The Four Color Media Monitor

The AV Club says the disgraced Neil Gaiman does not appear in the credits for promotion of the Sandman's 2nd season on Netflix:

Like, say, counting the number of times the words “Neil” or “Gaiman” appear in this new behind-the-scenes featurette for the second season of The Sandman, i.e., absolutely zero. The featurette itself is cool enough—we get shots of the big banquet of the gods scene from Season Of Mists, and shots of all the members of the Endless coming together for the first time in the show’s history. But you can also palpably feel the gaps where mentions of Gaiman’s “genius”—or even an appearance from the man himself—would normally go in a promo like this, presumably sucked into the void by the sexual assault allegations against the prominent author. Sandman is a big enough deal for Netflix that it’s unlikely to go the way of Dead Boy Detectives (which was canceled last month) any time in the immediate future, but it’s clear the streamer is feeling a little leery about how tightly it’s tied its brand to Gaiman’s in the lead-up to the show.

I don't see why Gaiman's take on Sandman is a big deal at all. I find it overrated and pretentious, as I've said several times before, and it only represents a sad staple of what's gone wrong with entertainment in general. Too much focus on darkness and jarring violence and such. When will the entertainment industry come to its senses?

When Uproxx commented on the subject, they said:

Has Gaiman been formally sidelined, by the streamer or by his own hand, as he has offered to do (i.e., to “step back”) from Good Omens? Netflix simply has not commented on the subject, but the omission feels awkward at best.

Why not "for the best"? Even though Gaiman's work, again, is just so overrated. Yet maybe it would do a lot of good for the pretentious Netflix to comment on the issue, if only because the severity of Gaiman's offenses must be acknowledged. Also, here's another commentary on TV Line, and this one is particularly insulting to the intellect:

Neil Gaiman is synonymous with The Sandman, both the DC comics he created and the Netflix series based on them, on which he is an executive producer. Ahead of the show’s 2022 launch, the streamer even released a video playing up Gaiman’s wonder at touring the sets, following him as he marveled at seeing his creations in physical form for the first time.

So when Netflix put out a behind-the-scenes peek at The Sandman Season 2 on Thursday, Gaiman’s absence from the video was notable — particularly in light of recent sexual assault allegations made against the beloved fantasy author.

Say what? A man who committed serious sexual offenses is "beloved"? Talk about insulting everybody's intellect! When an allegedly famous entertainment producer does something horrific, you cannot just simply say the guy's "beloved", when his victims would say otherwise. Just what are the TV Line writers thinking? And it's disputable whether Gaiman's truly synonymous with the Sandman, when it so happens this is a newer character introduced in 1989 whom he created. The original Sandman was created in 1939 by Gardner Fox, and was later scripted by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby until 1946, later making more appearances in the Silver Age under Fox and other such writers of a better era. Nobody even gives a damn about those past writers, even Kirby and Simon are synonymous with Capt. America, and the former with Fantastic Four alongside Stan Lee. Come to think of it, nobody even cares about Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds' later sidekick, Sandy Hawkins. All they care about is Gaiman. And that's one of the biggest problems with so-called historians, who limit themselves to the most PC choices.

Since we're on the subject, I also made an interesting discovery on Rumic World, a fansite dedicated to the mangas of Rumiko Takahashi, in an interview with another disgraced comics writer, Gerard Jones, which reveals his translations for Takahashi's manga stories has been replaced by new and different ones. First, let's take a look at the following exchange discussing Maison Ikkoku:

Early on in the series’ English publication, a lot of translation decisions were made to make the series more palatable to an American comics audience who was not intimately familiar with Japanese society and customs, such as downplaying the early ronin storyline, referring to Kyoko’s dog as “Mr. Soichiro”, and referring to characters by first name instead of last name (such as “Yusaku” instead of “Godai”). I was wondering if you could shed some light on why these decisions were made initially, and why these changes remained in Viz’s newest editions now that the series’ more uniquely Japanese elements are more widely understood by American manga fandom.

In the beginning, everyone at Viz was very insecure about the response the American market would have to these odd foreign comics, so the philosophy of the company was to keep the material as accessible as possible to the average American comics reader. In retrospect, that was a mistake, but I think it was a pretty understandable mistake for a new company in a new market, especially when the black-and-white comics market was collapsing and a lot of small publishers were going out of business. At the time, there really wasn't any big manga-and-anime fandom as far as anyone could see, and the readers who knew the cultural context wouldn't have been enough to support any series. So decisions were made— which everyone soon regretted— to Americanize some cultural elements.

They made a rule, for example, against using "chan" or "kun." (Editor’s Note: “Chan” and “kun” are Japanese honorifics, suffixes added to a person’s name to denote the speaker’s relationship to the person they’re addressing. “Chan” and “kun” imply a close relationship between the speakers, or are used by adults addressing children.) And we thought it might be off-putting to read all these youngish characters addressing Kyoko as "Manager" or "Ms. Manager." Unfortunately, too, I had no idea what was coming up in the series. I was really taking it episode by episode. So when I suggested (or agreed, I can't remember which) that the characters just call her "Kyoko," I thought I was just making it an easier read for Americans—I had no idea the Kyoko-chan kitten story was coming up. I don't think my first editor did either. All of a sudden it was just there, and we were faced with a classic "NOW what do we do?" We'd agreed not to use "chan." The characters were already on this very informal first-name basis. How could we make it plausible that she was so offended by whatever they were yelling when they called the cat? So we came up with "Kyoko-baby." Incredibly awkward, but I couldn't find anything else that would justify her anger. I was hoping the crassness and dopiness of the name would help explain her outrage. Unfortunately, it seemed to outrage fans just as much.

As for why the changes remain, it's just too expensive to make the corrections, the way the market is now and the way the series sells. We're probably stuck with "Kyoko-baby" forever, although it embarrasses me.

First, I doubt Jones had any issue, before or even after, with dumbing down the original translations, as his claim Viz's mistake was "understandable" suggests. And I don't buy that he couldn't find any way to justify Kyoko's anguish; Jones is just so artistically and morally bankrupt. Takahashi fans had every right to be angry at him. And luckily, despite his laughable claim it's too costly to mend the translations, the following footnotes appended to the interview - probably written in the 2000s - refutes his statement:

[1] Gerard Jones was in charge of the "English adaptation" of nearly all of Rumiko Takahashi's works into English from Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha. By the time of Kyokai no RINNE, Viz had essentially ceased having someone handle "adaptation" in addition to translating as they were moving to a quicker release schedule. Most of Jones' work on Takahashi's English releases is no longer available as Viz has had fresh translations done of all of the projects Jones worked on. Jones name is still listed on the inside cover of many of the updated translations, and in the first blu-ray boxset of the Ranma 1/2 anime, an interview was conducted with Hope Donovan, the editior of the two-in-one editions of the manga where the translations were polished for consistency. Donovan explained that she grew up with the original translation that Jones wrote and wanted to keep as much of it as possible while ensuring consistency throughout the new editions. Though this has never been commented on by Viz, Gerard Jones has essentially been ostrasized from the manga and comic book industries after being arrested and sent to prison.

And:

[5] The third edition's fresh translation addresses this. No longer is the kitten called "Kyoko-baby" (just "Kyoko" minus the "chan"). It also makes a more clear difference because Godai and other characters do not address her as "Kyoko" as in the earlier translation, but as "manager" which is more in keeping with the Japanese original's language. Jones seemed to be on the other side of this argument in his interview from 13 years prior in 1993 stating, "The manga purists don't seem to like such tricks. I guess they'd rather read the literal translation and smile to themselves in the knowledge that they're among the blessed few who know all the cultural references. I took it as my job to make Takahashi's dazzling characters and stories as accessible as possible to new readers. Her ferocious energy and acute comic eye were revelations to me. I wanted others to be able to have the same revelation I did."

[6] As mentioned above, all of Jones' adaptation work for Viz that has been reprinted since his arrest has been replaced, though it may simply be a conincidence. However, should the reader think that all of Takahashi's English work has been given a fresh translation just as a coincidence or to improve the translation one need only look at one of the Takahashi series that Jones was not involved in. Mermaid Saga was translated and adapted by Rachel Thorn for Viz in the 1990s and when reprinted in the 2020s it retained its original translation. For clarity, Gerard Jones is still listed for his adaptation work on the original publication of the Ranma 1/2 manga on the inside cover of the two-in-one editions.

[7] Please see note 4 for more details on Urusei Yatsura's complicated release history. Jones was in prison during Viz's eventual conclusive publication of Urusei Yatsura from 2019-2023 thus he had no involvement. He was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison beginning in 2018.

Viz and whoever else were in charge of translations did the right thing to replace Jones' work with new efforts, and sure refuted his questionable claim of expenses. Though it's a shame if he still receives any credit even as the original translator, and fascinating how he appears to insult the audience. Seriously, he should not receive any credit at all after his crimes with child porn. And if Donovan worked under any influence of his translations, she's making a big mistake. A man who wrote stuff with subtle and offensive political propaganda as he did when he worked in USA comics is equally capable of injecting some of the same into manga translation as well, and some of the modern wokesters likely did similar things when they translated mangas. If Jones could put the keys in the ignition for badness, then obviously, there's quite a few leftists like him who're now stepping on the accelerator today.

Removing men like Jones from any credit on famous manga series is crucial for retaining better reputations for them, ditto any credit he receives on USA comics. And it would also be a good idea to acknowledge that Gaiman didn't originate the whole creation of the Sandman, whose original Golden Age protagonist Wesley Dodds stopped using gas-guns 2 years after debuting, and just went with harpoons instead for the remainder of the run in Adventure Comics. It was only years later the gas-guns may have been restored, yet Dodds has since been wronged as a character by the editors and writers in charge of DC, particularly since the turn of the century, and even more recently. All this sugarcoating in favor of the newer writers has to stop.

Labels: dc comics, manga and anime, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence