Tuesday, January 31, 2017

The pseudo-creators who oppose Trump's efforts to keep the USA safe

Trump's taken the step of barring entry from 7 Muslim countries in order to screen carefully for possible terrorists trying to infiltrate. None of which matters to the following comics writers/artists I could find blabbering about it, beginning with one of the most obvious:

And Marz couldn't be more ignorant. Especially of how Obama selected the list of countries in the executive order. And that a pretty good majority support temporarily blocking entrants from terrorist havens, if that's what's needed to keep the neighborhood safe.

Oh, and he relies on a UK paper as embarrassing as the Guardian happens to be. I grew tired long ago of their hugely dishonest junk. But now, here's where he really says something disturbing in response to Trump's announcement that the government wants to prioritize Christian refugees from Muslim regimes:

*Shudder* Is he saying he considers them inherently dangerous, whereas not a single Islamist could pose any danger in the USA? What a disgrace, and all coming from one of the apologists for allowing men into women's bathrooms at the expense of the ladies. To imply that Christians persecuted by Islamofascists have no value only compounds the view that Marz is not worthy to take the assignments he's been given in comicdom. Bizarrely, at the same time, he put down a so-called conservative activist who's actually on the left's side:

Honestly, I do think it's weird that somebody who's an Islamophile would have a problem with someone like Norquist after all the problems he caused for the USA. Seriously, it's bizarre, and the biggest problem in all this is that Marz obviously isn't carping about Norquist because he has an issue with his standings.

Is he also proud of the "women's march" activists who gave a platform to a woman who'd been convicted in the kidnapping and murder of a gay man? And when somebody points out how the Obama administration wouldn't give asylum to Christian refugees, the possibly anti-religious Marz said:

Something wrong with that? I think not, and Marz is only making himself look laughable, and shameful.

So he's perpetuating an already debunked claim about Bannon. What a sorry case he's being. Now, here's another guy who's going out of his mind:

How long will it be before Palmiotti takes note of the 4 percent of Clinton voters who regretted their choice? His post was followed up by:

Umm, like I noted above...

Let's not. Safety must come first.

Translation: the 1st Amendment's religion clause is invalid, and nobody can make distinctions between religion and race. All that aside, the "ban" hardly affects Muslims by any stretch. Now, here's another one of the usual band of buffoons:

Portrait of somebody who won't make distinctions between religions, and ask whether there's such a thing as a bad one.

Will the perverse comments never end? Guess not.

Waid's mood is very 9-10, and not particularly concerned about the public's safety. And then he says:

In reply to a comment about Peter King and McCaul being involved in working out the temporary ban on arrivals from Muslim countries who could possibly be dangerous. What a sad case.

And continuing our little look at all these embarrassments in motion, here's somebody who's taking a one-sided view of things:

I'd say Slott's being an opportunist, because the MSM downplayed Obama's more reprehensible approach in 2009. This current tempest is just a phony, and WJC chairman Ronald Lauder's condemned the moonbats crying wolf:
“It does no honor to the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust to play politics with their memory.

“Any fair reading of the White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day will see it appropriately commemorates the suffering and the heroism that mark that dark chapter in modern history.

“There are enough real anti-Semitism and true threats facing the Jewish people today. Our community gains nothing if we reach a point where manufactured outrages reduce public sensitivity to the real dangers we confront.”
And Slott won't be doing anybody a service if he keeps up his own shameless exploitation of manufactured outrage culture and opportunism. All Slott's suggested is that he doesn't care about victims of persecution in Muslim lands. Remember, if Jewish lives matter, so must many others.

And so many of the leftist sources Slott buys into without question or reservation have lied too, yet has no issue with that.

He sounds like a 9-11 Truther here, and refuses to consider that it's temporary, in order to screen entrants properly, or that Obama chose the countries in the exec order long before Trump did. Public safety is no concern to Slott. Now, who else is there:

All this coming from somebody who most likely didn't vote for Reagan in the 1980s.

Wouldn't it be better to congratulate those senators who, specifically, are concerned for the innocent citizen's safety? Conway doesn't make any sense.

And there's some examples I could find of "creators" making idiots of themselves, and not giving any consideration to safety for country.

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posted by Avi Green @ 1:52 AM 8 comments

Monday, January 30, 2017

More on how Supergirl and Archie TV shows have been hijacked for liberal propaganda

The pretentious Inverse site's been fawning over the Supergirl TV series' depicting homosexuality in a positive light:
One of the most exciting plotlines in the second season of the CW’s Supergirl has been explored Alex Danvers’s homosexuality, and the story’s impact on the real world is starting to show as more and more watchers are engaging with this particular narrative. And to viewers who disagree with the show’s candor, Supergirl says, “Okay, bye.”
And to the propagandists running such a boring site as Inverse, we can say "okay, bye" to boot. They disrespect our views that it's not a healthy/sane practice, so why should we give them an audience any more than this series? Apart from studying their biases, there's little about this site to care for.

All that aside, I'm not sure "exciting" is the proper word to describe a drama-based situation, so they made themselves sound rather silly for starters.
A plot in Season 2 of Supergirl, Carol’s DEO agent sister Alex came out as a lesbian. She came out first to herself, then to eventual girlfriend Maggie Sawyer, and finally to her sister Kara and her mother. It was an uplifting story, and there have been many stories online about real-life fans who’ve found the storyline helping them come to terms with their own identities.
In that case, how come they didn't link to any of them? It sounds more to me like liberals who want to feel good about themselves, and the Inverse site is only too eager to distort everything in their favor.

The Sawyer character may have been depicted for a long time as a lesbian in the DCU, but I'm not sure that was actually established when she first appeared in Superman vol. 2's 4th issue in 1987, a creation of John Byrne (though he reportedly wanted to make Alpha Flight's Northstar homosexual proper in the MCU, which Jim Shooter talked him out of at the time, because he guessed it wouldn't appeal to the masses). Sawyer's lesbianism was actually established at least a year later in the sans-adjective Superman's 15th issue, and if homosexuality really mattered, then why wasn't it established on day one of her appearances? The whole out-of-closet theme was getting mouldy-oldy even then. In fact, what if sales-wise, nobody was impressed with homosexuality being presented, specifically, in an otherwise positive light? Historically speaking, the liberalism these story setups were built upon may have cost some readership back in the day, explaining why sales fell even lower as the years went by. If that was how Byrne wanted to approach his ideas for Northstar, it's no wonder Shooter's objections would've been for the best.
Supergirl has always been a relatively progressive series with regards to feminism, but Supergirl’s Alex Danvers storyline has been met with wide praise, with plenty of writers finding solace in Supergirl’s nuanced portrayal, especially in Alex’s anxieties and confusion over her identity.
Is "feminism" even a big thing anymore? According to Milo Yiannapoulous, it's losing popularity, because a lot of women are waking up to how the "social justice" it's building on today is actually doing more harm than good. And the praise they speak of is probably just coming from liberals like themselves, so I'd suggest they refrain from self-flattering.

Besides the above article, there's also the following awfulness from the San Angelo Standard Times that fawns over the Riverdale TV show, which, like many of the recent Archie comics it's allegedly based on, paints its picture in very dark, garish colors:
[...] It begins with the death of Jason Blossom, the identical twin of Riverdale High’s Queen Bee and resident Mean Girl, Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch). Much like “Twin Peaks,” Riverdale is going to be the ‘50s throwback town with dark secrets beneath the seemingly perfect surface.
Just what the world needs. Another murder mystery, which I no longer find an appealing genre. Oh, and look at the justification given for why this kind of approach must be taken:
Q: Why do that? Why change these wholesome characters from our youth? Is nothing sacred?

A: Because the wholesome characters from our youth don’t sell well any more. I read them until middle school and then quit, and I bet so did you. And younger kids today are playing video games, not reading Archies. Up until recently, the Archie titles were selling in the low thousands.

So for the last few years, Archie Comics has been working to fix these problems by placing the gang in new situations — zombie-apocalypse-survivor Archie in “Afterlife with Archie,” grown-and-married Archie in “Life with Archie,” not-long-for-this-world Archie in “Archie vs. Predator.” The publisher assumed affection for the characters would carry readers through, and it worked.
And for how long, exactly? Last time I looked, it was back to dismal numbers again (the main Archie title sold only 12,408 on store level), and even before that, it wasn't selling in millions galore. Their reasoning is laughable. The reason why wholesomeness allegedly doesn't sell any longer is twofold. One, educational decadence has led to a galling disregard for wholesomeness along with many other past classics, and two, pathetic, insular marketing that doesn't try to appeal to parents who just might be hoping to find something wholesome for their own children, and has nothing against such "old-fashioned" ideals.

