The Four Color Media Monitor

The Federalist reviewed Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and to nobody's shock, there's just as much stultifying leftist propaganda in this film as several other recent Marvel-based movies:

In line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) current ideological trajectory, the film reduces father figures to the status of court jesters and cuckolds while emphasizing the virtues of adultery and the political radicalization of children. Further establishing the franchise’s commitment to emasculation — hence the critical moniker “M-She-U” — Paul Rudd’s role as a father is to be the “yes man” for his teenage daughter’s Jacobin whims. Michael Douglas’ character, despite being a super genius, is depicted as a forlorn curmudgeon who accepts his wife’s adultery as merely a minor inconvenience.

But this really ought to be expected, as it has become the norm for Marvel’s parent company — Disney — to shoehorn leftist ideology into everything they produce. Disney’s obsession with inculcating its audience — which is effectively the world — with leftist ideology is why the studio’s storylines constantly revolve around political revolutions and cultural rebellions. It reinforces the priorities of the leftist managerial class that rules over us.

[...] Even without “Quantumania,” the MCU’s catalog has become filled with “burn it down” leftist apologetics. The most prominent example of this is the Disney Plus series “The Falcon and the Winter Solider,” featuring a group of anti-establishment, transnational terrorists who murder people in order to achieve social equity and free medicine. “Wandavision,” a series about an emotionally unstable witch, justifies the main character waging war against the U.S. government and holding an entire city hostage because her emotions got the best of her.

What's really offensive about WandaVision is how it draws from Brian Bendis' awful 2004 event story Avengers: Disassembled, which made Scarlet Witch out to look literally insane for the sake of reprehensible shock, and now, not only was it adapted into an overrated TV freakshow, it also saw a followup in the Doctor Strange sequel last year, yet wouldn't you know it, no leftist SJWs supposedly concerned about sexism in entertainment find it reprehensible. That just demonstrates how phony their act really is. And instead of portraying Wanda Maximoff as a woman to admire based on her abandoning her crooked father Magneto along with her twin brother Pietro, she's made out to look like a deranged creep.

Fortunately, it looks like the movie's box office prospects have sunk pretty fast, as noted by Breitbart:

More trouble on the Disney/Marvel front as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania takes a 71 percent dive in weekend two. That’s worse than Marvel’s previous stinkers, Thor: Love and Thunder, which dropped 68 percent in weekend two, and Eternals, which collapsed by 62%.

By the end of the weekend, Ant-Man will have earned another $30 million for a running total of just $165 million.

That might sound like a lot of money, and it is, but Ant-Man 3 cost $200 million to produce and somewhere around another $100 million to promote, which puts the break-even point at around $550 million worldwide. As of right now, Ant-Man 3 has earned $265 million worldwide.

Seriously, I hope this Ant-Man movie will be the last, and same goes for the recent Thor movie sequel. What do we need these movies for anyway? They don't replace the original, far better comics, and are just as dismaying as the modern, corrupted renditions that do a terrible disfavor to Stan Lee's visions.

Labels: Avengers, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, sales

Here's something appalling, but hardly shocking, from the University of Michigan, where they're spotlighting comics about "Black queer heroes":

The latest heroes to get the comic book treatment are Black queer historical icons.

Formed by University of Michigan Ross School of Business alums Nathan Alston and Daniella Gennaro, Plucky Comics is an activist-led company dedicated to protecting and reimagining Black queer history and finding ways to bring these important, undertold stories into the classroom.

[...] On a quest to bring Black queer history forward in a fun and creative way, Alston worked with the U-M Ross Impact Studio and U-M Engineering Center for Socially Engaged Design Innovation in Action to build out a few ideas.

Ultimately, a comic book company was the ideal medium to tell these stories with the artform being rooted in counterculture, and Plucky Comics was born.

“It takes a tremendous amount of creativity to tell these stories, and so many of these folks, because of the times they lived in, had to be creative about how they expressed their sexuality or their gender identity,” Alston said. “So to me, (comic book art) allows for us to honor them by showing them in this very expressive and beautiful way—sometimes in a way that they might not have been able to do when they were alive.”

This is just so cringe-inducingly embarrassing, right down the allusions to transsexuality and drag-queening. Speaking of which, considering how past Black African communities took offense at blackface performances, one must wonder why the people involved in this college-based propaganda can't comprehend that drag performance is the same thing, and demeaning to women. Of course, feminist movements of the past have some blame to shoulder for that, since they obviously never bothered to raise the issue of how drag-acting is belittling to the fairer sex, all because quite a few collaborated with LGBT movements of the past decades. That's why, while racial blackface theater performances mostly stopped in the mid-60s, gender blackface continued for a long, long time after, in a classic example of inconsistent positions on anything, and nobody on the left saw anything wrong with insulting women in the process, not even Black women. Yet that's what such an ideology does too, and now, we're seeing the sad results. Including the following regarding the comics in focus:

To spread these stories and empower future generations of students, Plucky Comics began to build a team of artists—largely from within the U-M community—to begin to tell the Black queer stories that they wished had been present for them as children.

Translation: they believe it's perfectly fine for children to be taught this kind of trash, which is humiliating to manhood, and womanhood too. What's so creative or beautiful about this? What they're doing isn't even fit to be called counterculture, and besides, there's only so much about past counterculture that would be considered taboo today by the social justice advocates who've put this new idea of theirs for PC advocacy together. This is why it'd be better not to attend universities these days, because they're more obsessed with political activism than studying science.

Labels: golden calf of LGBT, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics

Once, Marvel launched a line during 2000 called Ultimate Marvel, for at least a decade, that was supposedly a way for new readers to get into new takes on old creations, even though the content was far more questionable in taste, and certainly not kid-friendly. Now, according to Entertainment Weekly, Hickmand and Hitch are reviving the concept with a book called Ultimate Invasion:

Ultimate Marvel changed everything. Launched in 2000, the comics imprint from the major superhero publisher reimagined iconic characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men as if they had been freshly invented at the dawn of the 21st century. The goal was to energize readers who might be intimidated by decades of publication history, and it succeeded. In particular, artist Bryan Hitch's work with writer Mark Millar on The Ultimates made the Avengers cool and provided a useful blueprint for the eventual Marvel Cinematic Universe (from inventing the Chitauri aliens to drawing Nick Fury to look like Samuel L. Jackson). More than a decade later, writer Jonathan Hickman brought the Ultimate Marvel universe to an end with Secret Wars.

Oh, how fascinating. So the Marvel movies coming in later years drew "inspiration" from a line of alternate universe comics which included a nasty moment in the Ultimates where an alternate take on Hank Pym was abusing Janet Van Dyne, in a remake of a 1981 storyline that was very controversial, and did more harm than good in retrospect? Gee, that's just peachy. And it didn't "energize" readers in the long run. Lack of sales receipts only compounds the disputability. What's annoying is how they lecture us about publication history, as though trade collections weren't being developed at the time, even though over a dozen years before the Ultimate line, Marvel was already producing the Masterworks archives, and DC had similar ones coming around that time too.

Now, EW can exclusively reveal that Hickman and Hitch are teaming up for a new comic series, Ultimate Invasion, which will feature elements from the Ultimate Marvel universe. The Maker (an alternate version of Reed Richards) and Miles Morales (perhaps Ultimate Marvel's most important original character, though he wasn't created by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli until 2011) are both set to play major roles in the story.

And the reason Morales is considered "important", and supposedly original, is because he was specially created for social justice pandering, even though it's painfully obvious some liberals seemed to think it's important for virtually every racial background to be put into the Spidey costume, which only amounts in the end to caring about the costume instead of the character. This is the sad and laughable direction we've been going in for a long time, and if they believe this literally makes him more important in every way than Peter Parker, rather than story merit, that only confirms what else is wrong here.

"I think it's fair to say that both Bryan and I have already put in our time doing Ultimate books, so when Marvel laid this project in front of us, we both knew there needed to be a good reason to revisit the idea of 'Ultimate Comics' beyond telling a cool story or just getting to work together, which is something we've been trying to do for years," Hickman tells EW. "So with that in mind, it couldn't be replicating or revisiting what Bryan did in the original Ultimates — creating a streamlined, modernized version that would eventually become the spine of the MCU — and it certainly couldn't be what I did, which was a final chapter of a pre-existing universe."

For his part, Hitch says, "It's been more than 20 years since I started work on The Ultimates, a project that would have a big impact on my own career and beyond, so when Marvel came to me with the idea of revisiting the Ultimate Universe with the man who so brilliantly and spectacularly destroyed the last one, I was both feet in! Jonathan is a terrific writer of big, sprawling epics and we've talked about working together more than once so for this new Ultimate Universe adventure to unite us is very exciting. I get to bring two decades of new experience as an artist and storyteller to this. It's new, different and familiar. It's big budget, high-concept, widescreen storytelling. I feel right at home."

The Ultimate line may not have long-range value, but what's so great about destroying it, rather than ending it quietly? Another serious error mainstream writers are making - they can't do this stuff without resorting to shock value.

And when Hitch speaks of storytelling in a way that alludes to blockbuster moviemaking, that contradicts what Hickman's allegedly arguing, which is supposedly about the need for merit, but in the end, even his statement is hazy at best, and doesn't make a clear case for merit's need. What they say reminds me of author Sean Howe's commentaries of the past decade (which have obviously been ignored by the mainstream ever since), when he argued that making comics resemble movies is a recipe for failure. One more reason why anybody understanding what went wrong with comicdom since should avoid both the old and new Ultimate stories. Whatever was so great about the original Ultimate line I'll never figure out.

Labels: marvel comics, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda

Yahoo Entertainment interviewed Mark Steven Johnson, the director who helmed the Daredevil movie starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner from 2003, and what he had to say about its production those 2 decades ago, a number of years before Marvel was bought out by Disney. And they remind us:

Offscreen, of course, Daredevil inspired a real-life love story. Affleck and Garner were both in high-profile relationships when they played the doomed superhero couple — the Good Will Hunting Oscar winner was dating Jennifer Lopez, while the Alias star was married to Scott Foley — but started dating a year after the film's release and walked down the aisle in July 2005. They separated a decade later in 2015 and share three children; in 2021, Affleck reconnected with Lopez and they were married last summer.

Yes, and this was several years before Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively hooked up, the only good thing to come out of the aforementioned Green Lantern movie. But back to the Hornhead movie, here's some other stuff to consider:

Johnson based much of Daredevil's love story on a classic Marvel Comics storyline penned by celebrated writer and artist, Frank Miller. And just like the comics, their romance ends in Elektra's (temporary) death at the hands of ace assassin, Bullseye, played by Colin Farrell in one of the Irish actor's looniest performances. "That's a scene I'm particularly proud of," Johnson says now. "It's really panel-for-panel out of Frank Miller's comic: Bullseye saying, 'You're good, but I'm magic,' and slashing Elektra's throat with a playing card, followed by her crawling on her hands and knees with blood coming out."

In fact, there was a little too much blood for 20th Century Fox, the studio that released Daredevil and held onto the rights until 2013 when they reverted back to Marvel Studios. "They were like, 'It's pretty gruesome!' Johnson says, laughing. "I do remember getting some blowback on that, because her death was quite graphic." Some of the bloodier moments from Elektra's death scene were restored for Johnson's director's cut, which was released on home video in 2004 and remains his preferred version.

Of course, they don't mention Miller may not be as celebrated today as he once was, based on his onetime turn to more official belief in conservative-style patriotism in the late 2000s, and his Holy Terror graphic novel. That he regrettably reverted back to a leftist joke didn't change the mind of every leftist who may have rejected him as a result.

But it's interesting to read how 20th Fox, like several other studios who've adapted Marvel comics since, decided to tone down the violence level to PG-13 at best, with Blade one of the very few adaptations to receive an R-rating. Though toning down violence is still nothing compared to the much more concerning toning down of sex, if modern movies employ the concept at all. Don't be shocked if, even under a studio other than Disney, the outfit worn by Garner in the 2003 movie wouldn't be considered today. Also, I don't think the bloodletting is a laughing matter, as Johnson's making it out to be. One must wonder if, on the other hand, he'd laugh if they found Garner's outfit "too sexy". And, would he have the guts to defend it?

"It's definitely a more complete version," he says of that cut, which includes an entire storyline that was dropped from the theatrical version featuring the late rapper Coolio. "Looking back on it, one of the mistakes I made with the film was wanting to put everything in! I wanted to do Daredevil's origin story, and I wanted to do the Elektra Saga and I wanted to introduce Bullseye and Foggy. I wanted everything to be in there, but the film could only support so much. And then when you're told to cut a half-hour out and make it more of a love story, things star to feel rushed and not quite right. It's a fan thing: when you love something so much, you want to tell it all."

That reminds me of the awful Geoff Johns, who, as a "supervisor" on the DC adaptations, certainly came close to doing just that, sticking in as many allusions to comics stories as possible (and lest we forget, one of the most ill-advised ideas of the 90s, what began as the Parallax identity for GL). Indeed, it's not a good idea to stuff in as much as you can in such a hurry, mainly because a movie can only go so long, and the editor may not be able to keep everything intact. But if he's implying something's wrong with a love story, I'm decidedly not on board with that part, based on the sad PC situation we're faced with today in the entertainment world.

You had been wanting to make a Daredevil since the late ’90s, when comic book movies were essentially dead after failures like Batman & Robin and Spawn.

Yeah, it was such a different world then. It's funny, we were developing Daredevil before the first Spider-Man came out and I remember people saying to me: "I don't think that movie's gonna work." I was like, "Why? Spider-Man is one of the greatest characters." And they said: "Well, you can't see his face!" [Laughs] I remember telling people I was going to do Daredevil and they would say to me: "You mean Evel Knievel?" I'd explain, "No, he's a blind lawyer who has superpowers and heightened senses and he puts on a devil costume to fight crime." And they'd be like: "Oh, so it's a comedy?" Nobody knew who the character was then! The Marvel catalogue was so deep. And now everybody knows all the characters. It's pretty amazing how much has changed in 20 years.

Wow, imagine that. The original Daredevil volume ran during 1964-98, with several related miniseries and specials along the way, yet compared to Batman, nobody knew squat about Hornhead. Unless you consider filmmaker Kevin Smith, even though he didn't do favors for any comics, based on his overbearing writing style. Speaking of which, he comes up in the discussion too:

How involved was Marvel behind the scenes?

Certainly, Avi Arad — who was the head of Marvel back then — was all over the movie. And [current Marvel Studios head] Kevin Feige was a vice president then, and we spoke the same language. We were the nerds who grew up with the comics: the True Believers. Kevin was always brilliant, and you could tell that he was going to be someone you could trust and go to with questions. He was great back then, and he's great now. I also met with [former Marvel Comics boss] Joe Quesada because his Daredevil run with Kevin Smith influenced my take. The first scene of the movie where he's draped over the cross beaten and bloodied was from their comics.

Hmm, no wonder I want nothing to do with this movie today. When Johnson states he drew "inspiration" from overrated hacks like Quesada and Smith, it practically conflicts with the notion he was building off of Miller's runs during 1979-87, and it suggests Smith himself wrote his DD run for the Marvel Knights imprint just to produce something later filmmakers like himself could build on. Either way, it does confirm what went wrong when Johnson says he wanted to put everything in - he actually believed the stories from the Knights imprint had long range value. Nope, they don't.

Jennifer Garner was on Alias at the time, so very much in the pop culture zeitgeist from that show. Did you audition any Greek actresses since Elektra is Greek in the comics?

That was another big casting call, and we met with a lot of people. But once we met Jen, we were like, "That's it." Even though she wasn't Greek, she's such a fantastic actress and so good at the physical stuff, we knew she'd do a terrific job.

Notice how we're focusing here on a time when "cultural appropriation" wasn't turned into a deliberate accusation by SJWs who believe somebody who's not of a certain racial/ethnic background shouldn't be cast in specific roles where the character is of such a background, and when being white wasn't subject to villification. Of course, this is a topic highlighting a white girl of English descent playing a white girl of Greek descent, and not a Latin American character who could be of mixed Euro-Indian descent. In cases like those, the PC crowd on the left is more likely to object to a plain white gal being cast. Yet there is another issue involving race-swapping that comes up here:

You cast the late Michael Clarke Duncan as the movie's other villain, the Kingpin, who has traditionally been depicted as white in the comics. That kind of color blind casting is more common now, but ahead of the curve then. Did you get any blowback from comic fans?

Oh yeah, I got a lot of blowback. It's the strangest Catch-22, because you want to have opportunities for everybody. You say, "I'm not going to pay attention to race: I'm just going to cast the right person for the role." But then you get killed for that [from some fans] who say: "The Kingpin should be white" or "He's not my Kingpin" and all that kind of stuff. So I definitely got heat on that, but I don't regret the decision at all. Michael was fantastic. It's hard to find a guy who is that big and also that formidable, and Michael was definitely that guy. God bless him.

Well not to sound too PC myself, but seriously, one could wonder why a Black guy has to be cast in the villain's role, rather than one of the heroic roles in this movie? Actually, that's just what happened in last year's The Batman with Robert Pattinson, recalling characters like James Gordon are played by African-American performers, and Zoe Kravitz, who's got black heritage, plays classic anti-heroine Catwoman. In fairness, Johnson may have cast Duncan for his acting talent, but today that's far from the case, what with all the multiple examples of POC being hired for roles that were originally white.

Were you sorry that casting tradition didn't continue with Netflix's Daredevil series that's now coming to Disney+?

Not at all. I think Vincent D'Onofrio is wonderful as the Kingpin. It's all about finding the right actor for the character, you know? Vincent is a great Kingpin and Michael was a great Kingpin. And the show is terrific. It's fun, because everybody gets to have their imprint on it: You don't own the character, you just get to be the steward for a short time and then pass it on for someone else to do something with it. That's why it was so fun to see all the different Spider-Men come together in the last Spider-Man movie. Seeing all those different versions from different decades and different filmmakers coming together was such an exciting moment.

In hindsight, it's surprising the TV program wasn't as forced as some of the movies have been in terms of casting. But despite what Johnson told them, diversity checkbox casting has become an all too common staple these days at the expense of merit in writing, and acting. One of the reasons why I don't see what's so great about Into the Spider-Verse, as it's only one of these modern excuses for "inclusivity" as though it had never been there in the first place.

Garner eventually starred in an Elektra spin-off, but was there ever a serious chance at a Daredevil sequel?

I think the plan was that they would make an Elektra movie and then in success do another Daredevil. I didn't work on the Elektra movie at all, but that one didn't work out and then everything kind of went away, unfortunately.

While the DD movie may have made at least $100 million, even then, it was getting to the point where such a sum still wasn't enough to fully satisfy studios (unless maybe they go communist in a time when political propaganda's become more common, sadly). The Elektra movie fared less well, and who would've thought it could affect the DD movie preceding it.

Kevin Smith has a cameo as a morgue attendant named Jack Kirby after the famous Marvel artist. If you had gotten to make more films, would he have become Daredevil's nemesis Jester? That seems like the right villain for him.

[Laughs] I'd put Kevin in anything. He's a lovely man. Kevin put me in his movie once, too. In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, there's a scene where he and Jason Mewes are running through a studio backlot, and there's a Daredevil movie being made. If you look for a second, I'm the director of that Daredevil movie! So we traded parts.

It's honestly disgraceful Smith played a character bearing the name of the guy who co-created Capt. America with Joe Simon. What did Smith do that was good for comicdom, anyway? All he did was precipitate harm to classic creations, with the slaying of Karen Page in issue 5 of the Knights imprint, at the hands of - surprise, surprise - Bullseye (and Mysterio had a role in the whole plot too). If that's all he could cast Page in a story for, then it only amounts to crude shock value.

The 2003 DD movie certainly won't become a classic anytime soon, compared to some other, simpler movies of the past, whatever their genres, and some of the filmmaking choices at the time only compound the observation.

Labels: Daredevil, golden calf of death, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, women of marvel

Digital Trends published a list of several superhero movies where they consider the CGI effects perfectly dreadful, and not too difficult to see through their obviousness of being "unreal". For example, last year's Thor movie:

Director Taika Waititi’s second Thor film has become a punching bag for disgruntled fans since its 2022 release. One thing they seemed to have the most ire for is the way young Axl appeared as a floating head while magically talking to Thor.

Axl clearly looks like he was cut and pasted onto the screen, and when Marvel Studios tried to touch up the effect for the Disney+ release, it somehow made it look even worse. This is one of the many instances in the MCU that proves the studio should ease up on its VFX artists and, perhaps, CGI in general.

Some could argue you can't be surprised if a film already suffering from too much wokeness could end up having such bad FX to boot. Perhaps because too much attention was given to applying political correctness to the screenplay than to whether they were using the best possible CGI technology available.

Another example from over a decade ago is Ryan Reynolds' Green Lantern movie:

In this infamous comic book film, Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern suit is supposed to be made of his Power Ring’s energy. This idea is great in theory, but it flopped in its execution. Ryan Reynolds’s bright-green suit doesn’t blend well with his actual body, and it looks even worse when he has a mask brushed onto his face.

I remember what that looked like. The look of the "costume", with lines like ripple-effects, was most obscenely ugly. It gave special effects a bad name, though what was really angering was casting what was originally an "identity" given to Hal during Zero Hour as the main villain in the screenplay: Parallax. All because they presumably didn't want to make it look obvious they were going to spotlight a more ideal adversary like Sinestro. One must wonder what's so wrong with using villains like Evil Star, or even Goldface for a film like this.

One more given example to highlight here is the X-Men prequel for Wolverine:

There were many things wrong with this X-Men prequel film, and one of the biggest problems was with Wolverine’s computer-generated claws. While actor Hugh Jackman was given prosthetic claws in his first three films in the X-Men franchise, the filmmakers behind his origin movie decided to go digital, giving him razors that are completely unreal — and not in a good way.

Much like a certain co-star’s Green Lantern suit, Wolverine’s claws don’t mesh well with his actual body, and it’s clear that these shiny blades were pasted onto his hands in postproduction.

To be honest, I don't think I'd find prosthetic claws appealing at this point either, recalling an armor suit worn by Gal Gadot in the 2nd Wonder Woman movie looked like a dull combo of metal, plastic, and paint. Sometimes, I wonder if even Star Trek impresses as much as it did in my youth anymore. Okay, what was usually most impressive was if the stories could make you think, like if they did metaphors for the Cold War. But in today's PC-plagued environment, nobody wants to do that anymore, because it's otherwise taboo among leftists to offend communists.

While the special effects examples given by the article are certainly dismaying, I still grew tired of live action science fiction blockbusters years ago, after seeing the Mummy remake from 1999 starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, and the Matrix movies from those times were also decidedly insufferable. So it's hard to care about franchises that are now laced with considerable wokeness at the expense of thoughtful storytelling regardless of the FX quality in the finished products. So many millions of dollars wasted by Hollywood over such overrated junk.

Labels: dc comics, Green Lantern, history, indie publishers, marvel comics, politics, technology, Thor, X-Men

Event Hubs has news of yet another crossover project in comicdom, but with some very questionable writers involved, and it's coming from IDW:

The cast of Street Fighter has seen cameos in so many other video games and media over the years, with major collaborations happening with the likes of Fornite, SNK through the King of Fighters Allstar mobile game, and even a trek into Monster Hunter. In similar fashion, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have also made numerous appearances in outside media themselves, teaming up with the Ghostbusters, Batman, and most importantly to us, making a playable appearance in NetherRealm Studios' Injustice 2 back in 2018.

At this point, I'm unsure which of these franchises has seen more crossovers, but the fates are bringing Street Fighter and the TMNT together (surprisingly not for the first time) for a brand new, upcoming comic book series. Comic book publisher IDW has announced a fresh miniseries entitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter in which iconic characters like Chun-Li, Ryu, Guile, Leonardo, Raphael, and more will be gearing up to lock horns.

Gizmodo was given a first look at the upcoming series, which will be penned by Paul Allor, have art by Ariel Medel, and colors by Sarah Myer. The first issue in the five-issues miniseries is expected to drop this May, and in this initial preview we get to see the cover art for issue #1, as well as a handful of inked pages.

I seem to recall assigned scriptwriter Allor has a history of political statements, explaining why it's hard to feel enthusiastic about this new licensed merchandise, when it could end up becoming another casualty of political correctness, and there's no telling if Allor's ceased his previous errors. Let's also recall TMNT fell victim to PC when a masculine-looking "woman" was introduced, and turned into a turtle herself. With that kind of wokeness affecting the franchise, who knows if they'll refrain this time?

Since we're on the topic of SF, Noisy Pixel announced there's a prequel comic for the 6th game being prepared by Udon, which has been the main licensee for adapting the famous video game series to comics for many years. Let's hope they, by contrast, avoid any PC mentality, though at the same time, let's also recall Capcom may have sold out to that very problem. Exactly why it's vital to be cautiously optimistic.

Labels: indie publishers, licensed products, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, technology

Scripps News interviewed Joel Christian Gill, a cartoonist who's researched Black history in comicdom as a medium, and has written a few books about it:

Black history in comic books is so much more than the modern-day success of "Black Panther."

In 1942, during the Golden Age of comics, cartoonist Jay Jackson created the character of Speed Jaxon to advocate for inclusion and equality. Five years later, the publisher All-Negro Comics debuted its first and only issue illustrated and written solely by Black artists.

Decades later, a group of Black comic book veterans started Milestone Media, introducing readers to superheroes like Static Shock, Icon, Rocket and Hardware.

Well see, there have been examples, classic and recent, of Black artists and characters they've created, in history. Something the most stidently PC crowd surely still refuses to acknowledge. And if Jackson created his character inclusion and equality, it was a reflection of a time where it mattered. Today, whenever the SJWs in charge of the mainstream do it, it's only for the sake of PC quotas and checking boxes according to superficial beliefs and ideological pandering, not because they believe in merit to make the product worth reading.

Gill's work now also includes an exhibit on the history and power of comics as a "medium, not a genre" at Boston University.

It includes decades of work from Black artists, with a statement from comic book publisher and DC Comics veteran Joseph Ilidge that reads: "Every comic book we finish and hurl into the world is a culmination of our hope."

Considering what an ideologue Ilidge is, I'm honestly disappointed he gets citation here. What good does it do to highlight somebody who goes by laughable leftist beliefs?

