Actor Samuel Jackson reflects on friendship with Stan Lee

Actor Samuel Jackson told People about how he got to know the late Stan Lee while appearing in some Marvel adaptations as Nick Fury:

Samuel L. Jackson is reflecting on his longtime friendship with the late Marvel universe creator Stan Lee.

While attending The Beast premiere at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles on Oct. 6, the actor, 77, learned that he’s just behind Lee when ranking performers in cumulative box office revenue across all film roles.

The late co-creator of iconic comic book characters including Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor and the X-Men had worked on around 200 films when he died at 95 in 2018.

While growing up on Lee’s work, Jackson never envisioned having the opportunity to meet him.

“Things like that happen that you never expected,” he told PEOPLE at the L.A. premiere. “Those are things that you can’t even imagine when you’re a kid and you’re reading the books and you see his name all over the place.”

“Never occurred to me as a kid growing up in segregated Tennessee, I would meet Stan Lee,” he added. “So when it happens, it’s not even a dream come true. It’s something beyond that.”

Jackson, who plays Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, described Lee as a “wonderful, charming person” while reflecting on what a delight he was to be around.

I think it's great Jackson got to meet a figure he admired, but I'm sure there's people who're wondering why he - or more precisely, the studio - had to take the woke race-swapping route when they cast Jackson in Nick Fury's role instead of creating a new character who could take more or less the same prominent role as a leading S.H.I.E.L.D field operative. Let's consider that the political correctness got worse in some way or other in how the Marvel movieverse went forward, with post-2018 movies being particularly dreadful, including the 4th Thor movie (and lest we forget, there too, some race-swapping occurred with Heimdall earlier on). Was it really that necessary? Of course not, and for all we know, Jackson could surely have been cast as Robbie Robertson, one of the senior editors at the Daily Bugle in Spider-Man's series as well, and unlike Fury in the comics, Robertson was created as Black. Since Robertson was depicted as more favorable to Spidey than J. Jonah Jameson ever was, Jackson could've been perfect for the role of Robbie.

So Jackson's admiration for Stan the Man is appreciated, but it's a shame if he won't debate whether the S.H.I.E.L.D director who'd previously led the Howling Commandos in the first series Fury headlined should've ever been race-swapped. Of course it's absolutely terrible Jackson had to grow up at a time when the mid-south was held hostage to racial segregation, but that doesn't mean established fictional characters created as white should be changed to Black/Asian/Latino as a way to apologize. It's always possible to create new ones and not have to rely solely on what's already been created for the same comics-based movies. That kind of PC mindset has long ruined even DC comics, and it's something that has be moved away from and the original incarnations should be allowed to be made use of again.

Luton's Comicon pays tribute to Steve Dillon

Luton Today says their local convention is going to pay tribute to artist Steve Dillon, who passed away a decade ago:

Luton Comic Con 2026 will pay tribute to one of the town’s most celebrated creative talents with a special exhibition dedicated to the life and work of legendary comic book artist Steve Dillon.

The exhibition, which Luton Comic Con CIC describes as a special final tribute to Dillon’s legacy, will showcase his remarkable career and lasting contribution to the world of comics.

[...] Dillon’s professional career began when he was just 16 years old, when he was hired to work for Marvel UK’s Hulk Weekly. His early Marvel UK work included drawing Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as work connected to The Hulk, before he went on to establish himself across some of the most influential British and American comics.

That's pretty interesting he had Nick Fury to his credits. But what else was he know for?

He would later become renowned for his work on titles including Judge Dredd, Hellblazer and The Punisher, as well as co-creating the acclaimed Preacher with writer Garth Ennis. His distinctive storytelling and character work made him one of the most respected British comic artists of his generation.

Would that be Ennis' take on the Punisher they're referring to? Because Ennis set in motion the destruction of Frank Castle, turning it into a political mess 2 decades ago, and his take is something to admire? Though it does make me wonder what the late Gerry Conway might've thought of it.

Whatever the quality of Dillon's art, the sad part's that he was apparently one of a whole ocean of scribes who veered to the darkness, as his resume suggests. So what's so "remarkable" about that? I don't see it. There's bound to be only so many artists and writers who dealt more with the bright side - and Superman's building on that angle - who don't get as much attention as artists like Dillon may be getting (Al Plastino, for example). Seriously, it's time to give them more spotlight too.

What a Catholic commentator has to say about Marvel/DC history while discussing Voyage Comics' contributions to the medium

A writer at the Catholic World Report discusses Voyage Comics, the publisher specializing in religiously-themed stories, and along the way, has what to say about past Marvel/DC publications with allusions to leftist ideology. Some of which are admittedly quite interesting to ponder, including a certain aforementioned tale from 1986 that led to a disturbing form of editorial mandate the following decade or so:

Back in the late 80s and into the 90s, even as an unphilosophical teenager and avid consumer of comic books, I was well aware of flaws in the fantasy worlds of Marvel and DC.

I can, for instance, recall seeing through the thinly veiled propaganda of an “X-Men” graphic novel entitled God’s Country, the villain of which was a small-minded religious bigot who refused to tolerate super-powered mutants. One storyline of The Legion of Super-Heroes depicted a xenophobic dictator taking over the Earth, resulting in a terrible regime whereby hapless space aliens were persecuted.

Quite aside from the obvious virtue-signaling, I was also put off by the superficial and trite conflation of issues such as trans-humanism and extra-terrestrial life with the “gay rights” movement. Do slogans like Coexist! and Can’t we all get along? really represent the only response to the presence among us of alien beings endowed with godlike powers?

In any event, an issue of The Incredible Hulk would finally cut to the chase by featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury bragging about his organization’s acceptance of homosexuals.

To be sure, even in the mainstream comic book industry, there have been exceptions that veer from the reservation of liberal ideology. I still have an old issue of Batman, wherein the hero tracks down an insane criminal who would solve the homelessness problem … by killing off all the homeless. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting comics that part ways with leftist ideology are excessively dark. For example, Frank Miller’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns is laced with gratuitous obscenity and over-the-top violence, making it impossible to recommend this otherwise fascinating account of an indomitable, haunted man resuming his obligation to protect his home city from chaos.

Interesting the guy does have a problem with Miller's resort to jarring violence in the story, though I hardly consider DKR a title worth the time, if only because of what it led to years later, though of course I realize it's not Miller and his story who're literally and/or solely to blame, but rather, any editors and publishers who came within even miles of forcing successive writers to adopt a path where Bruce Wayne would be portrayed as a nasty control freak, almost entirely lacking a sense of humor or any kind of happiness amid the darkness. That direction also led to the horrific mistreatment of Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, because if memory serves, there were storylines where it was implied superhero missions are unsuited for younger protagonists, and all this in a world that was otherwise meant to be surreal. IIRC, even in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans title, this shoddy path was alluded to at one point.

I think the columnist goofed with the title of the X-Men GN, which I believe is actually "God Loves, Man Kills", originally published around 1982, and was the 5th in the Marvel Graphic Novel series that lasted until about 1993, comprising at least 75 stories. And since that came up, one can only wonder if Chris Claremont would've written up a villain who was a Muslim adherent? IIRC, when Claremont later wrote an unsuccessful 2nd volume of Gen13 that came after September 11, 2001, he added a character who was a Muslim to the cast, indicating Claremont was an early example of a writer who went woke in comicdom. And where exactly in the Hulk was Nick Fury boasting about welcoming LGBT agents into S.H.I.E.L.D? Perhaps in the 1990s, when it was more likely such propaganda would turn up, and the late Peter David was known to be a supporter of such ideologies. It is a shame he had to make such a big deal about it, even if at the time, most writers like him originally did it more subtly, unlike the very disturbingly contrived and forced way it's been handled since. Although, lest we forget, the disgraced Gerard Jones was one shoddy writer of his sort from the times who did it, as mentioned, in a very contrived and forced manner, at the expense of a more talented writer (Roy Thomas)'s creation from Infinity Inc. And that was definitely wrong. For all we know, what Jones did may have precipitated the alarming trend among leftist writers of changing a heterosexual character to homosexual, and it eventually led to the damage even X-Men's cast underwent. And even before all that, there was a time when William Messner-Loebs changed the Pied Piper from the Flash to gay in 1990. Just because this was a reformed crook who underwent an alteration of personality, does that make it inherently acceptable? Of course not.

