The Four Color Media Monitor

Over a week ago, Breitbart's London section wrote about Marvel's replacing Thor with a woman for the sake of progressivism:

Thor a woman? It’s hard to believe the most macho, overtly masculine character in the comic canon could possibly be reimagined as a broad. But that’s almost certainly precisely the reason Thor was chosen: as a screw-you to so-called nerdbros from the achingly progressive staff of today’s comic book establishment.

I'd say it's also an insult from the lefty staff to the female audience, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are some out there who find the idea of a woman sporting an ultra-masculine name side-splittingly hilarious.

Captain America, too, is changing: he’s becoming black. Changes like this are designed to provoke readers, and they do–not because readers are racist or sexist, but because they understand that certain characteristics are intrinsic to certain characters. James Bond and Captain America are obviously white. It is a part of their personalities. Thor is obviously a man; to suggest otherwise is daft.

Bingo. But the only other reaction readers should give is to stop buying the books, and their new Secret Wars designed to lead to a reboot is reason enough to quit buying and concentrate on older material instead, and newer material from different publishers that isn't intended for desperate controversy.

What sticks in the craw of the fans I’ve spoken to about female Thor is how utterly transparent the political posturing is behind the change. No one likes their thunder stolen but there is simply no good literary justification for making Thor a woman, they say–and the results have been execrable. You can write intelligent satire about masculinity without making a classic masculine icon into a girl, an observation that seems to have escaped Marvel’s writers.

That's not all they failed to consider. There's also What If #10 from August 1978 where Jane Foster was already cast as a female Thor (or Thordis), and an alternate reality anthology tale is all we needed. If they really have to emphasize a woman from Asgard, Lady Sif and Valkyrie could've filled the role perfectly without being shoehorned squarely into the role of a male protagonist with one of most masculine names around.

Men don’t seem to care about gender-swapping great female characters, which rather gives away the game about the sort of agenda driving these awful decisions. Why is there a demand for female versions of male superheroes, but no demand the other way? I mean, have you ever heard of calls for a male Lara Croft? It makes very little sense, until you learn that comic books, fantasy and sci-fi were taken over years ago by ultra-progressive misandrists who basically hate their own core audiences.

Does that sound familiar? It should: the recent GamerGate controversy in video games happened because ordinary gamers, unlike comic book readers or fans of fantasy and sci-fi, stood up to the authoritarian moral panic brigade in the press and their feminist agitator icons and said: no. We don’t recognise the world you’re sketching out, and we don’t want your bizarre and outlandish politics to pollute our hobby.

Marvel and DC addicts who keep buying out of habit - some just for alleged monetary value - would do well to take notice of the better example set by video game players and realize just how poor an example they've set by contrast. Reading this makes me think again how shameful it is that comics readers aren't borrowing a page from gaming counterparts and proving they have the ability to perform a consumer revolt and demand serious repair jobs for desecrated universes. No matter how small the comics readership is today, that doesn't mean they can't find ways to make a difference a la the Gamergate consumers. The time will have to come, sooner or later, for addicts and speculators, first and foremost, to decide where they stand and if they can continue to give the Big Two's staff a shovel to bury the pastime they allegedly love under tons of misery.

A good point is made how DC and Marvel's staffs have dedicated themselves to insulting the audience under the confidence it won't abandon them in spite of that. It's something that may date back as early as the Armageddon crossover by DC in 1991, but really started coming to a head with Emerald Twilight a few years later. In fact, I faintly recall reading a guy on an old message board 15 years ago, in the earlier stages of the internet, who said he'd met Kevin Dooley at a convention, and Dooley made it clear that his interests were not character growth in Green Lantern. Rather, it was "shaking up" the series. So it's clear where they were really headed, on a road to nowhere. That callous attitude still continues to this day, as mainstream writers and editors ignore all challenging dissent, under the confidence nobody will ever ask them any hard questions.

Labels: bad editors, Captain America, crossoverloading, dc comics, Green Lantern, marvel comics, politics, technology, Thor