The role of Detroit, Michigan in comicdom

NPR-Michigan Public wrote about what role a city like Detroit played in producing comics, and tabletop games:

When people think of Detroit, they might think of the city’s reputation for auto manufacturing or Motown music—but what about comic books? Two recent exhibits at the Detroit Historical Museum showcase the city’s lesser-known influence in comic books and tabletop gaming.

Curated by Billy Wall-Winkel, “Heroes vs. Villains” explores Detroit’s comic book history, showcasing more than 60 comic artists with ties to Michigan. The exhibit features artists like Jerry Bails, known as the “father of comic book fandom,” and Shel Dorf, the founder of San Diego Comic-Con, among others. A companion exhibit, “Worlds of Palladium,” profiles Detroit-based publisher Palladium Books, a pioneer in the tabletop roleplaying game community.

“We had folks here in Detroit that were just absolutely obsessed with science fiction and fantasy,” Wall-Winkel said. “We had folks that wanted just to convince everyone else that comics [were] a legitimate art form.”

Trouble is, anybody who thinks they succeeded in convincing they are a valid art form failed, if we look at this from an artistic perspective, and how the mainstream was devastated by political correctness. The only thing the specialists convinced anybody about was that comics make a great wellspring for extended media potential like movies and TV programs. And for a while, yes, that was a success. But by the turn of the decade, the fortunes of Marvel's movieverse began to recede under the weight of wokeness,

The exhibit also features the work of Detroit comic artists who worked for Marvel and DC, including Jim Starlin, Rich Buckler, Keith Pollard, and many more. Wall-Winkel’s personal favorite is writer Dwayne McDuffie, who pioneered minority representation in superhero comics through Milestone Media.

Be that as it may about McDuffie, something that disappoints me is that he was still quite a leftist, from what I know. But, if it matters, it's admittedly disgusting how Dan DiDio fired McDuffie over an Orwellian Thoughtcrime after the latter indicated he wasn't happy writing Justice League in the mid-2000s, because of horrible editorial mandates forced upon him. The worst part is that DiDio all but got away with doing so, and who in the mainstream holds him accountable for disrespecting a POC today over a petty issue? Let's not forget Frank Miller inexplicably hired him as an editor for a self-titled imprint Miller launched a few years back, and if it was a flop, DiDio's involvement alone is arguably why.

As noted, the article also brings up tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, and how such concepts have overlapped with comicdom:

Palladium Books was founded in 1981 by Detroit artist Kevin Siembieda, a time when tabletop gaming surged in popularity. The publisher is most known for tabletop games like Rifts or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness, which was the first licensed product of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons allow players to act out fantasy adventures together, fighting monsters while playing as their own original characters. Dungeons & Dragons, in particular, has been having a mainstream moment after featuring heavily in the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” as well as the success of its own 2023 feature film. According to Wall-Winkel, fans of video games often turn to tabletop gaming as a more expansive way to explore fantasy and science fiction worlds.

Predictably, they won't get into how the franchise also encountered political correctness and was watered down in the past decade for the sake of leftist propaganda like "inclusivity", as though it were never there, and some of the silliest things about this direction are that they acted like the Drows, Orcs and goodness knows what other anthropomorphic villains in the franchise literally had to see positive depictions, as though they weren't there to begin with. D&D, for all we know, will probably be brought down hard in time by all this wokeism.

Without a doubt, Detroit's got plenty of interesting comics contributors abound who could make good subjects for this exhibition. But, if there's one whom I hope they haven't gone out of their way to highlight, it's Geoff Johns, whose writings in mainstream in the past quarter century were so inexcusably crude and insufferable, they'd make a very humiliating addition to the exhibition as a result. From what I can tell, Johns doesn't seem to be on the list, and if he's absent, that's fortunate. No need to sully the exhibition with the work of somebody as blatant as he proved to be in the long run.

That told, it's still a shame there's so much more an article like this could've brought up, and predictably, they wouldn't because it doesn't fit the superficial, PC narrative they follow.