The Four Color Media Monitor

Entertainment Weekly's written up their own list of comics they think are best of the year, but which predictably include some politically correct recommendations. As expected, Jonathan Hickman's X-Men makes the list:

This X-Men story, told across 12 weeks this summer, is split into two interwoven comic miniseries: House of X and Powers of X, illustrated by Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva. It might sound like needless complication—born out of the fact that no human artist could illustrate a weekly comic for three straight months—but the two halves feed into each other. The House of X half marks a new beginning for Marvel’s mutants. Setting aside their differences with old enemies like Magneto, Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men stun the rest of the world by declaring a new sovereign mutant nation-state on the sentient island of Krakoa. Powers of X, meanwhile, jumps around in time to show both the necessity of that decision (the dystopian futures awaiting if mutants continue fighting among themselves) and the possible ramifications (unity taken to its extreme).

The connective tissue between them is Moira MacTaggert, a longtime X-Men ally (portrayed by Rose Byrne in the most recent films). Hickman invests her with new importance: Anytime she dies, the world resets to the time of her birth—the only difference being that she can perfectly recall the events of her past lives. Thus, she knows it’s time for change. At her urging, Xavier sets aside his dream of peaceful coexistence with humans and starts making demands to secure mutants’ future.

The parameters of this new world are defined not just by Larraz’s and Silva’s dynamic art, but also by infographic “data pages” from Hickman and designer Tom Muller, taking readers behind the scenes of everything from the different properties of Krakoa’s flowers to the timelines of Moira’s many lives. It’s not just the X-Men who are changing, it’s the very structure of their comics.

That's the problem. Sometimes changes aren't for the better. Sometimes they can make things worse, and dampen the impact of earlier stories. Why, if they're isolating themselves on an island, isn't that just bouncing back on a theme of isolation Grant Morrison for one angled into when he was writing "New" X-Men for about 3 years? I don't think isolationism is a helpful idea at all. Nor is it helpful when EW's contributors sugarcoat Al Ewing's "Immortal" Hulk:

Who could have seen this coming? Even at the height of the Marvel zeitgeist, it’s fair to say the Hulk isn’t widely loved; the ascendant MCU doesn’t have room for a solo feature film because his first two bombed so badly. Yet in the hands of writer Al Ewing, Hulk has become the focal point of a new superhero classic in the making. That’s a testament to Ewing’s skill, glimpsed in short-lived past favorites like Royals and The Ultimates but now finally given a major Marvel character and a long-form series to work with. The Immortal Hulk is, among other things, one of the first comics since Watchmen that actually earns its overly literary epigraph quotes — mostly because they, like everything else, get twisted into new shapes by Ewing to fit his all-encompassing design. Almost every single supporting character and villain of importance from the Hulk’s past pops up in fascinating ways over the course of The Immortal Hulk, but you don’t need to be familiar with them to get engrossed in Ewing’s story as it starts with straight-up horror and then accumulates elements of black ops thriller, metaphysical meditation, far-future sci-fi, and more as it explores the nature of evil and duality in the most thrilling manner possible. But although we’re focusing on Ewing’s writing here, equal credit for The Immortal Hulk’s greatness must go to artist Joe Bennett, who appears to be doing the best work of his career right now.

I don't think it's "fair to say" the Hulk "isn't loved". The problem is just that Marvel's story merit collapsed in the early 2000s, Hulk's included, all because of Joe Quesada's machinations. And while past Hulk stories have had their scary moments, I've never considered it part of the horror genre by a longshot. So for Bruce Banner's alter ego to be dismembered in one story was honestly revolting, as was an attack made on white people and some transgender ideology support in a few others.

The magazine also takes a sugary look at an Image book called Bitter Root, written by somebody who'd worked for Marvel at the time Axel Alonso was EIC:

Bitter Root understands the destructive power of racism. Written by David F. Walker and Chuck Brown, the Harlem Renaissance-set series follows the Sangerye family as they defend the city from monsters — specifically people who turned into demons after their souls were corrupted by racism and fear. However, the book doesn’t just stop there. It also explores how the trauma of racism can have similarly disastrous consequences on victims, too. Yes, this is heavy stuff, but it’s also incredibly entertaining, especially thanks to Sanford Greene’s action-packed and scary art.

After all the harm Walker caused, including Occupy Avengers, I wouldn't trust this to be any better. When a freelance writer disrespects core audiences, it's a very bad sign and example. They also bring up a book called No One Left to Fight, written by Aubrey Sitterson:

We here at EW don’t read enough manga to intelligently include it in our year-end comic lists, but mainstream comics got a refreshing injection of manga/anime flavor this year with No One Left to Fight. So often described by writer Aubrey Sitterson and artist Fico Ossio as “The Comic You’ve Always Wanted,” No One Left to Fight took classic fighting stories like Dragon Ball in a fascinating new direction. Sure, Goku and Vegeta can beat down any number of aliens and monsters, but what happens when someone who only lives for fighting hits their 30s? That’s the situation No One Left to Fight protagonist Vale finds himself in: Having beaten every villain, he now finds himself tormented by visions of what his life might have been if he had made other choices. The storytelling is very patient, with Sitterson rolling out world-building details bit by bit while Ossio hides indicative details in characters’ multi-faceted designs. But as tensions start to flare, Ossio’s colors really light up the place. It all culminates in the final issue (for now), when suddenly there is someone to fight again, and the pages practically explode with eye-popping action.

Any chance he's repentant for his own politically charged statements that cost him the GI Joe writing role at IDW, and maybe for his role in dumbing down the impact of the art there, particularly in the unfinished spinoff called Scarlett's Strike Force? Who knows? But recalling how alarmingly vicious he was with his own political visions is just why I wouldn't hold much confidence in this book either. And seriously, doesn't describing the book as something you've "always wanted" sound reminiscent of Sitterson's earlier promotional tactics like "best comic ever"?

They also fawned over Bendis' work on Superman. Surprise, surprise:

Superman’s future may be up in the air on the big screen, but he took on renewed relevance pretty much everywhere else in 2019. Just look at his eventful year in the pages of DC Comics alone. The Boy Scout helped reintroduce the Legion of Super-Heroes in Superman #15. Then only a few issues later, he revealed his secret identity to the world in #18 (by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Ivan Reis), which was surprisingly poignant and felt like a true game-changing development even though the publisher did something similar five years ago. DC also reinvigorated the world around him with the debuts of Greg Rucka and Mike Perkins’s Lois Lane and Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber’s idiosyncratic Jimmy Olsen. (There were some lows, though, like Superman’s confrontation with Doctor Manhattan in Doomsday Clock).

The Man of Steel also made an impact beyond comics, too. HBO’s Watchmen, a sequel to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark comic, powerfully used his origin story as one of the main ingredients of its exploration of race and superhero stories in America. Then over on The CW, the annual Arrowverse crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths” highlighted the 81-year-old character’s many dimensions with three different Supermen played by Tyler Hoechlin, Smallville’s Tom Welling, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Brandon Routh, who seamlessly stepped right back into the character’s tights 13 years after Superman Returns. And there’s hope for more Superman on TV next year because The CW is developing a Superman & Lois Lane pilot around Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch. Basically, the Man of Tomorrow’s time is now.

If only, but it's not. Such pretentious writers who have no true respect for characters and audiences, and all EW can do is fawn over the developing train wreck. No comment on Bendis' race-swapping of a Legion leader, or the rabid politics in Rucka's LL spinoff, and no objective view taken of shedding Supes' secret ID either. And what if the HBO Watchmen series is built on still more leftist biases, or if a planned TV show for Supes himself turns out just as bad as the Supergirl series has become? There's no hope if they go in that direction.

EW's just demonstrated why they're no better for comics coverage than the specialty sites like CBR supposedly are.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, Hulk, indie publishers, manga and anime, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Superman, violence, X-Men

CBR published a list of items that according to them have either lasted or haven't since the 1990s, and the viewpoints they have are not very respectable, depending on the subject in focus, or they're awfully misleading, dishonest and even contradictory. One example is guns and pouches:

In a world where people have heat vision and can command lightning with magic hammers, arming yourself with guns seems highly anachronistic. Of course, if you’re a street-level non-super-powered vigilante like the Punisher, it makes perfect sense to be packing, but the ‘90s seemed rife with characters who were armed with every conceivable firearm known to man regardless of their powers set. Hand-in-hand with the guns were the pouches and bandoliers that contained their ammo, but the sheer amount of pouches some characters sported were ludicrous. Aside from being cumbersome, the contents of these pouches were anybody’s guess (gas pellets? grappling line? reading glasses? spare change?) and happily, most characters these days sport a streamlined look.

This obscures the horrible art of recent in mainstream superhero fare, which is close on the heels of Rob Liefeld, and easily worse. Here's a panel I found that may come from Marvel's Incoming crossover, where we see yet another most offensive rendition of Carol Danvers into "Carl Manvers" and Tony Stark looks just as bad.