And most people who lost interest in Archie after reading it in their youth did so because they were basically growing out of it, just like they could've grown out of any Saturday morning matinee cartoon series, or Sesame Street. They were growing up, and such programs weren't aimed at anybody older than 12, so they moved on to different products. Is that so hard to understand? Only for cynical journalists who didn't grow up mentally.
The core line of Archie books has been rebooted as well. The new titles still feature a group of basically good (and funny) kids, but the humor is more sophisticated and the approach more modern. They’re written and drawn by mostly A-list talent, and appeal to older readers as well as their children.
Umm, how do we know they appeal to the latter as much as the former? Most of the leftist ideas for entertainment introduced several years earlier were carried over to the rebooted titles as well, some of which aren't exactly suitable for children. Even the Afterlife series is hardly what you could call child-friendly, let alone family-friendly. Speaking of which, look what they've done to the Miss Grundy teacher character on TV:
Q: Wait, Sarah Habel is a hottie! Miss Grundy is supposed to be an old bat!

A: Not in “Riverdale”! And she’s something of a twentysomething cougar, having seduced Archie into an illicit affair at the beginning of the show.
Gee, how disgusting. They've corrupted a decent character by turning her into a sex felon. Let's be clear, the subject of teachers sex-ploiting their students is a serious one, but exploiting established characters in fiction for the focus is just as reprehensible. Yet this has basically become the norm for many years in mainstream comicdom now. And if it turns out the young Grundy's actions aren't depicted negatively (meaning, they made light of a serious issue for the sake of cheap sensationalism) it'll only become all the more mind-boggling.
Q: Wait, there’s sex in Riverdale? That’s new.

A: We still don’t see it in the comics. As to “Riverdale,” we shouldn’t be surprised. There was sex when we were in high school, too, and always has been. We just didn’t talk about it, and girls who got pregnant “went to visit their aunt” for six months. Welcome to the 21st century, where what goes on behind closed doors is discussed at Pop’s Choklit Shoppe.
We may not see it in the comics per se, but they don't seem to have a problem with depicting homosexuality positively in the guise of the Kevin Keller character either. On which note:
Q: Speaking of sex, it looks like Betty and Veronica are kissing on one of the “Riverdale” trailers. I guess in the 21st century, they just don’t need Archie.

A: Don’t worry, the central love triangle is still mostly intact on “Riverdale.” Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart), who has been best friends with Archie (KJ Apa) since childhood, is wrestling with stronger feelings for him. That’s complicated by the arrival of Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes), who snags Archie’s attention.

But Reinhart told hollywoodlife.com that the kiss on the trailer is a dodge. “They’re not romantically involved,” she said. And while there’s a lot of fan fiction out there about “Beronica,” and some fans would love to see them as a couple, Reinhart says “That’s not our show.” The girls are the best of friends, according to The CW description, and they’re unlikely to jeopardize that by fighting over a boy.

Q: So there’s no homosexuality on the show?

A: I didn’t say that. Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) is an openly gay student at Riverdale High, as he is in the comics. And while it’s by no means definite, Entertainment Weekly describes Ethel as someone “who has a major crush on Jughead … in the comics. But, on Riverdale, Ethel will find herself in a romantic relationship with someone very different.” It’s a good bet that someone is of a different gender.
So let's see if I can figure this out. Lesbianism is supposedly not something they want to promote. But male homosexuality is? We must truly be missing something here. Even if they don't corrupt Betty and Veronica, they're still insulting intellects by depicting male homosexuality positively, if anything. And, if matters of racial "diversity" matter, guess what Josie & the Pussycats rock band is like on this TV show, along with a few other leading characters:
Q: Or a different race?

A: That’s possible, too. The original Archie cast was created in the 1940s, so by default they were all white. “Riverdale,” however, reflects the America of today.

Veronica and her mother Hermione (Marisol Nichols) are Latina. It’s unclear who plays resident genius Dilton Doiley — both Daniel Yang and Major Curda have been mentioned — but he’s definitely Asian. Josie & the Pussycats, which used to have one black member, is now entirely African-American (starring Ashleigh Murray as Josie, Hayley Law as Valerie and Asha Bromfield as Melody). Ross Butler, who plays Archie foil Reggie Mantle, is part Indonesian.
Gee, that doesn't sound especially diverse so much as it does sound like a changing of the entire band's members wholesale, ditto Veronica, her mother and the Dilton character. These producers are just so cheapskate. They don't have the brains or creativity to develop new cast members so they only tamper with the old, not unlike how Marvel/DC have been doing the same of recent. Ordinarily, I might not have seen reason to complain, but this diversity absurdity is getting way out of hand within just a few years.

I'm not sure who they're marketing this stuff to on TV, but it sure isn't family audiences, and if the Marvel/DC publishers don't want family audiences for their flagship superhero titles anymore, the TV producers of these new shows clearly don't want family audiences either. And they'll probably defend their products by claiming family-friendly fare doesn't sell well anymore. Which I don't buy. It's just their selfishness stemming from their politics that's clouding them to reason.

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posted by Avi Green @ 10:43 AM 1 comments

Sunday, January 29, 2017

5 political tweets by Bill Sienkiewicz

Sienkiewicz is a very talented artist, and I enjoyed much of his work on the New Mutants from the mid-1980s, to name but one example from years past. But his leftism today is a huge disappointment, and the following example is by far disturbing:

He supports Chomsky, who represents anti-Americanism at its worst? This is very sad. Chomsky's just one radical leftist who did considerable disservice to the USA and other sensible places, and Bill thinks he's worth backing? Sigh.

Sienkiewicz also wrote:

When I tried to access the page on Facebook, I discovered he'd erased it. Could it be his rightist fans let him know they were dismayed, and he decided to drop those posts? Could be. For now, let us be clear. Trump's only been in office for little more than a week or so, and proposed policies can't be developed all at once.

Assuming that's real, it's an awfully petty complaint to make. And if the picture's fake and doctored, then Bill's promoting a silly falsehood that obscures more pressing issues. Besides, even if Trump didn't put a strip of tape on the tie, leftists would be looking for other excuses to make petty yammerings, like that he's too cheap to use a tie clip so it wouldn't blow around in the wind. Something the left's "logic" already does.

I also discovered he drew two "tributes" to Obama:


A real shame he's got no disappointments to bring forth about any of the mistakes Obama made. Sorry to see Bill's letting "idol worship" get the better of himself.

Sienkiewicz is a talented artist, there's no disputing that. But his obsession with leftism makes any impact his work could really have very soggy.

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posted by Avi Green @ 7:31 AM 2 comments

Saturday, January 28, 2017

It's not really a big loss if the NYT dropped their comics best-seller lists

NY Vulture says the industry's up in arms over the New York Times' decision to cancel their best-seller list for comic books/graphic novels:
When the New York Times began publishing best-seller lists for comics material a few years ago, it was a welcome step toward greater industry insight, as well as greater visibility for creators and publishers. Alas, the experiment was not to last. Today, the Times abruptly announced that it’s gutting its best-seller lists, doing away with a host of existing lists in both the print and online editions of the paper as of February 5. Among the casualties are the Graphic Hardcover, Graphic Paperback, and Manga categories. The comics world is, understandably, quite unhappy with the development.

“I can't quite fathom why they thought graphic best sellers were worthy of tracking for the past several years, and now suddenly aren't,” says Eric Reynolds, an editor at Fantagraphics, which publishes comics luminaries like Matt Furie, Simon Hanselmann, and Daniel Clowes, the latter of whom has been on the best-seller list for much of the past year with his latest graphic novel, Patience.

There was similar anger at Drawn + Quarterly, publisher of creators such as Kate Beaton, Adrian Tomine, and Lynda Barry. “While the Times reports on comics in their regular arts coverage, the list has been an important embrace of the industry, in particular of small independent companies like D+Q, holding their own against companies 50 times our size,” says the company’s publisher, Peggy Burns.
Oh please. While I do believe there's some gems out there that deserve wider recognition in the book world, the NYT is not a place to be proud of being in. One of the most dishonest, disrespectful papers in history, and I have no doubt they've ignored some of the best writers out there like Chuck Dixon. Even more liberal writers may have been passed over in terms of recognition by the paper, because it's not like they really respect the medium and its better qualities at all. I mean, what good did they do for mainstream superhero books ruined by corporate greed, for starters? And what are they even doing for independents? Practically nothing. At least Vulture admits in their article that sales figures for comic books are often concealed, most likely out of embarrassment at how low they really are.

