Monday, June 30, 2014

Erik Larsen allegedly found it too hard to draw certain characters...

So what did he do with them? As he tells in this tweet:

That probably includes the old girlfriend the Savage Dragon had in the early days of that creation, whom he obliterated in very slapdash fashion. But I still find his defense hard to swallow, and it's no excuse for such cheap tactics either. Just because he supposedly finds it hard to draw them doesn't mean they need to be wiped out. Sure, it's his book, banal and pretentious as it's been for many years, but it's still pretty head-shaking how Larsen's made himself into one of those various modern contributors who take the easy road instead of being more creative.

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Saturday, June 28, 2014

Short history of Transformers comics

The website called Bam-Smack-Pow gives some history of how the Transformers comic series were published, from Marvel's to the series coming from IDW.

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Friday, June 27, 2014

Superheroes and co-stars getting their racial backgrounds changed for sake of diversity

The Guardian Liberty Voice wrote about the current obsession mainstream publishers have with changing the racial backgrounds of long established characters, with DC possibly being more obsessed than Marvel:
There is a new trend in the comic book industry, changing certain character’s races, and it is quite divisive. While some praise these changes as progressive others call them racist. The most current and infamous example of a comic book character’s race being changed is Johnny Storm in Fox’s upcoming reboot of The Fantastic Four. It was recently announced that popular and acclaimed actor Michael B. Jordan, perhaps best known for his role in Chronicle, has been officially cast in the roll of Johnny Storm/The Human Torch. There was an immediate outcry, claiming that Fox cast Jordan merely to make an inauthentic attempt at diversity. Others came to Fox’s defense saying that Jordan was a good choice to play the brash and overconfident hero and that if he played the part right, his skin color would be irrelevant.
In fairness, if a movie's doing it, that's one thing. It's only when these changes on the silver screen are forced into the original comics proper that it becomes ridiculous, and this could be what the detractors mean by racist acts: they're insulting whites, acting as though it was wrong to create the heroes in question as white to begin with. Or, they're going the cheapskate route by refusing to create new protagonists instead of changing the racial makeup of already existing ones. There's even cases in the past decade of putting minorities in the costumes of existing characters without even giving the established heroes and co-stars respectable sendoffs, as seen during Identity Crisis, and they act as though we should care more about the costume than the characters who wore them.
Other than his frequent arrogance and happy-go-lucky attitude, Johnny Storm has another defining characteristic, his relationship with his sister Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman. Fans wondered if Jordan’s casting would mean that Fox would cast a black actress to portray Johnny’s sister. After all as long as the two are close siblings on a four piece super hero team, there is nothing in their history or characterization that dictates they must be white. Then Fox confused just about everybody and cast Kate Mara as Sue Storm. The pair could still easily be siblings in the new film, but it will take extra and added exposition to explain whether one of them is adopted or the two are half/step siblings. Many fans see this as unnecessary and also as evidence that Fox was merely meeting some sort of diversity quota.
Maybe there's nothing in their past history dictating they must be white, but is there anything wrong with their being created as such? Were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wrong to make them white back in the day? That's what modern liberals seem to think.
Some fans and even writers see this as patronizing and racist in and of itself, while others still defend it as necessary progression. Perturbed fans question why change a comic character who has had a certain appearance and race for over half a century. If there is a lack of diversity in comic books then the writers and comic companies should create more characters with diverse ethnic backgrounds. These secondary versions of comic characters with swapped racial backgrounds have been viewed as insulting to minorities, as if they are given the scraps of older characters instead of new and unique characters. DC comics has recently ignited a similar controversy within the fan community with a simple cameo.
Indeed, they have a point: by transforming famous and established heroes into different racial backgrounds, all they're doing is insulting the intellect of minorities by acting as though they think minorities literally have no objections to anything the big two will do with their veteran casts. And yes, that is racist. Now, about that cameo they speak of:
The character of Wally West recently made his first appearance since DC restarted their universe in 2011 with the new 52. In the new DC universe many characters had been updated or changed, some to update origins and back stories to fit modern readers and others allegedly to fit another diversity quota. Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern, is now homosexual, many Batman characters had their back stories condensed, and government official Amanda Waller was slimmed down and sexualized. Among these and many other small changes the New 52 was fairly hit and miss with fans, some changes eventually warmed up to, others still derided. Now with Wally West fans may have released their outrage too soon. The classic Wally West that fans know is the nephew of Barry Allen, The Flash.

Wally becomes Kid Flash and eventually The Flash himself. Wally spent several decades as an affable, goofy red-head, but in his premiere New 52 appearance he is shown as a teenager being released from police custody with a smirk on his face who also happens to be black. Many fans had been awaiting Wally’s return to comics after the reboot and were disappointed to see Wally’s first panel be completely out of character. However Wally has only appeared in this first panel so far, so there is no assurance that anything other than his skin color has changed. Still fans say that if DC wanted a black teen character with a criminal record they could have created a new character instead of changing the race of an existing one and left Wally to exist alongside the new potential comic book hero or villain.
I'm not sure if they were clear enough here, but if comic buffs critical of the Fantastic Four movie reboot lodged their complaints about movies like that, they should've saved them for what's going on back in the comics. Yes, Wally being turned into a minority all for the sake of it is incredibly contrived, though any Flash fans who were hoping (begging?) for Wally to be reinstated shouldn't have waited around with Dan DiDio still lurking in the background. If this new take on Wally West really does make him into a juvenile delinquent, that too can count as another mistake: forcible character flaws that could ultimately turn out to be superfluous, and make it harder to buy him as somebody fit to be a hero. Unfortunately, they screw up with the following:
It is true that comics are largely populated by white heroes, and many of those heroes who are not of the Caucasian persuasion are aliens. however it is also true that new non-white characters have been created to great success in recent years. Marvel recently began the newest Ms. Marvel series starring Kamala Khan, a Pakistani American girl who deals with many modern issues that Muslims in America really face.
Sigh. I'm afraid the Ms. Marvel issue is a flaw of an entirely different type. Let us be clear: this isn't a matter of race here, but rather, of ideology, with the editors bent on promoting one that's harmful to women and acting as though the problem isn't there. They also depicted white Americans very loathsomely, leaving one to wonder if the newspaper thinks anti-Americanism or anti-white discrimination is legitimate despite all they've said.
The former Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, had recently assumed the name Captain Marvel so she is still a large part of the Marvel universe. Kamala particularly looked up to Carol and when she discovers her unique set of powers she decides to adopt Danvers’ old moniker. DC comics has had success creating a new Green Lantern in the Arab American Simon Baz who sports a unique look from the other Green Lanterns and adds to their ranks rather than replacing one of them. Comic books are a place where anything can happen and anything can be changed back even with in one issue. Many characters have existed for over half a century necessitating change from time to time. Whether or not changing the race of a comic book character is acceptable as one of those updates is still up for debate. Many of the most controversial changes are very recent or not even fully realized yet. Comic books and comic book movies are famous for inciting knee jerk reactions to what eventually ends up being an accepted and well-loved product, so fans will just have to wait and see the results of any changes to their favorite characters.
Wow, what "success" has DC had, seriously? Sales have been dismal, and the GL story went for some of the easiest conclusions. If they'd refrained from getting into religious issues and not acted as though it were impossible to do without them, they could've had something going there. Instead, those involved acted very cynically, forcing their political/religious beliefs down the throats of the public. They're correct that both comics and movies are famous notorious for infuriarating people by taking insulting steps that could've been avoided. They're wrong that all these "products" end up accepted. Has Spider-Man been accepted and well-loved since One More Day? Nope. So why should they assume each and every alteration instantly becomes accepted?

As for "change", it has to be consistent with what's come before, and that's not what today's editors and writers are doing. Possibly worse than the pointless changes in a character's race is the changes made to their personalities - if they have any at all - turning established characters into people who could care more about villains than innocents. And that's not how you appeal to an audience that appreciates coherency and intelligence.

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Thursday, June 26, 2014

Ron Marz attacks the Tea Party again

Here's two entries where he insults the Tea Party with some limp jokes:


So sayeth the guy who doesn't draw good lessons from anybody, and doesn't offer many to speak of either. And if he thinks liberals should lean more to the left, then I don't see the point in saying the Tea Party can only think to move more to the right.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

John Romita Jr. goes to DC to draw Superman

The New York Times wrote about John Romita Jr's move to DC to draw Superman. I think he's making the shift much too late, and for years now, his art has become a bit mediocre (in the early 2000s, his art on Spider-Man was blocky in some stories). In the article, they say:
When the move to DC was announced in February, fan reaction online was mixed. On the comics news website newsarama.com, comments ranged from the farther he “gets from Marvel the better” to “I wish he could draw every comic ever made.” Mr. Romita, whose first published story for Marvel was in 1977 and featured Spider-Man, would eventually draw most of its superheroes. He has worked with some of the industry’s biggest writers including Frank Miller (on Daredevil) and Mark Millar (on Kick-Ass). On Superman, he is working with the inker Klaus Janson and Geoff Johns, a popular writer who was named DC’s chief creative officer in 2010.
First, I wish he hadn't drawn that awful Spidey issue for J. Michael Stracynski that trivialized 9/11. As for writers and artists he worked with, Miller was a great guy to work with in the 80s. But working with Millar on Kick-Ass only jots down a black mark on his portfolio, given how grimy that was. As for Johns, it's already apparent he's nothing more than an overrated embarrassment, and hardly someone I'd call "popular". Besides, his books do not sell very high. Speaking of which, sales are brought up here, and it's almost hilarious:
Previews of his Superman pages showed off Mr. Romita’s signature thick line work, hulking figures and dynamic action sequences. The first story line involves Ulysses, who is sent to Earth from his doomed world by his parents. The new creative team for the Man of Steel will most likely give the series a sales boost. Last month, Superman was No. 48 on the list of comic book best sellers with just over 40,000 copies sold of Issue 31. Batman was No. 4 with over 107,000 copies. At No. 1 was Original Sin, a mini-series from Marvel that has revealed dark secrets about its well-known heroes, selling over 147,000 copies. As with the Coke and Pepsi rivalry, many fans divide themselves into DC or Marvel camps. Mr. Romita, who is not a complete stranger to DC — in the 1990s he worked on two stories that united DC and Marvel characters — is a bit more agnostic, looking across the industry at the work of compatriots like Mr. Miller, Jim Lee and Adam and Andy Kubert, among others, for inspiration. “Without competition, you’d be nothing,” Mr. Romita said.
I wonder how many people still reading the NYT on a daily basis felt puzzled and giggled when they read those sales figures? It wouldn't make much difference if it were 300,000 copies for each of the titles mentioned, that's still a very rock bottom sum compared to the sales for movies, videos and music tapes that sell in the millions.

The story for Superman had me chuckling because of how obviously derivative it is of Kal-El's own origin, and whatever sales jump Superman will get as a result of Johns and Romita is unlikely to remain for long.
You could say that Mr. Romita, 57, is not just leaving Marvel, but also the family shop. His parents both had careers at Marvel: His father is John Romita, a renowned artist who, among other things, designed the look of Mary Jane, Peter Parker’s long-term love interest; and his mother, Virginia, worked as a production manager. [...]
No mention of Joe Quesada's widely loathed breakup of the Spider-marriage, I see. Come to think of it, no mention that Mary Jane Watson had become Peter's wife under better writers. And, curious how they forgot to type in her maiden family name, Watson, to boot. Sadder still, Romita Jr. probably has nothing negative to say about that disaster.

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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The Wash. Times reviews The Forgotten Man GN

The Washington Times published a positive review of Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche's graphic novel developed from Amity Shlaes' book. They even say that:
Though a delightful, if esoteric, pleasure for adults, “The Forgotten Man (Graphic Edition)” has special value as a powerful and fun tool for teaching young adults about history and economics.
And maybe teenagers too. As Shlaes said earlier, comics are a perfect medium for teaching a variety of subjects, one more reason why conservatives have to take it more seriously.

Update: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review also gave it a positive mention.

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Mark Waid thinks McCain and Romney are trying to start another Iraq war

He posted the following with a link in it to the blog of an apparent left-wing member of the army:

But when I looked at it, the post text had been removed, with the guy in question complaining everyone else had borrowed it from him, and he was so mad he took it down. So I have no idea what it was that impressed Waid so much, but it doesn't take much to figure out he doesn't care about this gang called ISIS, an al Qaeda spinoff that's been raising violence around Iraq (and Syria) yet again, and causing misery for many locals. This reminds me that, in 2003, Waid may have written some anti-war propaganda into the Fantastic Four. And to think all that fuss caused by Bill Jemas before he took off from Marvel management had to be raised, when there wasn't much to miss in Waid's post-2000 mainstream work.

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Sunday, June 22, 2014

The Motley Fool believes Batman vs. Superman will be a failure

The Motley Fool gave 3 reasons why they think Zack Snyder and David Goyer's planned clash between the Masked Manhunter and the Man of Steel in a movie to be subtitled "Dawn of Justice" will wind up an epic failure. One is the presence of too many heroes, in a hasty step to build towards a Justice League movie. Another is the likelihood that the rest of the heroes appearing won't have back stories developed yet. And still another is the questionable creative process in developing the movie.

Incidentally, their description of David Goyer is confused:
Goyer, a comic book writer, can be exceptional when paired with the right director (Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy) but abysmal when paired with the wrong one (Neveldine/Taylor's Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance). [...]
Goyer is not a comics writer per se. He did write a few comics like Justice Society a decade ago, but began his career as a screenwriter sometime in the early to mid-90s. And as evidenced by his vulgar, sleazy podcast chat about She-Hulk and Martian Manhunter, he's not as qualified as some might've thought to take up these screenwriting assignments. Even moviegoers should give pause before deciding whether he's really a qualified scribe based on his alarming crudeness discussing past creations whose writers went to such pains to create.

As I may have said before, and will say again, I believe the movie could flop based on its insular premise meant to appeal to would-be readers who think clashes between superheroes all for the sake of it make for a great time. Moviegoers usually hope a comics film features a clash between good-vs-evil, and don't go to see one where the heroes battling each other is marketed as the main course. So far, that's pretty much how the film's been promoted, and it doesn't guarantee success.

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Saturday, June 21, 2014

More leftist reactions to Dixon/Rivoche op-ed

Here's some more examples of leftists who've got a problem with Dixon, Rivoche, and even Frank Miller. For example, here's another one by a writer on The Mary Sue, who said:
The essay also has a healthy dose of the “won’t somebody think of the children” argument, claiming we should eliminate politics from superhero comics because they are aimed at impressionable minds.

I can agree with Dixon on the fact that kids are ill-served by the superhero medium. Take, for example, DC offering an issue full of gore and violence for Free Comic Book Day, the most kid-oriented date on the comics publishing calendar. Superhero comics simply aren’t targeted at children any more (much to the annoyance to a number of geek parents I know, who’d really like to be able to share a Superman comic written within the last year with their tiny offspring), and they haven’t been since before Dixon started working on them.

Dixon and Rivoche acknowledge this when they talk about the rise in anti-hero comics of the nineties and the subsequent effect of that change on classic characters like Batman and Superman. Conveniently, they do this without mentioning the contributions of Frank Miller, another very outspoken right-wing comics pro, to the beginnings of that trend with his work on The Dark Knight Returns, and lay the source of all this “moral relativism” at the feet of liberal politics. [...]
First off, even if today's comics are marketed more for adults, that doesn't mean no child will read them and wind up badly influenced by the negative content, so I hope she's taking that into account. But as for Miller, he was not always right-wing. Back in the 80s, he was pretty much to the left. How did she miss that? It's not like it was ever a secret.
This description raises more questions than it answers. Millions of people live with AIDS every day. What is so political about their lives that a frank and honest depiction of their disease can not be made appropriate for children? Except, of course, that AIDS has long been associated, sometimes exclusively, with the gay community, and we all know that Superman can romance Lois Lane as much as he wants, and Bruce Wayne can date every socialite in Gotham, but homosexual relationships are inappropriate for children. Ultimately, at the end of the piece, Dixon and Rivoche’s call is not for less political subjects in comics to make them more kid friendly, but for more, different politics in comics. [...]
I'm not sure she gets it, but homosexuality, however we look upon it, has become a very politicized subject of late, and it's not something that any sane parent wants their children to practice and live by, just like we wouldn't want them being badly influenced by violence. Doesn't a good upbringing ever count?
Even if I agreed with Dixon and Revoche politically, their arguments are fundamentally unsound in a number of places. For example, the two spend some time establishing the clear good guys vs. bad guys origins of Superman stories, bringing up the 1946 radio serial in which Superman battled the Ku Klux Klan, at the time a pretty gutsy thing for a fictional hero to do. But what they don’t mention is that nearly a decade earlier when his very first comics stories were being published, at the height of the great depression, Superman was often pitted (as he is today) against corrupt fatcats, or shown fighting on the side of every day workers and laborers. They claim that “comics were a brotherhood beyond politics,” but the truth is, at their least regulated, superhero comics (not to mention the Underground Comix movement) have always often skewed towards liberal politics, being created very consistently by writers and artists who had grown up in underprivileged urban or suburban areas and were still (due to the usual work-for-hire relationships they held with publishers) living and working on low wages and in diverse urban settings.
Umm, how does low pay and corrupt business managers amount to an exclusively leftist concern? Even today, there's corruption in the market, and even conservatives worry about it everywhere. Like, for example, businesses hiring illegal immigrants because they'll work for less than what locals want. And some of that underprivileged environment was the result of leftist politics causing the Great Depression, which, I believe, is now the subject of Dixon, Rivoche and Amity Shlaes' new graphic novel based on her writings. The writer continues to say that their view is:
...the sort of limited perspective that could take a book like Persepolis and say that it cannot “be called left- or right-wing.” Of course Persepolis contains a political message, it just does so in the context of Iranian politics, in which it is an incandescently radical leftist work, the very existence of which may well prevent its creator from ever seeing her home country again.
Is it truly leftist? Not necessarily. Besides, look at how quite a few leftists turned their backs on the plight of innocent Iranians who were tortured in Ahmedinejad's prisons, among other horrors in that cesspool of a country. Whether Persepolis is "leftist", it's not in the same sense the writer sees things.
Dixon is fully free to champion the cause of his political leanings in comics, and, frankly, I’m much more interested in reading comics about conservative ideals from a conservative who has demonstrated he’s fully capable of exempting his personal views from a story where they conflict with the spirit of a longstanding character. But I think it’s worth pointing out that a number of the claims Dixon and Rivoche make in the article about the arc of politics in comics history are, frankly, bunk.
Okay, I thank her for saying she's not against reading the works of a conservative. And I also thank her for linking to one of my posts; that's how I noticed this in the first place. But I can't appreciate her predictable conclusion that nearly everything Dixon/Rivoche say about the history of politics in comics is all "bunk". And I can't help but wonder what she'd say if a liberal didn't exempt his/her personal views where they conflict with longstanding characters. Besides, she hasn't mentioned Marvel's most notorious leftist propaganda like The Truth: Red, White and Black, the Marvel Knights Capt. America, or even Civil War. Nor does she mention some of the crudest metaphors like DC's Identity Crisis. If she doesn't admit those are examples of leftism at work, there's not much point in dismissing Rivoche & Dixon's arguments as "bunk".

Next, here's one on IO9, that takes a superficial view of the length of the article and makes a similar mistake about Frank Miller:
Curiously absent, though, are the prominent works of non-liberal comics artists. Ayn Rand disciple Steve Ditko is never mentioned once, despite being the co-creator of Spider-Man and having produced a huge body of influential work. Frank Miller, who helped make comics more Hollywood-friendly and accessible to mainstream readers with Dark Knight Returns, is also completely absent. So is Larry Hama, a Japanese-American Army veteran who served in Vietnam and created most of the characters for G.I. Joe when the property was being developed at Marvel in the early '80s, and also wrote the bestselling The 'Nam. Mike Baron, an idiosyncratic conservative writer who created Nexus and the Badger, is also missing. And Peter Bagge, an outspoken libertarian cartoonist who created HATE and recently produced a critically acclaimed comics bio of birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger, is never mentioned, despite his many potshots at liberal and conservative orthodoxies.
As noted before, a mainstream newspaper will only allow so much space, even online. Does that not occur to them either? Besides, the main point is that major publishers are the ones all but denying jobs to conservatives.

And how come they haven't acknowledged Miller used to be leftist before turning right?
Even stranger is their defense of the (now-defunct) Comics Code Authority, which guaranteed "morally upstanding" stories until its power weakened in the '70s and '80s, and eventually died out a few years ago. The Code, after all, was voluntarily imposed by the comics publishers of the '50s on themselves for fear of Congressional action; it's rather odd to hear two principled, free market, "free speech" conservatives defending a pro-censorship organization designed to keep the petrifying influence of Big Government at bay. (And as comics creators, they seem rather sanguine about its catastrophically deleterious effects on the artistic and commercial growth of the medium.)
Just like the writer's sanguine about Fredric Wertham's apparent leftism. Again, it was more an opportunity to get a few publishers out of the way than a worry about Congress butting in, and this writer is missing points just like Janelle Asselin. He certainly isn't any more qualified to address these issues than she is.

And then, there's Bleeding Cool, who called Frank Miller the following:
Well... Frank Miller got work. If he wanted it. A famously conservative comic book creator, [...]
Good grief, what is happening to people's grip on history? For the thousandth time, Miller was not always conservative, and only turned more to that path post-9/11. He even ridiculed Reagan in the Dark Knight Returns, yet that escapes them too. Sometimes, I get the feeling they're doing this all for the sake of hinting their modern disdain for him, despite all the good he did for Daredevil back in the 80s. And he's gotten considerably less work as a writer, if not as an artist, in the past several years from the big two.

Even Tom Brevoort came into the picture with his usual dishonesty:
Given that all of the major companies employ creators of virtually every political stripe, I don’t think there’s much merit in what he wrote there. [...]
Dixon has not worked for Marvel in nearly 14 years, and again, there's more conservative artists than writers working for the big two now, because they're not the ones really telling the story. Nor have I seen Mike Baron working for them in a long time. Not even Carl Potts, so I don't think there's any merit in Brevoort's gibberish.

And here's a tweet by writer Rachel Edidin:

What, you mean Siegel and Shuster didn't have the Man of Steel fighting evil dictators during WW2, drawing special covers and advertising army bonds? Gee, what kind of a bubble does she live in? There was also a story in Action Comics #30 where he confronted the leader of a band of jihadists in the Sahara desert in Africa. Obviously, she doesn't do any research, yet she is comfortable claiming Supes as a "liberal property only".