As for firearms, what's so wrong with that in itself? Law-abiding people, if that's whom we're talking about, make use of them for self-defense in real life, and unless the writer has the courage to say he's anti-2nd Amendment, I don't think he should be coming up with an argument so petty and laughable. If he doesn't think Spider-Man should shoot anything other than his webbing, that's fine, because superheroes like Spidey are intentionally depicted using anything but guns for the surreal approach of seeing superheroes battle and win against armed criminals without the same, and, using their brains to defeat the "brawn" of guns. But if it's GI Joe we're talking about, it's trivial to complain. Come to think of it, it's also trivial to complain about girls armed with guns when there's plenty in real life who use them for self-defense in crime-ridden cities. Another element they cite is replacements for the white heroes:

In a trend that started with the Death of Superman and spread to Batman, Green Lantern and Spider-Man, replacing classic heroes with “grim n’ gritty” or “extreme” substitutes was all the rage in the ‘90s. This trend has not disappeared in the modern age, as Batman (again), Wolverine, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk have all been replaced at some point or other by younger substitutes.

The difference these days is that their replacements seem to fit better in their roles in terms of thematics and story-telling, as opposed to the pure sensationalism and shock value the ‘90s replacements sought to exploit. In being replaced by daughters, protégés and former lovers, modern superhero stand-ins just felt more appropriate and ‘right.’

This is almost enough to fall off the couch laughing, based on what it obscures. Namely, the POC/LGBT/Islamist characters who replaced established white heroes in their costumes, along with women replacing men. The Muslim Ms. Marvel is a standout example of a character who's being forcibly kept in the role despite such poor sales, and what's so great about an Asian guy making comments like "totally awesome Hulk" when Axel Alonso shoved him into Bruce Banner's role? Doesn't that reek of silly stereotyping?

It's interesting they don't mention Heather Hudson replacing her husband James as the Alpha Flight team leader back in 1984, using a suit containing technology similar to his, but more often under the codename Vindicator than Guardian. It may have been in questionable taste, despite setting up a motive for Heather, but compared to how changes of recent were written, that was done far better and less for shock value or sensationalism than today's atrocities are. On which note, let's not forget when DC preceded Marvel with their own forced replacements like a black Firestorm, Asian Atom and Latino Blue Beetle. It goes without saying many of these PC replacements with race/gender-swapping aren't built on artistic merit, and did not appeal to the audience as a result. And if you want an example of a man replacing a woman in her role, I seem to remember Hank Pym replacing Janet Van Dyne as the Wasp a decade ago! Next comes the grim & gritty era:

In truth, the whole “grim n’ gritty” trend in comics started in the late ‘80s with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. However, presenting heroes as hard-boiled, violent, quasi-sociopaths really flowered in the ‘90s, partly due to these two series' influence and partly due to the sensibilities of the time. Writers in the ‘90s seemed to want to step away from the wholesome, “goody-goody” image of the Silver Age and dive into morally ambiguous territory with characters who were more psychologically complex and unafraid of crossing ethical lines. Thankfully, the proliferation of gun-toting psychopaths willing to splatter blood in the name of “good” has since diminished, as today’s writers are more willing to incorporate Silver Age concepts in today’s comics.

This too is awfully naive. The Punisher's still around, and Bullseye recently stabbed Heimdall to death in a Valkyrie series. Back in the 2000s, Geoff Johns perverted the Silver Age by injecting shock value violence into his Flash stories, and his Green Lantern stories were no different. That's something the Golden Age wasn't known for either, and if you take the way Batman's still given a noticeably bigger emphasis than Superman as an example, that's another example of how the grim & gritty trend is far from over. Next is crossovers:

Crossovers have been a mainstay in comics since Superman, Batman, and Robin first straddled a naval gun. The ‘80s saw some experiments in line-wide, Earth-shattering epic events like Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths, but the “yearly company event” or “character event” really came into its own in the ‘90s, and has remained a popular vehicle for story-telling to this day.

Initially consigned to Annuals or the occasional 3-part crossover with another title, the ‘90s graduated into full-fledged title crossovers like Operation Galactic Storm, character or “family” crossovers like Knightfall and company-wide crossovers like Zero Hour or the Onslaught Saga. It’s hard to imagine a Final Crisis, Civil War or even a Death or Wolverine without the ‘90s crossovers paving the way for them.

At least here, they're right crossovers tragically endure, and yesterday's led to today's. But while they may have initially been popular, the decreasing sales have since proven they no longer are. Some of the early crossovers like SW and COIE may have been relatively harmless compared to modern ones (unless you consider all the desperate character deaths Crisis led to later), they've since degenerated into everything from politically charged monstrosities to editors and writers trolling the audiences by killing off any character they choose, minor or not, in the most repulsive way possible. Or, put another way, into repellent publicity stunts. That this continues almost entirely without complaint by the press is testimony to how far responsibility's fallen. I faintly recall 2 or 3 writers for IGN at the turn of the century lamenting the poor influence crossovers have had primarily on superhero comics at the turn of the century. But by the end of the 2000s, the arguments against all the superfluous flood of crossovers had vanished, as the media became more and more dumbed down, and if the above is any indication, it's not like CBR's protesting any more than anybody else. The next item's also at least half inaccurate:

Perhaps the most recognizable feature of the comic book industry in the ‘90s were the covers of the books. Adorned with every bell and whistle from foil-embossed to holographic to bagged with a trading card inside, comic books of the ‘90s tried as best as possible to catch your attention and your hard-earned dollar.

Although enhanced covers still pop up from time to time in contemporary titles, it is not with the same frequency as in the ‘90s, so a comic book fan can stare at a modern-day comic book rack without needing sunglasses and a Dramamine.

But does that excuse all the shiploads of variant covers that still come down the pike month after month; a gimmick that appeals far more to speculators who could gobble up as many as they can find, leaving many without a copy to buy? Dynamite's one of the biggest offenders too, IIRC. It costs a lot of money, and sometimes these variant gimmicks actually cost more than than the standard list price issue does, since they're marketed as "collector's items" of the highest degree. I've long advocated for switching to trades-only, which could save money for publishers, and drawing all those illustrations for covers as the basis for art gallery-style pictures instead, which could give them far better notice. Yet all this time, so many publishers spectacularly refuse to consider the benefits, even at a time when comics are reaching 5 dollars as a list price. Next item is creator-owned properties:

Although independent comic book companies have always existed, they historically had nowhere near the popularity, scope, and reach of Marvel and DC. That all changed in 1992 when a group of former Marvel artists got together to form Image Comics. Suddenly, creators had an outlet to explore their own ideas in the medium while receiving their fair share of the profits, as evident by creations like Spawn, Savage Dragon and Astro City.

Creator-driven projects gained more popularity, and DC and Marvel seemed more willing to allow creators more latitude with interpreting their characters or creating their own worlds under imprints like Vertigo and Marvel Knights. Although Marvel and DC are still the top dogs, today, creators are given way more credit, creative opportunities, and latitude in their projects than ever before, thanks to the popularity of creator-driven properties of the ‘90s.

Now that's interesting they cite the Knights imprint in this example. If the early examples were set noticeably apart from the rest of the MCU, you could figure it was at least close in its own way to something "creator-owned", even though its cast was long established characters.

But if that were to be considered significant, it'd be about the only thing so, and the serious minus is that, as overseen by Joe Quesada, it became the precursor for a problem that's prevailed since - the majors only hiring writers based on their alleged success in the indies, and less on genuine merit or a respect for what qualities make any mainstream superhero and their casts work well. If somebody tried to pitch ideas based on merit and a university degree rather than an already established indie comic, chances are they'd be rejected. And right-wingers would have far less a chance of getting through. Also remember that one of the first comics published under the MK imprint was Daredevil, and that was scripted by Kevin Smith, whose most "significant" achievement there was killing off Karen Page. A move I find reprehensible today. The next example cited is art over story:

Artists were insanely hot commodities in the ‘90s, so much so that a book would often sell better depending on who the artist was. Unfortunately, better art does not necessarily make better stories, and as the art became more central to selling books, story began to take a backslide. Exhibit A would be Todd McFarlane’s run as artist and writer on Spider-Man, which sold well due to his breathtaking visual interpretation of the web-slinger but left a lot to be desired in terms of dialogue and accurate portrayal of the character and his world. Thankfully, contemporary comics seek to establish an equilibrium between story and art, and overall, the quality of writing has improved since the ‘90s.