Today, Gill says he wants to use his platform to create more space in the comic book industry for marginalized voices and, ultimately, help more readers feel seen.

That's completely fine, but I hope he doesn't buy into the narrative of doing it all at the expense of entertainment value, and doesn't think it's mandatory to check diversity boxes. That's something this article, unsurprisingly, won't raise clearly, yet it's become the norm to be that way today.

Labels: animation, exhibitions, history, msm propaganda, politics

About a month earlier, I'd written about a PC project titled White Savior, by artist/writer Eric Nguyen. Now, the Valdosta Daily Times has - surprise, surprise - served an apologist for this very comic in their pages:

From Tarzan stories to “Avatar,” novels, movies and comic books are filled with the “white savior” trope.

You know the story: A white Westerner is the hero in a story set in a non-white land, where the white Westerner rescues the non-white people.

Eric Nguyen turns that idea on its head in the comic book spoof “White Savior.”

“In this case, the ‘outsider destined to save everyone’ is actually an idiot and the real hero is an Asian American teacher who time travels to feudal Japan and has to convince everyone not to follow the ‘white savior,’” Nguyen said.

“The comic is all about showcasing representation and diversity, and is being published by Dark Horse (‘Hellboy,’ ‘Umbrella Academy,’ first look with Netflix).

Anything with Netflix involved is surely a recipe for disaster. That aside, Nguyen's confirmed what's wrong with the marketing. It's all about political correctness, not about entertainment value. Worst:

The “white savior” is a drunken lout, whose plan to save the relatively peaceful people of Inoki, is to warn the brutal enemy that the Inoki are coming and will attack them in an uphill battle.

Todd, who has fallen through time and space to land in feudal Japan, knows the doomed ending to this attack.

It is a story he’s often heard from his grandfather.

The Inoki people consider Todd an idiot for warning them that listening to the Westerner will mean their destruction.

[...] Nguyen blasts the “white savior” trope out of the water with satire. He uses humor to scuttle a serious issue with a story that so far does not take itself too seriously. Not an easy feat but one Nguyen handles with grace and excellent comedic timing.

Seriously, what's so amusing about a story where a drunkard ends up telling the vile enemies the goodies are going to attack? This doesn't sound very funny at all. It sounds sick. Shame on the columnist for rushing to gushing over this PC project. What's really insulting is how this is considered a genuine substitute for a story where a POC could be cast as the savior of a peaceful community, and emerge heroic and admired. Instead, they make it more about an incompetent bungler whom a time-traveler's trying to warn about than something that could inspire.

In addition to the above, the same paper also took a weak view of a comic based on Hanna-Barbera's Space Ghost originally produced in the late 1960s. They say:

Younger generations have no idea who or what a Space Ghost is.

Of course not. That's because these antiquities may no longer be broadcast in wide circulation, available in video archives, or because nobody encourages younger generations to check them out and see if they consider them decent escapist fare. But they definitely shouldn't be introduced to Space Ghost through the following:

In 2016, DC Comics reintroduced “Space Ghost” to a new generation and older fans in a miniseries that shucked off both the talk show parody and the Saturday morning cartoon vibes.

The “Space Ghost” miniseries is an origin story – how a law-enforcement officer became the masked hero Space Ghost. Also, it explains how he adopted the twins Jan and Jace, who accompanied him in the Saturday morning adventures. It also introduces bad guys like Zorak.

This Space Ghost is fueled by revenge, a need to avenge the murder of his pregnant wife. Something that definitely was not part of his cartoon adventures.

But definitely not original either. And definitely abhorrent as a premise. Do we really need to hear this kind of setup again? How many times the murdered-while-pregnant premise been regurgitated, I can't be sure, but it's by far one of the sickest of its kind. And we don't need to hear of it anymore. Interestingly enough, it's told that:

DC knew it had an uphill battle finding its audience with “Space Ghost.” It opens the book with a full page titled “Who is Space Ghost?”

Indeed, it's steeply uphill. I wouldn't buy it, and neither should anybody else.

But DC’s reverential revival didn’t go far.

Other than the miniseries, Space Ghost teamed with Green Lantern for a storyline. and then he appears to have become a ghost once again.

With that kind of premise in the comic adaptation, no wonder. It perpetuates the darkness-laced directions that became a sad staple of modern showbiz, and with the way DC, along with Marvel, have been run in the past 2 decades, it doesn't take much to realize this is one of their most cynical offerings, doing a terrible disservice to the original cartoon, and not recommended to anybody who finds the scorched-earth landscape passing for entertainment today alienating.

Labels: animation, dc comics, golden calf of death, indie publishers, licensed products, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence

Looks like the latest Marvel movie is considered just as much an artistic dud as the last few (as of now, less than 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), and in this NBC-KGET review, what they tell about a certain supervillain originally introduced in the Avengers during the Silver Age, is so head-shaking:

If you missed the second “Ant-Man” movie (the only good one of the three), the Quantum Realm is a world that is even smaller than microscopic. It is the dangerous world where Janet spent three decades.

Faster than you can say “It’s clobberin’ time,” the family members are pulled into the tiny world through Cassie’s experiment. They find a world that has been savaged by a self-appointed ruler known as Kang the Conqueror (Majors). It seems Kang and Janet have a history that she never talked about.

The big threat is Kang needs Janet to help him escape the tiny world so that he can go back to conquering universes. She wants no part of it.

So in the context of this "Quantumania", Kang's been confined to a microverse (and Janet spent time there)? Under a better writer in comicdom, Kang would've been able to master an escape himself, something Dr. Doom could be seen doing too, as he eventually escaped the confines of a miniature body he got stuck in during the early 1980s in Fantastic Four, when John Byrne was the main writer. Putting a villain of Kang's stature in a micro-world is supremely silly, when there's surely other characters from Marvel lore that could've made far better choices for the specific premise of this movie.

And since this was the subject here, the Marvel studio's pretentious manager, Kevin Feige, was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly, and here's his justification for the setup:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's start with Ant-Man. Why was Quantumania the right film to kick off Phase 5 and introduce Kang the Conqueror?

KEVIN FEIGE: We wanted to kick off Phase 5 with a team of heroes that you already know. We knew that if we were going to do another Ant-Man film, it was always the idea to spend the majority of time in the Quantum Realm, this place you've heard about in various movies and seen glimpses of. We wanted to actually explore it. When we were making the earlier films, we saw the visuals of the Quantum Realm, like, "See that back there? That's a city. See that over there? That's a whole civilization." We were hoping that one day we could explore more of it.

For years, we've always had the inkling that Kang would be an amazing follow-up to Thanos. He's got that equal stature in the comics, but he's a completely different villain. Mainly, that's because he's multiple villains. He's so unique from Thanos, which we really liked.

This is almost beginning to sound, in reverse, like the way Warner Brothers prepared the screenplay for the abortive Green Lantern movie, where Parallax, the entity originally represented by Hal Jordan himself, would be the main villain, rather than Sinestro, all because they didn't want to make it obvious who the adversary would be for the film. But that, in its own way, only resulted in a movie both underwhelming, whereas to introduce Kang in a microverse rather than as a time-traveling villain making a first-time invasion in the Avengers proper is an equally underwhelming setup. Why, now that I think of it, this reminds me, IIRC, that when the first 2 Fantastic Four movies were produced in the mid-2000s, Dr. Doom was depicted as a crooked businessman, rather than the self-appointed monarch of Latveria. No doubt, because PC dictates they can't offer up even that much of a premise in which a despot from a foreign country serves as an adversary. And did Rise of the Silver Surfer lead to a stand-alone movie franchise? Nope. If multiples is the excuse for plunking Kang into a microverse, it's a very lazy one.

And then, Feige makes everything worse by gushing over modern Marvel's Islamic propaganda tool, Kamala Khan, in the Capt. Marvel sequel, simply titled "The Marvels":

Phase 4 was a transitional era. Several of your original cast members left after Endgame, and you introduced a whole new group of heroes. You also started to embrace television, launching multiple shows on Disney+. What were some of the learnings or takeaways from some of those projects?

I hope we learn something on every project. I was very pleased with everything that we did. Kamala Khan, for instance, is a great new character in the pantheon. I'm very proud of the Ms. Marvel show. I also know — and this is a spoiler — she essentially steals The Marvels, which is coming out [July 28]. It makes me excited that people will, I hope, see that movie and then go back and revisit those shows on Disney+. The fun thing about streaming is they are there forever, and people can keep re-exploring them. Moon Knight, same thing. I think there's a future for that character as we move forward.

This is bound to be very deliberate, based on how the character was developed to represent Islamic propaganda nearly a decade ago, much like the Simon Baz character in DC's Green Lantern franchise. Judging from the recent box office and TV ratings for these productions, I'm not sure there's much of a future for any of them. And if the Marvel/DC franchises eventually peter out, it'll be for the best. This was already some of the most overrated tripe to begin with, and it's taken away funding from smaller projects that could've provided more to think about, including Coppola and Scorsese's movies.