Happily, Voyage Comics avoids political correctness on the one hand and runaway sex and violence on the other, instead opting to celebrate heroes both more down-to-earth and more wholesome than what we typically find in Marvel and DC. Also, intriguingly, heroes are placed not in the immediate “now” but are situated within historical fiction; the “Lionette” and “Phantom Phoenix” titles are set in America in the period between the World Wars.

...A sick popular culture very much needs a Catholic presence, and one way to maintain such a presence is by imprinting artifacts of that popular culture with a Catholic vision. Certainly, our history and culture are replete with real-life heroism, protagonists, and images, which warrant our children’s attention more than do Spider-Man or Green Lantern.

On this, I would disagree just in how he implies Spidey and GL in and of themselves aren't worth our children's time. There was once a time they were relevant, and when most writers/editors didn't force extreme political beliefs into the stories under the confidence that, because these were corporate-owned, they could get away with it. But that began to collapse over time, with GL an early victim of PC post-1988, and Spidey the next victim years later in the early 2000s, when J. Michael Straczynski got his mitts on the writing assignment. I think back to that time and feel disgust at all the apologists who defended and justified JMS' writing, at least until the whole Sins Past debacle came around, and only then may they finally have conceded it wasn't worth the paper wasted to print it. Today, it's definitely aged poorly.

So it's great to have religious stories to tell from that specific perspective of what figures can be considered heroic. Even so, I don't think the columnist should be telling all this at the expense of the hard work figures like Stan Lee did in his time. That kind of bias never helps.

Tim Seeley turns off his social media pages because a controversy erupts over how he portrayed Magik

So it looks like even a few years after Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the name to X, there's still controversies bursting out there over comics, whether justified or not. And the latest one involves writer Tim Seeley and an X-Men story he wrote. But before we get to that, here's something I noticed written by Tom Brevoort at least a year ago about Magik from the X-Men franchise that requires pondering:

In the past, I haven’t liked Magik pretty much at all. But that doesn’t mean that the character doesn’t have fans, lots of them. And being in the position that I’m in now means that I can prevent her from being written in the manner that used to irritate me. So there’s no problem with using her.

He seems to have laid out quite a double-standard in which, on the one hand, he acts like a fictional character is a real person, a considerable problem still haunting comicdom till this day. On the other hand, he ostensibly admits, though not clearly, that it's the assigned writer who's guilty of whatever he thought "irritating" about Illyana Rasputin in the past. It was surely to be expected from somebody who hasn't been convincing in his dedication to the job he works in.

But that doesn't explain why Brevoort approved of the following story in focus, which leads us to what's come up on the web, as explained by Comic Book Movie. It's a story supposed to be set in a future alternate era, where Magik kills Maria Hill(!) and is killed by Nick Fury in turn, and goes to the depths of hell again, and:

Well, there are sexual undertones in the comic that imply the demons have sexually abused Magik. X-Men: Age of Revelation Infinity #4 doesn't depict rape, but demeaning remarks are made about her body, and two of the hero's tormenters, Belasco and S'ym, were previously revealed to have abused Magik as a child.

When Magik arrives in Limbo, she's in her underwear, and as Darkchild, she thanks her abuser—in an admittedly sexualised pose—for "sating [her] pathetic needs." While some read that as a reference to sexual assault, Belasco is actually making her beg for food.

Sexual assault has frequently been used as a plot device for female characters in comics, so it's easy enough to understand the outrage. It may not have been the intention here, but the issue can be read in that way, and therein lies the problem.

The backlash was so vocal that writer Tim Seeley, who faced abuse and death threats (which is obviously unacceptable), has deactivated his X account and gone private on Instagram. On Bluesky, he wrote, "Welp...I had to finally deactivate twitter because that was just a touch too much death for me and the family. It was a sh*t 16 year run! F**k everybody!"

He may have erased that specific post too, and it wouldn't be shocking if the atmosphere wasn't so clean even there. First, let's be perfectly clear. Of course if anybody reacted that repulsively on social media about this story, it's offensive and doesn't help the cause of anybody who's allegedly revolted by how the story was written up. That said, even if this is supposed to be an alternate future story, it is insulting to the intellect how a character who'd once been built up is reverted back to a denigrating position, as though her status in the regular world had never been. And that only suggests these alternate future titles Marvel's been working on lately have little purpose beyond the settings.

Here's what The Gamer tells about the story:

Specifically, readers claim that the comic depicts Magik being sexually abused until she becomes a villain. This is perceived as a resurgence of the trend in which female characters are sexually assaulted for shock value and receive a disproportionate amount of violence, something Marvel is no stranger to.

While Marvel obviously isn't innocent of concocting tasteless stories alluding to sexual violence, we have DC to thank for really leading us to the sorry state mainstream comics suffered from 2 decades ago, when they published Identity Crisis, the miniseries that minimized sexual violence for the sake of leftist metaphors, and worst, minimized real life victims of sexual violence in the process. Such abominations are why we got to a point where the audience may not be ready for stories in which sexual violence of the worst kind is even alluded to. That aside, one more reason it probably shouldn't be surprising a story like this was approved by Brevoort is because, lest we forget, he was editor of Avengers at the time Brian Bendis mistreated Scarlet Witch in Disassembled. It certainly does make his claim he wants to prevent Magik from being written poorly very bizarre indeed.

Another writer at ComicBook also spoke about the subject, but there's traces in his piece of blurring the distinctions between fictional characters and their real life writers/editors:

Right now, the X-Men books are in the midst of “Age of Revelation”, an alternate universe story whose perception that has mixed, which seems like the watchword for the line since Brevoort took over. This story takes place ten years in the future, with many characters drastically changed. Magik, who has been Cyclops’s right-hand woman in X-Men, has become the Darkchylde again, and an Infinity comic, the books that Marvel puts on their Marvel Unlimited app, told the story of how she got there. However, this comic caused a huge uproar, one that sees a disturbing Marvel trope return, and we need to talk about it.

We may alright, but I'm not so sure the columnist himself is the most qualified for the job, as a certain part of the following suggests:

Marvel Infinity’s X-Men: Age of Revelation #4 revealed the fate of Magik after her death. She was sent back to Limbo, where she met her old demonic masters and they decided that they wanted her back as their weapon. So, the demons sexually assaulted her until she became their slave again. Now, it wasn’t shown on the page, but the book didn’t shy away from telling us what happened to her. It’s such a strange and disturbing choice to make in 2025; Magik has gotten more popular than ever, and to have her abused in such a way is honestly terrible.

I looked at the earlier article from March linked to in the paragraph, and the fellow veers into silly babbling about Magik being great because she's supposedly better than Dr. Strange. Umm, that all depends on how well written she is, and if she isn't, then her power levels don't add up to much of anything. He also says, "Take Doctor Strange’s powers away and he’s just a guy. Take Magik’s powers away and she’s still a formidable fighter." *Ahem*. Around 1989, there was a story in the 2nd volume's 10th issue where Stephen Strange wound up in a fight with Morbius over a misunderstanding, and the Living Vampire assaulted Stephen when he tried to initiate magic spells, cancelling out the incantations, but Stephen didn't back down. Rather, he took to using physical martial arts taught by butler Wong, and succeeded in defeating Morbius that way. What ComicBook's writer says erases that storytelling history. I don't know just now if Dr. Strange was originally established by creators Stan Lee/Steve Ditko as a physical combat practitioner, but by the late 80s, succeeding writers like Peter Gillis certainly seem to have made use of the possibilities. What's the columnist trying to prove with such a puff piece? Which ends with:

Magik was able to summon a massive demon to help her fight Wraith’s mech. As powerful as Doctor Strange is, he wouldn’t have been able to summon a powerful demon to do his bidding. Magik’s history can be quite convoluted, but she’s proven herself as Marvel’s best magic user, making her a unique weapon for the X-Men.

Sorry, but this too hilariously ignorant of the fact that it all depends on what even Lee thought made for a great story, and whether it was plausible enough within the boundaries of science fantasy Lee established in his time. I'm sure that writers with talent could come up with a great Iron Man story where Tony Stark built a giant Japanese-style mech and put it to use in battles against criminals armed with similar weapons, but let's remember that with bad apples like Joe Quesada and his successors being in charge of Marvel, the chances something that spectacular could work well is simply out of the question. If you want to defend Illyana Rasputin as a storytelling vehicle and condemn superfluous use of sexual violence as a storytelling tool, that's okay, but making her and Dr. Strange out to sound like real persons and reducing everything to a whole "my favorite character's better than yours" argument does nothing, and in fact runs the danger of encouraging abuse of the character considered "lesser" by the columnist.

Sure, it's awful if Magik was established as sexually abused by the demons in the new X-Men story; whatever abuse she underwent in the Bronze Age stories where she first appeared was enough. But, chances are the cybertrolls on X and other platforms who attacked Seeley weren't altruistic, nor were they actually against offensive use of a serious issue in an entertainment product; chances are high they were just looking for excuses to attack somebody else over something they otherwise have no issue with in real life, certainly if they never condemn cases like the following in Europe. If the attacks on Seeley were only written for the sake of "fun", it only makes clear no problems are being solved at all.

With that told, there doesn't seem to be much point to these alternate future storylines Marvel's currently turning out, and the hypocrisies surrounding the whole mess are stupefying.

"Marvel Rivals" doesn't feel like a comics video game

A reviewer at AV Club is disappointed with the new Marvel Rivals computer game, which he says doesn't feel like Marvel, yet more like Overwatch:

There’s a fun game you can play while playing the (frequently unfun) new online shooter Marvel Rivals. I call it “Hey, Which Overwatch Character Is This Weird Version Of A Marvel Person Semi-Actionably Ripping Off?” [...]

Weirdly, the one itch the game doesn’t scratch is my love of Marvel. Sure, it’s fun to hear Yuri Lowenthal (Spider-Man), Josh Keaton (Iron Man), and Steve Blum (Wolverine) reprise roles from earlier Marvel games (including my beloved Midnight Sons). But Rivals is so interested in recreating the Overwatch dynamics that it rarely, if ever, feels like the superhero throwdown it should be, either in its fluff—with weird lore, costumes, and a time-tossed array of levels pulled from alternate universes that just happen to look a lot like OW maps—or its play. These don’t look, or feel, like any Marvel fights you might be familiar with from comics, TV shows, or films, and that’s because they’re not trying to be. They’re re-skinned Overwatch, and that’s a real bummer in a universe where a genuine Marvel hero shooter game still doesn’t really exist.

It's really no surprise these newer computer games don't feel like Marvel. That's because of all the wokeness they increasingly adhered to as the years went by, relying on newer stories and how characters were portrayed, and if they rely on how the movies approached the characters, rather than say, how Stan Lee and Roy Thomas did, that's another huge mistake. Why, even the increased focus on heroes fighting each other got way out of hand long ago, and that too makes this whole affair discouraging.

And come to think of it, when one takes into consideration that not many Marvel superheroes use guns, save for Nick Fury and the Punisher, maybe that's why the whole notion of modeling this game after a first-person shooter is another mistake? But the worst mistake of all is assigning only so many "reviwers" who couldn't care less about the classic material to comment on these topics, when they don't really have a proper grip on what originally made Marvel's comics work so well decades before, and no chance they'll ever complain how Marvel lost direction as a publisher under phonies like Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas. As a result, articles like these don't have much impact even to argue why these new computer games aren't worth the bytes they're published on, and don't make a good substitute for the comics.

Sloppy article about history of Black characters

Level has a history article about Black characters seen in past comics, and how they evolved, which unfortunately lack certain objectivity in its approach. Specifically, how it references the PC changes like race-swapping made in the past decade or so:

After Timely Comics came Atlas Comics in the 1950s, Atlas gave us the African tribal-chief “Waku, Prince of the Bantu,” one of four stories in each volume of Jungle Tales (Sept. 1954 — Sept. 1955). Marvel’s first Black supporting character was Gabe Jones in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos №1.

That was when Nick Fury was white (he still had an eye patch). Though he had his moments, Gabe was far less a stereotype than Whitewash Jones. In time, Gabe appeared on-screen in Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011. He was a graduate of Howard University and spoke fluent German, which allowed him to decipher instructions on Nazi tanks. He was still a mere private despite his college degree.

[...] There are many characters I missed. Lothar was among the first Black characters to appear in the Mandrake the Magician comic strip. The Falcon first appeared in Captain America in 1969 and substituted for the real Cap several times. To the chagrin of many, Sam Wilson has picked up the shield of Captain America, and a Black man will star as Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World, which is due out in February 2025. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has given the world a Black Heimdall and several other Black Asgardians. Both Sue and Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four have been portrayed by Black actors (Jessica Alba and Michael B. Jordan).

Sounds like somebody doesn't have much love for Steve Rogers, and accepted Sam taking up the shield unquestioned, even if it all came at Steve's expense, which it tragically did. If it's really such a big deal Sam become Cap - this despite how Steve, unlike Sam, didn't have built-in flying equipment - so be it, but why must Steve's background be de facto retconned so that he's more of a Nazi than a USA patriot? And why must Sam be exploited as a supporter for illegal immigration in stories so noticeably forced? And is turning Nick Fury, Sue and Johnny Storm, and Heimdall into black men and women really that big a deal? Point: in the comics, and even the movies of recent, this kind of stuff has not been merit-based in terms of story writing, which lacks discussion in the essay. And the writer keeps up his contrived charade with the following, which becomes quite telling what's wrong at the end:

By now, we’re used to seeing Black heroes, villains, and even bystanders in comics and films, but remember, this wasn’t always the case. I still remember when New York was all-white, as were Paradise Island, Gotham City, and Metropolis. Introducing Black characters has not come without resistance, especially when a previously white character like Sgt. Fury or Sue Storm turned Black.

Despite the reluctance of some fanboys, comic books and films based on comics have become more representative of America and the world, which has to be a good thing. They are less stereotypical and often unique, like Mr. Glass in the Unbreakable film trilogy, which is not based on comics but offers a thorough deconstruction.

I don’t read comics anymore, though I’m a buff of the films derived from them. I appreciate seeing characters that look like me, though they may have an extra ability or two.

Wow. He's no longer even a comics reader, and apparently only cares about the movies. And while it's okay to appreciate having characters around that look like you, it's not only to belittle the white characters and replace them almost wholesale to get to that point. That black Firestorm introduced even before DC's Identity Crisis took a horrific toll on morale never got anywhere back in the day, and has largely vanished since. One can only wonder if the writer believes the character, whose name was Jason Rusch, should be brought back without any consideration for the dignity of Ronnie Raymond as a character. I'd also point out that if Unbreakable was really so bent on deconstruction, isn't that dismaying?

It's also monumentally offensive how the writer says fanboys are "reluctant" when years before, they welcomed Black Panther, Robbie Robertson, Misty Knight, Black Lightning, Storm, Vixen and Luke Cage with open arms and no opposition. Why, they were even fine with introducing Monica Rambeau as a successor to Mar-Vell of the Kree, taking up the Capt. Marvel codename in 1982, all because Marvel wanted to retain use of the name, even if it kept DC from using it again for Billy Batson, whom they'd acquired along with a few other Fawcett characters in the Bronze Age. Despite what's claimed, "representation" remains superficial at worst, and most of the black characters introduced as part of DC/Marvel's woke directions don't seem to come from backgrounds like Cameroon heritage, or even the Central African Republic. What's the use of this futile charade where we're lectured that fanboys supposedly don't want POC characters, when past introductions that were far more plausible and organic prove otherwise? We accepted when Stan Lee did it, for example, because he'd written his creations organically back in the day. We don't accept these new characters replacing white ones in the classic costumes because they, by contrast, don't stand on their own, and besides, it's all just caring about said costume, not the characters wearing them, who end up serving as political mouthpieces for the modern writer's repellent leftist politics.

All this, of course, is precisely why Marvel/DC products are collapsing today, and have long become irrelevant in an age where contrived writing takes the place of plausible writing. Regrettably, these would-be commentators won't understand any of that.

Samuel L. Jackson prefers reading DC comics despite his role as Nick Fury in Marvel movies

Fandom Wire has an item that might not be too surprising when you think about it, where actor Samuel L. Jackson reveals he's not a reader of Marvel comics, even as he's taken up the role of Nick Fury in a number of them, and preferred to read DC instead:

As Jackson prepares for Secret Invasion the actor shared some anecdotes and shocking news on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast. On the podcast Jackson spared no one, he bluntly stated how much he loves DC Comics and has never read a Marvel Comic. He says,

“And truth be told, I don’t even read Marvel comic books… I kinda look at ’em, and when I discovered myself as Nick Fury, I just happened to see myself and [say], ‘What am I doing on this cover?’ And that was it, I put the book back…But I’ve read DC comics my whole life. I mean, we all [grew up with] Superman, Batman, Aquaman.”

DC characters, story arcs, and world-building are top notch and no one can debate about that. It is the dark, gruesome, violent, and fun kind whereas Marvel Comics is a little more sanitized and sort of takes the fun out.

When the actor was asked if his fondness for DC Comics would ever make him want to do a DC film, he again have an honest answer. Jackson currently pointed out how DC is all over the place cinematically.

“Well, I mean, we’re all– actors are mercenaries. It’s kinda what we do, we act who we act for but… But I don’t know that I’m going to read a DC script that’s gonna make me go, ‘Yeah, this is dope!’ “I’m a comic book fan, so I’ve been reading comic books forever.”

The Pulp Fiction [star] is not wrong in his critique of the DCU as a franchise, it has not been able to beat Marvel in that aspect. Despite having movies that have broken Box-Office records and received critical acclaim DC as a movie-making franchise is not tied together.

Well whatever success the Marvel movie franchise had in the past decade has begun receding now, and the Capt. Marvel movie, where he made an appearance with CGI technology employed to make him look younger, was not well received by fandom. That includes the part where it was made to look like Nick Fury got his eye patch via injury by an alien cat. So what's this showbiz site getting at?

And lest we forget, it's chilling to notice Fandom Wire's taken the position that gruesome violence is fun, as though artistic merit doesn't apply. Jarringly violent content, in fact, is what brought down the DCU in print years before during the 1990s, when only so many staffers thought being "edgy" was going to send sales skyrocketing. Even Marvel's guilty of this serious mistake, and some of the comics they turned out post-2000 were definitely tasteless. Even before that, the scene in Spider-Man's Clone Saga, where Peter Parker accidentally injured Mary Jane Watson while assaulting Ben Reilly in a moment of ludicrous frustration was very offensive, particularly when Peter's seen fleeing the lab they were in rather than doing what he could to mend the damage.

And, when Jackson speaks of seeing himself in S.H.I.E.L.D's top agent, he must be referring to the Ultimate universe, where Nick Fury was reinvented as a guy of black descent. But, as Jackson said, he'd never read the Marvel line, and to be sure, not even the WW2 series where Nick originally debuted, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, which Stan Lee launched in 1963, and new stories were in publication at least until 1974 before it went reprint only to 1981. It was 2 years after its launch that Lee and company decided to bring Nick into the present as well, now established as a leading field agent for SHIELD, and I own a paperback reprinting much of the Strange Tales stories illustrated by Jim Steranko. When a Hollywood actor says he wasn't into the original comics, it's no surprise he wouldn't know anything about how Lee's famous creations originally began, and couldn't appreciate the stories that really matter.

Anyway, who cares if the DC movies aren't connected? What matters is that the past decade's offerings are tremendously overrated, relying far too much on darkness and too little sense of humor or comedy. In other words, a precursor to the modern PC situation where comedy's considered a bad thing. The Marvel movies are decidedly overrated too. So it really doesn't matter if Jackson never takes a role in a DC movie, because they're bound to continue with PC directions, as the Marvel movies are now, and besides, there's been quite a bit of "superhero fatigue" lately, as even James Gunn has admitted. So whether Jackson takes a DC movie role is long a moot point. And currently, he's going to appear in a Secret Invasion movie? If memory serves, that was another crossover event story published at the time Quesada/Alonso were in charge of Marvel's comics, so anything based on what they oversaw is reason enough to avoid attending a movie based on the same.

The Marvel movie franchise exploits even leftist creators with insufficient compensation

Hyperallergic wrote an item about the Marvel movie franchise producers getting rich off the creations of writers and artists, both old and new, yet paying little of the box office grosses to the people responsible for bringing about the characters and such they're using in the movies:

Within about 10 minutes of the trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder dropping online, comics fans noted how one shot was identical in composition to a panel that artist Esad Ribić drew for his run on the series Thor: God of Thunder with writer Jason Aaron. Some sites have already lauded this for the “comic book accuracy.” To others, this feels more transparently like an artist being taken advantage of, with Ribić serving as “the cheapest possible designer” for one of Hollywood’s most expensive ongoing projects. Too often, the creators who forged the foundations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are given a “special thanks” credit and little else, and that’s being thrown into sharper relief as these films double down on lifting imagery from page to screen.

It’s even part of the press cycle for these films at this point — Marvel Studios will prove their “loyalty” to the source material by perfectly replicating something from it. The increasing pride with which the studio uses exact replicas of artists’ work leads one to wonder whether those artists are being fairly compensated for that usage, if at all. While it’s not easy to find concrete numbers, the first answer that comes up is often a resounding “No.” The Guardian reported that artists have been receiving “thank you payments” in the range of $5,000, along with invites to the premieres of the movies based on their respective works. Measure that against the billions that Marvel/Disney makes off these films each year.

There's just one thing: as noted, Marvel/Disney are relying upon the work of one of the worst SJWs employed by the former over the past decade, who went out of his way to exploit Thor's title for the sake of identity politics, and that included turning Jane Foster into a pagan deity using the very same name as her male counterpart. You have to wonder why Sif wasn't elevated to such a role, even as it would be equally absurd if she sported a male name out of the blue. It may not be right to cheat these wokesters out of bigger sums, but even so, it's hard to feel sorry, considering all the harm they've done till now. Let's not forget what Aaron and company did with Nick Fury to justify their direction either. Another SJW cited in the article are one who conceived America Chavez, and another who mistreated Captain America:

A more recent grievance came from Joe Casey, the co-creator of America Chavez along with Nick Dragotta. Chavez made her cinematic debut in the recently released Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Casey spoke about receiving an “insult of an offer” from Marvel, which he declined. As noted in a writeup by AIPT, Casey is fully aware of Marvel’s legal ownership of the character (a point defensive fans often argue). But that doesn’t make it right for them to stiff these creators. Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote the Black Panther comic beginning in 2016, who also speaks of being treated well himself by Marvel, calls it a moral obligation, not just a matter of legality. Speaking to the Guardian last year, Coates said, “it doesn’t seem just for them to extract what Steve and Ed put into this and create a multi-billion dollar franchise … just because it’s in a contract doesn’t make it right. If I have some kind of leverage over you, I can get you to sign a contract to fuck you over.”

Again, I'm wondering why these specific creators are among those we should care about. However, even if there's a valid argument to make regarding whatever they're offered in residuals, this does give something to think about - no matter how ultra-liberal and woke one is, that doesn't mean they won't be cheated by the higher echelons when their creations make it to the silver screen. So why do these wokesters even remain on the left? Either way, it's a wonder somebody like Coates would care, though his reasons don't sound altruistic. If the creators were right-wing, he'd likely turn his back on them entirely.

In any event, this does show how only so many recent creations at Marvel are being introduced solely as a platform for which screenwriters can make movies, far more than in past decades, and today, the biggest problem is how, unlike any prior creations, these new ones are created with political intentions. Which could explain why recent box office receipts for their films seem to be slowly declining, including Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which as noted earlier, saw a steep drop of over 80 percent in its 2nd week. Hopefully, the public is waking up to how pretentious the Marvel movies really are.

Jim Steranko visits an Ohio exhibition

The Youngstown Vindicator reported veteran Steranko attended an art exhibition in Ohio, at the Butler Institute:

Steranko is best known for his three-year stint at Marvel Comics. He did what many believe is revolutionary stylistic work with Nick Fury, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain America, the Hulk and the X-Men comics.

Much of his work was seen as realistic, yet stylistic, of his depiction of human figures. Steranko’s layouts were, at t =”At one point, I was one of the most hated guys in comics,” Steranko said. “It was amatter of sheer envy. I was a kid who came in and rose to the top almost immediately.”

Steranko described himself as a person who always tells the truth.

“I’m very candid,” he said. “Don’t ask me unless you really want to know.”

Something the MSM may not want you to know is that Steranko has indicated he's a right-wing patriot, at least by modern standards, and that's surely what he means when he tries to be truthful and candid. Today, he's surely hated for that among the less admiring of past veterans in the industry proper. Also note that in his time, realism didn't come at the expense of the fantasy elements. That's one of the reasons why artists with a similar style like Neal Adams (and possibly Curt Swan?) hold up a lot better than today's watered down embarrassments. And it's also why the veterans' approach is very stylistic, as they say, in a way that serves the art excellently.

The exhibition at the Butler is the first in an American museum to focus solely on his paintings, and the three rooms of paintings are not just for diehard comic book fans.

In his mind, Steranko said there were three artists who were at the top pantheon of comic book artists: Jack “King” Kirby, Wally Wood and Joe Kubert.

“All three of them were like family to me,” Steranko said. “I knew them for much of my life. That was a really special group of people. They were the top. They were all really, really good people.”

Which likely isn't something you could expect today's social justice obsessed to care about or appreciate. Steranko also met one of Superman's co-creators at the Marvel offices:

Steranko described meeting original Superman artist Jerry Seigel in the mid-1960s while in the offices of Marvel Comics.

“I saw this guy on the other side of the office shuffling along emptying ash trays from desks into the waste baskets,” Steranko said. “I went over to him and said, ‘you’re Jerry Seigel.'”

He said yes.

“What the hell are you doing,” Steranko said. “Everyone in comics — certainly everyone in Marvel — should have owed him a debt of gratitude. They owed him their careers.”

“That broke my heart,” Steranko said. “One of the first drawings I drew was Superman. I would not be where I’m today, if not for him.”

He noted he testified on Seigel’s behalf when he filed suit against DC Comics.

He described Jack Kirby and his wife as very generous people who welcomed him in their family.

“They were very loyal people, especially if they liked you,” Steranko said.

Defending Siegel and Shuster was another excellent deed Steranko could do. But it's not something you could expect the modern PC crowd to do, if at all. Even if their careers are owed to Siegel/Shuster's famous innovations. Or even Kirby, Kubert and Wood. Why, just look at how Kal-El as we know him, not to mention Lois Lane, are being kicked to the curb or worse in favor of a PC-laced character like Jon Kent, written to be either bisexual or almost exclusively homosexual, and whose main interests under a writer as horrible as Tom Taylor consist mainly of "climate change". And is paired with a boyfriend depicted as a fanfiction-ish near-immortal. And the worst part being that so far, this may have been done so DC won't have to pay any more residuals to Siegel/Shuster's heirs, as though their contempt couldn't get bad enough.

Steranko's a fine example of a veteran himself. But if he could show the guts to take issue with modern PC and how it's impacting the legacies of his other fellow veterans, that'd be even better.

So Nick Fury is the reason Thor becomes "unworthy"?

The Washington Post did a fawning interview with Jason Aaron about replacing Thor with a woman in the role. Along the way, the discussion features items like this:

This new story has “grown out of everything that I’ve been doing on the character,” Aaron told Comic Riffs. “I’ve been writing Thor for a couple of years now, like 25 issues. So this is not me coming to a stopping point and throwing out everything I’ve been doing. I’ve been laying a lot of tracks for future stories over the course of those 25 issues.

Yeah, just like Dan Slott did with Spider-Man. That's the problem with today's mainstream comics - if they really are planning ahead, it's not for the better, and fails to inspire.

“I’ve introduced some new characters, brought back some old villains,” Aaron continued. “All of that really plays into the new series. This was always the plan: to get Thor to a point where he was unworthy and have someone else pick up that hammer.

“The question was always: Who was that someone going to be?”

A better question would be why he/they want Thor to be "unworthy" of lifting the Uru hammer? Is that really what they think even women who might take interest in their new direction want happening? Has it occurred to Aaron that male Thor has female fans too, who might be speechless at the notion Thor should be considered unworthy of the hammer?

That someone for the moment remains a mystery. The first issue of the new Thor series, which will hit comic book shops and digital devices Wednesday, does not let fans see the face of Mjolnir’s new owner; instead, it sets the tone for the multiple mysteries to be solved within its pages. Mysteries that the former Thor — a now hammer-less male — will be driven to solve.

“The Odinson, the previous version of Thor, he’s going to look at all the women around him and start to try to figure out which one of [them] is running around with [his] hammer,” Aaron told Comic Riffs. “It’s a suspect list that’s going to include his mother, Freyja, who plays a big role in [the first issue]; Roz Solomon, who is Thor’s new love interest and also a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent; [his] ex-girlfriend Jane Foster; and Sif [who is a big part of the movies].

“All those characters will have roles to play in the new book, and not just as red herrings,” Aaron continued. “A lot of them have been a big part of the book for the past couple of years, so those roles will continue on, and then one of them ultimately … has a very different story to tell.”

Aaron says this Thor won’t just be a book about secret identities, noting that the mystery of who lies underneath the new mask of Thor is something that won’t be stretched out for too long.

What's this? They're not going to let us know who the female Thor is all at once? Honestly, I've long been at a point where I find "mysteries" unappealing, especially when they're part of a publicity stunt? This really is beginning to sound less like a decent new direction and more like an attempt to keep the audience hanging for nothing, and does nothing to convince they really mean for people to invest in their new path.

And just as important to the title will be the emergence of Mjolnir, which has a few mysteries of its own.

“Odin [Thor’s father] was the one who put the enchantment on the hammer in the first place,” Aaron said. “He was the one who gave this hammer the power to determine worthiness. As we can see in the first issue, the enchantment has grown beyond even the enchanter. So I really like that idea that this hammer has taken that power onto itself. The hammer will decide who is worthy and nothing can change that.

“It’s really just the beginning of Mjolnir having a very different sort of role in this new Thor series,” Aaron added, “and becoming more of a character in and of itself.”

It's beginning to sound almost like what Geoff Johns did with Green Lantern, retconning the background so that the power ring supposedly chooses who should wear it on their hand. Something I find rather cheap.

As for what motivated Aaron to make the decision to debut the new Thor as a woman — once he decided that the original Thor would go on a journey that would expose him as not worthy of his hammer or the title of Thor — Aaron says looking back on the few who have held Mjolnir up to the sky revealed an elite few that, though different, were all still men.

“I knew pretty quickly that I wanted it to be a female character for a couple of different reasons,” Aaron said. “We haven’t seen very many female characters pick that hammer up over the years. We’ve seen lots of different people in the Marvel universe, from Captain America to horse-face alien guy Beta Ray Bill lift that hammer, but hardly any female characters. And if you look at Thor’s supporting cast these days, like the one he’s had in the book I’ve been doing, most of his supporting cast is female. So if it was going to be someone from Thor’s world that was going to pick this hammer up, then it made sense that it was going to be a woman.”

It's a fair argument, but by keeping the very masculine name in place to be carried by a woman, they're making themselves look silly. Besides, I don't think Beta Ray Bill ever usurped the name Thor for himself and went to an Interior Ministry to have his name legally changed. Nor did Captain America. And why doesn't he mention the What If? story reimagining Jane Foster as a female take on Thor?

For all the fan excitement about this new Thor era, some were not pleased with the announcement. There were fans who claimed that Marvel Comics was running out of ideas, and that yet another male superhero mantle being passed to a female character was something that had been seen too many times. Aaron begs to differ.

“Whenever there’s a big change like that with a character that’s been around for so long, there are going to be people who freak out,” Aaron told Comic Riffs. “I don’t think we would have gotten the same amount of backlash if we just announced that it was a different dude that was picking up the hammer. So that’s pretty disappointing.

Wrong. I would've felt worried or disappointed even if another man were picking up the hammer. Certainly if it were all just being done for publicity's sake, like DC replacing Ronnie Raymond as Firestorm with a black protagonist in a story connected with Identity Crisis and was rushed with little explanation how he got the power just like that. All just for the sake of pandering to minorities on the assumption they'll all be accepting no matter the story quality. As sales proved, however, that's not the case.

And Aaron, along with the paper, are taking things out of context: most detractors are let down by their inability to craft a character who can stand on her own without replacing the main hero in his own book. Sure, it's possible to have a woman become worthy of holding Thor's hammer, but they shouldn't be teetering on the absurd by having whomever the woman is take up his masculine name to boot. Thor's title hasn't been published uninterrupted since taking over the numbering from Journey Into Mystery in 1966, so it wouldn't be any big deal if they wanted to cancel his solo book for a time and replace it with say, a series titled "Sif, Goddess of Thunder".

“I think a lot of people who were taking that [view] on it, who claimed to be big-time Thor fans, they didn’t seem to know too much about what the character had been up to for the last several years. If they’re freaking out that much just because Thor is a woman, I think they’ve missed some of the lessons that maybe the character has been trying to teach them over the course of the last 600 issues.”

No, I think modern writers miss every lesson earlier ones with more rationale have been trying to teach. And I don't see why he thinks turning Thor unworthy of his own hammer is literally justified. I also think Aaron may have committed a continuity glitch on his own writing. One of the commentors asked:

When did Freya become Thor's mother? Was there a formal continuity wipe of Thor being the son of Odin and Gaea?

And another one replied:

Just back in February (Thor: God of Thunder #19), Thor was saying that his mother was Gaea, and this is why he was so interested in environmentalism and efforts to save the earth. This was an issue written by Jason Arron!

I think this is all we need to know Aaron is but one of many new, not so appealing writers who doesn't care for consistency, so why should we assume he cares for organic storytelling?

But now, let's move on to what may be the cause of Thor's losses. The Wall Street Journal also interviewed Aaron, and he gives more data to raise eyebrows:

Set the scene for our readers: How did Thor, the male superhero, lose his worthiness to wield the hammer Mjolnir?

I’ve been writing Thor for about two years now in the pages of a book called “Thor: God of Thunder.” One of the themes of that book was always worthiness. I always liked the idea that Thor was the god who’d wake up every day and look at that hammer and not know whether he was going to pick it up. Only the worthy can lift the hammer of Thor, and I love the idea of a god who was always questioning his own worthiness. This summer in a book I did called “Original Sin,” Nick Fury was empowered by all the insights of The Watcher, who’s an old school, Stan Lee-Jack Kirby character who’s the cosmic observer of the Marvel universe.

In the midst of the fight, Nick Fury whispered something to Thor, and suddenly Thor dropped his hammer and couldn’t pick it up. It was really just a whisper that made Thor unworthy. It wasn’t just something he did that we know, it was really just that whisper. It’s still a mystery as to exactly what Fury said to him, and that’s a mystery we tease a little bit more in Thor #1, and will continue to be a part of that version of the character’s story. I’ve always been building to this moment, towards Thor getting to the point where he can’t confirm his worthiness with his magic weapon. His mother tries to tell him in that first issue that worthiness should not be left to the whim of magic hammers, that he’s hero whether or not he can pick it up, so he continues on even without the hammer. With him not being able to pick it up, it opens the door for someone else to come along who can lift it.

Just like it's a mystery what Mary Jane Watson said to Mephisto as Peter Parker was making a faustian pact to have their marriage erased. So Thor's loss stems from a company-wide crossover, and not from an organic, stand-alone development? Say, I wonder if the new female Thor is working for Evil-Nick? Aaron's just confirmed he cannot craft an authentic plot on his own, and the only developments he can think of tie in with one of the cheapest methods in mainstream: the company wide crossover. I don't see what's so great about this guy then. For somebody talking about worthiness, has it occurred to him he's not worthy of writing mainstream superheroes?

When did you decide that Thor, in terms of who can pick up the hammer, would be a woman?

That was pretty much the only story. We plan all our stories out months, a couple years in advance sometimes. We have these creative retreats, where a bunch of writers sit in a room with all the Marvel editorial [staff], and we talk about all this stuff far in advance. I don’t know exactly how long we’ve been talking about this now.

While this may not be new for editors and writers to sit down for a panel discussion, I wouldn't be surprised if today's involve a lot of discussions for what they think would make the best publicity stunts that the mainstream press is willing to blabber about minus any notes on talent.

The first time I read through the new issue, I got the impression that Thor’s mother, Freyja, picked up the hammer. But the second time, it came across a little more ambiguous. Is it his mother or another character?

I’m not just going to tell you!

Just like he's not going to tell us about his puzzling glitch, ignoring an earlier issue he wrote!

So it’s not a mystery that’s going to be revealed in the first issue.

No, no, no. You didn’t miss anything. We don’t see this new Thor until the very end [of the issue] when she’s wearing a mask, so that’ll be an ongoing mystery for a bit as to who she actually is. Yeah, there’ll be multiple “suspects.” Looking at Thor #1, the first one would seem to be Thor’s own mother. She’s got her own story beginning here, as well. Odin, who’s Thor’s father, has been away quite a while in the pages of the Marvel universe, so he only recently came back to Asgard. While he was gone, Freyja, his wife, was ruling in his place. She was the All-Mother, which is something we hadn’t really seen before in Thor comics.

I don't see why there has to be a mystery in a series he says is all about worthiness, which he lacks. Again, confusion reigns as to who Thor's mother is - Freyja or Gaea?

There’s been plenty skepticism about how dedicated you and Marvel are going to be to this female Thor? Do you expect to turn it back over to Thor Odinson?

Who knows what happens down the road? I’ve been writing the character for two years, and I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. Anyone who’s been reading my stuff can see that there’s a lot of tracks being laid for future stories. I’ve been writing for the long term this whole time. So this is not a short-term story for me. I initially had the same concerns when we started talking about this. This was my idea to do this change. I knew we were coming up on the big, new “Avengers” film next year, so I just wanted to make sure everybody realized we were on the same page, that we’d be going into that film with different versions of [Captain America] and Thor in our books than we see in the movies, and everybody was totally cool with that. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it otherwise. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it as a five-, six-issue story, and then she goes away and the regular guy is back. It’s not that kind of story. Once we get about four or five issues into the story, you’ll start to see what her story really is.

Just like we've seen what Dr. Octopus' story was at the time he hijacked Spider-Man's body. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be quite fascinating alright.

You said around issue four or five the new Thor character’s story would become clearer. Is that when you’ll reveal the character?

We’ll see. I don’t want to say exactly when we’re going to reveal it. We start weeding out suspects pretty quickly. So we’ll start compiling that list of suspects, and we’ll start marking names off it. Really, the first three issues are really about introducing this new version of Thor. We see her at the very end of issue one. Issue two is all hers. We get to see her in action for the very first time, and we see how she is different from the previous guy to wield this hammer.

He's already confirmed how different she is: about as different as Evil-Nick Fury enables. If they keep it a secret - even only for a few issues - that just speaks to their lack of confidence they can sell it without making it look more like they're trying to pull the readers' chains.

Does Marvel have plans for other classic characters along the lines of the changes in Captain America and Thor?

It begins with the kind of story the writers want to tell. We never sit around in those retreats and say, “We really need to make a change. Let’s change this character.” Or throw a dart at the wall and see what hits. It all begins with story. So, this change begins with the story I was telling and the new kind of story I wanted to tell, and Marvel embraced that. It coincided with the changes [Rick Remender] was making with Cap. It also gave Marvel a chance to put a branding on it and to get some publicity, but it still all started with story. That’s what it’s like in that room. Who knows? It’s always exciting when we do those retreats. Stories wither and die in that room sometimes. If your story can’t survive that gauntlet of writers and editors, then it’s not going to survive the gauntlet of fans, so stories disappear in that room. Some stories also come to life in that room, so you never know. The challenge of this job is that you’ve been writing characters who’ve been in publication for 60-plus years, so that’s a lot of stories that have been told with these characters. You’re always trying to do something that, on one hand, honors all those stories, that is still in some way the same character that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were doing back in the sixties. But, at the same time, you want to be able to tell new stories and not just rehash what’s come before. Sometimes that means tweaking things, or taking characters in a bit different direction than where they’ve been before. I think you can do that. I think you can do new and exciting and still honor the core of the characters that we grew up loving. That’s why you read Marvel Comics. Well, we write for Marvel Comics because we love these characters, too.

We've heard this all before. It's become a cliche for writers/editors to insist they're doing everything organically, when Aaron himself flip-flopped early in the interview with the word this stems from weird alterations by pseudo-Nick Fury. And ironically, there have been some very selfish, insular people out there in the remnants of the audience who don't read these books because they love or care about the characters. Some of them have even gone on to become writers themselves, like Aaron has, and even if they don't resort to the worst steps, it's not enough to say they "love" the characters. Otherwise, they'd never have gone along with ending the Spider-marriage, or their recent changes to Captain America and Iron Man.