When IGN brought this up, some of the commenters there had pretty good replies to offer:
LMAO The NYTs? Okay.... so the ten people still reading that rag probably don't care anyway. And the rest of the world doesn't really care what the NYT does anyway.
That's right. Their circulation and readership dropped considerably over the past decade or so. Most people recognize the NYT as the phony they are now. Another said:
What a shocker! More hate for comic books. Screw you New York Times, your garbage just like the city and state is.
This too has some sense in it. When did the NYT truly care about the medium when most of their coverage is pretty unobjective? Did they even point out how awful 2004's "events" were? How reprehensible both Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled happen to be? Not to my knowledge they didn't. Another said:
NYT is a piece of garbage ran by Liberal lunatics.
One more reason it doesn't matter whether they run bestseller lists or not. Here's another:
Surprising but who really gets their reading advice from NYT anymore? Especially graphic novels? They are simply showing how outdated and unnecessary the list is as a whole since we now have the internet.
Exactly. And still another said:
Over the past decade and a half Comic books have slowly turned into little more than a venue for far left liberals to push their politics and political correctness on everyone.
With the help of rags like the NYT, who do little or nothing to point out how bad an example it is to be shoving politics down the readers' throats at all costs.

It's no big deal if the NYT decided to discontinue best seller lists. Nobody reads them anymore, so artists and writers looking for wider recognition and sales won't get much help from them anyway.

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posted by Avi Green @ 11:50 AM 1 comments

Friday, January 27, 2017

Supergirl TV star joins the anti-Trump crowd

Melissa Benoist, star of TV's Supergirl series, took part in the so-called women's march against Donald Trump this past week, without any of the same objections to Bill Clinton's own terrible acts in the past:
Melissa Benoist is one of a number of high-profile stars attending the Women’s March on Washington and the Supergirl star has a message for President Donald Trump.

“Hey Donald, Don’t try to grab my p—y — it’s made of steel,” read a sign Benoist held above her head on Saturday. The actress posted a photo of herself wearing a “Feminist” sweatshirt and holding the sign on Instagram.
I honestly don't think she's suited to play the Maid of Might if she has no interest in condemning Slick Willy for doing much worse than Trump's crude chat with Billy Bush, let alone Hillary Clinton for defending a child rapist in 1975.

Since we're on the subject though, if there's anything else overly political on the Supergirl TV show besides the gun control mishmash and border interloper apologia, it's their rendering of Krypton's destruction, which in this TV series involves - are you ready? - global warming!
From its comic strip introduction in 1939, Superman’s home planet was said to have come to extinction due to an explosion, which then became a new asteroid belt. In Supergirl’s version of Planet Krypton’s destruction, we learn it fell victim to global warming (or climate change, it’s hard to keep up with the politically correct liberal terms) and Aunt Astra (Laura Benanti) returns to ask for Supergirl Kara’s (Melissa Benoist) help to stop the same thing from happening to Planet Earth.

In the first episode of a two-part story arc, “Hostile Takeover,” a flashback to Kara’s childhood includes a conversation between young Kara and her Aunt Astra explaining that occupants of Krypton were killing the planet because they are “greedy for energy.” Just like when candidate Barack Obama lectured us on the rising of oceans threatening planet Earth, Astra spoke of the threats to her planet to young Kara by saying, “The oceans have changed, and the weather.”
Thinking about this, it's hard not to giggle, yet at the same time, it's a head-shaker. Instead of merely ignorant of the volcanic radiation that would end up destroying the planet, Kryptonians are made to look worse than need be. It's insulting to the memory of Siegel, Shuster, Binder, Plastino and the source materials they developed.

And in the end, the setup the producers are using only compounds the image this TV show is already taking on, that it's more concerned with spouting political balderdash than in entertaining the couch potatoes. Coupled with Benoist's blatant political activism, it doesn't make for a very good image.

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posted by Avi Green @ 12:42 AM 2 comments

Thursday, January 26, 2017

WW "goes insane" in 15th issue

I just don't see what the point is of a story like this:
Wonder Woman #15 marks the beginning of a new story arc, "The Truth." When Wonder Woman first left her home island of Themyscira, the condition was she would not be able to return. Despite this, she did promise her mother she would. It had seemed as if she did find a way.

Wonder Woman has discovered all the times she's been home over the years, she's never actually been there. It's all been a lie. This knowledge and the possible implications over what her recent visits to the island mean and where she actually might have been has shattered her mind. As seen in the preview above, she's been taken to a hospital to be cared for her while she remains in this state.
If this goes more than 2 issues, that'll surely be its biggest weakness, but not the only one. And, it'll just demonstrate further how "Rebirth" isn't leading anywhere. But as the product of an overrated writer like Greg Rucka, it'll be no surprise. Such ideas are no substitute for character drama. It's not all that different from the time when Brian Azzarello changed WW's origin so that Zeus was her father, for no good reason.

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posted by Avi Green @ 12:38 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Ta-Nehisi Coates brings back a pretentious Crew for a more politicized path

The ultra-leftist Coates is reviving an older series from the mid-2000s written by Christopher Priest called The Crew - which, if memory serves, drew from the awful Truth: Red, White and Black miniseries - all so he can exploit it along with Black Panther for yet more terrible propaganda. In the following interview he gave to Time:
Coates, a National Book Award and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant winner, became the most famous comic book writer in the non-comic-book-reading world last year when he took on the Marvel character. The storied publisher recruited him to revive Black Panther, the first black superhero in mainstream comic books. Black Panther, whose given name is T’Challa, is the ruler of the technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda, a scientist and an Avenger. Coates’ 2016 version begins with a rebellion against Wakanda’s monarchy. The first issue sold more than 300,000 copies.
And what's it sold since? Little more than 45,000 copies, and even 300,000 is a very paltry sum. But, as always, they won't admit such receipts are pathetic. By the way, is the rebellion against the monarchy fueled by right-wing advocates?
Marvel has tried to widen its perspective from that of the white male creator in recent years with changes to its characters and, more slowly, its writers and artists. Priest’s version of The Crew has been called by critics “the blackest superhero story that Marvel Comics ever published” and dealt with issues like gentrification, poverty, religion and crime. Coates and Harvey’s version endeavors to be similarly ambitious.
This points to a problem with how assignments seem to be handed out at Marvel now: are black writers being offered titles with white heroes and heroines to script as well, or are they just being offered titles where the spotlight is almost entirely on black protagonists? Nearly all signs suggest the latter, in contrast to the late 80s-early 90s when Priest (who then went by the name Jim Owsley) wrote/edited some titles with white stars. Not that agenda-driven writers like Coates seem to mind, so long as they can ply their moonbat trade at the expense of entertainment and escapism.
Why did you decide to do a spin-off about The Crew?

Coates: Christopher Priest wrote what turned out to be a mini-series that I just adored called The Crew. Black Panther wasn’t in the original Crew, but he was weirdly sort of related because an ancillary character of his series was in the Crew. It was a unique book because the majority of the characters were black. So when I came back to write Black Panther, I read a bunch of Christopher Priest’s stuff, and I wanted to bring it back.

I was going to try to do it with the same members that he had. But it became clear that certain characters would not be available for various reasons. So I decided to think about it in a different way and think about something new.
This brings to mind that Jim Rhodes is one black cast member who's certainly not available now, because TPTB at Marvel decided to make him a sacrificial lamb in Civil War 2, proving even notable cast members of Black/Latino/Asian descent aren't immune to their wretched stunts. As for the series itself he's alluding to, which may have actually been an ongoing that didn't sell well, I'll bet he adored it, all because it used certain elements seen in 2003's Chomskyite miniseries, The Truth: Red, White & Black.

Now here's where the telling clues come up about where this is going:
The inciting incident of this story is an activist dies in police custody, and there’s an investigation. Why did you decide to use that as the jumping off point?

Coates: This is in the air. It’s not like I looked at a Black Lives Matter protest and was like, “Hey, I want to write a comic about that.” But you’re confronted with it every day. So when I sat down to think about what is this story with four black protagonists about, and you start scribbling, that rises up. The events of the day are with me. It seemed like an opportunity to do something. It becomes clear in the first issue that the activist is not just an activist. There’s something more going on there.
Sigh. He's influenced by those awful movements alright, acting as though it's impossible to refrain from going so political. And I have no doubt there's a ton more of leftism going on in his new series than he's willing to admit.
How much do you think the events of the day being on your mind are because you are also a writer, a journalist, who is writing about social justice issues and race or interviewing President Obama?

Coates: Those things don’t influence each other as much as you would think. These issues are all over comic books and particularly throughout the history of Marvel. What weighs on me is reading X-Men as a child. Those books influenced me so much. They were charged, they dealt with discrimination, they dealt with being an outsider. They dealt with the things that I was feeling.

The comics I’ve always read, have always had a philosophical thread. So when it came time for me to write comics, I just felt like that had to be. It’s definitely in the Black Panther books now. It’s not just a story about a king that’s trying to rule. I’m trying to answer other questions, philosophical questions, social questions.
The only questions he's trying to answer - unsuccessfully - are how to maintain failed liberal politics. And for somebody talking about outsiders, how come it doesn't occur to him he's turning conservatives into just that? I don't think he was influenced by X-Men at all, so much as I do think he was influenced by leftist thinking. Some of which is alluded to in the following:
Black Panther dealt very directly with questions of sexism, female empowerment and queerness, especially when it came to Black Panther's all-female guard.

Coates: [In some of the earlier versions, the guards] are like 16 years old. It's weird. I want to say that was a different time, but it was only 15 years ago. I think now, you have an all-female guard, you can’t just look at them strictly from the perspective of the teenage, male comic book reader. Like, when depicting a same-sex relationship, I was really careful. You don't want it to be a performance [for the reader.] You want the characters to own it. I don't know that we would have been having these conversations 15 years ago. It's good they're happening now.
Oh sure he was careful. No doubt, he's really pushed it on everyone. But more eyebrow raising is what age he gave the guards. It's not clear from this interview, but if he did make the guards underage, that's ludicrous, suggesting he was willing to risk making T'Challa look like a pervert or something, employing a bunch of teens who may be too young for him!
To that point, you've said before that those plots were in part a response to a conversation online about the ways in which comic books failed to represent complex, powerful women. Now that you've written a whole series, do you continue to pay attention to the online debate about representation and feminism?

Coates: I hope so. Yes, I am. You know, there were no women in the original Crew. And it just felt like you could not have a book like this without women. The moment it became clear I couldn’t do the original Crew, and I had to come up with my own, it just felt wrong to put together five dudes. These days, that’s not going to fly. So in its very conception, yes.
Maybe they shouldn't do it without female co-stars, but how come they can't do it without the constant stream of leftist politics all over the place? And how come they can't admit feminism as conceived in the 1960s only wound up having negative effects?

As if this isn't bad enough, they even invoke the exaggerated claim that past comics in the 20th century were inherently sexist and racist while speaking with one of Coates' co-writers, Yona Harvey:
How much did you think about the history of sexism in comic books before you started writing?

Harvey: Are the things that trouble women the things we see depicted in culture? Do we walk out the door terrified of mugged or attacked? I was thinking about these strong female characters, and how can I bring more subtlety or nuance to that idea. I think maybe for men when they write about women they're imagining this anxiety about the worst thing that can happen to as part of [the character.] But I don't think we step out of the house thinking we're in trouble or need to be rescued.
But there is trouble abound...in the form of leftism. Some of which is leading to the increases in crime in whatever areas it takes place. Has it ever occurred to him that, as a result, there are people who feel they're in danger and, if they don't have the proper skills, need to be rescued? It never occurs to men like him, does it?
What are the challenges of dealing with racial issues in this format?

Harvey: I think it's a good challenge because it gives people a touchstone for the current moment, but there's still this imaginative space where the story can unfold. There's a nice tension between those two things, the real and the fantastical.
If they don't deal with anti-white racism, then nothing's real in what they're developing any more than there's fantastical. They've already given telling signs this new series won't be free of bias or agendas, and that's why this is yet another modern product nobody should waste their money on.

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posted by Avi Green @ 7:37 AM 1 comments

Monday, January 23, 2017

An example of a reviewer who succumbed to SJW-ism

Here's a review I found of Tomb Raider: Lara Croft and the Frozen Omen, written by a man who buys into the whole PC viewpoint that the sexy art designs for Lara Croft in the past were "sexist":
The penciller, Randy Green also did an excellent job rendering the characters and environments of the story. Much of the criticism given to Lara Croft is that she is portrayed in a sexist light, as she is often shown with an exaggerated form of the female body. Green draws Croft in such a way that she looks more realistic, staying away from the classic and more sexist designs of the past, but his Lara is still attractive, almost like a model.
*Ahem* Artist Green's (no relation) art design isn't all that different from what any past illustrators used. That aside, this man's got some nerve tarring the reputations of the past artists he won't even name, but which anybody could find out without too much difficulty in this day and age, and then don't be shocked if SJWs would come about wanting to villify them in the worst ways possible. Even Jack Kirby wouldn't be immune to their extraordinarily negative viewpoints.

Never explained by these lemmings is how a gal is being portrayed in a "sexist" light if she knows physical combat skills, how to use hand-held weapons, has brilliant intelligence and even knows how to do mountain climbing. All these SJWs are doing is looking for every excuse in the book, every cheap trick they can exploit to accomplish their flaccid goals. If that's what they think, they shouldn't be reading any of these productions, and I have no doubt a lot of them don't anyway.

Sometimes, it's just dumbfounding how they can even have access to a computer.

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posted by Avi Green @ 6:39 AM 1 comments

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Paul Cornell's take on Vampirella sounds pretentious

And looks like it too. Cornell and his artist gave an interview to Bleeding Cool a few weeks ago where they talk about their upcoming run on Vampirella, but from what's provided, it looks more like they're still intent on belittling a famous character co-created by a woman artist (Trina Robbins):
DAN WICKLINE: Vampirella has had a rather convoluted past, with her origin changing a few different times. You seem to touch on that in the Zero issue. Who is the Vampirella we meet in this new series and how does she relate to the various incarnations that came before?

PAUL CORNELL: She’s all of them, and that’s all she knows. It’s a mystery we set up, part and parcel of how she got into our dystopian future. I think some characters have been reimagined too many times, and I wanted to do the opposite, bring it all in. She’s a tone of voice, wry and sighing and funny and slightly Goth English, and humane, ruthless, thirsty, afraid.
First, I'm beginning to find this whole "convoluted past" claim laughable at this point. If some stories from past publication are too much to get into, just follow an example Marv Wolfman went by when he wrote the New Teen Titans and don't actually mention them; let the readers decide for themselves what counts or not. Besides, some of the stories they think are convoluted probably surfaced just 2 decades ago, and if they think they should be disregarded as poor, why not just say so?

Second, it's similarly absurd to think they have to bring everything in, if that's really what they're planning on doing. All they need to do is stick by the main characteristics that work for a heroine like Vampirella, and tell a story that's self-contained with the main goal being to entertain. That way, it's not like they're contradicting anything they assume shouldn't be, and can allow the audience to judge for themselves. What so difficult about that?
DW: So far we’ve seen the one image you did of Vampirella wearing the red dress and dripping blood to the cat. Is this the Vampirella of the new series? How do you approach redesigning a character that has been around for over four and a half decades and has such an iconic look?

JIMMY BROXTON: This is more or less how she looks, the hand drawn “bat of blood” being a late addition/revision. This came from Matt and was a brilliant move. Both he and Matt wanted the new look to look more like a real outfit, rather than a “comic book ” costume, something a real woman would actually wear, albeit a kick ass sexy vampire woman. 60s fashions were definitely directly inspirational, I was keen to keep it red, and make it sexy, the previous version is cool, but quite gender neutral, our new Vampy is definitely a gal, sexy, but chic.
And I guess the tomboyish look is something a real woman would actually take up in all instances? Oh, tell us about it. And is he saying the bikini-like outfit is "gender neutral"? If so, it's enough to fall off the chair laughing. Why, even a PC design that was used a year ago didn't look "gender neutral" so much as did look very uninspired. The artwork sample they presented doesn't look particularly appealing either. Interestingly enough, look who's editor now at Dynamite:
DW: How did you guys get involved with the project? Were you approached as a team or was one of you asked and suggested the other? How did the wooing part go? And what was it that made you say yes to the series?

PC: I’m here because Matt Idelson is one of my favourite editors, and I asked for Jimmy because I immediately saw what he could bring. Matt had the setting in mind, and I liked how different it was.

JB: What Paul said! I was asked, and jumped straight in!
Oh, the same Idelson who said he didn't want to allow Clark Kent and Lois Lane to be a couple when he was working for DC several years ago, when they first pulled their New 52 crud! Yeah, I'm sure he'll make a great addition to their staff. Some of the commentors here seem to realize something's wrong with the picture, and one said:
I'll read the first issue but no interest in a politically correct Vampirella. The writers ideas seem stupid and scared.
Yup. And another said:
Didn't they do this already before and failed horribly?
I wouldn't be shocked. Sales figures could bear out this assessment. Another said:
Haven't checked out any of the been Vampi stuff but I have read all of the Master Series and enjoyed them. I don't really dig the new costumes.
And if that's what the contributors are going to concern themselves with, no wonder they're bound to fail. Still another said:
looks like they figured out how to make people care about Vampirella less.
Mm-hmm. If this how they're going to promote the book, they're not making a very convincing case at all. This certainly isn't likely to generate huge sales in pamphlets, and if they keep this up, it'll only make things worse.