Labels: Avengers, dreadful writers, islam and jihad, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics

Yonhap News Agency tells of a sport manga from Japan that's made waves on the mainland in Korea, along with a film adaptation:

The Japanese basketball comic book series "Slam Dunk" has sold over 1 million copies in South Korea on the back of the popularity of its animated film adaptation, its local publisher said Tuesday.

The repackaged version of the book series by Takehiko Inoue has seen a resurgence in sales since Jan. 4, when the animated film "The First Slam Dunk" hit local screens.

Daiwon C.I., its publishing company, anticipated robust sales in the short term due to strong demand from fans. [...]

The recent success of the comic series can be attributed to the popularity of the animated film, which has attracted both older and younger audiences with its captivating story of an undefeated spirit and nostalgia for the 1990s.

When it comes to the manga, it's certainly telling it sold more than a million, which is far more than can be said for a considerable supply of USA comics today. Again, here's an example of foreign comics proving more successful than USA comics.

Labels: Europe and Asia, history, manga and anime, sales

The Escapist announced Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson is returning after many years with a graphic novel that's written for adults, and, wouldn't you know it, the tale is dark:

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson is returning to the writing world in 2023 with an adult illustrated fable titled The Mysteries. Set for release on October 10, 2023, product listings for the fable describe it as a story “about what lies beyond human understanding.” It’s enough to send chills down your spine, and Watterson collaborated with caricaturist John Kascht to create an especially creepy package. [...]

Watterson has largely been absent from the writing world since retiring after his famous comic strip series came to an end. The Mysteries may not offer the same level of comedy as Calvin and Hobbes, but with Watterson and Kascht at the helm, we’re sure to be in for a dark treat later this year.

Seriously, I think it's a shame a guy who'd once been in the business of making people laugh with his 1985-96 comic strip about a kid and his toy tiger would now turn to something grisly, when it's practically become a cliche in the past decade. The whole emphasis has practially a demonstration of failure. One can only wonder what Watterson would say in defense of his new direction in interviews, which he'll presumably offer soon. When a veteran who'd once specialized in humor turns to this kind of darkness, it's more a disappointment than a pleasure, because it strongly suggests abandonment of his previous vision as though it were never a good one to begin with.

Labels: comic strips, history, msm propaganda

9-News NBC interviewed R. Alan Brooks, a comics creator in Denver who's now developing some of his own stories, and had what to say about building a career in the medium:

If you ask comic book creator R. Alan Brooks, it's never too late to achieve your dream. Brooks is an accomplished and award-winning author, professor and artist living in Denver, and he's doing just that.

Which means that, even if you're over 50, you can still have potential to deliver. An excellent message indeed.

Brooks is living out a dream that he says didn't ever seem realistic. "A lot of my teachers when I was a kid were condescending about me liking comic books," he said.

That doesn't mean, however, that things have changed for the better, as I've noted before. A lot of leftists today view the medium as acceptable only in the sense it can serve as a tool for producing extreme propaganda more hurtful than helpful to society. And while the guy's got some important points to make, the article's oblivious to the present reality.

Brooks said the lesson for the naysayers: there is more to comic books than meets the eye. They play an important role in bringing social issues into the spotlight, like many other art forms in society.

"A big influence for me is the original Twilight Zone. What people don't know, the guy who created it, was not a fan of fantasy or sci-fi. He wrote about racism, sexism, war, and he would get censored," Brooks explained.

"X-Men, during the 80s especially, drew really strongly off the civil rights struggle."

Brooks didn't build this dream alone. He credits his father for helping him find love in a medium that was otherwise shunned by mainstream culture when he was a child.

Yet today, censorship's made comebacks, and it's hard to say today's educators are honoring the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s anymore, seeing how Minnesota's public school system excised important figures like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks from their curriculum. And this was less than a decade after the latter passed away. If you're looking for a story with valid social issues, you definitely won't find it in mainstream today. And again, mainstream culture, however you define it, doesn't really embrace comicdom today anymore than it did yesterday.

Mr. Brooks certainly deserves appreciation and congratulations for some of his points. But it's a terrible shame nobody's willing to make clear that the present is no better for comicdom than the past was, or that the MSM won't acknowledge it.

Labels: censorship issues, history, indie publishers, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, museums, politics

Brave Words gives news of a music band named Within Temptation that's based on one of their albums. But if I notice correctly, there's a worrisome type of writer attached to the project:

Set in the distant future, an endless battle rages between two species - an advanced but inherently humanoid species ruled by a techno-organic matriarch on one side, and a cruel race of alien artificial intelligences on the other. Multiple stories collide to paint a sweeping portrait of the matriarch's life and her struggle to balance what she was created to be with the impossible forces that shape her.

In order to bring this story to the comic book page, the band have teamed up with acclaimed YA author Marieke Nijkamp and heavy metal artist Montos to flesh out their dystopian world.

Based on what I've known about Young Adult authors' leftist conduct in the past decade, don't be surprised if this builds on woke ingredients, and come to think of it, don't be surprised if the band themselves believe in PC. If that ends up becoming the result, what good are these adaptations of music albums, any more than movies?

Labels: indie publishers, msm propaganda, politics

The dreadful Gizmodo's talking about comic movies again, claiming fanservice has become the worst part of the franchises, but curiously, no lamentations about how a certain ideologue and felon of an actor is tarnishing one such movie:

It’s a thought that sprang to mind while watching the first real trailer for The Flash that dropped during the Super Bowl. Seeing Michael Keaton come back as Batman feels like it should have weight beyond having one of the most well-liked cinematic Batmen get back into the suit for a movie that won’t be canceled at the last minute. The Flash was conceived years before 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, and is based on the popular Flashpoint 2011 comic event by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert. But it wouldn’t be wrong to say that DC’s movie is trying to ride the wave that the live-action Spidey crossover flick turned into a billion-dollar success. The multiverse movie push is something that was begun by Spider-Man and it’s clear that it won’t be going away anytime soon, so WB getting in on that even if only one movie feels done partially out of obligation.

Having DCEU alums Ben Affleck and Michael Shannon on hand only further highlights how weird it is that The Flash movie exists. We’ve known for years that Affleck is done with playing Batman, and Shannon’s General Zod is memorable, but was also treated very weirdly by the DCEU proper. The Flash is trying to deliver fan service of some kind, but it’s hard to say what exactly that is. The fractured nature of the last decade of DC movies work against it here: it’s got Zod, but not the Superman whose inclusion would’ve gotten previously spurned fans excited, nor the Wonder Woman who stood as one of the franchise’s bright spots. It’s adapting the most famous story in modern Flash comics that’s already been done twice—once in animation and again in the CW’s take on The Flash—but is openly a stepping stone to a more unified DC universe whose lead actor may not even be back the next time Barry Allen graces the silver screen. Unlike the more focused Spider-Man: No Way Home or Avengers Endgame, it doesn’t know what fans it wants to court, it just knows that it wants to court them.

This is one of the weirdest, most superficial, to say nothing of decidedly ignorant commentaries I've seen their writers make, when you consider Ezra Miller, the man playing the Scarlet Speedster in this "blockbuster" has a serious criminal record, for which he's regrettably seeing no consequence. Based on this, even if I did try to watch more of the past decade's comic movies than I have, I'd never waste money on Miller's movie, which just so happens to be based on one of the most overrated DC crossovers of the early 2010s, and one that led to a supposed "reboot" of continuity that didn't last, and left nothing appealing in its wake.

It sounds like the writer's not enthusiastic, but was probably bound by his editors to avoid serious negativity, even though it's inevitable, based on the situation, that anybody could feel discouraged by this needless tale.

One must wonder though, if they believe fanservice is the worst part of these blockbusters, they mean sex appeal is bad. Well, they certainly could, yet it's ironic, considering how dumbed down most major movies are these days in that sense.

Since the subject of the Flash movie's been brought up, Sportskeeda's also sugarcoated the news about the movie:

The Flash is one of the most popular characters in the DC Comics universe, and fans have been eagerly anticipating the release of the upcoming Flash movie. The film draws inspiration from the iconic "Flashpoint" storyline, a crossover event in DC Comics that altered the course of the DC Universe.

The storyline was a significant event for comic book fans, introducing new versions of popular characters and exploring alternate timelines and universes.

Given the importance of the Flashpoint storyline to the character and the DC Universe, the upcoming Flash movie is expected to incorporate many of its elements, with some reports suggesting that it will be a loose adaptation of the comic book storyline.

The implications of this adaptation for the character and the wider DC Universe are yet to be seen, but the upcoming Flash movie is sure to be a must-see for fans of the character and comic book movies.

Umm, what if it's as woke as much of the other comic movies of recent? Besides, with Miller front and center of the film, somebody's bound to find it insufferable in light of his crimes. Judging from the underwhelming box office receipts for several previous DC films, it's hard to say whether these movies really have much of an audience at all. I'm certainly not part of it.

On the other hand, a writer at Giant Freakin' Robot believes a boycott of the Flash movie is prefereable, but the writer dampens the impact when he starts using "plural" terminology in reference to Miller:

I am not only a lifelong comic book fan, but my writing career depends largely on keeping current with all things nerd. Regardless, I will not be seeing The Flash in the theater, or in any other format that will add even the smallest fraction to the film‘s earnings, and neither should you.

[...] This isn’t Roseanne Barr being accused of making a racist joke on social media. This isn’t Joss Whedon being a jerk to his cast and crew.

This is someone accused of being a sexual predator of children, potentially for the better part of a decade. This is someone who is alleged to have used their money and influence to hurt children, hurt women, start a cult in Iceland, and — cherry on top — amass more guns than a Central City rogue and reportedly store them with all the care of The Stand‘s Trashcan Man.

[...] If the allegations against Ezra Miller are true, then the money you spend on The Flash will help them continue to do what they’ve already been accused of doing. It will potentially buy them more plane tickets to different states and countries to groom children all over the globe, it could help pay more lawyer’s fees, more guns and ammo, and allegedly more weed to blow into the faces of infants.

And really, the movie is just Flashpoint. We’ve known that for years. If you’ve read the comics or seen the 2013 animated movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, there are no surprises waiting for you in The Flash that will amount to more than an unexpected cameo.

Much as I want to congratulate this guy for awareness of Miller's horrific offenses, his perpetuation of the modern PC narrative of referring to transsexual/non-binary cultists with terminology that doesn't even acknowledge an offender's biological sex ruins everything. Does he realize he's only continuing to reward Miller's bad behavior by calling him something he doesn't deserve to be called by? Now, I've grown disillusioned with podcaster Joe Rogan recently, after he defended anti-Jewish statements by Ilhan Omar, but if there was a valid issue in itself he once brought up, it's why we're turning transsexuals into a protected class. And when the GFR writer continues to refer to Miller with words like "them" he's only giving Miller the satisfaction he's delighted to receive, that somebody actually respects his atrocious "punk" lifestyle, when he's done nothing to deserve such descriptions, regardless of whether his lifestyle is healthy or not.

There was a time decades before when, to refer to a dangerous criminal as a mere entity would've been viewed as deserved punishment. But the problem here is that many of the LGBT ideologues actually want this kind of reception and terminology, and to keep doing it only does something they want being done. If a man claiming to be a woman uses racist slurs, do we actually refer to him with a female pronoun if that's exactly what he wants? Sadly, these PC advocates don't see it that way, in all their regrettable cowardice, continuing as they do to refer to movie actors like Miller that way, and they're likely to do it long after he's washed up in Hollywood. And so long as they keep this up, they're belittling actual women by extension. Which didn't occur to them either, right?

Hopefully, this Flash movie will tank in sales, but speaking as a Flash fan myself, it's certainly shameful a classic creation's been subject to this kind of damage, both moral and artistic. This is exactly why I've long reevaluated whether it was a good idea for comics to be turned into so many live action blockbusters. One of the reasons I avoid these movie adaptations today is out of respect for the source material. And that's an idea everybody who appreciates the original comics up till the turn of the century should consider.

Labels: Avengers, Batman, Captain America, crossoverloading, dc comics, Doctor Strange, Flash, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman

Breitbart's reporting French government officials are disgusted over Black Panther: Wakanda Forever's depiction of French military trying to steal vibranium from T'Challa's country:

Sébastien Lecornu, France’s Armed Forces Minister, has strongly condemned Disney’s latest Black Panther film, Wakanda Forever, for its “false and misleading” depiction of the country’s troops.

In the film released late last year, the soldiers reportedly attempt to raid an outpost in Mali which is controlled by Wakanda, a fictional and highly technologically developed African nation.

However, the troops’ bid to secure ‘vibranium’ is ultimately thwarted by the fictional African state’s sci-fi forces, who defeat the gun-wielding troops before hauling them in front of the United Nations in a stunt seemingly aimed at embarrassing the fictionalised French government.

Such a political manoeuvre appears to have enjoyed a real-world success, with the not-at-all-fictional government minister Lecornu expressing anger at the uncharitable depiction of his country and his soldiers.

Lecornu said of the film: “I strongly condemn this misleading and misleading representation of our Armed Forces… I think and pay tribute to the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali at its request against Islamist terrorist groups.”

The costumes the French soldiers are depicted as wearing, it is claimed, are very specifically accurate French uniforms from recent history. Indeed, POLITICO reports the captured soldiers are dressed identically to troops France had deployed in Mali in order to fight Islamic extremists in the region back in 2013.

When liberal filmmakers are too cowardly to depict Islamofascists as an adversary, this is the result. Lecornu needn't be too concerned though, since the sequel to the recent BP movie had underwhelming box office results. But this certainly doesn't reflect well on the filmmakers, whose visions were woke enough already as it is. I hesitate to think what if the filmmakers decided to portray Israeli military as villains in this atrocity? France has suffered enough horrors from Islamofascism as it is, and this is how Hollywood and Marvel studios answer the issue? Utterly shameful. There've certainly been subtle attacks on Israel in recent comic movies like Black Adam and Wonder Woman 1984, and if the filmmakers of those equally unsuccessful films could do that, Marvel studios could do it next, recalling they signaled they'll do a woke take on Sabra.

When Marvel's movie machine makers signaled in the past few years they'd go woke (and hopefully broke), they weren't kidding. I'm glad I've avoided many of the adaptations over the past decade. Seriously, if this is what it was going to amount to, it wasn't worth it to adapt them at all. What the filmmakers of Wakanda Forever did was an utter atrocity.

Labels: Africa, Black Panther, Europe and Asia, islam and jihad, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, terrorism

A writer for Areo addressed the would-be critiques leveled at Japanese manga by western sources, and tells why western writers' critiques are poor:

The panic over anime and manga has always fed off stereotypes of Japan as a “menagerie” of the bizarre, as Ryu Spaeth depicts the country in a December 2020 piece for The New Republic, a place where “men fall in love with busty Power Rangers, and the women vanish like ghosts into the gloomy mist of the suicide forest.” Many writers in the west project their own anxieties about their societies’ growing atomisation, sexual degeneracy and demographic decline onto Japan: a place where, it seems to them, many of their fears have already been realised. Fans of manga seem to typify all those worrying tendencies.

Critics have often described the genres as misogynistic because they allegedly sexualise female characters, pander to lonely otaku (obsessive, housebound geeks) or even enable abusers. Journalist Sasha Kong is a typical recent example. She cites Patrick Galbraith’s claim that Japanese media production “has been heavily tilted towards men since its early formations in the post-war period” and views this as the explanation for the hypersexualised portrayals of women contained in anime and manga—although she notes that they are now being challenged by “feminist storytelling.” This framing, however, ignores the role women played in shaping the industry as early as the 1970s. In April 2022, the United Nations-aligned organization UN Women filed a complaint against Japanese newspaper giant Nikkei over an advertising feature called Tawawa on Monday, which has been running since 2020 and allegedly presents “an underage girl as a male sexual target.” The majority of respondents in a Japanese poll, including young women, disagreed.

There have been many similar complaints about the supposedly abusive nature of these genres over the years. In a 2016 report on women’s rights in Japan, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a ban on “the sale of video games or cartoons involving sexual violence against women” and blaming such works for propagating sexist stereotypes. As writer Dan Kanemitsu noted at the time, however, such assessments conflate wholly fictional creations with abuse directed at real people and do not reflect the views of mangaka (manga artists and authors), as the Japan Women’s Institute of Contemporary Media Culture representative Kumiko Yamada has argued in a memorandum signed by several professors and artists. A number of sexually provocative works in these genres were created by women, including Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist, Lida Pochi’s Lovecraftian The Elder Sister-like One and the works of the all-female CLAMP circle.

What's telling about this approach by alleged detractors is that they have none of the same complaints about graphic, gory violence in general. Over the years, there have been examples of knife cutting of all sorts in anime, yet that doesn't seem to ever matter to the phony critics at all. That they call for censoring instead of boycotting and improving creators' personals tastes says everything you need to know what's wrong with their MO. It goes without saying the critics are hurting lady mangakas as well as the men.

We should not make the mistake of viewing artistic freedom of expression as problematic in itself—no matter how emotively moralistic the appeals of activists may be. We must always take cultural preferences and creative liberties into consideration and not be blindly led by our disgust at sexual crimes to demonise an art form with which they have never been linked, despite perennial attempts to find such a connection. Neither should we slander the Japanese as child abusers because of their taste in comics.

Of course the wider sum of mangakas, no doubt, are far from scummy. To their credit, the Japanese usually apply higher expectations to their creators than those in the USA and Europe, and it's a shame there's only so many comic creators in the west with poor manners who vehemently refuse to borrow a page from Japan (and Korea) and retain a dignified persona.