Well I guess we know where this bozo stands on Wolverine getting killed off for publicity's sake too, right? And what he thinks of Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled. And even, lest we forget, One More Day, the erasure of the Spider-marriage, marginalization of Mary Jane Watson for nearly a dozen years, and slaughtering Arsenal/Roy Harper's daughter Lian in that disgusting miniseries called Cry for Justice from around 2010. Compared to those, even the lesser moments of the sans-adjective Spidey from 1990 were a masterpiece, and unlike the Slotts of today, McFarlane had a sufficient understanding of what makes Spidey work, and even today, he usually has far more class than a creator who attacks audiences on Twitter in the most vulgar ways possible. This paragraph also ignores how bottom of the barrel art at Marvel became under Alonso, and even DC's not immune to this. Sure, there were examples during the 90s of books with great art and weak storytelling. The Clone Saga's surely a telling example. But to claim modern books are a genuine improvement even in storytelling misses the boat by galaxies. And if artists today are forced to water down the quality of their art for the sake of social justice agendas, that too is a serious detractor. Now, here's what they say about movie adaptations:

Up until the ‘90s, the only really successful comic book films were the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and Tim Burton’s Batman. Aside from continuing the Batman series, the '90s saw the film industry flirt with the idea of mining comic books for movie ideas with hits like The Crow, The Mask, and Blade. Of course, a fair share of bombs and stinkers (like Tank Girl, Steel, and The Shadow) kept Hollywood from fully exploring the medium, until the success of 2000’s X-Men opened the floodgates.

Now, comic book films routinely hit the highest-grossing-film-of-the-year mark, and are released to packed audiences three or four times a year.

Sure, a lot of these adaptations have opened up big. But how well do they hold up in retrospect? Not very well, I don't think. And some, like Batman vs. Superman and the Justice League movie, may have begun strong, but plummeted badly soon after. As noted earlier, some filmmakers have taken issue with how these blockbuster tentpoles have since taken up all the funding for non-superhero related fare, and its taken a toll on creative freedom as a result. IMHO, it's not healthy. Now, here's what has to be the most hypocritical moment of all, "oversexualization":

Superhero comics have traditionally been a male-oriented industry, as a male-saturated writing and artistic pool crafted stories for preadolescent and teenage boys. Aside from a few notable exceptions, depictions of women seemed to follow traditional tropes, especially their visual depiction. In the ‘90s, almost every female hero or villain seemed to be drawn as an adolescent boys’ fantasy: fitness model body, heaving breasts, collagen-filled lips and hair that flowed in a non-existent wind. Although the depiction of women still has a ways to go in modern comics, current representations aren’t as blatantly over-sexualized as they once were.

Wow, a comment making it sound like women's sexuality is literally a bad thing. Even before the 90s, it's not like Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, John Romita Sr. and Jim Aparo didn't draw women as sexy as could be seen in the 90s, and it's not like that was an inherently bad thing either. There may be examples where it's superfluous, like when the artists assigned to Supergirl in the mid-2000s would make it look like her skirt was going to fall off her hips (example: issue #21), which was admittedly embarrassing. But if cards are played right, drawing a woman sexy - something Will Eisner precipitated with Sheena, and Bill Marston/H.G. Peter continued with Wonder Woman - is not wrong in itself, and there are women who do like to look sexy in real life. J. Scott Campbell's got his share of lady fans who appreciate his style of art, so to put down the hard work of talented veterans is to insult their female fans along with everyone else. Besides, look how horrible the character design became when Alonso was EIC at Marvel, and you'll see they became something worse than "over-sexualized" - they became offensively masculine, as was the case with Carol Danvers, and the above picture I'd uploaded confirms the abuse is far from over. Now, here's the last cited example, trades:

Younger fans may not remember this, but there used to be a time when if you missed an issue of your favorite title, you had to scour the back issue bins and newsstands around the city to find it.With the rising demand for issues of popular series like Sandman reaching a fevered pitch in the ‘90s, the trade paperback became the easiest way for fans to read a complete story without having to waste their time or break their banks searching for single issues. To this day, trade paperbacks and collected editions remain a popular, cost-effective and simpler way to read a particular arc.

In that case, why not advocate unambiguously for jettisoning the pamphlet practice and moving onto trades-only formats? It could ensure better artistic practices and financial benefits for publishers, yet this list writer doesn't have what it takes to form opinions. It's such a waste of kilobytes online. At least 2 commenters called out this farce too, with one saying:

Disagree with most of this. Grim & Gritty is now the standard, with blood and violence reaching levels that the 90's were never allowed. Cyclops/Wolverine, Captain America/Iron Man trying to kill each other in the streets. People losing limbs and getting their spines ripped out... Gimmick Covers are still painfully everywhere... in fact even worse. While a Hologram or pop up cover would actually tie into the story somehow and ENHANCE a comic... now we have lego covers, and Deadpool covers, and action figure covers that are company wide and don't even feature the characters in the book... and Art over story is worse than ever. There will be pages and panels after panels of just empty pictures with no dialogue... 'counting on the art to tell the story'... and only succeeding half the time.

Everything that people hated about the 90's, is still here. It's just become normalized to the point you don't recognize it anymore.

And second:

I'm sorry, what?
Gimmick covers died out? Ever heard of variants...
Sexualization of females died out? Art over story died out? In which world do you live, I wonder...

It's good there was opposition to much of the social justice damage inflicted, which resulted in Alonso deservedly getting canned, though what he led to still prevails in some way or other, and even if it were minor, it's still damaging. And jarring violence has become worse than ever. Back in the 90s, when Bane went on to break Batman's back, it was far from graphic. But if it were done today, I fear it would be close on the heels of a Mortal Kombat game, and no matter who'd be writing and drawing, it would be more alienating than engaging.

CBR's decidedly long worn out their welcome, and this kind of slapdash history coverage proves they wouldn't make a good investment on the stock market.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, dreadful artists, golden calf of death, indie publishers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, msm propaganda, violence

The mainstream superhero obsession with company wide crossovers continues, as Marvel foists their latest "Incoming" upon the audience, a story that stinks of Identity Crisis elements, and worst is that it'll lead into yet another this coming year called "Empyre". IGN describes it this way:

Incoming opens with a new murder mystery in the Marvel Universe, as the Masked Raider stumbles across a dead body inside a locked room. Numerous Marvel heroes are drawn into the resulting investigation, including Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Blue Marvel, Jessica Jones and Mister Fantastic.

As that investigation unfolds, readers are treated to new teases for major conflicts that will unfold over the course of 2020, such as a public backlash to teen heroes, Mister Sinister secretly creating hybrid mutant clones and the symbiote god Knull making his way to Earth.

Mister Fantastic and his allies eventually discover the murder victim is actually a Kree sleeper agent named Bel-Dann, and track down his Skrull opposite, Raksor. Both characters originally appeared in The Dark Phoenix Saga, tasked with observing the battle between the X-Men and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard for their respective empires and eventually forming an unlikely bond. Now, however, the two have been collaborating on a much different mission.

It all sounds pathetically familiar, to say nothing of an excuse to turn out many more crossovers by extension. That this is a sleeper agent of the Kree is no improvement, because there've already been too many plots like these during the time Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso were EICs for Marvel, like Secret Invasion.

And of course, there's that insufferable problem of too many crossovers, which both take away stand-alone storytelling and long cost too much in cover list price. Not to mention when you set up so many crossovers almost back to back, it just compounds the farce. Even if the crossovers C.B. Cebulski's overseeing aren't overtly political in nature, they're still doing considerable harm to Marvel, and let's hope the audience at large has learned why it doesn't pay to buy these superfluous projects.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, golden calf of death, marvel comics, msm propaganda, violence

Veteran filmmaker Terry Gilliam, in an interview with Indiewire, joins fellow movie directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola in arguing the Marvel film franchise has taken up too much room and notice, and feels they don't send the proper message, while discussing his latest production, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote". There's one part near the start though, where he unfortunately brings up his otherwise unsurprising politics:

...Gilliam remains embattled in a pile-up of lawsuits. Specifically, he’s up against his film’s producer, Paulo Branco, whom Gilliam calls a “psychopath. He’s the filmic version of Donald Trump. He’s an egomaniac, a megalomaniac, and a semi-psychotic and I also think schizophrenic…he makes Harvey Weinstein look like a really sweet guy to work with.” Branco has not responded to IndieWire’s request for comment.

He just had to take a swipe at Trump, and I think that reference to Weinstein risks minimizing the disgraced producer's sexual offenses, which he'll hopefully be convicted for at his trial in the coming month. I think that was awfully awkward of Gilliam, though he did acknowledge a year earlier Weinstein's a monster, and told how he caused problems for him. One Angry Gamer argues it leads to his comments on the Marvel films coming up short. On which note, now to the comics-related debate in question:

From “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” to “Brazil,” Gilliam has long adhered to his singular vision despite production setbacks and studio worries. “Each film I am doing is the one and only film I will do in my life,” he said. “Even with studio films, I go into it like a military strategist. Who’s going to be in the foxhole with me after we finish shooting?” He used “12 Monkeys” as an example of a film where, despite studio intervention on the dark sci-fi reimagining of Chris Marker’s avant-garde short film “La Jetée,” Gilliam relied on his cast for support to push the project through. “If Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, and me are in the foxhole together, they can’t touch us.”

However, not all auteurs are as lucky, and for Gilliam, the towering reign of Marvel movies at the box office pose an attack on this very kind of creative freedom. “I don’t like the fact they’re dominating the place so much,” he said. “They’re taking all the money that should be available for a greater variety of films. Technically, they’re brilliant. I can’t fault them because the technical skills involved in making them are incredible.”

However, he cautioned that Disney and Marvel’s seemingly infinite resources could be put to better use. “If you are that powerful, you should be dealing with reality a bit more.” He also warned of what he believes to be the central lie peddled by such films, and the cultural threat it poses. “What I don’t like is that we all have to be superheroes do anything worthwhile. That’s what makes me crazy. That’s what these movies are saying to young people. And to me it’s not confronting the reality of, you know, the quote-unquote human condition. You know what it is like to be a normal human being in difficult situations and resolving them surviving,” he said. “I can’t fault them for the sheer spectacle, except it’s repetitive. You still have to blow up another city.”

He's just hit on a serious problem that affected Marvel's comics proper when Axel Alonso was EIC (and DC's too several years prior), and still prevails - the whole notion that all these social justice fabrications they came up with to fill the masks and boots of veteran white superheroes can only do anything significant if they wear costumes and have superpowers. It's just as poor a direction as it is not to create new protagonists who can stand on their own in their very own roles, rather than be shoehorned hastily into an established white hero's role. It could even suggest why to date, there hasn't been a major film centered foremost around Nick Fury and Adam Strange. And then Marvel's complicated everything involving the former, because they had to change the Agent of SHIELD's racial background to black instead of white, which could surely wind up conflicting with how to market the original stories, since the moviegoers they supposedly want buying their books are bound to come across Nick's Silver Age tales, and wonder why the change? The Hollywood Reporter asked earlier this year if the time's come for a Fury-powered film. But even if racial background's not an issue, it may still be too late, now that Kevin Feige's moving their productions in a social justice-themed direction.

To be successful on many issues requires intellect and talent, and superpowers alone don't guarantee that. If the Marvel/DC films are sending that message, it's a very poor one.

“Where’s the gravity, where’s real gravity? Because [in superhero movies,] everything is possible,” Gilliam said of the limitless worlds of the MCU. “It’s the limitations that make life interesting. Okay, so your suit burns up. So you get another suit because you’re Tony Stark. It’s not enough. They dominate so much.”

Gilliam also argued that superhero tentpoles are drying out any available resources for mid-budget films. “There isn’t room or money for a greater range of films. You make a film for over $150 million or less than $10 [million]. Where’s all this other stuff? It doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “I make films where I’m trying to make people think. I mean, I try to entertain them enough that they don’t fall asleep on me, and they’re there to make you think and look at the world in a different way, hopefully, and consider possibilities. Those films don’t do that.”

That could explain why I've seen at least a few people on some online forums argue the Marvel films don't have re-watch value. If they don't have what to offer serious thought for the viewer, they're hardly the accomplishment Feige surely wants everyone to believe. Corporatism combined with political correctness has led to a situation where film producers - and comics writers - don't deal with issues in a valid way, but rather, with deliberately biased liberal politics that only prove divisive. Gilliam also took noticeable issue with the Black Panther movie:

Gilliam said he’s not a fan of Ryan Coogler’s 2018 “Black Panther,” which critics heralded as a gust of fresh wind in the superhero canon, and one that welcomed diversity and inclusion to an otherwise airtight, white-dominated universe of films. Earning more than $1.3 billion worldwide, “Black Panther” penetrated the cultural consciousness in a way few superhero films ever had, but Gilliam isn’t buying it.

“I hated ‘Black Panther.’ It makes me crazy. It gives young black kids the idea that this is something to believe in. Bullshit. It’s utter bullshit. I think the people who made it have never been to Africa,” he said. “They went and got some stylist for some African pattern fabrics and things. But I just I hated that movie, partly because the media were going on about the importance of bullshit.”

When asked if he felt that critical praise for “Black Panther” was a politically correct response that ignored aesthetics in favor of identity politics, Gilliam said, “It makes my blood boil.” The conversation pivoted to controversial remarks he made back in 2018 amid the Harvey Weinstein fallout and the wave of voices that responded to form the #MeToo movement. “We’re in the era of the victim. We are all victims. It’s all somebody else, abusing us, taking advantage of us. We are powerless, except except that we go out and do other things,” he said.

On the MeToo movement, there is valid criticism to raise, since, as noted earlier, there's been as many false accusations made as there have been factual ones, and the former have often been made without filing police reports, which could lend more credibility to the accusations. And in hindsight, the BP film does seem to have been hijacked by identity politics advocates, even if it wasn't an example per se of a movie made to represent the same. Film critics often do sell out to please a PC narrative, and these Marvel films are no exception, recalling a lot of the favorable takes on Capt. Marvel looked intentionally biased in its favor (and it even made the Oscar shortlist along with Avengers: Endgame). There's also a valid critique to be found on the superficial notion these films should be looked upon by POC as something to believe in, when artistic merit is what truly makes the movie worth the viewpoint. But surely it wouldn't work better if the films were sold as something like wish fulfillment? Yet that was hardly how it turned out in the past year or so. Black Panther wasn't even the first movie based on a black Marvel hero produced - that honor would go to Blade starring Wesley Snipes, first produced over 2 decades ago, and that was what precipitated many of the Marvel movies to follow over the coming years. (It was also one of the very few with an R-rating.)

And spending wasting so much money almost entirely on these tentpoles - the DC/WB and Star Wars movies included - at the expense of other projects whose filmmakers may have better ideas, even simple escapism-related ones, doesn't avail Hollywood or the reputation of the comics movies. Of course, that might be one of the reasons why the last of the latest SW trilogy, Rise of Skywalker, has turned out to be the lowest-grossing entry in the main franchise under Disney so far following Solo.

The Wrap notes, however, that Gilliam's mistaken about the filmmakers not visiting Africa:

Gilliam, however, is incorrect about the “never been to Africa” part. Coogler traveled with several key members of his team to Africa to do research and aerial shots for the film. Production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth Carter recounted in an interviews with TheWrap how Afrofuturist architecture from the continent and from the attire of tribes like the Masai were core influences when building the world of Wakanda. Both women won Oscars for their efforts.

But, as they also note, he is right about the following:

Like Scorsese and Coppola — the latter of whom called Marvel films “despicable” — Gilliam feels like the series is accelerating an arms race in Hollywood that prioritizes tentpole blockbusters and low-risk/high-reward microbudget horror films to the detriment of everything else.

The major studios are the foremost ones guilty of this, though it does seem to have affected indie production outfits as well, if the following interview Gilliam gave to The Wrap says anything:

So that’s the likely course rather than theatrical?
Independent distribution is really f—ed. They don’t have any money anymore. And how do you compete with “Avengers” and things like that? It’s only at this time of year when you get a sense that there are independent films out there, because they’re spending all their money for the awards.

There must have been a point in your career when Hollywood would have given you “Avengers”-style movies.
When I was younger, I would’ve loved to have done that kind of work. But not now. There’s so many good technical directors out there. I don’t know their names – nobody knows their names – but boy, they can do the job. And even fairly recently, somebody was talking to me about one of the big things. But I just don’t want to work on that kind of movie, because they’re basically factory systems. And why?

The one person I admire at the moment is Taika Waititi. A couple of years ago at Christmas, my son put on “Thor: Ragnarok.” I said, “I don’t want to see this stuff,” but it was really funny. [...]

Maybe the funniest part, depending how you see it, is that Thor was one of the earliest Marvel films where all the diversity-inclusion propaganda was first injected, with Heimdall an example to undergo all these unnecessary alterations. And what if independent films, regardless of their partisan politics, have suffered because too many businesses are putting all their eggs into the superhero investment basket, instead of simpler productions that don't rely on heavy special effects? However you look at this, I must concur it looks bad when so much money is being banked on in categories that wind up crippling the creative freedom of filmmakers like Gilliam who want to prepare food for thought, or even escapist fare that's not reliant on the heavy FX these major blockbusters are. It's not good for entertainment's future, assuming there is one.

Labels: Avengers, Black Panther, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics

Newsarama interviewed the overrated writer who came from Hollywood, recruited by the since-dismissed editor Eddie Berganza, about his Doomsday Clock miniseries, which has come to a belated end after delays not unlike some Marvel projects in the early 2000s helmed by filmmaking types:

There were a lot of returns in this week’s Doomsday Clock #12 - some expected and some more surprising. The Justice Society of America are back. The Legion of Super-Heroes are back. And Superman’s parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, are back.

I wish I could say this is admirable. But Johns is a writer who knows how to mask his pretensions well, and as Brian Bendis has recently demonstrated, it looks like race-swapping's taken place in the Legion. In which case, what good would Johns' restoration be?

But as important as those developments are to fans, Doomsday Clock’s most obvious message is the return of hope. And although readers might have seen that coming as well - and in fact, the “return of hope” was billed as one of the series’ purposes before it began - the way that hope endured at the end of the issue was the biggest surprise of all.

And what if Johns still hasn't abandoned his obsession with over-the-top violence, among other serious detractors? This was the case in the time following Blackest Night, like when Black Manta turned up again, and such a despicably sensationalized rendition doesn't exactly generate "hope".

As Johns tells Newsarama, no reboot or crisis will ever be “forever,” because the new rules that creators make for the DCU will just evolve and change again later.

Well at least here he admits even his own tinkerings and tamperings with the DCU won't be forever, which is surely more than can be said for how long the company will continue in business. This does hint, however, that he's still willing to go along with any plan to publish another company wide crossover, just what's brought down superhero comics, something even the new Valiant universe wasn't immune to, and as noted in the following:

The writer even includes a list of several theoretical events and reboots to come - including, less theoretically, a 2020 “crisis” event that DC has already acknowledged.

But none of them last - not even the upcoming 5G universe, the issue promises - and none of them ever will.

“Celebrate that. Embrace that,” Johns advises his fellow fans and creators in our interview. “I mean, you can try to chain [the DCU] up, but Superman’s going to break those chains at some point.”

And someday, he'll break out of the chains DiDio's imposed on the franchise as a whole, along with Johns. That 5G universe, which, from what I know, may be replacing the main heroes with younger substitutes, including at least one race-swap, which is no longer novel, and no one should be deceived into wasting money on it.

But now, after both orchestrating 2016’s “Rebirth” initiative and writing Doomsday Clock, Johns has guided writers toward re-forging lost relationships and bringing back missing characters and concepts.

Will it last? Probably not, as the aforementioned promise of a 2020 DC crisis will attest. But will the inspiration of Superman and the hope of the DC last? According to Doomsday Clock, it will.

I think Heroes in Crisis already proved it wouldn't, or time would be wasted on further character assassination of the superheroes. Even if Flash Forward does exonerate Wally and resurrect the slain Titans, the point's been made this is only leading to additional money being spent on projects that'll allegedly repair everything, when the harm could've easily been avoided in the first place. Publicity stunts have to cease. Now here's some sections from the main interview:

Nrama: That’s what the entire story really comes down to, doesn’t it? This entire story builds to this moment for Dr. Manhattan, for Jon Osterman, to choose the third option. All this time, he thought his story had two possible endings — the end of him, or the end of the universe. But he chooses a third way.

Johns: The world today is built on two choices. We’re in this almost unconscious mode to choose one or the other. And that’s led to division and that’s led to a narrow view of the world and reality and each other. You’re programmed to have to pick a side.

I think people need to stop sometimes and say, maybe there’s another option. Another path. Another choice. Instead of letting everyone tell us there are only two ways to think.

Superman would always find another option. He’d find the better option. That’s what Superman’s greatest superpower is. It’s not flight or strength or heat vision. It’s knowing the better option, knowing the choice.

People ask, "How do you challenge a character who has all these abilities?" But it’s not about these abilities at all. It’s about having him make choices and having him go beyond one or the other. He’s a bridge; he’s inspiration personified. And we need that. We always need that. Everyone needs that.

That whole thematic is laced throughout our book.

I don’t want to break down the book for readers, because I think they should do it themselves, if they want to.

But Superman’s role was to see beyond.

Let me take a moment to say, how interesting he's trying a gimmick of hinting he realizes there's people out there who aren't fooled by his deceptions. He also appears to be hinting at his otherwise leftist politics when he alludes to divisions, and suggests he's critical of conservatives of harboring a narrow view. Now about the theme of "seeing beyond":

Nrama: So you’re saying that theme of “seeing beyond” is laced throughout the book?

Johns: You see what you want to see. And Dr. Manhattan sees beyond what others see the DC Universe as. That thematic of seeing beyond something, and not being able to see something - from Dr. Manhattan not being able to see beyond the black wall of nothingness, to Nathaniel Dusk not being able to see the truth behind the crime he’s trying to solve, to Rorschach not being able to see the reality of who Ozymandias really is and what he’s really doing, to Mime and Marionette not being able to see where their child is.

The theme of blindness is throughout, a mass that obscures your view, shards of broken glass obscuring your vision, from the very moment that Comedian is thrown through that window through the universe shattering apart - that’s all laced within there.

This is something I didn’t want to talk about early on in the book, because you want people to find it and see it. And you want people to get what they want from this title.

Some people might read Doomsday Clock and just want to see the Watchmen characters meet the DC characters. And that’s fine.

They might focus on the “continuity” or the “future” bits planted in there. And some people might see a deeper story where you get inside these characters and inside these themes a little bit more. And everything viewpoint is valid, for whatever reason. You might just read it because you love Gary Frank’s art.

But everyone sees what they want to see. We live in an echo chamber of reality. We need to escape it. And the whole idea is, can you break past that a little bit? Can you see a little bit more? Can you try instead of shouting at the other side and seeing only its destruction as they answer?

That’s where the third choice comes from.

We all need a little help to see beyond what we can’t see. We all need a little help to know that maybe we can make a different choice.

The idea of needing someone like Superman to lead us there is what the series is really all about.

Here's what I find annoying about Johns' approach, where he touts Superman as one to lead anywhere. It isn't all that different from when he supposedly highlighted Wally West as a symbol of hope, and look how that turned out under Tom King. And how Superman's turning out under Bendis. All the while Johns has nothing to say. So why should we take his word at face value?

Nrama: He might go about it the wrong way, but he is smart enough to know what Jon needs.

Johns: He is that smart. And he knows that, OK, someone’s got to help him do it. And I can’t.

You know, there are no villains - or at least, I wouldn’t call them villains - in our book. There’s just people. I don’t want Dr. Manhattan and Superman to go fists-to-fists. There’s nothing interesting to me about who’s stronger. It’s all about who they are and what their viewpoint is and how that viewpoint remains, is reaffirmed or changes.

Part of it is seeing beyond what you can see, seeing beyond the next crossover. In the comic book aspect, this book doesn’t look to the next crossover. This book looks to all of DC comics. To the future of what DC is.

And what if DiDio contradicts this? He already did it with Wally West, so why should we expect much different later? These insults to the intellect will not stop so long as he's in charge, sitting around the corner from Bob Harras, who hasn't proven a convincing EIC. As for not having villains in the story, as Johns puts it, well, it wouldn't be the first time he's ever depicted a villain as a hero, with Lex Luthor and Sinestro but 2 examples.

Nrama: What, to allow us to have hope for the future? Is that where you’re going?

Johns: To inspire us. He does. That “S” symbol is everywhere across the globe.

Nrama: OK, Geoff, I understand what you told me the last time we talked - that this story’s point is bigger than just how it leads into the next crossover. But inside that sort of macro, there are some interesting micro-level changes to the DCU. For example - Ma and Pa Kent. We’ve already noticed hints in the DCU that Jonathan and Martha Kent were going to be alive after this series’ end. So they’re alive again, right?

Johns: Yes. We established really early on, in issue #1, we talked about Ma and Pa Kent’s death. There are specific things we point to that will carry on in other stories.

Nrama: Like the return of the Legion and the Justice Society…

Johns: Yes, if you look at what happened and how it changes in this story, it all has to do with the great history of the DC Universe - the great legacy from the Justice Society and Wonder Woman to Superman to the Legion of Super-Heroes to Superboy.

It all is tied together. And it all helps support itself.

It resonates and expands out from Superman, in all directions - the past and the future.

But he’s at the very center of it. And he always will be, forever.

No mention of the race-swapping Bendis indicated some time ago for Lightning Lad, I see. It may not last forever, any more than shedding Superman's secret ID, but Johns' inability to ensure such PC tampering doesn't occur doesn't speak well for himself either.

Nrama: So we talked earlier about how this issue says “the past and the future are free,” and how that frees up stories. But is this all tied together?

Johns: Well, the idea of the past and future being unleashed and free, to me, was personified in Johnny and Imra, two characters I love. The idea is that you shouldn’t try to control and put too many rules on this stuff and say this is forever, because it’s going to - and should - evolve and change.

Celebrate that. Embrace that.

Don’t put rules on this stuff. And I don’t mean rules like … I mean, you can try to chain it up, but Superman’s going to break those chains at some point.

There's stuff we can celebrate, but it shouldn't include his otherwise shoddy writing.

Nrama: Let’s talk about the end of issue #12. The boy, Clark. We talked about how Superman was the turning point - the inspiration for Jon finding the third choice. But there was also a seed planted early on, with this child, when Jon first noticed him in Marionette’s womb. I feel like there’s something you’re saying about Jon now finding a hope for the future, pouring himself into this child, both literally and figuratively.

Johns: Well, it’s kind of passing on the legacy to somebody else who will - and he says as much - who will get the love that a child needs so that they can return that love.

He never really got that in his life.

And of course, Superman did.

So hopefully, Jon’s created the hero, the human being, that can do what he couldn’t.

And hope is in children. That is our future. Children aren’t the ones choosing sides. They’re taught to do that. I think children have such unpolluted viewpoints. They’re so honest. And then they learn what to do by others.

Our greatest hope is the younger generation to always make things better.

And that’s really, ultimately, the point of this too - moving on and changing and allowing change.

As much as, like you mention, nostalgia is within this, it’s also very forward-looking.

I hate to say this, but children aren't always honest, let alone innocent, and if they're taught the wrong approach - which is arguably the problem with many universities today along with parents who have the wrong ideas on anything - then hope won't be coming from them. Did it ever occur to Johns his own writing isn't suitable for children? And if they did read the items he's written that really turned me off, something tells me that, if they bought into his garish viewpoint, they wouldn't make things better, but worse.

Nrama: It’s interesting that you’re saying there were no edicts or change, because you did have a lot of delays on this. Can you address the delays?

Johns: I know there were delays on the book as we worked on it. It wasn’t for lack of working on it. It wasn’t for lack of making this important or anything. This book took a lot of work. For me, I didn’t want to rush through the scripts - I couldn’t. I would have loved if we had started the book - we had talked about launching in April, but they wanted November. I would have loved if we had launched in April.

But ultimately, I need to focus on the quality of the book and getting that book out rather than rushing it or having anyone else but Gary draw.

It was also a really busy year for me running Stargirl and finishing up Wonder Woman 1984. With everything I was working on, I wanted to make sure it was as perfect as I could make it.

So for all the readers who were frustrated by the delays, I understand and I apologize. But I wanted to make sure it was the best I could deliver.

Yawn. If he were a truly dedicated writer, he'd make a choice between comics or movies/TV. That he didn't makes it pretty obvious he's no more responsible than Kevin Smith, who held up his own wretched Black Cat miniseries for nearly 2 years for the sake of his movie schedule. Nobody should accept Johns' apology if he couldn't choose which entertainment medium he wanted to concentrate on, which doesn't jibe well with his blabber about choosing sides. It's possible to craft a quality story without taking so much time in between to produce movies and TV shows, the latter starring his own creation, rather than Jerry Siegel's Golden Age protagonist the new variation is based on.

It's a terrible shame DC continues to employ this shameful hack writer whose visions aren't as spectacular as some of his apologists would like you to think. Bringing back the Justice Society members and such is fine, granted, but as with Bendis, it doesn't excuse the colossal minuses littering their careers, and nobody should let these phonies pull the wool over their eyes.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, dreadful writers, Justice Society of America, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Superman

The British comics writer David Hine, quite a boilerplate leftist (and once known for putting an Islamist co-star in a Batman book), wrote the following on Britain's election day in the past 2 weeks:

I'm not usually up this early but today is kind'a special. This is our last chance to save this country from heading down a very dark road. #VoteTheToriesOut

— David Hine (@HineDavid) December 12, 2019

So, he doesn't want the UK to retain more independence from the awful European Union, and he's probably unconcerned about the horrible situation already occurring with Islamofascists running rampant, violent crime shooting up to horrifying levels, particularly in London, while local authorities do nothing convincing about it, while real patriots like Tommy Robinson are persecuted for trying to defend the country. If he were really worried about a dark road, he would've recognized all the bad Jeremy Corbyn represented in Labour. If Hine voted for them, he doesn't.

And Hine clearly doesn't appreciate what financial benefits Brexit's brought to the UK, the good news that's taken place there. I'm glad the Tory party won with Boris Johnson in such a landslide, and think it's a terrible pity comics writers like Hine just have to adhere so hard to the left, and never consider the more challenging issues. Society will never recover fully so long as people like Hine take the positions they do.

Labels: Europe and Asia, moonbat writers, politics

The Fort-Smith Times-Record wrote up a puff piece about a few DC-related items, such as the TV adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the finale to Doomsday Clock, and even Brian Bendis' Superman mishmash. First, let's see what they say about the Crisis adaptation:

Let’s begin with “Crisis,” whose first three episodes Dec. 8-10 left Super-fans with a happy grin. The five-episode crossover between The CW’s six superhero shows (the last two episodes air Jan. 14) gave us the regular Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) from Earth-38, where “Supergirl” used to take place. (Spoiler: It was kinda destroyed. Don’t worry, I suspect its demise isn’t permanent.) He was joined by Superman of Earth-96 (Brandon Routh), who appeared to be, kinda-sorta, the Man of Steel from the four movies starring Christopher Reeve, and also “Superman Returns,” but at a time when the whole Daily Planet staff has been killed by The Joker, which also happened to an entirely different Superman in a graphic novel called “Kingdom Come.” Naturally, being Supermen, 38 and 96 get along famously.

I'm as huge a Super-fan as the next one, but I don't see why I should be happy and grinning about something containing these kind of lurid elements with the Joker in live action. Honestly, this is decidedly another example of overusing Batman elements to the max. It's bad enough Supergirl was ruined by rabid leftism, and now we have this littering up the TV set.

Let's see next what they say about Doomsday Clock:

Meanwhile, the new comics that arrived Dec. 18 included “Doomsday Clock” #12, the last issue of a sequel to “Watchmen” that integrates the characters into the regular DC Universe. It took a lot of guts for writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank to try to fill the boots of “Watchmen’s” Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, but it served its purpose — not only giving us the spectacle of Lex Luthor meeting Ozymandias, but returning the Legion of Super-Heroes and Justice Society of America to DC’s history. They had been erased by a previous revamp ...

... which “Doomsday Clock” established as being the work of Dr. Manhattan! And that’s not all — “Clock” established that all the revamps that have taken place in DC Universe, going all the way back to the establishment of a second Flash in 1956, are not only part of the in-story universe’s history (Dr. Manhattan is aware of them all), but that they happened for a reason.

I think it's shameful Johns gets to restore any of these characters to the DCU proper, not unlike how Bendis got to restore Superman's red tights, and it's also idiotic to put the Watchmen into continuity proper. IMO, there's something wrong when the most favored-by-the-establishment writers get the opportunity to take steps seemingly favoring what the audience would appreciate, even though these same writers continue to wallow in elements that otherwise harm the products they're working on. Now, let's turn to what they're gushing about Bendis' takes on Superman:

Finally, we come to “Superman” #18, which arrived Dec. 11. And yes, Supes revealed to the world that he has always been disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet.

That’s not as shocking as it could be, because his identity has been revealed before. In the “New 52” version of the universe created in 2011, Lois Lane discovered the secret and revealed it to the world. (That was undone by the “Rebirth” revamp of 2016.) And prior to that, decades of “what if” stories played around with the concept.

Further, the secret identity as a concept seems to be another one of those long-standing superhero traditions, like the boy sidekick, that might have made a grudging sort of sense in the 1940s, but is slowly disappearing among today’s capes and cowls. For one thing, we have facial recognition software that won’t be fooled by a pair of glasses. We have infra-red satellites that will find the Fortress of Solitude in a heartbeat. The world has changed, and for the most part, secret identities are passé.

Of course, that’s the metaverse reason — Superman gives an entirely different explanation at his worldwide press conference on the steps of the Daily Planet building. It’s been a slow burn since the return of Kal’s father Jor-El (yes, he used to be dead), who’s been hiding some dirty secrets. And now Superman is thinking hard about his own secrets, and feeling pretty badly about them.

Because under Bendis, he just has to feel some kind of forced guilt, huh? And this is another example, much like this one, of a politically correct declaration secret identities are so dated, suspension of disbelief is virtually impossible. Besides, tracking equipment that could locate the Fortress of Solitude has surely been around in the world of science fiction for decades on end now, and if the writers/editors decided, they could have an otherworldly alien armada be the ones to track Superman's tranquil laboratory and disrupt his peace and quiet while doing research. Or, has it ever occurred that, with a little imagination, you could establish Superman developed cloaking technology to prevent discovery of his fortress at ease, among other elaborate security devices? Come to think of it, in the world of sci-fi, you could conceive stories where the heroes with secret IDs came up with technology to fool facial recognition and fingerprint software. All that's required is a little imagination, creativity and suspension of disbelief, and you'll have an enjoyable tale. One that's not bound to make the list of must-reads from these awful journalists.

Interesting that, unless Jor-El turns out to be an imposter, there's no complaints about how one of the few decently written deaths in comics history was undone for the sake of Bendis' pretentious directions.

Say, now that I think of it, even before facial recognition programs, it was always possible for a police sketch artist to draw up something close, and in the 2nd issue of the sans-adjective Superman from 1987, Lex Luthor's staff came close to determining Clark Kent was the Man of Steel, but Luthor wouldn't buy it and told them to just throw out the computer's findings. In any case, it's worth considering that computers aren't inherently perfect.

Why did he have the secret identity? “Well, originally it was so ... I could be with people,” he tells Adam Strange. “Learn. Adapt. Be part of the conversation.” But keeping his life as Clark a secret, he says at the press conference, “today that feels false. Almost dishonest.”

No kidding. Consider all the secret agents for the FBI who have to go undercover in real life to infiltrate criminal rackets. Does that feel dishonest? And in regards to whom? If to be with other people though, would the propagandist be willing to admit Geoff Johns' ridding the open knowledge Wally West was the Flash in 2004 was a most insulting mistake, right down to how previously, Johns was making all the folks around Wally suffer?

And while I have mixed feelings about this development — not the least of which is knowing it won’t survive the next revamp — there’s no “almost” about it. As a journalist, the one part I couldn’t swallow with Clark keeping his Super-secret is that he was violating the ethics of my profession. You can’t tell your editor you just interviewed Superman when you are Superman. It’s a well-meaning lie, but it’s a lie all the same. And a conflict of interest. Plus, how can a guy profess to fight the never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way when he’s been dishonest to the people closest to him ever since he put on a pair of glasses he didn’t need?

Obviously, he believes Peter Parker couldn't tell J. Jonah Jameson and Robbie Robertson he'd photographed Spider-Man when he is Spider-Man. And speaking of lies, what about all the anti-conservative lies spewed by rock bottom papers like the New York Times, and TV channels like CNN? It's pretty clear the columnist doesn't think Supes should take measures to protect himself from the most dangerous criminals if he feels it necessary. Some superheroes of the past would keep secret IDs also because they didn't want to risk the chance said criminal entities would go after their paramours like Lois Lane if they knew the girlfriends/wives were aware of all this. Though I will say it's irritating when anybody has to pay the price for knowing a hero's secret identity, or even just being best pals with them.

Aside from honesty, there are some other pluses to this development. For one, maybe we’ve seen the last of the cliched, plot-driven story of Superman struggling to keep his civilian identity secret. For another he can smooch openly with Lois — who is married to Clark Kent publicly, and has a son by him — without anyone thinking she’s cheating.

Again, suspension of disbelief is considered impossible, let alone the suggestion maybe Lois and Clark should try to relegate their lovemaking to times when the latter is out of costume, rather than in it.

I’m still not 100% a fan, though, because it’s hard to see how Clark Kent can continue as a character, and I’ll miss him. I’ll reserve judgment, though, to see how “Superman” and “Action Comics” writer Brian Michael Bendis handles it.

I have a lot of confidence, though, because it’s not his first rodeo. He outed Daredevil too!

He also depicted Scarlet Witch as one-dimensionally insane, and turned Iceman homosexual for the sake of it. I don't think it's a matter of confidence so much as it is a matter of somebody acting as apologist for overrated atrocities. If that's what the columnist thinks, why be so otherwise welcoming of abandoning secret identities for the sake of a direction that could just as well result in Superman being forced to scrap his job at the Daily Planet, and along with Lois, all but live in isolation? If he abandons his Clark Kent identity, are we really supposed to consider that a good thing? I'd say no.

It's truly disgraceful how the press gives their full backing to to Bendis and Dan DiDio with no objectivity offered, much like it was the case when Bendis worked for Marvel, and insists you cannot use your imagination and creativity to retain the concept of secret identities. That's how famous creations and franchises collapse.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Justice Society of America, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Superman, violence

ABS-CBN News reported that Gerry Alanguilan, a noted comics artist from the Philippines who worked for DC/Marvel in the 1990s, has passed away at 51 years age. It says here:

In an interview released in 2011 about Elmer, Alanguilan had this to say about his creative process, and how his work is received. “It’s my personal creative belief that I do not tailor my work to target any specific audience or market. I just do the story I believe in, any story that I feel like telling at the time. If I do my best writing and drawing it, I know there are people out there who will appreciate it for what it is.”

This is just what's missing in today's mainstream US industry. Creators who'll develop a merit-based story marketed and promoted based on precisely that approach. Today's artists and writers would do well to take note of what Alanguilan stated years before, and recognize this is how to write a story in any entertainment medium.

Labels: Europe and Asia, good artists

The Verge recently announced cartoonist Gary Larson's Far Side is now online, first with classic material, and there looks to be newer material available this coming year. Here's the site's address.

Labels: comic strips, good artists, technology

A professor writing for The Conversation penned a biased item on how Alpha Flight's Northstar brought "queer" representation to Marvel's universe in 1992 when mediocre writer Scott Lobdell took to scripting the 1983-94 series briefly:

Marvel Comics is frequently referred to as “the house of ideas,” yet the idea of a queer superhero did not fully arrive at Marvel until the 1990s. Despite Marvel’s reputation as a campus phenomenon and as a hotbed for liberal — even subversive — discourse, Stan Lee’s comics publishing juggernaut would not feature a canonically gay character until some 30 years after the debut of The Fantastic Four.

But that doesn't make it good from an artistic perspective, as will be explored further along the way here.

There’s a reason for that.

The 1954 Comics Code Authority — a censorship bureau that policed comics content — explicitly banned “sex perversion or any inference to same,” which comics scholar Hilary Chute notes is “a clear reference to homosexuality.” The Marvel Universe as we know it began in 1961, with the launch of Fantastic Four #1. Thus, Marvel Comics was, from the outset, actually prohibited from depicting gay characters.

So how do you a write a queer character at a time when comics are expressly forbidden from featuring queer characters?

In a word: delicately.

First, I think it did cause harm in the long run to censor homosexuality as much as sex scenes in general for as long as it happened in the Silver Age. Mainly because, how would it be possible for anybody who disapproves of abnormalities to comment on how and why they feel it's a bad influence? And if you think delicate approach has an advantage, that's why I'll have to bring up Lobdell's second take on Northstar from 2001, in the last X-Men story I know of he's written to date, which was anything but delicate, and by no means subtle. Here's 2 panels I found from UXM #392:
In this embarrassingly bad story called "Eve of Destruction", which culminated in Wolverine seemingly stabbing Magneto to death, Jean Grey (depicted awfully robotically here) has to round up a ragtag handful of hastily written-up guest stars, including Northstar, and a jerk named Paulie Provenzano, who ends up being assaulted by the Alpha Flight member over alleged homophobia. Notice the line where Paulie tells Jean-Paul, "I told you - I ain't into that." Hmm, I wonder what that's supposed to allude to? Does it suggest Jean-Paul propositioned him?!? Whatever, this is actually far worse characterization for Northstar than what Lobdell wrote up 9 years prior in AF #106. As somebody who's read a lot of the original AF material, and thinks the late James Hudnall's work was surprisingly good, I can't recall him ever acting this disturbingly vicious in earlier stories, even as he was sometimes depicted with a condescending attitude towards Heather Hudson when she took over the team reins as Vindicator.

And neither Jean nor the sister of Sunfire turning up here does anything to put a stop to it. I hesitate to think what would've happened if this had been Diamond Lil in the role, since her invulnerability power is similar to what this hastily written guest has. By contrast, take a look at these panels from AF #12 from 1984, the issue where James MacDonald Hudson, Guardian and Heather's hubby, seemingly perished for nearly 6 years (shortly after returning, he parted again in the 100th issue):
Back at the time, Northstar disapproved of Sasquatch as a boyfriend for his sister Aurora, which alienated her from him for a short while. And the above incident let to a whole scuffle which finally culminated in Shaman deciding he'd have to use his magics to paralyze all the brawlers to make them stop. Here, common sense was shown by somebody. Yet years later, Lobdell pens a story where, while one character seemingly tries to stop a noxious brawl among the goodies, 2 others certainly don't. How odd indeed, because I don't think Jean ever stood by idly in past X-Men tales while 2 or more people wound up in a needless fight. It sure doesn't reflect well on her as a field leader, and more specifically, it's poor writing and characterization.

There's also this panel from Marvel Fanfare #28 from 1986 to consider:
In this story by Bill Mantlo, which brought up Northstar's past as a messenger for a Quebec separatist group, he told how he'd renounced violence. Put this alongside Lobdell's bizarre renditions, and it stands quite a bit in contradiction to how things were done earlier. Jean-Paul abhors violence as performed by the Quebec separatists, but he's okay bashing up another guy over personal dissent? Sorry, doesn't make sense. On that note, let's turn back to the article, as there's more in need of a commentary:

It wasn’t until 1992 — three years after a major revision to the Comics Code officially opened the door to depictions of LGBTQ+ characters — that Marvel had their first openly gay superhero. In Alpha Flight #106 written by Scott Lobdel, the character Northstar (alias Olympic ski champion Jean-Paul Beaubier) declared: “I am gay.”

