The Four Color Media Monitor

Polygon wrote an item about Aquaman and Mera tying the knot again, and how it came to be in the past several years that all of a sudden, they weren't allowed to be married:

Aquaman's adventures have all been pointing in one direction for the past few months — the reunification of the Seven Kingdoms of the sea under a new regime that’s more about democracy and less about which 1,000-year-old merman dynasties married which.

And you can thank Mera, Queen of Atlantis, for the initiative. Aquaman thanked her by throwing her a surprise wedding/engagement party with their daughter and all of their friends in attendance.

Throwing a successful surprise public proposal without consulting your significant other: Now that’s a superpower!

[...] Why did it take seven years for these two to tie the knot? Well, once upon a time, the creative team behind DC’s Batwoman title quit because DC editorial told them they were not allowed to let Batwoman get married to her girlfriend. In an attempt to quell fan blowback, then-co-publisher of DC Comics Dan DiDio said that it was DC policy to not allow superhero couples to get married, because “heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives.” And when fans pointed out that Aquaman and Mera were not only cohabitating but also the king and queen of Atlantis, DC reps replied that they weren’t actually married. 2013 was a real year.

Yup, that's right. The one and only DiDio got such laughably cold feet because - at least back at the time - they were so worried about family groups backlashing, that they resorted to moral equivalence in order to cover their tracks, insulting everyone left reading their books who cherished heterosexual marriage in the process. You can be sure DiDio couldn't possibly have cared less. Today, however, chances are much higher they would go full steam ahead with homosexual marriages, and IIRC, there was such a thing that took place recently in a Wonder Woman story. Point: DiDio, much like Joe Quesada, was and still is a social justice advocate (remember the diversity replacements he came up with to supplant Silver Age Atom, Firestorm and Blue Beetle in the mid-2000s), and the "wokeness" of a negative stance on marriage is part and parcel of that mentality. That's why Superman and Lois Lane's marriage was broken up too.

And they're also right that DiDio made it a whole editorial mandate that heroes shouldn't have happy lives, dating back more than 15 years ago. Much of the political correctness seen today comes as a result of DiDio's machinations from yesteryear. It's for this he should be remembered with scorn. If you're attending the Kubert art school, where he unfortunately got a teaching job, I'd strongly recommend avoiding his classes.

As for the Aquaman issue, it's amazing that a far-leftist like Kelly Sue deConnick would actually pen a story about a marriage between a normal man-woman couple, after all the harm she did to Carol Danvers at Marvel (and amazing such a far-left site like Polygon would make a big deal out of this and acknowledge who was responsible for the bad directions). Unfortunately, it doesn't prove she's mending fences, or is sorry for deconstructing what characters she did, and leaving considerable damage behind. And that's why, much as I wish I could consider supporting this Aquaman story, I cannot, any more than I could the Fantastic Four stories Dan Slott's been writing, and they haven't sold well either.

The Polygon article, however, also features a few more briefs about new stories that are pretty superficial in their presentation, and hardly objective. Such as the following about X-Force #14:

This week, the tournament between Krakoa’s champion X-Men and the best of Arrako came to a final head: The score is tied and it’s all come down to a duel to the death between Apocalypse and his long-lost wife Genesis. But shout out to X-Force #14, which dabbled in that long X-Men tradition of letting Storm absolutely destroy someone in a knife fight.

Oh, good grief. I don't think Storm was ever depicted engaging in knife fights prior to the turn of the century, so why all of a sudden do they think this is fine she be depicted doing what Apocalypse and this spouse of his are doing? Their take on Indigenous Voices is just as superficial:

Marvels’ Dawn of X titles are a great exploration of the formation of a sovereign mutant nation, and what that could mean for a truly Mutant culture. But I wish the flagship books under that umbrella could take a little time off from inventing new Mutant traditions in order to explore what Krakoa means to mutants who have allegiances to other embattled nations or a cultural heritage driven nearly to extinction.

So far I think the only books I’ve seen address this idea are Black Panther, Vita Ayala’s Marauders #13, and this story in Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices, from Darcie Little Badger and Kyle Charles — all written by creators of color. Other folks in the X-Men scene should take note.

And all folks in the audience would do well to take note of the site's failure to stress whether there's any writing and art of merit here. That's why these Polygon pages dedicated to mere briefs are one of the nadirs of their whole enterprise. There's even this brief about Dark Nights: Death Metal #5:

I’m not going to try to summarize what’s happening in Dark Nights: Death Metal at this stage in the game. I just thought you’d like to know that Wonder Woman has an army of Lobos.

Only so I can know to avoid this garbage. There's too much of this darkness emphasized in the title, and it's almost a moot point to say there's too many Lobos. I've made it clear before that the way he's been handled in the past 3 decades was an embarrassment, and this is not going to change my mind. There's also one more short take, on the Rorschach special:

The second issue of Tom King and Jorge Fornés’ Watchmen adjacent Rorschach plays out just like a political mystery thriller, to the extent that it wasn’t until this panel that I remembered it was set in the Watchmen setting.

And of course, if they're going to sugarcoat the writings of King, then it's clear this something to stay away from too. With superficial takes like these, it's no wonder Polygon is otherwise one of the worst entertainment sites around.

Labels: Aquaman, bad editors, censorship issues, crossoverloading, dc comics, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence, women of dc, women of marvel, X-Men