The Four Color Media Monitor

Asher Elbein, the SJW who once attacked Ethan van Sciver for all the wrong reasons, wrote a puff piece for Audubon magazine, published by a birdwatchers' movement where former Marvel editor Christian Cooper's a board member today, all about the propaganda rant Cooper penned for DC's Represent digital comics project, and it comes off as social justice-pandering as almost any other lugubrious article Elbein's ever penned on his part in mainstream news outlets:

The tale begins, as so many in birding do, with a pair of binoculars. In DC Comics’ Represent! #1, Jules, a young Black man with an interest in birds receives the binoculars from his father, who claims they have special powers. And they do: In the drifting, impressionistic 10-page story that follows, the binoculars show Jules a parade of faces along with each bird he spots: Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other Black men and women killed by police. At one point, while walking through the park, a white woman letting her dog run wild reacts violently to Jules’ request for her to leash it.

If that part sounds familiar, it should: The comic's writer is Christian Cooper, the birder whose filmed Memorial Day encounter with a white woman over an unleashed dog ended with her calling 911 and claiming that an “African-American man” was threatening her. Later that same day, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck. Both incidents have had far-reaching impacts. Cooper’s experience shone a bright light on the daily acts of racism Black people face while also inspiring Black Birders Week, a virtual event showcasing Black scientists, researchers, and nature enthusiasts. Floyd’s death sparked months of ongoing protests against systemic racism and police killings, and a flurry of symbolic changes in cultural spaces, including birding. Now Cooper’s story, It’s a Bird, ties the two events together explicitly—in a medium itself that has a very mixed record when it comes to Black representation.

From the material I read, it didn't look like she reacted violently, so much as she did act obnoxiously loud-mouthed. I guess that's one more stereotype the story invokes - an overweight woman coming off sounding like a loudmouth. As this whole article goes about invoking a one-sided view of violence, refusing to consider Black victims of homicide in cities like Chicago, for example. Seems like only police matter when political correctness comes into the focus. Funny thing is how Elbein sort of admits the tale Cooper wrote lacks a real point when it "drifts", yet he calls it "impressionistic", when it hardly is.

And that sure is interesting how Elbein claims a medium that produced Black Panther courtesy of Stan Lee has a "mixed record". No mention of Christopher Priest either, I see. Or Larry Hama, if it matters. Nor is there any argument about the dearth of merit-based writing in today's industry. It's pretty much limited to agendas only here.

Cooper has history with the comics industry: In the 1990s, he was a writer and editor at Marvel Comics, as well as the company’s first openly gay editorial employee. He handled scripting duties on various issues of Marvel Comics Presents and the X-Men spinoff Excalibur, and he was an editor for issues of the comic Alpha Flight that introduced Marvel’s first openly gay character, Northstar. Cooper left the business in 1996, quit reading comics, and is now a senior editorial director at Health Science Communications.

Umm, he worked with them for another 2-3 years, and nearly a decade, before he quit the business. No mention of how badly written AF #106 was either, and maybe the reason why is because in a manner of speaking, the story was actually rather demeaning to Canadian Mounted Police. In which case, the story could be looked at even more differently today than it was years before - as a story with a very poor approach to law enforcement metaphors. But, here's where a turn is taken to something Elbein's PC crowd actually influenced - ghetto mentality:

Something the mainstream comics industry has not done magnificently well, however, is hiring Black talent, whether they be writers, artists, or editors. DC’s relaunch of the comics company Milestone, originally established by a coalition of Black writers and artists, languished for years after the initial 2008 announcement. And Marvel’s launch of a series of covers riffing on classic hip-hop album art raised eyebrows among Black critics, who pointed out how few Black creators worked at the company at the time. When companies do hire Black creators, they often don’t invest in them.

“Everybody who I do know in comics that is Black, and is trying to sustain or maintain or even break into a career, talks about how hard it is to feel like you actually can grow in the medium,” says journalist and comics writer Evan Narcisse (Rise of the Black Panther). "I’ve had long established black artists tell me that somewhere along the line they became a 'black artist' and only got calls about Black characters.”

Narcisse credits the new Represent! series and Cooper’s one-off story as a nice gesture. But he also hopes DC follows it up by creating solid, ongoing working relationships with a diverse array of Black talent on series that aren’t limited to only Black characters or themes like racial injustice. In his own experience, Narcisse says it’s been frustrating to watch Black creators not get the same support and career opportunities as white colleagues.

Well gee, here's the problem: when Blacks are only assigned to stories starring Black characters in mainstream in modern times, it's got what to do with the PC mentality that only POC know how to write them, how they think, along with their cultural aspects and such. Not mentioned, however, is that when POC do get certain assignments writing/drawing white characters today, like Ta-Nehisi Coates getting a Captain America assignment, it's based on whether they're ultra-leftist. Obviously, all this PC thinking had a long-ranging negative effect that's unlikely to change so easily. It's also affected stories toplining women, like the real Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, whose stories have been almost entirely written by social justice-supporting women for nearly a decade now, with Kelly Sue deConnick one of the most notorious scribes assigned to write the repeatedly relaunched volumes.

Cooper acknowledges the industry's representation issues, but he also thinks it's improved. "In terms of creators, there's been a slow but I think somewhat steady coloring up of the creators even in mainstream comics,” he told Audubon. “I think change in birding has been much slower. I think comics are actually ahead of birding in terms of recognizing demographic change, adapting to demographic change."

When it comes to the future, though, his optimism is much more measured. "I’ve lived through this before—so many of us have,” he says. “Some unarmed innocent Black person gets shot dead by the police for no good reason, we protest in droves, people pay lip service, things calm down, nothing changes. And then we're right back where we started again."

Well, here we go again with the victimology and belief only police are the problem, making me wonder if Cooper really is concerned about crime in its many other forms, including crimes committed by one Black against another. He seems oblivious to polls specifying a majority of Black Americans want law enforcement to remain the same or better in their neighborhoods too. Hopefully, Cooper's aware Jason Blake is not innocent, and is facing charges for an extremely serious crime.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics