Being minor in lore does NOT make it okay to change a character's race

A case just turned up of a writer for Reaxxion falling into the trap of using rank status as justification for political correctness. He argues against comic creators changing characters' races:

DC Comics is one of the biggest offenders. The new 52, which is mostly awful sans a few exceptions like Aquaman, shows that DC is trying to be hip and appeal to the young’uns. This strategy would work if it weren’t for the fact that the younger crowd doesn’t read DC Comics, because they’re too caught up in the “Disney-fied” cartoon Avengers to care. It also doesn’t help to alienate your loyal fan base with gimmick-filled promotions and character arcs.

Yes, DC's a pretty big offender, though changing races of superheroes and co-stars is just the iceberg's tip. But it's foolish to say Aquaman's any good now, especially after all the terrible ideas Geoff Johns stuffed in.

And more unfortunate still, the writer succumbs to PC in the following:

So when is race-bending acceptable? When does it work?

I think one good example of race-bending working is with the CW’s recent show The Flash. Iris West was originally a white woman, but was changed into a black woman in the finished show, with the comics following suit. Now, as a lover of white women this should upset me, but it doesn’t. Why? Because Iris West simply isn’t that big of a character in superhero lore. This isn’t Lois Lane, Black Widow or Wonder Woman, it’s the woman that most of you forgot was the wife of the Flash until I just mentioned her.

No...no...no. This is exactly the kind of mentality that led to Identity Crisis. Because a character happens to sport a minor status and is presumably white, this somehow makes it okay to kill, maim, or worse yet, to rape them? That's wrong, and it's no justification whatsoever for wiping out Jane Foster, Karen Page, Stevie Hunter, Lynn-Stewart Pierce and Carol Ferris either. Sure, I'll admit race alteration is nowhere nearly as bad as enacting violence against an otherwise innocent, law-abiding co-star character. But it's still ridiculous to suggest minor characters are automatically sacrificial lambs, and what if Flash were far more popular that what the Reaxxion writer's suggesting? I think he'd be singing a way different tune. He fell into the trap of basing judgement on recognizability rather than quality of scriptwriting and how the cast are used this way.

It's funny he's citing Black Widow, because, despite her role in the Avengers films, she's a pretty minor superheroine herself, and could just as easily had her own race changed in the comics proper if Marvel wanted to.

But how interesting to learn Iris West's been altered back in the comics as much as on TV. I don't think even Perry White's race has been changed like in this situation after the Man of Steel movie...yet. For now, turning Iris black has only further rendered the Flash comics all the more unrecognizable from how it began, and compounds DC's own artistic bankruptcy.

And I say all this from the viewpoint of somebody who's come to appreciate third-tier characters in superhero books far more in the past decade than ever before, ditto the notable writers and artists who went to such pains to craft them in the first place. The Reaxxion writer's only done a disfavor to the many hard-working creators of yore who deserve much more gratitude than what he gave them with his op-ed.

Ta-Nehisi Coates continues to fail as a spokesperson on the medium

The journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates was interviewed by NY's Vulture, and for somebody who's worked in reporting, he continues to be very, shall we say, uninformed about what the public at large thinks of comicdom:

Seventy-seven years after Superman first leapt into the American imagination, superhero stories have never been more popular (or lucrative). Comics have become a breeding ground for multibillion-dollar movie and TV franchises — including the impending blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron. But why are superheroes resonating so strongly? And are they worthy of the attention? These questions are important enough to compel Ta-Nehisi Coates to take a timeout from kicking off national conversations about race and politics, don his fanboy cape, and go in search of the answers.

The intro sure isn't clear, but as anyone who looks at sales figures knows, comic books are only resonating strongly as movies and merchandise. Older stories from the pamphlet pages are worthy, but modern superhero output is decidedly not. The expensive cover price for today's comics doesn't even begin to describe all the modern problems that came up. Now for some of the interview paragraphs:

In the past decade or so, we’ve had this huge resurgence in superhero comics and their adaptations. Why do you think that’s happened? There were a lot of great stories being told during the ’80s, and those people who were reading them are of an age now where they can make this vision. That’s a big part of it. I was just reading about this: Marvel sold their licenses in the mid- to late ’90s, and X-Men came out in what, 2000? So within four or five years of them selling the licenses, you have the films. That also has something to do with it. But it’s kind of by accident, right? I mean nobody thought Spider-Man was going to be what Spider-Man was or Blade was going to be what Blade was, and everything kind of followed from that. It was almost accidental.

I'd say it's an extension of the fandom for sci-fi adventure fare that made the movies popular. That's why the movies succeeded. That, along with the surprisingly good promotional efforts are what made the consecutive films a big success.

The great questions that people have been asking at least since the ’70s are: Why are comics so deeply tied to superheroes? Why are superheroes so deeply tied to comics? And, why do the medium and the genre have such an enduring marriage? Superheroes are best imagined in comic books. The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much. I always feel like when I see movies, I’m a little let down by the [digital] animation. I want to hear the voice in my head, you know? When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it’s only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We’re talking about something that’s so surreal it’s just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal. Animation, movies, these could be literal — Avengers movies will always disappoint me. X-Men [movies] will always disappoint me.

That reminds me of how people complain about adapting prose novels to movies. I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do.

Well I hope he realizes there's a lot more people out there than we think who only know comics through movies, and in fact, only view them as movies, and will never read a single comic old or new. Since he brought up voices, does he want to hear co-star voices in his head as much as the superheroes themselves?

Surprisingly, he hinted he's aware of how the movies were a bit player in spoiling the comics, but does not deliver enough beyond that:

To what extent have the movies hurt superhero culture? It may have ruined X-Men. I don’t know how true this is, but it’s just like all the energy has been in the Avengers world right now, in terms of Marvel, and there ain’t much going on with the X-Men.

He's only half-right that the movies ruined the X-Men, among other Marvel properties. It's bad writing and other awful ideas that have destroyed Marvel and DC products. Iron Man became a huge victim of terrible writing and characterization before and after the movies found success. Something that he doesn't complain about to Vulture's interviewer.

There’s a sentiment lately that comics had rarely responded to the culture at large, but now they are. That’s totally untrue. We had drug-addiction issues in The Amazing Spider-Man; the politics in X-Men are pretty clear.

That's something he does get right. Many people out of touch with the medium assume it's all just about battling bank robbers and world conquerors, when topics like race relations, WW2, Vietnam and drug trafficking were the focus of plenty of superhero and adventure tales decades ago. Yet some segments of society act almost deliberately oblivious to that. However, they go on to say:

But comics companies have started to explicitly say, “We are being more diverse and inclusive,” which is much less coded than a lot of the efforts at diversity in the past. Marvel opened the doors, right? You have Storm, there’s a black Iron Man in the ’80s, the second X-Men generation — you have the Native American Thunderbird. You have heroes that look all sorts of ways. When I was a kid, I knew that superheroes were not exclusively white and male. And if you have fans who grow up with that, they reach a certain age and they expect you to go to another level. Beyond that, it costs comic books way less than movies to do diverse things. They ain’t got to worry about casting somebody who is going to bring in box office.

This predictably fails to note how current efforts in diversity have been more like attempts to supplant white superheroes with protagonists of Black and Asian background in the same costumes, or, if they remain white, they become homosexual. And like I've said before, this only furthers the notion today's publishers want people to care about the costume rather than the character. No questions here why the Big Two can't think up new characters and give them the same amount of attention they gave past creations.

And what they do have to worry about is an audience that loses interest after a few issues because the writing's just not that interesting.

You are mostly a Marvel fan, but what DC stuff have you read? None. I don’t know why I don’t read DC. I don’t even have a good argument. Here’s what I’ll say: For reasons right or wrong, you’ll see the lead character for DC is Superman. So, truth, justice, and the American way. And, not even consciously, I just kind of said, Hmm, maybe not. Then you pick up X-Men, right, and you see all these weirdos and freaks, you know? And you think, Oh, man, that kind of rings true for me. When I was a kid, I didn’t even think of Peter Parker as white. It didn’t even occur to me.

So, he's not a DC reader? I'm honestly not sure he makes the best commentator on all these political issues then, because DC had their share of the same topics in decades past, like drug addiction seen in Green Lantern/Green Arrow in 1971, and race relations seen in Teen Titans, and bore just as much significance as what Marvel was doing.

But the part about his not seeing Peter Parker as white is peculiar. Let's take a look at the following paragraph too:

That’s so interesting. Why didn’t you think of him as white? I think that’s a statement on how race is not a real thing. I acknowledge it, I think of it as living in a different world, and I can imagine a world where that was not that important; the color of his hair was just not that important. I thought of him as a dude, an outsider. But I was always aware that Superman was white, and I don’t even know why.

Sometimes I don't think Coates knows much of anything. To me, this doesn't make any sense. Still, if that was his view, did he also not think Ben and May Parker were white either? Not even Mary Jane Watson?

As for his argument race isn't a real thing, does that mean it shouldn't be an issue? No, of course it shouldn't have to be an issue, but then, why does he think it matters with Superman? I just don't get this.

I interviewed Brian Michael Bendis last year, the guy who came up with Miles Morales. He said he regularly gets people of color who are comics fans saying to him that “Spider-Man is the one I identified the most with when I was a kid, because under the mask he could’ve been anybody.”  You could be Spider-Man. It goes far beyond that, actually. It’s not a diversity program, it’s because they actually made a decent black character. [Bendis] really did it in a great way. When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that I wanted Peter Parker to be black. I didn’t even think about it.

But I thought he said he never thought of Peter Parker as white! So why think of him as black either? This is also bothersome because it quotes Bendis uncritically as he employs a hijack mentality. Whomever Bendis is getting statements from (and I suspect they're not many, since Ultimate Marvel never sold sky high at any time), I get the feeling it's people who were only familiar with the toy merchandise. People who cared more about the costume than the character. Some way to show gratitude to Stan Lee after all the hard work he did. Besides, why must we think Bendis, a man who turned the Avengers and X-Men into travesties, is capable of delivering entertaining writing with his new take on Ultimate Spider-Man? And how come Coates doesn't talk about the history of Black Panther and Falcon? How come they don't matter?

What kinds of people are attracted to superhero comics? I’ve thought about what is the core thing that people are attracted to and I don’t even know. I can speak personally: On the crudest level, it was escapism. But there are all sorts of forms of escapism, so why this one? That’s a tough question to answer.

Why must it be the crudest level? Even if it's just escapism, that's fine enough, isn't it? Unlike him, I can think of a decent answer to the same question: the same kind of people who'd be interested in sci-fi adventure. However, there's also today's much reduced audience to ponder: what kind of people today are drawn to superhero comics? Those who buy out of foolish habit, not because they have the ability to judge objectively, and those who only hope there'll be monetary value. It's not so tough a query when there's all sort of research out there to verify the reasons and possibilities. Yet Coates clearly can't be bothered to do what I've made efforts to over the years.

Take a step back there: What pushed you as a young man to want that escapism? Well, shit, I was living in West Baltimore. That was tough. My family’s home was not a democracy, and there was freedom in reading comic books. On top of that, these [characters] are people who had lives that meant something; Peter Parker had a mission, man. When I was young, I spent so much time thinking, What am I doing, what’s my meaning in the world?

Yes, what's his meaning indeed? Like, why can't he rise above a superficial level and provide a lot more, much better research, both as a reporter and to his interviewers, of what the industry's offered in the past? Including what some smaller publishers have to offer? Why should only mainstream superheroes matter? Sometimes I get the vibe he thinks only superheroes are significant and little else.

Can you give me a rough outline of when you started reading and what you were reading early on? I started probably in, like, 1985 and was immediately an Amazing Spider-Man fan. I would dip into Fantastic Four. In the mid-’80s to the early ’90s, I would go to Geppi’s Comic World in Baltimore, and they had all of the new stuff, but they would have this huge collection of back issues, and I probably enjoyed the back issues more. Because exploring the backstory was the beautiful thing about comics. To make this concrete: When I started reading [Amazing Spider-Man], obviously, Gwen Stacy was already dead. And yet she was very much a live character within the books, and so going back and seeing Oh, this happened here, or Here’s how this happened, it’s like putting together a puzzle. If you read the books back then, they’d have a little asterisk  to say this happened in issue such-and-such, and you would put this puzzle together. I probably read until the early ’90s, when I got to high school and I stopped for about ten years.

Oh, here's something where he's not so on the ball: the Gwen-clone conceived in 1975, as a special compromise for those who didn't take kindly to the real Gwen's death at the hands of the Green Goblin 2 years earlier. Sure, maybe he knows that (though I can't help but feel he doesn't), but not everyone reading the interview does, and neither he nor his interviewer are helping any by leaving out the answers.

The time he began reading comics is probably telling. The 1980s were a time when merchandise and commercialism were booming very big, recalling all the GI Joe and Transformer toys on sale when I was about 10 years old. And the same goes for toys, coloring books, games and other merchandise based on superheroes. I figure that must've played into his puzzling view where he never saw Peter as white, yet did see him as black? My point is, if he didn't see race as an issue with white, why should he see it that way with black? That's what baffles me about Coates' ambiguous viewpoints. Let's also remember he was the same guy who thought light-skinned blacks aren't qualified enough.

Why did you stop? I think hip-hop began to exert a stronger pull over me. It started doing something interesting. And, as it happens, Marvel started getting really bad. I came back in the middle of J. Michael Straczynski’s run on The Amazing Spider-Man.

And his run was really bad too, exhibiting more leftism than he might've expressed in any books he wrote earlier. The Sins Past storyline was a major embarrassment, and it makes little difference if Joe Quesada tinkered with his initial plans; JMS still had some pretty bad ideas there.

Do you, all these years later, have a sense of why Marvel spoke to you so much? I started at a very young age, doing dumb, stupid things. I can remember when I picked up a Marvel comic book — this is so shallow — you know, in the upper-left-hand corner DC just has its logo. But Marvel has who’s in the group! Like, Fantastic Four, right? Or the X-Men. And they were rotating different people, and that was really interesting to me. They were showing off the personalities of the people in the book. Beyond that, they just spoke to my life. There was always something world-breaking about Superman. It just felt like too much. And then on the other end there was always something too played-out about Batman. Spider-Man immediately spoke to me. I think you just fully attach, and that’s it. That becomes where you are.

I don't think they ever spoke to him. I think it was more like he speaks to them, with a mentality that wishes it were all, entirely what he thinks it should be. Here we are years later, and Coates is still doing dumb things. As for logos, that's not what makes the story inside compelling. Besides, has he noticed Marvel's since become more like DC, with just a corner logo and little else?

Has Marvel Unlimited ruined your work ethic? Not too much. There’s this notion about comic books that they are going to ruin you, but besides a brief spell of one year, when I was severely depressed, I haven’t found that. If anything, I read Marvel Unlimited like I consume any other piece of art. Very often, the good stuff, at least, I find very inspirational. I’m a writer, so I’m interested in the problems of storytelling, and I enjoy Marvel Unlimited in the same way when I was much younger I enjoyed poetry. It gives you a quick case study of the problems of storytelling, the challenges of storytellers.

Which he doesn't know diddly-squat about. Comics won't ruin you, but you can ruin comics, and that's what Quesada/DiDio did to the universes they hijacked. Which Coates never comments on. Nor does it occur to him his politics have ruined him, and in effect, his ability to discuss comicdom objectively to boot.

Can you give me an example of something you’ve read recently where you were grappling with that? I’ve talked about this on Twitter, but in Matt Fraction’s The Invincible Iron Man, the “Dark Reign”  portion of it, there’s this great fight scene between Pepper Potts and a female villain. The comic ends, and in the next issue you see the supervillain come on, and she’s like, “I killed her with my bare hands.” And you don’t figure out until maybe an issue or two later that actually Pepper Potts dealt with the woman and had assumed her guise. It’s a typical twist that you see in movies all the time these days. He was dealing with the problem of the twist. How do you get a twist in there? The great twist is the one that you didn’t even know was there. [Fraction] pulled that off so, so well. In fact, I have to go back and read it a few times myself. Think about it, you know? That’s how I read comic books.

I've long learned why not to rely on phonies like Coates for info on recent storytelling. A story that ties in with a ridiculous crossover where Norman Osborn suddenly becomes a numero uno nemesis of Marvel's superheroes? Nor does it help that Bob Harras just had to bring him back along with May Parker, most likely for commercial reasons, when they could just as well have introduced a new Hobgoblin instead.

You read them from a construction standpoint? I consume it in the same way I would consume any other literature. In the same way I would consume Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, or Fitzgerald. Anything else that I enjoy. Because for me, after I enjoy, the question is, why? What was this person doing that I liked?

He may read from construction standings, but not objective ones. Which is pretty much the case with a lot of the comics press today: they don't take an objective approach to superhero comics today; they're very much in the publishers' pockets.

Because you’re somebody who publicly talks about how much you love comics, people come to you and say, “Where should I start?” What do you usually tell them? Lately, I’ve been telling people that Iron Man run during “Dark Reign.” [Iron Man] has to slowly erase his brain. That’s such a mind-fuck. It’s great for anybody. “Kraven’s Last Hunt,”  if [the reader is] old enough. These are just really good, well-told stories.

What about some of the comics coming from smaller companies? If all he can recommend is one company's work, and worse, an embarrassment like Dark Reign, then I don't think it's worth listening to his drivel.

The problem for any comics reader is that there’s a near-limitless amount of material that you can dive into. It’s daunting, even for people who have been reading for years. How do you figure out what you’re going to read next? Twitter. And before I was on Twitter I would ask people. But Twitter’s a great help. You see names pop up; like 20 people telling you, you really gotta read The Superior Foes of Spider-Man.

Yeah, we just have to read a book stemming from an awful stunt like Dr. Octopus in Peter Parker's body. There's a number of javascript notes popping up when you hover the cursor over certain lines in this interview, and when you highlight Inferior Spinoff Series, it says it's a "very funny" book launched in 2013. Besides, I don't think a site with 140-character limits makes as good a place to seek recommendations as a website or blog with longer space.

Are you a fan of some of the more canonical comics that everyone always recommends? Your Watchmen, your Dark Knight Returns? Yeah, but the problem is I have a huge Marvel bias. So I’ve probably read one Batman comic book in my life. That’s the irony of this entire interview: I’ve ignored something like 50 percent of the greatest comic-book stories ever told.

And that's why, as I said, he's just not up to the task of recommendations or commentary. At the end, he says:

What are you still waiting for with super­heroes? Do you, as a fan, have any unfulfilled wishes? I’m still holding out that we get a Storm who looks like Storm, and that’s no disrespect to Alexandra Shipp being cast. Don’t let anybody think I’m criticizing her, but I hope we can get things as diverse as the books, and that one day we can start grappling with how folks actually look.

So lighter/darker complected skin is still a big concern of his? There you go, this man's still worrying himself about petty details, and not about the quality of writing on the finished products. Whatever he's had to say on a topic like that has been too little to convince he has any interest in how to ensure writing in any entertainment medium will be engaging.

The worst artist defended the best

At the time Frank Cho and J. Scott Campbell were being attacked by SJW kooks, Rob Liefeld, of all people, came to their defense with a post he initially put on Facebook:

Allow me for a minute to direct this diatribe specifically at my comic book brethren... In recent times I haven't joined in the fray but this time I have to stand up. I just finished reading a disturbing rant by a fellow who took, in my humble opinion, uncalled for shots at two stellar talents in my industry, in our industry, Frank Cho and J J Scott Campbell. Let's establish here at the outset that these two are a pair of comic book wizards, visual stylists that have been at the top of the comic book mountain top, and have entertained the masses for nearly two decades. Both men are famous for their renderings of the female physique, an art form once referred to as "cheesecake" by possibly the best illustrator comic books ever saw, Dave Stevens. Campbell and Cho have entertained myself and most of you with their outstanding work on Gen 13, Avengers, Star Wars, Danger Girl and X-Men over the years. Again, both are Titans in comics and illustration, having spent entire weekends with both gentlemen on the convention circuit, I can tell you that both men are outstanding human beings. From my experiences with both they are generous, warm and have a great sense of humor. It has been publicly suggested recently that each stop drawing in their respective styles, equating them with being "dirty" and "perverted".... Say what???? What's going on here? Is Jessica Rabbit a shameful cartoon to today's audience? Betty Boop? This rhetoric has been increasing of late and I find it completely distasteful that we are now calling out talents such as Frank Cho, J Scott Campbell, Milo Minara for their svelte female figures. Hey, pal, whoever you are, this is fantasy, it's not real you know. We draw warrior men and warrior women. You know who also puts a little sway in their female figures? How about Jim Lee, Marc Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen,Todd McFarlane, Adam Hughes, the list could go on forever but now each of my comic book brethren are being crucified and I would suggest that the wide majority of us who support their work get really loud and stand up and say this isn't okay. Don't suggest your fellow artist is somehow below you because he draws a voluptuous figure. These aren't pornographic images, it's just healthy female heroins, sometimes illustrated in a dynamic manner or an occasionally cheeky way. So I'll end here by asking us all to stand up for two of our own, each who deserves better than threats or suggestions that they change their trademark and very successful styles! I'll tell you what, we could all use MORE comics from Campbell and Cho, two time tested commercial powerhouses, not less.

I assume this was meant to make clear Liefeld recognizes that he, by sharp contrast, is not a talented artist, and as anyone familiar with his work for over 2 decades knows, his illustrations of physique are horribly incompetent, right down to the feet, and very derivative. Even today, he hasn't changed much. His defense of Cho and Campbell is flattering, but it won't change my opinion of Liefeld's botch jobs over the years.

Campbell's response was:

Thank you Rob, not only for the generous and tremendously kind words, but as you so elegantly said, for standing up for what it is that we do. I do think it's perfectly fine to draw and depict, healthy, strong, beautiful, pretty, yes... dare I say occasionally "sexy" and alluring women in our industry. Can it go too far..? sure, as can anything that's considered art. But I think we self regulate just fine, we have for decades. But this groundswell that's going on with these blogs with an agenda and this faux outrage, suggesting that us artists who are predominately known for drawing attractive and pretty women need to "grow up" and suddenly leave the industry that we love and that loves us because of a noisy few... despite the evidence that the books we work on are selling in the high stratosphere is preposterous! Thank you for standing up for us Rob! I sincerely hope more start joining us! If you love what we do, stand the hell up for us and don't let these message boards and rogue artists dictate the narrative any longer!

These loudmouth minorities have existed in various forms for more time than we may think. The one I may be most familiar with is the kind that can't tell the difference between fiction and reality when it comes to fictional characters, and they've sadly been present in letter pages from past pamphlets for goodness knows how long. And instead of trying to explain that the writers are responsible for any poor persona in a fictional character, among other problems, the editors and writers themselves just went along with it, leading to the huge disaster we're at now. That's another matter I believe should be addressed. Here's a little more from Campbell:

The industry is watching all of these interactions and the policies of the big companies are changing as they're reacting to this garbage. We're starting to feel the conservative safeness in their choices more and more. Some of the artists you love are actually getting less and less work because their styles are deemed as "too sexy" now according to these loud voices of the minority.

One of the key reasons why the babbling on specific websites is worthless is because the faceless, nameless blabbermouths complaining about their work may not even be buying and reading the mainstream books in question. In fact, they probably won't even if artists of their alleged preference were brought on instead. Which makes them nothing more than crackpots who think they're protecting the public from unconfirmed smut. Here's a recent example of somebody who thought he was being a genius attacking the She-Hulk's depictions, but only came off as a selfish "moralist".

Yet if Campbell's alluding to DC and Marvel, we're long past the point where I'd say it's worth working for them at all. Let's be clear: a good artist's work shouldn't be wasted on bad storytelling, right down to the company wide crossovers. Back in the 1990s, when Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell were assigned to the X-Men, that was the case, and Image too was known in its early years for similar reasons, which undermined the impact of any better offerings they might've had. It didn't help that variant covers were becoming a constant sales gimmick either.

They also mention a lady named Joyce Chin. From what I know, she may be a beginning artist, fairly new to the trade, and she said:

I spoke up about the absolutely appalling behavior, and the senseless outrage, and got a bunch of crap for it, because apparently women who want women to speak out, only want them to do so if it's the same opinion they have about it.

Just what Honey Badger Radio found out at the Calgary Expo. (In a way, I had a similar experience once with Kurt Busiek's crowd after I pointed out the flaw in his argument's about Marvel's Gambit character.) When somebody argued that SJWs should think up their own comics, she added:

Well that's the thing, with online comics, kickstarter, all these alternative publishers, and books coming from the big two that offer really cool storylines, diversity, and great art, why on Earth draw battle lines? Comics right now, is at the coolest point it's ever been in terms of it's ability to appeal to a big audience, and more of humanity. The gender mix at cons has pretty much reached equal. When I first got in, there was never ANYONE in the ladies bathroom at SDCC.

[...] Most of the people who come up to me at cons with books to sign that I've done of Xena, Sonja, Vampirella etc. are women. A LOT of Campbell and Chos fans are women. There are a lot of women now drawing superhero comics who love depicting the female form as powerful, positive, and with ownership of their own sexuality. Yet nearly all the coverage of what women want in comics denies that any of that, our voices, our likes and wants, exist. It's as unfair and uncool as denying that there is misogynist content in comics.