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posted by Avi Green @ 12:48 PM 1 comments

A leftist-owned comics store explains why they're not worth buying at

Comics Beat fawns over a store in the DC area called Fantom Comics that's providing "safe space" for anti-Trump protestors, in a move reminiscent of liberal-dominated universities that want to make their own campuses "safe spaces":
Last week, Fantom Comics in Washington, DC announced via Facebook that they would open their doors as a safe space and rest area for those protesting the Inauguration of President-Elect Trump on Friday, or marching in the Women’s March the following day. [...]
Oh, and that's not all. There's something pretty shady about the following statement:
They even welcome Trump supporters to check out the store during inauguration weekend, as long as they are respectful to those utilizing it as a safe rest stop from their protests.
Sounds like coded dialect, meaning "don't try to persuade anybody to change their minds." Or something like that. They proceed to interview the manager:
Edie Nugent: How does the creation of a safe haven during this years’ inauguration (and related protest march) “for anyone seeking shelter, solidarity, or just a drink of water” fit in with the mission of your store?

Jake Shapiro: Many of our close friends and family of the store are worried for their safety, not just in this upcoming inauguration weekend but for the upcoming four years in our country. We pride ourselves on our diverse community, so it behooves us to stand up for those people in a time of need. We’re trying to be as inclusive as possible, though–none of our messages are anti-anything. If a family of Trump supporters wants to shop here this weekend, they’re more than welcome, as long as they’re respectful to the folks in our space.
I can't help feel they're implying Trump supporters aren't respectable at all, while ignoring that leftists make mistakes too. Isn't that awesome; pushing liberals for sainthood.
Edie Nugent: Do you have any fears about backlash resulting from publicly providing this type of space?

Jake Shapiro: Yes, we’re definitely a little worried about backlash. Not in our direct community–DC is one of the most progressive cities in the country, and went over 90% for Clinton in the election. But tourists are visiting from all over, not to mention angry people on the internet. Of course, what happened to our friends at Comet Ping Pong is always on our mind, and we know anytime we take a stance we’re going to make ourselves a target. But that risk is worth it to us, because being a positive community space for marginalized groups is more important now than ever.
Oh, just look at that, he's implying that right-wing vandals are on the warpath! Naturally, no consideration that there's vandals on the left, not the least being the Black Lives Matter nuts he's pandering to. And how is possible that conservatives aren't marginalized in any way?
Edie Nugent: Comics and cartoons have long been intertwined with politics, whether it’s political cartoons or comic books that explore the issues of the day. In your view, why are comics and political expression such a potent combination?

Jake Shapiro: Comics are a visual medium, which gives them wide appeal. They’re no better or worse than any other medium for socio-political commentary, but unlike literature or film, comics are still fighting the stereotype of being “just for kids.”
Did it ever occur to him there's liberals out there who could be major perpetuators of the stereotype? They may be no better or worse for politics, but the problem is that superhero comics in particular are clogged today with ultra-leftist propaganda - far more than ever before - that's suffocating the entertainment value out of all they were meant to be when they first began.

At least one of the commentors, himself a store manager, spotted what was wrong with the Fantom staff's declarations, and said:
Wow. When you put it this way, it doesn’t sound like Trump supporters are very welcome at all…
Everyone is always welcome at my store. All viewpoints are welcome. Liberal and conservative. To say that Trump supporters need to be warned to be respectful is rather rude and not a very inclusive or tolerant remark to make at all. Why on earth would you want to alienate 50% of your potential customer base? Could you imagine the backlash you would be getting if you had said the opposite. You should sit back and think about that for a moment. Just some friendly advice from someone in the business for over thirty years in the most liberal state of all…
Bingo. All the store staff were doing was taking a partisan position, strongly hinting they don't like conservatives, and only see the right as troublemakers. Another guy said:
Love the whole “Trump supporters WATCH YOURSELVES” line.. When it’s just as likely the anti-Trump people will be violent.. but I guess the owner is saying that Anti-Trump people can be disrespectful and violent against the Trump supporters. and the Trump supporters just need to take it..

Sorry, this space doesn’t sound remotely safe to me. Why not instead of trying to scream that it’s a safe space and promoting violence against one side by implying that ONLY one side is capable of it when that is clearly not the case.. not just say “My store is for everyone. Period.”
That's an idea. Another idea for the moment is to simply vote with our wallets and not put any money into the pockets of a store ownership that's so cynically political. The store's ownership may want to consider that they might've alienated over half their customers already, and as I've indicated, no one should waste their time buying at their very unsafe haven.

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posted by Avi Green @ 11:56 AM 3 comments

Friday, January 20, 2017

Blastr covers Obama's roles in comics

The Blastr website's written up a fluff-coated article about the now former president's appearances in the four color panels and pages. Courtesy of a whole bunch of scriptwriters and editors who only cared because he's a leftist and represented all sorts of dreadful values that have only hurt America, yet the odd thing is that not all of them were as favorable as they could've been. They reference his appearances in the MCU, and oddly enough, it does look like his first appearances weren't flattering, although it's suggested the Chameleon was at fault:
But while the presidents may be the same, time in the Marvel Universe certainly isn't, and so Obama made his first appearance as the Marvel POTUS just a month after being elected. In Secret Invasion #8, readers saw the first reference to the new Commander-in-Chief ... and it wasn't under terribly flattering circumstances. While we didn't see his face, a president clearly meant to be Obama reacted to the massive alien invasion attempt that had just taken place by appointing Norman Osborn — the former Green Goblin — as the new head of S.H.I.E.L.D., or as Osborn would rename it, H.A.M.M.E.R.

Apparently wanting to score back some political points with his favorite superhero, his next major Marvel appearance was in Amazing Spider-Man #538. Taking place on Inauguration Day 2009 (and being published just a week before), the issue's backup story saw Obama arrive in Washington, D.C. to be sworn in ... only to be met by himself! As anyone who's ever read a Spider-Man story with a doppelganger in it can probably guess, the other Obama was none other than the Chameleon, and with a little help from the webslinger — who was in attendance as Peter Parker, sent there to take pictures of the historic event — the villain's plot was thwarted.
So let's get this straight. The ASM backup story ties in with the Secret Invasion crossover, and was conceived to provide clarification on what was really the case? If so, it'd be clear Secret Invasion was more like a repeat of Geoff Johns' monumentally bad 2002 Avengers story called Red Zone, where a US defense secretary named Dell Rusk (the same initials as Donald Rumsfeld) turned out to be the Red Skull. Making things worse, it was implied the Black Panther was guilty of making the poisonous serum the Red Skull was using in his plans. And Johns had the gall to depict the Skull claiming he "loved" America (reminds me that in his take on Hawkman, there was a scene where Shadow Thief claimed he liked capitalism. Seems like some leftist writers have quite a knack for making crooks spout rightist talking points). Presumably, the following Secret Invasion issues continued Chameleon's charade (and the writers):
Later that month, Obama decided to invite his aforementioned troubling appointee for a ride on Air Force One in order to discuss some of the more questionable allegations laid against the former supervillain. Pre-H.A.M.M.E.R., Osborn was in charge of the black-ops villain rehab team known as the Thunderbolts and had appeared to relapse into his Goblin persona on a few occasions while leading them. So when he boarded the world's most famous airplane to be questioned by the president and Doc Samson in Thunderbolts #128, there was only one course of action: use the T-bolts to fake an attack on the president by the Green Goblin and save the day! This story really made President Obama look like a bit of an idiot, and it didn't really get much better from there.
But if the Chameleon was impersonating Obama, then what transpired won't mean anything. However, if it was supposed to be the real Obama in a sci-fi world, then it's a pity this particular story had to be built on such cynicism.

Still, depending on one's POV, this could be two sides of the same coin: one the one hand, as a story stemming from the same mindset that drove the first Civil War, it goes by a liberal bent, yet at the same time, the writers like Bendis and Millar seemingly have no problem with depicting Obama incompetently, something they'd doubtless be more likely to do with a conservative president (to be sure, we haven't seen anything yet now that they'll be attacking Trump even worse). The politics of modern Marvel are further alluded to in the following:
Over the years, Obama appeared in too many Marvel comics to list, usually when big events went down, such as his cameos in Siege, Doomwar and Avengers vs. X-Men, but his most recent event appearance was one of his most baffling -- and probably his final Marvel appearance. In the first and last issues of last year's Civil War II event, a silhouetted Obama makes an appearance, the first time discussing with Colonel James Rhodes, aka War Machine, his potential future in politics. By the end of the event, however, Rhodey is dead, and so his second meeting is with Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, who he congratulates on her composure in the conflict and her use of precognitive visions in stopping crimes, despite those actions having killed Rhodey. The scene plays especially weird when considering the metaphor that Marvel said they were going for was criminal profiling, which is certainly not a position that the president has been supportive of. But it only serves to reinforce that Marvel's Obama was significantly more oblivious than ours.
Again, that is strange, isn't it? If the artists and writers of the crossover voted in 2012, I'm sure they cast votes for Obama, yet they don't have an issue with making him look like he's backing all that they despise? Very weird, yet it's not likely to get any better. The irony is that Obama was oblivious to what causes Islamic terrorism during his two terms.

The following storylines from DC were certainly tilted in Obama's favor:
Even before Barack Obama made any formal appearances in the DC Universe, he became the clear inspiration for a new character: Calvin Ellis, an alternate universe's Superman, and also the President of that universe's United States. He popped up only a couple of months after our universe's first African American president's inauguration in the pages of Final Crisis #7 and was clearly a play on not only Obama, but also his message of hope, a primary theme of Superman. [...]
Ah, now this certainly does sound favorable to Obama, just like the ASM issue over at Marvel obviously was. But if Obama was oblivious to serious issues, then what hope was there in his messages anyway? The most favorable appearance in comics, however, had to be in Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon:
Despite Obama's girth of appearances in the two most popular superhero worlds, they were actually both beaten to the punch by Image Comics co-founder Erik Larsen. Savage Dragon #137 featured a cover with the titular hero giving his endorsement of the presidential candidate in September 2008. He later featured the president in a one-page strip which had Obama thank Dragon for his support and even credited him with helping him push the vote count "over the top." Larsen featured the president on multiple covers afterward, including a variant which showed Obama knocking out Osama Bin Laden, two full years before the latter's death. Another Image founder, Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld, put Obama in Youngblood #8, which saw the president authorizing the actions of yet another shady government-sponsored super-team. He really should stop doing that.
Gee, how come they couldn't be as favorable or inspiring when it comes to right-wing presidents? Despite bin Laden's eventual erasure, nothing was actually done to confront the root causes of terrorism, and Larsen once noted that he had a negative view of Charlie Hebdo's satires of Muhammed, making it difficult to believe he's really against censorship in superhero comics. He certainly didn't seem to understand all the pertinent issues.

And look what Antarctic Press put out at one time:
[...] Antarctic Press, the guys who started it all with Obama: The Comic Book, also published a four-issue that they clearly had no other choice but to call President Evil. It featured “Ba-rot Obama” leading the country's resistance against the zombie plague while taking on undead presidents as well as conservative talk radio hosts.
Well, I think we know where they stand. We can only wonder who those zombie presidents are too, for that matter.

In the end, none of these stories featuring Obama are any good, as they all look infested with leftist politics no matter how he comes off in illustrated format, and most of them are otherwise favorable to him far more than most right-wing presidents were depicted back in the day, or Trump's been so far too. It's just an example of how escapist entertainment's gone off the rails in favor of politics over the past 2 decades.

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posted by Avi Green @ 12:57 AM 5 comments

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

IGN admits Marvel's suffered from the diversity-pandering approach

Well, sort of. The IGN website's written about how the SHIELD books are the biggest victim of Marvel's arbitrary diversity tactics, but anyone who's taken a close enough look knows it's not just Nick Fury's crowd who've taken a toll from the pretentious writing that dominates their modern output:
Marvel has quite a busy spring planned when it comes to launching new comics, one being Nick Fury, the first ongoing series to focus on elite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury, Jr. That series has a promising creative team in writer James Robinson and artist ACO. But it also faces a massive uphill battle. Five years after his debut, the younger Nick Fury still isn't the compelling character he needs to be. This is the make or break moment for Mr. Fury.
If Robinson's the assigned writer, it certainly is an uphill battle alright. After all, he's the one who concocted the overrated take on Starman in the mid-90s, and more recently turned first Green Lantern Alan Scott homosexual for no good reason, and even retconned the Invaders with an angle that was insulting to America. That's one scripter everyone would be strongly advised to avoid. His Starman series doesn't stand the test of time either.

As for the younger Nick Fury, who's of black background, is it any surprise he's not working out? He was an early example of pandering to diversity at the expense of the original cast members, and one of many contrived and forced steps Marvel took to reflect the movies at all costs, banking on the idea nobody cares about the older stories from the Silver/Bronze Age, and won't make any effort to research Stan Lee's own creations.
I've argued before about the dangers of publishers arbitrarily changing comics to bring them more in line with other media. And as far as Marvel is concerned, no franchise has suffered more from pointless corporate synergy than the S.H.I.E.L.D. franchise. I reread Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors recently, which only served to reignite my frustration over how the S.H.I.E.L.D. comics have been handled since. Hickman ended that series on a nicely open-ended note. Nick Fury finally left the life of a spymaster behind him in order to "break his girl outta jail," leaving the reformed S.H.I.E.L.D. in the hands of his protege, Daisy Johnson. It was a clear case of a torch being passed and a legacy being honored.

Sadly, Marvel's subsequent S.H.I.E.L.D. stories failed to catch that baton and run with it. Instead, Marvel began a long, ponderous process of bringing the S.H.I.E.L.D. comics more in line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Daisy was quickly ousted as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in favor of Maria Hill. Agent Coulson and his team made the jump from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And a new Nick Fury appeared to replace the old one, one who bore a much closer resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson.
And this has been the problem for well over a decade. They simply must align everything with the movie visions, yet they have no qualms with rendering the original cast members in the most awful of lights. Namely, turning the real Nick Fury into a jerk, or worse, a crook, in the crossover that saw him erase Thor's "worthiness" by whispering in his ear. And even the changes to resemble the movies are superficial at worst: there's no talented writing at hand, and the changes themselves are part & parcel of the problem.
The reasoning behind this decision, presumably, was that Marvel didn't want to confuse fans of the MCU who might gravitate towards the comics. We'll ignore the fact that Marvel's movies seem to have little impact on book sales in the first place. Why would such a superficial element make any difference? Couldn't it be argued that this new Fury would only be more confusing to MCU fans? He may look like Sam Jackson, but his role within S.H.I.E.L.D. is very different from Jackson's Fury. He's a field agent, not a director, and a relatively young one at that. He's really a completely different character in every way that matters, which makes his clunky origin story all the more perplexing. Why didn't Marvel simply port Ultimate Nick Fury over to the regular Marvel U if having an MCU-friendly Fury was so important? Why didn't they allow Marcus Johnson to be his own character rather than a pale imitation of his father?
Simple: for the same reason they didn't allow Riri Williams in Iron Man to be her own, or even the new, "totally awesome Hulk" to be his own. And even the same reason they arbitrarily came up with a Muslim Ms. Marvel while putting Carol Danvers in the role of the guy who helped her get her own superpowers in the first place, Mar-Vell of the Kree. And, the reason Jane Foster was made into a new Thor instead of the pagan deity she'd loved once. Is that so hard to understand?
Plenty of good characters have overcome bad origin stories. That has yet to happen for the new Nick Fury. He's popped up in all sorts of books since the Battle Scars days, often serving as connective tissue for Marvel's shared comic book universe in the same way Fury has for the MCU. But he rarely stands out as a very deep or memorable character. [...]
Nor will he, with the way they've politicized the whole environment in the MCU. Maybe if they rebooted him as a different character with no connections to Nick Fury and as more of a civilian businessman, they could put him to better use in other stories. But with such awful editors and publishers in charge, there's no way he'll ever be put to compelling use.

That told, let's remember that it's not just the SHIELD-related products that are in bad shape today. The whole MCU is too, thanks to all the bad steps Joe Quesada and company took ever since he got his foot in the door more than 15 years ago. So long as anybody with visions as terrible as his remains in charge, repairs will be impossible.

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posted by Avi Green @ 10:13 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Movie Pilot botches their argument for how Marvel should recover from the SJW-infected state

Movie Pilot's spoken about how Civil War 2 turned out to be a flop - much like anything else in sales receipts these days - with readers who're thankfully tired of Marvel/DC alike turning out company wide crossover after company wide crossover every year, often at least twice in one. But in stressing how they should recover, they cite some pretty weak, dishonest, and politicized material, they screwed up the real impact this could've had. In fact, at the beginning, they say:
Marvel's Civil War was a massively successful comic that inspired an even more successful movie.
Umm, did it sell in the absolute millions? Then please, kindly quit claiming the 2006 ultra-leftist intellect-insulter had stratospheric sales. Heck, if I were new to comics and found out what the crossover was like after seeing the movie, I'd feel depressed and/or embarrassed, because the scriptwriters sure weren't choosing the best source material.
Marvel's Civil War II was...not.

Actually, it was a disaster on the scale of the ending that saw Iron Man and Captain Marvel come to blows at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Instead of recapturing the original arc's bold storytelling, Marvel saw a backlash from fans and critics who felt the company was just trying to cash in on another event comic.
At least they're more accurate about this part. Worst, Marvel's hack writers were doing it for practically the same reasons they did the first: as little more than leftist propaganda with which to attack the Patriot Act. Don't be shocked if they have plans to attack any policy Donald Trump wants to draft in the coming year with yet another crossover. And the first crossover was not bold if it's only intention was to depict heroes fighting each other. It wasn't even bold if it was going to connect with dozens of other Marvel ongoing series and miniseries and crowd out stand-alone storytelling.
Civil War II needed to be a win in order to keep some momentum going forward for Marvel Comics in 2017. Sadly, Brian Michael Bendis and David Marquez failed to live up to expectations, almost solely because of the tired premise: heroes fighting heroes over a philosophical debate. (Spoilers follow!)

In this case, some of Earth's Mightiest believed it was better to stop crimes before they were committed; others believed that punishing pre-crime (to borrow a phrase from Minority Report) would be unjust. This led to various characters being on either Team Iron Man or Team Captain Marvel.

It simply wasn't a fresh enough idea to warrant an event comic of this magnitude. Also, Captain Marvel was written extremely poorly and it was hard to see where she was coming from with her acting more like a villain than the wonderful person that we know she is.
First it was Iron Man depicted more like a villain, and now it's Carol Danvers, who should've remained in the Ms. Marvel role. They're correct about heroes vs heroes being done to death. But then, it already was when the first crossover came out, so why don't they think of reevaluating that for a change?

And they botch their suggestions for how to mend their image when they start citing the Muslim Ms. Marvel as an example of "great" writing:
Comic books are finally heading back in a direction where hope and compassion take center stage. Ms. Marvel does this extremely well by balancing out Kamala's duties as a superhero and as a Muslim teenager from New Jersey. By showing her struggles to maintain normalcy with her family and keep her friendships intact, it allows us to truly care about her because everyone can relate to those situations.
Yes, everyone can relate to a religion of violence, can't they? A religion that also sanctions "honor" killings when a daughter even dares suggest she's willing to do something the parents disapprove of, like dating a boy they're against. Movie Pilot's not doing any service at all if they uphold pushing propaganda down the readers' throats. If this is what it's come down to, that's just one more reason why it's ill-advised to think hope and compassion are returning, especially when it's selective at worst. At least the website admits there's too many titles and spinoff series being published:
Do the Avengers really need two different books with two different teams? Can you tell me the difference between the All-New Avengers and the Uncanny Avengers?
Indeed, there's no need. A lesson that should've been learned after sans-adjective X-Men turned out to be less successful than claimed in 1991, with huge crates of copies stacked up in many stores. Today, at nearly 4 dollars a pamphlet issue, it's even more of a ripoff than before. They also agree that replacing established heroes deliberately with new characters of different race/sexual orientation is unnecessary and doesn't improve story quality or sales:
No offense to Riri Williams, but people read an Iron Man comic to see what crazy thing Tony Stark will do next. Riri is a cool character and she would've proved popular enough to receive her own book without Tony getting sidelined. We'll see how receptive readers are to the A.I. version of him.

Marvel's capable of this. Kate Bishop's Hawkeye and Jane Foster's Thor have been well-received by both fans and critics, and Miles Morales is a breakout star...but we still have Clint Barton, Thor Odinson and Peter Parker. So, was it really necessary to kill Bruce Banner and War Machine in Civil War II?
Absolutely not. Something's certainly wrong when they're willing to wipe out a character of black background (Jim Rhodes) just as much as a character of white (or even green) background.
One hates to keep bringing up DC, but they went back to legacy characters with DC Universe: Rebirth, and that's currently working out extremely well both critically and commercially. [...]
Umm, is it? Sales certainly don't back up their claim of commercial success, and even now, artistic results are far from magnificent.

They also cite how comics are being used to sell movie tickets (but not the other way around):
This was one of the biggest complaints that fans had for Civil War II. The integrity of the story felt sacrificed in order have more connections to the heroes' on-screen counterparts. Honestly, what were the Guardians of the Galaxy doing taking part in some war on Earth when their best stories come from these epic space operas?
Which brings us back to the plague of crossovers: how do they expect moviegoers to feel up to buying any of their products, let alone comics readers, if they charge 4 dollars? Or, why should readers be encouraged to buy movies when the crossovers are such junk? And as they mentioned, the Civil War sequel was far less successful than the first, and even that was nothing to crow over.

The website makes some good points, but dampens a lot of them thanks to their leftist politics.

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posted by Avi Green @ 1:27 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 16, 2017

A comic made for the anti-Trump crowd

Fast Co-Design reports that some New Yorker propagandists have put together a negative tabloid-style comic "for the Trump age":
As the country prepares for the inauguration, many artists are making their own preparations.

For some that means community installations; for others, large-scale performances. For Françoise Mouly, the art editor of The New Yorker, and her daughter, the writer Nadja Spiegelman, protest comes in the form of Resist!, a tabloid newspaper filled with art and comics that will be distributed in Washington D.C. and across the country during the weekend of the inauguration and the Women's March on Washington. [...]

"The intimacy of hand-drawn comics combats the alienation everyone has felt after this election," Spiegelman says. "They draw someone into a personal universe of both space and time. There’s something really intimate about that that lends itself well to telling personal stories."
Oh, tell us about it. It's been more like a case of leftards shunning the right, all because the GOP candidate won. And it's worth noting that the march they're going to distribute this to has already been panned by victims of Bill Clinton, because when did the march organizers ever consider their case? Simply put, the upcoming march is all a sham. And the tabloid's content includes:
[...] pieces of visual art that are motivated by the election, but also speak to much larger issues like civil rights, immigration, and health care. (Mouly and Spiegelman have also posted hundreds more online.)
I think we can already guess where this is going. One of the illustrations in the tabloid is about Planned Parenthood, whose main specialty besides hurting minorities is wasting the taxpayers' money. If that's who they're pandering to, it's shameful.
Despite its robust online presence, Resist! is first and foremost a print artifact—which is part of the point. Mouly was inspired by the French satire magazines , Hara-Kiri, and Charlie Hebdo; Fowler drew inspiration for Resist! from countercultural newspapers that told stories the mainstream left out.
Gee, and I thought the New Yorker considered themselves the mainstream! But if they wouldn't defend the artists who drew the Danish Mohammed cartoons, then I don't see what they're getting at. All they're doing is giving everyone an idea of what Trump-bashing is yet to come, something we could all do without.

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posted by Avi Green @ 12:24 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Disney really is no longer allowing artists to draw the "slave Leia" outfit

A few weeks ago, Bleeding Cool revealed that J. Scott Campbell was right - under Disney/Lucasfilm, Marvel's no longer accepting illustrations of Leia Organa from Star Wars in the slave outfit, no matter how bravely she fought back against Jabba the Hut. According to Frank Cho, a submitted illustration he offered was rejected:
Frank tells me he was told that Lucasfilm/Disney were no longer allowing artists to draw Princess Leia in the slave outfit. The “Slave Leia” or “Hutt Killer” portrayal of the character of Princess Leia in Return Of The Jedi has certainly been a controversial one over the years, albeit a look popular among cosplayers.
Cho also noted this on his Facebook page:
As I stated before, the original Star Wars variant cover with Slave Leia was rejected by Lucasfilm/Disney. It was all around miscommunication. I wasn't aware of the Lucasfilm/Disney edict of no more "Slave Leia", and Lucasfilm/Disney wasn't aware that I didn't know of this general order.
Good grief. Despite the fact that the late Carrie Fisher decided later on that the outfit did bear significance due to how she fought back against Jabba, choking him to death with the chains, Disney decided otherwise and insulted her memory by rejecting all to do with the outfit. Yet they would accept a Han Solo drawing by Cho.

What does this tell us? That the Disney Corp. today is a slave themselves...to the will of politically correct SJWs who likely don't even watch the Star Wars movies or buy any of the merchandise. And that's the problem with corporations today - they're jelly-spined and don't have what it takes to stand up to anybody wishing to make a mockery out of their properties.

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posted by Avi Green @ 6:45 AM 1 comments

Saturday, January 14, 2017

A manga editor was arrested for murder

Even the world of manga/anime in Japan, sadly, is not without people who've turned out to be repugnant fiends, as one of the editors of Attack on Titan turned out to be:
Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Tuesday arrested the first editor of the popular manga “Attack on Titan” in the alleged murder of his wife, 38, at the residence they share in Bunkyo Ward last year, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Jan. 10).