I also found John Ostrander lambasting them, and his defense is:
Suicide Squad was nothing if not an exercise in moral ambiguity.
Really? The idea was grouping together a special team mostly comprised of villains on probation (and also a few superheroes) who get a chance to redeem themselves by using their powers and skills to carry out deadly missions in middle eastern and communist countries, towards the end of the cold war. The sad part is that Ostrander later disowned parts of the 1987-92 series, when he wrote a miniseries in 2008 where he tried to downplay Islamofascism.
I have some problems with their selection of facts and their interpretation of those facts. For instance, they say “Superman, as he first appeared in early comics and later on radio and TV, was not only ‘able to leap tall buildings in a single bound,’ he was also good, just and wonderfully American.” Might I suggest they go back and read those earliest tales. Superman takes on crooked politicians and even the U.S. Army. He was a renegade and an outlaw. The earliest Batman carried a gun. I suppose that makes him wonderfully American, too. The heroes changed with the advent of World War II and became part of the war effort.
I think I can figure out what he's trying to say: according to Ostrander's perception, conservatives think the military are all saints. Umm, no, we don't. If they were, the horror perpetrated by Nidal Hasan wouldn't have taken place. There've even been cases discovered of military officials who smuggled drugs and members who used them in Afghanistan. Past and present, the sad truth is that there is corruption in the military staffs of western countries, committed by personnel who do grave disservices to an outfit that deserves better. No matter how unfair we think leftists are to the military, that doesn't mean we think all their employees are honest. Similarly, conservatives don't think all politicians are innocent either, not even within their own ranks; that's one of the reasons why the Tea Parties were formed. Ostrander's not making a great case based on that.

Mindy Newell, however, is defending Dixon/Rivoche:
Well, John, to a certain extent I have to agree with Chuck and Paul. It’s one thing for us, as adults, to read comics with an adult slant – meaning moral ambiguity in both our heroes and our villains. But I do think that for younger readers, the children and pre-teens (and, I suppose, depending on their maturity, some teenagers), it’s important that the heroes do act ethically and morally. They (Superman, the X-Men, Captain Marvel, Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Daredevil, et.al.) are, not to put too fine a point on it, cultural icons…and besides, all kids need heroes to look up to – with a sense of wonder, with awe, with a desire to “be just like him/her when I grow up.”

And when their heroes fall, children are upset; they don’t understand adult haziness, they live in a black-and-white world. I remember when Lawrence Taylor (of the New York Giants and considered the greatest linebacker in NFL history) was arrested for cocaine use. “L.T.” was one of Alixandra’s heroes, and when she heard the news – we were in the car listening to the radio – she said to me, “How could he do that, Mommy?” And in her voice there was confusion and hurt and the sound of her hero crumbling into dust.

And I was angry. At that moment I hated Lawrence Taylor. In one second he had destroyed a part of my daughter’s innocence. And I thought of all the other kids out there who had looked up to him and now, just like Alix, were asking their parents how and why and I bet those parents felt just like I did.

Now I am not one to hide the facts of life from children. I always tried to be as honest as I could be with my daughter when she asked any and all questions. And certainly, Alixandra, as a child of divorced parents, already knew that the world was not a bed of roses.

But I also believe that in a world that grows uglier by the minute – I just saw a statistic on MSNBC’s Up with Steve Koracki that there have been 74 school shootings since Newtown in 2012 – it’s more important than ever that kids have heroes.
Not just children, even adults need heroes - fictional ones, in this case - whose values they can appreciate, and feel glad that, unlike real life humans, they do not corrupt, regardless of whether they have moral flaws. I'm an adult, even I've been burned on many public figures who did bad things, and that's why it's great to read escapist fiction to get my mind off those real life turncoats.

Ron Marz also had something to say:

Umm, Joe Shuster was Canadian too, and he clearly loved America. Something wrong with Rivoche doing the same?

Surprisingly, Marz and Kurt Busiek are still respecting Dixon by promoting Winterworld:


Well that's certainly setting a good example for a change. Now if they'd lobby for the majors to rehire Dixon, we'd certainly be getting somewhere. Indeed, I'd think that would be a very good deed if they were willing to call on Marvel and DC alike to rehire Dixon - and Miller - though with the way the big two are managed now, it wouldn't do much good for them to work there, since continuity and coherency have been largely destroyed, and the current EICs and publishers are unreliable. Maybe the best option for now would be for Image's managers to offer them some jobs.

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Friday, June 20, 2014

Another DC reboot crossover could be looming

At this point, I'm not surprised DC, having performed one reboot less than 3 years ago, could be preparing to launch another. And Dan DiDio said that:
...he and other industry leaders feel like the "excitement" that readers felt in September 2011 (when DC rebooted its universe) has died down.

"When we came out of the gate with the launch of the [New] 52 [in September 2011], we had people buy it, and we held onto them really tight and there was a level of excitement that we hadn't felt in comics for quite awhile," he said. "Quite honestly, we felt, even between ourselves and other companies, it seems like the excitement is quieting down again, across the industry.

"So we feel like it's time to crank it back up again and start to remind people about the big, bold and just craziness that we can bring to comics, that makes our storytelling so unique and exciting," he said. "And from my standpoint, the three weeklies that we're doing — with Batman Eternal, with Futures End and [Earth 2: World's End] — these are all world-building and show really, just the depth and breadth of the DC Universe and all of our characters from all different perspectives. And I think that's what makes it fun."
Why should it be fun when all these consistently frequent reboots and retcons keep it from being fun? There's no plausible characterization anymore, no serious drama, and they keep interrupting nearly everything for the sake of crossovers. Did it occur to him that's why his claim they held onto audience "really tight" is simply not true? The only excitement felt was that speculators could buy much of the output.

And his babble about "craziness" is merely telling what's gone wrong - it's more an allusion to the nasty brand of storytelling Geoff Johns specializes in.
The current environment in the comics industry — and really, the entire entertainment industry — is filled with relaunches, revamps and reboots. These days, readers encounter restarted numbering and redesigned characters several times a year, not just at major publishing companies like DC and Marvel, but even with other publishers and licensed properties.
And how does that amount to authentically character-based storytelling? Those are very superficial efforts that don't amount to anything meaty, and only compound the perception the publishers have no true interest in plausible character drama. If they can't keep themselves from doing crossovers, then they're clearly not making an effort to bring the situation back to what it used to be like, when major publishers cared more about story quality done independently from other books. They only care about fast bucks and the speculator market, and any variant covers that debut next year will only prove that part.

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Thursday, June 19, 2014

Yep, Slott still can't keep from spluttering about gun control

Just as we should've figured, Slott's still droning on and on about gun control:

So in other words, he's caved to his inner urges, and is ranting on about gun control yet again.


He's being vague. What most people with sense mean when they say "their right" is to be able to defend themselves against violent criminals. It's not just "end stop". There's more he's deliberately leaving out.

Not if more responsibility is taught, like keeping the weapons locked away tight if you have impressionable children around, who should be taught in turn that guns aren't fun, even if they're necessary for self-defense.

I don't see what the analogy is here to slavery. Slaves usually weren't allowed to keep firearms. In Nazi Germany, Jews and other communities under the oppression were forbidden to have weapons. It's the same thing in Saudi Arabia today.

Hmm, I'm guessing he can't think of how to counter this, so he's just insisting his rival in the dialogue stop. Lazy.

No deaths of innocents are acceptable under any circumstances, but it's worth pondering how, with a weapon with which to defend oneself and other innocent people from violent crime, it's possible there'd be less.

Well, does that mean he doesn't believe there should be any kind of laws to go by? It figures people like him don't know what they want of this world we live in.

I'm sure he dislikes the Fantastic Four issue 335 where the NRA came to the defense of superheroes. Hey, maybe he dislikes all of Walt Simonson's writing too. In that case, I don't see much point in his continuing work for Marvel.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Comics Alliance detests Dixon and Rivoche's op-ed

I decided to look around and see what the reaction was by liberals in the medium to Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche's WSJ article. As expected, there are some out there who resent that someone's letting the world know how dominant leftism's become, much as they might try to conceal that and pretend it's not the case. One of the people who spoke against them was - sigh - Janelle Asselin, starting with these two tweets here.


