengers, Batman, dc comics, Green Lantern, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics