Why Can't Comics Just be Fun?

I have been reading comics for over thirty years it is one of my greatest pleasures or at least in once was, the big two are caught at a cross-roads now that comic book movies have opened the doors to readers they feel the need to placate to. When I was a kid in the 80s, I went to the comic book store bought my comics, never heard any complaints about what the publishers should or shouldn't be doing, people would get their panties bunched about their favorite hero getting busted by someone one, but thats about it. There was no internet to sway them. There are some issues I run across that do re-kindle the feeling I used to get out of reading comics as a kid, but the writing is not as true to who the characters I have grown up with. In fact super-heroes became the new mythology of the western culture. In some cases like Thor pulling from older myths of other cultures. But those guys and girls in spandex represent our higher selves. Now I seem to be deriving more enjoyment from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, than last weeks issue of the Hulk. This is a problem because all of those shows and movies we are enjoying are based on character established back in 1961. So for we'll say 50 years considering how bad the past year has been, these characters have stood the test of time. So why change them?

One reason is writers who are not well read in the source materials and do not know how to write Steve Rogers as Steve Rogers or Peter Parker as Peter Parker so they try to put a spin on it. But in forty years from now something like Thor being a girl will be taken as seriously as when he was a frog. And if we want to get into the real lore of the character, well Thor is a god. How about we make a comic where Jesus is a girl? Or the Buddha is a girl? How would that fly? How are those deities any more sacred than Norse gods, who are still worshipped by pagans today? But what this is really about is how to please everyone? How can we reach into the wallets of every demographic? Disney seems to have done a pretty good job of this and Mickey is the same mouse he has always been. I said it once and I'll say it a hundred times, if you want strong female characters why not give Valkyrie or Sif the spotlight? Thor is a name that sells. Why doesn't Sam Wilson get a Falcon comic? Captain America is a brand that sells. Another Thor is fine there the horse alien Thor Beta Ray Bill, who won a hammer of his own fair and square. The new Thor has not beaten Odinson.Even if your only knowledge of Scandinavian culture came from the show "Vikings" you would be aware there was a certain social order and no way Odin would just say,"Ok, Little girl you can be my son." Since gods might be depicted as having certain human characteristics , they can never be not worthy of being a god that what they are. Are they going to write a comic where they say to Jesus come down from that cross we need the wood to build this little girl her own manger? So why call her Thor? It's not to give female fans a strong woman, its because the name sells the comics.

All of this is beginning to take the fun out of comics , and is making the companies put out a lower quality of product. I look forward to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, if I was watching it an some one was sitting next to me in my living and saying things to me like "Why is Agent Coulson the star of the show. Why is he a man?" I would wait until the commercial and pick them up and toss them out the door with a swift kick to the teeth to thank them for ruining my enjoyment. So why do I continue to make the mistake of clicking on articles on Comic Book Resources written by some of their liberal attention seekers? It was an honest mistake this morning when I clicked on Joseph Illidge's the Mission column. I need to avoid it. It is like a lingering fart that makes me want to clear out the room.

He went above and beyond. Comparing Thor to Captain America, the current incarnations of the books mind you. He first went on to praise the female Thor, he was also under the delusion it was because He is now a she. Not the case, I read it because I know Odinson and the characters related to Odinson are going to be in the book, the female character is the weakest developed of the bunch, one reason being is she doesn't have decades of development behind her. However in his article Illidge stated that it took him 90 minutes to read six comic books, this seemed long to me so I went online and found six comics I had not read before and timed it. It took twenty minutes. So if it took him four times longer, then well... I guess that why Odin makes all kinds of people some are just better at something than others. This is a concept Illidge doesn't grasp as he complained Sam Wilson, was struggling to much to be Captain America. The reason for this Joseph is he is not cut out to be Captain America, Sam is much better at being Falcon. He can't hang gong toe to toe with some of the guys Cap fights. One reason for this is he is not even half as strong. This is canon, Wilson can only lift 480 lbs, Rogers can lift over twice that. He then goes onto say like most black people in real life Sam Wilson's book has little chance of success. The reason is the book has had it's moments, but the concept is dumb so it should fail, its a gimmick rather than just getting a writing to pen a good Steve Rogers story, when Captain America 3 comes out do you think Wilson would have still been in the red, white and blue? No, he'll be Falcon that what he is good at and succeeds at. Even Luke Cage is a better leader of the Avengers than Wilson. Cage is not struggling he sticks to what he's good at.

So before I let all of people personal issue bleed over into my enjoyment of comics, which are becoming the battleground for social debate, and what some people think social change, I think I'll stick to clicking only on what matters, super-heroes in the comic books, it's supposed to be fun not like watching CNN,it's always been about escape. If you don't find a character you relate to escape with then you are reading the wrong books. I'm an alcoholic but I would much rather read the Hulk than Iron-man.

Enough is Enough- More Violence in Comics

Enough has finally become enough when it comes to being politically correct in comic books. D/C Comics finally showed that they do not have the stones to stand up for their creative integrity by pulling a variant cover for an upcoming issue of Batgirl. The cover in question… see above is a tribute to one of the most iconic Batman stories ever Alan Moore’s “the Killing Joke”. The story won an Eisner Award was written in 1988 and went on to influence both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan’s vision of the Joker. It was one of the first books to show that comic books could challenge you and held more depth and weight than men in tights playing cops and robbers. So for feminists to get out raged that some in comics would pay homage to a classic graphic novel like “the Killing Joke” well it really holds no weight and if that is all you have to get your panties into a wad about then go live in a third world country where people actual problems that go beyond getting upset about something they saw on the internet. Hell… there are people who have no internet at all, in fact they don’t know where there child’s next meal is going to come from, there is something that is upsetting not Bat-girl crying.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Rafael Albuquerque dropped his purse on his keyboard after requesting D/C pull the cover and said he understand it touched a nerve and didn’t want to make people hurt or upset. Grow some thicker skin pal. Art is supposed to touch nerves, especially when you are depicting villains, when you are dealing with the dark world of Gotham, the evil has so be horrendous worse stuff has happened on the show, and that ABC. Comics should be edgier than ABC. D/C attempted to placate the audience in question by saying “violence and harassment have no place in comics or society”…what? Now this can be taken two different ways one that people fighting on Twitter and making death threats is wrong. If you take anything anyone says to you from the safety of the anonymity the Internet provides then it’s time to go to Wal-Mart and buy your self a pair of big-boy panties.  But this could also be taken as violence and harassment don’t have a place in comics meaning Bat-man and the Joker really just need to sit down in group therapy and talk it out. There no need for Captain America and the Red Skull to keep punching each other. D/C if violence had no place comics would not exist; violence is always the means of resolution in comics, at least the good ones. An example of no violence in comics would be Super-man Returns. Kent didn’t throw a punch the whole movie and it sucked…end of story. In fact comics should have more violence, one of the best moments in comics was when Sentry ripped Ares in half during Siege. Give me more of that and if you don’t like go back to reading My Little Pony. You want peaceful inspiration where every one is respected, go talk to Rainbow Dash.

My five-year-old daughter loves Batgirl. If she saw that cover in the comic book store with me she might wonder what was going on and I would tell her some times the good guys win and some times they don’t, looks like Bat-girl is having one of those days. Once she is twelve she is welcome to read my copy of the Killing Joke and make her own judgment about it. Will it send a negative message about women’s place in the world? I don’t think so. Women get shot every day. Men get shot every day. People get shot, that’s the world we live in. Barbra Gordon got shot. Not because she was a woman, but because the Joker will shoot you, even if you are Booster Gold and try to go back in time to stop him from shooting Bat-girl. The Punisher will shoot you too and he’s a good guy. That’s the world we live in. Deal with it.

The Week in Marvel

This week in Marvel Hulk  12 was the best of the bunch. Mark Bagley seems to be the only one really knocking it out of the park. It  sucks Dr. Green had to de-power the Gamma Corps. I thought Gray was Glen Talbots, and a peek a Marvel's very own wiki confirms this, so how is he black when he gets de-powered ? Under stand they want diversity in comics, but changing some one's race when it's established canon they are white is poor editing. As for the other Avengers. Avengers World 18, felt more like an X-men book. On the better side of mediocre . Avengers 42, continues to set up the Secret Wars, about as good as that book as going to get with the story they are choosing to tell.

The Guardians of the Galaxy team up was fun. The art looked like it came right out of the 90s. Guardians of the galaxy have to be every where they are like the new- X-men there appearance in Angela, helped an other wise dull book, the whole Black Vortex thing is a lot of hype about nothing.
I dislike the art in Wolverines 9, but I like Daken even without his arm, but it has flipped the character around and now he doubts himself.

People whine about wanting more female-centric comics, but X-men is boring as all hell, so not making a great case for that argument.Speaking of female comic books, Spider -Woman 5 , was not bad , but what happened to her powers? Shouldn't it only take her one hit with a sledge hammer to knock a hole in the wall? I can knock hole in a wall with one hit and no powers, so should she since she's in the 5 to 7 ton rage. I would think she would knock the whole wall down. The motorcycle thing, seemed a little CW.

The books I passed on this week were  Rocket Raccoon, Original Sin, Iron Fist and Hawkeye, because they have been so terrible I can't even bring myself to flip through them anymore. Why some of those are big sellers is beyond me I think they are geared towards hipsters who want to be geek-chic by reading a comic, but don't really care for super-heroes. I salute  them with my middle finger for their efforts.