I realized she was surely that far out there, but still, what a shame. Now, here's her response on Comics Alliance, and she doesn't start out well:
[...]Beating familiar conservative pundit drums like jingoistic nostalgia and referencing a lot of demonstrably incorrect information, these two experienced pros manage to paint a picture of an industry tottering on the edge of moral collapse to an audience — readers of WSJ — that knows little about what’s actually going on in cape comics and the American comics industry in general.
I don't think she's making a very good case if she resorts to slurs like "jingoism", which is basically a leftist's way of saying "patriotism = bad". Big mistake. That's more like saying pride in American identity was wrong from the start. It even suggests she's not a fan of the famous artists who drew Superman and Capt. America with an Old Glory flag alongside them. As for the newspaper's audience not knowing anything about the industry, well duh, that's because a lot of the insiders have no intention of telling anyone, and sadly, she appears intent on taking the same approach with issues like this.
The goal here, of course, is to sell comics. By complaining to WSJ’s ostensibly conservative audience about how liberals have taken over the American medium, conservatives Dixon and Rivoche attempt to persuade non-comics readers to buy their new book, an adaptation of Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man, as an exercise in political activism.
Really, you don't say. And if Warren Ellis went on the air to chat about what he thinks is great with the medium today and brings up a new book of his, will she say he's trying to discourage an audience from applying? If not, then she'd do better not suggest something's wrong with Rivoche and Dixon promoting theirs. Funny thing is, she might be right about the WSJ's audience being "ostensibly" conservative, if only because their modern MO could've become more leftist after the Saudi prince al-Walid bin Talal bought into NewsCorp. But then, why does she have any problem with the paper?
Like many conservative comics fans, Dixon and Rivoche bemoan the lack of conservative comics being published today, and a perceived liberal bent of the industry, while limiting their definition of comics primarily to superhero books published by Marvel and DC Comics.

The problem is not with their politics; it’s with their misrepresentation of the industry and its history.
In that case, the problem is not with her politics either, it's with how she fails to make a certain distinction between the liberals of yesteryear and those of modern times who've lost their way. Sure, maybe they could've been more specific about how liberals during WW1 and WW2 were more in favor of fighting to help the persecuted, but she fails to do any better. And I don't think they just limited their POV to superhero comics. What they're doing, if anything, is telling how these famous figures have been brought down to the gutter by too much leftism, which was present since the late 60s-early 70s, but became worse as truly awful editors came aboard years later. Asselin's living in denial, unwilling to admit she worked with those kind of people back at the time she was a staffer at DC. Worse, she sounds intent on acting as if no rightists could possibly care about the medium, and no leftists will buy Shlaes/Dixon/Rivoche's book either. I guess she doesn't have it on her holiday list.

And what's wrong with sticking up for superhero books? Is she claiming they're "left-wing property" and no conservative may dare add their views to those products? To me, this hints at a resentment some modern leftists have, wherein they perceive superheroes and other such adventure fare as only "belonging" to them, even though there have been some conservatives throughout history who had a hand in creating them, like Joe Simon and Steve Ditko.
Dixon and Rivoche have drawn their line in the sand, then, as “conservative = American with a sense of right and wrong,” and “liberal = morally ambiguous.” The term “moral relativism” is beloved by conservatives when talking about liberals. The term is often used incorrectly, however, or misunderstood.

There are different kinds of moral relativism, including descriptive moral relativism — the idea that there are widespread moral disagreements across different societies as a fact, and that those disagreements are more significant than agreements — and meta-ethical moral relativism — the idea that moral judgments are not absolute, but instead relative to individual groups. Just using the term “moral relativism” is actually not all that helpful or accurate.
Oh really? From what I can tell, their point is that modern liberals are acting like the beliefs they've taken up come the 21st century are and were the only legitimate way things should be done. But take a look at most of the Golden/Silver/Bronze Age books: sure, there were liberals at work in those times, but even then, they didn't deny, for example, that communism and socialism were harmful ideologies. Nor did they act en masse like the creation of the USA in itself was a mistake and only stands for all that's wrong with the world. Let's remember that in the mid-60s, Stan Lee and company took on issues of communism. So "misunderstood"? Tell us about it.
The way this idea gets tied into liberalism for conservatives seems to be two-fold. One; many liberals preach tolerance and acceptance for cultures and people whose ideals differ from our own. This is often assumed to be related to moral relativism, but is not in fact considered such by actual philosophers who write about these things. Two; moral relativism leads to moral ambiguity. Accepting the morals of other cultures will lead to the downfall of American society, which has for hundreds of years been primarily Judeo-Christian in its moral view. In other words: dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria.
I believe she has unmasked and let everyone know she thinks Judeo-Christian values are 100 percent worthless, with nothing to learn from. And if she thinks preaching acceptance of other cultures/ideals she doesn't even have the courage to name is positive, then does that mean leftists who preach in favor of communism, Islamofascism and Marxism are doing the right thing? Moral ambiguity was exactly Rivoche and Dixon's point; she's not making a good argument based on that.
Now, to be fair, the issue of Action Comics that Dixon and Rivoche cite is a particularly political one, but since when has it been okay to claim that only conservatives are patriotic? Or that it’s “politically correct” for someone to care about what happens beyond the boundaries of their own country? Why wouldn’t an alien from another planet want to help his entire adopted home planet, versus just his home country? You could argue, as this issue of Action does implicitly, that limiting Superman to just America is like limiting a Green Lantern to one half of a planet in his sector.

But the merits of David S. Goyer and Miguel Sepulveda’s comic are a discussion for another time, really. The problem here is that Dixon and Rivoche are pretending before an ignorant audience that within that story, Superman has forsworn his home country because of those damn liberals and in a particularly dramatic way. The truth is that this was a short story in anniversary issue filled with them, and one that really didn’t matter in the long run. Was it a political story? Yes. Did it ultimately impact the tone of other Superman stories? Not at all. Indeed, Goyer’s own Man of Steel script goes out of its way to identify Superman as a firmly American character when he tells a military commander, “I’m from Kansas; I’m as American as it gets.”
She misses the point here: the whole story was petty and pointless to begin with. Superman may talk with an American accent, but it's not like past writers made a big deal in past stories whether he was an authentic citizen with a passport while in costume (and with his powers, he could surely mimic many accents), so while Clark Kent may be a citizen, it's not like Kal-El has to claim he is, any more than Batman and other heroes with secret IDs. But citizen or not, he's not a politician, has no employment with the US government and thinks for himself, so why should he have to care what politicians with questionable approaches think of him? It's also worth noting that some of the Outsiders like Batman, Black Lightning, Looker and Metamorpho are American citizens, yet they operated outside the USA without letting the government or anyone else's positions concern them back in the 80s. In that case, David Goyer should've just had Supes tell the government liason he's his own man and doesn't take orders from politicians whose own sincerity is in question.

In fact, Goyer's screenplay line where Superman lets know he's from Kansas could actually be a flaw: why give an idea of where exactly you're from while growing up? Wouldn't that make it easier to piece together clues of his origins and figure out his ID as Clark Kent?

And that's not the only point Asselin missed: what about Superman's failure to bring down the Iranian dictatorship and not just float around between the two sides, refusing to make distinctions? That bizarre part of the tale completely escapes her. As I've said before, the story structure does not hold up well since the Iranian dictatorship is still in place, and does little more than insult Iranians in the process.
Superman is “wonderfully American,” but Dixon’s criteria for that judgement might be ignoring other pieces of the Superman mythos that would seem to be at odds with contemporary conservative values. Is Superman not the ultimate “illegal alien”? He wasn’t born in the U.S., his biological parents weren’t born in the U.S. ether, and he didn’t enter the country in any state-approved way — plus he’s literally an alien. Yet he’s built his life in the U.S., continues to work in the country, and, one short story notwithstanding, identifies as a proud American.

Real-life humans whose stories reflect that dimension of Superman are as a group frequently targeted by conservative politics, so it’s Interesting that the Man of Steel is the figure being upheld by Dixon and Rivoche as the conservative ideal.
Oh, so now she's dragging more politics into the mess, not willing to view Supes as the ultimate infant refugee from another planet. His home world exploded, and his parents sent him to Earth for his own survival - what was supposed to be done? Were the Kents really supposed to turn him over to authorities who might've exploited him for bad purposes, or just left him to fend for himself without guidance? Asselin's completely ignoring the sci-fi angle. I guess she just can't suspend disbeliefs and simply love Supes as the sci-fi adventure it was meant to be. There's a difference between a deliberate interloper and a refugee from horrific disaster. How come she doesn't think of all the Christian refugees from Muslim countries who're being denied entry into the USA? Didn't it occur to her that they could be Kal-El's closest similarity from a modern perspective?
The greater and more damaging implication in Dixon and Rivoche’s piece is that only American conservatives can actually perceive right and wrong, and this is incredibly limiting both to our society and to our entertainment. The two authors attempt to draw a correlation between the idea of accepting or even just respecting other viewpoints and understanding right and wrong at all.

This is incredibly flawed. People who tolerate other folks with different opinions do not, as a rule, lack a moral compass – they simply are willing to listen to others. It’s not as if that is a solely liberal trait, either. Why draw that comparison? When America entered World War II, were all of our soldiers Republican? Or is the rise of what the authors call moral relativism (again, most likely meaning “tolerance”) only a recent phenomenon, and prior to that, liberals were okay? There are a lot of people in this country today who are “good, just and wonderfully American” and plenty of those people are not conservatives. Or even citizens.

There were also superheroes who “fought” in World War II who were not conservative or who did not uphold particularly conservative political beliefs. Superman might be considered conservative by some. That’s probably the reason they cited him specifically rather than, say, Captain America.
Pardon me, but superheroes aren't "conservative" per se because they don't exist in real life. They only reflect what poliitics the writers assigned will apply. And when did Dixon/Rivoche actually say liberals couldn't figure out differences? Once, there were leftists at work who could, but today, there's quite a few running the scene who can't/won't, and shun those who do. And years before, there were liberals with bad MOs too, if that matters, like Bill Ayers, whom that same site paid lip service to. And even conservatives can make terrible mistakes. Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard is one. I'm still horrified he gave Identity Crisis a free pass.
Cap can actually be interpreted as a liberal hero based on his origin and early stories set during WWII. As political historian Steven Attewell writes; “unlike other patriotic superheroes (like Superman, for example), Captain America is meant to represent the America of the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, and the Second Bill of Rights – a particular progressive ideal … there’s nothing ‘revisionist’ or ‘politically correct’ about portraying Steve Rogers as an explicitly progressive superhero. Without that, he wouldn’t be Captain America.”
It sounds more like Attewell's trying to hijack, presumably because Jack Kirby was liberal leaning (while Joe Simon was conservative leaning.) and claim that Cap is an exclusively leftist icon, and say conservatives shouldn't be fans or recognize the potential at all. Something he doesn't sound intent on making clear is that Nazism was an acronym for National Socialism, and by combatting the nazis, Cap was fighting against a belief system that advocates both economic and physical slavery as much as savagery. One of the biggest lies of the 20th century was that the nazis were "right-wing" but as their ideology should make clear, they were not, and that's one of the most bizarre points overlooked by a lot of callous leftists.

And if Attewell is saying Cap couldn't be what he is if he'd been depicted as a capitalist, that's ludicrous. Leave it to a modern leftist would-be historian to tell us all what to believe. We can only wonder what he'd say if a story were written where Cap defended private property rights, something I'm not sure I've ever seen leftists like him discuss.
As well as hailing Superman as a (fictional) war hero, Dixon and Rivoche also cite some Superman radio episodes in which Superman led a crusade against the Ku Klux Klan, which they reference in the context of conservatives’ allegedly stronger understanding of justice. To be fair, the KKK did in its earliest incarnation target Republicans, and Southern Democrats had plenty of racists and bigots among them. But it seems odd to bring up race in regards to liberals vs. conservatives, as Republicans consistently tolerate racism within their party and block legislature meant to address racism, plus they are significantly more white than other political parties. It’s a very cool thing that Superman was employed as anti-racist propaganda, but it would seem, based on their own track record on civil rights for minorities, that contemporary conservative politicians have more to learn from the Man of Steel’s example than modern day liberals.
Much as I'd like to credit Asselin for admitting the 19th century Democrats were the party supporting slavery in southern states, I don't think I can, because it sounds like she's implying the Democrats have polished up their act ever since, and are now clean as a whistle. But their tolerance of Muslim racism contradicts that. And while it wouldn't be right to say Republicans are totally innocent, Asselin also buys into leftist propaganda at Mother Jones at face value, acting as though modern rightists are evil in every way, in a classic parroting of ultra-leftist propaganda. Just what proof does she have that modern conservatives across the board are blowing it on race relations? The Tea Party has some black members. Guess that means nothing to her.

And say, how come she notes now that Superman is a fictional character, when earlier, she sounded like she thought he exists?
Where Rivoche and Dixon’s piece transcends mere wrongness into weirdness when they write about comics from the 1950s to the 1970s. In that section, they speak of the loathsome Comics Code Authority with what sounds like teary-eyed nostalgia.

That’s right. In an article bemoaning the lack of free speech in comics because of oppressive liberal values, two men who presumably share a political ideology that believes in minimizing government manage to talk with admiration about a literally oppressive set of censoring regulations that the comics industry imposed on itself following actual government hearings (inspired by Fredric Wertham’s Seduction Of The Innocent) about whether comics — even superhero comics — were corrupting children.

When Dixon and Rivoche say of one of the CCA’s rules that “there were still good guys and bad guys,” it’s like they’re pointing to the Code as a kind of proper morality that they wish comics still had. This is not longing for free speech. This is longing for a limited kind of morality that matches the authors’ own particular set of morals.
Okay, here, she comes close to noting a flaw in the argument. No, of course the Comics Code wasn't a good idea, specifically because it did impose limits on mature content for at least 15 years, and of course the medium isn't solely for children any more than movies and TV are.

But I don't think somebody who tries to hijack Superman for drawing comparisons to illegal immigrants and canards away about "jingoism" is qualified to make these points. Besides, while the CCA was a foolish mistake - one several publishers decided upon themselves, not because they agreed with Wertham, but because they saw it as a great way to get a few competitors out of the way - the industry does still need some kind of moral ethics compass to go by, or else they're not producing good writing. In fact, maybe that's Dixon and Rivoche's real point. That's not saying they didn't put it across awkwardly, but if that's their actual belief, then it's a shame the CCA was abandoned without keeping around some moral ethics that would suit superhero tales better.

I wonder if she's also aware that Wertham leaned more to the left himself, as I'd once noted? She hasn't mentioned that, and if not, then strange she's even bothering to cite Wertham. In fact, how come she doesn't argue that all would've worked out a lot better if comicdom developed a rating system during the time the MPAA came up with theirs?
What comics publisher was Chuck Dixon writing for during the ’90s that was making comics for children? Presumably this wasn’t a storyline they wanted to run in The Simpsons comics, which means it was probably a Marvel or DC book, which haven’t really been for kids since those halcyon CCA days they spoke about earlier.
Gee, I wonder why she missed an opportunity to argue that, if he feels more writers should've made an effort to write tales better suited for children, he should've tried it himself? That could've made a worthy argument, but she hasn't tried it.
If this was, as I suspect, about the Speedy/HIV storyline, it only makes sense that Dixon’s comments necessitated an apology given that the writer of that story, Judd Winick, actually lost someone close to him to HIV/AIDS — as chronicled in the graphic novel Pedro And Me.
Really, Winick, the guy who exploited his good friend for the sake of promoting LGBT mishmash? The problem with Winick is that he only cared about presenting homosexuality positively, and if there were any arguments to raise about that story in Green Arrow(?), it's whether he intended to keep up that propaganda. But I get the feeling that story wasn't the real reason DC later shunned Dixon, and I seriously doubt he ever insulted anyone suffering from AIDS.
Dixon is the writer who had teenage heroine Spoiler get pregnant and give the baby up for adoption – couldn’t that be seen as a political storyline that was inappropriate for children? After all, it involves teen sex, and since she wasn’t on birth control and didn’t get an abortion, it can easily be seen as a bit of conservative politics to encourage girls to go the adoption route. Yet that story was published.
I wonder what she'd say if Spoiler did get an abortion? Does she think that's a better alternative, and that Joss Whedon's Buffy vision was more justified? What made the story in Robin work well enough was that it had some educational value about the risks taken in teen sex, and also why adoption can be a better idea than abortion. No doubt Robin may have required parental guidance, but it was certainly a lot more suited for younger readers than the Buffy story.
All creators have times of more work and times of less work. Certainly comics is more liberal than conservative these days, but outspoken conservatives like Ethan Van Sciver and Bill Willingham don’t seem to be hurting for work.
Van Sciver is an artist. If there's anyone who isn't getting many jobs now, it's conservative writers, including Mike Baron. As for Willingham, he's an interesting case. After all, he was the writer who took to denigrating Dixon's very own creation, Spoiler, during the War Games crossover in Batman, and afterwards proceeded to wreck havoc upon another recurring cast member, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, writing that she was responsible for Stephanie's death. But surely the biggest mistake he made was insulting the readers who found the story offensive. I remember at the time Willingham did this on the Fabletown forum he was running, after I saw he was using the "whiny fanboys" insult, I came away with a bad aftertaste, and it was exceedingly difficult for me to bother about his other works as a result. At the time, I didn't know enough about him, so when I realized he was a conservative himself, it just made things all the more embarrassing, because here was an alleged rightie stooping to the same tactics as his leftie counterparts, claiming that "indifference" is the one reaction they're worried about, and making no differences between positive and negative response. I don't recall Dixon ever following his example, nor Dan Jurgens, who's got a black mark on his record with Zero Hour in 1994.

So here, when Willingham might've had a chance of winning me over as a full time reader of Fables, he threw it away by hinting he wasn't all that different from the left-wing writers he's working with. I wouldn't be surprised if there's other conservatives in-the-know out there who were alienated by his crude act. If anything, he proved himself a very poor spokesperson for comicdom. Is that how somebody who wants everyone to buy his books should behave?

Thanks to this, how was I supposed to fully credit his Breitbart article about superhero decadence when he says he portrayed Batman and Robin steadfastly, but wouldn't say nary a word about how he'd handled Spoiler? Is that honest? Do only the Dynamic Duo count? In fact, after CBR did a post about this issue, he replied to somebody referencing Thompkins:
Yes it was me who wrote that story — at least part of it. The decision to make Dr. Thompkins was either an editorial decision or the group decision (I forget exactly which, since it’s been a while) and it fell to me to actually write the scene. No, I didn’t think it was a particularly good idea, but (full disclosure) I wasn’t that much a fan of the Thompkins character in the first place, so I didn’t say, “Hell no, I won’t be a party to doing that to a beloved character!” This incident, plus the whole death after torture of Spoiler thing, are among the many reasons I have decided to make sure that I actually control the stories I decide to write in the future, since they are going out under my name.

I floated the idea of letting Spoiler live and letting her stay as Robin for awhile, since the sales and national attention took quite an uptick at that point, and since the Robin I really wanted to write (male or female) was one who was still in the process of learning the job — not someone who substantially already knew the job. But DC had other ideas, and these are after all their characters. The death of Spoiler plans were locked in by then and couldn’t be changed.

As far as someone coming along afterwards and rewriting all of that out of continuity, that’s fine with me.
Yes, he later changed from a stance defending War Games/Crimes to one where he says it was an editorial mandate. But there's still questions unanswered, like why, if the editors really stood by what they were doing, they'd need Willingham to serve as a fall guy? He also admitted a serious flaw of selectively not caring about specific characters and acting as though that justifies the worst in storytelling. How does that make a good writer?

Even after the Breitbart contribution, Willingham may not have shaped up. I found a posting by somebody who'd gone to a convention where she says he told Spoiler fans, "I wanted to gun down those girls who kept asking about the memorial case." It may be hearsay for now, but if even half this account is correct, Willingham blew it again. Yes, that was an insulting thing to say, suggesting he was begrudging, and honestly, was everyone asking for memorials but not resurrections?

I'd also wondered why DC still keeps cozy relations with Willingham, and maybe this answers it. Because he wasn't all that different from his liberal counterparts in terms of public relations. As far as I know, he's never publicly apologized for insulting the readers who took offense at how he handled Spoiler and Leslie in War Games/Crimes, and Jean Loring in Day of Vengeance. If he did, he might have a chance of mending fences even with me. But so far, I haven't seen him taking that step yet. Let's return to more of Asselin's stuff now:
Dixon and Rivoche also bemoan the dark and gritty turn superheroes have taken, and the “code of political correctness and moral ambiguity.” Again, this is just factually inaccurate. The tonal shift from black-and-white morality of older comics to the pervasive “grim and gritty” aesthetic of the ’90s was not ushered in solely by liberal creators. It’s true that Alan Moore and Frank Miller (now an outspoken right-winger) wrote popular works in this vein (Ronald Reagan was actually a villain in Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), but then again, so did Chuck Dixon, whose Punisher comics — where the protagonist circumvents the law to murder anyone he thinks deserves it — are remembered as some of the most intensely dark and violent anti-hero comics of the era.
Oh, here's where liberal bias seeps in again. Many of the criminals Frank Castle was seen gunning down were murderers and murderous themselves, not the least being the mobsters who wiped out Frank's family. Are those vermin to just be let off the hook when the justice system fails? Does Asselin also think Charles Bronson's movie of Death Wish from 1974 was wrong too? And how come she didn't mention there was one time in the early 90s when the Punisher let some shoplifters go without killing them? See, he wasn't depicted as that tunnelvisioned. I won't deny the Punisher's MO raises serious questions, but obfuscating how he went about his business and claiming Frank is the real wrongdoer is ludicrous and obscures what the criminals themselves were committing.
The tonal shift had less to do with politics and more to do with fashion and an aging audience. To assign a political bent towards these changes because of “political correctness and moral ambiguity” is like accusing anyone who believes in tolerance of actively encouraging crime. Tolerating other viewpoints does not equal anarchy or a lack of morals.
Uh uh. The overabundance of leftist politics and crude, pointless violence and sexism seen today, along with ridiculous cover prices, is just why the audience is comprised of aging people, some of whom suffer from aimless addiction and speculator mentality. And tolerating destructive beliefs like communism, fascism, jihadism and marxism - anarchy in themselves - does equal lack of morale. But since she brought it up, does Asselin believe her liberal peers should tolerate Dixon/Rivoche's conservative viewpoints in mainstream products?
Later in their piece, Dixon and Rivoche hold up the graphic novels Persepolis and Maus as examples of popular comic books that do not fall on either side of the political divide. This is just completely incorrect.

The story of author Marjane Satrapi’s childhood growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, Persepolis is a manifestly anti-fascist work. Likewise, Art Spiegelman’s Maus dramaticized his father’s ordeal during the Holocaust.

These comics may not, in Dixon and Rivoche’s minds, “parrot the progressive line,” but the truth is that these are political comics that Dixon and Rivoche happen to accidentally have enjoyed.
Missing the point. They don't parrot the progressive mindset leftists like her go by, is all. They may be political, yet they don't let even worries about conservatism get in the way of telling some good fact-based stories.
There are a lot of other issues in the phrasing chosen by Dixon and Rivoche that help spread incorrect facts to WSJ readers who likely wouldn’t know any better. Simple things like saying comics are for kids, referring to Comixology as a company that “translates comics to e-books,” or describing San Diego Comic-Con International simply as “the annual comics convention.”

Perhaps most crucially, Dixon and Rivoches pretending that American comics are made up entirely of superhero comics, rather than discussing the wide range of work that exists and is successful today, ignores the fact that there is room in the comics market for a book like the one Dixon and Rivoche have produced. If the only comics that existed were the superhero books and graphic novels they discuss, they would never have had the chance to create their new book.
No, still missing the point. What they're saying is that it's regrettable mainstream comics owned by corporations are held hostage to otherwise exclusively leftist viewpoints, with no rightist ones allowed to apply, if at all. And say, didn't she just note they cited Maus? I thought Art Speigelman published that in the USA! But most importantly, she forgets that this is a commercial newspaper, only willing to allow so much space for citations. If there's anyone to blame, I'd say it's the paper's editors for not giving more room. Food for thought. At the end, she says:
But Dixon and Rivoche are right that there should be more conservative comics. They’re both talented creators who have written some amazing and influential comics and created some important characters. Their choice to blame liberals for the problems they see in comics may be flawed, but they still deserve the opportunity to produce comics that accurately represent their world view — and they’ve taken the advice so many internet commenters are eager to throw at comics feminists online, which is, “If you don’t like what’s being made, make your own comics.”
Well at least she's respecting the belief more comics with conservative views could be written. But I get the feeling she'd rather it all be done in their own comics, and no rightists be allowed to touch Superman and Capt. America, because in her mind, they're leftist "property" only. In fact, how come she didn't bring up awful products like The Truth: Red, White and Black, or the Marvel Knights take on Cap? For somebody who says Dixon and Rivoche didn't cite enough examples, she's not doing much better.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Kurt Busiek thinks the NRA is just a sales company

Here's a few tweets he wrote about the NRA:





I've got a sad feeling he just sees what he wants to. So basically, he's calling the NRA profiteers, not advocates of self-defense. But what does he call Russian and Chinese weapon manufacturers who sell arms to Iran and Syria? Those aren't acts of profiteering? And why can't he argue in favor of better education in the school systems, which could help lower crime rates? Again, all these leftist comics writers seem to worry about is the easiest of subjects.

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Monday, June 16, 2014

Some gun control babble from Mark Waid

Here's several tweets by Waid featuring his takes on gun issues and even some healthcare issues:


Hmm, does this mean he's growing disillusioned with Obamacare? We can only hope.




Well now, does this mean he's fed up with the Obama administration over both gun control and healthcare issues? But then, it remains to be seen whether he'll still vote for the Democrats in future elections.



What about meaningful education curriculum? Why can't children and adults just be taught that guns aren't fun? Doesn't he have any worries about what kind of etiquette's being taught in public schools?

It's not just his cynicism. It's also his manners. If he lets the F-word slip from his tongue again as did several other times, that'll only prove he hasn't learned why it doesn't pay to be so nasty. And this is someone who created at least one teen superhero for DC (Impulse) that can be great for younger readers! Being profane does not contrast well with the more kid/family friendly efforts he sometimes made.

Oh yeah, resort to that kind of claim, why not. Typical of a leftist to use that kind of canard.

Does Waid try to appeal to young people anymore? And if he were a millionaire, would he be saying the same as he is here?

Not if it's from such a crummy leftist site. It's hard to agree with people whose view of self-defense is so awkward. Finally, Waid tweeted this:

I wonder if what he really means is that agreements are welcome, dissent is not. I hope he at least makes an effort to avoid using lurid profanity in the near future. But I'm not holding my breath.

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Sunday, June 15, 2014

Walt Simonson creates his own Thor property

PC Magazine interviewed Simonson about his career as an artist, and lets know that he's preparing his own graphic novel based on Norse mythology called Ragnarok. He also notes he's been criticized for being too old-school:
PCMag: Speaking of lettering, I noticed that contemporary comics have fewer words per panel. Am I crazy or is that a deliberate happening?
WS: My view of that is that comics up until the '80s and '90s were created by people who read pulp novels and magazines as kids. Comics were visual, but they were written with pulp wordiness. Then we had a generation that was raised on movies and not pulps.

I've been attacked on the Web for being old fashioned and using thought balloons. You should use whatever tools are available. If part of what you're writing reflects real life, people do have internal thoughts!
That's a shame there's people today who don't appreciate old strategies that worked. But also that modern output uses less words. I don't think the best tales would work without more wording. Maybe what needs to be done is make the page size bigger instead.
PCMag: How do you counter the critics who say that you're too old-school?
WS: You'd like your work to satisfy you. I don't draw stuff because Jeff will like this. You write and draw for yourself and hope to share it with an audience that appreciates it.
That audience would be me, rest assured. I'm guessing most of the readers who seem fine with less wording are the obsessive collectors not interested in good storytelling, who couldn't care less if there's fewer words per panel.
PCMag: I know people who hope that digital comics will destroy the print collector market in which certain books are hoarded and high prices are maintained. Do you see digital driving down print collector prices?
WS: I'm not sure why anyone would hope that, especially if you get your comics digitally. What difference would the collector's market make? Of course, if you buy most of your comics digitally, but still long to own a copy of The Incredible Hulk # 181, I can understand that.

I think there will always be folks who enjoy the tactile sensibilities of holding an object in their hands, whether it's a coin or a comic or a rare book. That said, I don't have any clear notion of how the digital world in general will affect the collector's market for physical ephemera over the long haul. I could see the market diminishing over time as the number of people who have actually encountered physical comics shrinks, perhaps. However, the market for incunabula can be pretty expensive, and how many of us have ever held an example, let along grew up with them? We're still in the early stages of digital in a lot of ways. Ask me again in 50 years.
In response to this, I'd say it's better for paperbacks to replace pamphlets. Digital might work, but so long as the big two continue down their path of wreckage, I don't think it's going to work for them.
PCMag: Comics are selling, and their move adaptations rule the box office. Are we witnessing a comic book bubble that's bound to pop?
WS: Comics have always been a feast or famine business. The Image guys, the original seven or so guys, did pretty fine back in the '90s. There are times when [comic book] sales have been in the toilet. A number of times there were guys that I'd worked with who left the business for jobs that would sustain them. I have been very lucky.
Comics as pamphlets are not selling, thanks to the poor writing in mainstream and the ridiculous prices. And I'm disappointed here that Simonson wouldn't admit several examples from Image's early output helped damage the industry in the long run, like the notorious Rob Liefeld, and also Erik Larsen and Todd McFarlane. All that pandering to speculators for assumed monetary value and no good writing ruined everything, and Simonson would do better not to sugarcoat. So that's the part where he comes up short, by not being clear with the interviewer about the real sales picture, or Image's early embarrassments. I wish him well with his new take on Viking mythology, but I'd be a lot happier if more contributors would just show some guts and tell what brought down the medium.

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