For National Comic Book Day, more news about speculators came up

Here's some recent UPI coverage of National Comic Book Day, which tells how, wouldn't you know it, there was quite a bit of auction-style news brought up as they discuss 5 times comicdom appeared in "odd news". First:

September 25 is National Comic Book Day, celebrating the heroes, villains and stories that have filled comic book pages for generations. UPI is marking the occasion with a look back at five times superheroes -- and their fans, collectibles and real-life counterparts -- made their way into Odd News.

You know, it's very ill-advised to make it sound like the villains are something to celebrate, yet that's what they're certainly risking here, and it's quite the dismay indeed. And then, there's the sugarcoating of speculation:

Also in July, the piece of comic book art that first introduced readers to the Marvel Comics hero Iron Man sold for a record-breaking $3,875,000.

Heritage Auctions announced the sale of the original Don Heck artwork from page 1 of Marvel's Tales of Suspense No. 39 from March 1963.

The final price set a new world record for the highest price paid for a piece of original comic art. The previous record of $3,360,000 was set by a piece of Mike Zeck art from 1984's Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars No. 8. The artwork, which depicts the first appearance of Spider-Man's black costume, was sold in January 2022.

Again, why must we hear about how much it sold, and not say, what the best stories throughout the ages are? And just a single page too. This is getting ridiculous, and no clue whether the audience for comicdom overall has grown as a result. Then comes the following about Wonder Woman:

A Georgia woman paid tribute to her favorite superhero by amassing the world's largest collection of Wonder Woman memorabilia: 1,581 items.

Guinness World Records announced in June that Cedartown resident Aleshia Wiley's collection of memorabilia, including comic books, Funko Pop figurines, action figures, specialty toys and branded merchandise, officially took the title.

Wiley said she likes that Wonder Woman stands for female empowerment.

"Wonder Woman is a beacon of hope for girls and women everywhere, and a reminder that we need to support one another more," she said. "She shows that true strength comes from within and together we have the strength of the Amazons. Over the years, her character has evolved alongside new generations, but one thing has always stayed the same: women can do anything, and together we are unstoppable!"

Now this beggars some challenging questions: does WW still stand for anything positive regarding women? It's been far from the case for years, and the stories haven't been entertaining in a quarter century, with Greg Rucka making it worse when he was writer for at least 3 years. Some recent problems and incidents explain why whatever "female empowerment" is supposed to mean now stand as a joke, and make clear women never really had the backing they needed. Certainly not from leftists. All that aside, can women in real life do virtually anything? Are they "unstoppable"? Sadly, reality says otherwise. And then, more items involving villainy come up on UPI's list:

Also in 2025, a 22-year-old comic book fan from Indiana earned a Guinness World Record for her collection of 2,318 items related to Batman villain the Joker.

Bloomington resident Megan Pierce said she started collecting in middle school, and soon she had amassed items ranging from action figures and comic books to Joker rollerblades, a skateboard and milk caps from 1966. [...]

She said her hobby has allowed her to make connections with Joker fandom figures including actor Mark Hamill, who voiced the character in several animated and video game projects, as well as other collectors.

They were manufacturing merchandise for the Clown Prince of Crime that far back as 60-plus years? Even if that was before the darker angle of Batman was restored in the comics proper, to emphasize a villain who was often written as a murderous man is disturbing. And what's so great about veteran actor Hamill anyway? It's long turned out he's one of the most disturbingly leftist activists around, and I don't want to admire somebody who seems to consider a villain the most ideal role to play. Certainly not a supervillain as nasty as the Joker's often been characterized. Why, even a villain with a seemingly honorable persona as Doctor Doom's been written with is a character to give pause about, mainly because even Doom's been written as a nasty monster too decades before.

If that's the kind of material UPI thinks is a big deal for NCBD, something is terribly wrong here alright.

What Polygon says about MTG cards based on Marvel illustrations

Polygon wrote a fluff-coated article about several cards from a new Magic: The Gathering collaboration with Marvel, and they sugarcoated at least a few things involving history, past and present. First, what's said about Contest of Champions:

Nowadays, Marvel Comics launches a new big event every year that’s all about stacking as many characters together as possible and seeing what happens. Well, it all started here. Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions is Marvel Comics’ first-ever limited series. Published from June to August 1982, it was written by Mark Gruenwald and penciled by John Romita Jr. It introduced the concept of crossovers, events involving characters from different comic books, getting together to face a big crisis that usually has an impact on the entire Marvel continuity.

Mark Gruenwald was an ante-litteram visionary. (Just check out his Squadron Supreme run: it was one of the first politically charged big superhero comics, before that became a cool thing to do.) Contest of Champions planted the seed of what would become a standard practice for the House of Ideas, and while that series is less ambitious than Crisis on Infinite Earths, it predates DC Comics’ famous crossover event by three years.

So that's a good thing these comics were "politically charged"? And that crossovers crowded out creativity? Wow, the writer here certainly isn't approaching this from an objective viewpoint, despite any suggestions to the contrary. Contest of Champions may have been one of the first limited series they published (years later, these would be more likely to be described as miniseries), but that doesn't make it one of the best. Nor is it truly a good thing we had to see Marvel/DC destroyed creatively by only so many crossovers that came about since. What does the writer even mean by "less ambitious"? Does that mean it didn't go far enough as Crisis did by killing at least a few characters like Supergirl and 2nd Flash Barry Allen? If that's what he means, that's quite tasteless, and the worst part is that years later, Marvel did go the killing route in some way or other with a number of characters, and in cases like Scarlet Witch's, subjected her to a fate worse than death in Advengers: Disassembled. Also vital to note is that around the turn of the century, that's when keeping consistent with continuity and decent characterization began to deteriorate more than ever before in the mainstream, and it's had a disastrous effect on storytelling cohesion ever since. Now, here's something even more unworthy of a MTG card:

This is more a personal favorite than one of the all-time greats, perhaps, but it’s still a milestone in Iron Man continuity. Written by Warren Ellis with art by Adi Granov, “Extremis” is a six-issue story arc that ran in Iron Man between 2005 and 2006. It introduces the Extremis virus (also featured in the movie Iron Man 3), which upgrades Tony Stark with real superpowers, allowing him to connect to his armor and other machines through a neural interface. Extremis is perhaps the last interesting Iron Man story published (except for the magnificent miniseries Infamous Iron Man, where Doctor Doom takes the mantle of Iron Man). It transformed Tony Stark from “former alcoholic rich guy in a suit” into his modern image of a futurist, before that term was spoiled by creepy technocrats.

Seriously, I can't see what's so appealing about Ellis' writing that he has to have his story become the subject of a trading card. Also note how the columnist sugarcoats one of the modern stories where the hero's replaced by a villain in the armor, or costume. As though it weren't bad enough Spider-Man had to be mind-switched with Dr. Octopus. And doesn't giving Tony actual superpowers contradict and defeat how he was first created, as a guy whose power was the armor suits he built? That was the emphasis for many years, and coming when these "real" powers did, it was just too late to work out anyway. So why does this tale of all things need a MTG card? And then, there's Infinity Gauntlet:

Thanos and his infamous Snap in Avengers: Infinity War became the most iconic moment of the golden age of MCU movies. 27 years before Josh Brolin “blipped” half of the universe away, Jim Starlin wrote one of the most important sagas in Marvel history, bringing back the character he created two decades prior. The six-issue limited series The Infinity Gauntlet shows the outcome of Thanos’s quest to collect the Infinity Gems (shown in The Thanos Quest). The Mad Titan has obtained absolute power over creation, but will it be enough to please his cold mistress, Lady Death?

Before Hollywood success went to his head (and ruined his comic book characterizations), Thanos was one of the most fascinating Marvel characters, a villain fueled by philosophical musings and unrequited love more than lust for power or conquest. This is Starlin’s Thanos at his best, and the incredible art by George Pérez and Ron Lim brings to life an apocalyptic tale unfolding at the edge of the universe, where gods are brought to heel and a Mad Titan finally gets his wish.

I think even this crossover can be subject to some objective viewpoints. The Infinity minis may not have had as many crossover connections as others did, but IIRC, they still had some nonetheless, and that was simply appalling, because it was entirely unnecessary in order to make it a story worth reading. That said, interesting that here, the writer actually admits Thanos' characterization was ruined later on, though it'd be a lot better if somebody commenting on these topics gave more attention to heroes who underwent the same. And then, Secret Wars gets fluff-coated:

If Contest of Champions opened the door for crossovers, Secret Wars smashed those doors down. Conceived as a big marketing gambit that would tie in with a Mattel toy line and an RPG from TSR, this massive 1984-1985 event spanned over 12 issues of the main limited series and more than two dozen crossover issues of ongoing series. Written by Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, with art by Mike Zeck, Bob Layton, and John Beatty, the series sees a host of heroes and villains transported to a mysterious planet dubbed Battleworld by an omnipotent entity known as the Beyonder, and forced into an all-out battle for survival.

In one of the most iconic moments in the series, the villain Molecule Man drops an entire mountain range (yup) on the heroes’ heads. The good guys barely survive in a wedge dug by Iron Man and Hulk, but the Green Goliath is carrying the entire weight of the mountains on his shoulders. To buy enough time to build a contraption to escape, Reed Richards insults Hulk since getting angrier makes him even stronger. Who else could have come up with this plan if not Marvel’s number one a-hole? It’s a pretty amazing moment and still one of Hulk’s greatest feats of strength.

That still doesn't justify the way Secret Wars was produced, as something where almost every Marvel title had to reference this story according to editorial mandate. Granted, unlike Crisis on Infinite Earths, it wasn't written for the sake of killing off any characters the editors considerd expendable, as DC did with Silver Age Supergirl. But it still has responsibility to shoulder for leading later to the disaster we see in the mainstream today, one that nobody writing these puff pieces has any intention of arguing against. And then, what does the writer say about one of Stan Lee's last creations:

Speaking of artists who loved to push the envelope, John Byrne’s run on Sensational She-Hulk in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s marked one of the few truly avant-garde moments in Marvel Comics history. Byrne took a minor character in the House of Ideas’ roster and turned it into a fourth-wall-breaking sensation. Towering over the series’ covers with a dominating, ultra-sexualized physicality, Jen Walters was threatening readers to rip up their X-Men collection if they didn’t buy her book, and openly mocking comics’ narrative tropes.

There’s no point in denying that the sexist tinges of Jen’s representation in the series were targeted at an audience of hormone-fueled, adolescent boys, but Byrne was still able to turn a relatively obscure character into one of the few culturally relevant women in Marvel Comics, at least for a while. It’s very cool that Magic’s homage to that historic run shows She-Hulk literally breaking the fourth wall.

Fascinating how the writer seems to be speaking with a forked tongue in regards to sexuality, though Byrne did have very questionable moments in his resume, including the time when he wrote a Superman story where Big Barda fell under the mind control of an alien from Apokalips named Sleez, who also brought Supes to heel, and then took them to a snuff filmmaker so he could film them engaging in sex?!? And you thought this kind of stuff was just relegated to fanfiction! That said, I think what the writer's telling about how Byrne handled Jen Walters is hypocritical, and certainly exploits it for the sake of pushing sex-negative visions simultaneously. At least the She-Hulk series Byrne launched during 1989-94 is more worthy of a MTG card than some of the above examples.

Anyway, this would've been a lot more charming news if it hadn't been for some of the more modern choices made like an Ellis story, and if it hadn't been for the realization the MTG franchise was subject to wokeification in the past decade. Who knows if they've reversed course since then? If not, that also dampens the interest.

Back issue bins can turn up interesting items, but why not trade collections?

CTV News wrote about what people find in back issue bins, at conventions like FCBD and the Calgary Expo:

If you’re the right kind of geek, there’s a good chance you’ve spent some time lately rooting through comic book back issue bins.

Calgary Expo and Free Comic Book Day are just freshly behind us.

Maybe you were hoping the next flip would bring you a particular something on your list for a mere dollar or two.

Maybe a successful dive through the cheap reads means getting exactly issues 520 and 521 of Journey Into Mystery.

Or maybe you were flipping aimlessly, and it was by the Comic Book Gods’ good grace you hit on the “fear-filled final issues” of that specific Marvel Comics series that someone else either didn’t want anymore or couldn’t sell at face value.

It was a rescue mission, regardless.

How comic book collectors approach it is what can vary, says Bill Bateman from Alpha Comics in Calgary.

“While some are looking for anything to fill in the blanks in their collections, others are looking for that elusive rare book that may have been missed by the store,” Bateman told CTV News.

“Some people show up with a binder of notes showing what they’re missing, (while) some have apps on their phones that do the job a lot faster, and some just know all of the books well enough.”

Sure, there can be gems to find in back issue bins, but if the same issues have been reprinted in trade collections, why must we hear about would-be collectors zeroing in almost entirely on said bins and not searching for paperback/hardcovers reprinting the very same issues? Why not even whether anybody wants specific issues reprinted, if they haven't yet been? That's what I never seem to see these news outlets bring up, nor do they interview people who do. But trade collections or paperback/hardcovers are what comprise the bulk of my collection now, and I think it's working a lot better that way, because thanks to the Marvel Epic Collections and the more recently launched DC Finest archives, I now own hundreds, perhaps thousands of old issues reprinted through these forms of collections for older comics. And these news companies don't want to talk about how great those can be for everybody who hopes to acquire a complete run of various classic series? That's just the problem here.

Rhiannon Mesler says comic book bin diving “runs on the same machinery that powers a slot machine.”

Likewise, the University of Lethbridge marketing professor and expert in consumer behaviour and decision-making says, “the same machinery social media platforms have spent fifteen years optimizing.”

“What makes it irresistible isn’t the find. It’s the unpredictability,” she says.

“Neuroscientists have shown that the brain’s dopamine system fires hardest not when reward arrives, but when reward arrives unexpectedly.

“And that the dopamine signal actually peaks when the odds are roughly 50-50, when you genuinely don’t know whether the next comic in the box is going to be ‘The One.’”

They make it sound more like a game of hide-and-seek than searching for the best reading material. Another clue the speculator mentality plays a part in this whole affair, which effectively ruins any attempt to sound convincing in their fandom.

In addition to the above, ComicBook also told about a guy who, with aid from his dad, managed to purchase at least 400 of the Amazing Spider-Man issues printed up till around the mid-90s:

Many times, comic book collectors are only interested in building a collection for bragging rights or to hopefully one day make money off of the collectibles. However, there are other times when a collector has a more personal reason for collecting memorabilia, and it has a purer meaning than just looking for the big bucks. In some cases, the idea of collecting comics or other items of memorabilia is passed down through the generations. In those cases, it is more about the relationship between a person and their parents, and that makes completing a collection something that means so much more.

This was the case for a Redditor known as joeltheconner, who just revealed that he finally completed his Amazing Spider-Man run of the first 400 issues. He then added that he has his father to thank for this fact.

In his post, joeltheconner wrote that his dad was a comic book collector and would take him to comic shops when he was a kid. However, he said that he was never as interested in comics until he was nine years old. “At the age of 9. My dad gave me a copy of ASM 300 to read. I was hooked instantly,” he wrote. “From then, we started collecting together. For two years we took our vacations to Chicago so we could go to the big convention up there.”

Around 1998, he said he lost interest and stopped collecting, and then moved on. However, he admitted there was something his dad had said to him before that he thought was cool. They discussed having the full run of a specific comic book title. He chose Amazing Spider-Man and decided he would collect the run of the first 400 issues. That led to a few years ago, when his dad asked if he was still interested in completing that collection. His dad then did something that meant the world to him.

His dad had his “prized” Silver Surfer comics, and he offered to sell those to the local shop to get credit so that his son could work on finishing his Amazing Spider-Man run. “I honestly tried to talk him out of it, but it sounded like a really fun thing for him and I to do together again,” he wrote. “From the first time I stepped back into a shop, it took me right back and I was hooked again. 2 years later, today I bought the last book that I needed to complete the run.”

That book was Amazing Spider-Man #2, which was the first appearance of the Vulture and which was the first book where Spider-Man fought a superpowered villain (Chameleon was the first villain in the debut issue). This man’s dad gave up a prized possession to work with his son to help fulfill a dream. It was obvious that it meant the world to this man. “It’s so hard sometimes for sons to tell their fathers what they mean to them, and I’m going to figure out a way to really tell him,” he wrote. “But thank you, Dad. I owe more to you in this life than I could never repay.”

While it's great for dads and sons to do all sorts of things together, it's simply ludicrous how somebody would like to get as much of Spidey when it mattered in pamphlets, but not in trade collections, which at this point is precisely what I own. As of now, I own, for example, the first 12 ASM Epic archives, and have plenty more coming after that, and hope the ASM run will be more or less completed eventually, so that then, I can try to buy complete sets myself, though admittedly, at this point I'm hesitant to buy those collecting the Clone Saga, which, while it may not be as awful as some other artistic humiliations to come down the pike later, was still very damaging to the Spidey legacy, and certainly the part where Peter assaulted Ben Reilly in frustration and accidentally injured Mary Jane when she tried to get him to stop, after which Peter just ran out of the laboratory in horror instead of doing what he could to mend the damage to MJ. That kind of scene is far more reprehensible than claiming Ben was the protagonist all along between 1975-95 (and it was soon confirmed by writers that Peter was the protagonist within that time frame, not Ben, in their efforts to apologize to Spider-fans they alienated).

And I have plenty more Epic Collection and Finest archives I've bought, including a few dedicated to Superman's series and spinoffs, all 3 for Black Panther, several for Daredevil, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Dr. Strange, Justice Society/League, Punisher, Luke Cage, X-Men, Capt. America, Thor, Hawkman, Defenders, Moon Knight and even Excalibur. I also have several omnibuses to boot. And I hope other Spidey spinoffs like the 1976-98 Spectacular will see some Epic archives eventually too. That's what serious "collectors" should really be buying, and considering the back issues are highly likely to become increasingly expensive over time, if they really want to read this stuff, that's why they'll buy the trade collections.

So again, why are we still seeing this otherwise absurd news about people searching for back issues instead of paperbacks/hardcovers? That's another huge letdown with modern news coverage of comidom. Because in the end, it only hints they still don't take the medium seriously, otherwise, they would talk about all these reprint collections and how they can introduce new generations to older classics as a great reading pastime. And this demonstrates how the MSM continues to belittle the medium, by not highlighting a far more convenient approach to collecting notable stories of the past decades by today's standards. Unless something is done to dissuade speculators and collectors from back issues and try trade collections instead, the problem's going to continue for at least another decade or three.

The kind of writers Ed Brubaker is chummy with

The overrated comics/novel writer Brubaker was interviewed by Alex Segura for Crime Reads about a new story for his GN series Criminal, and if there's any writer who's working for him in developing a new story, it's somebody who played a part in destroying Marvel coherency:

This month marks the release of GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1, a, well, giant-sized comic book set in the acclaimed and bestselling world of writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips’ CRIMINAL series. The first new story in five years is loaded with CRIMINAL goodies – including an extra-long Ricky Lawless story, a CRIMINAL TTRPG module written by superstar comic book writer and game designer Kieron Gillen with illustrations by Phillips, an illustrated guide to the world of CRIMINAL and its key players, plus insights into the upcoming CRIMINAL TV show by Brubaker – who is also the showrunner on the show. The comic is only available in print and in comic shops – making it not only collectible, but also a key part of the universe’s gritty, grounded lore. The release of the issue gave me an opportunity to poke Ed about something else I was curious about – the upcoming CRIMINAL streaming series, which he’s running himself, with input from co-creator Phillips and a team of crack writers. I sat down with Brubaker to not only talk about the show, but what fans can look forward to when reading GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1! [...]

AS: The world of Criminal boasts an impressive backlist – so that can be a little daunting to a new reader. Is this book the kind of thing new readers can step into?

EB: Yeah, I think pretty much all the CRIMINAL stories are, actually. I always assume any book or comic might be someone’s first time discovering our work and make it new-reader-friendly. This is really just spending a crazy night with one of my favorite characters from the world of CRIMINAL. And it’s also got an introduction to the world of CRIMINAL and an RPG module by my friend Kieron Gillen, so readers can make up their own CRIMINAL game. It’s a fun issue, and jam packed.

So he associates with the same writer who deconstructed Tony Stark's background in Iron Man, changing his parents to adoptive instead of biological. And it's undoubtably not the only blatant direction Gillen ever took when he was working for Marvel. That Brubaker would do work with him is decidedly galling. At least if Gillen, on his part, is no longer working at the Big Two, that's good, but with only so many other bad apples working there since, nothing's changed. Brubaker also spoke about working in TV and animation:

AS: What was it like, as a first-time showrunner, taking point on CRIMINAL? Can you talk about any lessons you learned and what you might have done differently?

EB: I’ve been working in TV on and off for 20 years trying to get to be a showrunner, but of course, once I got the job, nothing was what I expected to be. I had written most of a season of TV for Refn, with TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG and right before CRIMINAL I had been the head writer of Bruce Timm’s new Batman cartoon, so I knew there was always a lot of rewriting throughout the whole process, that’s just the nature of it, but I had never been in charge during post on anything before, and that was a really amazing experience.

I was having lunch with a screenwriter friend while I was editing and telling him how much I was learning about the process and he was like “yeah, writing the script and shooting it is just making the ingredients, post is where you have to be like a chef making it all come together into a meal.” And that was a real learning experience, seeing how some scenes that felt really alive on the page didn’t on the screen, and how you can edit and score a scene to bring that life back. Or even change it to something else that’s actually better.

As far as what I’d do differently, there’s way too much, but most of it is just technical things or being better at communicating with collaborators, the kinds of stuff we all learn on the job in this industry. Overall, I had a great time being a showrunner, even for all the struggles, and my only hope is I’ll be better at it the next time around.

I can only wonder how much of the Batman cartoon he worked on was influenced by his decidedly uninspired, shoddy work on the comics, recalling he was part of writing a crossover titled Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive, which sacrificed a recurring character, Vesper Fairchild, for the sake of a story where Bruce is framed for murder, along with a lady employee. And then Brubaker hilariously claims he was "learning". Well what he did with Batman was decidedly too much, and too late.

If Brubaker does make the switch from comics writing to TV writing and production, it'd almost be a blessing, and certainly no loss to comicdom. But, he wouldn't be any gift for Hollywood either. Though it wouldn't be a surprise if, based on how PC he actually is, plenty of modern wokesters in Hollywood would be more than eager to work with him.

A most insufferably biased essay about James Robinson's overrated Starman series

The Comics Journal wrote an atrociously biased take on the pretentious James Robinson's Starman series from 1994-2001, in two parts so far, and it contains some troubling lines suggesting this was written from quite a leftist perspective. For example:

Starman is a story about the United States. Not the one we learned about in civics class. Not the golly-gee willikers, apple-pie-and-baseball bullshit that Ivy League-educated, far-right populists talk about while deifying “the founders” and pretending that history is only what you learned it was in first grade and anyone who tries to teach anything more complicated than that is desecrating those buried in Arlington. No, this is “The Old, Weird America” as Greil Marcus titled one of his books.

Well, what's this? A lecture in the vein of claiming patriotism is bad? Well that's what it sounds like. And why is the writer making it sound like Ivy League universities are inherently right-wing? If you took a look at the sorry state of modern colleges, that can refute what they're lecturing everyone with here. In any event, whatever form of "America" was being emphasized in Robinson's Starman series does not appeal to me, and definitely not today.

It’s easier to place all that weirdness “over there” in its own space so the rest of us can pretend that it doesn’t exist. Those weird stories with strange artwork and designs can exist ... somewhere else. That way the DCU can function in a vaguely “realistic” manner drawn in a vaguely realistic fashion. Comics are serious, after all. Far too serious for romance or humor or wackiness or surrealism.

I don't think the above was meant as a joke. It's just irritating in how it's implied "realism" is the only way, ditto "seriousness". Does this also mean Marvel's Excalibur from 1988-98, which I consider one of the most surreal adventures they ever published back in the day, was just a bad idea all over? This is insulting to the intellect, and belittles the work of past writers who emphasized merit and entertainment value first and foremost. Without that, how could even "realistic" work well? And then, as if it couldn't possibly get worse:

Art emerges from a cultural space. I believe that culture shapes behavior, or as Heraclitus argued more than two thousand years ago, geography is destiny. In the 21st century, something like Starman wasn’t of interest. A loving couple like Ralph and Sue Dibny solving crimes wasn’t of interest. Raping and murdering them, though? DC’s Identity Crisis and Marvel’s Civil War were made while the United States was a nation at war. Stories about superheroes behaving like horrible villains in the name of righteousness. Comics about “good” people doing monstrous things. That’s not a coincidence. Art is not created in a vacuum.

And here's another, and by far one of the most repellent moments in this essay, because the writer brings up those past crossovers/events and what occurred in their pages in such a casual manner, as though sexual violence were a trivial issue, along with the divisive politics both IC and CW contained. It does confirm though, that both miniseries were meant to be political metaphors. In one of the accompanying footnotes, the writer tops it off with, "The fact that the nation’s leaders were intent on acting as though we were not a nation at war meant that like repressed emotions, it comes out in other ways." So let's see if I can understand what's going on here. Because certain leftists disliked the policies that came up at the time from a Republican-led government, that literally justifies shoehorning established characters into terrible roles and situations? Also insulting to the intellect is how it's implied crime-solving couples is literally worthless as a storytelling concept.

Before we go further, since it's been a few years since the series ended, a recap for those who forgot what the comic was about (or haven't read it yet). Starman was about Jack Knight, but it also tied together the stories of every superhero ever named Starman. One of whom was Jack's father Ted, an inventor turned Golden Age superhero who is now retired. Another was Jack's brother David, who was killed in issue #1.

Assisting Jack in his super heroic efforts of truth, justice, and well, stuff: The Shade, a former Flash villain who Robinson writes as a complicated antihero whose life and mysterious past becomes central to the series. There's Sadie, with whom Jack falls in love, and in the final issue, retires to be with her and their child. The O'Dare family, who are all cops. Charity, a fortune teller. Plus the ghost of a pirate, a superpowered ex-con, and various other figures who appear over the course of the 80+ issues.

On the other side of the ledger was The Mist, a Golden Age supervillain now an aged man with a failing memory, who with the help of his two children, Kyle and Nash, stage a series of attacks in the opening story arc. A destruction-filled crime spree that included the murder of David Knight, aka Starman. Then Jack killed Kyle. Nash becomes the new Mist, swearing vengeance by planning to — well, we'll get to all that.

And I don't see what the big deal is here about turning the David Knight character into a sacrificial lamb. That only precipitated a very bad trend/obsession/habit that cost the original Supergirl, and the way writers continued over the years to do so, as though it were inherently wrong to have created these characters in the first place, was nothing short of repulsive. In hindsight, what stories I read from Robinson's Starman series were so empty and pointless.

Here's the 2nd part of this shoddy essay (and I won't be surprised if a 3rd is in preparation), and something decidedly eyebrow raising about artists is brought up:

Rereading the comic, it was a great showcase for artists. It was never defined by the artists, not even Harris, who co-created Jack and drew roughly half the run. The fill-in issues worked because they were very much written to the artists, and stood out from the regular run. I mentioned earlier that one of Robinson’s great skills was the way he took so many tones and styles and managed to make them part of this larger thing. This is one of the things I meant.

Today the writer is considered the author of the comic and treated like that by companies. Rarely are artists filling in and written to and allowed to go crazy in the way that Robinson let them. It may have been in service to the writer’s vision, to the series’ structure and plan, but it was a vision that allowed for many approaches and a significant level of collaboration.

Perhaps that's another problem with some overrated comics of their times, like the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, recalling there were several notable artists who drew stories for that too - it seemed to serve more as a showcase for artists to draw what amounted to nothing, all for the sake of promoting artists who could be as overrated as the writers.

Reading through the first few years of Starman, I am reminded how much comics have changed in the years since. There are story arcs, single issue stories, two or three issues stories, issues that are designed to transition between story arcs and catch up with multiple characters. A time before comics would “write for the trades”. That shift — and I say this as one who since the 1990s would wait for the trade — has not been a good thing.

Umm, even when comics aren't written for the trades, that doesn't mean they can't be awful. And the half-hearted way at least a few of the characters were handled in Starman was atrocious. And there were bad storylines 3 decades ago that weren't written for trades per se, like Emerald Twilight, something overrated writers like Robinson never seemed to complain about. Interestingly enough, the article actually admits there's something wrong with the Starman series in more ways than meets the eye:

One of the sources of superhero comics are old boys adventure tales. I keep thinking about this strange lineage of stories that stretch back to Daniel Defoe in the 18th century and Alexander Dumas in the 19th. That leads to Jack London to Joseph Conrad to John Buchan to Graham Greene to John Le Carre to Robert Stone to Viet Thanh Nguyễn.

One reason they were boys adventures was because there were no girls allowed. Which brings me to Starman’s great failure. There are plenty of things that, in reading the entirety of the series over a short time many years later, may not hold up as well as one would hope. That read differently in chunks than monthly. That didn’t age well. Some plotting that didn’t work as well as they thought. All of this is to be expected. The big failure and disappointment of the series is the female characters.

I wrote earlier that the book is the story of Jack and Ted Knight, of fathers and sons. It does get into Jack and David’s relationship and the complex nature of brothers over the course of its run. That complex relationship of loving someone even though you may not like them. The series’ main problems is that none of the female characters have the depth or complexity of the male characters.

Nash, who after the first story arc becomes the new Mist, is the biggest disappointment. When we meet her in the first story arc she is the stuttering daughter helping her father and her brother. Her brother Kyle is the light of her father’s eye. The one who will become The Mist, the second generation supervillain who will take on his father’s mantle. Later in the series we see The Mist’s misogyny when he speaks of his daughter in a way that makes clear why she might have grown up stuttering and seeking a certain invisibility, even as she was desperate to gain her father’s approval. While she might say that she is taking on her father's mantle, it’s the death of her brother that inspires her and drives her.

Nash goes about being a villain in a familiar way, as though following a script. She stages heists. She kills a few superheroes. I think most characters in superhero comics tend to be one note, flat characters. Is the flatness of her character deliberate? For years I’ve heard about this need to make villains complicated. Yes, people who disagree with me have as deep and rich inner lives as I do. I’ve lived through decades of pop culture that was entranced by Hannibal Lecter and has regurgitated a million serial killers who are interesting and complicated. The truth is that they’re not. Political and business leaders literally laugh like cartoon characters when presented with evidence that they’re hurting and killing people. They may be sentient, but it’s hard to think of them as well-rounded human beings with complicated feelings and inner lives.

Is Nash the product of her environment? Incapable of being a full, complete person and playacting out relationships, imitating her father and other villains? Was she an intentionally flat, boring shell of a human being who lacks an inner life?

The most notable thing about her is that she rapes an unconscious Jack. She does for the purpose of becoming pregnant. Something we would see in the pages of Tom Strong from Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse a few years later. It remains uncomfortable thirty years later. Some of that is simply because it is rape. She does it to a man, which makes it about power as much as sex, which, yes, is always the case. Her plan, to get knocked up by Jack and then to raise their son to be a villain who will kill his father, is one of those plots that I guess makes sense?

No it does not. If anything, what's described here is sick. It's the kind of "product of its time" that gives management of female cast members a bad name. It could also explain why a character like Doris Lee was never made use of, and was apparently established as having been retroactively murdered in the story. For now, what they say about the Nash character is certainly repellent. Note the part about her killing at least a few superheroes, and even raping the star of the show, and something is definitely wrong. I hesitate to think, what if she'd been written as a lesbian, and wound up invoking offensive stereotypes about lesbians while homosexual men were let off the hook by contrast? The part about her resorting to rape of a man, whether conscious or not, is another irritating problem with this pseudo-Starman series - while such things are obviously possible in real life, here it amounts to shock value and cheap sensationalism that can obscure the even more pressing problem of men violating women, based on how contrived and forced it was. And that Nash would be written obliterating any superhero characters who could be minor is another signal what's wrong with the tale: it's all an excuse to rid DC of any characters they consider "useless". All by people who don't have the courage to admit their "talent" in writing and art is completely lacking.

The Mist and Starman. Two elder figures, shaped by the First and Second World Wars, respectively, still alive at century’s end. Both heralded for their actions, but one emboldened by what he did during the war, the other weakened by it. The two men cast shadows over the decades, and over their children, each losing their firstborn son, who sought to take their father’s place. Each then replaced by their second-born.

In that framing, Nash’s plan to have a baby with Jack who will then kill Jack, makes a certain sense. The way that opera and myth have a logic to them.

In the end, The Mist returns. While Ted Knight gave up his role and let Jack find his own way, we see The Mist driven by hatred towards not just his old foe, but his own daughter and grandson. And that hate literally consumes him, as he intends to destroy the city and everyone in it.

The city is saved by Ted, who sacrifices himself, after holding his grandson in his arms for the first and last time. Before encouraging his son to find his own path forward. In Ted’s final act of bravery, he uses a device to lift the Mist and the building with a bomb in it above the atmosphere where it can safely explode. In his last moments, Ted Knight becomes a star.

Considering that the final issue of the comic was released in 2001, at the turn of the millennium, that’s not a meaningless fable.

It is meaningless. And both Starman and Mist are "heralded"? What does that mean, that the villain is admired for his criminal activities? Sorry, that's just further compounding all that's wrong with it. Not to mention that what Nash had planned for Jack gives motherhood a bad name. And that Ted would be turned into a sacrificial lamb for the sake of a bizarre series like this is disrespectful to original creators Gardner Fox and Jack Burnley. So the hero can't die from natural causes and auto accidents; it can only be as some kind of pyhrric victory where a villain is made to look like he's in some kind of "fun" rivalry with a villain. It reeks of moral equivalence.

Perhaps the comic’s biggest failure is Sadie, or rather, the failure of Sadie as a character. She’s the character who Jack falls in love with. He goes into space for her in search of her brother who everyone else thinks is dead. He gives up being Starman and moves away for her. Not just for her, but she’s one reason he moves and realizes it’s time to give up being a hero. A character like that should jump off the page. Their relationship should burn.

I call her the comic’s big failure because she comes off fairly flat.

Gee, if the ladies in Starman are that poorly written, why doesn't the essayist think this comic is a failure? Even the father-son-brother relationships in this tale were dreary and went nowhere in what I read. The main problem is that otherwise insulted the whole superhero theme, right down to the cosmic rod originally used by Ted in the Golden Age tales; also note how Jack takes to using a large pole-style device as the series continues. Perhaps that's another problem: the series has a condescending view of superheroic themes, including the costume worn by Ted.

What would it have meant for Robinson to center Sadie and her romance with Jack in the comic? My gut says that the comic would have been cancelled. This is me being cynical, but I don't think that I’m wrong.

There are two stereotypes to acknowledge about romance stories. One is that the romance genre is largely written and read by women. The other is that it is a largely unserious genre that has led to women having unrealistic views of romance and men. Romance is a genre with tropes and expectations. Unlike other genres like mystery, crime, westerns, thrillers, etc., romance, which remains largely written by and about women, as a genre is not considered art and remains looked down upon.

I will admit to reading very few romance novels in my life. Like all genres, good writers are able to use tropes and expectations but can write thoughtfully about people. Great romantic comedies and dramas work because they understand their characters and while they contain tropes, they are telling the stories of people. Genre contains tropes and myths that are important to cultures. That's why they continue and continue to be passed on.

If romance books give girls and women unrealistic expectations, that implies that men have “realistic” expectations. Or takes as a given that whatever men think/believe is "the norm.” What are those expectations? How do we get those expectations? Supposedly women believe in a prince charming who will come along and save them. I won’t lie, some people think that, or want that.18 A romance is all about fighting over expectations versus reality, and the demands people place on each other, and how to live in the world. That’s not subtext, it is literally the text of everything from Nora Ephron to Jilly Cooper to Jane Austen. The bad books and movies may feature poorly drawn characters uttering bad dialogue, but it is the subject.

Romance in men’s stories, and boys stories, are often side stories. If they appear at all, the romance is secondary. The object of the romance is secondary as well. The relationship is secondary to the plot. Secondary to the character's passion. Secondary to the character’s destiny. What the main character does is the most important thing. The romance must fit into the man’s life and purpose that already exists. Men look for someone who believes in them, their passion, their purpose. Who will support them in their quest. The romance is not about negotiation and conversation, but about passion and choosing.

Is this an argument that romance and relationships should be a minor aspect of our lives for everyone? Or that men should see romance and relationships as a minor aspect of our lives? Because whatever one’s thoughts on monogamy and compulsive heterosexuality, those are very different things.

I don't know about the romance genre, but drama is something that's been marketed to men as much as women, and has succeeded more or less with adults in the west, including incorporation of romance. Of course, if drama is what Starman is supposed to be, it fails. I think it's quite a stretch to say romance has never appeared in men/boys stories, because what about Superman and Lois Lane, Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson? Romance has appeared in stories for men/boys, more or less, and has been appreciated by many of the same, though today, it's certainly been ruined beyond belief by wokeness. Which is decidedly what the Starman series from Robinson represented too. And if the columnist didn't read much romance, how can he be certain women have "unrealistic" expectations, or that even have "realistic" ones? Interesting he speaks of poorly drawn characters with bad dialogue, because that decidedly describes Robinson's shoddy Starman series too.

I wonder sometimes what it means to love superhero comics as an adult? Heroic stories that lack a third act, a resolution, where one faces the consequences of all that has come before. Is this love for comics, which often translates into — if not paralleled by — a love of serialized and procedural stories. Adventure and crime stories featuring the same characters. Who may or may not age, for whom time may or may not continue, but one episode to the next, they continue having new adventures and solving new problems.

Much has been written for decades about the embrace of superheroes in the United States in the post-WWII era and what it means and represents. The embrace of superheroes in popularity writ large in the culture in the 21st Century is often seen in relation to a decline of American power. It remains to be seen what happens next. As the United States declines in economic and cultural power, will they continue to be embraced or will the genre decline?

That's for the moviegoing public though, which is different from people who visit comic book shops. Does our embrace and interest in superheroes represent an arrested development? There is a term I learned years ago, Peter Pans, for adult men who aren’t playboys or fuckboys. They aren’t against marriage. They might want kids. Maybe? Maybe not? They’re in no rush. It’s a bemused term tinged with sadness used to describe some men. I wonder if a love of procedural stories and superheroes, full of ongoing stories and last minute saves, is either a sign of such arrested development, or a contribution to it. Swimming in stories without a third act, without resolution and consequences, do we see that, even unconsciously, as a model in our lives? Does it prevent us from what we should be and need to be doing?

If you're going to write up stories like Robinson's at the expense of what themes made them work in the first place, you don't love superhero comics as an adult. And unfortunately, there's a certain segment of society today, moviegoing or otherwise, who are anti-marriage, even anti-child-bearing. Another reason why this pretentious piece falls flat is because it then veers into a more noticeably political diatribe, and even brings up one such item from Warren Ellis, an Iron Man miniseries he wrote, along with the IM movie from 2008:

Ted was a fragile figure. I don’t mean that mockingly. He had a mental breakdown. One tied to the murder of Doris Lee, his first love, but also to his work on the Manhattan Project. Here’s where I think that Robinson’s Britishness come into play. I was reminded of the Warren Ellis and Adi Granov miniseries Iron Man: Extremis and the series’ take on the military-industrial complex. The idea that Tony Stark and his father were pushed into developing and building weapons from an early age. That this system doesn’t want the best and brightest to design new cities and energy sources, and bring about a Star Trek-like future. Instead it’s focused on weapons, and to a lesser degree, consumer goods. I would argue that this critique — even if just a few pages buried in six issues that consists largely of lengthy fights, an obvious reveal, ending with Stark having new fancy powers — makes this the fourth most subversive comic Marvel has published.

Compare that to the Iron Man film, where the elder Stark’s role in the Manhattan Project is a part of why he’s so great. Rather than question the systems around Stark and militarism, instead we have movies that were used to help promote the military and American militarism and privatized war.

I hated the first Iron Man movie. That put me in a distinct minority among people I knew. The Afghanistan in the film had nothing to do with the actual country, but was instead Dick Cheney’s wet dream. The same cartoonish fantasy used to sell the Afghan and Iraq wars. A lawless place where Muslims of many languages and cultures came together to be evil terrorists whose ultimate goal is …something. Something evil, obviously, even if makes no sense. In Iron Man it involved obtaining weapons, attacking Americans, and rounding up villagers. They’re terrorists. We don’t need to think about who they are or what they want. They don’t make any sense. We just need to kill them. And we need bigger and better weapons to do it.

The second Iron Man film included an Elon Musk cameo and featured Tony Stark declaring “I've successfully privatized world peace.” How did we go from a Republican President pushing through tax cuts for the rich and planning destabilizing wars to today when we have … a Republican President pushing through tax cuts for the rich and planning destabilizing wars? Where people who once supported those wars now think they were a horrible mistake, and that the country’s real enemies are the people who protested that war believing it would be a horrible mistake.

Well, this certainly is another clue what's wrong with this whole pointless commentary about the Starman series. I knew the Comics Journal was a leftist periodical that had to be taken with a grain of salt, and this isn't improving things one bit. In hindsight, while the movie may have established that the terrorists in the 2008 film were being employed by figures like Obadiah Stane, it is rather surprising they would allude to serious issues like Islamic jihadism, because today, it's become far less likely, if at all. Nor would they invite Musk for a cameo in their films, let alone Donald Trump. But no matter the standings of the Comics Journal, what they're writing here is a complete slap in the face to advocates of freedom, including victims of Islam, and that also includes victims of 911. The essayist completely blurs what's wrong with the Religion of Peace, disregards victims of the same, right down to victims of honor murders, and even shoehorns in anti-conservative propaganda to boot. He even refuses to consider that there were people at the time of 911 who thought Iran was a more pressing concern than Iraq, and that was dealt with earlier this year. So Starman, along with the Ellis-penned IM miniseries, is what he considers fabulous? Absolutely shameful.

I was eager to read Batman: Face the Face, the first comic of Robinson's in a while, and was just unimpressed. Anyone could have written that. This is part of what was behind Airboy. The comic got attention for the nasty transmisogyny, which I will not defend, and honestly sits uncomfortably in the story. I think it’s worth noting just how angry and nasty the book is in general. I won’t say it’s Robinson lashing out at the comics industry and himself, but it kind of is. It might open with a sad and almost over-the-top tone, but I think that obscures the sadness at the heart. This feeling that his career has come to an end, his marriage has come to an end, he hates himself, and feels like a failure.

As someone with career and money troubles, who lives alone and has been known to wallow, who has had depression and suicidal ideation for most of my life, I can relate.

Well I can't. Because it does nothing to encourage and inspire, or give somebody a reason for happiness. Interesting they bring up the alleged "transphobia" topic involving the Airboy comic Robinson wrote, because that was tasteless regardless. But while Robinson's an artistic failure, the problem is that in a way, he's the kind who's been failing upwards. Why else would he have gotten the jobs he did?

I’m guessing that Robinson didn’t invent that above dialogue out of thin air, but quoted it directly from someone. How sad is it that this was what so many editors took away from that? How pathetic that people who make comics had only the most surface level understanding of the book. After Starman wrapped up, Robinson stepped away from comics briefly and it’s hard to blame him if this was how the industry responded. I don’t think he meant for comics to be a stepping stone to something else, something “better,” but he wrote a great comic series and got to conclude it on his own terms. Why should he turn around and try to do that again? He tried to do something else. If editors didn’t understand what he had accomplished, why work with people who don’t appreciate you?

When he returned to comicdom later on, he was given the keys to retconning Alan Scott into a gay man in Earth 2, a series that didn't last long. With that kind of obsessive PC direction he took, exploiting other people's creations for his petty politics instead of at least creating new ones, how could anybody consider him an "auteur"? Robinson's not the only one, of course, who's done stuff like this, taking advantage of other people's creations to convey questionable beliefs and directions. But he only made bad situations worse, and simultaneously, the editors/publishers have to shoulder blame for enabling these situations and doing nothing to reverse them.

Anyway, this is one of the grimiest, stupidest essays I've ever read from the Comics Journal, and only makes me glad I don't own stories like Robinson's today. He was like a precursor to Geoff Johns, and did work with the latter on JSA and Hawkman in the early 2000s, which were also overrated, and made clear why I'd rather stick with the older stories than read their modern slop. So I guess it's ironic if Robinson's career sputtered in the end, seeing how he hasn't written much in the past decade. Unfortunately, seeing as he's a SJW in his own way, he's probably not disappointed, because such people are more interested in bringing down the quality of past creations than in building up better storytelling. As for the Comics Journal writer, he certainly knew how to exploit the subjects for conveying his own awful politics, and makes clear why the magazine is such an embarrassment.

A columnist who believed only black women should write Riri Williams, during 2016

I discovered an article on Ebony from 2016 where a writer was pushing the aggravatingly woke propaganda that it should be black women who should write a character like Riri Williams, who was only created in the pages of Iron Man for diversity-pandering at the time, and even pushed the bizarre perception the mainstream industry's literally not open to black women. I don't think I'd ever written about this item before, so I guess I'll take a look at it now, if only to make a point why it's monumentally dated in its "argument":

I was 19 when I bought my first comic book. I had always loved them from afar—comics were the modern day Greek mythology, and superheroes were the gods that I wanted to hear about, time and time again. The most popular superheroes are household names—Superman, Batman, Captain America—and are supposed to represent our best selves. They inspire us to what we can be.

It took me until I was 19 to gather the courage to enter the comic books shop and purchase a physical copy of my own because of one vital fact: The comics industry is not an accepting place for Black girls and women. In fact, when you’re a young Black girl, there’s a very small list of heroes we can claim as our own, as one of us.

It's been years since this was written, but curious how the article made no mention of Storm from X-Men, or even Misty Knight, the lady with the bionic arm provided her by Tony Stark in the mid-1970s when she premiered, and I can't help but wonder if any omission of them from the article was deliberate, and possibly coming from somebody who, despite her claim to the contrary, isn't the avid comics reader she claims to be, and maybe she only began reading a decade ago. What good is that if the history she's gathered is only of recent? Also unmentioned is the 2nd Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and even civilian characters like Glory Grant can count. What's interesting about this puff piece though, is that the writer doesn't seem to like Brian Bendis, his leftism notwithstanding:

When Marvel announced their latest superhero was going to be a 15-year-old Black girl named Riri Williams, I wanted to be excited. And I was. But after learning more about her and the people who would be guiding her to the forefront, my excitement quickly turned into sadness and frustration.

Riri’s announcement into the world concerned me. This 15-year-old was being heralded “a woman” in mainstream write-ups popping up online, adding to the all-too-real issues of hypersexualizing Black girls. But what was even more disturbing was learning about the creative team behind her. Led by writer Brian Michael Bendis, not one of the people responsible for bringing RiRi to life was Black women.

This is, perhaps, most troubling because there’s a chance that Riri Williams could fall short because of the lack of Black women playing a vital role in her creation, which could limit the authenticity of the character. Without allowing someone who has the experience of being a young Black girl helping to shape this character, Riri may fall flat, or worse, become little more than a caricature of the stereotypes that already surround Black women and girls.

Now it's most intriguing that, despite Bendis being quite a PC panderer himself - and he certainly went the woke route in the past decade - the columnist doesn't seem to find him appealing. Which could just go to show that, no matter how PC he tends to be, other social justice advocates still won't consider him worthy of praise. That said, Bendis was and still is a horrible scriptwriter, and that he got as far as he did, despite having such a bottom of the barrel resume, is lugubrious.

That said, the columnist was regrettably demanding the legitimization of "purse puppies", or quite possibly sensitivity readers, which became a sad staple of the PC era of the past decade. Perpetuating a bizarre notion that a white doesn't know anything about how to script a black character, this despite all the past writers of the past century who did. And whether Riri was characterized as under 16 at the time, "hypersexualization" is apparently the biggest concern, not jarring violence. Interesting how this was written as merely an issue involving racial backgrounds, because in the past decade alone, there was only so much assault on girls' sexuality no matter the background. Was the character of Riri really even described literally as a woman in the past decade? Why do I get the vibe it was a huge exaggeration?

Black women may be underrepresented in the creation of mainstream comics, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t here. From comic book store owner Arielle Johnson to actress Amandla Stenberg and artist Afua Richardson, Black women are a vital part of comic book and nerd culture at large. But while the number of Black women creating the art we want to see is growing, there is still a large disparity in editorial and other managerial roles at major publishers, which could create an even bigger impact for our representation.

Jaime Broadnax, creator and managing editor of Black Girl Nerds, has been critical of mainstream comic book publishers, like Marvel, because of their lack of Black women creatives.

“What is most important is that we give opportunities to more writers to have a seat at the table. Marvel’s history with hiring Black women writers is very poor, and with so many Black women writers as well as artists currently making their own comics it’s pretty bad when you elect to overlook so many of them,” she told EBONY.com. “Riri is also a 15-year-old girl, so there’s a lot of context with being and seeing the world through the eyes of a 15-year-old Black girl that a middle aged white man just wouldn’t understand. Fans have also criticized Bendis for ignoring them when they have legitimate concerns on how he writes characters of color, notably [Spider-Man] Miles Morales.”

And why exactly is it such a big deal to work for Marvel or even DC, yet no worries to be found regarding story merit? All that aside, it's worth considering that just like white women, if black women feel there's not enough money to make in comics production, they may simply not care to seek jobs in the industry when technology proper could offer only so much more. But again, isn't that amazing how despite all his own woke pandering, certain "fans" dislike Bendis, not because he even disrespected Stan Lee's own creations with stories like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M, but because of how he allegedly writes characters of specific racial backgrounds. Also note the "ghettoized" viewpoint hauled into the mess, where we're told a white man, no matter his background, couldn't comprehend anything about black girls. Ahem. What about white women, no matter their background? Do they also fail to grasp anything specific about black women? Is it virtually impossible to do research on their own? Most black girls are little different from white girls in what hobbies they could enjoy, along with topics like fashion, and something tells me the writers of this puff piece don't actually appreciate any of that. One of the worst takeaways from this article is that it's also hurtful to Stan Lee, after all the hard work he did in his time focusing on race relations in the comics Marvel turned out in the Silver/Bronze Age. There's a white man who, in sharp contrast to Bendis, did far more in his time to oversee talented storytelling, and this puff piece insulted him just 2 years before he passed on.

As Broadnax pointed out, it’s important for both fans and creators to speak up about why Black women and girls need to tell their own stories in comics, and that currently, that isn’t happening with the big two, Marvel and DC Comics. To date, only one Black woman—Felicia D. Henderson—has ever been employed as a writer for a major comic book publisher, and that was for DC Comics back in 2009 and 2011. Henderson worked as a freelancer, not a full-time writer, for the company that produced Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Marvel, so far, has never hired a Black woman writer to lead a title, something Broadnax found troubling.

The comics industry has a problem with acknowledging the importance of having Black women present as writers and editors, or as an integral part of the industry in general. So instead, we have Black women taking things into their own hands by being vocal on social media and creating their own webcomics or indie creations without the help of mainstream backers.

Seriously, if you need to tell your own stories, then you don't act like Marvel/DC are literally the sole places where it can be done, and you don't ask for the aid of anybody you think isn't helping your cause. So the black women who produced their own comics were doing the right thing. But the lack of acknowledgement why merit matters is telling, and today, this puff piece is more dated than ever, as what's told at the end makes clear:

Tee Franklin, better known as MizCaramelVixen on Twitter, is working to bring more diversity and awareness to the field. In addition to lauching her site VixenVarsity, Franklin has gone on to kickstart other initiatives, like #BlackComicsMonth and writing her own title, to make the community more inclusive.

On Twitter, she went on to share her own apprehension about Riri Wiliams, especially when there’s still so much work to do with ensuring that Black women’s voices are heard.

Despite my concerns, there’s no doubt Riri Williams is important. She represents the bright future we have both in the comics industry and everywhere else. However, Black girls and women have a disturbingly low number of role models to look up to within the subculture, and by publishing of this story without the input of Black female creatives, publishers are in danger of insinuating Black girls and women aren’t good enough to control their own narratives.

We all deserve to have our stories told. But more importantly, we deserve to be the ones creating them in the first place. As Riri Williams continues to grow, hopefully her success will open up doors for Black women writers, editors, and illustrators at the Big Two, and other mainstream houses in the industry. After all, we deserve the chance to fly with the rest of the superheroes we love.

What's laughable is that, despite the notes on black women developing their own comics, all the writer truly cares about is Marvel/DC. Also fascinating how she doesn't seem the least bit disappointed by how under Axel Alonso, Tony Stark was not just kicked to the curb at one point, his background was forcibly rewritten so that his biological parents were adoptive foster guardians instead, and all of a sudden, he even has a stepbrother named Arno. To date, it doesn't look like even under C.B. Cebulski that's ever been repaired, yet when it became apparent it wasn't working, so they went for the next cheap trick, which was diversity replacement, pushing an established white character out of his armor for the sake of a girl whose promotion wasn't based on writing merit. Also, I wouldn't be shocked if it turns out the whole notion Marvel/DC never employed a black woman on a regular basis was a huge exaggeration. Let's also not forget all the Black ladies in mainstream comicdom the writer omitted, including Storm, Vixen, and again, we could surely add civilian co-stars like Glory Grant from Spider-Man, and Black Lightning's ex-wife Lynne Stewart-Pierce, to the subject to point out how there's only so many Black women in these fictional universes who were left out for the sake of inflating an absurd narrative that, as a result, runs the gauntlet of victimology.

Today, less than a decade after all this, while the Riri character may still be around in comics, all because woke pandering dictates they cannot even quietly phase out a character based on how she was created to start with, none of these same SJWs ever talk about her anymore, if at all. It doesn't even matter to them that her codename may have been changed to Ironheart, yet lack of merit continues to scuttle any chance for success, as does woke pandering in an adaptation. They don't even talk about what a shame it was that Riri never made the waves of stratospheric success they so much wanted her to make, never gathered any kind of huge audience, nor do they lament how she wasn't created to stand on her own like the Falcon and Luke Cage did when they were created in 1969 and 1972, and as a result, lacked her own agency as a newer creation. Which is surely to be expected when nobody on the left wants to explore serious issues of the times, in sci-fi terms or otherwise. I don't think the writer actually loves these superhero comics save for the sake of exploiting them for political points that don't add up to anything. There's no mention of why merit is vital for success, and if any of these mainstream or independent comics aren't being developed based on merit, can you truly expect to get ahead? Of course not.

Disney's new TV show based on Marvel's "Ironheart" features drag dresser

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart says Disney still remains fixated on pandering to wokeness - and gender-based blackface - in a new TV show based on the very new Marvel creation of Ironheart, one of their unsuccessful attempts to pander to diversity politics in the past decade, though it does make clear why the main character was introduced:

Disney’s upcoming super hero streaming series Ironheart, is set to bring a queer drag queen character to the Marvel universe of super heroes shows on the Children-friendly Disney+ platform.

The series, which follows Ri Ri Williams (Dominique Thorne) as she creates her ironman-like supersuit to fight evil, will also feature Marvel’s first drag queen character starring Ru Paul’s Drag Race contestant Shea Couleé, who will portray a computer hacker and drag queen codenamed “Slug.”

The drag queen, whose real name is Jaren Merrell, is a Chicago-based entertainer who competed on several seasons of Drag Race, excitedly told Entertainment Weekly that his character is a socialist-styled “Robin Hood” who steals from the “privileged” to “give back to the community.”

For a show spotlighting a black girl star, it sure is bizarre they're casting a performer who specializes in a form of blackface, and then they even pander to socialism by extension. This just makes clear what else remains wrong in how the live action Marvel movieverse is being managed. Also note how fascinating it is that characters created solely for the purpose of espousing leftist social justice propaganda in the past decade have since been put to use for the same in live action TV and films. To be sure, the comics writers and film producers had all this in mind for some time, to make use of these newer creations for what we're seeing now.

Much like the Marvel films need to be avoided now so's not to finance their propaganda, even the TV shows will have to be avoided for similar reasons. They're a sick joke now.

A new Marvel video game venture, influenced by anime, but with PC casting involved

Polygon talks about Marvel Tokon, a new game project by Arc System Works (producers of the Guilty Gear series, IIRC), who're doing something like a followup to Capcom's earlier fighting games starring or co-starring Marvel casts:

Whether you’re mourning Capcom’s absence or thrilled that Arc System Works is taking the reins of a major franchise, the reveal of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls made waves across the gaming world. Its connection to Marvel vs. Capcom is unmistakable, not just because of the Marvel branding, but due to its fast-paced, multi-character tag team 2D fighting style that Capcom helped pioneer. While Capcom broke new ground by blending Marvel’s comic book flair with innovative storytelling, Arc System Works is set to do the same, this time by infusing heroes like Iron Man and Captain America with bold, anime-inspired re-imaginings. It’s a stylistic shift that signals the end of Capcom’s comic-inspired Marvel era and the beginning of Marvel’s bold new chapter in anime.

[...] This time, Arc System Works aims to do for Marvel what Marvel once did for Capcom, by immersing Marvel’s characters in Japanese culture, particularly anime and manga, which have largely overtaken Western comic books in terms of sales and popularity. Due to the MCU and titles like Marvel Rivals, Marvel characters’ brand recognition is on fire and has far outgrown the comic panels that made them famous. Anime is one of the few forces truly rivaling Marvel in global popularity, thanks to the success of several key franchises. Anime has become so popular that even corporations and Japan itself are turning to AI and cybersecurity to combat the millions lost to piracy. But the tangled web of anime and manga licensing is a whole other story.

Well unfortunately, it appears that, sadly but perhaps not surprisingly, the cast here includes a character who was introduced nearly a dozen years ago based on political motivations, which dampens the impact:

In Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, Kamala Khan has googly anime eyes, Captain America is spouting Shonen one-liners about freedom, and Iron Man has Gundam eyebrows for heaven’s sake! Even the trailer uses the Japanese dub (although SAG-AFTRA shenanigans may be the culprit). The material for this crossover was all there from the start, it just took a dev team steeped in Japanese culture to bring it forth. Arc System Works has long since overtaken Capcom in the tag-team 2D fighter subgenre, especially after the misfire that was Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, the franchise’s prolonged absence afterward, and MvC2’s eventual replacement at EVO by ArcSys’s own Dragon Ball FighterZ in 2020.

The way they keep putting a character whose general "popularity" has remained unproven into these video game projects is just plain laughable. The last time this was done, in an Avengers game, it tanked in sales. I have no idea so far if the Islamic background remains intact in whatever story elements appear in Tokon, but if it is there, such politically motivated elements will be precisely the reason why this is not worth playing, and doesn't make a good successor to Capcom's earlier productions. One can also reasonably ask why the Khan character has to be cast in this game, but not Carol Danvers, if she's not here, and even if she is, any retainment of the Capt. Marvel role is problematic. What's so "bold" about perpetuating a propaganda tactic? No, a fictional character isn't to blame for any bad political components applied to them and their narratives, but if said components are retained in the video game as much as the comics, then it's obvious this project didn't have all the creative freedom one might hope it could have, or, the designers could regrettably share the same politics as the Marvel staffers who foisted the Islamic propaganda upon the comics output.

Unshockingly, this article fails to make clear why anime/manga's overtaken USA comics in popularity, but may not much longer if they turn to Orwellian PC - because Marvel and DC sold out to wokeism long ago, particularly by the mid-2000s, and licensed merchandise is no substitute for comics storytelling. Recalling when Capcom produced Clash of Super-Heroes in 1998, they were only allowed to use War Machine rather than Iron Man for the Marvel side of the cast, it doesn't take too much to guess Marvel's marketing department's influence over casting choices in Tokon was prevalent here as well, so you can see why the Muslim Ms. Marvel wound up being added rather than say, Mr. Fantastic from the Four, who also has stretching powers. And Khan's not the only newer character to be cast in Tokon - even Robbie Reyes, possibly the 5th character to take the role of Ghost Rider, was cast in this instead of Johnny Blaze, Danny Ketch, or even the Silver Age western-based precursor, Carter Slade, who was co-created in 1967 by Roy Thomas, Dick Ayers and Gary Friedrich prior to Blaze's 1972 creation. Far as I'm concerned, nothing with the title GR past the turn of the century is worth putting to use in games like these any more than comics, based on how pedestrian the writing's long become.

And the material was "all there" from the start? Sorry, but some of that material reeks of more PC directions in the past 20 years, and what if this video game leaves out any connections between Spidey and Mary Jane Watson? I seem to recall one of the Capcom games featured MJ in the epilogue for Spidey, but won't be shocked if she has no place in this newer game, even though these mandated omissions are already beginning to reek of embarrassment. Besides, I long lost interest in licensed merchandise based on Marvel/DC, because of how they turned it out at the expense of their comics, and DC probably fared worse in terms of producing video fighting games based on their comics than Marvel did in past decades.

Peter David passes away at 68

The UK Independent reports veteran scribe Peter David, who wrote the Hulk's series for nearly a dozen years, along with notable runs on X-Factor, Aquaman and Supergirl, has died at 68 years old:

Legendary comic book creator Peter David, best known for his 12-year run on The Incredible Hulk, has died.

He was 68.

His death was announced on Sunday by friend and fellow author Keith R.A. DeCandido.

“Just got the news that Peter David finally lost his rather lengthy battle with his failing physical form last night,” DeCandido wrote on Facebook. [...]

Over the course of David’s tenured run on The Incredible Hulk in the 1980s, he regularly explored themes of the Marvel superhero’s multiple personality disorder. He is also credited with creating new Hulk universe characters the Riot Squad and the Pantheon.

Besides The Incredible Hulk, David also wrote for Aquaman, Young Justice, SpyBoy, Supergirl, Fallen Angel, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Captain Marvel, and X-Factor.

As the NJ Star-Ledger notes, he also had his share of novels and TV programs:

He wrote many “Star Trek” novels, including the “Star Trek: New Frontier” series, as well as “Babylon 5″ novels.

David also novelized films including the “Spider-Man” movies, “Iron Man,” “The Incredible Hulk” “Batman Forever” and “Fantastic Four.”

His other books include his original “Sir Apropos of Nothing” fantasy series, which debuted in 2001, and the Peter Pan story “Tigerheart” (2009).

I think there were plenty of impressive comics he'd written years before, but, he did have his share of bad stuff too, and almost 15 years ago, he wrote a X-Factor storyline that amounted to apologia for Islam, was insulting to 911 Families, and his politics were unsurprisingly very left-wing. That said, a shame he had suffer illnesses and a stroke, because there was a time when he did demonstrate creativity, and his run on the Hulk did have the best sense of humor, a theme he also put to use in comics like Young Justice years later. As a result of the stroke he'd suffered in the past decade, he wrote far less.

So, let me offer my condolences to him and his family, and there are plenty of stories he'd written that I do appreciate from the 80s and 90s that we likely won't see emulated today.

Jack Kirby exhibition at LA's Skirball Center in California

The Los Angeles Daily News reports there's a new exhibition spotlighting Jack Kirby's artwork at the Skirball Center. And wouldn't you know it, something awkward comes up:

“He then, with Stan Lee, created the Marvel revolution of the ’60s,” he says. “And created the Hulk and the Fantastic Four and Iron Man and Thor. Then he did work at DC through the ’70s, creating a whole other universe of characters. So there’s the creative story we need to tell.

As far as I know, Don Heck is the artist credited with Shell-Head's introduction, and while Kirby may have done artwork for IM, he wasn't the co-creating artist as Heck was. It makes me think, when is Heck going to get an exhibition like this? It's always great for Kirby to see attention drawn to his art, but there's plenty of lesser-known artists who deserve the same regard.

Reed, Saunders and Skirball curator Michele Urton agreed early on that Kirby’s art had to lead the way.

“We would allow that to illuminate the story of Jack’s life and his impact on popular culture,” Reed says. “And likewise, how popular culture influenced and informed his work.”

The rooms of the exhibition are full of vibrant color and include all manner of treasures, including a variety of original artwork; a wall of comics featuring the first appearances of Kirby-created characters; a room depicting the evolution of his explosive style and much more.

“The title ‘Heroes and Humanity’ is incredibly apt,” Reed says. “We lead with the art, not only the comic art but the private works, the things that Jack did purely for his own artistic satisfaction, his collages and fine art, his work for animation as a character designer.

Once, Kirby doubtless had an impact on pop culture, but today, much of that influence disappeared, as more PC writers/artists came about, and if you don't see him in discussion much in modern times, that's because too much wokeness has led to a sad situation.

“Captain America Comics No. 1” came out in December 1940, a year into World War II for many countries. In it, Captain America punches Adolf Hitler in the nose, a sign of how concerned its co-creators Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were about the European theater a full year before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

Which reminds me that years ago, when Simon was still alive, he told that he drew an illustration of Cap smashing Osama bin Laden, something mainstream comicdom has gotten to the point where they would vehemently refuse to publish it, and if it hasn't been published, who knows if we'll ever see it on public display at all? And all because long ago, after September 11, 2001, the industry cowed from the subject of Islamic terrorism.

In the exhibit, the curators walked a fine line not to link Kirby’s personal life too directly to the comics he created, Reed says. But some facts are clear.

“We know from speaking to his family and his loved ones and his friends that he was a lifelong liberal,” Reed says. “He personally fought in World War II. He was a first-generation Jewish American who dealt directly with the threat of Nazism and fascism.

“He famously did stories in the ’60s and ’70s that were quite socially progressive, and he actively opposed Richard Nixon,” he says. “Certain things we can say as matters of historical record. What we can’t do is say what Jack would think or do on any given topic.”

Interesting how they acknowledge that yes, Kirby was a liberal, but it's not like he ever literally supported the kind of narrow visions today's leftism does. Unsurprisingly, they don't make clear that "nazism" was an abbreviation of National Socialism, and socialism is a concept that modern leftism's become more accepting of, which could explain why the newspaper doesn't have the courage to get into that topic. That said, there were valid issues to make against Nixon, who offensively thought abortions were acceptable based on interracial affairs. That was absolutely disgusting of him, and it wasn't the only wrong he'd ever done. So if Kirby ever took issue with Nixon, he had every right to be concerned. Nixon was nothing more than a shoddy example of a so-called "conservative" who really made himself look as bad as the leftists of the 19th century USA.

“You can see, after he got back from World War II, his work shifts,” Reed adds. “Even when you’re looking at the Thor comics or the New Gods comics, you can see that he was directly conscious of the reality and horror of conflict and war when he’s telling these stories.”

Yes, but what they may not make clear in the interview is that totalitarian tyranny is what makes wars against civilized communities, and without better education instead of indoctrination, how are we to mend all the damage and prevent such badness from occurring in the future?

Here's another report from Variety:

According to co-curator Patrick A. Reed, assembling all of the materials needed for such a retrospective was often a tough challenge. “Comic books were a disposable media, so none of this work was preserved by the publishers. None of it was archived,” Reed told Variety. “Original comic art from the 20th century largely exists in the hands of private collectors, and those are because those people collected it. So the difficult thing is finding specific pieces of original artwork.”

And none of those collectors, private or otherwise, ever donated or sold it to museums, private or otherwise? See, this again makes clear what's surely gone wrong with the whole speculator business - do these collectors want the art to be seen and known about or not? So long as they keep hogging it and shutting it all away in vaults, it'll be impossible to escape the feeling that deep down, they're actually embarrassed by the medium instead of impressed.

As a fan of Kirby's work, I think it's wonderful he's getting an exhibition devoted to his contributions as artist and writer. But it's uncertain if in the long run, he's made an impact on pop culture, and lest we forget that, less than a decade after he passed away, Captain America as a storytelling vehicle was largely destroyed by political correctness at the time Quesada/Jemas/Alonso were running Marvel. And that influence of theirs is doubtless still hurting Steve Rogers as a comics creation even today. How can one celebrate Kirby's arts when modern comicdom's contributors let it down?

Of course comics are a form of literature, but where this columnist began his reading doesn't make the best starting points

A writer at the Daily Aztec argues that comics are literature, though where he drew his own encouragement from for taking up the medium as reading material is hardly the best:

The first comic book I read was a single issue of “Iron Man,” a billionaire tech-head turned superhero. This comic tied in with the Marvel cinematic Universe film “Iron Man 2,” and it was given to me and a handful of other guests at a family birthday party. As fate would have it, that wouldn’t be my last comic book.

I grew up watching Marvel and DC cartoons like “Batman: The Animated Series,” “Justice League Unlimited,” and “The Spectacular Spider-Man.” These shows began my interest in the superhero world.

Stories coming from Marvel around 15 years ago were not worth the paper they were printed on, not even movie connections. It's decidedly a shame when anybody and everybody thinks the best gift you should give your children for reading is the very brand new items, when here, there were Marvel Masterworks archives available back then, and today, Marvel Epic Collections make it even easier to obtain far better stories pre-2000. The same can now be said about DC Finest, a similar archiving project that began just a year or so ago, and will hopefully be put to serious use more than previous archiving projects were.

Reading their best stories or the classics intrigued me. With stories like Spider-Man’s, I learned that if Peter Parker, the character’s alias, can manage his hero life and academic life, then I could take on any challenge that college presented me with.

What about leftism that's ruining the college system? Because there's some of that in this article too, unsurprisingly. If partisan politics can't be challenged, nor some of the worst results of leftist indoctrination, then the writer hasn't learned much of anything from reading Spidey.

With every comic I read, I was introduced to the grand world of superheroes that captivated me with each panel showcasing them in beautiful colors, portraying them with vivid art. It got me thinking, all the way to coming up with the essential question:

Can comic books qualify as literature?

Literature is commonly defined as “Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit. Books and writings published on a particular subject.”

Now, I like the first definition because it talks about how a written work leaves a lasting mark on the reader and the audience. Novels such as Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Animal Farm by George Orwell, and many many more. These pieces of literature are frequently recognized for their timeless messages and use of language that captivates readers in every read-through.

Yes, comics can count as literature in their own way, but like any other medium, they too can fall victim to political correctness and propaganda of the worst kinds, and have their best messages turned inside out. A similar point could be made as to how the artwork fell into mediocrity over the past decade in the mainstream, and no telling how easily it'll recover, if at all. What the past 2 decades have had to offer definitely isn't of lasting value, nor is it "superior". Certainly not if it happens to be something like "Superior Spider-Man", which was just a tired excuse to depict Dr. Octopus switching brains with Spider-Man. The writer then cites 2 items, one with more positivity, oddly enough, but another that's lacking:

Less known but just as valuable are the retelling of classic fairytales in Fables by Bill Willingham. Or Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Novel Adaptation by Ari Folman. [...]

“The graphic diary is the perfect solution for the next generation. To reach the readers of the diary you also have to find their language-more people will get to know the story,” Folman said as his reason for using the comic medium.

While it's admittedly surprising to see the writer cite Fables as a comic making for valueable reading, given that Willingham is a right-winger, this is soured when the work of an actual leftist is put alongside, one who exploited Anne Frank's history for writing up a crude, contrived rendition where homosexuality is shoehorned into the mess. I get the feeling the writer would never cite GNs like those written by Arnon Shorr as recommended reading. And if not, that's telling just how narrow a university paper's viewpoint can really be.

The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel known for being set in the dystopian Republic of Gilead, a theocratic regime that has replaced the United States, was also adapted into a comic book by Renee Nault.

“Although the subject matter is bleak, I wanted the art itself to be beautiful, and for each page to stand as its own work,” Nault said when commenting on her motivation.

If memory serves, Margaret Atwood's novel was written as a left-wing feminist story, with conservative/Christian-like figures as adversaries, so what makes this a great item for adaptation into comics? I can't say I'm surprised it would be adapted though. But, if the Handmaid's Tale were a critique of Islam, it would never be embraced by the leftist crowd.

Anyway, this pretty much sums up what you can expect to come from a university rag. The only thing that's really accurate here is that yes, comics can be literature in their own way. But what predictably goes undiscussed is how comics can also be exploited as propaganda for bad politics, and while it is amazing the Daily Aztec would cite Fables as a comic of interest, they ruined everything with the tasteless leftist items that were also brought up.