The Four Color Media Monitor

Rucka, of all people, with his track record, has written in the Hollywood Reporter that he believes the new Superman movie should be rated PG rather than the PG-13 ranking it's received:

Words like “realism” and “dark” and “gritty” get bandied about Hollywood as if the only merit a story can have is in its verisimilitude, but that’s a lie. Emotional honesty transcends reality; it’s what allows disbelief to be suspended, and yet what makes a story stay true. When Superman: The Movie was released, Richard Donner promised us we’d believe a man could fly. We did, but it wasn’t the wire-work alone.

[...] if you make a Superman movie you can’t take kids to, you’ve done something wrong.

This from the same man who wrote some Superman stories and even connected storylines several years ago that you couldn't give your kids for reading pastime, at least not without parental guidance. And those same three words he put in quote-unquote get bandied about the comics medium as though they're the only merits a story can have too. One of Rucka's most notorious scripts that tied in with Superman in 2005 was one where Max Lord, blatantly exploited by the editorial mandates along with Rucka himself, put the Big Blue Boy Scout under mind control by Lord, and under the influence proceeded to wage violence, endanger Wonder Woman and cause her an injury, and to stop this, she broke Lord's neck merely because he said so. And never mind that Lord was being depicted so shamelessly out-of-character, but for doing what she could to save the Man of Steel from getting innocent blood smeared on his hands, he returns the favor by condemning her for killing even a de facto villain. Batman followed suit and she was condemned by some of the media/public for her act. It was ludicrous in the extreme.

Does this mean that Rucka regrets his past efforts as a comics writer on mainstream books? Well, he did answer a query on his Tumblr site asking if article taking issue with his work on Superman for similar reasons would be justified, and admitted that if anybody slammed him for that, it would be justified. I just hope he feels the same way about what anybody would think of his work on WW.

If he's worried about taking children to see a dark movie, that's one thing. But then, he should also feel the same about giving them comics with famous icons, no matter how wide or narrow an audience they can reach. Being concerned only about movie adaptations while showing none of the same about the source material is hypocritical at best.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, Superman, violence, Wonder Woman