Not sure how familiar you Cats are with the comic book world. I don’t partake myself but have enjoyed the political theatre of it over the last year or so, culminating in the latest offering from DC comics: I am not star fire.
No honey you are definitely not star fire.
An art form traditionally dominated by the best humanity can offer whether that be in looks, strength, courage, honour or some other positive trait is not another outlet of left wing propagandist human excrement. Let’s take a look at a positive review from Your Money Geek.
When DC Comics first announced their young adult graphic novel I Am Not Starfire, it was met with outrage and vitriol, which has, unfortunately, become the standard for comics that break the historically straight, white, male hero stereotype. A certain subset of comic readers took offense to the idea that the scantily clad K’oriander could have a daughter who was the complete opposite of her. But Mandy is precisely what we need more of in comics. She’s brutally honest about who she is and unabashedly proud of it too. She’s goth, she’s queer, and she’s trying to find her place in the world beyond the glamour of her upbringing.
Blame customers and fans for being trolls – Check
Attack white people for no reason at all – Check
Attack straights and men in for good measure – Check
Tick some minority boxes – Check
What you may notice already is that character depth, good story telling or attractive art has not yet been mentioned, these things being unimportant to fans and customers apparently. Lets continue though:
Mandy may not fight crime like her mother, but she does face impending adulthood and S.AT.s… Okay, well, she doesn’t exactly tackle these things head-on. But she does face her burgeoning crush on her classmate Claire with… copious amounts of nerves and a little skepticism. Alright, Mandy doesn’t possess any of her mother’s grace, superpowers, or tenacity, but she had plenty of merits on her own
Impending adulthood and school studies – sounds riveting. Superheroes used to find whole dimensions, create time travel, use wits to beat enemies far more powerful themselves. Importantly our female protagonist doesn’t possess grace, superpowers or tenacity which is lucky because that might make it worth reading. But they continue:
Not only do we get to see a teen grow into her own as an individual, but we see that you don’t have to possess classic beauty, a perfect figure, or the most gracious personality to see yourself in a graphic novel. This is the graphic novel that so many young people needed decades ago, when they struggled with being accepted for who they are and not judged for who they were not.
Classic beauty or perfect figure are things that teenage comic book readers definitely hate but the kicker is not possessing the “most gracious personality” which is a euphemism for entitled, lazy, stuck up, unhealthy, resentful bitch.
Maybe I am being a bit too hard on the comic. They are clearly trying to reach their audience in new ways, making it more relatable to the current generation, more gritty and realistic which the fans want, right?
Check out that disconnect between the critics and the fans. Mark Dice talks a lot about this on his YouTube channel and in his book and the evidence is certainly increasing. He talks about Hollywood and entertainment being the propaganda arm of the government with a lot of money being funnelled there for movies and shows to show ideas and characters that benefit the government but more likely the deep state.
The only other viable option I can think of is that these companies are so woke, and the employees have so much power that they simply don’t care about making profits and just want to evangelise to existing market bases, which is for me is the saddest part of the story.
These companies use goodwill from ground-breaking writers, directors and other creatives that have been generated pain-stakingly over decades and shit all over them not just without disregard but in malice and spite. They lack the talent and discipline to create something new to preach their garbage, that they have to resort to destroying beloved characters from the past and don’t even have the empathy to feel remorse.
And in case you think I am cherry picking a single example (as egregious as it is) here is an offering from Marvel comics last year:
Let me leave you with the character synapses:
Screentime: Our token asian character in the green
Snowflake & Safespace (these are real names): Our sexually suggestive twins with dyed hair. Snowflake gets the bonus power of “non-binary”
And my personal favourite:
Trailblazer: The one who looks like they have never blazed a trail in their life and who takes dieting techniques from Monty. Her powers are a magical backpack that can access pocket dimensions which means she didn’t earn her powers and has no useful skills should someone else simply pick up her backpack.
If you are into the comics thing with incredible drawing and solid story arcs, try Witchblade.
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Try Blade Devil too.
It will be R rated, degenerate and NSFW.
Apparently another culture ear issue is for anime, the translation companies are infected with woke BS, Crunchyroll has been accused of rewriting scenes and dialogue to suit their special snowflake translators and voice actors.
Anyway. Why say that comic, novel or movie characters ought to reflect attractive real life women? Why should anime, manga, DC or Marvel have someone like Gal Gadot or Emily DiDonato when they could have Andrea Dworkin?
You. 👏 Are. 👏 Not. 👏 Allowed. 👏 To. 👏 Find. 👏 Women. 👏 Attractive. 👏 On. 👏 The. 👏 Internet. 👏 Not. 👏 On. 👏 My. 👏 Watch. 👏
PS
I also recommend Kenny Lauderdale’s You Tube channel.
Plenty of funny stuff about wholesome lost media and anime. I really want to watch Silverfang due to his channel. Princess Mononoke might be fun to watch, but 2 hrs runtime is still two hours.
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Culture war. Bloody hell I ackchually spell checked that too.
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I tried posting something containing the text of a link and got sent to an error page which, undismayed by its inability to deliver on the least demanding task, brags in copious detail about how fast and great it is.
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The Critical Drinker shares his bibulous ruminations in a slightly slurred brogue on YouTube.
Google “Marvel’s New Warriors Looks AMAZING!” and it should be the top video result.
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Just like ads. If you watched the ads on TV you would believe that 70% of Australians are of African origin, 5% from the Sub Continent, %5 from Asia, %5 are Southern European/Middle Eastern, %5 gorgeous blondes, and the rest are bogans
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Super heroes are now the play thing of intersectionality. The goal is to have a super hero horizontal totem pole where there is are cocktails of every victim permeation presented as a beacon for less mortal fans to follow.
One would think that the fan base identifying with an obese ugly lezzo goth would not be large enough to justify a print run any larger than house washing flyer in the town of Cooper Pedy.
What minority grievance groups need to figure out is how they can join the majority, who have figured out how not to be the minority, instead of forcing the majority to join their pitiful existence.
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Check out a YouTube channel called “Lack of Entertainment” (and his other one called “Romanian TVee”). He discusses these very topics in a witty and acerbic way.
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“may not fight crime like her mother”
In this age of collective global insanity crime is no longer fought or policed, it is celebrated, as are the useless lowlives who perpetrate it.
“she didn’t earn her powers and has no useful skills”
Similar to Syndrome in the Incredibles, although at least he was intelligent enough to parlay that into taking the fight to the supers.
Great piece, Adam.
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I quite understand that stupid, lazy, ugly, fat chicks who want to be loved have a problem.
My problems are quite different. But don’t worry, I shan’t tell you all about them at excruciating length in a comic book.
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Dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, Starfire. Well, that’s what she looks like.
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I would suggest a character called ‘Big Swinging Dick’ and his sidekick ‘Alotta Vagina’. I don’t think it would get off the suggestion board at either Marvel or DC.
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The politically obsessed activists have absolutely no sense of fun, of awe, or the connection that people can have to a movie, a song, a book, a legend, or simply other people.
Their eyes are intently attuned to one narrow part of the spectrum human experience that they are utterly blind to the rest. They really cannot see it.
Even that need not be fatal. A blind man cannot experience the feelings people have looking at a clear blue sky, a rainbow*, a night sky sown with stars, or even the iridescent armour covering a beetle’s wing. But they can form an understanding of what they mean and through empathy can share some of the joy.
But activists refuse to empathise. They are too important. Their mission too vital. And other people too stupid.
So in pop culture they settle on a beloved original, or popular franchise. They tear out its living organs and like inept taxidermists stuff it with handfuls of dry paper covered in their tortured scrawlings of theory, leaving something stiff, lifeless, lustreless, and even worse a travesty that severs the connection to the original.