Even then this move was met with outrage by Marvel’s corporate leadership, Marvel Comics historian Sean Howe explained in his book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

No kidding. And I've got a feeling that, based on the following panels from the 106th issue, it's not merely because Northstar was now openly identified as homosexual, but rather, because of how the would-be veteran hero, Major Maple Leaf, reacted to the news Jean-Paul rescued an infant dying of AIDS he'd found abandoned in a trash can in the Toronto district while the team was doing battle with Mr. Hyde. Take a look at the following in the panels I found from the issue:
Major Maple Leaf, wearing the style of a Mountie, busts into the hospital. He's outraged the little infant girl's getting all the headlines, in contrast to his homosexual son who'd died of AIDS, and got none of the same. His reaction, horrifically enough, was to threaten to commit infanticide, which would've resulted in blood dripping off his hands if Northstar hadn't stopped him. The story may imply homosexuality's an acceptable practice, but that's the least of the problems compared to this. An alleged hero would threaten murder over his personal issues and because Northstar never spoke about his own homosexuality before? The story tops it off with a sewage cover at the end with the following panels:
After all that violent scuffling, threatening the life of an infant regardless of whether she was on her way to the grave, Northstar lets the guy off the hook and comforts the guy, and then MML stands alongside several other people in the hospital as the girl's declared dead while comforting the hero...as though nothing ever happened. MML wasn't arrested, even though he'd threatened murder and committed assault while destroying public property and trespassing. My jaw fell off my face and crashed to the floor in disbelief. The article doesn't mention any of this. Since when did alleged homophobia and lack of interest in the AIDS epidemic justify violence, to say nothing of lenient positions on homosexuals and homophiles who'd stoop to mayhem? What if this was the reason Marvel executives at the time were outraged? For a story supposedly addressing what liberals of the times considered big deals, it sure does a horrible disfavor to them all. You could argue it even does a disservice to RCMP officials who believe in maintaining a positive image shunning violence and crime.

Just an issue earlier in #105, when Madison Jeffries and Diamond Lil were planning to marry, Lobdell had written a scene where the men of AF encountered an attempted armed robber at a bar who was using a shotgun, who turned out to be a guy who's family was living in poverty and in danger of being evicted from their apartment for failure to pay the rent. Because his gun was empty, and he claims in his defense he was allegedly going to give back the money later, they're inclined to take a lenient approach to him as well. And across town, the women of AF went to a male strip bar, and were arrested for brawling with Pink Pearl, the villainess who appeared in the mid-80s as an attempted terrorist plotting to assassinate the Canadian prime minister and the US president, and here, she's now suddenly a legitimate businesswoman? This, IMHO, was ludicrous, almost as much as the mind-boggling embarrassment of #106. If there were ever a case to be made about the downside of surrealism, this would have to be it.

Northstar had debuted way back in 1983 as part of the all-Canadian, government-sponsored superhero team, Alpha Flight. The team first appeared in the pages of X-Men, brought to life by Canadian artist and writer John Byrne and iconic X-Men writer Chris Claremont.

This isn't accurate. After James MacDonald Hudson's debut in 1978 in X-Men, a few more AF members debuted the following year in X-Men #120, so Northstar as a creation is at least 40 years old. What happened in 1983 was, after a few guest appearances in other books, AF made their debut as an ongoing series, and for all we know, this embarrassingly over-the-top story by Lobdell may have led to the series' demise.

At the time, X-Men comics were already a hotbed for queer subtext. Comics scholar Ramzi Fawaz notes that Claremont’s X-Men “articulated mutation to the radical critiques of identity promulgated by the cultures of women’s and gay liberation.”

Another comics scholar, Scott Bukatman, puts it more simply and says: “mutant bodies are explicitly analogized to … gay bodies” in Claremont’s X-Men. It is no surprise then, that Marvel’s first gay superhero should emerge from this series.

Oh please! Like we're supposed to take the word of university "scholars" at face value. This is little more than hijacking for the sake of narrow agendas, which must've begun over 2 decades ago. The problem with these supposed experts is they care not for how it all began, as metaphors for Jews and blacks, and their obsessions got the better of them.

The article also cites what Northstar creator John Byrne himself stated:

Okay! As the creator of the first Gay superhero, this one I can answer.

There need to be Gays in comics because there are Gays in real life. No other reason. Same reason, in fact, that there are Blacks in comics. Asians in comics. Women and children in comics! The population of the fictional world should represent the real world.

That's why I created Northstar -- I felt the Marvel Universe needed a Gay superhero (even if I would never be allowed to say it in so many words in the comics themselves), and I felt that I should create one, rather than retrofitting an existing character.

But did he believe homosexuality must be depicted positively, with no dissenting views allowed, if at all, and that any character created as homosexual should never abandon the practice and belief? Does he also believe there's no distinction between homosexuality and race? Granted, Byrne didn't take the extreme route of modern SJWs, which resulted in Iceman changed to homosexual, but if he believes homosexuality is a positive example, that's just sad. I do wonder what he thinks of how Lobdell's story was written up? It did more harm than good to his creation, if you ask me.

They also bring up AF #7, where an old buddy of Northstar's named Raymonde, allegedly gay himself, was murdered:

In 1983, the narrative of a former lover being murdered and thus spurring the superhero to action and emotional eruption was already a comics cliché. But staging that through a same-sex couple establishes a sort of subtextual validation of Northstar’s relationship as something more than the Comics Code Authority “sex perversion” label.

Wonder why they don't mention the guy had a daughter named Danielle, who indirectly arranged for the murder via the superpowered gangster Deadly Ernest? This story was in questionable taste, since it was basically turning a woman who could've become a love interest for Northstar into a vile crook, all for the sake of a twist.

Two years later, in the 1985 limited series X-Men and Alpha Flight, Northstar’s sexuality is once again woven into a key story, this time written by Claremont. After having his consciousness briefly absorbed by the X-Man Rogue, Northstar becomes furious that she now knows his “secrets.”

In a misguided attempt to help Northstar, Rogue then asks him to dance at a very public reception. When Northstar’s own teammates make fun of the incongruity of Northstar dancing at a ball with a woman, Rogue thinks “None of y’all understand him the way ah do.”

So Rogue wasn't doing the right thing, if she wanted to try and undo his homosexuality? Okay, got it. I do know it was troubling when, during the Purple Girl/Persuasion's debut, and in her original crush on Northstar, where she commanded him to be her boyfriend, Mantlo wrote that he later told the team he felt like he'd "been raped". (Which Heather Hudson considered ridiculous.) Kara Kilgrave's crush on Northstar was largely forgotten a year after her debut.

On the literal level, Northstar is being ridiculed for his general disinterest in heterosexual romance. But Claremont is crafting a story of a man who struggles with his closeted sexuality in the face of social pressures.

Maybe ridicule is exactly the problem. Maybe it should be written it's sad and regrettable he's disinterested in heterosexuality? Though this paragraph also ignores Jean-Paul may have had an affair with Clementine D’Arbanville, a former FLQ terrorist who alternately worked as a circus manager, and was killed in Marvel Fanfare #28.

It’s a sympathetic portrayal of the character that helps to normalize the concept of a gay superhero, even if Marvel couldn’t identify him that way at the time.

Does the professor believe homosexuality in itself should be normalized? That's what the above suggests. If homosexuality can't be depicted as a mental flaw, and only society in general be the problem, that's just the issue with how Northstar was depicted for so many years. And I guess he can't ever be written wanting to overcome his lack of interest in the opposite sex, or worse, rejection of the same, eh? Very disappointing indeed. I don't think it does much good to keep them stuck on such traits, seemingly forever.

Whether through delicate subtext or comics covering wedding events, Northstar holds a uniquely prominent and, at times, poignant position in the history of LGBTQ+ superheroes.

As we come to understand the importance of diverse representation within the superhero genre, this is a character that needs to be known, discussed and hopefully appreciated.

Well if you want my take on the subject, I'm afraid homosexuality did not a compelling character make him. For many years since his debut, Northstar's characterization was by far the most stagnant, and he was depicted at times as condescending towards Heather, as she took over the reins of AF when James was put in limbo. Maybe part of the problem was that the writers went by the ill-advised idea that he had to remain stuck on a homosexual mindset and couldn't engage in a serious affair with the opposite sex (later, he was put in limbo on Asgard for a year and a half following issue #50, after Loki's deceptions). But even after Lobdell's sloppy tale, he still remained dully written. The story from 2001 merely compounded the damage. And it didn't ensure Alpha Flight better sales. Nor in fact did the 2012 gay marriage in X-Men prove stratospheric success in sales, and historian Sean Howe saw it for the tedious gimmick it really was.

As for Lobdell, he may have apologized for sexually harassing a lady cartoonist several years ago. But I think he should also apologize for the forced way he wrote Northstar beating up on another guy, either over disagreement, or that he spurned advances, all the while depicting Jean Grey taking no action to stop him, and even for the shoddy way he depicted Major Maple Leaf dealing with his personal issues in 1992. That kind of writing did no favors for anybody. As far as I know, Lobdell's AF material hasn't been reprinted in trades yet. I'm sure it will be eventually, and then, many more readers will be able to evaluate the material more easily, right down to how Aurora was reverted to split personality situations by Headlok. But for now, one can only wonder if the reason Marvel hasn't gotten around to it is because Lobdell's tale from 1992 really is bad writing, and does more harm than good to the topics they focused on?

Labels: golden calf of LGBT, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence