The Four Color Media Monitor

The BBC reports that a video that was in development for some time based on Wonder Woman has been scrapped altogether, and the company working on it, Monolith, has been shut down by owner Time Warner:

Warner Bros Discovery has confirmed plans to shut three of its gaming development studios.

The decision means the anticipated Wonder Woman game, which has been in production for three years at one of the affected studios, Monolith, will not be released.

Player First Games, which made MultiVersus, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego will also be shuttered.

The announcement comes after a difficult time in the industry, with widespread job losses since a boom during the Covid pandemic.

A spokesperson from Warner Bros told BBC Newsbeat the "difficult decision" was aimed at boosting profitability.

On Wonder Woman, they said: "Our hope was to give players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities."

Last month, MultiVersus said there would be no more updates for the game, which would have to be played offline "for the foreseeable future".

Warner Bros said it will instead focus on developing its core franchises including Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones.

Ugh, they still consider Mortal Kombat a series worth continuing with, despite all the repellent gore it emphasized in over 3 decades, and even Game of Thrones? Well that says all that's wrong with WB's conduct. Harry Potter's a decent choice, but their reliance on the grossest monstrosities for video games only embarrasses the medium all the more. BBC also notes:

Warner Bros Games had big expectations for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League but the game was panned by fans and critics.

Updates for the game ended in January after weak sales and poor reviews.

With a title like that, what can you expect? The emphasis on villainy is taking its toll, and thankfully, it turns out the video game community has common sense members who don't want anythng to do with a game where villains target heroes, and it makes little difference whether the game followed the premise of John Ostrander's 1987-92 series, with the crooks forced to do government service. It's also pretty weak to just blame the Covid pandemic for the Suicide Squad game's failure, because wokeness has played a role in recent video game development, and it remains to be seen if corporations will let it go. For all we know, even the WW game could've been subject to wokeness, but since it's been kiboshed, we might never find out the exact details.

The Verge also notes:

The cancellation and shutdowns are yet another rough spot in Warner Bros.’ gaming efforts. Player First Games recently announced that MultiVersus will be taken offline, ending a development period that has already included a long hiatus and a relaunch. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a flop, with that game receiving its last season less than a year after launch. A previous report from Bloomberg said that WB’s gaming division suffered $300 million in losses last year.

It's interesting to note there was a certain very far-left writer who was hired by Monolith as a consultant, according to IGN:

Comic writer Gail Simone has revealed she worked on Warner Bros.' beleaguered Wonder Woman game before it was shelved yesterday.

Simone, known for being the longest running female writer on Wonder Woman comics to date, praised the "dream team" working on the video game, insisting everyone she worked with from the now-shuttered Monolith and Warner Bros. was "enthusiastic and supportive."

"I was asked to do long-term consulting on the game, and I was thrilled to do it, it was a perfect storm of stuff I adore," Simone wrote on social media. "Wonder Woman, video games, and one of my favorite games studios: Monolith, who produced the Game Of The Year Mordor games, that I was completely addicted to.

"The game was gorgeous and expansive. It was beautiful to look at. I am not going to give details for a number of reasons, but every effort was made to make this not just a great game, but a great Wonder Woman game. A showpiece epic.

"And all of that was because of the team. Everyone who worked on it brought their A-game. Programmers, artists, designers, everyone. I don’t know that I have ever worked with a team that cared more about making sure the end product was perfect."

"It was a dream come true. Wonder Woman had a dream team and they put their all into it," Simone concluded.

"They made sure it had WW and DC lore on every aspect of the game. It was a thrill and honor to work with them. I know there’s a lot of finger-pointing going on, but everyone I worked with from Monolith and WB both was enthusiastic and supportive. Everyone wanted to make the best game ever."

With somebody that cynical and far-left, as she turned out to be, working with them, I'm not sure there'd be much to look forward to. What has she actually done to improve women's status in the long run? Not enough, that's for sure.

Since we're on the subject of WW, Polygon told why the writers of Absolute WW made her more like a witch, and:

Like her Gotham City counterpart Batman, Wonder Woman leapt into DC Comics’ blockbuster Absolute line — a starting-from-scratch setting where the odds stacked against DC’s classic superheroes are higher than ever — with a striking new look. Astride a red-eyed skeletal pegasus, Diana sports tattooed arms, a buster sword, a black-and-red color scheme, and (perhaps most controversially) pants.

One must wonder why these PC ideologues have a problem with a lady's legs, because this is getting absurd already. I suppose they'd also use Donna Troy's pants-built costume as justification to boot, which decidedly begs the question: did even Donna's costume have to be that way just to differentiate her from WW back in the day? Also note how any allusion to the colors of the USA flag have been muted, and you can guess where this is going too.

“She still has all these very superhero-y, classic powers,” Thompson told Polygon over video chat, “but they feel different now because they have this base of her being a witch. That’s how she was raised, and this is what she knows — even though she’s never going to be a sorceress the way Circe is, and she’s throwing around this huge magic. And then she’s saying to people, ‘Well, I’m not much of a witch,’ and you’re like, Really? What you’re doing is pretty huge.”

The way they put it obviously sounds like the negative connotation of the word "witch", and that's a problem. It's just embarrassing, right down to the mediocre artwork samples, and making matters worse:

Among the huge things Wonder Woman has done in Absolute Wonder Woman’s first four issues? Casting a spell to deafen an entire city — but first broadcasting a comforting, hopeful explanation about how it will keep them alive. Cutting off her own right arm to fuel an arcane ritual — freely given so Steve Trevor, playing his traditional role of catalyst to her hero’s journey — could escape hell. And in the latest issue, Absolute Wonder Woman #5, Diana musters a very different weapon than her traditional Lasso of Truth: Circe’s own Lasso of Transformation.

So this comic is another modern monstrosity built upon gore. That Absolute WW does the ritual just to enable this take on Steve to escape hell is no excuse. And what does writer Kelly Thompson think of the golden lasso?

Thompson said that the reason she wanted to show the full origin of the Lasso of Transformation here is precisely because of how big of a departure it is from the usual Wonder Woman canon.

“This lasso is not very Diana,” Thompson said. “It’s not who she is, in a lot of ways. […] You can be raised by someone and really believe in their ideals and believe in them — whatever Circe thinks about herself, Diana sees her mother as a heroic figure, for sure. But that doesn’t mean they agree. Even though Diana was raised in [hell], there’s just more darkness in Circe than there ever has been in Diana. That’s a wedge between them, a little bit, but it’s also a way for them both to learn. […] Diana recognizes that she’s an incredibly powerful character with an incredible amount of knowledge, but she’s also very aware of how little she knows, of how much she has to learn. That is a template for a great character, as opposed to a closed-off one that cannot move forward.”

Well if that's what Thompson has to say, it just compounds more of what's wrong with their approach. No doubt, for them, the lasso represents brightness more than darkness, and for them, that's another sad excuse to shove the vicious direction they're taking here down everyone's throats.

The news of WB's video game production outfits closing is likely for the best, because the company's been going in wrong directions for years already, right down to what's coming from their comics to boot. It's best not to finance their video games either, and most definitely not Mortal Kombat.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, golden calf of villainy, Justice League of America, msm propaganda, sales, technology, violence, women of dc, Wonder Woman

State College interviewed a guy who founded the Happy Valley Comics & Collectibles convention:

Tom Range traces his love of comic books to a playground mishap that left his younger brother with two broken wrists.

“I was in fifth grade. [Vince] was in third grade. He broke both his wrists trying to swing all the way around on a swing set at recess,” Range says. “Aunt Sue sent him some comic books to read to cheer him up. But both his hands were in casts and I had to sit next to him to turn the pages for him. That’s how we got kind of addicted to comic books.”

Range eventually found his way to Penn State, where he played sousaphone in the Blue Band; he graduated in 1989 and embarked on a career as an educator in Bucks County and New Jersey. His passion for comic books never waned. He and his brother ran a comics shop in Bucks County for a time, until his children came along. Later, Range became more involved attending comics conventions.

That gave him an idea: Penn State “would be a perfect place for a comic book convention.”

Years later, Range and his family brought that inspiration to life. In 2023, they founded the Happy Valley Comic & Collectibles Convention. The event, casually known as Happy Valley comic con — or HVC3 (C to the third power, Range says) — celebrates its third year March 1-2 at the Nittany Valley Sports Centre.

When they present more questions for how he founded the convention and his childhood inspirations, the following comes up:

You started collecting comic books at a young age with your brother and became a comic books dealer. What’s your favorite?

Range: It’s interesting how he and I went two different ways. He’s more of a DC (Comics) guy. I’m more of a Marvel guy. He’s definitely DC, Superman. My favorite, and actually the first series I finished, was a group called the Defenders. And it was considered a non-group. Their membership changed regularly. It started off with Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Namor and the Hulk. And then Valkyrie came in and it grew.

If it had a single character, I always liked Daredevil. Here’s a guy who was blind, but his other senses kind of took over. Supposedly he was blinded by a radiated isotope that hit him in the eyes, but the radiation heightened all his other senses. And of course, Spider-Man. Everyone loves Spider-Man. That’s the holy grail of superheroes, I guess. And again, it depends if you’re a Marvel or DC (fan). Marvel, it’s Spider-Man; and DC, it’s Superman. Superman started the whole comics superhero genre.

Finally, it's a real relíef to discover somebody citing Superman as a favorite pastime from DC reading, rather than Batman, and at this point, even Daredevil makes a more challenging citation when discussing series with darker angles. What took some press sources so long, you could wonder, to give specific mention to the Man of Steel as somebody's numero uno favorite DC hero? I'll be very happy if more news writers make an effort to highlight a superhero like Superman, and even Supergirl could make a great example, if the right material up to the early 2000s was cited.

Why do you think events like yours are so popular? What is it about comic books and superheroes that capture the imagination of so many people of all ages?

Range: I think there has always been a fascination with “super” people.

What are sports stars? Maybe just low-level superheroes that can do things that normal people can’t. How many times have we seen a spectacular play and been envious that we can’t do that? These superheroes are the beings we wish we could be.

And we as a species have had superheroes from the beginning. What was Hercules if not a superhero?

We talk about Thor and Loki, thinking they are Marvel superheroes [or villains] but those characters have been around for centuries in Norse mythology.

What was Beowulf if not an early superhero?

I think it is just in our human nature to create beings of immense power, because deep down, we wish we could be them.

Now comic conventions are popular because they give you an avenue to enjoy your favorite character and celebrate him or her. You get an escape for a few hours to immerse yourself in a culture you can enjoy and get to know people that are very similar.

No matter how obscure a character you might like and enjoy, there will probably be at least someone else at the convention that likes and enjoys the same character.

On this, there's a vital message to consider in something the late Mark Gruenwald once said: "every character is someone else's favorite. You shouldn't kill them off lightly, or worse, ruin their appearances in retrospect." I'd hope such a viewpoint is brought up at these conventions, because even "civilian" co-stars in superhero comics have been some of the biggest victims of such a mindset, and it can't continue any longer. I'd even add that, no matter how well written the 3rd Robin, Tim Drake, was under Chuck Dixon, that doesn't excuse the cheap direction taken with 2nd Robin Jason Todd in 1988's "A Death in the Family" storyline in Batman. Why, one could argue even the killing of Jean deWulff in 1985 in the pages of Spider-Man was going a bit far. Certainly, if these stories were self-contained, that's the saving grace. But since the turn of the century, as I've discussed before, things have a taken a turn for the worse, mainly in the company wide crossovers that have come down the pike since. They also bring up certain fan clubs participating:

How important is the Penn State audience to your convention?

Range: I find it very, very important. I mean, if one of our big selling points is that Penn State has 46,000 students, am I [saying] 46,000 people are going to show up to my convention? No. But if we get 10 percent of that, that’s almost 5,000 people. [A shuttle bus runs from East Halls to the convention.) And Penn State already offers groups that are interested in the stuff that we’re dealing with. I just presented to the Yu-Gi-Oh! club. There’s the Magic the Gathering club. There’s the Students of S.H.I.E.L.D, which is a comic book club. There’s the Star Wars club, the Disney club, the anime club. There’s the Alliance of Heroic Hearts. That’s the first group we did an alliance with. They are cosplayers that show up to local hospitals and different events for children. We give them a booth, and they help us advertise; they were in the homecoming parade, handing out fliers and things like that.

On this, one must wonder if Magic the Gathering, as allegedly celebrated at the convention, is still going by "woke" standards, as seen in the past decade? The same could be asked when it comes to Star Wars, of course. Or, do the fans attending the Happy Valley convention put up with this, and have any complaints to raise in regards to what Wizards of the Coast and Disney are doing to those franchises, and what they've also done to Marvel, and Warner did to DC? Well I sure hope so, but that's where the interview avoids any discussion of challenging issues when it comes to pop culture. And that's where it's honestly not helpful.

I wish the convention good luck in the forseeable future, but if it turns out they too happen to take a PC approach to promoting pop culture, then it can be argued they too are another convention that's not defending pop culture convincingly. At least the citation of Superman as a favorite pastime is an important plus.

Labels: conventions, Daredevil, dc comics, history, manga and anime, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales, Spider-Man, Superman

Here's a writer at the UK Spectator who's arguing that we shouldn't cancel the disgraced Neil Gaiman's books, because children should get a chance to read Coraline:

Whether or not the allegations against Gaiman are true, the backlash has been swift. Gaiman’s upcoming creative projects have been cancelled. Netflix’s adaptation of his comic book The Sandman will end. A hotly-anticipated stage production of Coraline will not see the light of day. Publishers now refuse to touch Gaiman’s graphic novel manuscripts.

The collapse of his literary empire comes with immense collateral damage, not least for those employed on these various projects. But perhaps the unacknowledged losers in this sad saga are the children who won’t now find his work.

When I first encountered Coraline as a teenager, it gave me thrilled nightmares for weeks; I devoured Good Omens in one sitting. Beyond his writing, I became enamoured with the man. Gaiman has a fascinating backstory; born Jewish and raised a Scientologist, he was a precocious boy who could read at the age of four. As an adult, he left the Church and married musician Amanda Palmer, who struck my teenage self as fun and sexy.

With his dark semitic features, gentle manner, and large collection of leather jackets, Gaiman reminded me of the dads I used to see in my school playground at drop-offs. Over-familiarity with celebrities is almost always a mistake. Boy, did I make a huge one with Gaiman.

Whatever Gaiman did, or didn’t, get up to in his private life, we should separate the art from the artist. A reader would struggle to infer anything nefarious about his attitudes towards women from his work. The phrase ‘strong female lead’ is surely one of the most irritating in the English language, but Gaiman’s novels are chock-full with them. From spiky Anathema in Good Omens to clever Lettie in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, these characters are three-dimensional and thoughtfully drawn.

She hasn't read all of them, or maybe she'd notice that wasn't exactly the case for Calliope in the now notorious 17th issue of Sandman, and even Lyta Hall didn't come off well in the series, where any use of her superhuman strength was very watered down. We could even add how Zatanna was underserved as a character in the original Books of Magic miniseries, and how poorly Sersi was handled in the ghastly Eternals miniseries. Even the take on Jean Grey in 1602 was dreadful. The columnist continues:

I envy young girls and boys who get to read Gaiman for the first time. Though they’ll now miss out on getting to watch his adaptations on stage or telly, I hope his books won’t disappear from school library shelves.

If we ‘cancel’ Gaiman, then other authors surely deserve a similar fate. Separating the art from the artist is not a new moral dilemma. But while adults have autonomy over what art they consume, cancelling a famous children/young adult writer is different, precisely because kids don’t have that same choice. Even if Gaiman is a creep of epic proportions, that’s not a reason to consign his writing to the shadows.

Ahem. I don't think literally canceling them outright is the answer, but again, I just don't see why we should pay money that could go into a bad writer's pockets. One lesson we can find in this whole flap is the recognition that most authors aren't always nice people, and can be very bad ones, including the late Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton, who're cited in the article:

Us kids somehow cottoned on that Dahl didn’t like Jews and that Blyton might have had some troubling views. We felt discombobulated, as children do when they learn that a grown up is flawed. It’s difficult to square how an adult can invent such lovely characters when they’re a decidedly unlovely person.

Well let's consider that in the years since, not everyone in Britain's willing to defend Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton at all costs, and the former's family apologized for his racism, while the latter was once considered a subject for commemorative coins, but the UK Royal Mint decided to scrap any such plans because of her own racism. On which note, in my youth, I read several items from their resumes, and the problem with Dahl is that, while some of his stories were imaginative, his sense of humor in others was very crude, and the Big Friendly Giant from 1982 had some gross elements in it, conveyed through the 9 cannibalistic giants. Also worth considering is that in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas were originally depicted as racial caricatures.

As for Blyton, there were some books in her resume that were imaginative too, like the Wishing Chair and the Faraway Tree, but while most of the books she wrote that I read may have been abridged editions, I do recall reading 2 or 3 stories where "golliwogs" - a notoriously racist caricature of a doll - turned up in the cast, and there was an illustrated short story she wrote (it may have been from "Tales of Toyland") featuring a sailor doll who angered his fellow toys in a family's collection by posting their items in a kid's money box. The other toys later exacted revenge by tricking him into handing over his clothes for washing while he was bathing in the dollhouse bathroom and posted those in the money box too, so he couldn't go to a party, lest anybody see his "skinny legs". Yes, a golliwog appeared in that too. I was too young at the time to understand that such imagery was based on racial caricatures, but today, it makes my stomach crawl. Such alarmingly ghastly dolls largely ceased production by the early 90s. Making matters worse is that Blyton was pro-Nazi, leading her husband Hugh Pollock to later divorce her, and I recall 2 Blyton stories where National Socialists were never explicitly referenced, yet Blyton had no problem identifying Black criminals who acted nasty towards the child stars in stories like The Island of Adventure. I don't support bowdlerization of older works, but I also don't see why even the original manuscript should be considered worthy of any child's audience when there's plenty of other stuff out there that's less tainted, as Blyton's writings unfortunately were back in the day. Honestly, when I think back on some of the books she wrote that I read, they were otherwise worthless, and not every Dahl book was a classic either.

The accusation Blyton's books were "homophobic", however, appears to be a misunderstanding of how, in the early 20th century, the word "queer" was just a synonym for words like "peculiar", "weird" and "strange". Even some early Marvel/DC comics up to the mid-1960s made use of the word in that context. I've also sometimes noticed that in some of those early comics, probably up to the late 80s, you could occasionally see British-influenced spellings and slangs used in the scripts. The word "queer" fell out of use due to how it became a figure of speech for homosexuality, and was probably even more common in Britain. That's what modern complainers about Blyton's work miss, and if she really once had a lesbian affair, as this article suggests, that refutes the notion she disapproved of homosexuality.

That told, there's a difference between Dahl/Blyton and Gaiman the Spectator columnist didn't consider: while the former 2 were pretty bad in terms of personality, neither, to my knowledge, were ever accused of physical felonies like what Gaiman committed (although Dahl's villification of Salman Rushdie was very disturbing). And when somebody fouls up that horribly, that's why sensible people want nothing more to do with them, mainly because no decent person wants to put money in the offender's pockets. Plus, why should children be encouraged to care about a would-be kiddie novella built on any kind of horror imagery?

The Spectator columnist is making a big mistake to argue Gaiman's writings have much worth, based on what themes are referenced and alluded to far too often in his wider list of writings for them to really work out in the long run, and that he worked as a "public moralist" only compounds the damage. Besides, his being part of the Scientology movement at this point should be a big red flag, and he's given signs in the past he's disrespectful of his Israeli ancestry. So, what's the big deal about him anyway?

There's also a writer at Rolling Stone who'd met Gaiman years before, and along with commentary about Sean Combs, who was also accused of sexual abuse, the columnist tells the following:

WHAT I HAVE TO SAY about Neil Gaiman makes me profoundly sadder, and that makes the rest of this piece one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written.

I was friends with Neil. I wrote the first feature coverage of him and The Sandman in the U.S., back about 1990. I thought his stories were remarkably inventive, and his range of imagination and intelligence was breathtaking. I said at the time: “DC Comics’ Sandman is one of the more radical books being presented in today’s comics mainstream. Written by Neil Gaiman — the most prolific and poetic writer that British comics have produced since Alan Moore — Sandman is the story of the god of dreams (or, as Gaiman describes him, ‘an anthropomorphic personification of dreams’), as he attempts to bring order to the realm of the nocturnal. By entering the dark places where gods, demons, succubuses, and frail humans dream, Sandman must also wrestle with their most secret hurts and hopes.”

Gee, just because Gaiman's Sandman may have been more about drama as much as horror, does that make it "inventive"? Or is he alluding to the leftist metaphors the series built upon? The problem with a lot of these op-eds is that they won't elucidate exactly what they consider masterpieces in the writings of such scribes, and based on the political angles, maybe that explains why. Nothing "radical" about the 1989-96 Sandman series, unless perhaps one were to describe it in a negative connotation as something akin to "extremism".

I was pleased when Neil and D.C.-Vertigo asked me to write an introduction to the concluding volume of the Sandman hardcover reprint series. The last time I saw Neil was in May 2019, at the premiere of Good Omens, at the Hollywood Cemetery. We continued to exchange emails, and at times talked to one another publicly on Facebook, and hoped to meet up again, but that wouldn’t happen. I never met his second wife, Amanda Palmer, though Neil invited me to visit his new home in Woodstock, New York, which had once belonged to Bob Dylan’s manager: “I bought the house where Albert Grossman lived, where the cover photo of Bringing It All Back Home was taken.”

Like just about everybody, I was thoroughly unready when accusations about Neil’s sexual misconduct — his alleged abuse of numerous women — began to emerge last year. The stories just didn’t fit with the man I’d known, respected, and liked for years. That Neil Gaiman was gracious, erudite, brilliant, and concerned for others. The Neil Gaiman that appeared in a January New York magazine feature was none of those things, except by way of his now devastated reputation. (In a statement posted to his website following that story, Gaiman said, “I have never engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”) The discrepancy between the two Neils is incomprehensibly stark — even shocking. People, of course, have secret selves, and their sexual lives sometimes take place undercover. Not all of those secrets are our business — sex is complex, and part of what might give it frisson is when there’s an impermissible, even debauched, aspect to it. Sometimes, it’s merely the secrecy of infidelity that provides the frisson. Sometimes that is found in sex with multiple partners. Sometimes in the same room at the same time. Learning about these activities on somebody’s part might change how we see that person. Certainly, infidelity can change how many others might regard somebody. Broken faith, lies, ruined marriages, betrayed families… These are hurtful, consequential matters. But what Neil is accused of is something well beyond cunning or perfidy or faithlessness, well beyond questionable morality. Neil stands accused of activity that shocks our conscience, that ruins our previous estimation of his depth and art, because depth and art don’t excuse wrecking the lives of others. Depth and art are not a license to impose behavior on those who are young, confused, vulnerable, trusting yet unwilling. Depth and art don’t matter at all when the artist hurts or corrupts or malforms innocence. If somebody thinks his depths grant him a perspective that allows him these actions, that person no longer possesses a depth we can believe in or trust.

Back in 1990, Neil said to me: “Sandman isn’t always a horror book, though horror is very often the lie that tells the truth about our lives — and in that sense, it’s essentially an optimistic genre. But actually, I’d like the stories to be as varied and unpredictable as dreams themselves — which means that the Sandman should be willing to follow the human subconscious wherever it may go, even into the darker realm of internal mythologies.”

“Horror is very often the lie that tells the truth about our lives.”

I can’t get those words out of my head. Sometimes our lies tell our truths in ways we never anticipated. Sometimes real-life horror might be all we are remembered for. Sometimes our horror reaches out and devastates others, and when that happens, the eloquence of our lies will do nothing to redeem us.

Oh, please. What's so "optimistic" about the horror genre? Not enough, that's for sure. But Gaiman sure did concoct a perfect self-description, and his obsession with horror themes really went much too far.

There's also been more news about Gaiman's victims, and New Zealand's Stuff reports that Scarlett Pavlovich feels awful about writing anything positive to Gaiman in her exchanges with him:

A woman who is suing fantasy author Neil Gaiman and his ex-wife due to alleged sexual abuse says she is “furious” with herself about sending affectionate messages to the writer.

[...] Pavlovich told a Tortoise Media podcast hosted by British writer Rachel Johnson she was “[on a] journey from being a victim to a survivor”.

Johnson, on the postcast, suggested that a series of affectionate messages to Gaiman appeared to support claims the relationship was consensual.

Pavlovich said in one message: “It was consensual. How many times do I have to f...ing tell everyone?”

In another message to Gaiman she wrote: “I think you’re a wonderful person and a friend. I would never MeToo you,” referring to the global social movement to raise awareness around sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape culture.

Pavlovich told Johnson that she was angry with herself for those messages.

“The messages are really hard for me to go through because of, you know, my delusion,” she said. “I’m so furious with myself.”

She told Johnson that seeking legal action filed in US courts was scary, but she was telling the truth.

“This is terrifying, because it’s opening myself up to every which way of scrutiny,” she said.

“And that’s not because I haven’t told the truth or been duplicitous. That’s because the role of the law is not to really scrutinise him. It is really always to scrutinise me.

“It’s still coloured by the most horrible thing and the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me. And the thing that almost took my life more than a few times, that continued to make me suicidal last year.”

One of the worst things about men like Gaiman is that they doubtless know how to determine if a victim's too timid to say what they really think. But now, more victims of "celebrities" are speaking out, and when they file a police/legal complaint, that can strengthen their accusations against showbiz predators. So, I hope Pavlovich and the other victims are doing well, and wish her luck with the upcoming lawsuit against Gaiman.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, golden calf of LGBT, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence

Leftist comics writer Matthew Rosenberg was interviewed by Dying Scene, where, along with a new comic he's written titled What's the Furthest Place From Here, he also told them about a career he had in music distribution:

Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis): For people who aren’t familiar with you, can you give us a little background and tell us a little bit about What’s The Furthest Place From Here?

Matthew Rosenberg: I’m in New York City. I’m from here. I grew up in the punk and hardcore scene in New York. I used to run a small indie label (Red Leader Records) in my bedroom, tour with bands, put on shows, but eventually I worked at a merch company for a while. All the stuff that is punk rock jobs; I worked at a record store, worked at record labels. Putting out records was really kind of brutal. We were putting out records in a time of the rise of iTunes. Everything’s online and people were downloading things and it was hard to figure out how to sell music to people. We just kept having distributors go out of business on us. We put the label away and stopped doing it. I sort of looked for another job that I could do that was something I was as passionate about as music and punk rock. The only other thing in my life that was a constant was comics. So, I set out to make comics. I’ve been a comics writer professionally for a decade now. I got my start at Black Mask Comics. They first published me which was really serendipitous because they were all punk rock people. Black Mask was founded by Steve Niles who wrote 30 Days of Night.

Dying Scene: Okay, is it Steve Niles? I always thought it was Brett (Gurewitz) from Epitaph also?

Matthew Rosenberg: Yeah, it was also founded by Steve, who was in a bunch of Dischord bands back in the day. He was in a group with Matt Pizzolo, who is the third partner. He was a Long Island hardcore guy and put out the New York Hardcore documentary and a bunch of music stuff. I had friends who knew him. I went through Black Mask and did a couple books there and then moved on to Marvel. Now, I make books at DC and Image including What’s the Furthest Place From Here? which is my current ongoing series that I do with Tyler Boss.

With his politics, that he forced upon the Punisher, it's hard to see how he does better with this, even if this time, he's working on his own creations and productions. But, this does tell why he went into comicdom more than music. Because the downloading business all but rendered the music distribution business obsolete.

Dying Scene: Did you and Tyler come up with the concept together?

Matthew Rosenberg: Yeah, me and Tyler did a book together called Four Kids Walk Into A Bank and we knew we wanted to do another book together after that. So we started doing a different book and we realized that it was just Four Kids Walk Into A Bank, but sci-fi. We realized we didn’t want to do the same thing again. So, we sat down and tried to think of a book that would be very different from the book we made before and that’s some of What’s the Furthest Place from Here is. We wanted to do something that was big, sort of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic, ongoing, and had a big cast. We wanted to tell a story about kids who grew up in subculture, if that makes sense. We didn’t want to do a story about kids who loved comics and I said it should be kids who love punk rock. It should be kids who grew up surrounded by punk rock whether or not they fully understood it. The premise of What’s The Furthest Place From Here? is, it’s a post-apocalyptic story where there’s no adults left in the world. It’s just gangs of children and each gang lives in a building where they take on the personality of the business or the entity in the building beforehand. So, the kids who live in the bank control commerce and the kids who live in the police station try and enforce their own laws and rules on people. Our story follows the kids who grew up in a record store. They worship all the records that they grew up around and consider them their gods. They take care of them and try to do right by them. I’ve been working on it now for four years.

Based on how he describes the teens living at the police precinct, it wouldn't be shocking if it turned out they were the baddies, and this GN another metaphor for leftist anti-police propaganda. That's practically why Donald Trump was elected 4 months ago. Why, it wouldn't be a surprise if, based on what's told about the teen bankers, this were also an anti-capitalist metaphor.

Dying Scene: Has anybody asked about doing a film or TV adaptation of What’s The Furthest Place From Here?

Matthew Rosenberg: I can’t talk too much about that, but we have a deal for it. It’s being developed now. The thing I can talk about is that when you put out a comic on a certain level, like an Image Comic, it’s very much on the radar of a lot of Hollywood people from the go. They’re always looking out for things to adapt and buy, and so when a book comes out that’s like our book, you get a lot of inquiries from the start. You get a lot of producers and actors and directors and studios just asking if the rights are available? It’s always flattering, but me and Tyler knew that we were doing a huge story, and we’re doing a sort of non-traditional story. In a lot of comics, you read the first issue and it says, well, this is the premise of the book. These are the good guys. These are the bad guys. You’re going to follow them. Our book doesn’t work like that. We wanted to do a real three-act structure through the whole narrative of thirty-plus issues. You don’t really know what the book is about for a long time, and we didn’t want to go into conversations with people about adapting it or buying it or anything without them knowing what it was. We told everyone, we’re not going to have conversations about selling it or optioning it until we’re 10 issues out. We took it off the market immediately, which business-wise is probably stupid, but artistically I think was the right choice to do. When we brought it back out, we had meetings with all these people and big studios. A lot of them said, well, how would you see this as being a movie? I don’t have any idea how you’d make this a movie. It’s got this huge scale. Then we met with one company who said, “We know how to do it. It would be super faithful. We want you guys involved. This is how we do it.” It just made so much sense what they said. We don’t need to go out and have a bidding war on this. They understand what it is and they want to do it. They brought in some amazing people to work on it. So we’re really excited because people who’ve done some of my favorite stories in recent years are attached.

Dying Scene: I saw that you were in Ireland because they are making Four Kids Walk Into A Bank a movie.

Matthew Rosenberg: Yeah, me and Tyler went over to Dublin for a week right before Christmas. I think they just wrapped shooting the other day. Shooting over six weeks in and around Ireland. It’s really fun. It was a weird one.

Dying Scene: Did they do a good job matching it to Tyler’s art?

Matthew Rosenberg: Me and Tyler are producers on the movie, so nothing caught us off guard. We’ve been there at every step and we’ve seen from the concept art, look books, casting, and all of that. There’s places where they made choices to go a different way, which totally made sense because the comic would be hard to adapt as a movie. There’s a lot of stuff that is specifically for comics. You want someone other really talented people to come in and say, I’m going to do my version. Like when a band does a cover song and it sounds like the original song, what was the point of this? So they took their old spin on it. It’s incredibly faithful. I think it was really intense for Tyler being in the house that looks like the house and car he drew. It’s especially funny because the car he drew was based on his grandmother’s old car. So he said, it’s really weird that someone had to go out and buy the same model car as my grandmother drove in the 90s.

Sounds like we have here yet another GN that was only produced for the sake of providing moviemakers with more material, not to mention pushing potential propaganda, even at a time when wokery's alienated many people. There have been some people who've argued comics can't be developed solely to get movie and TV deals, or even theater adaptations, and the upcoming adaptation Rosenberg and Boss have in the works only explains all the more why this is becoming quite a farce already. Even novels have for too long been used as a source for producing screenplays.

Dying Scene: I saw you did work on some of the Archie comics, too.

Matthew Rosenberg: I did. I’m really good friends with Alex Segura, who used to be a vice president of Archie. He’s a music guy and wrote Archie Meets Kiss. I said to him you should do an Archie Meets Kiss book, but with a band that doesn’t suck. The obvious one is Archie Meets Ramones. I said, how do we do that? You have to go out and get the Ramones’ license. I spent about 18 months. everything is different estates If we want the logo, that’s the licensing department. If you want likeness rights, that’s estates and that’s people. If you want to reference songs, that’s publishing. I came back to Archie and they were baffled that I did that. It did really well. The folks at Archie called me and said, we want to do a music thing. Do you want to do The Archies as a band touring and draw from some of your experience touring with bands? There was a special musical guest in every issue. And we got awesome ones. I mean, we had Blondie and Tegan and Sara, but I had lined up some more for later on. Bands that they were pretty confused by that I got. The Mountain Goats gave us permission and that was going to be fun and I was talking to Converge about coming on. I wanted to do the Archies get booked onto a hardcore show in a basement. It was a Converge show at a Legion Hall, everyone’s spin kicking and crowd killing and all this stuff. Then, The Archies have to get up and play. Then the book folded right before we were going to figure out how we were going to do the Converge one. The Archie company is owned by this family and these people who’ve owned Archie for years. They would send us notes like, can we get Van Halen? I don’t think we can get Van Halen, but also that’s not exactly selling comics to teenagers in the supermarket. I think the legal nightmare of us trying to get Van Halen in a comic is going to kill us. Whereas I just went to a Mountain Goats’ show and was like, hey, guys, can we do this?

I'm sure Rosenberg's work on Archie is bad news too. If a specific project was shelved, however, it's fortunate, because the less propaganda like his on the market, the better. And selling to teens? They threw all that away long ago for the sake of PC. Whatever they've been writing up in the past decade has been bottom of the barrel, woke stuff, including how the Kevin Keller character is depicted as homosexual, and how they put such an emphasis on horror themes, another serious issue plauging the entertainment scene of recent.

Dying Scene: The other thing I saw online randomly, and I have to ask, is you wrote an album with a member of the Wu-Tang Clan?

Matthew Rosenberg: My first published comic, I got hired through music people to write the companion comic to an album by Ghostface called, 12 Reasons to Die that RZA produced. I did a six-issue comic that was a concept album of a story of a mobster who got killed. Ghostface played the mobster who got killed and came back from the dead to haunt the twelve gangsters who killed him. I wrote the comic to it. I got along with RZA and Ghost. Ghost wanted to do another concept record. It was weird, he did a 12 Reasons to Die 2 that I didn’t work on. Adrian Younge, the producer, and his team put that album together, but then Ghost wanted to do another concept album that was sort of similar. They hired me to write a story. It’s called 36 Seasons. Tommy Boy put it out. I wrote the story. They said, we don’t really know how to do this. It’s just a story. You didn’t break it up. I broke it up into songs. This is what the song is. You have to figure out who the guest vocalists are and give them characters. We can figure out who they are and where they appear. I had all these conversations with legal where they said, we can’t do that because of music publishing and the way it works, you didn’t write lyrics or music. While the whole thing is based on your writing, there’s not a legal definition for what it is. you’re an influence. I literally titled the album. I think I named some of the songs, but not all of them. None of those fall under ASCAP BMI songwriting.

Well there's another form of darkness produced even within the framework of the music industry we could do without. Sometimes, I wonder if even musicians are too hung up on darkness, and sadly, probably have been for a long time. And here's more about another comic Rosenberg recently published:

Dying Scene: So looking ahead, I know you got, We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us.

Matthew Rosenberg: Yeah. I won’t say where I got the title from, but I am a big Against Me! fan from the No Idea days and back. Coincidence.

Dying Scene: Do you want to give a little bit of the premise of it?

Matthew Rosenberg: We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us is sort of a 1970s James Bond type spy story about sexy super spies, crazy mad scientists, power-hungry humans, but it’s told from the POV of a 13-year-old girl who is the daughter of the world’s greatest scientist. Everything goes wrong for the girl, she discovers who her father is at the same time that the world discovers who he is and where he has been hiding. She and her robot guard set out with sort of a choice whether she wants to follow in her father’s newly discovered footsteps and become this villain and get revenge for the wrongdoings that have been done to her and her family; or she could go and live a normal life for the first time. It’s a revenge story about family and regret and the way violence sort of ripples through their lives. The way that generations of anger and resentment and hate sort of manifest. It’s a dark comedy too. I made it sound like a bummer, but it is actually funny. That comes out March 26.

Even the mention of "dark comedy" is cause for dismay, as is the talk of violence as a tool used by the star characters in the comic. At the end, they say:

Dying Scene: Thank you very much for this. This was awesome.

Matthew Rosenberg: Thank you, I never get to talk about the music. Comics people don’t know what to say about music stuff. You meet a lot of people in comics doing this. When I worked at Black Mask, most of the staff at Black Mask was straight edge, punk rock and hardcore kids.

Dying Scene: I feel comics are the punk rock art form.

Matthew Rosenberg: Yeah, I always think that it’s pretty egalitarian. There’s a low bar to entry and anyone can do it. It’s like mini-comics are our demo tapes or 7-inches. I think it’s a really good way to put it.

Unfortunately, the "low bar" is more easily accessed by leftists, certainly in the mainstream. That's how Rosenberg got the assignments he did in the past decade. Alas, he's just another overrated liberal ideologue, and it won't be surprising if, in another number of years, nobody will care much about his pretentious stories.

Labels: Archie, dc comics, indie publishers, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda

The Tacoma News-Tribune announced that a comics store that was emphasizing LGBT ideology is closing down:

Beloved comic book store Destiny City Comics in Tacoma will be closing its doors at the end of February after its rent has increased “exponentially,” one owner told The News Tribune this week.

Located next to King’s Books at 218 St. Helens Ave., the shop is advertised as “Tacoma’s Unapologetically Black and LGBTQ+ Friendly comic shop.” On Wednesday, shelves upon shelves of novels, graphic novels, comics, art and toys filled the walls.

Matt Nebeker owns the shop with his wife Stephanie Hagan and is known colloquially by his professional wrestling name “ETHAN HD.” Nebeker said due to rent increases the shop close Feb. 28 after more than 10 years in operation.

Well I'm sorry it got expensive to maintain the shop. But what's the big deal about LGBTQ+ among leftists like these I'll never know, and with Donald Trump's re-election (in which he won a considerable number of Black voters), it should be clear it's not appealing to the masses. I get the feeling the productions meant to appeal to Black consumers at this store don't expand beyond the superficial, and it wouldn't be surprising if it turned out they don't have anything emphasizing the history and cultures of African countries like Kenya, Cameroon and Ghana.

Nebeker said he and his wife reached out to the original owners to buy Destiny City Comics “because we wanted to keep that going and be that conduit in the community for local artists and creators and people to find comics outside the beaten path of Marvel and DC.”

I'll give them this: what they say about the Big Two in this day and age figures. But that's because they too went down the dreadful path of wokeness long ago, and at this point, it's clear it isn't improving their fortunes.

“We’ve been there for parents who find out their child is trans or queer and [are] coming in to get literature on that, and kind of go on this adventure together,” he said. “[We’ve] seen people going through name changes, going through hormonal changes, staying up to date on what their pronouns are and new names and things like that. Getting to see people over time become their authentic self and be a part of their journey, even if you’re only seeing them like, once a month or every other month, that’s very cool.”

As someone who is Black and biracial, Nebeker said he wanted to stock books by authors of color that didn’t just touch on difficult topics like racism.

“If you’re a young Black kid, not every Black story you read needs to be about, like Frederick Douglas or John Lewis’s march. Those books are important,” he said. “But you know, having graphic novels like Colin Kaepernick’s, where it’s just being young and successful, having books by Miles Morales, where you just get to see yourself as a yearling, those are equally important.”

Here's another article where somebody makes it sound like it's such a big deal that a POC creation be wearing a Spidey suit, but not whether a merit-based story's been produced that everybody can enjoy. And as the above suggests, the store seems to have been intended to pander to people who wanted affirmation for their identity politics more than entertainment value. Does that make sense? Not really, and is definitely different from what things were like decades before. The problem with Morales' stories is that they were developed as little more than a form of social justice pandering, and that's worn very thin too by now.

An important query to be raised here is whether it's healthy to despise being born man or woman. That's what's appalling about all this "transgender" propaganda, because it totally obscures whether the child should be lectured to take up pretending they're the opposite sex. Most of which looks like it'll hopefully fade in time, though already serious damage has been done.

It's not great if a comics store closes, but one must wonder what the big deal is about a store that seems to have built its whole reputation on identity politics. If there was no clear emphasis on merit at the specialty store, then doesn't that kind of explain why their sales eventually faded?

Labels: Africa, dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, indie publishers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, sales

Rob Salkowitz at Forbes says there's scholars and readers taking looks anew at the romance genre:

The romance comics genre was founded by comics icon Jack Kirby, better known for Captain America and basically the entire Marvel universe, with his then-partner Joe Simon. Simon & Kirby had an unerring sense for what fans wanted from the medium and believed there was an untapped market among women who liked “true confession” and pulpy love stories. They were right. The first issue of Young Romance comics in 1947 sold so well that it inspired a host of imitators almost overnight, turning romance comics into a multimillion-dollar industry.

“In the 1940s and 50s, women of all ages read romance comics,” says Sydney Heifler, a PhD candidate at the Ohio State University and part of a new wave of scholars exploring the connections between comics, American culture and gender. “There was a strong moral code in those comics, but you had women who tested behavior and limits. After the mid-50s censorship scare, romance comics became a lot less interesting and more sanitized. Then in the late 60s, you had all these hilarious examples of the middle aged men who wrote them trying to keep up with women’s lib.”

Be that as it may, it's kind of surprising potential liberals would sound like they disapprove of a form of feminism, considering how they certainly used to go out of their way to uphold it...until the transsexuality cult apparently was considered far more worthy in their POV, and feminism expendable. One might also consider how the "young adult" genre also makes a big deal out of LGBT themes, and in the past decade, was plagued by alarming amounts of PC storytelling in any case, comics included, to the point where you could almost wonder what the whole point was of writing books to start with.

Now, how did romance comics slowly make a comeback years later?

One creator who saw potential in the genre was John Lustig, who began a strip called “Last Kiss” in 1996 that added contemporary captions and dialogue to vintage romance comics panels, often giving the female characters more agency – and libido – than the originals ever contemplated. “There’s some lovely artwork in those old strips, and they are the only genre that really focused on women, so I could get into what the women are really thinking,” he says. “Those images became such a trope, because they are so dramatic but in this bland, safe way. I’m playing against that image in a lot of ways.”

Clearly the concept has appeal, as Lustig has maintained Last Kiss in digital format, merchandise, and occasionally in print for nearly 30 years.

Fast forward to today, where a generation of creators raised on well-crafted josei (manga for adult women) and more sophisticated romance and romance-adjacent prose fiction have reinvented the genre for the predominantly female audience of readers who consume comics on mobile devices. The growth of platforms like Webtoon and Tapas in North America have given creators ways to connect directly to readers hungry for romance-oriented work compared to traditional publishers aiming for the more male-dominated superhero and action genres.

On that note, they may want to consider that, whatever one thinks of superhero themes, Marvel/DC ostensibly tried to write their comics as geared for women in the past decade, and in the end, had no success, because they were draining the action themes for the sake of poorly written drama that didn't appeal to anybody. And even that was sabotaged by alarming amounts of wokeness. If they were serious, they would've produced self-contained romance tales not connected to their superhero universes proper, and they wouldn't have limited themselves to the woke directions they took. Even earlier, one of the worst examples of Marvel's phony attempts at rebroadening focuses was a miniseries titled Trouble, which dealt with teen pregnancy, written by Mark Millar, and what rubbed people the wrong was that the story implied Peter Parker's family were the protagonists, hinting this was more an effort to produce cheap sensationalism. It was overseen by none other than Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas, and wasn't successful, for good reason. One of the saddest results of the miniseries was that Terry and Rachel Dodson's artwork was wasted on this botch. It goes without saying that, if the story wasn't stand-alone, that pretty much sunk it.

It's good that in the years since, there have been certain efforts made at producing new romance comics, and I recall Top Cow/Image did at least a few in the past decade, and if USA/Canadian creators wanted to, I'm sure they could even develop dramas about food, sports and fishing like the Japanese have, and even comics within comics, recalling there's anime productions where manga is referenced in the screenplays, which I see as making for an amusing in-joke. The simple point is that, if any creators wanted to, they could do much of this stuff without tampering with established corporate-owned franchises, and turn out crowd-pleasers for real. That's what has to be the way going forward. I wouldn't recommend buying comics like these from creators who were involved in destroying what made Marvel/DC work years ago, though, if only because, if they haven't apologized for playing a part in destroying Kirby/Lee's best items, then there's little point rewarding them when they ostensibly produce their own work. Only those who develop their own stories without participating in destructive directions are worth buying from, IMO. Come to think of it, the creators who're more worth buying romance and drama comics from are also those who don't take the kind of paths Garth Ennis has over the years, and unlike him, at least show some respect for adventure and sci-fi fandom's validity. That way, some improvement might one day be achieved.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, good artists, good writers, history, manga and anime, marvel comics, Spider-Man, technology, women of marvel

It's a sad day when a veteran writer/editor/columnist I once thought at least posessed a modicum of decency and self-respect now decided to join the transsexuality cult and now wants everybody to call him "Jenny". From Fandom Pulse:

Tony Isabella had a career in Marvel and DC Comics in the 1970s, creating Tigra and Black Lightning, with a run on Ghost Rider. Now, he’s gone a step further and decided to push mental illness for attention by declaring he’s transgender at the age of seventy-three.

Of note in his 1970s work was a Ghost Rider arc where he intended on ensuring the character was Christian, but Marvel editorial squashed the idea and removed the Christ-like figure from the book.

He stated in an interview in 2007, “Getting prior approval from editor Roy Thomas, as I would from later editors Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, I introduced "The Friend" into the series. He looked sort of like a hippie Jesus Christ and that's exactly who He was, though I never actually called Him that.... It allowed me to address a disparity that had long bothered me about the Marvel Universe. Though we had no end of Hell(s) and Satan surrogates in our comics, we had nothing of Heaven.... [After two years] I'd written a story wherein, couched in mildly subtle terms, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan's power forever. Had I remained on Ghost Rider, which was my intent at the time, the title's religious elements would have faded into the background. Blaze would be a Christian, but he'd express this in the way he led his life. ... Unfortunately, an assistant editor took offense at my story. The issue was ready to go to the printer when he pulled it back and ripped it to pieces. He had some of the art redrawn and a lot of the copy rewritten to change the ending of a story two years in the making. "The Friend" was revealed to be, not Jesus, but a demon in disguise. To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrongheaded actions I've ever seen from an editor.”

Sadly, in his older years, Isabella turned away from Christ, attacking anti-woke movements on behalf of his new leftist extremist religion. In 2018, he started attacking the anti-woke movement known as ComicsGate, saying on Twitter, “To the #Comicsgater who said it was bad business for me to alienate my base, you should know my base has NEVER been racist, bigoted, misogynist, white supremacist, GOP-loving zombies. You must be confusing me with some other writer. And, also, I blocked you. Bye, Felicia.”

He got stranger in 2023 when he decided to attack creator Eric July, advocating violence at San Diego Comic-Con, saying, “Come on, CGC and Comic-Con! You can do better than empowering an unsavory (to put it mildly) person like this. Jack Kirby would have punched him out.”

He's undoubtably done some of this for what Andy Warhol called 15 minutes of fame, and certainly got the attention of the LGBT crowd. And it's a real shame, because now, anybody and everybody who ever thought Black Lightning, Black Goliath and Misty Knight had significance as notable Black superheroes for DC and Marvel, is going to have to separate art from artist. I myself own 3 paperbacks reprinting Black Lightning from the late 70s-mid 90s, and may have a Daredevil Epic Collection archive containing a handful of issues he wrote there, and I'll have difficulty getting around this embarrassing news, certainly for a while. Isabella must've performed this stunt as a bizarre revenge for the election of Donald Trump, and it's very sad. Why does he think taking up a belief system similar to/worse than self-hating Jews is going to please anybody but the most self-despising? Doesn't he understand it's also demeaning to women, and a form of blackface?

I read some of his columns that he wrote for 2 or 3 pop culture news sources a quarter century ago, and while there were some things regarding the comics industry he talked about at the time that were perceptive, his increasingly left-wing positions like obsession with LGBT ideology and hostility to Republicans were very glaring a number of times, to the point where I was discouraged from continuing to read much of what he had to say. I remember he may have once said he'd characterized Jeff Pierce/Black Lightning as a Northern Baptist Protestant, but based on where Isabella's going now, he clearly no longer upholds that position, and his attacks on July are indicative of where Isabella's going when it comes to race relations too. And despite what he's doing now, I wouldn't be shocked if he gave Islam a pass on objections to LGBT practice that he wouldn't give Judeo-Christianity and even Buddhism/Hinduism. Come to think of it, he's probably okay with Chinese communists objecting too. A shame that somebody who, in his early career, showed talent and promise, would throw away everyone's ability to fully appreciate what he's written in the past, though with the way he acts now, it actually makes it easier to separate art from artist, because he very likely doesn't care much about his original works anymore. From what I've noticed about his past conduct though, it does suggest he had considerable disagreements with comics editors, quite possibly because his politics at the time were too forced, and other things that some editors back then at least had the audacity to object to putting to use in their comics. But more recently, when Dan DiDio was still running DC, Isabella wrote a Black Lightning story in 2017 that resorted to politically correct positions like attacking the police as though they're all literally evil. And that was certainly bringing down even his own creations to an embarrassing moment.

One of the most distressing things about Isabella's publicity stunt is wondering if any more creators like him will take the same route, in a desperate ploy to remain relevant? All it would do is embarrass their legacies, and say quite a bit about what they really think of the audience that supports their works. Fandom Pulse also notes:

Now, on X, Tony Isabella seems to have lost his mind after the recent election of Donald Trump as president. Unable to procure enough attention simply by attacking right-wing creators, he seems to want to go for more virtue points, declaring himself transgender. He posted, “This is real. I'll have more to say soon. In the meantime, I ask you respect my privacy and especially that of my wife and our children. Thank you.”

It's very sad that he would do this to a wife and children in his later years to try to gain social acceptance among leftists. Moreover, it’s ridiculous to make a public declaration like this and demand privacy—very similar to how Neil Gaiman demanded privacy upon his very public sexual allegations.

Yes, that's the worst part of this whole affair. He's embarrassing his family, which is worse than tainting his legacy. As for Gaiman, interesting that Isabella once associated with men like him in past years, as he noted on his blog in the past:

When I think about my influences, I wonder who is influencing the current comics writers and the comics writers of the future. I’m not coming up with a lot of names. Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek are among the few current comics writers who have mastered the various arts mentioned above. I can see learning things from Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Harvey Pekar.

All of them leftists, sadly. More recently, Isabella may have turned against Gaiman, but the problem with this post is the contrast between the length of his commentaries. When he rants about Trump:

TRUMP. The Constitution is crystal clear on this matter. Donald J. Trump cannot be President of the United States. Yet he will be sworn in. The Republicans in Congress will not honor their oaths of office. They are driven in turns by fear, greed, lust for power and an unreasoning hatred of the “evil” minorities who exist only in their deranged minds. The Supreme Court justices, even those not appointed by Trump, will not uphold their oaths of office. Even the Democrats, who should and do know this clear truth, will not oppose his inauguration. So the worst man in our nation’s current history – bully, con man, coward, crook, liar, racist, rapist, insurrectionist, traitor – will again become the President of what we all hoped was the greatest nation on earth.

With Trump will come a noxious collection of clearly unqualified appointees, avaricious billionaires and arguably insane zealots. They will gut the various agencies they are supposed to guide for the benefit of the American people. They will visit hardship and soul-deep misery on innocent people. They will make every day less safe for all of us and for the world.

If you voted for Trump and any other Republicans, you are in my eyes, as vile as they are. Maybe you were too lazy to do even the most basic homework exercising an informed vote requires. Maybe you thought they hated the same people you hate. Maybe you foolishly think their cruel and self-centered policies won’t hurt you just as much as they will the decent people who voted against Trump and his fellows. Maybe you’re criminally stupid. Or maybe, like Trump and his ilk, you are actually evil. Whatever you are, I will always wish ill for you. I will always wish your happiness and hopes crumble into the foul-smelling dust of your souls. As much as I cherish redemption stories, and have written more than a few of those, I fear you are beyond redemption. You are damned by your own actions.

But when he addresses Gaiman, he merely says:

NEIL GAIMAN. You utter piece of shit.

Notice that, while he devoted at least 3 paragraphs to making nasty comments about anybody who so much as dared to dream of voting for Trump, Isabella only wrote one brief, non-committal statement about Gaiman that doesn't say enough of anything. And if he can't prove Trump's as physically evil as Gaiman was, then why say so much about Trump but so little about Gaiman? Some could wonder if what really annoys Isabella is only that Gaiman didn't have enough morale as a leftist to avoid committing the offenses he's accused of, not because of his specific politics. Seriously, if Tony wanted to, I'm sure he could've figured out what was wrong with Gaiman years ago. What Isabella said about Trump supporters is also very horrific and makes for very bad PR. If a lot of 9-11 survivors voted for Trump, as did a lot of Blacks and women under 30 or outside colleges, does Tony also see them as beneath himself?

And then, I also noticed he brought up the following overrated novelist in one of his commentaries:

October 10: I am Gandhi, newest book in the “Ordinary People Change the World” series by Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos.

As I once noted almost a decade ago, Gandhi was a bad lot himself, possibly more than Gaiman turned out to be. So it's head-shaking how Isabella can ignore this as much as Meltzer's repellent script for Identity Crisis, which even some leftists have been re-evaluating over the years. Isabella also wrote:

3. Over the years I have praised the Black Lightning writing of Brad Meltzer, Dwayne McDuffie, Grant Morrison, Adam Beechen and Sholly Fisch in various Justice League and other titles.

Considering what Meltzer did to several other characters in Identity Crisis, mainly women, it's not doing any good to gloss that over and just excuse Meltzer after what he, along with Dan DiDio, led to as much as Joe Quesada did over at Marvel. Even Morrison's not a good choice. It's hugely disappointing Tony obscured all that. Does he really think it's okay for a writer whose resume includes a nasty comic that was accused of misogyny to write any comic that Isabella helped produce? Simply sad. And then, he even wrote the following bizarrity in 2016:

Sunday morning. I woke to the unspeakable. Again. As the day went on, the horror and the tragedy grew. I didn’t know what to say. I knew I had to say something. This is what I posted to Facebook and on Twitter:

We are all gay. We are all Muslim. Don't let hate define our nation or ourselves.

I’ve been around the Internet long enough to avoid the comments on the domestic terrorist attack that left 50 innocent people dead at the Pride nightclub in Orlando and more than 50 others wounded and, in too many cases, fighting for their lives. I know how bigoted and vile the comments from the anonymous cowards can be. Empowered by right-wing politicians and pundits, sanctified in their tiny minds by so-called Christian speakers and, overwhelmed by the fear that has been implanted in their souls, holding nothing more dear than the profits of the sacred gun lobby.

It sounds like he's excusing that the perpetrator of the crime in Orlando, Omar Mateen, was a Muslim. For somebody who only seems to care about homophobia/transphobia, Isabella sure does have a most peculiar approach to the subject to seemingly take both sides. So, as noted prior, it looks like despite what he claims, Isabella has nothing against Islamic homophobia, and gives them a free pass on it. The chances are very high we'll never see him write about subjects like this terrible incident in NYC either, and if not, it'll contradict his alleged support for Blacks too.

Predictably, even Superhero Hype went along with this pronoun propaganda stunt virtually unquestioned, and what they tell is that:

Beyond her current work at Last Kiss Comics, Isabella is also working on an independent series centered around a trans teen superhero. Describing them as “a contemporary Peter Parker,” Isabella thinks the series will hold broad appeal for queer and straight teenagers. However, Isabella is still shopping the series around to publishers, searching for a “fair and mutually beneficial agreement.”

In a time when many are now rejecting this kind of wokeism, there's no telling how many people will care about something that's long become an insufferable cliche. And he wants heterosexual teens to embrace this? He's way behind the times, and what he's doing is offensive to boys and girls alike, no matter their lifestyles. If he's still trying to find a publisher, that suggests he's not having much luck, because there's only so many items like his at this point that aren't selling, as this propaganda and ideology have only alienated so many people, to say nothing of hugely disappointed them. Some of the comments include:

Why do people need to shout their sexual preferences to the world?? This is completely asinine and shouldn’t happen. Aside from pointing out someone else’s sexuality, this is a totally pointless article. I saw the title and not even going to bother reading it. No one needs to know about yours or anyone else’s sex life.

And:

But ... you clicked on it and commented, which rewards their effort. You sent the message, "Keep doing exactly this. We WILL click on it and engage with it."

But, yes -- it is totally asinine.

As one commentator famously put it -- it's like getting a face tattoo, and then complaining that someone is gazing at your tattoo disapprovingly.

When someone makes a point to publicly announce X, they are putting it on the table for public scrutiny.

But, the exercise has been normalized because it's an opportunity to shout people down as bigots and -ist/-ophobes if they don't join the chorus of praise and affirmation of the thing being announced.

Except, now it's just trite and boring and pathetic, and if I was Tony Isabella, I would be embarrassed at having to resort to this kind of a stunt to get attention and feel relevant. If he wants to put on a dress and call himself "Loretta" or whatever, I don't know why he thinks we're supposed to care ... except that this has become the expected public ritual now.

And it's very sad. One more said:

In other news: nobody freaking cares.

No indeed. It's been old news for years, and has not bettered this world at all. At its worst, it's offensive to women, not to mention victims of sexual abuse. On which note, if Isabella wanted to, he could've developed stories about Armenian, Kenyan and Uruguayan culture, even the Hindu, Sikh and Jain religions, and instead, he resorts to one of the most ultra-cheap, pathetic cliches of the modern world, LGBT ideology.

Since the subject of Gaiman was alluded to again, I also found the following op-ed at the Irish Examiner, asking whether we should dispose of works by authors accused of abominations, including the writings of Gaiman and Alice Munro, though she seems to be reluctant to fully acknowledge the situation does look grave:

Terry Prone wrote an interesting article on Monday about the problems arising from the veneration of public figures. She suggested that it can lead to us applying different standards of etiquette or morality or turning a blind eye to questionable behaviour.

It made me consider the problem in the context of revered writers. Putting writers on a pedestal can result in unhealthy power imbalances between writers and their readers — two prominent writers who have been in the news spring to mind.

Those two being Gaiman and Munro, of course. And she notes that, when it come to the former:

Apparently, many of his fans were women, which is unsurprising given the gender gap in fiction reading with more women reading short stories and novels than men.

In an era of mob justice on the web, we have become too casual about proof. The allegations against Gaiman and Palmer are unproven and, therefore, remain in the realm of accusation. Gaiman has released a statement saying that all his past sexual relationships were consensual and that he is “still learning.” Yet, whatever the outcome of the court cases, it seems likely that Gaiman’s legacy will be permanently tarnished. [...]

I was mid-way through one of Nobel laureate Munro’s collections for the umpteenth time when the allegations surrounding her broke, and I immediately set her book aside. It returned to me how I had previously preached that you had to separate the art from the artist. If you didn’t get that, you were a rube. Ah, yes, the certainty of youth. I still, broadly speaking, believe that, but I wasn’t alone in being taken aback. Since the story broke, there are plenty of photos online of Munro’s books being jettisoned in recycling bins. [...]

Munro’s stories reveal much about the human heart. Troublingly, one of her short stories, Vandals, depicts a woman who knew her partner was a paedophile who had sexually abused a neighbour’s children but refused to act. Some see this as an admission of failure by Munro, but an alternative view is that Munro failed to protect her daughter and cynically mined the experience for her work, profiting from it.

Should the allegations about Gaiman and Palmer be proven, and I’m not saying they will, an obvious link between Palmer and Munro would be how some women act to harm other women in the service of their male partner's toxic desires.

The accusations, if anything, may not have been proven so far in a court of law. But in the court of public opinion, when the victim number reaches critical mass, as it has so far with 9 or more women speaking out, that's why it's hard to deny something terrible happened, and there's no going back for those two. Their careers are over, and I hope the columnist isn't downplaying the severity of what's been told so far. Perhaps the mistake made was to trust in somebody who worked as an activist, claiming he's a "male feminist", and using that as a ways to deceive women into relations that turned out awful.

Anyway, back to Isabella, what he's doing is a terrible disfavor to himself, his writing legacy, and particularly to family and friends. It's a shame he's so obsessed with hating conservatives and anybody else he believes committed an Orwellian Thoughtcrime, that he just has to drag the whole world down with him, and now, for all we know, some people could be discouraged from reading his earlier works. Which is a shame, obviously, but that's what happens when creators take bizarre steps that alienated their audiences. At least it's apparent he no longer cares at this point about his past writings, so again, mainly because he doesn't own them, people can part the art from the artist more easily. But to read his writings, it's best to just stick with whatever he penned up to the late 90s, as much of what came after in the mainstream is not worth the price of admission.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, history, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, politics, violence, women of marvel

It's been a while since I'd noticed any news about far-left comics writer Marz, but now, he's journeyed to India to attend Bengaluru's convention and was interviewed by The Hindu, where what's told is predictably at a superficial level, and offers nothing truly challenging:

“I try to tell a story that I would be interested in reading. While writing a character, I try not to worry about the audience too much. I try to make sure I am my first audience because I know my taste, the kind of stuff that I want to read and the kind of stories I want to experience,” says Ron.

A story that he would be interested in reading? What about the audience? Some stuff he wrote in the past may have found an audience, but in the long run, his GL series starring Kyle Rayner was far from a huge seller. What he could've said was that he hopes the audience will find the story he tells appealing. And that wasn't the case with his GL writing, if anything. Maybe not with his Silver Surfer writing either.

Ron is widely known for introducing the character Kyle Rayner for Green Lantern #48 (1994) as part of the Emerald Twilight storyline (DC Comics). While Kyle is known as the relatable hero, he also sparked controversy for replacing Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern. Ron took us through the process of creating this iconic character. “When DC contacted me for this, I took it as a challenge where I knew I was going to upset a lot of people. So, when Darryl Banks (the artist) and I designed Kyle, we aimed to make a Green Lantern unlike any other Green Lanterns from the past.”

Unlike Hal Jordan who was a former military test pilot, Kyle was written as an ordinary everyday person — he is a freelance artist living in Los Angeles. “As a child, I was a big Spiderman fan, what appealed to me about him was how he was an ordinary guy who had to also think about paying his rent or getting a date for Saturday night. This is what made us all root for Peter Parker outside the costume.”

“That is exactly how I wanted to create Kyle; I wanted the audience to be engaged in his overall life and not just the superhero stuff.”

Oh, please. Pilots aren't "ordinary" people? I can't buy that. Not to mention that the whole notion they couldn't tell the kind of story with Hal that Marz claims to have done with Kyle is also laughable. Despite what Marz claims, Rayner had little personality applied to him, and the attempts to create drama were very weak. I once found strong hints from a Chuck Dixon forum that there were other people who also thought Kyle was a very superficially written character, and I noticed there were at least a few times in comics from the 90s where Kyle was written as annoying his JLA partners, or even telling a dreadful joke that made the Martian Manhunter angry in the pages of Impulse. I'm sure there were at least a few more. From those examples, it was clear even some of the other writers and artists working for DC at the time were not fond of the character, even though, as a fictional character, it wasn't his fault for what happened to Hal during Zero Hour, the loathsome crossover from 1994 that Dan Jurgens and company still won't apologize for. By the way, how come no mention of the poorly designed crab-mask Kyle wore at the time?

And it wasn't Kyle who replaced Hal, but rather, more precisely, the editors like Kevin Dooley, who imposed a very bad mandate. The editors are primarily the ones who disappointed there, and attempts to appease the audience by turning Hal into a new Spectre didn't work either. If it hadn't been for the nasty way Hal was kicked to the curb, audiences might've been okay with a successor. But because Hal was forcibly turned into a villain, compounding some of the worst storytelling that came after GL's 2nd volume was cancelled in mid-1988, and the damage compounded by the incredibly crass way it was done, that's why the audience in the long run didn't warm to Kyle, though they shouldn't have "projected" upon the fictional character. What they should've done was campaign for the guilty editors to resign, and boycott the 3rd GL volume, which now stands tainted by the disgraced Gerard Jones, who did a very poor job that the editors only took advantage of for the sake of forcing their sloppy directions upon the GL series.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the other controversy unmentioned here is how Kyle's original girlfriend, Alexandra deWitt, was only created to be killed after several issues, in the now notorious "fridging" scene where Major Force throttled and then stuffed her lifeless body in the icebox. And then the unfunny farce was compounded by not giving Kyle another "civilian" girlfriend, but rather, 2 different superpowered girlfriends, Donna Troy and later Jade. If that's all they would allow, what creativity are they actually achieving? Such editorial mandates and restrictions have only brought down creativity for mainstream superhero fare many years ago. And why is it okay to upset the audience? That kind of thinking practically brought down Star Trek too, recalling writer Michael Chabon said he wanted to do something like that when he was working as a producer on a sequel to The Next Generation, titled Picard. That's not how you win over an audience and gain their confidence. In fact, it's quite alienating.

While comic book characters have evolved over the years, so has the diversity that we see in comics today. Ron holds strong opinions about visualising Indian superheros in global franchises. “Comics should represent everybody and everything, we should have a vast array of comics by a vast array of creators, who bring their experience to it. I also hate when entertainment does this sort of checklist casting that doesn’t seem real and is done just for the sake of putting something out on a buffet table.”

“What should be the focus is making Indian characters, that are as real and integral to the story as possible, I feel readers or viewers respond to characters they care about. At the end of the day, the audience can tell if something is being offered to placate them.”

I think even this is a lapse in logic. I myself respond to writing and characterization that impresses and draws me into the story. And if there's any writing from Marz's resume that didn't in the end, it was his GL run. Who's he kidding anyway? Not to mention that "real" is also a PC belief being applied here. It depends what kind of story you're telling, and there is such a thing as surrealism in fiction, old and new. What matters is the entertainment merit, yet he remains unclear on that. And what was so integral about how Kyle replaced Hal?

Interesting he implies he's not enchanted with the DEI propaganda that became a sad staple of entertainment in the past decade, which I'm guessing is what he means by placation. He may not have actually done this himself when he was writing GL and even Silver Surfer, but recalling his successor, Judd Winick, might've done something like that (establishing Kyle was half-Mexican), something tells me Marz might've also been willing to do that if he'd wanted to conceive a PC shield like what was seen in the past 2 decades at Marvel/DC, with the diversity-casting farces.

In an industry that is highly competitive and creative, artists are often plagued by a writer’s block. “That is an excuse to not do the work. Comics are creativity on demand. It is a monthly business in America. You have to be constantly producing. It was taught to me quite early on in this career that you don’t wait for the muse to strike; you sit down and do the work.”

For aspiring writers, “You have to force yourself to do it every day, even when you don’t feel like doing it, only then you keep getting better.”

And this is little more than a justification for sticking by an outmoded business model of pamphlets instead of paperbacks. Besides, if he were serious about how to be a writer, he wouldn't have been spending so much time on X/Twitter writing leftist political rants.

And DC/Marvel's continuities are now in tatters, which he doesn't acknowledge. In any event, if they wanted to, they could surely change the publication format to a whole paperback/hardcover format, but apparently, that would only scuttle their ability to concoct busloads of crossovers, which they can't let go of, even though what began with Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths destroyed mainstream comics in the long run. Marz, of course, participated in some of these crossovers himself, and clearly doesn't regret his part in bringing down the quality of storytelling in mainstream, so what does he think he's achieving here anyway? Comics writers in India would do well to be wary of what he's talking about, including the part where he takes a casual view of the pamphlet format that's now very outdated.

Labels: bad editors, conventions, dc comics, Europe and Asia, golden calf of death, golden calf of villainy, Green Lantern, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence, women of dc

For this post, I thought of adding 2 panels I found from Roy and Dann Thomas' mid-80s DC contribution, Infinity Inc, which show a Hector Hall and Lyta Trevor/Kosmatos different from the questionable portrayal in the disgraced Neil Gaiman's pretentious 1989-96 Sandman series: These panels, from near the beginning and end of Infinity Inc, show the twosome far differently from how it appeared in Gaiman's Sandman series. Hector Hall and Lyta Trevor/Kosmatos are shown as pretty competent talkers, converse without the former being made to look like a crazy nutjob, or the latter like a depressed dullard who's on the verge of being thin-skinned. Whether pre-or-post Crisis, they were depicted pretty much on the level, and it can decidedly be said that Gaiman and company took a very forced approach with their Sandman material, making Hector look dismaying, and Lyta didn't come off much better. And since the Gaiman Sandman series comes up again, we might as well note that David Goyer, Geoff Johns and James Robinson's JSA series - which picked up from the stories previously written by Gaiman with the twosome - hasn't aged well as a result, and is more or less tainted.

Now that Gaiman's Sandman series, among other works of his, are bound to cease print, I think it's as good a time as any for DC to make amends by preparing to reprint Thomas' writings from the 1980s, and they can even do it in their new DC's Finest line (I recently bought one collecting the 1993-2001 Catwoman series, mainly illustrated by Jim Balent). Why, even before that, they'd do well to seriously reprint the Golden Age Sandman tales from 1939-46, featuring Wesley Dodds and Sandy Hawkins, and they can even add bonuses like a Justice League of America story from the mid-70s, and a backup story from DC Comics Presents from the early 80s, featuring those characters. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few more they appear in from those times worth reprinting as well. And surely most vital is that nobody who cares about past storylines from decades past should let the modern Gaiman scandal sour their reception of the classic Sandman stories written by Gardner Fox/Bert Christman/Mort Weisinger/Paul Norris/Jack Kirby/Joe Simon. I looked on Amazon, and as far as the Golden Age Sandman is concerned, I only found this old hardcover archive of reprints available, originally published back in the mid-2000s, and another example of something that unfortunately ceased print since. Well I think it'd be a good idea if all Sandman stories from the Golden Age be given the serious reprint they could use for a change, whether in paperback or hardcover, and modern readers encouraged to try that kind of storytelling instead of Gaiman's overrated mishmash that didn't do any favors for the characters it misused. The Justice Society, from what I know, has been reprinted as part of the new DC's Finest line, so that's a hopeful sign DC will eventually get around to reprinting the Dodds/Hawkins stories, which aren't much more than 10 pages each, and would be fairly easy to reprint in a large volume wholesale.

There's other stuff they'd do well to reprint from those decades past, including Golden Age Green Lantern and Flash stories, along with Golden/Silver Age Atom and even Zatara, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Johnny Quick and Wildcat, so let's hope that after the Gaiman scandal, DC will turn their attention to more classic stuff and encourage audiences to find some enjoyment in earlier publications that aren't built on the politics ideologies Gaiman exploited his Sandman series for 36 years ago. The time's come.

Anyway, since we're still on the subject of Gaiman, the UK Guardian announced another of his titles has been withdrawn from sales:

DC Comics has pulled a Neil Gaiman title that was due to be published later this year.

Death: DC Compact Comics Edition was meant to come out on 2 September, but listings have been scrubbed from online bookshops and Amazon, reported Bleeding Cool.

DC Comics did not confirm that the decision was taken because of allegations of sexual assault made against the author in recent months.

The Sandman spin-off was one of 15 compact edition graphic novels slated for publication in 2025. Unlike Death, listings for the other 14 titles can be found on sites including Amazon, Waterstones, and OK Comics, a comic book shop in Leeds.

Nine women have now accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct. On Monday, one of the women, Scarlett Pavlovich, filed a civil lawsuit against Gaiman and his estranged wife, Amanda Palmer. The lawsuit accuses Gaiman of rape, sexual assault, coercion and human trafficking, and Palmer of “procuring and presenting” her to Gaiman “for such abuse”.

[...] Along with Death being pulled, orders for a DC Comics facsimile edition of Sandman #8 – due to be published on 26 February – have been cancelled. Retailers were told that the edition “will be resolicited at a later date”, though according to Bleeding Cool, similar phrasing has been used for other titles that were ultimately never published. Again, DC Comics did not confirm that the decision was made because of the allegations.

Marvel likely won't be publishing any more reprints of the 2 titles he'd written for them in the 2000s either.

Labels: dc comics, good artists, good writers, history, Justice Society of America, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, women of dc, Wonder Woman