I love the MCU, and care about their cast of characters. But that's why I don't read their modern output, because despite what Aaron and company say, they don't. That's why, for a decade now, I've only been reading the older, better stuff from the past century.

The hidden politics in Original Sin #6

Earlier, it was revealed Nick Fury's army partner during WW2, Dum Dum Dugan, was a robo-duplicate. Now it's revealed that in Original Sin #6, not only does the robot commit mechanical suicide, there's also subtle politics involved:

In this 10 page story, Dugan visits Fury during his interrogation of the Orb in Original Sin #6 and questions the torture tactics used by his former X.O. to obtain information about the Watcher’s death.

Hmm, I wonder if there's a hidden message here against waterboarding terrorists? It's something even miniseries like DC's Identity Crisis stealthily injected, and this could be another example of using metaphors to craft leftist propaganda. And then:

Confronted by the truth, Dugan – who retained the memories, emotions and conscious of his real-life self – debates the ethicacy of Fury’s deads and ultimately kills himself rather than live on as a duplicate.

And I guess Fury's at fault for that, huh? Another cunning way to make Fury look like a bad guy, and very insulting.

It was previously believed that Dugan remained the same age due to sharing in the Infinity Formula that Fury was dosed with, but this story would retcon that notion as well as several other stories showing Dugan aging, going grey, and even having a heart attack.

Granted, they admit this defies prior continuity elements, yet fail to say whether they think this retcon was called for. It was definitely not, and if Dugan really had outlived his usefulness, all they needed to do was write him passing away from natural causes. But this is how modern mainstream works, and heroic characters cannot just die natural deaths, nor from auto accidents. They can only be turned into pawns in a politicized tale.

The short but splendid career of Jim Steranko as an artist

The Lexington Herald-Leader spoke with veteran artist Jim Steranko, who's famous as one of Marvel's most prominent artists in the Silver/Bronze Age. Most interesting is that he didn't choose his projects by a hero's popularity ranking, but by how well he could contribute to any assignment he chose:

As Steranko tells it, Lee offered Steranko his pick of Marvel's popular superhero titles — including The Amazing Spider-Man, The Mighty Thor and the Fantastic Four — but that would mean following legendary artists Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, who established those characters.

Instead, Steranko picked an unloved feature starring cigar-chomping Nick Fury, a secret agent for the covert operations group known as S.H.I.E.L.D. In a few months, Steranko went from drawing over Kirby's layouts to doing it all himself: stories, full art, even the coloring.

Nick Fury quickly became as popular as any Marvel superhero. The art was exciting, and Steranko kept the censors busy trying to cover up his characters' revealing costumes and passionate love scenes. It's due in large part to Steranko that Nick Fury is now played in blockbuster movies by Samuel L. Jackson and that a weekly television series called Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. launched last fall on ABC.

I think he was being clever and creative when he chose Nick Fury for art assignment. Even a guy who doesn't have the powers Spider-Man and Thor do still has the potential to be made very entertaining with talented writers and artists, and Steranko played his part well. He did his work during the 60s/70s and then moved on to work in other projects, but his art had a very positive impact in its time, something not many artists today can duplicate today, at least not in mainstream, because the editorial mandates affect them as much as they do the writers. A telling example is whether the editors will allow Nick Fury to smoke cigars anymore. Joe Quesada may not be EIC anymore, but his influence is still lurking in the background, with Axel Alonso carrying on much of what he started, and that's why artists may not be able to do it anymore, even if they do depict smoking as an unhealthy practice.

AP Wire fawns over Original Sin

The AP/Indiana Gazette's fawned sensationally over Marvel's latest crossover called Original Sin, which sounds all too reminiscent of DC's Identity Crisis:

There’s a murderer at large in the Marvel Universe and it’s not the killing that has heroes in an uproar.

Seriously? They care less about who killed Uatu than about the closet skeletons the miniseries will focus on?

The death of Uatu the Watcher, long a sentinel soaking up every event that has happened — big and small — has heroes such as Nick Fury, Black Widow, Thor and more seeking his killer but also striving to find out who has his secrets and how they can be kept from exploding into public view for all to see.

That's what worries them, and not whether this killer they're looking for will repeat the offense? The worst part is, what if it turns out to be one of the goodies, and a supporting cast member? After all the horrors Identity Crisis beat readers over the head with, we can't put it past Marvel to do the same, and yet, even if it is a villain who committed the crime, that doesn't mean this isn't already a travesty.

Editor-in-chief Axel Alonso says “Original Sin,” which begins with a zero issue in April written by Mark Waid and drawn by Jim Cheung, is a “murder mystery” spanning from near and far, with many suspects and so many secrets. That will be followed by an eight-issue limited series in May penned by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Mike Deodato Jr.

“It’s a whodunit with lots of action,” Alonso said.

Does that action include jarring violence like punching a woman in the tummy and causing her to vomit, like Deathstroke did to Zatanna in IC, one of the most nasty, disgusting moments in that miniseries? That may not happen here, but Waid as a writer does raise my eyebrows, since he went along pretty cooperatively with DC's handling of their miniseries, having taken up a writing job on one of the followups - the 52 maxi-series from 2006 - and his assignment here might have something to do with it.

At the center of the event is the death of Uatu the Watcher, a cosmic figure who observes the earth, its trials, tribulations and victories.

With a vow of never interfering — broken only to signify a story is really important — he has collected information on everyone, good and bad, for as long as Marvel’s heroes have been righting wrongs and avenging the downtrodden.

“This is basically a crime story. A murder mystery. A manhunt. But with the entirety of the Marvel Universe as its backdrop,” Aaron said in a statement.

“We’re taking all the toys out of their packaging for this one. Everyone and everything is in play.

“For some characters, life will never be the same again.

“And it’s only a matter of time before more bodies are popping up.”

One more reason I'll have nothing to do with this monstrosity. Identity Crisis has had the effect of making me dislike murder mysteries, and maybe the whole mystery genre along with it. Original Sin gives me no reason to revise my opinion. And where have I heard that line "never be the same again" before?

The Watcher’s death, Alonso said, is the impetus for the story.

“The Watcher is an eternal figure who is very familiar to Marvel fans, new and old, but, beyond that, really what is relevant is that his death is the inciting incident for our story,” he said. “Once this eternal figure is dead, the secrets of the Marvel Universe, what he’s seen, are loose, are in the air.”

Why not just do a story where somebody breaks into Uatu's computer files and robs all the closet skeletons, and he asks the superheroes to get them back? We've long come to the point where only the death a supposedly worthless character matters, not whether they could develop him/her into something more useful. These deaths are another grave problem: what follows in their wake is truly awful.

And that has everyone mindful of things said, and unsaid, and will leave some classic friendships in ruins, destroy long-standing partnerships and drive new wedges between old teammates, too.

“You’ll see original sins that link characters, their faters intertwined in ways they never knew,” Alonso said of the story event that will branch into core titles over the course of the story’s run. “Some relationships will be changed irrevocably. There’ll be no going back.”

Not with Alonso around, that's for sure. Not unless the Marvel book publishing arm could be purchased by a better business outfit. It's very much like Identity Crisis, which had and led to similar situations with heroes clashing with each other over contrived situations, and ongoing series get a wrench thrown into their already stagnant flow for the sake of a crossover. And the sensationalistic mainstream news coverage it gets is very similar to what IC had a decade ago too.

Why does Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D need superheroes to be a ratings winner?

The New York Daily News says that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D lost a third of its audience with its second episode broadcast. But the article is of very poor quality, eschewing any legitimate points for the sake of ones that don't work. They begin by saying:

So much for the superheroes.

ABC tried to leap over a tall building with Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” but someone at the network forgot to call “The Avengers.”

How else to explain how the show has lost a third of its viewers since the debut.

Marvel’s comic book writers have been telling stories about S.H.I.E.L.D. since industry pioneers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby cooked up the secretive organization in 1965’s Strange Tales #165. It’s a clandestine group of law enforcers who specialize in saving the world. Depending on venue, the acronym has varied from “Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division” to “Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate.”

Why does it have to emphasize superheroics with superpowers in order to hold onto its audience? If the series is supposed to be about secret agents without superpowers, then one would expect the audience to take interest based on that approach. It certainly doesn't need to feature superpowers in order to be entertaining. What it does need is good writing, and the producers probably didn't live up to that vital step. That's the real explanation.

Also, it wasn't S.H.I.E.L.D as a whole the tales focused on, but Nick Fury, since he was the main star of the show.

By ditching the iconic superhumans like the Hulk, “S.H.I.E.L.D.” the TV show tries to offer a glimpse into the part of the Marvel universe that operates behind the scenes.

Galaxy-sized battles between iconic characters like Thor and his twisted brother Loki take a backseat to more mundane threats like hackers and nascent superhumans.

This wouldn’t work in a feature film and it’s likely not going to work on TV.

Marvel has gone down this road before. Especially in comic books — and even done a far better job.

In comics up to the end of the 20th century, yes, they certainly did. Why shouldn't it work as a feature film? The late Tom Clancy specialized in plenty of elaborate spy thriller novels and expanded into films, TV and computer games, some of which were quite successful, like The Hunt for Red October, one of the first adapted into a movie, and what mattered there was the suspense, not reliance on superpowers.

Alias (no relation to the TV show) was a comic published from 2001-2004 by Marvel’s “adult” Max imprint that followed the tale of Jessica Jones, a former costumed superhero who hung up her cape to become a private investigator. While her life was deeply intertwined with solving mysteries related to her superhero past, most times she dealt with more mundane matters — all while epic battles between the forces of good and evil would unfold in the background, almost as an afterthought.

The celebrated writer of Alias, Brian Michael Bendis, also took on similar themes in Powers. That comic book series ran from 2000-2004 and explored a universe of superheroes — as seen through the eyes of two homicide detectives.

FX has been struggling to develop Powers as a TV show for years — without success.

There’s a good reason it’s been stuck in the mud. We expect our superhero tales told on an epic scale. These are big stories that demand to be told in big ways.

There's just one little thing: Powers was about a pair of homicide detectives investigating the murders of superheroes, and they're the main spotlight, not the superpowered figures, something the article isn't clear about. And the reason it got stuck in the mud is because the premise doesn't sound very appealing, and sounds pretty absurd if people without powers end up being the victors where those who do failed. Besides, Bendis has long proven himself overrated, trivializing a lot of the most prominent characters in the Avengers for the sake of crime noir angles. There's nothing especially big about his brand of storytelling, and outside of comics circles, he's hardly been celebrated.

Or at least in a less subtle manner. The 1990s series, “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” may have been soft and hokey, but it was still a TV show about Superman.

Personally, I don't think much of it today, and Superman alone is not reason enough to view it. It's whether the writing is entertaining enough that matters, and I think Lois and Clark suffered from a juvenile idea of what a comic-based TV show should be. Or, a poor perception of what comics are all about, even Superman's. They stopped being about goofy science and slapstick in the Bronze Age, yet somebody held onto the notion for a long time that they couldn't be about serious action and drama and had to be more about silly tongue-in-cheek elements instead of serious sci-fi elements.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.,” at its best, is a bunch of characters who make a really neat backdrop for bigger storytelling — like superheroes turning back a massive alien invasion, helped along by a demi-god. You know, the stuff that happened in “The Avengers.”

The film’s director, Joss Whedon, knew that. His brother Jed and sister-in-law Maurissa Tancharoen, who oversee the ABC show, seem to have missed that notion.

But viewers haven’t.

But the paper has missed something. This didn't have to be about superheroics to entertaining. It had to be about good writing to be. If the suspense wasn't engaging enough, then it should come as no surprise it's been losing ratings. Similarly, if none of the actors stands out enough to appeal to the audience, then that's another detractor. There have to be a certain number of actors, at least one who can be the leading star, who take the spotlight and can generate interest. So far, it looks like they didn't. That's why Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D may be losing ratings, and viewers.

Again, a mainstream paper completely fails to grasp the real keys to making a TV show something to tune in for every week on the tube.

S.H.I.E.L.D has been shamed

Nick Fury's espionage and law enforcement agency is being villified in "Secret Warriors":

When Nick Fury joined the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and later became its director, he thought he was continuing his decades-spanning fight against tyranny and evil in the Marvel Universe.

Turns out Nick Fury was dead wrong.

As head of S.H.I.E.L.D, Fury believed he was working to smash several global criminal-subversive conspiracies, most notably Hydra, but in the sold-out “Secret Warriors” #1, Fury learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. was actually an arm of Hydra.

Oh my god. They're still going on with their leftist tyranny.

[Jonathan] Hickman credits his editor Tom Brevoort and co-writer Brian Michael Bendis for the idea of making S.H.I.E.L.D. an arm of Hydra. “I remember talking with them about all the things that would make ‘Secret Warriors’ a cool book and we agreed that we needed a big, shocking reveal at the end of the first issue; something to make everybody say, ‘Oh my God!” Hickman told CBR. “At first, I think Brian wanted the big reveal to come at the end of the first arc, but I said, ‘No. Let’s make it the first issue.’”

Better yet, let's NOT read this book, which clearly shows that they're still hell bent on destroying some of their best works. I wonder if the Howling Commandos will be next on their list of targets to defame? Bendis is definitely one of the worst writers they have now along with this Hickman, and Brevoort has made himself one of the worst editors.

In the new Punisher series, S.H.I.E.L.D hires the wrong agent

There appears to be something wrong with what's in the script for the new Punisher War Journal series. In the premiere issue:

Agent Sitwell recruits G.W. Bridge, who's praying at a mosque, back to SHIELD to bring in Frank Castle.

It's bad enough that Civil War was written as an attack on US government policy, but now, they have to take S.H.I.E.L.D, Nick Fury's respectable law enforcement agency in the fictional world and tarnish that too, by making it seem as though they're willing to hire potential jihadists? Good grief.

And while Bridge may resign from SHIELD later on:

Bridge quits as he knows that while on the SHIELD payroll, he won't be able to cross the moral line that he needs to in order to bring The Punisher down.

It sounds to me as though this is more of an attempt to dodge any criticism. Sorry, but, that doesn't explain why they ever bothered to hire this character in the first place, or why, if he's willing to resort to plain deadly force to attack Frank Castle, that they're letting Bridge run around loose either.

That aside, Captain America is certainly tarnished here, when in the second issue, he's hiring thugs:

Captain America is talking with Diamondback to accept a few villains on his side. Punisher isn't having any of this, and being the Punisher, blows away Goldbug and the Plunderer right in front of Cap.

He even blew away Stiltman in the first. Do I get the feeling that this offing of some of the supercrooks may not last so long? I don't know, but for now, I'm disgusted that Cap's being depicted as badly as he is, hiring criminals to back his own movement in Civil War.

Marvel signs a 10-movie deal with Paramount

The Indianapolis Star/Bloomberg reports that Marvel's entered a 10-film deal that even involves characters like Capt. America, Nick Fury, and even...Ant-Man?!

But aside from that, let's see what the flaws are in this mainstream media report:

Marvel's decision to go without a studio partner will give it the opportunity to build a film library and a greater chance to profit if the films are successful. The move may help the company reverse a decline in net income over five of the past six quarters as licensing revenue slipped. Marvel previously licensed its film rights to studios including Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox.

"This is phenomenally good for the company, and it's the best movie financing deal Hollywood has ever seen," said Robert Routh, an analyst for Jeffries & Co. in New York, who has a "buy" rating on the stock and owns shares of the company. "They got a good deal because their characters are so valuable."

Sigh. As expected, they're just not getting into the really big picture. Marvel's editors, even now, aren't exactly treating their characters like they're valuble. If they did, would we have had to put up with something as awful as Avengers Disassembled/House of M, or even the next massive crossover, Decimation?

"The movies are there to support the core businesses of toys, licensing, video games and publishing," Avi Arad, chief executive officer of Marvel Studios, said in a conference call with investors. "Each of these titles is meant to be a franchise."

I take it the core businesses don't include comic book publishing, eh? Pity.

The characters covered under the deal also include The Avengers, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi, according to the statement.

Somehow, I highly doubt we'll be seeing a movie based on the Avengers or even Ant-Man that easily. Come to think of it, why do I get the feeling that even a movie based on Hawkeye isn't too likely, any more than one based on Green Arrow?

But the main problem with all this is, it just doesn't seem to have anything to do with their comics publishing, which apparently does not factor into this.