There you go. It's possible that wish fulfillment ties in to some of these ideas, and fashion magazines have long featured photographs of hot supermodels in skimpy underwear, so where the SJWs get the idea women have a problem is beyond me. In past years, there have been other notable lady artists like Ramona Fradon and Jan Duursema, who drew beautiful girls in their portfolios too, and nobody was making petty arguments about what/how they should draw either.

Interestingly, some of these SJWs probably have denied that DC and Marvel are the companies really guilty of clogging misogynist content into their products. No doubt, because in their twisted minds, T&A is "bad", but violence, physical, sexual or otherwise is allowed, no matter how offensive it is. That's the most disturbing part of their whole MO, which rejects escapism for the sake of "reality".

Thinking about this issue, it wouldn't surprise me if excellent veterans like George Perez one day found themselves shunned like they were nothing but plagues, and late talents like Will Eisner, Gil Kane, Frank Frazetta and Dick Dillin were condemned posthumously, all because they too have been known for drawing awesome female physique in their own way. In fact, even a talented artist/inker like Rachel Dodson could find herself on the outskirts; even women aren't immune to these kind of PC kvetches.

But if the past few weeks have said anything, it doesn't look like many artists working for the mainstream are coming to their defense. Let's take the following as examples: Patrick Zircher, Jimmy Palmiotti, Adam & Andy Kubert, Ron Wagner, John Romita Jr, Cully Hamner, Mike McKone, Frank Quitely, Gene Ha, Mark Bagley, Alex Ross, Rags Morales, Mike Allred, and Chris Samnee. Some of these men, to my knowledge, are mega-leftists, but almost all of them have specialized in artwork involving lovely ladies, or been favorable and supportive of the same. You'd think they might care about Cho and Campbell's case, but if they've said anything, I have yet to find it. There could be at least 2 reasons why these established mainstreamers aren't coming to Campbell & Cho's defense: they're worried about being blacklisted, or, they see this latest flap as the perfect way to whittle down competition in the mainstream so they'll get more coveted assignments. If it's the latter, that's really bad. Say, why hasn't Jim Lee, whom Liefeld mentioned, stepped up in their defense either? It could be he thinks he's so high up in DC, there's nothing wrong with throwing the others under the bus.

And Bleeding Cool certainly doesn't sound helpful, as they said the following:

It’s arguable however that we are at a stage when the invisible hand of the free market will do what it always does. As more women enter the comic book market, so the industry is changing to address that. Because what the industry likes to do best is make money. And when Saga, Sex Criminals, Ms Marvel, Thor, Harley Quinn, Batgirl and more do that, then the rest will follow. And in the long run I’ll also end up with some superhero comics I’m a lot happier to show to my daughters.

Well I'm sorry to say, but they haven't done that, even after male Thor got replaced, which even women didn't ask for. This article misses a vital point: most women, just like men, want to read stories that are entertaining and have talented scriptwriting. That's why New Teen Titans and Avengers worked so well decades before, and not just because of the hot costumes. And without good writing, it won't make any difference what the art's like, the mainstream will just be giving a whole show to which nobody comes. Plus, there's women out there who don't take kindly to violent abuse of notable mainstream female cast members. In which case, it's no wonder a lot of women aren't interested in superhero comics. Say, how come they mention Sex Criminals? Doesn't the title alone suggest it's a very racy item that might be what BC's claiming won't work with anybody? From what I know, no matter how the content is conducted, it's certainly not a children's book.

Which brings us to another interesting point: whatever the costumes and other outfits look like, the noisy minorities don't seem especially concerned about the crude, jarring violence that's increasingly plagued mainstream superhero comics since the 1990s. In fact, if they're really so concerned about T&A outfits in superhero comics, how come they're not so bothered by the kind of insanities found in various manga/anime products coming from Japan? Over the years, I've noticed insulting jokes involving sexual assault turning up in some manga products - sometimes known as "ecchi" - that outstrip what you see in a US/European comic by many miles. And I guess that doesn't disturb the SJWs so much, does it?

Oddly enough, BC did mention a women who's working on products involving T&A:

However, as those who attend comic book conventions will attest, those flocking around the Zenescope table, are as likely to be female as male as well.

And it’s also worth looking at the work of Gail Simone, seen by some as a figurehead of the increasing female focus within comics, and her work for Dynamite with female creators on the Sword Of Sorrows series using Red Sonja to produce a series of sexy female characters and stories.

Well if there's any female audience for the creations of Robert E. Howard, then I honestly don't see why it'd be different for superheroes. Obviously not. But then, the writer goes on to respond to Campbell's comment about less mainstream company work with:

That, J Scott, is capitalism. People will buy what people will buy. But tastes change and either you change with them or you appeal to a market increasingly reducing in prominence.

Ahem. This wasn't a case of sales results for specific books we were talking about. It was the publishers acting like cowards because they think all the audience would literally stay away should they dare hire Campbell and his crowd for their products. The argument tastes change doesn't work so well either when you consider how awful the storytelling's become. Without good writing, you only appeal to a market buying out of sheer inertia, in hopes the worst tales will someday make big money on the speculator market, and it's been pretty apparent for years that it won't.

Sure, T&A as we know it can go too far in some cases. But that doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea, and when the SJWs refuse to complain about jarring violent content in modern superhero books, including stories that trivialize serious social issues like sex abuse, then it becomes pretty apparent their whole goal is only to dumb down mainstream storytelling in the worst ways possible. And that's why no sane person should waste time listening to their drivel. It's situations like these that prove why the internet is not always such a reliable source to figure out anything.

Update: also of worthy note: Cho donated at least a thousand dollars to a battered woman's shelter from what he made on the Spider-Gwen cover. Now is that really somebody worth making such a negative fuss over? It's a very heroic step Cho took, and a lot more than can be said about all the DC and Marvel contributors involved on Identity Crisis. Indeed, did Brad Meltzer, Morales, Dan DiDio, and other such men ever donate the money they made off that abomination to a shelter for abused women and children? In the past decade, I don't recall ever hearing they made donations to aid victims of abuse, which puts those charlatans on a level far below a much finer fellow like Cho.

The color pallettes of the Avengers

The Wall Street Journal wrote about how use of color palettes in comic books changed from the 1960s, when machinery of the time made it difficult to use really fancy colors for books like the Avengers.

Unfortunately, it turns out to be another superficial propaganda piece, where one of the captions for cover comparisons reads as:

DARKER, MOODIER COLORS The cover of the first issue of “The Avengers” (Left: “Avengers” #1 from September 1963) only really has about eight colors (plus white and black). The color palette from this cinematic 2014 cover (Right: “Avengers” #28 from April 2014) illustrates how dark and moody the palettes have become. Note, for instance, how different the greens are for The Hulk.

To be fair, this photo caption does tip in-the-know readers off to some of the biggest mistakes in modern comics - making them look more like movies, and how too many superhero comics have plunged into darkness. But the downside is that it's all told without comment on whether making regular comics look more like movies hurts them in the long run.

And towards the end, when bringing up Marvel's first major movie ventures, it says:

The shift to digital coloring occurred in the late 1990’s, and by 2000 it was the industry norm. Around this time, Marvel started rolling out its first major superhero films, such as “X-Men” in 2000 and “Spider-Man” in 2002. These new films were significantly darker, and had a more muted color palette than their comic-book representations. The popularity of the films brought many new readers to Marvel’s comics, and those new readers’ expectations led to a shift in the colors used on the comic-book covers. [...]

Wrong again, and sales receipts prove it. The early 2000s were the first time I know of when sales for X-Men began to sink below 100,000 copies on the charts. As for expectations, I don't think the audience ever expected or wanted darkness supreme, certainly not in Spider-Man. That's what brought down X-Men too in the 1990s. Grant Morrison's vision clearly didn't impress any moviegoers, but they conveniently ignore that.

Man, the WSJ sure has fallen in quality all these years. Darker color has only become as unhelpful as darker storytelling.

Valiant products apparently were revived for extended merchandise purposes

That's what I began to think after reading that the new Valiant's made some movie deals for adapting Bloodshot and Harbinger to the silver screen, just a few years after the new company was launched. But depending on one's view, that only enforces the notion this is what comics are for today: to serve more as movie material than as reading material. Mainly because the cover prices are getting so high, the chances moviegoers will read the comics are minimal.

A video all about Mark Waid's selfish attitude

We have here a video producer on YouTube who's put together a 21 minute commentary about Mark Waid's false accusations leveled against Honey Badger Radio at the Calgary Expo. And Waid is so mad, he's resorting to petty complaints about the guy's perceived mispronunciation of his name. But hey, some presumed foreigners do have difficulties, so what's the use of arguing about that? What he should be doing is offering a convincing defense why he think his take on the issue is justified, and he hasn't done that. He's only proven himself a sorry old man, jealous that he's no longer as big a thing as he used to be, who's making everyone familiar with his past work now have to take it with salt.

Adam Hughes not a Hillary Clinton fan

Artist Adam Hughes retweeted another post seen in the following screencap that signals he doesn't like Hillary Clinton:

Amazing. The original tweeter, and by extension, Hughes, are alluding to some of the most reprehensible statements ever made by Hillary and Bill. I have no idea if she made jokes about obesity, although Trevor Noah did. If Hughes understands what's wrong with Hillary - and all those statements she made in the past are just part of the mistakes she's made - that's why he's another artist I can certainly admire for being a realist.

Radical feminists get women's group expelled from Calgary Expo, and other leftist feminists think it's justified

Not only that, some radical left-wing comics writers/artists are backing this alarming act too. First, this is what happened that's resulted in a scandal, as the Honey Badger Brigade was thrown out:

According to their account, they encountered no problems at all on the first day of the convention, when they were simply manning their booth. In the afternoon, however, Alison and other members of their group decided to attend a feminist panel event discussing the depiction of women in comic books.

During the Q&A session, Alison publicly disagreed with one of the panelists, and gave a short statement in which she argued that the brand of feminism articulated by the panelists was too quick to embrace victimhood. This appears to have been the catalyst for the expo’s decision to eject the Honey Badgers from their conference.

And the worst part is that they're being framed as mere stooges for GamerGate. But there's been some deserved backlash, and I hope it'll convince the convention's managers to cease their ban on Honey Badgers. I wouldn't be surprised if whatever "feminism" was in discussion at the panel, it didn't bring up DC and Marvel's most offensive literature from a decade back, and was more about petty concerns like beautiful women on coverscans.

Now for at least a few of the offending writers backing this. The biggest appears to be Mark Waid, who's clearly fallen back on the kind of monstrosities he was mouthing off against conservatives more than a year ago. Another is Kurt Busiek, who's been a big mouth more often than Waid. And still another is Ron Marz, and even Dan Slott's made a few comments tying in. For Waid, this is just a fallback on his earlier tirade against conservatives. While the Outhousers has a lot of the relevant tweets in screencaps, I'll try to post some of the most telling ones here.

Favorite tweet of the day: https://t.co/H5b5Tn4MFv
— Mark Waid (@MarkWaid) April 17, 2015

So Waid doesn't want to admit he's doing what he accuses GG of doing. But as anyone familiar with his work over the past decade knows, this man was a co-writer of DC's 52 maxi-series, which followed up on Identity Crisis, something he's never openly condemned. On the surface, the dismal Elongated Man story he was writing there could be contstrued as a critique of IDC. But in retrospect, when you look at it under a microscope, and think about how it never reversed anything in the end, it's clear he never intended to make any fixes. I vaguely remember a Fantastic Four story he wrote in 2003 where Doctor Doom attacked Sue Storm with fire while using sorcery as a weapon; pretty lurid in retrospect. Sometimes, literary work can hint at your biases, and vice versa. Let's also not forget Waid once got nasty with a feminist a few years ago.

@MarkWaid Notice how most of the responses are a bunch of insults of GG and patting your back, but not a shred of evidence to be seen.
— Jane Doe (@MommyGotGamed) April 17, 2015

That's modern Waid for you, though he's probably been like this for a lot longer. Hard to believe he even cared about all the hard work his predecessors did at this point. He doesn't even seem to care about the Flash work he's particularly known for writing in the 90s. What a jerk.

Someone’s just told me that it’s okay to make false accusations of misogny if it’s retaliation. Because, I guess, ethics in game journalism.
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 18, 2015

Yeah, tell us about it. All this from a guy who probably thinks accusations of misogyny leveled at the IDC miniseries are "false" to the very end, doesn't seem particularly bothered by Brian Bendis' treatment of Scarlet Witch, associates himself with writers of questionable character, and has done little to convince he cares about women's rights despite some of his statements.

Of course, hijacking a Women in Comics panel to tale about Men’s Rights Activism isn’t ethics, games or journalism. But hey.
— Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) April 18, 2015

Umm, the girls from HBB paid for their booth, per requirements of the convention, so that's not exactly hijacking, now is it? Besides, if you don't like their opinions, just ignore them. Again, this is a guy who doesn't call out creators who willfully lend themselves to stories with sexist tones.

Man, some guy practically tweeted a novel at me, a dozen tweets about how the poor GamerGaters are misunderstood and BLOCK.
— Ron Marz (@ronmarz) April 18, 2015

B-but Marz, they are misunderstood! Haven't you heard? They're LEFTISTS! Based on the info I found earlier, I'd estimate two-thirds of GamerGaters are liberals and libertarians. There's even this woman who was once part of OWS. Some of them even support homosexuality. Some of them may have voted for Obama just like you. And some of them probably read your comics work too! And yet you shun them so much? Dear oh dear.

If you consider getting blocked by someone a badge of honor or some kind of achievement... ...man, is your bar set low. Like REALLY low.
— Dan Slott (@DanSlott) April 19, 2015

Who says they wanted to be blocked? They just wanted to argue their side, and Slott won't have any of it, because everything's got to look like he wants it to. He doesn't even care they're leftists! Still, who in the right frame of mind would want to associate with a crude man who dabbles in tasteless fanfiction where Mary Jane Watson is exploited by a man with tentacles disguised in Peter Parker's body? Here's also a screencap of a retweet by the artist Gene Ha, apparently related to the subject, although coming from back in October:

But if the GamerGate supporters are leftists and libertarians, then wouldn't you know it, they're the SJWs! LOL. Honestly, I don't see why this clown wants to view GG any more negatively than his other leftist peers, because hey, they sure seem to support the same visions he has.

Update: and while we're on the subject, here's another screencap to ponder:

And again, I don't see why this man has a problem with GG if he doesn't have a problem with Meltzer.

This brings us to a most interesting question: are these creators familiar with the botched Law & Order: SVU episode that aired at least 2 months ago? They probably are, but what remains to be learned is whether they realize in retrospect that despite any and all nasty dialect online, no actual violence was committed in real life, making the episode pretty phony, or, whether they're irked because the episode otherwise proves all the hysteria surrounding GamerGate was just a big moral panic. That said, the episode was widely panned, and even some of the alleged targets of GG couldn't bring themselves to defend it. And the "Darknet"?!? Oh, that's the best one I've heard all day.

Maybe not today, but someday, Waid, Busiek, et al will sit around shaking their heads in disbelief, feeling stunned at how the consumer movement they despised over misinformation turned out to be on the same side of the political arena as they are. I was never surprised it was possible; there's all sorts of liberals out there who like escapist fare, and don't like it when petty arguments become the norm. Nor do they like it when video game reporters act like J. Jonah Jameson. Speaking of which, does that mean Waid despises what Stan Lee created Jameson to reflect?

Oh, and another interesting question: what if GamerGaters happen to be very thankful to Dona Bailey, the lady who developed Centipede in 1980? That was a wonderful gem I played in childhood, and while it's been a long time since I last played with it, I for one am very grateful to Mrs. Bailey for what she helped bring this world back in the day. If a game like Centipede with prominent female staff were invented today, you can be quite sure it'd win over GamerGate supporters, maybe even more than the phony comics creators acting all uppity and taking the news they get at face value. So, that's just one more reason why they should stop acting like GamerGaters are only what they want them to be.

This experience these would-be creators had with GamerGaters this past week shows that the latter is beginning to catch on to what's gone wrong in comicdom today, and sooner or later, they're going to campaign for better ethics in comics journalism and coming from creators. Those who read the works of the aforementioned writers have probably come to understand why they'll have to separate art from the artist. Others will surely understand why, if they want to make a difference, they'll boycott their work or campaign to have advertisers stop paying for space in pamphlets from companies that allow this kind of insanity to go unchecked. Yes, the comics world feels it coming, and they're dreading the day when it does.

What would Jack Kirby think of Brian Bendis' retcon to Bobby Drake?

Another retcon's been made to an X-Man for politically correct pandering:

Bobby Drake, otherwise known as classic X-Men member Iceman, will come out of the closet this week. In a collection of leaked panels from All-New X-Men #40, due out tomorrow, Drake finds himself outed by fellow teammate Jean Grey. The revelation makes Iceman one of the most prominent (and powerful) LGBT superheroes in Marvel comics, and is in keeping with the company's push for more diversity among its characters.

The circumstances surrounding the character's coming out are unique, to say the least. Readers discover that the past, teenaged Bobby Drake, who has been transported to the future along with the original X-Men to help solve a crisis, is gay. Meanwhile, the present-day Iceman — who is still very much around — has had relationships with multiple women in the past. Apparently, that was an act

Just look how they report this with nary a critique whether it's necessary to turn an established character into something he was never intended to be. What would Jack Kirby have thought? I recall reading once that he was angry at a Superman story John Byrne wrote where Big Barda became a mind slave to a diminutive alien from Apokalips called Sleez, mainly because Barda was inspired by his own beloved wife. I see no reason to assume he'd think any differently if he found out about this mess.
And the most aggravating thing about this is, it all appears to be based on "fan speculation":

For years, fans have speculated about the sexuality of Bobby Drake, AKA Iceman from the X-Men. Specifically, fans have speculated that Iceman is gay. Despite dating women over the years, a lot of fans have felt it's been hinted at in stories, and Chuck Austen in particular seemed to really run with it. Well, according to leaked pages from this week's All-New X-Men #40, the cat is out of the bag and Iceman is out of the closet, as Jean Grey reveals his secret and he admits that it's true.

Austen? IIRC, he was once panned as one of the worst writers on the series. But if he wrote it today, I'm sure critical reception in particular would've been a wholly different story. On the other hand, I must take issue with this claim "fans speculated". I certainly didn't, and I think what they're insinuating stemmed from the selfish visions of kooks who wanted everything done their way. I'd say it was all just seeing what they wanted to, without a single critique for writers whether their characterization is good or bad. If they're using the notion that Bobby's failed relations with some of his past girlfriends justifies this new time-warp mishmash, that's ridiculous, because tons of men and women have fallouts and disagreements, and don't always find the mate who's right for them. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark must've had plenty of failed affairs years before, and does that somehow make them closet cases? Of course not. This is just another effort to hijack the X-Men for PC pandering, all at the expense of the hard work by pros of the past.

I also think the claim Bobby dated Kitty Pryde is not accurate; I certainly don't know of any stories where this took place (unless it may have taken place just a few years ago, when Bendis came aboard). And the biggest victim in this new Bendis story besides Bobby himself (and Kirby's memories) has got to be Jean Grey. She penetrates his mind without permission, and what Bendis is writing her doing is more like insulting his intellect. So in a manner of speaking, he's making her into a baddie. No surprise, really. It's already clear to most that his take on women in his superhero writing is very poor.

On a related note, when Grant Morrison was writing X-Men, he injected a contrived scene at one point where Beast tells the reporter Trish Tilby he's "gay" either supposedly to keep her away from the mansion when it was being attacked by villains, or out of revenge for some contrived reason. Even if it was supposed to be a joke, it was very poor, and disrespectful to better writers and artists who worked on X-Men.

And again, I don't think Kirby would've been very happy with what they're doing to Bobby and Jean.

Frank Cho stood up to SJW feminists

The artist who draws the Liberty Meadows comic strip stood his ground against humorless SJWs who took offense at some parody sketches he drew based on the Milo Manara Spider-Woman cover from almost a year ago. All because they don't like images or pictures of beautiful women, and must absolutely hate being pretty themselves. And where were those phonies a few years ago when Brian Bendis penned the much more offensive Avengers tale where Jessica Drew wound up naked while prisoner of the Wizard?

Here's Cho's reply to the overreaction:

Wow. What a crazy couple of days it has been. My parody cover sketch of Spider-Gwen aping the infamous Manara Spider-Woman pose sent some of the hypersensitive people in a tizzy.

To be honest, I was amused and surprised by the uproar since it was, in my opinion, over nothing. It’s essentially a small group of angry and humorless people ranting against my DRAWING of a pretty woman. It’s utter nonsense. This world would be a better and a happier place if some people just grow a sense of humor and relax.

It'd also be a lot better if they focused on more challenging issues like how the topic of sex abuse was trivialized in Identity Crisis. Something I doubt a lot of these SJWs care about then or now. Reaxxion goes on to note:

Sadly, the SJWs usually get their way when it comes to comics, and it’s making comics suck. Not only do new comics suck, they don’t sell, even though they should. Even though superhero movies dominate the box office and there are four superhero TV shows on network television right now, Marvel and DC Comics are lucky to sell 100,000 copies of any comic. Part of the reason superhero comics can’t sell—despite the popularity of superheroes—is because SJWs are making them suck.

Thanks to the SJWs’ influence, many fans and creators have been chased away from comic books. If these whiners get their way, artists like Cho would be driven out of the industry altogether, and who would take their place?

Part of the reason SJWs could get away with it is because mainstream companies are obviously open to their balderdash, and because of the insular MO they run their business on today. Another is the heavy cover prices, which are bound sooner or later to reach 5 dollars apiece.

This news does suggest that artists - along with some writers - are beginning to sense there's a hostile movement out there trying to undermine their work, and if they believe in the art they worked hard to master, they're going to have to fight back. Cho did the right thing to stand his ground.

Comics Alliance wants to tell everyone the Muslim Ms. Marvel is some generation's Kitty Pryde

Comics Alliance published some more propaganda the other week, where they want to tell us all that a character introduced in such a jiffy qualifies immediately as a modern Shadowcat. At the start, they say:

Kamala Khan is a superstar now. Introduced only a year ago by Marvel, she’s become a bona fide figurehead for the publisher. A young Muslim girl in America who develops powers and uses them to try and help people, her story has caught on with a mainstream audience and turned the Ms Marvel series into a real, actual hit, especially among the growing digital readership.

Man, such comedy! To date, I've never seen actual figures for digital sales, no matter what ranks are given, so I just don't see their point in boasting. If they were serious, they would've provided actual figures in numbers long ago.

What’s fascinating about the character, though, is how clearly she’s embedded into the tradition of superhero comics, and how you can draw a direct line from her back through Marvel’s history, to some of the company’s most popular female superheroes. Kamala broke through at just the right moment in time, in just the right way, for the readership to embrace her, but she owes a debt to several characters that came before her.

I'm not sure how she can be seriously embedded in the superhero traditions when the Religion of Peace sticks out like a sore thumb. That only conflicts with superhero traditions for the most part.

Things start, as they always do, with Kitty Pryde.

Introduced as the first explicitly “young” character for a series whose teenagers had always sounded like they were the same age as Stan Lee, Kitty was written to be a fresh voice in the cast. She was flighty, strong-willed, and frequently shown as naive. She also changed her outfits a lot. Her character quickly grew to be the heart of the series, as her point of view generally matched that of the reader. There’s a good reason she’s cited by many female readers as the character that brought them into comics in the first place.

Pryde was also an influence on one of the preeminent writers of the new millennium, Joss Whedon, who incorporated her spirit and personality into his character Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He brought the influence full-circle when he became writer for Astonishing X-Men and wrote Kitty as his Buffy stand-in.

Whedon also introduced a new female for his team in the form of Armor, an Asian student at the school who accidentally gets drawn into the main team.

But if we're talking about this in terms of the comic book series from Dark Horse, it became too much of a vehicle for Whedon's own sloppy politics. And speaking of naive, one could say Willow Wilson's naive, or just dishonest, about the Religion of Peace. It's worth noting that over the years, whether Kitty was seriously observant of religion never seemed to be a big issue, unlike how it's apparently playing out in the Muslim Ms. Marvel series. For Kitty, they ideally kept that to more of a minimum.

Armor is an interesting character, because her personality and role were played up quite strongly while Whedon wrote X-Men, but dropped almost immediately after he left. Unlike Kitty Pryde, who benefited from years of Chris Claremont‘s stewardship and became a popular subject for subsequent creative teams, Armor got messed up fairly quickly after her original creators moved on. One later story seemed to imply that her ability to generate forcefields was tied to an honor system. When she feels like she’s being honorable to her family’s legacy, the armor grows stronger; when she feels she’s betraying her ancestry, it grows out of control.

“Weird cultural stuff” sums up a few of the characters Marvel have tried to build up over the years. Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men took place around the time of the September 11 tragedy of 2001. As a result, a large segment in the middle of his run reads as a direct response to the attack, in uncharacteristically clunky ways. This included the introduction of one of the few positive Muslim characters in superhero comics, Dust.

Despite what they say, I'm not sure many Muslim characters have ever been presented negatively, not even Bill Mantlo's sloppily created Arabian Knight, who was depicted as a polygamist. Interesting they're actually willing to speak negatively about the latter as much as the former example. Usually, PC would dictate how this kind of review is run, and chances they'd deliver a poor review of stories by leftists like Morrison are minor. And over a decade ago, there were gushing reviews of Morrison's nonsense given on mainstream sites.

A Sunni Muslim, Dust is characterized rather consistently in all her appearances, and several writers have even used her as a way to educate readers on Islam, and especially on what life can be like for a young Muslim.

She also… turns into sand. I’ve spoken to several Arabic X-Men readers over the years, and the general consensus among them is that Dust is a positive character, but also somewhat passive, with a power set that presents problems because it evokes some of the strongest racist insults directed towards Arabs. She also wears an abaya and niqab together, which are appropriate items of clothing for a woman from the Middle East, but some creators have confused it for a burqa, and several artists have drawn the outfit as form-fitting, in contravention of the purpose of the clothing.

I'm not surprised there'd be Islamic detractors out there who'd dislike the creation. As I'd discovered, there's dislikers in the Muslim world of Kamala Khan too. Interesting that Morrison may have created a character with specific features that Muslims don't like. But their claim these burkas, abayas, niqabs and chadors are "appropriate" is distasteful. Covering one's body like that doesn't just deny one an identity, it's also unhealthy, and bars vitamin D from the sunlight to the wearer. And of course, there's women in the middle east and elsewhere who are miserable about wearing such awful clothing - which sharia enforcers force them to wear - and CA's defense of the oppressive garments is insulting to Arabic/Iranian women too.

Dust and Armor were attempts to diversify the Marvel Universe with characters who could be new versions of Kitty, but from different cultural backgrounds. In both cases they suffered from mistakes in their representation and risked feeling more like statements than fully-realized characters. The characters have since become regular members of the Westchester student body, but neither of them are the stars they could have been.

Oh, there were mistakes made alright, but not what they might imply. The mistakes were refusal to be honest about what's found inside the religion Dust adheres to.

Due to the significance and power of Kitty Pryde’s initial appearance in Uncanny X-Men, many writers have attempted to create new female characters who can match her for star power. Even Claremont tried to recapture the magic when he introduced Jubilee back in 1989.

Jubilee was a Chinese-American character who managed to leapfrog many of the problems that hit other female characters at Marvel, and quickly developed a fan following. A Kitty Pryde for the next generation along, she was brought into the 1990s cartoon series that defined the X-Men as a group for a large number of fans.

It’s arguably Jubilee who influences Kamala the most. They’re both excitable, flammable characters, and both are shown to be smart and capable and enthusiastic about superheroes, but they also both clearly needed to develop and grow. The characters also share an emphasis on fun. Where Dust carried the burden of being a Muslim character during a particularly stressful time, Jubilee was brought in to provide comic relief.

Jubilee is one of the strongest examples of a female character growing in popularity through comedy, and the creation of Kamala Khan feels incredibly informed by this. Her series is light and bubbly, and the character is a quick-talking spark, just like Jubilee — and like another recent character on the road from Kitty to Kamala.

No, sorry, but Jubilee doesn't influence the Khan character, and her initial characterization may not have been the best either. Although what I find really disappointing about the early appearances of Jubilation Lee is the costume design by Marc Silvestri: a yellow trenchcoat and shorts?!? You could call that the flipside of any problems with the Khan character's outfit: Jubilee's made her look like a teenage streetwalker. I once met somebody a little over a decade ago who noted that Jubilee was meant to be a parody of the Batman-Robin teaming when Wolverine took her up as a protege. Which is fine, but still doesn't make the outfit any more tasteful. Obviously, somebody at Marvel must've thought so too, since almost 4 years later, they all but abandoned the initial design for different garments like jeans, and her hair was grown longer.

As for the Muslim Ms. Marvel series, if they push ideology, then the tone is no compensation. In fact, it just reveals a telling problem: sometimes, when a series comes along that's allegedly bright and optimistic, it turns out it's little more than a propaganda vehicle. If that's how mainstream publishers are going to do their business, then it only proves editorial mandates are vehement as ever, and choices for writers are selective in the extreme.

Although she’s seen as being a silly character, Pixie is one of the few recent characters at Marvel to have headlined her own miniseries, Pixie Strikes Back. Clearly, silliness has an audience, especially when the rest of your superhero universe is so often downbeat and grim. Just as Pixie and Jubilee both proved that comics readers like a bit of levity (and some actual jokes) in their books, so we see Kamala developed not as an “important character,” but as a funny one.

But as I've said before, any and all use of the Religion of Peace in this propaganda ruins everything. As a result, humor only becomes a smokescreen, and some of it's quite terrible.

Angel Salvadore is another example of a teen girl character who briefly gained some traction at Marvel, but again only one writer really had a handle on her, and though she embraced comedy, her story was also marked by tragedy and weighty drama. Driven out of her home by an abusive step-father, Angel was defiant and rebellious, sneaking off from school to drink and meet boys. Her anger was played for laughs as often as it was played seriously, and it created a character who felt like somebody real, and different for the X-Men as a whole.

Then she got pregnant. As with Dust having the power to turn into sand, having the teenaged black girl get pregnant felt like something that should’ve been given more thought. The storyline led to the well-written development of a family unit over the years – and to one of the only mixed-race couples in comics, and one of the longest-lasting – but it also angered several readers at the time. Angel could have been a new Kitty or Jubilee, but her story largely took her out of rotation . Why would she go off to fight Magneto when she’s got kids at home?

Why do I get the feeling they're not very honest about reaction to the interracial couple seen in the Morrison tale? That's not a problem. What is a problem is how the X-Men under his pen were still depicted as absurdly isolationist and close to anti-war, accompanied by tasteless violence and other visuals like this one on the side where the girl throws her drink at another X-Man (next think you know, we'll find out she was belching or spitting on him!). It's not often I've seen sights so crass in the years I've read superhero comics.

Most of these teenage female characters have come from the X-Men, which is understandable because the X-Men’s central premise demands the periodic creation of new voices and new characters. Whole teams like the New Mutants and Generation X grew from that demand for new generations, establishing characters like Dani Moonstar, M, and Husk. For the most part these were ensemble characters, rather than sole teen girls in a team or in their own title.

The Avengers have also had fleeting moments when they ignored the old white guys in favor of telling stories with female characters. Two of them, in fact, grew separately and joined forces in the most recent run of Young Avengers; America Chavez and Kate Bishop.

What this? They're putting down "old white guys" again? Does that mean "old" white women don't count either? And what about robots like the Vision? Or, why are white guys a problem but not women of any ethnicity? I'm not sure what their logic is here. But I do know Young Avengers came out far too late in the mid-2000s, at a time when quality was plummeting for Marvel.

What’s most noticeable about these characters is that they were not written to fill that Kitty Pryde role. They represented a different kind of young female character – women embracing the responsibilities of adulthood – and they stole the spotlight of the books they appeared in.

If they did, not many people were around to care - let's remember sales levels. But since we're on the subject, I just realized that nearly all the women they cite are superpowered - no "civilians" seem to turn up. And I honestly can't help but wonder why superpowered women count...but not so much non-powered women. Then again, these are the kind of people who've turned their backs on Mary Jane Watson, so maybe it's nothing new.

Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta’s Vengeance miniseries was clearly intended to subvert the way young characters are written at Marvel, and introduced America as an all-action star who just happened not to have reached her twenties. She didn’t share the same interests as Kitty or Pixie or Jubilee – shopping, music, pop culture – but was instead self-sufficient and ready to fight.

Kate Bishop is similar in that regard. She didn’t need to grow into being a superhero; from her first appearance she was already a more confident adult than her fellow Hawkeye, Clint Barton.

Again, the chemistry of these characters feeds in to the new Ms Marvel. There’s a grown-up attitude to Kamala Khan. She realizes, quips aside, the real dangers of the world she’s in. We’re following her origin story, but the character already has the self-reliance and immediate confidence that are usually only afforded to male characters like the new Nova. With Kitty and Jubilee, there was a sense that they needed the X-Men to help them develop. With Kate Bishop, America Chavez, and Kamala Khan, there’s a sense of self-sufficiency even if they do all end up on teams.

If we’re going to talk about the many influences that have blended into Kamala Khan through the years, there’s one character who stands out above all others.

Yeah, tell us about it. In fact, logic suggests that if Morrison's New X-Men were published today, they'd be all gushy as can be. It's honestly funny how they seemingly put down the depictions of Dust, yet take a more positive view of Ms. Muslim.

Molly Hayes was the breakout star who proved to Marvel that people wanted new, fun, complicated female characters out there. Created in the pages of Runaways, by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona (the current lead artist for Ms Marvel – what a coincidence!), Molly Hayes was the kind of character that Marvel wanted Armor, X-23 and Pixie to be. She grew a huge fanbase, especially among female readers – and especially especially among new female readers, the most valuable demographic out there.

When the Runaways brand lost momentum, Marvel was either unable or unwilling to capitalize on Molly’s popularity and launch her into a solo series, even though she was arguably one of their most-loved characters of the time. Marvel would later give solo series to both Pixie and X-23, but neither character had the same level of fan-support as Molly Hayes ten years earlier.

But if nobody care about the Runaways cast, and low sales in modern times actually compound that, why would they expect a solo book for Hayes? Few even cared about any of the Gambit series written to date. There's valid reason to doubt what a site that minimized what their resident cybertroll did a decade ago is throughly accurate.

If the time wasn’t right back then for a breakout young female solo star, today is definitely the right time for Kamala Khan. Created by Alphona, G. Willow Wilson, and editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, Kamala wears the influences of decades of prior characters like Jubilee and Kitty on her sleeves. One can also see the effort being made to respectfully represent her cultural history, rather than to replicate some of the missteps made with Dust and Armor.

But most of all, you can also tell that the character stepped into the spotlight at a time where the demand for a hero like her was reaching new heights. Kamala Khan marks a cautious step forward from Marvel comics. Hopefully in a few years’ time she’ll be remembered as the first in the next generation of young female characters at the company.

Oh, here's where they're really lurching into propaganda. Who's truly demanding an adherent to Islam - or any religion, for that matter? Only the most cynical propagandists and even then, they may not care. CA's just confirmed why humor and tone can't compensate when there's propaganda at work: her "cultural history", a very ambiguous term at that, is already presented in a whitewashed light, and that's actually a misstep, making it kind of amusing they'd call missteps with Dust just that, when they actually see the presentation to their liking. Indeed, it's still a bit odd they'd be willing to say something remotely negative about Morrison's tales, when if done today, they'd be less likely to, although one could wonder if someday, they'll be willing to say the same about Muslim Ms. Marvel that they did about Dust in New X-Men: that missteps were taken. There were, but chances are next time around, they won't be admitting that about any of these Islamic propaganda storylines.

Gerry Conway on immigration and supposed religious fanaticism

Here's two more tweets by radical leftist Conway to ponder. For instance:

SCREAMING WITH FRUSTRATION "TSA ‘Behavior Detection’ Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists" https://t.co/cbxpXS0dYJ
— Gerry Conway (@gerryconway) April 6, 2015

Sigh. He won't consider that there have been terrorists who crossed the border while posing as illegal aliens, which, come to think of it, they are. But, if that's what he thinks, how come he hasn't criticized the Obama administration for letting it get out of hand? Oh, right, he'll make separations when he thinks it suits him. Only a Republican-led government is suited for scapegoating in his mind.

Yikes: "Religious Fanaticism is a Huge Factor in Americans’ Support for Israel" https://t.co/XHSCRiskFY
— Gerry Conway (@gerryconway) April 15, 2015

Tsk tsk tsk. So Christianity/Judaism is fanaticism, but Islamofascism never is, nor its motivations for al Qaeda, Hamas, and Boko Haram. This isn't the first time Conway's signaled hostility to Israel (and maybe the USA?). A few years ago, he wrote these disgusting tweets as well. That's why he's such a leading example on a big list of writers whose art you'd have to separate from the artist, or take with a grain of salt. And he actually read and wrote the creations of descendants of Israel, and worked alongside plenty of them decades before! We can only wonder if today, he's the kind of man who's happy to just take the money and run. Yet simultaneously, he doesn't sound like a very happy man.

Tom Brevoort says killing terrorists makes you one as well

Just when you thought Brevoort couldn't stoop deep enough into the abyss, he does again. It began with some posts where he claims Batman killing the Joker would be wrong, even if it's to save an innocent life (strange, wasn't Daredevil shown killing a handful of villains in self-defense, possibly in Frank Miller's stories?), and veers close to acting like Batman is a real person. Now, he's gone overboard again with another stupefying argument against killing murderous offenders that basically says you're also a terrorist if you terminate them. He begins with:

I think this has as much if not more to so sub-textually with the audience wanting to feel good about itself.

I think Brevoort likes to feel good about himself. No wonder he's part and parcel of the crew backing the erasure of the Spider-marriage, and the awful treatment of Mary Jane Watson. And that's just one example of many embarrassments he's been involved with for over a decade.

it started a little bit in the 80s, but especially ever since 9/11, there’s been an underlying narrative throughout popular fiction that amounts to, “In order to fight terrorists, the only thing that can be done is to become a terrorist yourself.” And that seems to me to be a product of a society that knows that things like the abuses at Guantanamo Bay are wrong, but doesn’t actually want to change the behavior or demand accountability. In a world where even Superman can’t find a way other than to become a terrorist, it’s more all right for ordinary people to feel the same way.

What a groaner. All he's doing is blurring the differences between terrorists and counter-terror specialists, for example. You could easily argue he's insulting liberals along with conservatives too. How does he know the entire public agrees with his view of anything going on at Guantanamo, if it really did take place?

And what narrative has there really been in popular fiction that he claims? Not in the fictional stories he's been in charge of, that's for sure, and certainly not since 9-11. They took good care to ensure the narrative would be one of defeatism, and a dearth of creativity. That's why the Marvel Knights take on Captain America was truly awful.

I think grappling with hard moral choices, and the question of where heroism stops, at what point you become a villain, is definitely interesting–it’s certainly been the backbone of the storyline in AVENGERS and NEW AVENGERS for months. But I don’t think the example that was given fulfills that quandary. That isn’t a hard choice at all, not for a super hero–if it is, then they’re a piss-poor super hero, and will be dead on in prison soon anyway. No, it’s a false choice that we want to see go the other way because we’ve become societally convinced that doing so makes somebody a “badass” and worthy of emulation. And because, on a visceral level, we want to see the bad guy get theirs. But that isn’t justice, that’s vengeance.

Says who it's not justice? Only a lazy bum like Brevoort. He's long stopped being relevant. Besides, didn't they once try to make various superheroes into "badasses" over past decades? Wolverine's one of those too. But then, that could explain why they got rid of Logan in their recent publicity stunts, replete with a few tie-in specials to milk more money off of the gullible.

I have no doubt there's plenty of terrible messages to be found in the recent Avengers storylines. It's not all that new though. Marvel's surrendered the Earth's Mightiest Heroes to the worst of writers since 2002.

Thank goodness we didn't have anti-warrists like Brevoort around during WW1 and WW2. But tragically, we do have men like him around today, and they do not help one bit.

Why it took 2 decades for Dark Horse to try Barb Wire again

The Dark Horse editor who created the futuristic lady bounty hunter, Chris Warner, was interviewed by Bleeding Cool about the relaunch of Barb Wire, though he doesn't give exact reasons why:

William Wright: The obvious question everyone wants to know is, why bring back Barb Wire now?

Chris Warner: Well, now is the only time we could bring it back, since we can’t change the past, and the future isn’t here yet. There is no better time for now than the present. I dunno, just seemed like a good time to do a fun book and kick some ass. Over the years I’ve wished that comic books were more like comic books and not the deadly serious, overwritten, postmodern, continuity-strangled torture chambers so many have become. I read a typical mainline comic book these days and I want to jump off a bridge, which interferes with all my other reasons for wanting to jump off a bridge.

He avoids explaining the exact reasons, but I'm aware of what they really are: the abortive 1996 movie starring former Baywatch starlet Pamela Anderson in the role. It was a movie that opened to negative reception, and tanked at the box office after barely a month, grossing less than a quarter of its approximately $20 million budget. What might've been better suited as a made-for-video production was turned into a theatrical dud. And it must've embarrassed Dark Horse for quite a while, since it took nearly 2 decades for them to try it again. Warner's right, they can't change the past. But with a little work, they can ensure the future will work better for the source material.

I wish Warner well in seeking an audience for his creation today, and I hope the people in charge of Dark Horse won't be turning their products into movies that don't have solid scripting. (In fact, of all the films based on several of their products to date, very few other than The Mask did well, and the 2004 sequel to that film certainly didn't.) On his other points, he's right that mainstream superhero comics have become far too serious, post-modern and overwritten. He's wrong, however, that they became continuity-choked. DC and Marvel threw away all consistency long ago.