I find that I am reluctant to watch movies made after 2015 unless I can verify that it is not garbage. I have learned to be wary. 2020 and 2021 I by default assume the worst.
*It really meant nothing to them, to commandeer the greatest symbol of innocent and childlike wonder, the rainbow, and turn it into a symbol sodomites, miserable middle-aged men dressed like Lolitas, teenagers being told their adolescent angst is due to their pudenda and can be cured with hormone cocktails and a swift slice with a scalpel, and so on.
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Cartoons have done nothing but go down hill since L’il Sport.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7064/1685/1600/ltlsportsun.jpg
Fortunately he vanished from the pack bage of the Sun News-Pic before his gender identity came into question.
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Mother Lode says:
August 5, 2021 at 9:30 am
all too true, ML.
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Dr BG:
My problems are quite different. But don’t worry, I shan’t tell you all about them at excruciating length in a comic book
Most people loved superheros growing up. Mine were Thor and Ironman. Interesting, when I think about it, that “our” superheros pre this “modern” world had internal pressures and angst as well but didn’t carry on incessantly about it.
So reading about those parts of the character not only grounded them in human understanding, it helped young minds to learn about life – the highs and lows.
But despite their psychological dramas, superheroes just got on with things – there was a job to do and they went and did it – despite whatever they were “going through.”
Learning to understand that as well, that I idea that sometimes we have to put aside that internalisation of ourselves and keep going is a powerful message for young minds.
Now, however, everything has to stop because the internal worries must always and forever override the external world. What a disappointment is this current stage in human endeavour.
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Diogenes and Splatacrobat.
+1
btw, Splatacrobat, I do like your gravatar!
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In school my mate and I wrote stories about a dude who had all these useful tools in a backpack. Sorta like inspector gadget but everything was in the backpack. Those jumanji movies sorta stole our idea, but this is blatant! Who I gotta sue!
And yes, he eventually met a very gory end when his sister took his backpack, just when he needed it. Our teacher just gave us a very patient look, and asked if we had finished reading Tess yet?
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The donning of sheepskin is nothing new for Fabianists.
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Super heroes are now the play thing of intersectionality
The rise of the super-hero reboots is/was driven by the need to have a. Unfortunately, we can no longer have anyone else but a white cis-gendered conservative character in a good super-villain role in “block-buster” type movies. And this creates a problem … anti-establishment villains are definitionally non-conservative.
And so we have a need for a villain that does not tick any of the offenderati boxes [and especially not (heaven forbid) Chinese!!! Where Hollywood sees its big$$$!!!]
And that leaves Sci-Fi and the super-hero genre filling the niche that used to be filled by Dr No, Fu Man Chu, Pao Tcheou, Ming the Merciless and the like… 🙂
And now – even the likes of James Bond and Thor are being cancelled and like Walter Lawson / Captain Mar Vell replaced by the more politically correct Carol Danvers / Ms Marvel (a strong female character in her own right)… even to the extent of totally cancelling the male character and taking his name!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_%28Mar-Vell%29#/media/File:Captain_Marvel_29.jpg
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Let them carry it, it’ll be the comic version of nitv
At shareholder expense
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One thing Hollywood loves is the Mary-Sue.
Previously characters would start out being plucked from their normal life and thrown into a situation for which they were unprepared. They had to learn, had to deal with setbacks, confronted their doubts, took responsibility for their mistakes especially where the cost of the mistake fell on others (it is harder to accept the forgiveness of others), get back up time and again, and finally earn their success. The hero’s journey. We see our own condition magnified on the big screen and are invested in the hero’s progress.
A Mary-Sue starts at the end, already with the talents, strength, and attitude to win. There is nothing to connect with. They just sail through without risking anything being a god to other people.
Oh, and with the Mary-Sues Hollywood can never resist making men, especially white men, feeble confused buffoons in need of saving.
