The Four Color Media Monitor

Looks like the news about Dynamite's laughable direction for Nancy Drew - assigning the Hardy Boys to investigate her "death" at her expense - has drawn fan criticism, as this CNN report's stating:

Longtime readers of Drew were flummoxed by the news: Why celebrate the 90th anniversary of a beloved female character by making her a ghost in her own story?

Some fans criticized the decision to apparently "fridge" Nancy Drew in her own series. "Fridging" is a comic book trope in which a female character is killed to build a male character's development and motivation.

"The Nancy Drew books were powerful because a smart, brave, independent young woman solved crimes by doing all the things we got told weren't for girls," feminist writer Claire Heuchan tweeted. "Killing her off so two male characters can have an adventure is the ultimate betrayal of that legacy."

The whole trope itself's been done to death in the most offensive ways possible over the years, and Dynamite hasn't made things any better by making it look as though they contributed to the cliche. Yet they want readers to "give it a chance":

The authors still want readers to give it a chance when it's released in April.

Illustrator Joe Eisma told Gizmodo that he promised the series wouldn't "fridge" Nancy.

"I personally am not a fan of fridging as a plot device, and I wouldn't have agreed to draw a book that had that as a plot element," he said. "I just hope folks will give us a chance to tell our story."

Ah, so now they're on the defensive, and scrambling to assure everybody it's not what they're advertising it to look like. But it still doesn't excuse their apparent elements of social justice pandering in earlier comic entries, let alone the dismal-looking artwork. Those kind of queries remain unanswered so far.

He hears fans' concerns, but he suggests they read the first issue or the previous "Nancy Drew" series he penned to understand he's "just as big a fan of Nancy Drew as anyone else out there."

"I think that they'll discover in doing so how much I adore the character of Nancy Drew and how this character allows us to get to the core of who she actually is," he said.

If he wrote the earlier comics, I don't buy an iota of what he's saying. It sounds more like he wants everyone to just buy the book regardless of the merit in any part of this storyline.

Jennifer Fisher, an author who runs the Nancy Drew Sleuths fan organization and has consulted on books in the series, said she's excited to see where the new comic takes the character. There are few situations Nancy hasn't already been through, she noted.

"Whether or not she's really dead is the real question," she told CNN. "My take is that I see it as being more of a ruse, and hopefully Nancy Drew is really alive and controlling the show from the shadow and investigating in secret" while the Hardy Boys think they're on the case.

"That's what most fans are likely hoping for," she said.

I think purists should disregard the lady above as a sellout. I don't consider it a good idea to act as apologist for stunt-writing, and their reliance on this kind of gimmick is pathetic. I mean, just look how sites like CNN lapped it up based on the notion they'd even so much as pretend ND died, rather than whether Nancy and the Hardys would say, investigate a case involving Islamic terrorist cells, but those aware of the entertainment industry's tragedy of political correctness know there's only so many companies in showbiz who absolutely won't take the challenging direction, all because they're terrified of being attacked by the PC advocates.

And again, all this time, no questions raised about whether the previous writing on these adaptations was any good to start with, nor the artwork. If this is all they can comment on, it confirms they were never interested in meritocracies.

Labels: dreadful writers, golden calf of death, indie publishers, licensed products, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda