The Four Color Media Monitor

NPR's KCUR did a report on comics stores in the Kansas City area, along with local conventions, and some of the guests invited to their local events include:

Held March 8-10 at the Kansas City Convention Center, this year marks Planet Comicon's silver anniversary. Meet Jason Aaron who has worked on Wolverine, PunisherMax, Thor, and The Avengers. Get an autograph from the Vision, Paul Bettany or Hellboy Ron Pearlman.

What is so special about one of the wokest writers of the past decade like Aaron that they have to invite him? Even Perlman, from what I recall, is quite a leftist himself, and hardly the greatest choice for inviting to entertainment conventions any more than a lot of other Hollywooders. The reporters didn't see fit to bring up any of Aaron's wokest writing either. Although they do bring up the history of story censorship:

Step back in time to the Golden Age and browse some of those masterpieces that have been collected and republished in book form for today’s audience. “Shock SuspensStories” was published by Entertaining Comics in 1952. That was before the Comics Code of Conduct in 1954, which limited the content that comics could publish — including banning “smut” and vulgarity, forbidding the words “horror” or “terror” in titles, and stopping the use of vampires, zombies, and many other creatures. Steven Spielberg, who grew up as a “nerdy kid who loved the escapism,” wrote the forward for this republished collection.

Maybe most notably, Mangiaracina founded the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund all the way back in 1986, to defend the First Amendment rights of “comics art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers.” Neil Gaiman, known for his comic "The Sandman" (which was recently adapted by Netflix) and book “American Gods” (now on Amazon Prime), is on their advisory board.

Say, would that be the same CBLDF that vehemently refused to take up the case of Mike Baron against the Daily KOS, and even goes out of their way to defend LGBTQ propaganda? Gee, I wonder what the point is here? Gaiman's a pretty bad leftist lot himself too, and if he - and even Frank Miller - refused to give Baron any backing, that sure speaks volumes. Interesting though, that veteran filmmaker Spielberg, who's another ultra-leftist, penned the forward for the EC collection. As I recall, he recently stated he regretted producing a censored edition of E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, because he did exactly what's become a sad staple of modern entertainment in the USA. But who knows if he's really being altruistic in his venture here? That is to say, is he willing to defend conservative writers against censorship? Alas, based on this news, there's no telling if that's the case. Now, here's some news about a specialty store:

On the walls of their Overland Park shop is much of their personal collection, and you can almost track their friendship through the titles. Currently, one of their rare comics is the "Amazing Spider-Man" featuring the villain Kraven the Hunter.

Published in 1966, that issue at Nerdstalgia is rated a 9.2. That number may mean nothing to non-collectors, but it reflects how the comic is scored based on page condition and color. You’ll find expensive items like this inside a plastic case called a slab – like the “Mona Lisa” being kept behind a plate of glass so it doesn’t get damaged.

Nerdstalgia also carries a rack of pulp fiction books, a throwback to the days of novels that were mass-produced and meant to be read quickly. Easy on plot but high on action, it’s a trip down memory lane.

But some of their real treasures of Nerdstalgia are back in the boxes of back issues. Carefully placed inside plastic bags with a cardboard backing, many comics have notations on top — showing you, for example, the first appearance of Gamora of the Guardians of the Galaxy, or the first appearance of The Living Tribunal that appeared in “Strange Tales Doctor Strange.”

Reading this, I began to wonder why we hear about back issues all the time in these news reports, but not the reprint archives carrying the same in paperback/hardcover formats. Also note the emphasis on "slabbing", which prevents the issue from being read, unless the buyers want to pull apart the casing to open it up. And many surely know speculators aren't interested in doing that. Why do they keep talking all the time about these individual back issues but not the archives where they can be read instead, along with plenty of other stuff? As a result, it's unclear they're really dedicated to the medium's better interests. And here's one more topic from a specialty store:

Over the years, comic book shops have evolved into a place where people combine passions. Collectibles and action figures dot many of the walls, shelves are filled with card games like Magic the Gathering and role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer 40K. (Check out our Adventure! guide to playing D&D and other RPGs around Kansas City.)

It should be noted that franchises like MTG and D&D have fallen victim over the past decade to wokeness/political correctness, and for an article discussing issues of censorship, they sure don't see fit to raise the issue of how that's the same thing that occurred in the 1950s. Once again, they hollow out their own perspectives.

And if conservatives like the aforementioned Baron aren't invited to these kind of conventions and stores, that just goes to show how farcical these conventions for pop culture really are.

Labels: censorship issues, conventions, dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, good writers, history, indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, sales, Spider-Man, Thor