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So Mandy is a trash talking aggressive goth dyke. Nothing unusual in comic book world everyone is considered a weirdo. What are her values? What special powers does she posses or is it just her rightousness she preaches, a weight challenged cranky bitch. Can she be fought against or will that be considered racist and bigoted picking on a minority.
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Hollywood loves the Mary Sue, but so does our spiritual liege, Matt Ward.
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The only other viable option I can think of is that these companies are so woke, and the employees have so much power that they simply don’t care about making profits and just want to evangelise to existing market bases
The problem is that the bosses of these companies are so divorced from reality that they have zero idea of what the “normal” person wants and needs. So they take advice from consultants who also have zero idea but know how to deliver what they think the bosses want (woke shit) and know how to run focus groups picked from randoms on the street to get it. The thing falls apart when one realises the randoms off the street are not represenative of the paying audience.
The randoms answer an add and get $5 for their participation … and who are they? … typically students, unemployed (to whom $5 is a lot!) and otherwise woke idle. Those who would be the “paying” audience (to whom $30 for a movie ticket or monthly magazines, is fine) are too busy and $5 ain’t anywhere enough to compensate them from other more rewarding activity. So they get no input.
And the result is that the movie / comics etc are written for those that won’t buy it / can’t afford it … or worse yet, those who will more likely pirate the movie on principle [coz capitalism].
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“Check out that disconnect between the critics and the fans.”
Most especially look at “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (Disney+).
They got upset because the lead character – a black man – decided that he COULD be Captain America, and that no-one has the right to say he can’t fight for what America stands for as Captain America, when he already fought as a “normal” soldier.
So, they use a black man as the main character – should be a tick, yeah?
He says he supports America – should be a tick, yeah?
He says he CAN be Captain America – should be a tick, yeah?
All that is saying to young black kids “it doesn’t matter your background, or skin colour or anything else, you can love your country and defend it”.
Absolutely PASTED by the wokeratti. Apparently, a black man should always hate the country and never be Captain America.
Sad, very sad.
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Hollywood loves the Mary Sue, but so does our spiritual liege, Matt Ward.
Speak not that heretic’s name, lest he rise to prominence once more.
There aren’t enough bolters in existence to take care of THAT much heresy…
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Sometimes it is good to go to Rotten Tomatoes and compare the Critics score to the Audience score.
Sometimes the difference is so stark you can’t help but laugh.
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As black panther showed…. There is a lot of money to be made by creating this woke trash. State education will be lining everything to be copies for every child, just like how children were taken to screening of black panther as school excursions.
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If munty were a comic book character….
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I believe Black Panther was created by two white guys.
I never saw it but I get the impression that people felt they had to rave about Black Panther – such was the climate of the time.
Certainly to my ear the praise seemed over the top for any movie and there was very little criticism considering it was just another superhero movie – none of the earlier ones received such consistently glowing accolades.
My suspicion is that it was probably reasonably good, but not great. Just that no one would dare say that.
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What has always struck me about the appropriation of brands and characters in comics and fillums and so on is that the people who created the originals seem to have no power to stop their work from being trashed in the ways described above.
Maybe they were naive, or unworldly, or simply worried that pushing too hard would get them fired.
I dunno.
But it is a pity that they are not in a position to defend their creative work, in the way that big brands do. Try using an apple in your logo, or piggybacking on The Divine Agatha. Their lawyers will descend on you like a ton of bricks.
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I would suggest a character called ‘Big Swinging Dick’ and his sidekick ‘Alotta Vagina’. I don’t think it would get off the suggestion board at either Marvel or DC.
No wait..that’s huge. As the story unfold we learn that Big Swinging Dick wants to have his neck and giblets removed and Alotta Vagina wants to sew them on. It’s a winner!
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Well, it’s not Archie and Veronica, is it? 🙂 My teenage reading in the comics line.
My outlet in my primary school years for being a girl who could get things done was Nyoka, the Jungle Girl. She was a sort of female Tarzan, with a great feminine figure dressed sketchily in leopard skins. She swung around on vines and had a treehouse. I would get sixpence for returning old bottles and would fly down to the newsagent and bring the latest comix back to our Commission House which I revisited with Hairy last year; it’s still there. I’d sit on the back steps, sniff the new smell of the paper in it, and only then open it up to enter into a world of somewhere else.
There was never such bliss.
These woke take-over comics drawing ugly people into an uglier world are pretty appalling. But sociologically interesting. Thanks Adam.
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NSFW, not PC and a lot of fun. Some extra stuff there for lonely weebs.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blade-devil-ghosts-of-the-past-graphic-novel#/
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I must admit to not being a gamer, Dot.
You quite threw me off with that Matt Ward reference before.
But I must admit to being surprised how many serious people are also serious about games and comics.
Yea verily, the world has moved beyond Space Invaders and Pacman, and the 1960’s Batman series.
I sometimes wonder what I might have missed.
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Mother Lode says:
August 5, 2021 at 7:52 am
The Critical Drinker shares his bibulous ruminations in a slightly slurred brogue on YouTube.
I too would recommend him. While his drunk Scot schtick can be tedious after a while, he doesn’t just criticise for the sake of it. He breaks down in very simple language, the elements of story and film and where he feels his subject has fallen down. He talks about archetypes and how story elements are fairly universal. I believe that right-of-centre politics could learn a thing or two by studying reviews such as his.
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“That is the question Ashyara faces on a daily basis in this broken, dying world.
“Mortally wounded and running out of time, she was forced into a deal with the devil. Now she continues her quest well beyond her natural lifespan.” from Dot’s link.
Mythologies will always be constructed by humans out of any cultural debris.
Comics present the new mythos of our times.
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“I sometimes wonder what I might have missed,”
I don’t. My daughter’s husband, aka my son-in-law, a senior corporate executive aged nearly forty, father of three, still plays video games for fun and distraction. They are highly competitive vs oneself and consist of all sorts of strange beings with even stranger accoutrements to help the player to perform more skilfully in intensely fierce situation. I find them boring, but my autistic grandson plays them internationally with online friends. Like most distractions they are a substitute for doing anything meaningful oneself.
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One wonders if they are targeting the most lucrative demographic, in terms of disposable income and addiction to nostalgia?
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The BBC has destroyed Dr Who. Utterly destroyed it with their sickening woke attitude. They should be Mussolinied for their cultural vandalism. Sadly Tom Baker was still alive when they did it.
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Precociously sexualized girl child- indulged in diet and temper, abrasive bordering abusive manners, little apparent responsibilities.
Apparently healthy and well-balanced parents, who nonetheless are obviously absent, inattentive, and indulgent with their kid to the point where she’s a monster who will have little social success, burgeoning obesity and probably mental health decay to boot.
There’s obvious direction for a story arc from there, where the characters look around themselves, and look hard at themselves in the mirror, and decide to humbly do the hard yards towards healthy, wealthy and wise… but somehow I don’t think they’re going to take that path.
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It’ all about pushing mediocrity as the new ideal for everyone to aspire down to.
That’s the essence of wokeness.
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Diogenes:
“Just like ads. If you watched the ads on TV you would believe that 70% of Australians are of African origin, 5% from the Sub Continent, %5 from Asia, %5 are Southern European/Middle Eastern, %5 gorgeous blondes, and the rest are bogans.”
I must admit I laugh at the amount of African Americans in the ads – they are there for the dark skin, but look nothing like Aboriginals.
Does Hollywood think they shouldn’t be shown because not telegenic enough?
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“I must admit I laugh at the amount of African Americans in the ads”
I saw one ad where the dad was Asian, the mum was light brown African and the kids were white. They are trying the Bulworth maneuver………
“All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody ’til they’re all the same color.”
Warren Beatty – Jay Bulworth
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