It seems that Booster Gold, who turned out to have faked his death in 52, . But while Dan Jurgens, who was a co-creator of Booster back in the late 80s, is drawing, it appears that Geoff Johns is co-writing this new book along with another person who came from movies named Jeff Katz, whose resume, I see, includes horror movies like Freddy vs. Jason. Who knows then if it’s really worth it?
, for New Avengers #31, which appears to be an “homage” to when Elektra was originally killed off in Daredevil #181 in 1983.
According to a source from Marvel, this will mostly likely be the next big “it” book, as what happens on the cover is only the start of the story, and doesn’t involve Elektra’s resurrection a handful of issues later.
I hate to say, but somehow, I doubt this’ll be “it”, seeing as I’m already disillusioned with Brian Michael Bendis for at least three years now.
And this solicitation sure is going a bit far:
No hype! No BS! The most important last page of any Marvel comic this year! Do not miss it!
Wow, that’s certainly an attention grabber, using even initials for profanity to raise people’s eyebrows.
The verdict: No sale.
I agree with that Carol Danvers, Ms. Marvel of the MCU, is one numero uno babe, and one of the best women in the MCU’s cast of characters. I do not however, agree with this part:
After the events of Civil War, Ms. Marvel is poised to be one of the most powerful characters in comics.
After Civil War, and the eight issue of Carol’s new series, they came pretty close to rendering her unlikable. Blogger (via ) said that:
I haven’t hated the main character of a book I bought this much since Tim Drake at the end of Robin’s first One Year Later arc (the little bastard).
Carol took on a standing as dreadful as those of Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man in CW, and if we’re past that now, we - and she - should only be so lucky.
IGN’s right that Ms. Marvel is a number one hottie, but they shouldn’t promote her based on a miniseries as terrible as Civil War was. That’s superficial at worst, and obscures many of the deeper details about CW.
, the director of the Doug Wright Cartooning Awards in Canada, . Unfortunately, he chose what I feel is a superficial argument at best, about why they’re on the decline, and even runs the gauntlet of sugarcoating. First, what’s this that he says here:
For an industry famous for tales packed full of muscles and melodrama, the situation has prompted an unusual amount of soul searching. The would-be villains are many. Some have blamed the sales slide on cultural upstarts, like video games, manga and the ever-present Internet. Others point to the increased popularity of bookstore-friendly graphic novels, sales of which have recently surpassed traditional comics.But there are those who have begun to ask more complex questions, like how characters that are 40, or even 70, years old can remain relevant in an increasingly diverse society. This raises one of the oldest and most uncomfortable truths about the superhero genre: its surprising dearth of non-white heroes, particularly black ones.
Take Marvel Comics, home to such super-powered luminaries as Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine and the Fantastic Four. For more than 40 years, the New York-based company has modelled itself as the more progressive half of a superhero industry dyad, the other half being DC Comics. But on closer inspection, Marvel’s catalogue tells a different story. According to their own figures, the Marvel universe contains more than 5,000 characters, yet even a generous count reveals that only 100 or so of these are black – less than two per cent of their fictional population. This pales in comparison to the nearly 14 per cent that the U.S. Census says makes up American society at present (the number is more like 12 if you expand the numbers to include all of North America).
The rest of the mainstream industry doesn’t fair much better. Of the 300 comics published monthly by Marvel, DC, and a clutch of other companies, only a half-dozen or so titles feature a black hero in a starring role. And according to the industry website Icv2.com, none of these titles – which include the Black Panther, Blade and Spawn – sell well enough to regularly crack the Top 50, which on most months is a realm reserved for an all-star (and all-white) cast of heroes like Spider-Man, Superman and Captain America.
The rest of the mainstream industry doesn’t fair much better. Of the 300 comics published monthly by Marvel, DC, and a clutch of other companies, only a half-dozen or so titles feature a black hero in a starring role. And according to the industry website Icv2.com, none of these titles – which include the Black Panther, Blade and Spawn – sell well enough to regularly crack the Top 50, which on most months is a realm reserved for an all-star (and all-white) cast of heroes like Spider-Man, Superman and Captain America.
Female superheroes, meanwhile, haven’t fared much better in the pages of mainstream comics. While there have been many notable super-heroines in comics – including DC’s Wonder Woman, who was among the first to debut way back in 1941 – their ranks are far outweighed by the men.
But for those working in the estimated $400 million mainstream comic business, the homogeneity of heroes is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
In all due fairness, while there certainly is something to the argument about women not getting as good as the men do, I think the argument about “diversity” is moot at best. It’s not at all because there aren’t enough minority group folks in prominent leading roles. It’s because of the lack of entertaining, intelligent writing, and because of the mass-stuffing of ultra-political plots down the throats of the readers. And if all they can do is one-dimensionally stuff anti-war propaganda down our throats, then is it any wonder that people will slowly begin to be discouraged from reading? Plus, , I think that the way that DC for one has been putting minority group characters in the roles of the everypeople who came before has actually hurt them more than helped.
The article does get this right though:
“Everything that these companies do is in complete isolation from true market forces. They are not now, nor have they been for 30 years, part of the mass media,” says the co-owner of Toronto’s most discerning comic shop, The Beguiling. “Companies run by fans with comics drawn by fans rarely think of catering to anyone but themselves, which unfortunately means comics aimed primarily at adult men who still want to read comics featuring characters suited to children’s entertainment.”If they’re truly unable to recruit younger readers, superhero comics are destined to whither and possibly die within a generation or two. It is entirely possible that our grandchildren will know of Spider-Man or Batman only through other iterations, like Hollywood, cartoons, or video games.
Comics will always be around in some form, possibly trade paperbacks, but yes, they’re, well, half right, that they companies now are acting in isolation, but mainly because they’re mostly obsessed with political metaphors and mindless violence with no positive messages to accompany them.
This might make some sense too:
Leopold Campbell, a 34-year-old vice-principal and die-hard superhero fan, has an easy solution: write better stories. Campbell, who has been reading comics since he was “a working-class black kid” in Toronto, says comic fans of all colours get hooked on them for one reason, the addictive nature of serialized storylines – many of which involve complex plots and take years to resolve.Most black comics, on the other hand, “are insulting to the intelligence,” he says. “The problem is, black characters always have to be protest characters… They’re always arguing about something or they’re always angry, and it always has to do with race. So they’re fixed within one specific subject.”
The worst recent example of this was Steel, a 1994 Superman spin-off that featured a black engineer-turned-superhero. “The stories were insulting. [Here’s] this guy that’s supposed to be highly intelligent and makes weapons for the military, and he’s fighting people in the ghetto. It just made no sense.” This is especially frustrating for Campbell who runs a book club for boys (many of whom are black) at Toronto’s Fisherville Junior High School.
The guy may have a point here too, that too many minority group characters are depicted as having an axe to grind. Vic Stone/Cyborg, IIRC, was one black character whose background was far better written than that of Steel’s, as his father was a prominent scientist at S.T.A.R Labs, a guy who’d climbed the ladder to success. But even so, the lack of standout protagonists of minority backgrounds is far from being the biggest problem with comics today.
And the following part is what drowns out the credibility of this article, I’m afraid:
If anyone is going to take the black superhero out of the ghetto, it just might be Marvel’s executive editor, Axel Alonso.A veteran of Marvel and DC, Alonso has championed controversial projects, including a 2003 miniseries that re-imagined the 1950s western hero Rawhide Kid as a leather-clad gay cowboy, and the 2004 series Truth: Red, White and Black. It recounted the untold story of the first Captain America, an African American who endured brutal tests that echoed the real-life Tuskegee syphilis experiments that were conducted starting in the 1930s on a group of American men who were black and poor.
Both series were praised by many outside of the comic industry, yet Marvel weathered intense – and often racially charged – criticism from fans.