At around 2:50 a.m. on August 9, Park Jung-hyun, a 41-year-old vice editor for publisher Kodansha, telephoned emergency services to report that his “wife had collapsed.”

[...] An autopsy later revealed the cause of death to be suffocation due to pressure applied around the neck.

Park, who at the time lived in the residence with his wife and their four children, initially claimed that his wife “fell down the stairs.” However, he later changed his story, saying she “committed suicide by hanging herself by a handrail.”

An investigation was launched after police were unable to find sufficient evidence to back Park’s claim of suicide.
Unlike some of the recent cases in the US, where at least two creators turned out to be felons trafficking child porn and/or molestation, the Attack on Titan manga series may not be as tainted since this was only an editor who committed the violent crime, not a writer/artist. Nevertheless, it'll surely be an embarrassment for the medium as a whole, because now a career contributor to the manga industry's become a violent criminal much like O.J Simpson. I hope Park Jung-Hyun's given a severe punishment for what he did to the poor woman, and no sane person should allow him near the medium ever again.

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posted by Avi Green @ 8:33 AM 0 comments

More about the 3rd issue of Champions, Love is Love, Supergirl and even Civil War 2

Since we were previously on the topic of the recent series Marvel's publishing called Champions, Bleeding Cool's got more details, panels scanned from the issue, and the following picture that I'm posting here is just one making clear there's nothing particularly impressive about this self-defeating story of the group taking on Islamic fundamentalists oppressing women in a fictionalized regime in a story that won't even admit the villains are just following their indoctrination:
So getting help from Americans is considered a bad thing in this fictional country? Wow, some show of gratitude, I'll say. Just another clue to how self-defeating the story was. And the artwork in the panels is pretty weak too. (Side note: so Cyclops is back? Has he been exonerated of killing Prof. Xavier yet, and has the latter been resurrected? If not, then I'm not sure it'll be easy to overlook how this story pans out.)

In fact, cartoonist Bosch Fawstin said in the comments section:
I wrote this on Facebook: Three years after she debuted, Marvel's “Muslim superhero”, as part of a team, goes to Pakistan to fight “extremists” who are dismissed as “heretics” by actual heretics, and I'm supposed to be pleased with that for some reason. BS. The Muslim writer and Muslim editor of the comic book hasn't taken on the “extremists” at all in the character's main comic book. They left that to a leftist, but he only did so in a half-assed way, and mainly in order to play up the “girl power” in Pakistan, those who want an education. And one of these girls tell the “extremists” through a bullhorn: “How dare you be so frightened of young women learning.” Mohammad was frightened of that, something that the writer wouldn't dare touch. Oh, and there's no mention of Islam or Muslims or Jihadists or Sharia Law by name at all in the issue. So Marvel “took it on” in a way that they can deny ever really taking it on. In other words, if you want to see a comic book t ake on Islam and its Jihad in as thorough and honest a way as possible, there's still only my Pigman comic book for that. [link]
Simply put, if the writers/editors publishers aren't willing to take it up meat-and-potatoes style and acknowledge the koran's contents, then they haven't accomplished anything, period.

And, since we were also on DC/IDW's superficial "tribute" to the victims of the jihadist in Orlando, the AV Club's got another an article about that, and about a few other books worth pondering as well. First comes the pointless sequel to Civil War, which they come close to describing as a "so bad it's good" type of work, yet I can't help feel they still want to like it so much because of its politics:
Bad comics used to be fun. The first Civil War, 10 years in hindsight, had charm—a well-made piece of hokum that falls apart the moment one looks away. It was a fun book to flip through and pick out weird or awful or (occasionally) interesting sequences. It doesn’t hold up, not proportionate to the weight Marvel places on the fun potential of heroes splintering into violent schisms because of ideological differences. It poses a question answered by a majority of superhero stories published since roughly 1987: Who is cooler than who?

No one is cooler than anyone, Marvel. Not now. No one’s going to be cool again for a very long time.
Not when you have somebody like Joe Quesada still pulling the marionette strings. Secret Wars ruined corporate owned superhero comics for years to come, and still is, with the approach of encouraging readers to root for one hero or group at the expense of another, instead of admiring all of them equally for who and what they are, and what they stand for. Or used to.
Marvel is in sad shape. These characters have no more weight on the page anymore. It’s possible to be distracted by individual successes like Ms. Marvel or Squirrel Girl or The Ultimates. But put all these heroes on one page—including many of the company’s flagship characters, stuck in the throes of uninspired costume redesigns—and there’s no friction. These characters inhabit a trivial world. Brian Michael Bendis’ diaphanous plot falls apart the moment one looks at it. The conflicts are so ill-defined that the Beast needs to spend two pages at the end explaining the series’ themes. There are so many endings. There’s the Beast haranguing Carol about the book’s plot, a deus ex machina so random it almost achieves the audacious, a pin-up spread advertising future Marvel Comics, and a final final ending that would have read quite differently had a different candidate won in November. None of it hangs together.
Sigh. They just can't bring themselves to admit Muslim Ms. Marvel is a failure in many ways, nor that Squirrel Girl surely isn't selling as much as they'd want it to. As for an ending that might read differently, maybe so, but it wouldn't read any more appealingly, that's for sure. So let's proceed to the category about Supergirl:
One of the strengths of the lineup at DC right now is that it isn’t trying to make every book exist within the same continuity. Given that some characters can appear in five titles at the same time, with five completely different creative teams, it’s a losing battle to try to convince readers that they’re all the same exact person and they have a Santa-like ability to be everywhere at once.
Now that's a laughable argument. Both DC and Marvel were once able to tell plenty of stand-alone stories set in the same universe without contradicting continuity severely. It was through the simple conceit of keeping a lot of stories stand-alone that they were able to tell their stories as well as they did. A character with his/her own solo book didn't have to have their developments there seriously emphasized or brought fully into discussion. That's why so many older stories worked far better than today's. As for this new take on Supergirl, here's what's eyebrow raising about its approach:
[...] Unlike the Kara on TV, she doesn’t know why she was sent to Earth, never met her famous cousin, and doesn’t remember Krypton at all. She’s not sure who she is or where she belongs, and those are the kind of questions every teenager has to cope with. Her struggle is just dialed up to a much higher degree.
Even if somewhere along the way, she does begin to recollect, this still looks an awful lot like a joke. And how could she end up on Earth without any superheroes finding out? Or, why separate her from Superman just like that, and not have any heroes discover her existence? Self-containment is certainly helpful, but omitting all connections to Superman sounds awkward at best.

Now, let's turn to the Love is Love anthology, which the entertainment site, like quite a few others, won't mention is supposedly a tribute to the victims of the jihadist in Orlando last year. For starters:
...there are some powerful tearjerkers and inspirational messages for the future, but there are also some uncomfortable, tone-deaf pieces that venture into some embarrassing territory.

Patty Jenkins, director of the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, writes the introduction, and her experience exploring the life of Aileen Wuornos for her film Monster results in an introduction that is more about Wuornos and how she connects to the killer in the Pulse shooting. It’s an awkward way to begin an anthology honoring the victims, and while Jenkins is ultimately talking about empathy, that introduction should have gone to someone who would write about the victims, what Pulse meant to them, and what they meant to other people in their lives.
Reading this, I was reminded that Monster from 2003 was a potentially left-leaning type of movie (when Wuornos is convicted, she asks if they're going to terminate a rape victim, as if that clears her of the vile crimes she committed), and why do I start to wonder if Jenkins is talking liberal junk in that intro? It won't be shocking if she did, and that just demonstrates how some liberals don't want to learn from mistakes.

There's more:
...Marc Guggenheim and Brent Peeples’ two-pager with Batman investigating Pulse when it’s still filled with dead bodies is in very poor taste, with exploitative visuals and an extremely groan-worthy final line. Taran Killam is primarily known for his comedy work, and he contributes a laughably bad Deathstroke story that has the supervillain assassin dumping his arsenal of guns after hearing news of the Pulse shooting. It’s reminiscent of J. Michael Straczynski having Marvel supervillains mourning the 9/11 attacks in Amazing Spider-Man when they themselves have been responsible for similarly horrific deeds, and despite Killam’s good intentions, his concept is both ludicrous and lazy.
Now that's even more telling! The 9-11 issue in Amazing Spider-Man was one of the worst examples of leftist defeatism sinking in, and now, over 15 years later, another leftist falls back on the same garbage. And after reading the description of the Batman story, I think Guggenheim's just become a successor to Straczynski as a propagandist too. These recent books are definitely as bad as they sound, and look.

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posted by Avi Green @ 8:09 AM 1 comments

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