If anybody thinks Japanese culture needs improvements, just say so, but to repeatedly resort to a call for censorship never solves the problem, and only obscures it.

Labels: censorship issues, Europe and Asia, manga and anime, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, violence

CBR recently interviewed Frank Miller, his awful co-publisher Dan DiDio, the former DC publisher/editor, and a film producer working with them named Silenn Thomas, about their new Frank Miller Presents imprint, and along the way, they also discuss shared universes:

In the world of comics, there is a massive drive towards the shared universe or connecting to a million other books and events. It is refreshing to read books that stand on their own. Dan, considering your history with DC and the DC Universe, do you ever put on your publisher's hat and start thinking about potentially shared universes here?

DiDio: I shouldn't say this, but I always know how to [start a] shared universe. I can always figure that out. You build it from the ground up, but it's also shared in commonality and sensibilities, which seem familiar in all the books. Then you'd find a way to make all those intersects into something that's shared between all the books. That's the best way, and it's much more organic in its creation. Here, we're starting fresh on everything. So, the truth is we've got to make sure that each book is the best possible book it can be. That's the main thing.

The truth is if we were going to do anything, we'd build everything off of Ronin. But you want Ronin to live and breathe into its own sensibilities. If every book is able to stand on its own, when you cross things over, you have the aggregates and strengths of three different audiences coming together to support three different books and styles. If you do it where they're all tied together from the start, you're working off the same audience, and that could always be diminishing returns in the long term. It's not even about world-building but company-building. If you're trying to build a company, you want to make sure you have as many legs to stand on as possible. So if one or two don't work, it doesn't take you down. This is a great way to try different formulas.

I just have to go one step further on that. When Frank talks [about] Sin City, we're talking about a western, and that's another genre. The goal is to constantly challenge all the different genres out there with different styles, rather than to lean heavily on one genre and one style of storytelling. I think that's a lot more fun. The thing that unites Frank Miller Presents is the sensibility and tone that go into the creation of the books more than the tying of the characters and stories.

Miller: My feeling is that the whole fixation on a company having a single universe is… I mean, it started because of the explosion of work by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Frankly, those two men could produce so much material. Jack, in particular, had this thing about having it all fit together. Unfortunately, that explosion of creative freedom has since turned into a straitjacket where everything's got to be connected and suffocated against everything else. Our effort is the opposite of that. We want to go back to explosive creative freedom.

Well gee, if that's how Miller feels, why doesn't he lay any blame at the feet of DiDio, to say nothing of Joe Quesada, Axel Alonso, Bob Harras, Marie Javins and C.B Cebulski? They have blame to shoulder not just for getting Marvel/DC to that point, but also keeping it that way. I've raised ideas before that're more than fully workable for how to mend damage, specifically, by jettisoning specific "continuities" dating back to the turn of the century, and even earlier, depending what's bad enough to warrant expunging, and do these charlatans ever take that advice? No. They don't even consider abandoning the monthly pamphlet format for a more paperback-based approach, which could provide more self-contained potential. So who are they to lecture us about how continuity's become more hindering than helpful? Even the part about sensibility and tone taking a precedence over connecting stories and characters sounds suspect.

Are you looking towards expanding to other industries, such as film and television?

Silenn Thomas: I would say 100% yes, but it has to be the right type of [an adaptation]. It has to be authentic. For example, Pandora is getting a lot of traction that we cannot speak of just yet, but it's been very exciting to be rewarded, even though we haven't shown it to anybody. Just one issue has been released, but we already have this interest because they know that Frank is a world builder, even though there's no continuity in any of his worlds.

Miller: The continuity is between them. [laughs]

Thomas: The continuity is forging through with stories and characters. So, it's very exciting to see that people already respond. So, stay tuned on that one. But yes, definitely.

Wow, sounds like this is yet another publication venture established for developing more material to be adapted to movies, rather than stand on its own as comics stories. You could likely make the same argument about many novels of the past century, adapted as they were to film almost immediately after the books went to press. It's absurd, and doesn't provide a good example of originality. Nor does Miller's little venture with 2 other people who, despite their attempts to claim otherwise, don't sound altruistic. And CBR predictably sugarcoats DiDio's past MO.

I've sometimes thought that, outside of Daredevil, most of Miller's portfolio was overrated, and I'm sure there's a valid argument that can be made to that effect. If his FM Presents publisher doesn't do well, that's fine by me. Miller's made it too hard to care what he brings to the table these days.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat artists, msm propaganda

I've read the news of what James Gunn's plans are for restarting the slate of DC movie adaptations, and am not impressed. As reported by Slash Film, one of the projects WB's working on is a new take on Supergirl, and this sounds a lot more politically motivated than the abortive 1984 adaptation ever was:

DC Studios may not be directly adapting all the books Gunn mentioned, but we know one recent comic that is definitely getting a movie: "Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow." The eight-issue miniseries from Tom King and Bilquis Evely (whose art is absolutely phenomenal, as are the colors from Matheus Lopes) first hit stands in 2021, wrapping up the following year.

It might seem surprising to adapt such a recent tale, but King and Evely have crafted a truly unique story about the Girl of Steel. Even cooler, is that King, one of the best writers working in comics today, is involved in the project. Just read "Mister Miracle," "Vision," or "Strange Adventures" and you'll be a believer. Or, better yet, check out "Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow." Not that the book needs my help, since it's currently selling out everywhere, but let's delve into why this comic is worth your time.

No, let's not, because I've heard enough. Even the bragging about Gunn causing these books to sell like hotcakes reeks of too much boasting, and that's why I find this movie specialty site so unbearable. The columnist clearly doesn't see Heroes in Crisis as a terrible example of writing, if we were to bring that up, and her sugarcoating approach destroys everything.

It's not so surprising at all that a filmmaker as PC as Gunn is would scrape the bottom of the barrel for building a screenplay, and to do so, he looks for the most recent storylines, instead of researching the older Maid of Might tales from the Silver/Bronze Ages, which could have potential for movie inspirations. Even the Peter David-scripted series from 1996-2003 might be more worthwhile as a wellspring. Instead, Gunn draws from leftist ideologue King for how to make a movie (and even gives him a job on the planned film), and it doesn't take much to conclude this'll turn out to be one of DC's wokest-laden movies to date.

It's sad enough the Salkinds crafted such a botch of a Supergirl movie, shortly after the 3rd Superman movie floundered. Now, decades later, it looks like another cheap project emphasizing pessimism this time round is in the works. Once again, the Maid of Might's been dealt a serious disservice by modern ideologues at the movies.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful artists, dreadful writers, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Supergirl

Bounding Into Comics announced Baron's launched a lawsuit against the far-left website Daily Kos over the incitement they caused, all because they hated the premise of his graphic novel Private American:

Despite that setback, it wasn’t the end. Baron and his team were able to keep the crowdfunding going on Indiegogo and Crowdfundr. “I’ve been a writer my whole life. Job one is to entertain. Private American grabs you by the throat on the first panel and never lets go. No lectures or bumper stickers. I only wish to be left alone to create entertaining stories,” he said.

“However, in calling me a terrorist and racist, and deliberately misrepresenting my work, the Daily Kos has left me no choice. My previous graphic novel, Thin Blue Line, was about two police trying to survive a night of rioting. The Daily Kos described it as about ‘gangs of white police officers going into black communities to kill black people.’

“The two protagonists don’t kill anyone in the book. The person who wrote this has never read it. We contacted the Daily Kos and asked if they would like to see the book. They reluctantly agreed. My publisher made it available to them as a PDF. That was over a month ago. As of today, they have not looked at it.”

On Jan. 10, a GoFundMe campaign launched to raise money for legal support for Baron, with the copy stating: “We’re raising money to pay for writer Mike Baron’s legal fees to fund a lawsuit against the Daily Kos website, their writer, and other parties, for publishing malicious lies about his two most recent graphic novels Thin Blue Line and Private American.”

By Jan. 27 the campaign reached its target. “We’ve hit out goal and will now proceed to retain our legal representation for the battle ahead.” The campaign remains active and those wishing to contribute to it can still do so at the GoFundMe page.

I wish him good luck on this lawsuit. It's clear the leftist site's writers' positions were predetermined, and they were predisposed to hating his products, all because they represented visions they despise and now view as taboo. The crass, vulgar attitude they put on display is particularly offensive, and a textbook example how not to convey dissent. Let's also hope the crownfunding websites that shadowbanned Baron's campaigns will stop doing that too. Because that was equally wrong and politically motivated.