Oh. My. God. Once again, we’re up against a case of someone clouding the exact facts about all matters surrounding those horrible miniseries, the former of which depicted Rawhide as an alarmingly flaming homosexual, and the latter of which wallowed in vicious racial stereotypical artwork by Kyle Baker. You could say that that’s why I wouldn’t dare buy his take on Plastic Man; why should I want to do any favors for a ? Can we be clear here, the Truth miniseries, , was racist and also anti-American, and I shouldn’t have to keep pointing that out. And Mackay has the disgrace to blur and confuse all that? And is it just me, or is he implying that the fans were the ones who went overboard, rather than the writers and editors themselves, when delivering their criticism? I’m not sure, but I will say that for now, Mackay has submerged his whole argument by sugarcoating some of Marvel’s worst controversy-baiting material from the past few years.
With all the anti-conservative standings turning up in comics today, even allegorically, it’s probably time to make some notes on that comics may have had some unfavorable leanings against conservatives for longer than one thinks.
Now, let’s take as an example some of Marvel’s 1980s output. Some works, like for example, the time when president Reagan gave the Hulk a presidential pardon in 1982, were probably the most respectable you could find about a conservative in their comics at the time. Some of the stuff on this can be found (and also ). But that’s probably the closest you could get to a favorable depiction, as Captain America, on the other hand, took a turn towards featuring an unfavorable stand on Reagan in the mid-80s, which culminated in the story where Steve Rogers was fired and introduced John Walker to replace him, the protagonist who later became USAgent. Most appalling about him at the time was that, while he may not have been racist by any stretch, he may have been nasty towards women, and invoked a southern stereotype. This ultimately was what had Steve Rogers brought back to his rightful role as the Star-Spangled Avenger.
DC Comics, while not as negative towards Reagan as Marvel was being with Capt. America at the time, still had some negative takes on conservatives that turned up in a few places. And while the ones I recall were pretty mild, they were there too. For example, in the New Teen Titans #18, which brought back Leonid Kovar, the original protagonist to take the name of Starfire (he later became Red Star), Kid Flash, depicted as a “midwestern conservative”, bore a severe distrust towards the Russian-born superhero, and was depicted as something of a hothead over the issue of whether he’s judging Kovar too hard. I don’t think Wally West’s political standings were ever focused on again after that, but there you have it, it seemed as though he were being depicted as a conservative stool pidgeon. In the Question, when Vic Sage went to a fictional Latin American country called Santa Prisca to find his abducted mentor, Aristotle “Tot” Rodor, there was a part there where he was trying to decide which corridor in a forked path he should take, and, “in honor of the previous election, I’ll go right.” That he did, leading right into the path of some menacing guards. As mild as it was, this still seemed like a swipe at the 1984 election, where Reagan was reelected, implying that it was a mistake to vote to the right.
Now a big difference you had back then was that, whether or not conservatives were being attacked at the time, the writers and editors of liberal standings weren’t going galaxies our of their way with their politics to the point of letting it get almost completely in the way of their creativity, as a lot of those at Marvel now seem to be doing, and lest we think that DC is any better. And everyone recognized that Communism was bad, and even Islamic terrorists, whether or not they were named as such, occasionally turned up at the time as the criminals they were too, even in Russia itself. Plus, many stories offered much more to think about too. I suppose the problem was that liberals were acting as if conservatives weren’t doing a good enough job in dealing with the problems, or as if they could literally do an even better job. I don’t know.
Negative leanings towards conservatives at the time may have been much milder and more restrained, but that doesn’t mean it was a healthy practice to do it. For, it may have been what led to a lot of the politicization of comics today. I’m not saying that liberals should have to be flat out taken to task instead now, but attacks on conservatives are going to have to stop, and politics, simply put, will otherwise have to be moved away from.
At the same time, writers also have to avoid falling back on errors like the Clone Saga in Spider-Man from the mid-90s, a story that was not political by any stretch, but was still pretty offensive, like when the Spidey clone wounded Mary Jane while running out of a room (so painful to think about, I’m not getting into this any further). If you’re going to write something de-facto nostalgic, it has to be without descending into the kind of crude litter that many entertainment venues sunk into during the past decade.
that gives a surprising revelation: he’s color blind and doesn’t actually color his drawings. Rather, he uses:
To simulate something that looks like painting (which he frequently uses for some of his comics work) Sale uses an ink wash technique that produces a largely black-and-white image. He dilutes the ink to produce subtler gray tones.Then the image is scanned into a computer at a really high resolution and a colorist adds color and textures so it looks like a painting.
“It’s not that much different than the way I normally work, except they blow up the images really, really big and print it on canvas,” he said of the mural-sized pieces often used on the show.
Well now, that’s certainly an interesting explanation about how Mr. Sale does his trade - by the virtue of modern technology!
echoes a similar sentiment to mine and various others, that Joe Quesada should resign as Marvel’s EIC:
I’d like to respond to on Captain America. Diamond was sold out of Captain America on Sunday night. I always do my re-orders on Sunday night and when I went to increase my orders on Captain America #25, they were already sold out. So obviously there were dealers who had inside information about this book. It must be nice to have inside information like that. There have always been extras on all of the Civil War books except this one. Hmmmmm! Sounds like a scandal to me. But that is the beauty of a one distributor system!Last night I asked myself how I could have missed ordering big on this book, so I looked in the December Marvel Previews and there was one of those black classified stamps across the content description for Captain America #25. How silly and ignorant is that. What other surprises await us with the other “classified” books?
Marvel handled this poorly. They made us retailers (with the exception of the retailers who had inside information) look like morons! They cost us sales and hurt customers. Let me be the first to call for the resignation of Joe Quesada. This was a huge blunder for Marvel and the industry as a whole.
More than just that, it was an insult to fans, and really, the audience would do better not to waste time and money upon their latest publicity stunt. Still, this is interesting in a way, because it shows that, while no doubt Marvel is hoping to make big money out of this, they went about it surprisingly poorly. The store manager here is right, Quesada should resign, and this may be just what’s needed in order to see to it that he finally takes a hike.
adapted from Frank Miller’s graphic novel from the late 1990s, has scored a remarkable success at the box office with at least 70 million dollars. I wonder if it has anything to do with Miller’s patriotic standings. I have no idea, but that said, there are those who don’t seem to think it’s great for political reasons. For example, , a film writer for has taken the opportunity to turn it all into a red-and-blue state affair. I guess that’s why I’ll have to think about going to see it when I have the chance too then, eh?
Hysterical liberal buffoons in the US aren’t the only ones who seem to have a problem with it, because it seems to represent what they dislike. There’s also - wouldn’t you know it - (also via ):
Iran on Monday strongly condemned the US film company Warner Bros. over the allegedly “anti-Iranian” blockbuster film 300. Javad Shamqadri, art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told Fars news agency that the film was an insult to Persian culture and in line with the American “psychological war” against Iran…Iran’s has called foul over what it calls “deviation of history” but also because the Persians in the film were shown as “ugly and violent creatures rather than human beings.”[…]
The news network Khabar organised a special programme in which the film was evaluated from several angles by film critics who argued that the film’s alleged efforts to expose Persians as violent was a US political plot implemented through Hollywood and the Warner Bros. company.
Wow, they still think of themselves as Persians? I don’t know if the Persians by the time of Sparta were still the original inhabitants, but isn’t that something, Iran’s current tyrannical rulers take this amazing movie as an insult to their Islamic “pride”, and may confuse the original Persians with today’s Iranian population, which has long since stopped calling itself Persia.
Seeing this news, I’d have to conclude that’s what makes this film a winner. Because it’s exactly what the nutroots can’t stand! Ha ha!
I’ve been starting to wonder recently if comics today have gone too far in how they feature minority group characters, to the point of where they’re only featured as stunt gimmicks, or serve little to no significant purpose beyond their just being.
I found this about how to make comics more appealing to minority groups. But here’s an even better question: must they? And how do they know that any minority groups are really asking for them to?
And if they really have to appeal to minorities, why then does it only have to be according to race? That’s the problem, that comic book publishers, in their attempts to reach out to minorities are still only featuring those considered minorities - black, Asian, Latino and caucasian. If they really want to appeal to minorities, not to mention show some creativity, why then can’t they start featuring some characters of noteworthy European backgrounds, for example, of Hungarian, Armenian, Latvian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Danish descent?
As of now, there are very little to no prominent characters in mainstream comics, superheroes or supporting characters, who are defined by their European origins, and for a medium that some may say can have its educational values, they sure don’t seem to teach about other nationalities and their cultures, probably not even honestly. One of the very few standouts I know of is the new Dr. Mid-Nite, Pieter Cross, who’s from Trøndheim, Norway, who, unlike some other characters from Scandanavia who’re defined by having powers similar to the pagan deities of the Vikings, just carries gadgets and gizmos and isn’t superpowered by any stretch (but like his predecessor, he is blind). And yet, this is but a drop in the bucket compared to what could be done by coming up with a whole ton of stories that could tell you about the history of the nations any characters defined by their nationalism.
Also, too many of these characters defined by nationalism tend to slip under the radar and get clouded out by all the stock elements we’re already too familiar with by now.
Many minority group characters, as I’ve long guessed, are introduced for the purpose of getting minority group people to take a look and read or watch the product. But minority group membership alone does not a character make; there’s also the importance of solid, in depth writing to boot. And by now, that’s something that’s lacking in many cases.
Also, recalling how in years gone by, minority group characters were usually introduced as part of human interest stories, one would think that by now, that’s something that they could serve a good basis for - telling human interest stories with educational value. Instead, they’re just being introduced on their minority group status alone.
Which leads to the following question: if there really needs to be a black Firestorm, a Chinese Atom or a Mexican-American Blue Beetle, surely they couldn’t have some purpose beyond their just being minority group members? For example:
These are all the kind of subjects that are perfectly ripe for discussion, and you’d probably think that a medium as under-the-radar as comic books would be just the perfect place to discuss equally under-the-radar subjects like the above. But alas, the companies all tend to think in the way of the “mainstream” and thus, these are the kind of stories we’re not getting, all possibly due to “sensitivity” to minority groups, or even to the Commies in China. See, this is but a reason why comics are so dumbed-down today, because in spite of themselves, they’re not willing to tackle the hard issues.
Minority characters can certainly be a welcome idea, but without some solid ideas behind them, their strengths as characters can wear thin very fast.
And on another note: I can’t find any proof and thus doubt that any minority group members as a whole are asking for leading white everypersons to be replaced for the sake of a minority group character, certainly not at the expense of said everyperson. I think that’s exactly why, if a Jewish character came along and replaced an everyperson, and I discovered that it was all being done at the expense of said everyperson, that’s why I would flatly object and shun the whole idea, period. To forcibly replace an everyperson for the “sake” of what I would “want” is an insult to me from a racial perspective, and I highly object to it.
Most minority group characters introduced in years past also debuted as their very own characters, as in the case of Sam Wilson, the Falcon, and certainly weren’t intended to just replace their white every-stars within an instant. And if they did, as Michael Holt replaced Terry Sloane as Mr. Terrific, it was only years later, long after Sloane has passed away. They certainly didn’t do it forcibly, and by insulting the predecessors in the process.
The time has come to stop with this absurd notion that comics are truly desperate for minority group members to be featured at all costs in comic books, and if they are needed, then it’s high time that those defined by European backgrounds and cultures are introduced. Comic books may feature minority groups, but their perspective is still limited to either the minorities that are already well known in the US, or to a strictly US-bound perspective of what minorities are, without even trying to seriously explore European nationalities and cultures in depth. If comics are really to be unique, that’s why they have to start showing that they can do serious research on nationalities as much as on race.
I’m not a very big fan of the horror genre, if at all, and there’s only a handful of horror books in comics that I’ve got any interest in reading. Thus, I really couldn’t get enthused about reading the [gushy] news that .
It may not actually be a horror series, but still, given that King has told a tale or two in his career that I found distasteful, that’s why I’m really not interested in this either, no matter how much it’s sold.
Besides, how can one really be excited when seeing how Joe Quesada veers into comedy again:
“I think this is sort of like a coming-out party for the comic industry, a way to reach out to the mainstream,” said Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada. “We’re a very serious art form.”
Too bad they don’t manage it that way.