The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at the Washington Post looked at some of the latest editions of early Marvel tales from Folio Society and Penguin Classics, but at the end, a most curious statement comes up:

Looked at in 2023, these early superhero adventures, largely taken from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, exhibit an innocence and Mad Magazine-like insouciance unknown to the existentially bleaker, often more highly sexualized comics of recent years. But of course the latter aren’t meant to be read, traded and argued over by 10-year-old kids. Today, if Marvel comics are read at all, it must be very carefully, so as not to crease or damage a valuable investment. You certainly wouldn’t want Comic Book Guy to glance at your collection and say, in that drippingly sarcastic voice of his, “Worst. Copies. Ever!”

Gee, I thought the past decade regrettably brought about a disturbingly sex-negative viewpoint in comicdom, along with much of the rest of entertainment. And they're glossing over that, to say nothing of perpetuating an insultingly sex-negative viewpoint themselves? Well that's shameful. There were Marvel artists who took a sex-positive viewpoint decades before, and so did Stan Lee, himself, so what's the paper's point? And why does it sound like somebody's sugarcoating the speculator market to boot?

One thing they do get more accurate is the sad case of bleakness becoming a staple of modern comics, or even the wider entertainment landscape. But then, what does "sexualized" have to do with any of that? Romance and sex can actually be quite endearing, even if the latter's more suited to an adult audience. It's just a question of whether it happens to be heterosexual affairs in focus, something that's been severely dumbed down or kicked to the curb in the past decade, while LGBT ideology gets more emphasis. That said, I really can't stand how these real life J. Jonah Jamesons keep blurring distinctions between subjects like darkness and sex. It's not helpful in the slightest, and sends a poor message as a result.

Labels: history, marvel comics, msm propaganda