Labels: censorship issues, good writers, indie publishers, msm propaganda, politics, technology

The Hollywood Reporter has a whole report on the collapse of Rick & Morty co-creator Roiland's career. It turns out his crass behavior went a lot deeper than what was previously known, since his colleagues were aware of how revolting'd been even before the audience was:

On Jan. 9, Hulu debuted its animated comedy Koala Man, the latest installment in what was then Justin Roiland’s sprawling empire. An absurdist superhero series that features a voice cast with Hugh Jackman and Succession‘s Sarah Snook, the project seemed to cap off a particularly prolific period for its producer. In a matter of months, Roiland had released a hit video game, put a collection of paintings on exhibit, aired a sixth season of his Adult Swim juggernaut Rick and Morty, and snagged a fifth season for his other Hulu series, Solar Opposites.

Three days later, that image as a high-flying animation maestro came crashing down. On Jan. 12, NBC News revealed that Roiland was facing two felony charges in Orange County stemming from an alleged 2020 domestic violence incident that occurred with a woman he was dating at the time. That August, he was arrested and released on bail. Roiland has pleaded not guilty. The news, which blindsided both his employers and his colleagues, was greeted with an outpouring of other troubling revelations surrounding his online interactions, with multiple women publishing lewd messages they claimed to have received from Roiland. He direct-messaged former Mad magazine editor Allie Goertz, a longtime fan who was prepping a Rick and Morty concept album: “Can you write a song about 9 Dick’s of different sized and ethnic origins hanging above your face, and then in the lyrics describe how they each splatter you with semen.” He allegedly messaged another woman, who posted the exchange using an anonymous Twitter account and claimed to have been underage when they began corresponding, “You should just run away from home and go into sex slavery YOU FUCKING STUPID FAGGOT BITCH (!!!) (Jk).”

Yikes...that's disgusting, and goes entirely without saying. It reminds me of that French cartoonist named Bastien Vives who reportedly posted obscenities against a woman who'd criticized him, and anybody who crosses the red line that badly is asking to be ostracized, as Roiland looks to be now. If a mangaka or an anime writer in Japan had pulled anything that offensive on social media, chances are higher they would be shunned for causing an even bigger embarrassment than the most troubling manga they'd published. How is it nobody in the west is willing to study the higher standards expected in the east?

There's more eyebrow raising details in the rest of the article, which tells how Roiland's lost more business deals as his offenses became known. While he clearly deserves his downfall, the sad part is that even today, he won't be the last Hollywood producer committing sexual and domestic offenses. And there will unfortunately be more than plenty of leftist media sources who'll pass on the chance to cover the topic, all because the offender in question is as leftist as they are. These far-left ideologues sadly don't change or improve their standards overnight.

Labels: animation, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, technology, violence

Total Film spoke with actor Seth Rogen, who gave a defense of the Marvel movie franchise for the sake of The Boys, but the way he conveys his argument sure is peculiar. Here is one of the points of contention:

"I think that Kevin Feige is a brilliant guy, and I think a lot of the filmmakers he's hired to make these movies are great filmmakers. But as someone who doesn't have children… It is [all] kind of geared towards kids, you know? There are times where I will forget. I'll watch one of these things, as an adult with no kids, and be like, 'Oh, this is just not for me,'" Rogen laughed, noting that he and Evan never stopped reading comic books, though, and one day realized that there weren't many adaptations of more grown-up graphic novels onscreen.

So because he doesn't have children - a sadly common case among many modern liberal showbiz contributors - he believes the Marvel movies should be geared more towards adults than they actually are based on his not being a parent?!? What a groaner. This is so mind-boggling. Besides, depending on the view you take of this whole subject, when Stan Lee laid out his vision for Marvel in 1961, he made an effort to emphasize elements that could be considered more sophisticated and thus impress upon older teens as much as children, and by the Bronze Age they were making even more efforts to develop stories with elements that could impress upon adults too. So where does Rogan get off claiming the live action adaptations aren't aimed at adults? If anything, until more recently, you could say they were family-friendly, but with more woke ingredients now clogging the screenplays, it's hard to say they're kid-stuff in a positive sense anymore.

What's actually troubling about Rogen's argument is that he seems to believe more gruesome violence and other mature content is what instantly makes comics adaptations worth his time from an adult perspective, and the following certainly seems to confirm this:

"I remember when the first issue of The Boys came out. We were big fans of [writer/creator] Garth Ennis, because we'd read Preacher already, and we bought it. We had the same experience that I think, now, audiences are having, which is: 'Oh, we've been reading Marvel for the last 15 years and now there's starting to be stuff like this, which is a great addition to this landscape. It's [the same genre] but not considering younger audiences in the slightest. If anything, it's much more geared towards adult audiences."

"I think just as naturally to us as The Boys fell into the comic-book-store landscape as a comic, we thought it would fall well into the media landscape as a TV show. But truthfully, without Marvel, The Boys wouldn't exist or be interesting. I'm aware of that. I think if it was only Marvel, it would be bad. But I think it isn't – clearly. An example I'm always quoting is, there's a point in history where a bunch of filmmakers would have been sitting around, being like, 'Do you think we'll ever make a movie that's not a western again? Everything's a western! Westerns dominate the fucking movies. If it doesn't have a hat and a gun and a carriage, people aren't going to go see it any more.'"

This sums up more of what's wrong with his whole argument. He must believe the most grisly forms of storytelling are the most superior, which is the whole problem with The Boys. And let's be clear. Of course it shouldn't have to be just Marvel serving as everybody's source of entertainment, which they haven't been in a long, long time. But what if the entertainment landscape, adult or otherwise, were to just consist of violent, sexually explicit content? Wouldn't that be bad too? Rogan doesn't seem to have considered that.

When he speaks of having read Marvel books for 15 years, that would imply he'd begun in the early 1990s (Ennis' The Boys first debuted in the late 2000s), at which time, their story quality was beginning to unravel, as the Clone Saga, the Onslaught/Heroes Reborn events and Age of Apocalypse demonstrated, so one has to wonder just what kind of Marvel books they were reading, and if they even read the best the 90s had to offer. A serious problem with some of these "trendy" types is they're predisposed to liking specific products, and even leap to supporting them if the ideologies they emphasize meet their ultra-leftist positions. Whether or not they actually read the comics in question, anybody who goes by a predetermined viewpoint to uphold a product based on the politics injected into it is taking a very laughable path.

And did Rogen and company ever read DC books of the past? Presumably, they did (with the sad part being they could've been stories just as bad as what Marvel had at the time), but for some reason, many of these trendies repeatedly emphasize Marvel at the expense of everything else, as though Marvel literally set the tone for everything, and as though everybody managed to successfully emulate Lee's approach, which unfortunately isn't so. Particularly irritating is when some ideologues act as though Lee's approach was "realistic" in every sense imaginable, which isn't true either. His writing - and that of his more respectable colleagues - contained tons of surreal moments, not the least being how Peter Parker instantly lost all fear of heights in his Amazing Fantasy #15 debut when he climbed the wall of an apartment building shortly after being bitten by the radioactive spider at the science convention, and a passing car caused him to leap away from the street. This is why it's practically offensive when PC advocates exploit Lee's visions and memory as a shield for directions that don't add up to good storytelling. Yet they're unwilling to defend his creations long after they were victimized by the very PC crowd they're part of, which proves they're not fans of Lee and his contributors at all.

Rogen doesn't impress me in the slightest with his tedious viewpoints, and only makes me feel fortunate I decided in past years to avoid the Marvel movie franchise altogether.

Labels: indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence

Just what the world needs in animated format. Still another horror comic is adapted into a cartoon series, as Variety reports, based on Scott Snyder's Wytches:

Amazon has ordered an animated adaptation of the comic book series “Wytches,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The comic was created by Scott Snyder and Jock. It tells the story of “17-year-old Sailor Rooks, whose family moves to a remote New England town after a tragic accident, only to discover that a burrow of monsters—ancient creatures that prey on our darkest fears and desires—lurks beneath the town,” per the official description.

Snyder and Jock will both executive produce along with Plan B Entertainment, Project 51 Productions’ Kevin Kolde, and Amazon Studios.

I wonder where they get the money needed to serve as producers? As I recall, the very left-wing Greg Rucka had producer's credit on a live action TV show based on Stumptown. Do these overrated wokesters really take that much pride in their equally overrated comics, they're willing to spend so much on the kind of works that depress more than inspire?

“‘Wytches’ is possibly my most personal work,” Snyder said. “It’s all about the monsters that dwell beneath the surface of things, both literally and figuratively. I’ve been intimately involved with this animated series from the start, and I can honestly say that I love this show as much as the book, if not more. The animation brings the incredible art by Jock to life, and the episodic format expands the world of ‘Wytches,’ taking the characters and mythology to terrifying new places. Jock and I are deeply grateful to Plan B Entertainment, Kevin Kolde, and Amazon Studios for believing in ‘Wytches’ and giving us a chance to make this show dark, personal, twisted, and very special.”

If that's the emphasis they consider a big deal, it's all the more reason to turn off the TV set. Making it dark and twisted doesn't make it special. By contrast, you rarely ever hear these scribes discussing optimism and a sense of humor the same way. How much more of these dark cliches must we be hearing of?

Labels: animation, indie publishers, licensed products, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence