#even the early captain america issues in the 1960s

[sunsoakedhighhopes]

All Winners #1 (1941) - The Case of the Hollow Men

I promise I’m not going to do a full write up for every single case, just the ones that I find fun or interesting. 

So, in June of 1941, Timely Comics (the precursor to Marvel comics, yes Captain America is older than Marvel) started releasing a line of comics called All Winners that was basically a collection of stories from each of their biggest heroes. The first issue contained stories for The Human Torch, Black Marvel, Captain America, Sub Mariner, and The Angel. They were released semi-sporadically, and there were a total of fourteen issues released. 

I did really enjoy Steve’s case in this. It’s definitely not fun, but I did think it was interesting. This is the first case where we’ve had some comic book science happening, and it’s actually quite dark, I think. 

There’s a lot of death in these early comics, like, there will be a single panel and it will just say “the villain did x, killing thousands of people”. And I guess, coming from a time of war when thousands of people were dying every day this seemed reasonable. But this issue felt different to me, and I realize that I’m looking at it through a modern lens, but I want to talk a bit about why I think this was so dark compared to the rest and why I think it may have been done intentionally.

Part of this is because they put a face to the literal hundreds of people dying, and part because they go out of their way to show that these people are part of a vulnerable population.

Also, on a character note, both issues released in June 1941 (this and Captain America issue #4) show Steve giving money to a beggar with no very little hesitation. In this issue, the beggar asks him for money to buy a cup of coffee, and in CA, the beggar is sitting on the street, and Steve gives him money without being asked. 

Also I find it funny that fic writers tie themselves into knots to get Steve to smoke in their fics by saying he smoked asthma cigarettes (which don’t have tobacco) but in the comics, this man is like, literally never seen without a pipe in his mouth. 

The reason for this is, I suspect, that the vast majority of pre-serum Steve canon comes from after he was resurrected in the 1960s. Because even when they refer to him as “unhealthy” in issue #1, unhealthy seems to simply mean skinny. He’s taller than Dr. Rosenstein (Erskine in the MCU). In fact, I don’t think the serum changes his height at all, it really just gives him muscles. There also has been no mention of disabilities or illness. I mean, we basically no nothing about pre-serum Steve at this point.

Okay, so the plot of this case is that some Nazi scientist has found a way to create hoards of unkillable zombies, and he uses these zombies to take out infrastructure around the tri-state area. Military infrastructure, but also just regular infrastructure like bridges. 

Unfortunately for Steve, the shipyard where he is assigned overnight guard duty is attacked by one on these zombie hoards. 

Note Bucky’s use of the words Bowery Bums. The Bowery was a low income area of New York where a lot of low quality tenement housing was built to house the influx of immigrants moving to the city.  It’s also where Steve and Bucky were earlier in the day. Bowery Bums were essentially homeless men, though not necessarily unemployed. 

Steve and several other soldiers are unable to hold back the hoard of zombies, as they are “unkillable” and bullets don’t affect them, so the zombies manage to set fire to one of the ships that Steve is supposed to be guarding.

Before they can burn down another one, Steve and Bucky change into their uniforms (I like the implication that Steve is just wearing his uniform under his clothes at all times) and rush the zombies off the pier into the water, where they all drown. 

Here’s where it starts to get dark…

Yep. Steve recognizes one of the zombies as the man he gave money to for coffee earlier in the day.

Steve returns to base where he gets in trouble for “letting” the zombies burn down the boat. This time he’s punished by having to shine boots. 

Shining boots gives Steve the idea to go undercover in The Bowery as shoe shiners.

Bucky does not approve.

Not gonna lie, I kinda dig Steve’s bum look. 

A flop house was not exactly a shelter. You had to pay rent to stay there, but it was cheap, not very nice, and you paid by the night. 

The Lord of Death, our Nazi scientist, takes Steve and Bucky to his lab where he explains that he takes these men, drains them of their blood, then fills them with “Dy-namo fluid” instead, which turns them into mindless, violent, unkillable zombies for twenty-four hours.

I think this is really dark, because Steve killed all these men the night before. They drowned, and now we’re told they would have gone back to normal the next day (I assume, or that’s the implication that I took away). We know they drowned, because the Lord of Death talks about how easy they are to replace after Captain America “interfered”. 

I just feel like the first really dark storyline targeting a group of vulnerable people is intentional. That they were turned into weapons for the enemy against their will reminds me of the line from LOTR where Faramir says “The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.” 

I’m also reminded of the horrible South Park episode where they made homeless people out to be mindless zombies asking for money. Idk, something something, social commentary on the way we view the homeless.

Anyway, back at camp, Steve is still shining boots.

Clearly Steve and Bucky think they’re very funny with this. 

[wingshead]

headcanon / meta post based around de-constructing the thematic qualities in the five-part series man out of time by mark waid.

Bucky: What about you, “Rembrandt?” You oughta start makin’ plans. Steve: If my country wants me to keep serving, I’ll serve. But they might not. Seriously, what purpose does Captain America serve outside of combat? I wouldn’t be surprised if they took the suit and shield and sent me home with every other soldier. Bucky: Ha! They’re gonna have you be the first man to break the sound barrier! First man to climb Mount Everest! Heck, you’re gonna be the first man on the moon! Steve: You think? Bucky: That’s my two cents. So I ask you back: Is that what you want? Steve: I’ll do whatever needs doing. Bucky: That’s not an answer. My brother, you have been running a mile a minute since they shot you up with the super-soldier serum. There is not an American alive who doesn’t owe you (and me) a thousand times over. So, what? Do? You? Want? Steve: Honestly? I just want to sleep.

So right off the bat in the first few pages, it’s pretty clear from the beginning of this mini series that we’re getting a look at a side of Steve that we don’t see very often in the comics, and it directly deals with Steve’s exhaustion & uncertainty. For all his boosting the morale and fighting on the front lines, Steve has an exhaustion with the war and the fact that he for as long as he fought in it, he never stopped working, fighting, and obeying orders the entire time. He has never once complained, other than when he was frustrated in the beginning at not doing more. Minus obeying orders (seeing how for a good portion of his run with the Avengers he’s been the de facto leader/ co-leader of the team), Steve continues on the same way now in the future. He’s strong, he’s fast, he’s got enhanced stamina and agility and an eidetic memory. He’s dedicated to the cause : both as a man wanting to do the right thing, and as a soldier wanting to serve his country.

And Steve is very much a soldier, he may have only fought in World War II for a number of years, but he’s fought in many other wars afterwards, and fought alongside other men as well - both as Steve Rogers and Captain America.

But unlike the other GIs and men out in the battlefield that had something or someone to come back to, Steve didn’t. Even back then. He didn’t have family left to go home to : didn’t have a girl. Didn’t really have any friends either. He’s fully immersed in Captain America: the man has become the symbol, and without the symbol, Steve’s not sure who the man is. The question Bucky asks him, ‘what do you want?’, is a difficult one to answer for Steve, because for all that Stevewants peace in the world and the war to end, he doesn’t know what he’ll do in the absence of having a war to fight. A purpose. Despite the fact that it was a pretty god-awful movie, the line ‘God’s righteous man, pretending he can live without war’ in regards to Steve is a pretty accurate one. Steve is constantly at war : with the world, and with himself. He hasn’t known life without a battle or a fight for most his life. The idea of peace and normalcy is a tempting one, and it’s Steve’s goal, but he doesn’t know what his role would be in a life where he’s no longer needed to be Captain America anymore.

Throughout the five part series, Steve’s thoughts are shown in a recurring type-face in the form of a mission report. It shows his distrust with the people and the world around him, and the fact that even in completely new terrain, Steve’s first instinct is to think like a soldier still in a war, & act like he’s behind enemy lines. The last thing Steve remembers is being thrown from a plane armed with a bomb that Zemo had set, and now he’s waking up to strangers in strange costumes. He fought with the Invaders, and super-beings are not new news to Steve : he’s fought with them, and against them. Considering the last thing Steve remembered was being in enemy terrain, he’s suspicious still of the Avengers at first, and Steve tries to maintain a cover that no longer exists. That never existed. He’s still reporting to his higher up. Steve is using his inner reconnaissance report as a crutch : trying to hold onto something familiar, even though it’s not real.

And then there’s the whole issue around his hallucinations, the people and fantasy that he makes up in his head to cope with the reality he’s faced with. This one…kind of speaks for itself. The fact that Steve on the outside looks very composed and calm with the situation, when the panels seen through his eyes show a very different and more disturbing story. His cavalier attitude freaks a lot of people out, both Rick and the medical staff that Steve sees after being shot, but despite the fact that Steve ACTS like he’s fine waking up in the distant future, the fact that we can see that he’s replacing people in the present with people from his past shows that he’s really, really not dealing with what’s happening to him. it’s obvious that waking up and being faced with a time that’s not his own isn’t something that Steve can readily or easily accept, and it’s traumatized him to the point where he’s had to make up an entire world around him to compensate.

But it’s not only limited to the hallucinations. A few times in the comics Steve has what’s known as the thousand yard stare. A blank, long and limp look that isn’t directed at anything. The thousand yard stare was coined in WWII to correspond with war veterans where the intense trauma they faced had left them haunted, and not all there. It’s reflected in their gaze. The dissociation. And dissociation is exactly what Steve is going through right now. He couldn’t possibly be in a more dissociate state at the moment, with everything and everyone he knows gone from his life forever.

Dr. Dysart: Hang on. You can’t just leave! There’s paperwork and payment and – Steve: Alright, I’ll play along. Call this number. This man will clear everything. Dr. Dysart: There’s only six digits … Wait. President Roosevelt … ? Steve: Tell him I said hello. Dr. Dysart: Son, stop! What did you mean when you said “even here”? Where do you think you are? Steve: Huh.

The issue, and the tail - end to Steve’s conversation with Doctor Dysart really hits home the extent of Steve delusions here, and its only expanded on when he meets Rick on the streets of New York. Steve has deluded himself into believing he’s in a dream, because it’s easier for him to accept the future and the changes if he thinks his mind is making it up and he’ll wake up from it soon. But despite this, he still keeps up appearances, showing that while he’s trying to convince himself all of this isn’t real, a part of him deep down can understand that it isn’t, and he can’t freely give away classified information.

Another one of Steve’s hallucinations, and another way for him to compensate for his loss and not face the reality of it all. He sees Rick, a young kid & a friend of the Avengers, and his mind immediately turns him into Bucky. Bucky, who last he’d seen, had been on top of a plane that had blown up. Bucky, who Steve had asked about when he’d 'woken up’, and didn’t get an answer for. ‘Bucky’ looks the same age as he did when Steve last saw him in 1944, despite the fact that in this 'dream’ of Steve’s they’re decades in the future. “It’s good to see you, partner. I was worried about you.” he tells Rick-Bucky.

The guilt and the fear of admitting that the possibility of Bucky being dead is not something that Steve, at that moment, was equipped to handle.

He chooses instead to use a coping mechanism, replacing Rick’s presence with the image of Bucky’s. But during the entire conversation with Rick, despite Steve seeing him as Bucky, he can hear what Rick is saying and understand clearly how it doesn’t fit in with what Bucky would say. Steve understands this, but he chooses to ignore it. He tries to keep playing along with his little game, and keep up the illusion as long as he can. Desperation, maybe, to see when the 'dream’ will end, how far he has to play along before he can wake up.

And yet.

Yet, despite the fact that Steve believes he’s in a dream, he still remains ultimately unchanged in one of his biggest character traits:

The first thing Steve did when stepping back into New York was rush to the aid of a young woman getting robbed. Despite Rick calling him crazy, and Steve believing he’s in a dream - therefore whatever he does should logically have no real consequence - he decides to help Rick in finding the Avengers.

The illusion doesn’t break in the face of everything that his 'brain’ keeps coming up with – the internet, females as Doctors, foreign languages, modern slang, etc etc – until he’s faced with FDR’s death. It’s what makes the illusion snap inside of Steve’s mind and it breaks him out of his trauma induced delusion forcibly. He ends up leaving Rick and going after the man they’re after himself.

And when Steve finds out it’s an alien, when he’s faced with yet ANOTHER oddity that he couldn’t possibly come up with, faced with the reality that he’s really in the future and Bucky’s not here, faced with his world crumbling around him – all Steve can do is laugh. He laughs. Like it’s funny, because it’s the only thing he can really do. The only other option is cry and grieve and face the fact that he’s lost EVERYTHING.

Despite snapping out of the hallucinations and coming to terms with the reality of things, Steve remains vehemently determined to find his way back home. Despite being impressed and overjoyed w/ the future’s accomplishments, he wants to go home. but despite his stubbornness to go home, he listens to the President’s orders above all else. Bitterness possibly at Tony, for exposing him to all this information, knowing he wouldn’t be able to go home afterwards because of it. Steve’s silent breakdown by the foot of Lincoln’s statue, a small figure in comparison to the cold marble, all by himself with his head in his hands, cuts a very solemn and tragic figure. The juxtaposition between both Steve’s current attitude now - solemn, sad, beaten down - to how his attitude was just earlier in the issue - awed, inspired and impressed - as well as Steve sat hunched in front of the Lincoln Statue, which sits tall and proud, is pretty remarkable.

Steve was impressed by the future but from an outsider’s point of view : like sitting in a class, watching a documentary play. What you see astounds you, but it’s a documentary and it ends, and you go back to your own life. Steve expected that. He expected to go back to his life. The future held many remarkable things but it wasn’t, in his opinion, his time. It wasn’t his world, no matter how much better things seemed. Then you have Steve sitting in front of Lincoln’s statue : two larger than life figures that dedicated themselves to their country. Both etched in time, both someone many people know of. Only Steve’s not standing still in time : he’s just out of it. He’s out of place.

It’s in the fourth issue that you really start seeing the shift in Steve’s attitude. He’s downtrodden : he feels beaten down, lost, and at a crossroads with no clue where to go. Thor’s words, while probably meant in a good natured way, didn’t help. The next few pages show even more examples of the juxtaposition that Steve embodies : he fights alongside the Avengers and accepts his duty, given to him by his President and country, but he doesn’t stop searching for links to his past either. He tries to find evidence of Bucky and Peggy’s existences, and eventually visits his commanding officer, General Jacob Simon. A man from his past, who opens Steve’s eyes to all the corruption and cruelty of the world, when Steve had been shown only the good and the progress by Tony, a man from the future. There’s a clear divide shown, between Steve fighting for peace, justice, and good both on his own against what General Simon tells him about as well as with the Avengers, and Steve being crushed by the weight of all the evil, the injustice, and the cruelty of the modern day world. Being exposed to the horrors.

He feels even less, and less like he belongs, despite having a spot on the Avengers, and while he shows his disgust and disappointment with General Simon, he hides his feelings well from his teammates. He’s distant to them, as seen when Iron Man tells Hank Pym that he barely ever sees Cap anymore. Steve is silently grieving: for his life, and for what he’s woken up into, something he fought to protect and create that’s not as great or beautiful as he thought it would be.

The entire issue is very much reference to the opening conversation between Bucky and Steve at the start of the series: Steve, being tired and wanting to sleep but doing what he’s asked to do, being where he’s needed. Only now Steve has a home he needs to get back to, but the war he’s fighting is more internal and impossible that it’s one he’ll never really come back from, one he hasn’t come back from even in today’s comics.

When Steve is finally, finally transported back to his own time by way of Kang, at first he’s shocked. But shock gives way to relief. Not joy ; not excitement ; relief. Steve is relieved to be back home. But throughout the issue, his expressions mainly seem too serious, too somber to match the eagerness and impatience he’d displayed earlier in the series about getting home. A man even asks him, “How’s it feel to be back home? Pretty terrific, I bet!” 

and Steve pauses for a bit before answering with a ‘it’s good’. But Steve’s not smiling, despite having said he’d missed this just a few seconds earlier, Steve is showing anything but happiness. He’s finally back in his own time, and catching up on things, but – his perspective has changed. Most telling of this fact, is that slowly over the course of the first seven pages, the color fades. It fades so that everyone in the background is in black and white, but Steve stays in color. It’s a total juxtaposition to the first two issues, where Steve hallucinated and imagined everyone in the future / present to be someone from his past. The only difference now is that the people in black and white are the people from his past. The only people in color are the images of his teammates he sees on a circus poster, in place of the actual carnies. The people in the 40s are the ones that Steve knows. Except now Steve knows more. He’s experienced something extraordinary and new : and he’s changed because of it.

Steve has, for all his emotional displacement in the future, adapted mentally to the cultural and societal shifts that it offered and gave. It causes a rift between him and the 1940s, where things are different from what he’d seen in the future, where progress hasn’t yet been made, despite all the issues and problems that had been created in the future, something important happens in this final issue.

Steve realizes that even when he’s home he has no one, nothing to stay for or come back to. It’s shown in his worry and constant thoughts for the Avengers, because they are in the future and they are something he has to go back for. Bucky is not there. Steve feels he can do for the Avengers what he couldn’t for Bucky : Save them. And he does.

Steve: It’s odd. All I wanted was to be back home, Noonan, and now that I am…I don’t feel ready to put down roots. Why is that? Noonan: Eh. We all gotta get readjusted, am I right? Don’t be sad, be proud! We fought the good fight, and the job is done! Steve: It’s not that simple for me. I have…I had these friends…And the last time I was with them, they were in trouble. I couldn’t help Bucky…And now I’ve failed them, too. Noonan: I don’t know what you mean by “failed 'em”, but if it’s that important…there’s nothing you can do? You know what Captain America says, Rogers: “there’s always a way.”

Steve realizes how he doesn’t belong ; not to the future, and not to the past anymore either. Most people when they think of Steve, and hear the words “man out of time”, tend to only associate it with him being a man of the past in the future. And that is true. But that’s only half of it. Steve is a man out of time in all regards. He says it himself in several different medias, in the movies, in the comics, in different eras : he never fit in, even in his own personal life. He always stood out. He didn’t want to, but he did. But the past is what Steve knew: it held his life, and his potential for a normal one after the war. Now Steve is enlightened, he’s seen the future. He’s lived in it. This issue is showing that even when he DID go back to his own time, and had every opportunity to stay, he couldn’t. He didn’t fit in. It didn’t fit him. Steve lives in a future where it’s very much the same, but he actually serves a purpose.

This goes back to the fact that Steve is a man who fights for peace but is at constant war – and is made for it. However much he dreams of a normal life, it’s not in his cards. We can come full circle here, and draw back on Bucky and Steve’s conversation in the beginning: Steve doesn’t know what he wants to do after the war is over. Captain America is what Steve knows best. Fighting the good fight. Living in the 40s, after the war is over and peace reigns is certainly a tempting thought for Steve, but it’s not a realistic option for him. Not anymore. Not with everything he’s learned, and not with how he is. He goes back to help the Avengers because that’s what he’s always done: help. The Avengers gave him a PURPOSE. Steve may not fit in, and he feels a lot of disassociation with the world and the people, the current culture, but he’ll protect it.

[seyesnyl]

Examining the history of queer comics in the US

As previously mentioned, I am interested in creating graphic novels or comics during my practice as an illustrator. As a Nigerian, I also wish to include Nigerian elements in my comics and social commentary about the state of my home country. I want to comment on the injustices being faced by minority groups in tasteful ways in both metaphorical - like some of my favorite superhero comics- and literal as comic journalism. A particular social injustice I am interested in that the Nigerian government seems unwilling to budge on is its treatment of LGBTQIA+ people.

Considering the laws set in place against LGBTQIA people in Nigeria, a graphic novel about the situation will be controversial. I am intrigued to research how entertainment media (specifically, comics) navigated representing queer issues and topics in other countries that previously had unfavorable laws and attitudes towards queer people but have changed over time

The focus for this post will be the United States of America with a look at the correlation between the developments in the representation of queerness in comics and other mass media and the change in the country’s attitudes towards queer people.

In 1954, major U.S. publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and its censorship arm, the Comics Code Authority (CCA 1954). This has been said to be in response to concerns over the explicit violence and sexual themes in depictions of superheroes (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016). The sexual themes that seemed queer in these comics were largely sub-textual and highlight the prejudice and paranoia against queer possibilities like what the Nigerian government currently emulates. This act of censorship brought to a halt any subtle references to gender nonconformity and same-sex attraction in mainstream comics.

Because of the restrictions in mainstream publishing, queer comic strips started to appear in underground comics and adult magazines in the 1960s. Chute (2008) talks about the rise of underground comics during this period as a reaction to the censorious content code that debilitated the mainstream industry and describes them as an influential cultural vehicle, challenging and arresting because they meditated on the violation of taboo. According to Murphy (2014), the world’s first gay comic strip was arguably Harry Chess: That Man from A.U.N.T.I.E., (Fig. 01) published from 1965 to ’66. However, other scholars like McGurk (2018), have pointed out earlier presences of queer comics - even though subliminal- like Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye (Fig. 02) which was published weekly in newspapers in 1905, written and drawn by an unidentified artist. In the same decade as Harry Chess, Tuoko Laaksonen illustrated and released  another popular gay comic series titled 'Kake', under the pseudonym, Tom of Finland.

(Fig 01) Harry Chess That Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. https://glreview.org/article/the-lives-and-times-of-harry-chess/ 

(Fig. 02) Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye, May 21, 1905. Chicago Tribune.

Unlike Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye, which could be interpreted as an exaggerated parody of women's social behavior, Harry Chess and Kake were inherently sexual and left little for subtext. Murphy (2014) describes the publication of Harry Chess as a key shift in gay publications and gay politics, and Ajuan Mance in The Routledge Companion to books noted that the explicit sex in strips of the two comics “created both a space and a demand for broader portrayals of gay men’s lives”. (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016).

To provide context for where the United States was in laws concerning queer rights in the ’60s, Illinois had just become the first U.S. state to decriminalize homosexuality by repealing its sodomy laws, and several milestone protests including the Stonewall Riot occurred during the decade The Supreme Court had also ruled in favor of an LGBT magazine when a suit was filed against them after the U.S. Postal Service and FBI declared the magazine obscene material. (Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement | American Experience | PBS, 2021). There had been little progress in legal rights compared to the country’s present status, but queer Americans were visibly fighting for them.

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the next wave of queer comics like Wendel, It’s a Gay Life, Leonard and Larry, Poppers and Chelsea Boys, which were all published in gay magazines. These comics reflected their primarily gay male readership in that the characters “attended gay pride celebrations, shopped at LGBTQ bookstores, and responded to the AIDS crisis, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, all while falling in and out of love.” (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016).

It was not until about 28 years later in Marvel’s Captain America Vol. 1 #270 (1982) that either of the large mainstream comics publishers (Marvel and DC) featured a story-line depicting queer or trans characters (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016). In this issue, Captain America helps his childhood best friend, Arnie, by rescuing Arnie’s close friend, Michael. Through subtext, it seemed to become clear to Captain America that Arnie and Michael were, in fact, a couple. (https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_America_Vol_1_270).

(Fig. 03) Cover of Marvel’s Captain America Vol. 1 #270 (1982)(https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_America_Vol_1_270). 

Throughout the 1980s, more queer characters were depicted, although indirectly and still with subtext like Captain America’s Arnie. The CCA, in response to the greater inclusion of LGBTQ characters and themes in the film and other popular media forms, revised its Code to lift its prohibitions against queer characters and content. CCA-approved comics however were to avoid the graphic depiction of “sexual activity” and that depictions of adult relationships, “be presented with good taste, sensitivity, and in a manner, which will be acceptable by a mass audience” (CCA 1989).

Over the years to date, DC and Marvel have introduced characters explicitly stating their orientation, including Northstar, an X-Men character; members of The Runaways and the Young Avengers; and notably Batwoman, who came out as a lesbian. The popular Archie Comics in 2010 introduced a gay character named Kevin Keller (Fig. 04) who eventually had his spinoff comic in 2012. Ajuan Mance noted the debut of Kevin Keller as queer attracted a higher level of attention than any Marvel or DC character (Bramlett, Cook and Meskin, 2016). In 2014, Kelvin Keller got married to his spouse in the Life with Archie series (Fig. 05) a few years after New York and other US states legalized same-sex marriage and a year before the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal.

(Fig. 04) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11661956-kevin-keller

(Fig. 05) https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2019/06/the-wedding-issue-pride-edition-kevin-keller-and-clay-walker/

Taking this study for use in the Nigerian context can be applied in different ways. In the US, when the laws were restrictive and limiting towards queer content, the creators of comics and graphic novels under mainstream publishers had to operate in line with the laws. The creators could merely represent queer people through subtext. Unambiguous representation was only viewed through underground magazines from the ’60s up to the ’80s. In today’s age, Nigeria still has comparable, if not more regressive laws, but the Internet provides a similar and arguably better platform than the 20th century underground comics did.

The ease of access and ability to self-publish can cut out the publishing middleman, and I can illustrate distribute the stories I want via the Internet and social media platforms. Of course, if I am fortunate to secure a publishing deal for other ideas I have, I can employ subtext to include queer elements. 

I will carry out more research on the best ways to present these proposed comics. Do I go in the explicit and sexually charged direction like Harry Chess and Kake to show a boldness and an unapologetic display of Nigerian queerness? Do I go the route of illustrating average Nigerian queer people to reflect their humanity hopefully to convince prejudiced people that queerness is not an abnormality? Or do I represent queerness in my comics for the Nigerian queer people to identify themselves in the media? These questions relate to the audience I want to reach because they will inform the content I want to create.

References

Bramlett, F., Cook, R. and Meskin, A., 2016, The Routledge Companion To Comics, Taylor & Francis Group.

Chute, H. 2008, "Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative", PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 123, no. 2, pp. 452-465.

McGurk, C., 2018, Lovers, enemies, and friends: The complex and coded early history of lesbian comic strip characters, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 22:4, 336-353, DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2018.1449502

Murphy, M., 2014, The Lives and Times of Harry Chess, The Gay & Lesbian Review , 21(2): 22– 24.

Pbs.org. 2021. Milestones In The American Gay Rights Movement | American Experience | PBS. [online] Available at: <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-milestones-american-gay-rights-movement/> [Accessed 12 January 2021].

[alexandralyman]

project neverland

Inspired by Colin’s upcoming role on The Right Stuff, I wrote a little 1960s CS test pilot/early NASA AU one shot. I didn’t aim for historical accuracy with this one, it’s more about the feel of the era instead of a literal depiction of the Mercury 7 and their missions.

Summary: Test pilot Captain Killian Jones always liked to go too fast. When he gets asked to join the elite group Colonel David Nolan of NASA has formed to be the first men to fly into space it's all he ever wanted...until he meets his CO's daughter, the beautiful and headstrong Emma Nolan.

Read on ff.net here and on AO3 here

Killian Jones always liked to go too fast.

In fast cars.

In fast planes.

(with fast women)

The NASA shrinks said it was because he had to grow up too quickly, too young when his father finally took off for good and his absence sent Killian hurtling recklessly into adulthood too soon with only his older brother left to try to keep him tethered to Earth. They almost didn't clear him to join Project Neverland, the internal code name given to the mission when someone made a late night crack after one too many pots of coffee about throwing out all the charts and just taking the second star to the right to reach the moon, but he was a hell of a pilot and after rising star Captain Arthur Pendragon, given the call sign "King" because everyone expected him to lead the mission, literally crashed and burned out of training in the Excalibur prototype and actually broke the damn thing clear in half, Colonel David Nolan publicly decided to give Captain Killian "Hook" Jones a second chance to join the team and be the hero.

Alongside a more private warning for Killian to clean up his act if he really wanted to reach the stars.

Killian knew the man wasn't kidding, so he took it to heart and stopped drinking (hard liquor, at least), stopped sleeping around (he'd been given the call sign "Hook" for his ability to hook up with any woman he wanted, including a general's wife, the bold and brash Milah Gold), he cut his hair short and shaved twice a day to keep within NASA's strict grooming requirements for its elite group of test pilots, he wore a suit and tie and smiled politely for the photographers whenever he was told to, doing the whole dog and pony show for the press without a single word of complaint. He wanted to fly to the stars, wanted it more than anything, he wanted to go faster, higher, than any man had gone before and bring home honour and glory for the name Jones.

Dr. Hopper scribbled furiously in his little notebook during their mandatory sessions and went on and on about his clear "father issues" and his "tendency to overcompensate" while Killian tuned him out, thinking instead about the feel of the wind in his hair when he drove with the top down on his 'Vette, rock 'n' roll blaring on the radio and putting the pedal to the metal up and down the Florida coast, or the exhilaration of taking off in one of the sleek new jets, feeling the lift and drag of the wind under the wings as delicate and powerful as a lover's touch along his skin when he aimed straight for the clouds above and pierced the sky fast enough to break the sound barrier. He agreed with whatever the doc said every week just to get out his office, lighting up a cigarette as soon as the door closed and taking a deep inhale to deal with his nerves instead.

Killian was keeping to the straight and narrow as best he could, but he couldn't stop himself from driving way over the limit in the early morning when the roads around the base were clear and empty as far as the eye could see, or taking his boat out just before sunset after a long day of NASA eggheads telling him what he could and couldn't do and blowing off steam by opening up the throttle as far as it would go to ride the waves so fast that the hull barely touched the water. Giving up booze and unhappily married women were one thing, he'd already almost ruined his career more than once over both and he'd learned his lesson the hard way, but the bone-deep need within him to push just a little bit harder, go a little bit faster, always chasing something that lingered just beyond his reach, well, what NASA didn't know couldn't hurt them.

Captain Killian Jones did everything too fast, but when Miss Emma Nolan grabbed the collar of his leather aviator jacket and kissed the smirk right off his face he wanted nothing more than to take it slow for once, since the only thing more off-limits than a superior officer's wife was a superior officer's daughter and Colonel Nolan wasn't just Emma's father, he was Killian's CO, with the power to ground him for good if he knew that his princess had been sneaking out to meet Killian at the underground drag races and after-hours nightclubs in Cocoa Beach. She wore dangerously short miniskirts and pale, frosted lipstick, all the men assigned to Project Neverland were half in love with her and she was the cause of every grey hair on her mother's elegantly coiffed head. Colonel Nolan's illustrious career had taken the family all over, although not always together. Emma had been sent to live with relatives in Boston while her parents were overseas on a remote posting that didn't allow children, reuniting several years later and then taking assignments at several different bases across America until he was handpicked for the most coveted position of them all and the Nolans moved again to Florida.

Emma recited the long list of former addresses without looking at him, staring out at the horizon instead while she sat with her legs folded Indian-style on the beach blanket he kept in the trunk of his car.

"It must have been hard, moving around so much," he offered. Military life was tough on families and tougher on marriages, which was one of the reasons why it had been all too easy to fall into bed with Milah Gold, despite both the ring on her finger and her husband's rank and a bigger reason why he had never followed that track.

"Yeah," she agreed, letting the clean white sand run through her fingers. "If I wanted friends I had to make them quickly, and then as soon as you really got to know someone new orders would come in and either we'd be leaving in a week, or they were shipping out, and sometimes you didn't even get that much notice. Sometimes...sometimes someone you thought you were really close to would leave one night and just never come back."

She said in a way that Killian knew she was referring to someone in particular, someone who'd done just that, walked out of her life one night and broken her heart in the process. But before he could say anything she stood up and took off, sprinting away from the memory on those long legs that looked so fantastic in white go-go boots and that he privately thought would look even better wrapped around his hips instead. She headed straight for the ocean and came to a halt right at the water's edge, waves just licking her toes and lapping at her ankles before rolling back out into the sea. Her hesitance confused Killian at first, Emma was like him, always leaping before she looked, but then she peeled off her lime green two-piece and dropped both halves into the sand, plunging straight into the crashing surf as naked and carefree as any flower child.

Killian Jones was one of the seven best pilots in the entire country, his reflexes were literally off the charts...and yet it took him an embarrassingly long time to pick up his jaw from where it had dropped somewhere around his knees and reach for the knot in his own swim trunks. Turned out there was something that could get his heart beating faster than the sight of the sleek vessel he was slated to fly into space sitting in the hanger at Cape Canaveral, and for the first time in a long time, he didn't look up into the sky when the sun set and the stars appeared.

But a late night skinny dip at a secluded little cove aside, Killian did his damndest to be a gentleman to Emma Nolan, and it wasn't because it was rumoured that the sword her father had mounted to the wall in his office wasn't just ceremonial. It would be easy to fall into bed with Emma, easy for this thing between them to be nothing more than another meaningless fling, but maybe he had been listening more than he realized while Dr. Hopper droned on about how lost boys either grew up and became men, or just grew older and which did he want to be? So he checked his speed and drove much more carefully when she was in his car and didn't let his hands wander when they danced no matter how dark it was in the hole-in-the-wall bars far from the country clubs frequented by his fellow officers and their wives. He made sure to have her home at a reasonable hour afterwards, even though he had to park around the corner and she was going to climb the tree next to her bedroom window and sneak back in anyway.

They got caught one afternoon, not by Colonel Nolan (although there had been a couple of close calls in that regard) but by one of those Florida downpours that came without warning, a sudden and shocking deluge that plastered the clothes to their bodies and ruined Emma's bouffant in a heartbeat before Killian could get his jacket off to serve as a makeshift umbrella. She clung to him while he held it over their heads, cursing a blue streak that would make a sailor blush and her mother faint while he laughed and did his best to shield her with his body. Raindrops slid down her neck and lingered in the little dip of her collarbones when she tilted her head up to the sky, mapping a course on her skin that he longed to follow with his lips until he'd charted every square inch. For someone who was about to take off at speeds men could only dream of a few short years ago and touch the stars, everything he'd ever wanted and more, Killian wished for nothing more now than to make these quiet moments last, for the song to never end when they danced and for the rain to keep falling, to keep them grounded in the here and now.

"You're leaving soon," she said in barely more than a whisper, a statement instead of a question. Suddenly everything was moving too fast, the mission date was measured in days instead of years now and their time together was growing short. The rain stopped, the afternoon showers were heavy but they never lasted long and it ended as abruptly as if someone had turned off a spigot, leaving wet pavement steaming in the sun and nothing to hinder Emma's return to her own car, the cheerful little yellow thing her parents had bought her.

"Yes...but not a day will go by where I won't think of you."

Emma looked at him and he wondered if the dampness on her face was from the rain or from something else. Her lips quirked in a half-smile that made his chest ache.

"Good."

Killian watched while she walked away and got into her car, putting it in gear and driving off. Slowly, at first, until it started to pick up speed. He knew, intellectually, that it couldn't go nearly as fast as his own V8, but it didn't feel that way when she was driving away from him.

He stood completely still until she was gone.

...

The little beach house that he'd rented when he first arrived to join the program went unused, Killian had to cram in his flight hours to stay mission ready after falling behind thanks to a certain blonde distraction, and he was going out daily in the jet that had been nicknamed the Jolly Roger and staying on base at night with other members of the crew. It seemed that whatever he'd had with Emma was over completely, she used to come by on a regular basis to visit her father and once she'd left the colonel's office there were all sorts of storage closets and empty stairwells to hold a more clandestine meeting afterwards. They'd neck frantically against the wall until Killian had to tear himself away to return to the daily physicals and calisthenics and whatever else the brass had scheduled for him, with the waxy taste of Emma's lipstick lingering in his mouth for hours afterwards and his uniform rumpled. But now it was Mrs. Nolan who came to base instead, with her lacquered helmet of dark hair and impeccable manners she was the Jackie Kennedy of NASA, always with a smile and a gracious word for the men under her husband's command.

It would be much more colourful if she knew exactly what her free-spirited daughter had gotten up to with one of them, even though he hadn't crossed that line. They'd come close, too close, moving too fast, too soon, the way Killian did everything else in his life.

Perhaps breaking up before one of them inevitably got broken was for the best.

Life magazine devoted an entire issue to Project Neverland and the men carrying the hopes and dreams of the nation on their shoulders, with each member of the flight crew getting their own double page spread. Captain Graham "Huntsman" Humbert was unsmiling and stoic in his photograph, described as, "the serious, single-minded leader of the elite group and devoted husband to his wife Ruby, as stunning and statuesque as any high-fashion model" while Captain Will "Knave" Scarlet was, "the practical joker, unofficial jester and class clown and a newlywed to boot, to former school librarian Belle, as pretty as her name suggests."

Killian posed alone in his flight suit, with no sweet-faced wife in hat and gloves like the others to stand by his side he was, "the swinging bachelor with the rock 'n' roll attitude and the looks to match, with eyes even bluer than Paul Newman's fixed firmly on the prize."

They were all inundated with fan mail after that, everything from children's crayon masterpieces of themselves meeting little green aliens on the moon to letters from senior citizens who remembered Kitty Hawk and man's first flight, but Killian in particular received a lot of perfumed envelopes decorated with lipstick prints and marked SWAK. Infatuated schoolgirls wrote him mash notes that Scarlet stole and read aloud to the rest of the crew in a high-pitched squeal, suburban housewives offered home-cooked meals with themselves served for dessert, and a Playboy Playmate even sent a few photos too racy to publish with her phone number scrawled on the back.

"Have you rung up Miss November yet, Hook?" Scarlet asked with a wink and a nudge, his caterpillar eyebrows practically doing the Twist on his forehead at the prospect. "Maybe we should start calling you Hef instead."

"Knock it off, Knave," Killian replied around the cigarette in his mouth, trying to snatch the picture back. Scarlet was shorter than he was, but he kept dancing just out of his reach with that smug grin while he continued to make jokes about Killian trading his flight suit for a smoking jacket. Finally, Humbert intervened, smacking Scarlet in the back of the head with one hand and grabbing Miss November away from him with the other.

"Ow! Watch the goods, it's property of Uncle Sam now, you know."

Humbert rolled his eyes. "We all are, dummy, which is why Captain Jones here isn't going to risk catching the clap and getting grounded. Are you, Hook?"

Killian met his expectant look. "Sir, no sir," he said, giving a mock salute and taking the photo delicately between his fingers. He left them to their bickering and headed outside, where he lit another cigarette and then held Miss November over the little flame, bidding her a silent farewell as she turned to ash on the wind before sliding the Zippo back into his pocket. Maybe he would have given her a call, once upon a time, risked a venereal disease and a shot of penicillin in the ass just for the story alone. But Humbert was right, there was too much at stake now. They all had to stay squeaky clean, in more ways than one. He wasn't even supposed to smoke in public anymore, which was even more of a pain when he had to deal with the press. Thankfully access to the base was highly restricted, and the wide swath of tarmac was completely deserted save for him and the line of sleek jets parked in neat rows, under a clouded sky.

The clouds drifted and the moon appeared, just as she had to the ancient sailors who set off in search of riches across Homer's wine-dark sea of old. They'd plotted a course into the unknown with only the stars to guide them and he was about to do the same, on a ship of a different kind but a ship nonetheless, with titanium wings instead of canvas sails to carry them across an ink-black sky, navigate by the stars and then follow them back home.

It wasn't his empty cottage that Killian pictured when he thought of home now, closing his eyes and letting the cigarette burn out untouched, breathing in the clean night air instead and hearing the faint crash of the waves against the distant shore.

...

A decision was made to hold a party at the base a few days before they had to enter pre-mission quarantine, a full on soiree with politicians flown in from Washington to see for themselves where their constituents tax dollars had gone, four star generals, celebrities and the cream of Florida society, and as the guests of honour, the flight crew in full dress uniforms with their brand new commendations pinned over their hearts. Colonel Nolan would lead them in to the fanfare of a naval brass band, each man with his wife displayed proudly on his arm. As the only unmarried one, Killian would escort one of the single women who'd been invited so he wouldn't have to walk alone.

Emma Nolan.

She arrived with her parents, stepping out of the car in a red cocktail dress that matched her red lipstick and drew him straight to her like a beacon.

Ot a warning light.

Maybe it was both.

"Miss Nolan."

"Captain Jones."

He proffered his arm and she accepted, her gloved hand resting lightly on his sleeve. His eyesight was as keen as the rest of his senses and yet everyone else seemed to fade into nothing more than a blur in the background, as far removed as the Earth would be once they broke through the atmosphere and went where none had gone before. The only one he could see clearly as the flashbulbs popped and the band started to play was Emma.

They weren't seated together at the dinner, much to Killian's chagrin while he made polite small talk with the senator's wife on his left and tried not to let his gaze drift too much in her direction. When the floor was cleared for dancing he took a turn with Ruby and one with Belle (neatly evading the rather overzealous senator's wife, a tall redhead from Kansas) and even danced with Mrs. Nolan herself, feeling his back straighten even more under her scrutiny. Her husband might be the one wearing the silver stripes, but she had the bearing of a queen in her golden dress.

"You look lovely this evening, ma'am," Killian said, his posture still stiff and formal despite the modern bossa nova the band was currently playing.

"Thank you, Captain. At ease."

He did relax a fraction at that while her stern expression melted into a smile. Over her shoulder he caught a flash of red and saw that Emma was dancing with her father, on the next pass Mrs. Nolan saw them as well and her face softened even more.

"Part of me is glad he's not twenty years younger or he'd be the one leading this mission instead of overseeing it. As exciting as this all is, don't forget about those of us back down on the ground waiting for you to come back."

Humbert drifted by with Ruby, her arm wrapped tight around his neck and her cheek resting against his chest. The wedding ring on his hand shone under the lights, his fingers splayed across her slim back and looking like there was nowhere on Earth or beyond that he'd rather be.

"I'll bring them all back safe and sound, ma'am, I promise."

Mrs. Nolan's eyes were a lot like her daughter's, a deep gemstone green that reminded him of distant galaxies they'd only caught the faintest glimpse of from Earth. They fixed him in place for a long moment, making his step falter and lose the beat while everyone else continued to dance.

"Not just them, Killian. You come back safe and sound. That's an order."

She had no real authority over him, but as the song ended and she patted him affectionately on the cheek, Killian was tempted to salute her as neatly as he would a general. He settled for giving a respectful dip of his chin instead, wondering as she walked back to her family if maybe, perhaps, his relationship with Emma hadn't been nearly as secret as he thought it was.

"Yes ma'am," he whispered, even though she was too far away to hear.

A few (or several) champagne toasts later everyone was invited into the hanger to view the spacecraft itself up close. Killian hung back, he'd already seen it, after all, more times than he could count, and as tipsy politicians eagerly followed the NASA eggheads through the doors to gape and gawk at what had built in this little corner of the world for the glory of all mankind, he noticed a familiar woman in a red dress with a bottle of champagne dangling from her fingers, heading the other way.

He went after her instead.

"You know, if you mean to christen the vessel with that, love, it's actually that way."

"Hmm," Emma mused, her red lips pursing as she appeared to contemplate the thought. "It's for good luck, right?"

Killian took it from her and swigged right from the bottle, feeling the bubbles pop on his tongue. "For luck," he said, and he was lucky that it didn't break or tip over when he set it down, blindly thanks to the woman in his arms, her mouth hot under his and her fingers fumbling with the buttons on his jacket. She got it open just as he hefted her up in his arms, fingers splaying over his heart while her legs went around his waist and a shoe hit the floor with a thump. They were in a darkened conference room, the walls strewn with maps and schematics of the most modern undertaking ever dreamed while the most ancient and primal of needs clawed at his belly, and he carried her to the couch in the corner that had seen many a hastily-snatched catnap during the late nights of the Project, but never an assignation quite like this one. For all the optimism and hope that they all professed publicly, privately everyone knew that the mission was dangerous, and there was a more than infinitesimal chance that none of them would make it back. Humbert knew it, Scarlet, despite the juvenile sense of humour, knew it, Colonel Nolan knew it and Killian did as well. The fierce claim in Emma's kiss as he fumbled with his belt told him that she was more than aware of that grim possibility, the squeeze of her thighs around his hips was an anchor, one he would remember later once gravity faded and he was floating free. As dangerous as this was it was more than worth the risk, and when he crossed that final barrier it was like both braving the unknown and coming home in one fell swoop, his face pressed to her neck to muffle his groan and her nails digging into his shoulders. The little half-moons she left in his skin had faded by morning, when all of NASA was hung over except for Captain Killian Jones and Miss Emma Nolan had gone home with a pilfered bottle of champagne and without her girdle.

She still cut quite the figure in her dress, even if it was wrinkled just a tad.

They were each allowed to bring one small personal item with them on the mission, something Dr. Hopper had said was to remind them of whatever it was they held most dear. A photo of a loved one, perhaps, or a symbol of their faith, the choice was up to them. The shrink had nodded approvingly when Killian had shown him what he'd finally decided to bring in their last session, leaving his little notebook closed for once. It didn't weigh very much, it couldn't, since it cost a literal fortune for every pound of weight being sent into orbit, and tucked easily into the little zippered pocket on his flight suit set aside for the purpose.

It was therefore the most expensive engagement ring in all of history.

Maybe he was moving too fast, but when he caught sight of Emma on the other side of the glass, come with her mother and the wives to say their final goodbyes on the morning he was going to leave the Earth and take the second star to the right, he knew he'd finally found what he'd been chasing for so long.

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

The Problem with Spidey as ‘Iron Man Junior’

Proponents of the MCU version of Peter Parker have often defended his characterization as logical and necessary in context. But is this really the case?

Tl:dr version: No it is not.

Forgive some laziness on my part because I’m going to be presuming everyone’s familiarity with the comic book iteration of Spider-Man and his MCU adaptation for the most part. To say there is a divide between many fans of former vs. the latter would be an understatement.

Detractors (which I count myself among) typically sum this up as the character being reduced to ‘Iron Man Junior’. In general this refers to MCU Peter Parker’s hero-worshipping of Tony Stark/Iron Man, their father/son relationship and the similar emphasis upon high technology in their hero identities. A connected point of contention is Peter’s aspiration to become an Avenger.

This was outright confirmed by Tom Holland himself in an interview for the then upcoming ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’.

"I think the difference now is that Peter Parker finally has an all-time goal, and his goal is to become an Avenger…Everything he does, even though he's doing it for the right reasons, is done so that one day he can become an Avenger and prove himself to Tony Stark. And I think we've never really seen Spider-Man with that kind of motivation before."

Defenders of this take upon Spidey have argued that this portrayal makes sense in context.

After all, Peter Parker is a teenager who’s grown up in a world where the Avengers are beloved, especially Iron Man. Plus in the comics (under J. Michael Straczynski’s pen) there was a time when Peter and Tony shared a father/son relationship. Tony even equipped Peter with a high tech costume as he did in the MCU. Spider-Man early in his career attempted to join the Fantastic Four in ASM #1 and later the Avengers in ASM Annual #3.

The problem is these defences just don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Let me first be upfront about my philosophy towards adaptations.

I in no way shape or form demand nor expect adaptations to be 1:1 panel to screen translations of the source material. I fully respect that changes are a necessity.

One of many 22-page comic book stories put out every month in the 1960s inevitably needs to be altered when jumping to a 90+ minute live action film in the 2010s.

Even the characterizations need to be altered where necessary if the source material is found wanting. *side eyes Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy*

However, my attitude is that adaptations should at minimum respect the spirit  of the source material no matter what. To do otherwise defeats the object of adapting the work in the first place. If a film is just borrowing superficial traits (names, costumes, powers, etc.) and but not representing the spirit of the character, then creatively speaking it might as well be an original character.

This is the case with the MCU version of Spider-Man. A fundamental component of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original vision for Spider-Man was that he was in essence the anti-Robin.

At a time when teenaged characters were sidekicks (Dick Grayson), supporting characters (Rick Jones) or the ‘kids’ in teams (Johnny Storm) Peter Parker was unique as a totally independent  teen hero. Of course that independence only applied to his life as Spider-Man, but that was part of the point. Spider-Man was his escape and release from the pressures and hang ups of his regular life, which included his doting yet coddling aunt.

A critical part of this was that he was a self-made  man. No elder mentor guided him in the use of his powers, helped him create his equipment or provided any sort of advice/accountability for Peter. He did it all himself. He was a loner.

On a meta level this is partially why Stan Lee (and for the longest time consequent writers) showcased Spidey not jiving with super teams. It was done to emphasis Peter’s independence and thereby his uniqueness within the genre. Even if that’s not so unique anymore (even in film), it’s still a baked in component of teen Spidey’s story. An essential aspect of who he is as a character.

As is his working class status.*

In fact these things go hand-in-hand. Just as Peter had to shoulder an ‘adult hero’s’ burden as Spider-Man (noticeably Lee didn’t dub him Spider-Boy or Lad as would’ve been common back then he also had to struggle for every penny. With the death of his uncle and his aunt’s poor health the burden of household provider fell on his shoulders.

When you take all this into account, having him fanboy over the Avengers and have a superhero mentor (let alone a billionaire one) is an aggressive misreading of the character.

The best way I can illustrate this is with an analogy from the opposite end of the spectrum. Imagine if you will a movie depicting Dick Grayson’s transformation into Robin. Except Batman was wholly absent. Not even an off-screen presence.

That  is how poorly MCU has missed the point  of Spider-Man.

And it was never necessary.

Contrary to defenders of the MCU, making Peter an Avengers/Iron Man fanboy was not the only logical direction to go with the character.**

Yes, in Peter’s world most kids would revere the Avengers and Iron Man. But in the real world not every kid or teen likes the Avengers characters or movies. Just as not every major pop culture phenomenon has ever been universally  embraced by contemporary kids/teens. In the 1980s not every kid loved the Transformers or the Ninja Turtles. In the 1990s not ever kid loved the Power Rangers or Pokémon.

Of course, most kids did, just as most  kids like the Avengers characters today. Similarly most  kids in the MCU by extension would look up to the Avengers. However, if anything this could actually help generate a more spiritually faithful rendition of the character. Consider that on literally the first page of Amazing Fantasy #15 Peter Parker was mocked by his classmates for being an outsider. A bookworm who didn’t know the difference between a cha-cha and a waltz.

In the context of the MCU wouldn’t Peter’s lack of familiarity or interest in the Avengers make for an appropriate updating of that characterization?

Let’s also consider that in the context of the regular 616 universe Spidey held little reverence for any of the heroes who had preceded him. This included Captain America and other WWII heroes as well as the Fantastic Four and their leader, the world famous scientist Reed Richards. Peter would’ve surely known who Reed and Cap were but as originally depicted by Stan lee himself, he wasn’t falling over himself during any of their early encounters.

So there was already a precedent in the comics for Spidey to not be dazzled by famous A-list heroes, meaning it’d be totally believable in the context of the MCU. Indeed this was likely part of the point of the character. Just as being Spider-Man didn’t improve his outsider status within the high school hierarchy so too was he an outsider among his super hero peers. The nerd to the Avengers jocks if you will.

But what of those comic book sources that say otherwise? Surely ASM #1, ASM Annual #3 and JMS’ run on Amazing Spider-Man corroborate the MCU’s take upon the character.

Yes and no, let’s tackle them one by one.

In ASM #1 it was made explicit that Peter wanted to join the F4 for purely practical reasons. His family needed money so he hoped the F4 could provide and income. When he learned otherwise he departed as quickly as he’d arrived.

In ASM Annual #3 Peter was far from eager  to join the Avengers and was equally unimpressed with them as a group.

He actively sabotaged his own chances to join at the issue’s conclusion.

As for Straczynski’s run…sigh…strap in.

At face value this run does indeed seem to support the MCU’s rendition of Spidey. However, the support it offers falls apart due to two factors.

The first is that, well…Peter and Tony’s relationship was pretty nonsensical.

I’m no Iron Man expert so I do not know how old the character would be roughly. From my impressions of the character though circa 2006 he wasn’t even in his 40s yet. Peter by contrast was 30 years old when you do the math. Unlike Tony he’d had several very serious romantic relationships and was back then happily married (barring a brief trial separation). He and his wife had lost a child and even believed one another dead at one point or another. Peter at the time was also working as a teacher to teenagers where he was clearly framed as their elder authority figure.

What I’m saying is that Peter was if anything more emotionally mature than Tony at this time. Or at least he was mature to the point where he was not going to view Tony as his father figure given the minor age discrepancy.

The relationship was clearly engineered with the pre-determined endgame in mind. That endgame being the ‘Civil War’ storyline wherein Peter would unmask upon Tony’s request and subsequently become a fugitive in defiance of Tony’s unethical practices. The latter would entail Tony threatening Peter and the pair coming to blows.

This brings me to the second factor. The totality of Peter/Tony’s relationship was designed to be a testament to how it was ultimately a bad thing.

Tony wasn’t the man Peter believed him to be.

Tony didn’t have Peter’s best interests at heart.

Tony was willing to spy, threaten and even attack Peter.

And along the way Peter and his family lost their home and the safety of Peter’s anonymity. The end result was Peter’s life becoming a shell of it’s former self, with his loved ones in serious danger. In fact you could view his fugitive status as a way to recreate the ‘good old days’ when Spider-Man was feared and hated by the public and authorities.

Had Peter retained his independence rather than surrendering any part of it to his ‘father figure’ Tony Stark, much of this could’ve been avoided. If nothing else Peter might’ve been able to unmask privately rather than publicly.

Whilst the MCU addresses the first factor via de-aging Peter, it has no answer for the second. It borrowed from the JMS run superficially and ditched the greater subtext regarding how Peter shouldn’t  have formed a relationship with Tony.

I’d like to conclude by addressing the most obvious counterpoint to everything I’ve said.

If Spider-Man were more comic faithful wouldn’t it undermine the entire point of him being in the MCU? The appeal of the concept was seeing Spider-Man interact with the wider MCU. From the audience’s POV seeing yet another Spidey flick confined to using Spider-Man exclusive elements might as well have been produced solely by Sony.

The problem with this argument though is that it doesn’t consider the myriad of possibilities available. Spidey could interact with the wider MCU and still be in character.

I’m no writer but off the top of my head:

Spidey could have defied the Sokovia Accords and thus been wanted by the authorities (a neat updating of his traditional ‘outlaw’ status), consequently coming into conflict  with Iron Man

Spidey might have still dueled the Vulture and interacted with Tony as he did in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’. However, instead of gradually realizing he should be a ‘friendly neighborhood’ hero, he could call Tony out for ignoring small scale crime which indirectly ‘created’ the Vulture in the first place

Following ‘Avengers: Endgame’ the dissolution of the Avengers combined with the huge uptick in the population and displacement of citizens might’ve caused far more street crime that Peter would have to deal with. The remnants of H.Y.D.R.A. might’ve exploited this to gain a foothold upon which to rebuild.*** That might’ve warrant an appearance from more grounded heroes like Hawkeye or Ant-Man

An environment like this could’ve been exploited by Quentin Beck to frame Spider-Man, exploiting his already shaky public reputation and make himself look more appealing by contrast

Or Hell just do ‘Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut’ but with the Hulk as Roger Stern planned to do in the first place

I’m sure many of you could suggest infinitely better ideas.

In conclusion, no matter how you slice it, there were better options than rendering Peter Parker Iron Man Junior instead of Spider-Man.

*Peter, as depicted in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ was clearly not well off financially, yet consequent depictions of Peter in the MCU have de-emphasized this to the point where you could argue they are very probably not working class anymore.

This makes sense internally as a billionaire Tony Stark has no reason to take Peter under his wing but allow him to still dumpster dive for equipment. Giving the boy at least some modest financial stability would be a logical step in building a relationship with him and giving him more time and energy to put into his scientific and heroic pursuits.

Whilst I don’t exactly agree with everything said here, this post dives into the subject more deeply.

**And even if it was, if the context demands Peter be rendered so unrecognizable then maybe it was just creatively reductive to integrate him into the MCU the first place.

***They have after all had connections to organized crime in the comics.

[shlabam]

THE HISTORY OF THE H-DIAL, DC’S WEIRDEST SUPERHERO CONCEPT

Everyone wants to be Superman. His unparalleled might, massive array of powers, and winning personality makes him a fantasy figure in many imaginations. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, given the option, we wouldn’t want to be one superhero, we’d want to be all of them. This is the premise behind Dial H for HERO’s H-Dial, an incredibly powerful object used in DC Comics stories intermittently since the 1960s.

Introduced in House of Mystery #156 (a title up to that point reserved for supernatural horror stories), the H-Dial was discovered by teenager Robby Reed in a cavern while he was camping nearby. The H-Dial resembles a rotary phone dial, and since Robby existed in a time when rotary phones were still in use (youths of today would likely struggle a bit), he quickly discovered by dialing H-E-R-O, he could turn into a random and wholly original superhero until he dialed O-R-E-H to change back. There appeared to be no limits or boundaries on the heroes Robby would be become, as the first year saw characters like Giantboy (a giant with super strength), the Mole (who could dig at super-fast speeds), Hypno-Man (with the ability to control minds), and Mighty Moppet (a super-strong baby who could shrink his enemies by spraying them with a milk bottle). Clearly, this was a creative playground for writer Dave Wood and artist Jim Mooney, who had smartly devised a storytelling platform that liberated them from the bonds of using the same power set to solve new problems every issue. However, the stories clearly weren’t a huge hit, as House of Mystery reverted back to horror stories and ended the original Dial H run after only eighteen issues.

The H-Dial would return in 1981, with new users Chris Grant and Vicki King, who discover them in a haunted house. A number of changes were made to the H-Dial this time around: there were two of them (Chris wore his on a watch and Vicki’s on a necklace), they had a one-hour time limit, and, incredibly, the heroes they became were submitted by readers! If you had the manual dexterity to hold a few crayons, you could see your creation in print in a real comic book! (The creators of these heroes were rewarded with a t-shirt and, uh, credit.) For eleven issues of Adventure Comics and twenty-one issues of New Adventures of Superboy, Chris and Vicki transformed into heroes submitted by the youth of 1980s America (as well as science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, then aged 46 years old), and series creators Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino clearly picked the cream of the crop: Vibro the Quakemaster (caused earthquakes), Hasty Pudding (either moved super slow or super fast, no in-between), Glass Lass (who could amplify laser beams), and Sister Scissor-Limbs (do you need this one spelled out for you?). This iteration once again faded away as new back-up features replaced them. Chris and Vicki got a mini-epilogue in the pages of New Teen Titans but following that, just faded away.

It wouldn’t be until 2003 that the H-Dial would appear again, and this time it would be the star of the book: H-E-R-O would follow the H-Dial (as it was seen in the original House of Mystery run) as it gets passed around from person to person for anywhere from one to four issues. Writer Will Pfeifer took this opportunity to tell some smarter, smaller stories about normal people who briefly possess incredible chaotic power, only for it to be lost, via intentional abandon, theft, or, most commonly, hubris. Robby Reed also returns in this series, hunting the traveling dial as it turns minimum wage earner Jerry Feldon into Afterburner, pre-teen girl Andrea Allen into Nocturna, and small-time crook Tony Finch into the Stretcher. The series was cancelled after an incredibly satisfying twenty-two issues, ending with Robby sending it 50,000 years back in time, hopefully ridding the world of its dangerous potential.

However, reboots gonna reboot, and the H-Dial would make its triumphant return in 2012 as a part of DC’s New 52 line-up in the series Dial H. This time around, the H-Dial is turned into an anachronistic telephone booth, as novelist China Miéville would lend his signature surrealistic take to transform schlubby everyman Nelson Jent into heroes like Captain Lachrymose (who derives strength from the traumatic memories of others), Hole Punch (who had three arms and sledgehammer hands) and Control-Alt-Delete (a computer-themed hero with the ability to “reboot” recent events). Miéville traded adventure and coherence for comedy and absurdity, showing that when the existing status for a device is one without presented limits, the logical step forward is one without logic at all. It could be argued this series existed at the wrong time; if it had shared the shelf with 1990s Vertigo hits Doom Patrol and Shade the Changing Man, it could have entered a classic status and stayed reprinted forever. Sadly, 2012 wasn’t the year for an interpretation like this, and Miéville’s Dial H would be cancelled after 15 issues.

This brings us to the most recent swing at the H-Dial, the criminally underrated Dial H for Hero, remarkably the first time the feature has had its full, original name as the title of a book. This time, the H-Dial is a glowing red rotary phone (complete with fairly unnecessary handset), wielded by teenagers Miguel Montez and Summer Pickens as they travel across the United States to find a place to safely dispose of the powerful device. Under the storytelling direction of Sam Humphries, this version of the H-Dial transforms its users into wholly original superheroes, plus the new wrinkle of each hero being drawn in a distinct homage to comic book creators of the past, such as the Rob Liefeld-esque Monster Truck, the Mike Allred-ian Lo Lo Kick You, and the Irritable Various Geckos, four lizard villains drawn exactly like the classic Eastman/Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Illustrator Joe Quinones puts in work for this series, effectively aping artists like Frank Miller, Akira Toriyama, Moebius, and even Bill Watterson, while keeping everything on brand in the distinctive DC-house style, allowing every page to function as a museum exhibit on comics history. This mini-series was originally intended to only last six issues, but early success expanded it to twelve, with the dangling possibility of more to come down the line.

What could the future possibly hold for the H-Dial? Like the device itself, there is limitless potential. Superheroes are more popular than ever, and with deep cuts like Doom Patrol and Stargirl finding success on the small screen, there’s no reason a Dial H for Hero show couldn’t make a similar mark. It could be animated (Cartoon Network’s Ben 10 showed there’s a market for “boy with many superhero forms”), but a live-action version would also work. Utilizing celebrity guest stars as the different heroes could place it perfectly in that high-stakes-meets-childish-wonder space the comics always occupied. Dial H for Hero is nails exactly what we love about superheroes: powerful, vibrant characters in a grounded, human space. But while Wonder Woman is limited to magic and mythology, Green Lantern is confined to space policing, and Batman deals with a constant crew of painted goons, Dial H for Hero discards the pesky origin and setting to create a one-person anthology hero, something completely different yet charmingly familiar every time, where the only thing predictable is that it will be absolutely unpredictable.

[svankmajerbaby]

13, 20, 30, 40 !!

thank you so much for the ask!!!!!!

13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished i’m not really sure, but i think i’d go something like this: i get the idea usually by either being obsessed with a property (whether it’s frankenstein, beetlejuice or barbie) or by thinking up characters and adding traits and backstory to them, and then thinking up possible dynamics for them to have with other characters. then, i try to figure out a particular context (place and time) that could fit these characters, and i make sure to think it up in such a way that it doesn’t really conflict with the source material (for my barbie-frankenstein fanfic, for example, i didn’t want to set it in early 19th century, because i wanted vivianna to be able to become barbara roberts at some point, and as such it was more comfortable to preserve the victorian aesthetic while also being closer to the 20th century); if there’s not a proper space and time these characters can feel comfortable in (whether because of a particularly tense political situation, persecution, or simply The Wrong Aesthetic Choice), i make up one. after that i begin to write dialogues and location descriptions, try to picture it all in my head as clearly as possible. then, after i have some scenes written and some interactions done, i try to organize them, thinking what should come first, what can lead to a good finale, what would be the most important moment for each character and so on. when this is done, i usually already figure out the ending and can structure everything to lead up to it. after that, it’s all a matter of sitting down and writing between the scenes i’ve already done, editing them and adding whatever new ideas i get in the meantime. usually this is what takes the longest, because by this point i’m losing steam and interest and become distracted by new projects... but sometimes i manage to finish it and by then the editing process starts on full, checking for any grammar or spelling mistakes, wrong pronouns or words or names, usually cutting down on redundant descriptions or dialogues, adding things if i think something is not clear enough or erasing things if they seem too on the nose, and then i do this over and over until i feel it’s good enough.

20.  How many WIPs and story ideas do you have? oh boy do i have plenty. i’ve sorta finished the first novel of the story of Olimpia Gómez -the first one is simply called “La Ejecutora, 1938″; i’m currently writing the second, the third and the fourth ones -”La Ejecutora, 1946″, “La Ejecutora, 1954″, and “La Ejecutora, 1966″ respectively. then i also have almost finished my stage adaptation version of “Corpse Bride”, which i renamed “Death and Marriage”. i’m a chapter away at finishing my toy story fanfic, “Sitting On The Shelf”. i’ve written a single chapter of a beetlejuice fanfic about the maitlands that i still haven’t found a proper name fore, but which i’m very excited about. i’m writing several chapters at once of a massive addams family fanfic, focused on most of the main family characters’ backstories or developments beyond the nineties movies, which i’m calling “Family Beyond Blood”. i’ve started a little princess tutu fanfic that i’m not sure if i should continue, but which is a stylistic deviation of what i’ve been writing so far, so that’s good. i’ve kind of abandoned another fanfic idea i had, “Vulnavia & Vulnavia”, from one of my favorite horror movies, “abominable dr phibes”, which i have to come back to... and like the madwoman i am, i’m planning on rewriting the star wars sequel trilogy, so i got that in my to do list, as well. besides those fanfics, i got a sci-fi novel being developed, called “Los Prototipos”, about two twins that escape the enclosure where they had been raised to find out they were being studied to make a single-minded working force (kind of like the replicants in blade runner) with an expiration date -all this set in a dystopic 1960s country somewhere in latinamerica, tackling issues of economic imperalism, forced labor and independece through revolution. this is one of my most political works, so i’m giving it a lot of space to breathe. i’ve also began some time ago a series of noir/horror short stories set in Buenos Aires, one of them based on a short movie script i’ve written, which i’m really excited to do -because i’m usually crap at writing short stories -but i’ve left it in standby until i finish the bigger projects first... and then I Have Scripts, Baby! “Mi Amiga Carolina”, about a possessed doll that emotionally manipulates a depressed teenager that moves alone into her grandmother’s old house; “El Moderno Prometeo”, a (mostly) faithful retelling of frankenstein set in Argentina, focused on the family drama of the frankenstein family and on the relationships between victor, daniela (justine, here being his older sister), quique (henry) and elsa (elizabeth); a screen adaptation of a novel of a friend of mine, “La Chica Que Trabajaba Los Sábados”, about a non-practising jewish woman in Buenos Aires who falls in love with a rabbi, and how their relationship ebbs and flows; and “Verano en los Manzanos”, about a boy who lives in rural Córdoba who falls in love with a girl from Buenos Aires (i try to write what i know, usually), and who as they grow up become a couple, have a kid, and ultimately wind up apart due to his struggle with depression and her own struggle with acute anxiety, all of this interweaved with his own return to the little forgotten village he grew up on, where he reflects on the life he used to have. so, in total... 16 WIP. plenty.

30.  Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet i just now realized that i forgot to mention it in the last point, but technically i havent’ even started, so yeah, it’s just an idea: a series of sci-fi books about a parallel history in which India was the first country to go to the moon, and in which South America has the ASADE (Asociação Sul-Americana D’exploração Espacial), where they train cosmonauts to explore the vastness of space: set in an alternate 1930, a team of specialists on several fields and from several countries (the ones I got thought up already are captain Alfonsina Shua, from argentina, and copilot Adolfo Chaviano, from a paraguayan-argentinean couple) go on the fifth ever tripulated voyage. on an exploration, copilot Chaviano gets lost and disappears in space, cut off from his crew, and ends up going through a wormhole and crossing a threshold between sci-fi and fantasy of a blooming star -rendering him immortal but extremely radiated, which allows him to continue exploring space (ending up in several planets, registering his encounters with varied extraterrestrial cultures) while back in Earth the ASADE and his family try to locate him and bring him back home -it’s basically “The Martian” meets “The Little Prince”. and then, there’s the sequel series, about the three grandchildren of Adolfo Chaviano, who, after his death, discover that their grandfather had been developing a time machine alongside Alfonsina to go back in time and look for a way to revert the effects of the radiation in him, in order for him to live longer -and, perhaps, to find the way to become immortal and continue exploring the deepest limits of space. set in an alternate 1971, where space travel is now commonplace, the three siblings, Lena, Majo and Laucha embark on a space mission, meeting all sorts of new characters similarly affected by radiation and some mysterious magical/space properties, in order to find Alfonsina and ask her to give them one more chance to ask questions and say goodbye to their grandfather. so yeah, i got a lot of ideas, but i haven’t been writing any scenes yet -it’s still all in my head so far.

40.  Share some backstory for one of your characters well, the original character i’ve got developed the most is Olimpia Gómez (whose birth name is Beatriz Moreno), the orphaned daughter of two spanish union workers who were killed in the Semana Trágica on 1919 by the mysterious Society (of course, working in cahoots with the repressive government), and taken in by that same Society and raised to kill supposed “criminals and dangerous subjects”. trained in the countryside, taught to always be ready to die an honorable death for peace and justice while on duty, she’s taken to Buenos Aires to prove herself by stealth-killing the targets she is given, who she is told are people beyond salvation. she’s never been popular, but her closest friend, Eugenia Menéndez, always tries to get her to open up and join her own attempts at having a normal social life -which is quite difficult when being a spy and “executioner”. Olimpia has a boyfriend, fellow agent Evaristo Gutiérrez, but by the time they’re nineteen their relationship feels cold and strained, and at the same time there’s the pull of one of the most powerful members of the organization, Azucena Velázquez, daughter of two high-ranking agents: she’s kind-of out as a lesbian (only able to be so because of her high status), and has always been interested in Olimpia; Olimpia has to wrestle with her own internalized homophobia, feelings of guilt and bisexuality in order to finally decide who she wants to be, alongside her discovery of precisely how the Society is corrupt and extremely politically motivated when electing its “targets”, which leads Olimpia to try to escape it -despite knowing that the Society is everywhere, and if she can manage to escape, it’s because the Society allows it in the first place.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Why (most of) the 2010s Marvel legacy characters didn’t work

For Marvel characters I think it comes off as profoundly undermining when they get legacies, at least in the specific way Marvel attempted this throughout the 2010s.

To explain this we need to actually first look at DC’s characters in order to compare and contrast why legacies for them tend to work out better than they do for Marvel.

Simply put back in the 1930s-1950s (if not even later) DC’s characters were almost always created as powers first, people second. Wish fulfilment fantasy figures over flawed mere mortals.

Consequently you could legacy Green Lantern and the Flash in the 1950s and then do so again in the 1980s-1990s because so so long as you had a guy with a ring and another guy with super speed you were retaining the essence of both characters, the fundamental point and appeal of them.

But the Marvel characters were the other way around and practically deliberately designed to be so. 

Thor was the story of the life and times of Thor Odinson. Spider-Man was the story of the life and times of Peter Parker. The Fantastic Four was never the story about a brainiac who stretched, a girl who could go invisible, a kid who could burst into flame and a guy who looked like a rock monster. 

It was about a stern scientist obsessed with his work. A nurturing young woman who loved him but was frustrated by his tendency to get lost in his work. Her younger brother interested in sports cars, girls, excitement and other typically hot headed teenage endeavours. And an average Joe who was tortured and depressed that he was no longer human. 

Ben Grimm could’ve looked like any kind of monster and the central point of his character would have been retained. The F4′s specific powers, complemented their personalities, but they were not the driving point unto themselves. 

In contrast let us consider Captain America, probably the Marvel character who’s done the ‘replacement legacy hero’ storyline the most (at least within 616 canon). How comes he  lends himself so much better to this type of story than the other Marvel characters? 

Simple, because unlike most of the big name Marvel characters you know of, he wasn’t created in the 1960s or beyond. Cap was the product of the 1940s and was a peer to those same early days super heroes from the Golden Age, including the original Green Lantern and Flash. Like them he began fundamentally more as a symbol and powerset than a person. 

But now flashing forward to the 21st century many (most in my view) Flash fans were upset (and continue to be so) Wally West’s ascension to the Flash mantle was undermined and ultimately undone for the sake of restoring Barry Allan to the spotlight. The reason for this upset when Wally himself had replaced Barry? Wally had proven himself a far more flawed, nuanced and complex character than Barry had ever been. 

He demonstrated a degree of characterisation in the Flash role that Barry never had. It wasn’t even that he simply had more of this than Barry, but that Barry, just like Jay Garrick preceding him, had little to speak of in the first place. Thus the contrast between Jay and Barry was mostly superficial but the contrast between Barry and Wally was as stark as comparing Spider-Man to 1950s Superman.*

But Wally West, and the entire DC Universe from Post-Crisis onwards in fact, were in that mould precisely because they were trying to be more like Marvel comics has been since the 1960s onwards. 

DC in effect began prioritising the people beneath the costumes over the powers.** But Marvel starting in the 1960s had pretty much always been like that with their heroes.

Consequently when legacies popped up and those new characters were pushed as being just as good, just as worthy, or (in some cases) lowkey pushed as being better  than their predecessors it naturally rubbed those fans with decades of emotional investment the wrong way. OBVIOUSLY  a woman or a POC can be just as worthy and just as capable as a man or a white person as a superhero. But series to series, character to character, it was almost like Marvel was taking away your beloved pet.

Imagine for a moment you had a pet named Rex that you’d known and loved for years. 

Then Marvel insisted on taking Rex away from you when there was nothing wrong with him. In his place they give you another clearly different pet with Rex’s collar, who gets Rex’s bowl, Rex’s food, Rex’s toys, Rex’s bed and even Rex’s name and asks you to treat them not as just a new dog but straight up the new Rex.

Except he isn’t Rex. Rex is Rex. The ‘new Rex’ playing with Rex’s toys, doing the same tricks as him or having his collar doesn’t change that.*** 

Because Rex was more than a collar, his toys or his tricks. He was an individual that you’d known and loved. And even if you know Rex is going to come back ‘eventually’ having Rex taken away from you at all, having the new Rex supplant them (especially if old Rex was screwed over for the sake of new Rex’s arrival) and having so many people insist new Rex is just as great or more great than old Rex (to the point where many people loudly proclaim they don’t even want the old Rex back and the old Rex was kinda lame and boring) is going to create a massive dissonance. Maybe you would’ve been chill with the new Rex is he was just another additional pet called Rover or even like RexY who was similar yet different to Rex, but not actually promoted AS Rex or as his replacement. 

Maybe you would’ve been okay with the new Rex if the old one got too old, died naturally or accidentally. But you aren’t okay with it because there was nothing wrong with Rex, you LOVED Rex and Rex had been with you and been around generally forever. So the new Rex felt like he was undermining him, especially undermining Rex’s individuality. 

That’s how I think most Marvel fans felt about practically EVERY legacy situation that’s ever cropped up from the 1960s onwards, not even the ones just from the 2010s. I remember  the outrage when Bucky was announced as the new Cap. I know there were people salty about Eric Masterson as Thor and the Spider-Man Clone Saga speaks for itself.

Compounding the situation is that more than a few media outlets (despite imo not representing the feeling’s of the majority at all) promoted (and in some cases still promote) the new characters as not just better than they are (see the dozen or so lists talking about how great Riri allegedly was) but along with many fans tear down the older characters whilst doing so. 

See every article ever talking about why Peter Parker in the movies (and sometimes in the comics) NEEDS to die for the sake of Miles becoming the new Spider-Man in spite of their rationales rarely making sense from a creative/financial POV and utilizing misrepresentations of both characters to varying degrees. Even fans that appreciate the social/political relevancy of the new characters are going to naturally be upset in response to that and angrily voice opposition when the character they love gets dragged through the mud like that. And that then gets exacerbated when they are labelled as bigots for feeling upset by the changes or reacting against the character they love being dragged through the mud.**** 

Especially considering they would’ve reacted the same way regardless of who was the replacement hero.  Again, fans at first didn’t take kindly to John Walker or Bucky as the new Captain Americas so the idea that backlash against Sam Wilson was entirely or primarily racist was itself profoundly ignorant. Especially when you consider black reviewers such as those on the Hooded Utalitarian were calling it out as bad storytelling and bad representation for black people. SpaceTwinks went issue by issue through Spencer’s Sam Wilson run and called it out as racist, ignorant and naive. NONE of which is me saying that there isn’t more than a little bigotry going around detractors of these new characters nor that there aren’t obviously bad actors.

But those people did not and do not represent the majority and framing the situation as though they do is disingenuous and highly unethical. In conclusion, the backlash against the 2010s Marvel legacy characters was entirely natural, understandable and for the vast majority came from a place of love for the original characters not a bigoted hatred for the new characters skin colour or sex. 

It was a testament to Marvel’s, and the wider media, misunderstanding the psychology of most comic book fans. 

P.S. In regards to that, though it isn’t exactly talking about what I’ve spoken about I’d highly recommend checking out this video which touches upon the disenchantment Star Wars fans felt over the Sequel Trilogy, which itself could be viewed as doing the same thing Marvel did with it’s replacement legacy characters.

P.P.S. The reason I think the likes of Miles Morales or Kamala Khan succeeded where others failed is chiefly due to their rise to the role of legacy replacements stemmed from their predecessors not  being sidelined for their rise to the spotlight. Miles never ever replaced the 616 version of Peter Parker, widely considered by most fans and Marvel internally as the true and legitimate version of the character. Kamala Khan meanwhile picked up the Ms. Marvel only when Carol Danvers discarded it and became Captain Marvel. She was still in the spotlight in her own right, Kamala simply got her own spotlight using Carol’s obsolete name. Which isn’t all that dissimilar to fan favourite Cassandra Cain’s rise to the Batgirl mantle now I think about it.

P.P.P.S. A possible counter argument to all I’ve said is the success of the Superior Spider-Man/Otto Octavius. After all why was he embraced when Sam Wilson and Jane Foster wasn’t? Was a double standard rooted in bigotry at play?

No, but the answer isn’t neat and simple.

I think Ock as the new Spider-Man was more embraced partially because Ock had been around essentially as long as Spidey himself. But more poignantly  pre-Superior Spider-Man was so atrocious that a sizzling and sexy idea like Superior (which generated tons of cheap novelty) felt utterly refreshing, even to people who had actually LIKED pre-Superior Spidey under Slott. It’s like how people praised the early Big Time stories despite their problems because compared to BND they were genuinely better.

Plus Superior, for all it’s god forsaken writing, didn’t exist to clearly workshop potential movie ideas or chiefly in aid of a social/political cause. Someone can agree that there should be more black or female superheroes but disagree that the older characters should be sidelined in the attempt to achieve that.

Especially when there were better alternative options such as introducing those newer characters within and alongside the established hero’s narrative or simply introduce them independently as has happened recently with the likes of Lunar Snow.

*This is also why I suspect Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman survived from the Golden Age into the Silver Age. Because they were the DC characters who (more than any of the other ones) had actual personalities/substance to them. **Of course this didn’t begin wholesale with the post-Crisis era. But noticeably the characters who had worked with this new shift in priorities prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths stayed generally the same thereafter (E.g. the Titans, Batman) whilst characters who had largely vacillated or struggled (e.g. Superman and Wonder Woman) were given fresh starts which proved critically and financially successful.  

***Not even if he does everything just as well as Rex did or does some stuff differently that’s still good (although the overwhelming majority of the time new Rex is clearly not as good as the old Rex).

****I’ve seen people be called racist and misogynists for calling out Riri Williams honestly ridiculous degree of competency as a hero/tech genius in spite of her age. This is not an invalid criticism, yet disliking the character because of those reasons is grounds to be labelled as something ugly by another (imo minor yet also vocal) contingent of fandom. 

Hell I was called a Trump supporting Breitbart reading bigot for calling out Marvel as two-faced due to never putting a black writer in charge of Sam Wilson as Captain America or a woman in charge of Jane Foster as Thor. It isn’t exclusive to comics either as I and other people have been accused of racism/misogyny for disliking the Last Jedi in spite of that film to my eyes being itself racist and sexist anyway.

[emiliachrstine]

ok this was an ask i got and had a good time with but! what would jackie’s comics history be if she had been canon/how would it have differed from the film adaptations?

Okay, I need to preface this by saying I know nothing about the comics. Only what I’ve read through my research, so I apologize if I get something wrong. Anyways, here we go! (also I know I’m going to forget major points so I apologize)

Comics History:

Jackie doesn’t appear in the comics until the late 1960′s when they revived the character and comics in the early 60′s. When she’s first introduced, she is the only child of Addie Harris (nee Lewis) and Joseph Harris. She takes on her mother’s maiden name when she joins the academy. Jackie was born after WWII and her mother was friends with Steve during the war. She grew up around SHIELD and the stories about Steve Rogers. Since Peggy Carter was a very minor character in the comics, her relationship with Peggy wasn’t shown too much in the comics. But she did often talk about how much of an influence Peggy had on her growing up. 

By the time Jackie is introduced, she is already working as a SHIELD agent and has a rather fractious relationship with Tony Stark. She’s not as close with him as she is in the films, in fact, there are several instances where her dislike for Tony is very prominent. They are very much reluctant friends and allies, but they work very well together and share a few moments of genuine friendship and admiration for each other. There’s even a period where Tony has a clear romantic attraction towards her but Jackie persistently rejects him. But as the comic series goes on, their animosity slowly melts away and they become really good friends. Close to what would happen in the films.

Jackie is one of the best agents working for SHIELD. She and Sharon Carter are two of the most trusted agents and often go on missions together. However, there was always a level of competitive nature between the two, but it was always in good fun. They were always like sisters to one another. 

The character’s popularity spawned her own spin off series which were actually a rather big hit. The Argentina mission was the first major arc to be covered. The series starts off in the early 60’s during the first few years of her working at SHIELD. And it starts this whole complicated relationship between Jackie and Bucky Barnes that actually turns romantic at one point, way down the line. Jackie’s trauma from the failed mission isn’t as intense in the comics as it is in the films. She’s able to understand Bucky’s situation and forgive him more easily. It’s a very on and off type relationship, never one where they officially are together or anything of that matter. And it is a big rival against Natasha and Bucky. 

An offshoot comic series, has Jackie getting pregnant by Bucky and giving birth to a son. She gives her son up for adoption to protect him from a domestic terrorist, Baker, who discovered her identity after she infiltrated his group. Jackie ended up going on the run, never telling Bucky that he had a kid. It’s not until the kid returns as an adult in search of his parents. Jackie is presumed dead since going on the run and Bucky doesn’t believe that this kid is actually his. The kid is named Michael and he makes on and off appearances in this issue run.

But going back to the main comic series, Jackie is made head of the team who found Steve in the North Atlantic. While she’s not assigned to help with reintegration, she ends up helping Steve adjust to modern life. And they become close friends fairly quickly. But Steve and Sharon become a thing and they are a couple for quite some time. However, during the periods where they are not together, it makes way for a romance to blossom between Jackie and Steve. Much like her romance with Bucky, her romance with Steve is a very will they won’t they type relationship. But it became a very popular couple and most of the reception given was that people wanted them to get together. But they never do. Steve and Jackie’s romance is the tragic love that was deep and affectionate but was never meant to be. Even though Sharon and Steve are considered the couple and have a longer trek history, Steve never stops loving Jackie, even up to when he’s killed by Sharon. One could make the argument that Jackie was his true soulmate. 

Jackie is a lot more involved in the comics’ run of Civil War. She takes on the side of Captain America, becomes part of the Secret Avengers, and fights against the ones who are for the federal registration which brings her face to face with Tony Stark. When the Secret Avengers respond to a fake emergency call, they are ambushed by pro-registration forces and Jackie ends up getting killed during the skirmish which makes the team retreat. Steve continues on with the fight but ends up surrendering at the end, as we all know. Her death is mourned by everyone. Sharon lost her best friend and sister, Bucky lost someone he felt truly understood him, and Steve lost the love of his life. Even Tony ends up feeling guilty for what happened to her. 

Jackie remains dead throughout the proceeding comic issues. When the first few mcu films are released, marvel makes a whole new comic run that could run parallel with the films, while still keeping some details different. Of course, Jackie is brought back with a lot of changes done to coincide with what was being done with her in the films.

The Films:

There are quite a few changes that are made to Jackie and her backstory. Since the films were taking place in the 21st century, her birth date was changed to 1985. She is no longer the child of Addie but retconned to being her granddaughter. Kathleen and John were created for the films, then were put into the new comic runs. Jackie’s relationship with Tony becomes a more familial bond than what was depicted in the comics. Although, it was important for the films to keep in the fact that they butt heads a lot with each other. And the romantic interest on Tony’s part in the comics is completely erased in the mcu. 

Her involvement in Civil War is drastically changed compared to what happened in the comics. In fact, when it was announced that the civil war storyline was being done, a lot of the fans speculated that Jackie would end up dying in the film since she did so in the comics. In the film, Jackie refuses to take sides despite being against the accords. Her relationship with Tony and Steve prevents her from choosing one or the other. She very much becomes a witness and only intervenes when she sees no choice. Her being pregnant in civil war is a new detail created for the film. 

The biggest change is her relationship with Steve and Bucky. It is definitely decided between Feige and Stan Lee to try and put Steve and Jackie as the endgame couple, since their relationship tenure in the comics was quite popular. Their relationship is made to be much more complex and ended up being controversial because of key events that happened (i.e. the biggest being Steve choosing Bucky over a pregnant Jackie). Her relationship with Bucky is definitely toned down a lot more, the movies played more into her trauma and her hesitation to forgive Bucky. And this did not please bucky stans and also the bucky/jackie shippers because their relationship in the comics is pretty significant, and the films pretty much erased how important they were to each other.

Madison and John are also a new addition. They are eventually written into the new comic run and are given their own spin off as well. Though, John is based loosely on the son that bucky and jackie had in that offshoot series. And as for Madison, her name comes from a Captain America issue where Steve and Jackie talked about what a normal life together would be like. They would have a house on an isolated patch of land, away from the city. And they would have a kid, they always debated whether it would be a son or daughter. They liked the idea of either but always agreed that Madison would be the name of their daughter. So in the films, they decided to give them two kids with the daughter being named Madison and they move to a new home almost in the middle of nowhere.

Then, there will be Madison and John’s tv show, maybe even a show depicting Kathleen and John in their early years at SHIELD. There would definitely be a comic run for her parents in the new comic run. 

[twiddlebirdlet]

https://www.wired.com/story/chris-evans-starting-point-politics/

Chris Evans Goes to Washington

The actor's new project, A Starting Point, aims to give all Americans the TL;DR on WTF is going on in politics. It's harder than punching Nazis on the big screen.

It’s a languid October afternoon in Los Angeles, sunny and clear.

Chris Evans, back home after a grueling production schedule, relaxes into his couch, feet propped up on the coffee table. Over the past year and a half, the actor has tried on one identity after another: the shaggy-haired Israeli spy, the clean-shaven playboy, and, in his Broadway debut, the Manhattan beat cop with a Burt Reynolds ’stache. Now, though, he just looks like Chris Evans—trim beard, monster biceps, angelic complexion. So it’s a surprise when he brings up the nightmares. “I sleep, like, an hour a night,” he says. “I’m in a panic.”

The panic began, as panics so often do these days, in Washington, DC. Early last February, Evans visited the capital to pitch lawmakers on a new civic engagement project. He arrived just hours before Donald Trump would deliver his second State of the Union address, in which he called on Congress to “bridge old divisions” and “reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution.” (Earlier, at a private luncheon, Trump referred to Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, as a “nasty son of a bitch.”) Evans is no fan of the president, whom he has publicly called a “moron,” a “dunce,” and a “meatball.” But bridging divisions? Putting an end to the American body politic’s clammy night sweats? These were goals he could get behind.

Evans’ pitch went like this: He would build an online platform organized into tidy sections—immigration, health care, education, the economy—each with a series of questions of the kind most Americans can’t succinctly answer themselves. What, exactly, is a tariff? What’s the difference between Medicare and Medicaid? Evans would invite politicians to answer the questions in minute-long videos. He’d conduct the interviews himself, but always from behind the camera. The site would be a place to hear both sides of an issue, to get the TL;DR on WTF was happening in American politics. He called it A Starting Point—a name that sometimes rang with enthusiasm and sometimes sounded like an apology.

Evans doesn’t have much in the way of political capital, but he does have a reputation, perhaps unearned, for patriotism. Since 2011 he has appeared in no fewer than 10 Marvel movies as Captain America, the Nazi-slaying, homeland-­defending superhero wrapped in bipartisan red, white, and blue. It’s hard to imagine a better time to cash in on the character’s symbolism. Partisan animosity is at an all-time high; a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found that 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats would oppose their child marrying someone from the other party. (In 1960, only 4 percent of respondents felt this way.) At the same time, there’s a real crisis of faith in the country’s leaders. According to the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress behave unethically at least some of the time. In Pew’s estimation, that makes them even less trusted than journalists and tech CEOs.

If Evans got it right, he believed, this wouldn’t be some small-fry website. He’d be helping “create informed, responsible, and empathetic citizens.” He would “reduce partisanship and promote respectful discourse.” At the very least, he would “get more people involved” in politics. And if the site stank like a rotten tomato? If Evans became a national laughingstock? Well, that’s where the nightmares began.

It took a special serum and a flash broil in a Vita-Ray chamber to transform Steve Rogers, a sickly kid from Brooklyn, into Captain America. For Chris Evans, savior of American democracy, the origin story is rather less Marvelous.

One day a few years ago, around the time he was filming Avengers: Infinity War, Evans was watching the news. The on-air discussion turned to an unfamiliar acronym—it might have been NAFTA, he says, but he thinks it was DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era immigration policy that granted amnesty to people who had been brought into the United States illegally as children. The Trump administration had just announced plans to phase out DACA, leaving more than half a million young immigrants in the lurch. (The Supreme Court will likely rule this year on whether terminating the program was lawful.)

On the other side of the television, Evans squinted. Wait a minute, he thought. What did that acronym stand for again? And was it a good thing or a bad thing? “It was just something I didn’t understand,” he says.

Evans considers himself a politico. Now 38, he grew up in a civic-minded family, the kind that revels in shouting about the news over dinner. His uncle Michael Capuano served 10 terms in Congress as a Democrat from Massachusetts, beginning right around the time Evans graduated from high school and moved to New York to pursue acting. During the 2016 presidential election, Evans campaigned for Hillary Clinton. In 2017 he became an outspoken critic of Trump—even after he was advised to zip it, for risk of alienating moviegoers. Evans could be a truck driver, Capuano says, and he’d still be involved in politics.

But watching TV that day, Evans was totally lost. He Googled the acronym and tripped over all the warring headlines. Then he tried Wikipedia, but, well, the entry was thousands of words long. “It’s this never-ending thing, and you’re just like, who is going to read 12 pages on something?” Evans says. “I just wanted a basic understanding, a basic history, and a basic grasp on what the two parties think.” He decided to build the resource he wanted for himself.

Evans brought the idea to his close friend Mark Kassen, an actor and director he’d met working on the 2011 indie film Puncture. Kassen signed on and recruited a third partner, Joe Kiani, the founder and CEO of a medical technology company called Masimo. The three met for lobster rolls in Boston. What the country needed, they decided, was a kind of Schoolhouse Rock for adults—a simple, memorable way to learn the ins and outs of civic life. Evans suggested working with politicians directly. Kiani, who had made some friends on Capitol Hill over the years, thought they’d go for it. Each partner agreed to put up money to get the thing off the ground. (They wouldn’t say how much.) They spent some time Googling similar outlets and figuring out where they fit in, Kassen says.

They began by establishing a few rules. First, A Starting Point would give politicians free rein to answer questions as they pleased—no editing, no moderation, no interjections. Second, they would hire fact-checkers to make sure they weren’t promoting misinformation. Third, they would design a site that privileged diversity of opinion, where you could watch a dozen different people answering the same question in different ways. Here, though, imbibing the information would feel more like watching YouTube than skimming Wikipedia—more like entertainment than homework.

The trio mocked up a list of questions to bring to Capitol Hill, starting with the ones that most baffled them. (Is the electoral college still necessary?) They talked, admiringly, about the way presidential debate moderators manage to make their language sound neutral. (Should the questions refer to a “climate crisis” or a “climate situation,” “illegal immigrants” or “undocumented immigrants”?) Then Evans recorded a video on his couch in LA. “Hi, I’m Chris Evans,” he began. “If you’re watching this, I hope you’ll consider contributing to my new civics engagement project called A Starting Point.” He emailed the file to every senator and representative in Congress.

Only a few replied.

In hindsight, Evans realizes, the video “looked so cheap” and either got caught in spam filters or was consciously deleted by congressional staffers. “The majority of people, on both sides of the aisle, dismissed it,” Evans says. Many “thought it was a joke.” Yet there are few doors in American life that a square jaw can’t open, particularly when it belongs to a man with many millions of dollars and nearly as many swooning Twitter fans. Soon enough, a handful of politicians had agreed to meet with the group.

On the morning of his first visit to Capitol Hill, as he donned a slick gray windowpane suit and a black polka-dot tie and combed his perfect hair back from his perfect forehead, Evans felt a wave of doubt. “This isn’t my lane,” he recalls thinking as he walked through the maze of the Russell Senate Office Building. Here, people were making real change, affecting the lives of millions of Americans. “And shit,” Evans said to himself, “I didn’t even go to college.”

“This isn’t my lane,” Evans thought as he walked through the maze of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The trio’s first stop was the office of Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. “Which one is the senator?” Evans asked.

Coons, having never watched any of the Avengers movies, didn’t know who Evans was, either. But in short order, he says, he was won over by the actor’s charm and “very slight but still noticeable” Boston accent. The thing that got Coons the most, though—the thing that would lead him to pass out pocket cards on the Senate floor to recruit others, especially Republicans, to take part in the project—was how refreshing it was to be asked simple questions: Why should we support the United Nations? Why does foreign aid matter? Coons saw real value in trying to explain these things, simply and plainly, to his constituents.

“Look, I’m not naive,” Coons says. He is the first to admit that one-minute videos won’t fix what’s wrong with American politics. “But it’s important for there to be attempts at civic education and outreach,” he adds. “And, you know, his fictional character fought for our nation in a time of great difficulty.”

Evans stiffens slightly when people mention Captain America. The superhero comparison is, admittedly, a little obvious. But again and again on Capitol Hill, the shtick proved useful: Sometimes it’s better to be Captain America than a Holly­wood liberal elite who defends Roe v. Wade and wants to ban assault weapons. When Evans met Jim Risch, the Republican senator from Idaho joked about catching him up on NATO, “since he missed the 70 years after World War II.” When he met Representative Dan Crenshaw, a hard-line Texas Republican and former Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, Crenshaw lifted up his eye patch to reveal a glass prosthetic painted to look like Captain America’s shield.

Eventually, Evans loosened up—at least he lost the tie. Since that first round of visits, he and Kassen have returned to Washington every six weeks or so, collecting more than 1,000 videos from more than 100 members of Congress, along with about half of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls. Evans has conducted every interview himself. Kassen, meanwhile, managed the acquisition of a video compression startup in Montreal. About a dozen of the company’s engineers are building a custom content management system for A Starting Point, which is slated to go live in February. They’re running bandwidth tests too—just in case, as Kassen worries, “everyone in Chris’ audience logs on that first day.”

“We have to do this now,” Evans says. “It’s out there. We have to finish this. Shit.”

Back in LA, Evans pulls up the site on his iPhone. He hesitates for a moment and covers the screen with his hand. It’s still a demo, he explains, in the same bashful tone he uses to tell me the guest bathroom is out of toilet paper.

On the homepage, there’s a clip of Evans explaining how to use the site and a carousel of “trending topics” (energy, charter schools, Hong Kong). You can enter your address to call up a list of your representatives and find their videos; you can also contact them directly through the site. The rest is organized by topic and question, with a matrix of one-­minute videos for each—Democrats in the left-hand column, Republicans on the right.

Early on in the development of the site, Evans and Kassen fought over fact-checking. Kassen, arguing against, was concerned about the optics: Who were they to arbitrate truth? Evans insisted that A Starting Point would only seem objective if visitors knew the answers had been vetted somehow. Ultimately he prevailed, and they agreed to hire a third-party fact-checker. They have yet to put their thousand-plus videos through the wringer, so for now I’m seeing first drafts. If they’re found to contain falsehoods, Evans says, they won’t appear on the site at all.

Kassen showed me a sampling of some of this raw material. Under “What is DACA?” I found dozens of videos, offering dozens of different starting points.

One representative, a Republican whose district lies near the Mexican border, describes the program’s recipients as “1.2 million men and women who have only known the United States as their home.” They go to school, he explains; they serve in the military; they’ve all passed background checks.

Sometimes it’s better to be Captain America than a Hollywood liberal elite who defends Roe v. Wade and wants to ban assault weapons.

Another Republican representative says, “So, DACA is a result of a really bad immigration system … We’re seeing record numbers of families crossing the border because a kid equals a token for presence in the US. All right? We have all of these people come over, we can’t process them, they’re claiming asylum. I just heard from the secretary of Homeland Security this week, about nine in 10 don’t have valid claims of asylum. Meaning they’re not political—there’s no political persecution going on. OK?”

These two responses (from politicians on the same side of the aisle, no less) illustrate some of the quandaries that Evans, Kassen, and their fact-checkers are likely to encounter. The first representative, for instance, says there are 1.2 million DACA recipients, when in fact only 660,000 immigrants are currently enrolled in the program. The higher number is based on an estimate of those who could be eligible published by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. The “nine in 10” statistic, meanwhile, is a loose interpretation of data from 2018, which shows that only about 16 percent of immigrants who filed a “credible fear” claim were granted asylum. But this does not mean, as the representative implies, that the other claims weren’t “valid”—merely that they weren’t successful. Nearly half of all asylum claims from this time were dismissed for undisclosed reasons. These are fairly hair-splitting examples, but even the basic, definitional questions are drenched in opinion. What is Citizens United? “Horrible decision,” says a Democratic senator in his video response.

Evans doesn’t want to spend time refereeing politicians. To him, A Starting Point should act more like a database than a platform—rhetoric that rhymes with that of Facebook and Twitter, which have mostly sidestepped responsibility for their content. He’s just hosting the videos, he says; it’s up to politicians to decide how they answer the questions. There’s no comment section and no algorithmically generated list of recommended videos. “You need to decide what you need to watch next,” Kassen says.

One of the assumptions underlying Evans’ project—and it’s a very big assumption—is that the force of his fame will be enough to attract people who otherwise would have zero interest in watching a carousel of videos from their elected officials. This, by all accounts, is most people: Only a third of Americans can name their representatives in Congress, and those who can aren’t binge-watching C-Span. “Celebrities bring an extraordinary ability to get attention,” says Lauren Wright, a political researcher at Princeton and author of Star Power: American Democracy in the Age of the Celebrity Candidate. But Evans, she says, is “not taking the route that a lot of celebrities have, which is: The solution to American politics is me.” It would be one thing if Evans were guiding you through the inner workings of Congress like a chiseled Virgil. But why would someone watch a senator dryly explain NAFTA when they could watch, say, a YouTube video of Chris Evans on Jimmy Kimmel?

Without its leading man in the frame, A Starting Point begins to look uncomfortably similar to the many other platforms that have sought to fight partisanship online. A site called AllSides labels news sources as left, center, or right and encourages readers to create a balanced media diet with a little from each. A browser plug-in called Read Across the Aisle (“A Fitbit for your filter bubble”) measures the amount of time you spend on left-leaning, right-­leaning, or centrist websites. The Flip Side bills itself as a “one-stop shop for smart, concise summaries of political analysis from both conservative and liberal media.”

The underlying idea—that there would be a new birth of civic engagement if only we could wrest control of the information economy from the hands of self-serving ideologues and deliver the news to citizens unbiased and uncut—is an old one. In 1993, when the modern internet was just a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, Michael Crichton wrote in this magazine’s pages that he was sick and tired of the “polarized, junk-food journalism” propagated by traditional media outlets. (This was three years before Fox News and MSNBC came into being; he was talking about The New York Times.) What society needed, he argued, was something more like C-Span, something that encouraged people to draw their own conclusions.

But does any of it work? Not according to Wright. “We have many years of research on these questions, and the consensus among scholars is that the proliferation of media choices—including sites like Evans’—has not increased political knowledge or participation,” she says. “The problem isn’t the lack of information. It’s the lack of interest.” Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, agrees. “All of these fact-­checking initiatives, all of this work that goes into trying to disambiguate issues or trying to reduce noise—people have no time,” he says. “Some people care about politics, but those are not the people you need to reach.”

Naturally, this sort of talk makes Evans a little nervous. But he takes refuge in what he sees as the core strengths of the concept. For one thing, he argues, snack-size videos are more accessible than text. Also, those other sites rely on a translator to interpret the issues, while A Starting Point goes straight to the source. It’s not for policy wonks. It’s for average Americans, centrists, extremists, swing voters—everyone!—who want to hear about policy straight from the horse’s mouth. (Never mind that most people hold horses in higher regard.)

Evans has all kinds of ideas for how to keep people coming back. He might add a section of the website where representatives can upload weekly videos for their constituents, or a place where policymakers from different parties can discuss bipartisan compromise. He talks about these ideas with an enthusiasm so pure and so believable that you almost forget he’s an actor. The whole point, he says, is giving Americans a cheap seat on the kinds of conversations that are happening on Capitol Hill. That’s a show that Evans is betting people actually want to see.

The worst thing that could happen isn’t that nobody watches the videos. That would suck, but Evans could deal with it. What gets him riled up most is thinking about what he might have failed to consider. What if the site ends up promoting some bizarre agenda that he never intended? What if people use the videos for some kind of twisted purpose? “One miscalculation,” he says, “and you may not get back on track.” (See: Facebook.)

Evans knows his idea to save democracy can come off a little Pollyannaish, and if it flops, it’ll be his reputation on the line. But he really, really believes in it. OK, so maybe it won’t save America, but it might piece together some of what’s been broken. A fresh start. A starting point.

“This does feel to me like everybody wins here. I don’t see how this becomes a problem,” he says, before a look of panic crosses his face, the anxiety setting in again.

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of August 28th, 2019

Best of this Week: Spider-Man Life Story #6: The ‘10s - Chip Zdarsky, Mark Bagley, Drew Hennessy, Frank D’Armata and Travis Lanham

All good things must come to an end. That’s the main theme of this final issue of Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley’s phenomenal Life Story miniseries as it recounts the last adventure that Spider-Man goes on as he leaves the world free and safe in the capable hands of the new generation of superheroes.

Comic books are cyclical. For some heroes, you get a short run, 6-12 issues and then they disappear for years until they’re needed again for some big event. For the bigger heroes, there are ongoing series that last years upon years with some BIG changes that inevitably get reversed for the sake of reestablishing the status quo. It’s understandable, recognizable names draw big money, but there’s only so many times you can see a hero fight a particular villain before it becomes trite and meaningless.

The same goes for their daily lives as well. Peter Parker has been stuck as a meandering young adult for the better part of a decade since the events of One More Day and he hasn’t been allowed to grow past his immaturity, save for the few times when the situations have become desperate and dire. Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows tried to posit a family man Peter Parker in an alternate universe, but for the most part he came off as just regular Peter with a kid to banter off of. Nick Spencer and Tom Taylor are doing their best in their respective Spider-Man series to get Spider-Man back to a position where things actively change for him, but Chip Zdarsky has gone the extra mile.

The Spider-Man Life Story miniseries goes through Peter’s life if he actually aged with the decades that all of his comics took place in. He goes through the struggles of being an American citizen straddling the fence during Vietnam, the aftermath boiling to a superhuman civil war, a better Clone Saga of the 90s, Aunt May’s death, the start of the information age and finally having children and watching them grow up. Peter Parker is allowed to grow old, change with the times. He sees old friends die, new heroes emerge, give his take on current events of the time and it’s all been amazing.

I know I mentioned that fighting the same villains over and over can seem trite and meaningless, but that’s only when they’re done for the sake of being done. In this fantastic take on the Superior Spider-Man story, Peter and Otto have their absolute final confrontation with one another over the body and soul of the young Miles Morales. Peter and Miles are shot into space to stop some sort of satellite created by Doctor Doom that allowed him to fill the power vacuum left by Captain America and Iron Man’s Civil War. As the two explore, Peter is attacked by Kraven wearing the Venom symbiote, but he dispatches the villain easily and it’s revealed that the suit was just piloting a are skeleton.

Miles questions how it was possible and Peter replies that all of his old enemies are dead and rightfully accuses Miles of being Otto Octavius, Doctor Octopus. Otto reveals his scheme, but instead of fighting Pete physically, he chooses instead to go into the mindscape and have a battle of the intellect as they were always destined to do. 

Bagey pulls out all of his stops as he draws Spider-Man costumes from the various decades as well as beautifully illustrates some of the best of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery as they battle for supremacy. Set against a white background, the characters shine with their vibrant colors, dynamic posing and Bagley’s ever amazing facial expressions. I have never seen Otto look so menacingly mad and subsequently, once Peter defeats him, absolutely crushed. 

Using the only person that Peter knew Otto cared about, Aunt May, she’s able to convince Otto to let go of his hatred and rage. She tells him to let Miles live his life, to move on. I really felt this and inside, it feels like Zdarsky is also telling us that sometimes we have to let the status quo go. Spider-Man has been around for longer than some of us have been alive and will be long after most of us are gone. Do we really want him to be the same mid-20s to early 30s hero that we knew, or do we want to spend our time with someone new? Miles Morales is a little more than ten years old, he’s fairly young as a character and I wholeheartedly believe that he can carry on the Spider-Man name on his own.

As the satellite starts to collapse and there’s only one escape pod left, Peter chooses to save Miles and sacrifice himself so that the future can flourish in peace due to his heroism. It’s a true heroes death and something that we almost never see (and likely never will), but if this were a true moment of closure, then I would be happy with it. Peter Parker is known for having more guilt than a Catholic who hasn’t been to Mass for a month (or Daredevil) and as he finally closes his eyes for the final time, he has a nice conversation with Mary Jane and recounts his recurring dream of the day he truly learned about power and responsibility. The last panel is his guilt finally being washed away.

If there is one series I would recommend anyone read, hands down, without a doubt it would be this one. Chip Zdarsky has a strange yet beautiful understanding of how to tell a story with characters that some of us know better than our own family members. Mark Bagley has the art skills to make us care about them immensely as well. Putting these two together as well as their amazing inker in Andrew Hennessy and colorist in Frank D’Armata, they sell you on each decade presented and how Peter changes throughout. 

Spider-Man isn’t the same plucky youth we met in the 1960s. By the end of his story, he’s led a full life full of adventure and his time has been well spent making sure that it was a future worth living in. Isn’t that something that we all can only dream of?

---------------------------------------------------

God is Here.

Runner Up: Absolute Carnage #2 - Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin and Clayton Cowles

After the events of the last issue there aren’t enough words to describe just how hopeless things are looking for anyone who has ever worn a symbiote.

Spider-Man and venom have been backed into a corner by Carnage and his horde of infected inmates at the Ravencroft Asylum. With no other options Eddie decides it best to break out and punches a hole through the wall for a tactical retreat. Eddie is typically known for his ability to brute force his way through any problem, but Carnage is a new monster altogether and as he sees Spider-Man running out of energy, he gives into the fear that they might die.

In the past, the combined might of Spider-Man and Venom has been more than enough to combat Cletus Kasady. Even when Cletus had help, he still couldn't hold a candle to the heroes, but now, they're almost low tier by comparison.

Spider-Man notes that he's almost out of web fluid, so there's no way that they're swinging out of there, so Eddie and the Symbiote utilize one of their badass upgrades, spreads his wings and flies out of Ravencroft with Peter screaming frantically "WHATISGOINGONRIGHTNOWIHATEALLOFIT!" They then land on a roof in the city, defeated and horrified that they may not be able to stop Carnage this time.

Spider-Man says that he'll try to get a hold of Wolverine and Captain America and Eddie says that he'll go find any of the lowlifes that have been Symbiotes and the two split to complete their missions. Carnage chooses not to follow after them, instead he waits and plots. This issue then turns into a bit of a catch up game for the other tie in issues while Carnage gloats to Norman that everything is running smoothly and that the world will be painted red soon enough.

Ryan Stegman absolutely smashes the art in this issue with absolutely killer detail, expressions of fear and disgusting visuals, especially in Carnage's underground lair - The sprawling mass of symbiotic flesh that covers New York's sewage system, packed full of infected humans is a dreadful sight. In the beginning of the issue, Stegman drew a splash page of Carnage with other panels overlaid, showing one of his eyes of madness and the decayed flesh that's absolutely under the symbiote. It's an absolutely terrifying sight that set the tone of this horror show.

Not only were these shots great, but Stegman kills one of the moments that happens in the Miles Morales tie-in where Miles and Scorpion (Mac Gargan) fight off the infected hordes trying to take Gargan's spine. In the tie-in, the art is more subdued and less violent, but here, Stegman turns it into something to get squeamish over. Gargan tries to abandon Miles to fight the infected alone, but is thrown back into the fight by Venom.

Unfortunately, Carnage is there waiting to pounce. He plunges a tendril into Mac's back and DIGS around to get that spine. There's no need to leave anything to the imagination as the blood spurts out, Gargan screams in agony and Kasady looks like he's having the goddamned time of his life. Mayer and Martin's colors and inks really sell just how violent all of this is. It's almost gross just how close they get the color right and how dark the scene is. Miles swoops in to save him, but… no good deed goes unpunished.

Absolute Carnage absolutely does what it set out to do. I have never been more afraid for the Marvel Universe than I am right now. Of course, there have been universal threats, but with how close and personal this feels and the looming feeling of dread knowing that Knull is THIS close to returning is mortifying. Normally a villain will just kill a hero or destroy them and whatnot, but Carnage wants nothing but massacre. If there's not torture and blood then what is it all worth?

Everything that Cates and Stegman have been building to has lead us here. To say that it's beginning to lay off would be an understatement. The dividends of fear are fore more exponential than anyone could have anticipated and this will likely go down as one of the greatest Venom/Carnage stories ever written. Absolute High Recommend.

[valdomarx]

Early 616 Steve/Tony recs

Retro comics are truly the most delightful source of silliness and lovely fics. There’s Tony angsting about his imminent death, Steve sulking far more than you might imagine, and of course copious amounts of identity porn.

This month’s Steve/Tony recs are stories set early in canon in the 616, meaning around the 1960s -1990s. Let’s get nostalgic, and remember to give kudos and comments to our lovely authors!

Think of This as Solving Problems (That Should Never Have Occurred) by Sineala

No one knows Tony is Iron Man. Then Tony gets amnesia, and literally no one knows Tony is Iron Man.

If Only, If Only by coaster  

Iron Man liked to cuddle when he's tired and drowsy. More specifically, Iron Man cuddled Steve when he was tired and drowsy. Steve thought he was too late to do something about it.

I'll Be Home For Doom's Day (The You Can Count on Doom Remix) by teaberryblue

When Tony invites Steve on a last-minute jaunt to Latveria, Doom is lurking on the horizon. Literally.

Fortunately for them both, what happens in Latveria stays in Latveria.

In Every Way That Matters by Sineala

There are bright things about the future, and Steve's friendship with Iron Man is one of the brightest. So what if he doesn't know who the man under the mask is? That's not going to stop Steve from wanting his friendship, or even from wanting something more.

Your Hand in Mine by navaan 

Steve tries to find his place in this world. But it's hard if you're in love with someone who you don't really know outside of their secret identity.

Get Some Now by Sineala 

Avengers Mansion has a mysterious feline infestation. Meanwhile, Steve just can't figure out how to ask Tony out on a date. And the thirteen teleporting cats sure aren't helping matters any.

The Collection by Sineala 

In the early days of the Avengers, Steve finds out about Tony's Captain America memorabilia collection -- and much, much later, Tony tries to give a piece of it back to him.

Intrepid Hearts by Neverever 

Tony hangs around the mansion more after Steve is seriously hurt in an explosion caused by Iron Man. Steve likes Tony but doesn't know why Tony is upset all the time. Maybe Iron Man is the problem.

You and Me and Him by navaan

If you live in the same house, it’s really hard to keep your secrets. Especially if you are good friends. He doesn’t mean to watch as closely as he does, but it’s obvious to Steve that Tony and Iron Man are in a relationship. Right?

Detours in Getting to Yes by MsErmestH

Tony is trying hard to stay sober by throwing himself into his work and leading the Avengers. At the same time, Steve moves to Brooklyn Heights in an attempt to find himself after Sharon’s death.

Which means it’s a great time for the two of them to get in an argument about Stark International’s new Brooklyn facility and for Steve to realize he’s in love with Iron Man.

in the one garden you may call your own by Woad

It was probably the height of arrogance, helping Steve woo himself. But what could Tony do? Steve was right, there was no one else who knew the Golden Avenger better.

Steve enlists Tony to help him tell Iron Man how he feels.

Evocation by captainshellhead, vibraniumstark

Steve decides that he should get to know the Avengers's benefactor better. Tony can't imagine why, but he's not complaining.

That Time Back Then by navaan 

An accident sends Steve and Carol back in time and watching Steve and Iron Man interact gives Steve a new perspective on how blind both of them were all those years ago.

Gravitational Pull by antigrav_vector

A strange temple floating in space is discovered, and Steve and Tony are the logical choices to go investigate. What they find is going to make or break their relationship...

Take It Like You Mean It by Amuly

Steve Rogers is new to the Avengers and fitting in just fine. At least, he seems to be, though Tony notices that after battles he has a certain itch that needs scratching... in his ass. Soon enough, Tony finds himself watching as Steve fucks his way steadily through various teammates: Namor, Thor, Sam, Clint (or, more accurately, is fucked by them).

To Tony's great frustration, Steve never seems to ask Iron Man, or Tony Stark (because for all Steve Rogers knows, they're two different people) for a helping hand. It's enough to make a guy feel unwanted!

Bizarre Love Triangle by panickyintheuk                

Once the idea was in his head, he’d started picking up on all kinds of things, like the way Stark talked about Iron Man with such affection, and seemed to share so many of his mannerisms, and was constantly working on ways of improving the suit. It was obvious.

To Make Much of Time by Sineala 

When Iron Man rejects Steve's romantic advances, Steve is disappointed, but of course he understands -- Iron Man's secret identity is important. But when a portal opens and Tony Stark crashes into their midst from twelve years in the future, Steve starts to suspect that there are more secrets here than he can even begin to comprehend, and neither Iron Man nor Tony are providing any answers.

I'll Give You Gifts Until You Know My Name by Amuly

Mr. Stark is an extravagant gift-giver: he has the money for it, after all. As Iron Man, Tony has the opportunity to gift Steve even more presents that, while less expensive, are more heartfelt. Having a secret identity means Tony gets to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to showering Steve with presents.

Until Steve starts developing feelings for his armored companion, and all the benefits of living a double life are turned on their head for Tony Stark.

Comedy of Illusions by ladyshadowdrake

Thinking that he's been caught out, Tony confesses that he's Iron Man - at least that's what he thinks he's doing. Steve hears something very different. Date night, sexy-fun times, and a jumble of errors as Tony tries to fix his mistake results, all compounded by a mysterious enemy who's been hacking into SI servers.

As you can probably tell, I friggin love this era. So I’ve written a few fics on this theme too:

He Don't Love You (Like I Love You) by cptxrogers

Misunderstandings! Heartache! Heroic escapades! The beguiling tale of a LOVE TRIANGLE between handsome industrialist Tony Stark, his valiant alter ego Iron Man, and their intrepid teammate Steve Rogers. In this issue, our favorite Avengers face their toughest foils yet: THEIR OWN HEARTS! A drama not to be missed!

Comfort, Truth, Joy (the Mountains of Madness remix) by cptxrogers

A mysterious signal is emanating from deep within Antarctica, and Steve and Tony set out to investigate. If they can make it through the freezing temperatures and the deadly ice fields, something even stranger awaits them deep in the antarctic mountains.

Many Faces, All of them Yours by cptxrogers

Steve is head over heels for the team's benefactor Tony, but he feels terrible for his best friend, Iron Man, who seems to have developed a bit of a crush on him. And now there's a mysterious new hero, Nomad, stalking the streets of New York.

An identity porn soap opera.

[maddie-grove]

The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2018

My main takeaways from the past year’s reading:

Growing up is hard, whether you’re a working-class college sophomore trying to adjust to an Ivy League college, a chronically ill medieval kid trying to beat witchcraft charges, or A GHOST THE WHOLE TIME.

You can go to Kansas City or the Congo or SPACE, but you can never escape the past. 

Maybe I should be more worried about getting murdered?

Anyway:

20. East by Edith Pattou (2003)

Rose, a sixteenth-century Norwegian farm girl, loves her large family, but sometimes feels at odds with their rather staid personalities. So, when a talking polar bear offers to end her family’s poverty and her sister’s illness if she’ll stay with him for a year, she accepts not only out of desperation, but also wanderlust. This expansive retelling of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” (already a winner because of its determined, flawed heroine) shines because of its vivid use of multiple settings and its well-developed minor characters. I initially thought it was a little slow, but I really came to appreciate Pattou’s skill over time.

19. Joe College by Tom Perrotta (2000)

Danny, a working-class Yale sophomore in 1982, thinks he has a lot to worry about. His rich friends are clueless, his townie coworkers at the dining hall resent him, and his crush is dating a professor. Then he goes home for spring break, where he’s confronted with a pregnant ex and a bunch of mobsters who try to interfere with his father’s lunch-truck business. I mostly read this book for completism--I love Perrotta, but The Wishbones made me wary of his earlier work--yet this seemingly lighthearted story contains some fascinating moral and ethical dilemmas, plus a hero who is sympathetic despite his callowness. 

18. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (2010)

In the explosive conclusion of Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy, the protagonists find themselves in the middle of a war with an enemy they don’t understand, forcing them to wrestle with questions of right versus wrong, forgiveness versus revenge, and the possibility of redemption. This was an intense read, but there was a lot of genuine joy and love mixed in with the death and war.

17. Ashes to Ashes by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian (2014)

In the less literally but just as emotionally explosive conclusion of Han and Vivian’s Burn for Burn trilogy, former revenge-partners Lillia and Kat try to move on in the wake of a tragedy, as well as the abrupt departure of Mary, the other member of their retribution-themed trio. The future is looking bright, but then it becomes clear that Mary is neither gone nor happy with their life choices. I read the first book of this trilogy way back in 2014 and, while I enjoyed it well enough, I wasn’t blown away. This spring, though, I had the sudden urge to read the next two books, and they were both a wonderful mix of affecting human drama and ludicrously soapy plot twists.

16. The Charm School by Susan Wiggs (1999)

Isadora Peabody, the awkward scion of an otherwise graceful old Bostonian family in the 1850s, decides to take her fate in her own hands and become a translator on a merchant ship bound for Brazil. The captain, freewheeling Ryan Calhoun, isn’t too happy with this unusual arrangement, but he comes to admire and sympathize with the independent-minded and painfully self-conscious Isadora. At the same time, Isadora realizes that Ryan’s untidiness and occasional bouts of drunkenness disguise a heart and principles and a talent for making out in lush Brazilian gardens. I was absolutely delighted by this romance novel, which is an absolute romp with some terrific character development. 

15. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (2009)

In the middle book of the Chaos Walking trilogy, the protagonists reach the end of a long journey, only to find themselves separated and caught between two warring factions. This installment does a great job of elaborating upon the world introduced in the first book, offering new perspectives on old characters, and introducing compelling new conflicts. 

14. Fire with Fire by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian (2013)

In the middle book of the Burn for Burn trilogy, classmates Kat, Lillia, and Mary deal with the fallout of their semi-successful Strangers on a Train-lite revenge scheme. Kat and Lillia want to call it quits, but their sympathy for Mary causes them to agree to one last score, so to speak. Unfortunately, FEELINGS and PAST TRAUMA and DANGEROUS PSYCHIC POWERS complicate matters. Despite my love for Ashes to Ashes, Fire with Fire has a special place in my heart because it’s the first book to explore the characters’ emotions in depth, as well as the first one to go way over the fucking top.

13. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (2018)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a rash of horrifying home invasion rapes, seemingly meticulously planned, plagued the bedroom communities of Sacramento. Then a series of uncannily similar home invasion murders broke out in the Southern California. In this book published after her death in 2016, McNamara makes the case that this was the work of one person, dubbed the Golden State Killer. McNamara has a clear, humane way of describing grisly and/or convoluted events, and her portrait of the dark side of California suburbia is enthralling. 

12. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

In 1960, a dangerously determined and self-righteous reverend from the American South travels to the Belgian Congo, even though his own church begged him not to go. He makes the questionable decision to take his exhausted wife and four daughters--vain Rachel, suck-up Leah, nearly mute Adah, and baby Ruth May--along with him. Their new home is a shock to all of them in various ways, and that’s before a personal tragedy and the Congo Crisis enter the picture. Kingsolver makes excellent use of her five viewpoint characters, all of whom have distinctive voices and enjoyably unpredictable (yet entirely appropriate) character arcs.

11. Lighter than My Shadow by Katie Green (2013)

As a young child, Katie has seemingly minor issues around food, but during adolescence she develops a serious eating disorder and almost starves herself to death. A diagnosis and the ensuing support of her parents seem to signal hope, but recovery is more complicated that one might expect. This graphic memoir offers a nuanced portrait of the sheer range of stuff that gets wrapped up in an eating disorder: religion, gender, sex, control, trauma, the desire for independence, and so much more. Green’s “cute” art style enhances the story, both because it makes an interesting contrast to the upsetting material and because it grounds the reader in the humanity of the characters. 

10. Mindhunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (1995)

Throughout the 1970s, FBI agent John Douglas, along with the rest of the Investigative Support Unit, compiled information about an increasingly common type of criminal: the serial killer. Gradually, they developed the practice of criminal profiling. As gruesome as it might sound to call this an excellent beach read, that’s essentially how I experienced it (not that I went anywhere this summer, but still). The pace is fast, the style is engaging, and the authors are frank but not overly lurid in their presentation of the nasty details.

9. The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro (1977)

In this collection of connected short stories, Rose, a bright Canadian girl, grows up in a rough, deprived neighborhood with her sick, stern father and prickly but not unloving stepmother. Life in the wider world brings her mingled pride and shame at her background, a largely disastrous early marriage, and eventually a satisfying but decidedly unglamorous acting career. Munro is a master of description, and she has a sense of fun that puts her head and shoulders above most short story writers. And the title story is just the most perfectly painful exploration of why someone would stay with a partner who is deeply wrong for them.

8. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (2009)

In 1985, seven-year-old Libby Day narrowly escaped death at the hands of her teenage brother, but her mother and two older sisters weren’t so lucky. Except that Libby doesn’t feel so lucky, either, because she’s thirty-one years old with massive trauma, dwindling funds, and few adult life skills. Then a true-crime enthusiast contacts her with an offer: cash in return for investigating whether her brother was actually the murderer. Dark Places may be the awkward middle child of Flynn’s novels, but that reputation is undeserved; it has a thrilling plot, a perversely lovable heroine, and a sly critique of the “Morning in America” view of the 1980s.

7. The Hostage by Susan Wiggs (2000)

In the confusion of the Great Chicago Fire, frontiersman Tom Silver kidnaps heiress Deborah Sinclair, hoping to force her industrialist father into compensating the victims of his negligence. He’s not prepared, though, for her dogged escape attempts, her hard-earned resilience, or the hints that something was horribly wrong in her life even before the kidnapping. I had my doubts about reading a kidnapping romance, but Susan Wiggs proved me wrong. (It helps that Tom’s motives are both understandable AND not presented as an excuse for dragging Deborah into his revenge plan.) The super-slow-burn romance pairs wonderfully with the action-packed plot, and I love Deborah so much.

6. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006)

Troubled reporter Camille Preaker returns to her small Missouri hometown to investigate the grisly murder of one tween girl and the ominous disappearance of another. As upsetting as the case is, it doesn’t hold a candle to what waits for her at home: a softly cruel mother, a barely there stepfather, and a teenage half-sister who alternates between adoring Camille and tormenting her. Sharp Objects entirely deserves its reputation as the best (if not most popular) Flynn novel; it has a beautifully constructed plot, descriptions so lush that you feel like you can reach out and touch Wind Gap (not that you’d want to), and a deeply flawed yet admirable heroine.

5. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (2008)

At nearly thirteen, Todd Hewitt is the youngest resident of Prentisstown, and nobody is ever going to take that distinction away from him. Just after his birth, a plague killed most of the humans on New World, including every woman and girl. What’s more, the same plague made it so the thoughts of men (and most other living creatures) are audible to all. And the mayor of Prentisstown is a religious fanatic who won’t let anyone watch videos or teach kids to read. It’s...not awesome. Then Todd makes a shocking discovery that forces him to flee his community and question everything he knows. This book is a fascinating sci-fi take on the frontier horror story (ala The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, and, more recently, The Witch) with a read-hundreds-of-pages-a-night plot and astonishing moment of wonder.

4. After the Wedding by Courtney Milan (2018)

Lady Camilla Worth, daughter of an earl who committed suicide to avoid treason charges, has passed from home to unwelcoming home ever since, finally ending up as an unknown housemaid. Adrian Hunter, a mixed-race ceramics heir on a desperate mission to make his family happy, happens to visit the house where she’s employed. Under some very strange circumstances, they’re forced to wed at literal gunpoint. Working together to unravel the mystery and get an annulment, they grow to like each other, which complicates things. This is one of my favorite romance novels ever, with wonderful characters (especially Camilla!), an explosive plot, and masterfully explored themes of healing and being true to oneself.

3. Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy (2017)

A famous magazine writer and father of two young children, Handy expounds upon the classics of children’s literature (The Cat in the Hat, Goodnight Moon, the Little House series, Narnia, the Ramona books, etc.). As someone who frequently rereads the favorites of my youth to de-stress (House of Stairs 5eva), the subject was tailor-made for me, and Handy’s execution is impressive. He covers an amazing amount of ground, switches deftly from one mode of analysis to another, and shares plenty of funny anecdotes and moving reflections on parenthood.

2. Blankets by Craig Thompson (2003)

In this autobiographical graphic novel, Craig, a creative, devout, and deeply lonely teenager in rural Wisconsin, meets his first love, Raina, at a church retreat that otherwise would’ve been miserable. They become pen pals and are finally able to arrange for him to spend a few complicated, wonderful weeks with her and her family. Their relationship and its subsequent fallout drive him to confront his conflicted feelings about his faith, his art, and his family. This is an absolutely beautiful story, complemented perfectly by the wintry landscapes and expressive human figures.

1. Breath by Donna Jo Napoli (2003)

Salz, a twelve-year-old boy in medieval Saxony, is dismissed and sometimes even reviled by most of his community, including his own father and brothers, for the unnamed illness that stunts his growth and makes it difficult to breathe. Still, he’s got a lot going on; he helps his beloved grandmother around the house, studies for the priesthood, and belongs to a secret coven. When an abnormally wet spring drives the rats indoors and causes a strange disease to spread among the locals, Salz’s sharp intellect and thirst for knowledge are more needed than ever. This novel is a historically grounded retelling of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” where the protagonist has cystic fibrosis, and did I ever think I would type that combination of words? No, I did not, but I am so glad things worked out that way. Napoli’s treatment of disability is unusually gratifying, because she illustrates the essential things that a society loses when it dismisses the sick and disabled (as well as some other marginalized groups, such as women). At the same time, Salz’s family and neighbors aren’t cruel for the sake of cruelty; they’re just uninformed, scared, and/or bad at managing their own problems without lashing out at others, which does not absolve them but makes for a more thoughtful story than if they were just bad seeds. The portrayal of Salz’s struggles to reconcile the different sources of wisdom in his life--Church orthodoxy, pagan folk practices, and the knowledge slowly filtering in from the Arabic world--is also fascinating, plus the pathological mystery makes for a tight, exciting plot. All this in less than 300 pages! And do not get me started on how much I love Großmutter.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Stan Lee [1922 – 2018]

Stan the Man.

. . .

I tell people that after four guys with Liverpudlian accents, the greatest influencers of pop culture in America in the 1960s were four editors.

A lot of us looked on them as uncles -- and an aunt -- who served as inspirations / role models / guideposts / influencers during our lives, especially our impressionable preteen through early adult years.

Uncle Hugh was the worldly bon vivant:  Suave, sophisticated, erudite, hip.  He showed us what it meant to be a grown up even if our parents disapproved of his lifestyle.

Aunt Helen was kind of Uncle Hugh’s female opposite number, trash talked a bit because she was a female and “women just shouldn’t behave that way” but y’know what, every family needs an eccentric-bordering-crazy aunt and she was America’s.

Especially for tens of millions of young women and girls to whom she demonstrated  there wasn’t just one lifepath stretching before them but thousands.

Uncle Forry showed us it was okay to be obsessive and geeky about weird interests and, contrary to our parents’ advice, to seek community with others who shared those interests.  Okay, so maybe there was something a little odd, a little off about him, but he showed us how the magic was made, and thus steered thousands of us into creative careers.

And Uncle Stan?  Uncle Stan was the avuncular raconteur, the enthusiastic cheerleader crackling with energy, the slick yet charming salesman so good at his job it never seemed like he was selling anything even when he was most blatant about it.  He got us excited about what he was selling, and unlike our other uncles and aunt, he would drop by once a week with some new adventures to share with us.

He was our storyteller, our mythmaker, and in a very real sense, our prophet.

I’ll leave it for you to decide if he was a false one or not.

. . .

Luck matters.

Talent is tremendous, perseverance a plus, and skill a must, but it’s better to be lucky than good.

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, the son of a working class immigrant New York couple. He grew up in a manner very typical for New Yorkers and Americans of that era, struggling through the Great Depression, catching odd jobs where he could find them, finally landing a gig as a nepotist at a company owned by the husband of a cousin.

That cousin’s husband was Martin Goodman, and the company was Marvel (nee Timely) Comics.

If it had been a dress making factory we would have never heard of him.

. . .

Decades later, The Cannon Group -- that slapdash conglomeration of ruthless ambition and genuine love of cinema held together by the thinnest threads of artistic ability -- released their version of Captain America and erroneously attributed the character as “created by Stan Lee”.

To his honor, Stan was embarrassed by this gaffe and when asked would be quick to cite Jack Kirby and Joe Simon as the actual creators.

Stan entered the then nascent Marvel Universe early in 1941 with issue three of the Captain America comic book, penning a two page text story:  Captain America Foils The Traitor's Revenge

And credit where credit is due:  From the very beginning of his creative association with Marvel, he was adding innovative ideas (in this case, the first instance of Cappy using his shield as a frisbee to attack bad guys).

But that was far from the most important thing young Stanley Lieber created in that story.

The bigger, more important, far more influential invention?

Stan Lee

. . .

Take a moment to understand how important writers were in American culture between the two world wars.

Hemingway kicked over the anthill.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis probed deep down through the upper crust into the American psyche, John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair did the same in the opposite direction with their stories of working class people.

Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler looked at the underbelly of American cities while William Faulkner dug deep in the old south.

Anita Loos and Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and James Thurber and even irascible Alexander Woollcott brought sunshine and laughter.

These people were not just celebrities, they were looked upon as key influencers and trend setters, seeing where the culture was going and commenting on it, illuminating the way forward for the rest of us.

And that’s not counting the hundreds of other authors who wrote popular books and magazines, who filled the best seller lists with novels that became hit movies.

The American people read and they read a lot.  Every week The Saturday Evening Post would deliver a half dozen top flight stories and articles to your home.  Liberty and Collier’s and McCall’s and The Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook would also bring dozens of well written stories to you, and that’s not counting the vast pulp market or publications like Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Review and The New Yorker which offered literary criticism not for a high brow elite coastal urban audience but for Americans all across the country.

We read more, and thanks to pre-TV radio we listened more, not sitting passively as images washed over us.

Being a writer was a big deal back in those days, even if it wasn’t the most reputable of professions.

My father wanted to be a writer, but after the Korean War he put that aside and started working in a dress factory.

You’ve never heard of him.

. . .

Like many young people between the two world wars, Stanley Martin Lieber harbored literary ambitions.

He’d written for his school newspaper, did some small scale copywriting for neighborhood advertisers, and briefly worked with the W.P.A. Theater Project as well as a couple of other entry level jobs typical then and now for teens after school or on weekends.

His initial employment at Timely Comics was pure schlub work:  Sharpen the pencils, refill the ink wells, erase the pencil lines once the inkers were done.

I can easily imagine him pestering Joe Simon, co-creator and editor of Captain America, until Simon finally said, “Sure, kid, write a two page story for me” just to get him out of his hair.

(Sidebar:  Back in the early days of comics, there was some question whether they qualified for the cheaper second class periodical mailing rates.  The formula of two text pages per comic took root as the minimum number needed for a publication to get that postal designation, so that’s why there are literally tens of thousands of crappy short-short stories in old comic books; they just had to be text, they didn’t have to be good.)

When Stanley Martin Lieber turned in Captain America Foils The Traitor's Revenge, he didn’t put his name on it.

He was saving that for his big / important / serious work.

Rather, he put his pen name on it:  “Stan Lee”

. . .

In all fairness, young Stanley Martin Lieber proved a fast study.

Within a year he was writing then creating back-up features for the various comic titles Timely published.

When the powerhouse creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left Timely towards the end of 1941, Martin Goodman installed Stanley Martin Lieber as the company’s new editor.

He was 19 at the time.

Now, while that is a laudable accomplishment, it’s also not as impressive as it sounds.

Low rent entertainment companies operate like assembly line factories:  The creative talent throws their work into the hopper at one end, the distributor hauls the finished product out at the other.

If the basic structure is sound, it doesn’t need a lot of attention to function smoothly.

Proof of this is that almost no sooner had Stanley Martin Lieber been promoted to editor than he was drafted, and from early 1942 to mid-1945, while he was in uniform, Timely Comics chugged along quite nicely in his absence.

At the end of the war and his military service, Stanley Martin Lieber made a fateful decision: He went back to work for his cousin’s husband.

. . .

To understand much of Stan’s career and later years, you have to look at his mid-1940s mind set.

Stan had never really worked for a living.

As noted, all his earlier jobs had been teenage entry level work.

While he was happy to have the income and helped with his family’s finances, he never had to support himself, much less a family of his own.  

Compare this to Simon and Kirby, who had hit the streets and hit ‘em hard during the Depression, scrambling for every odd job they could find, building their portfolio and reputation while supporting themselves.

There sat in the hearts and minds of the freelance writers and artists he employed a certain tough confidence that Stan never enjoyed.

His freelancers and co-workers who, like Simon and Kirby, would and could take principled stands were forever citizens of another country, another land that Stan could only gaze upon wistfully but never enter himself.

Draw your own Moses parallel.

. . .

If returning to Martin Goodman’s employ was a fateful decision for Stan, it was certainly a financially sound one.

Like many vets, he married soon after the war ended, in this case to Joan Clayton Boocock, a British hat model working in New York.

Of the many improbable things in Stan’s life, few are as improbable as this odd romance.  The couple enjoyed a very happy and long, long life together.

Seventy years married.

We should all be so lucky

But the blessing of this marriage was clouded by Stan’s anxiety over providing for his family.

He worked hard to support his wife and daughter.

But he never had the courage or confidence to look elsewhere.

When he married Joan, for all intents and purposes Stan married Marvel as well.

. . .

While comics publishing in general and superheroes in particular did well during World War Two, the market changed drastically afterwards.

Superheroes faded fast, replaced by true crime and horror comics.

Even super patriot Captain America went the horror root with the last two issues of his book being retitled Captain America's Weird Tales before being retired in 1949.

The true crime and horror craze was soon scuttled due to Dr. Frederic Wertham and the subsequent Comics Code.  

Timely renamed itself Atlas, and for the 1950s Stan busied himself on a variety of titles: Westerns, funny animals, teen, nurse (yes, there was a market for nurse comics), romance, teen nurse romance, and monster (a highly sanitized kid friendly version of the now banned horror comics).

He also got to know and work with an astonishing array of freelance talent:  Jack Kirby (now bouncing from project to project), Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr., Marie Severin, Gil Kane, and Wally Wood among others.

He enhanced his income with an odd assortment of side projects, including a comic strip based on a radio show and a pamphlet on how to write comic books.

Stan joked that he was just Goodman’s interim editor, that he would leave Timely-now-Atlas the moment a better gig showed up.

Stan didn’t look for a better gig.

The better gig came looking for him.

. . .

There are numerous versions of how Marvel Comics came about.

They all start with the Justice League over at DC.

As noted, after World War Two superhero comics faded and faded fast.

All the superhero titles vanished except for Action Comics (featuring Superman), Detective Comics (featuring Batman and Robin), and the occasional Wonder Woman cover story published by DC.

And the reason those three titles stayed in print was that if DC failed to publish them, they would either lose the license (in the case of Wonder Woman) or open themselves to the possibility of their creators reclaiming them.

And greedy scum that they are -- hey, these are comic books we’re talking about, a.k.a. the sleaziest industry on earth -- DC wasn’t about to let those properties go.

Despite efforts by other companies to relaunch superheroes (including a failed attempt by Stan and Atlas with Captain America in 1954), the kids just weren’t buying.

But in 1959 DC comics reintroduced Aquaman and Green Lantern, added their revamped but lackluster Flash, plucked the Martian Manhunter from the sci-fi bin, and added them to their big three (or 3.5 if you count Robin) as the Justice League of America in a one shot story.

To their delight, they captured lightning in a bottle (or at least on the pages of a badly printed comic).

Now, there are three primary variants in the Marvel rebirth story.

The first is that while Martin Goodman was golfing with Jack Liebowitz of DC, Liebowitz couldn’t help bragging on the Justice League’s success and Goodman went back to the office and told Stan to come up with something similar.

The second is that Stan had noticed the success of Justice League and suggested it to Goodman when they were brainstorming ideas for Atlas.

The third is that Goodman was on the verge of shutting Atlas down, the offices were already being packed up, Stan was in a dither, and Jack Kirby told him to relax, they’d figure out a way of staying in business before Goodman lowered the boom for good.

What really happened?

Who knows…

Kirby’s version certainly sounds more in character for the men involved, but the paper trail points somewhere between the Goodman and Stan versions.

Maybe (probably?) some combination of all three, with each participant remembering only the part that seemed most important to them.

Whatever the true impetus, a decade and a half writing, drawing, and editing romance / soap opera and goofy monster comics served Stan and Kirby well.

The unique gestalt of The Fantastic Four flew right in the face of DC’s “super friends” approach: This was a team of superheroes who had their own personal problems, who didn’t like each other all that much, and who had to spend as much time fighting their own personal discord as they did the supervillains that threatened them.

DC caught lightning in a bottle.

Marvel (formerly Atlas, and before that Timely) caught…a spark.

The popular history (and we’ll get into how that was shaped in a moment) is that The Fantastic Four and all the other Marvel titles were huge hits from the git-go, steam rolling over all opposition to dominate the industry.

Ehhh…not quite.

Insofar as they sold well and kept the doors open and attracted a good audience response and an appreciable amount of ancillary merchandising, yeah, that they did.

But DC outsold Marvel for most of the decade, including the roll out years when all their big characters / teams / franchises were introduced.

There’s a phrase I use: The jazz musician’s jazz musician.

I use it not to just specifically reference jazz but to point out the innovators who are doing highly influential cutting edge stuff that mainstream audiences just don’t get.

Those in the know -- other jazz musicians, or in the case of Marvel, other artists and writers and editors -- grasp what’s happening immediately, but it isn’t until they begin reinterpreting it and filtering it through more audience familiar styles that the innovators’ true impact is felt.

And then, if they’re lucky, the innovators finally come into their own much later as the mainstream catches up to where they once were decades earlier.

Marvel didn’t exactly struggle, but they had to work hard to remain competitive during the 1960s -- and there was a lot of competition out there.

But the pay off came in the mid-1970s, when the young fans (and we’ll get to them, too) grew up and started entering the business.

I state this without equivocation:  All American comics from 1975 to the start of the manga boom in 2000 -- every single one of ‘em -- were direct or indirect responses to what Marvel had been doing from 1961 to 1967.

What part did Stan play in all this?

. . .

There are almost as many ways to create a comic book as there are comic book creators, but the two chief styles are DC full scripts and Marvel outlines.

At DC, writers handed in scripts broken down panel by panel, dialog included; the artist followed the script as closely as possible and made no major changes without editorial permission.

At Marvel, Stan would discuss a story idea with a writer or sometimes directly with the artist.  At most this would result in a short outline (three pages max for a full length comic) that laid out the basic idea of the story, described the characters and conflict, and gave some idea how things should wrap up.  The artist then broke down and laid out the story by themselves; the editor would either add dialog themselves or send a Xerox copy to the writer for them to come up with dialog.

If you have a proficient hard working art crew, the Marvel method lets you produce a lot of comics very fast, and relatively cheaper since the editor and artist can knock out a story idea over coffee, thus sidestepping the writer for at least the first half of the process.

Stan and his artists had been working this way for a decade and a half.

They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how to play into the former and avoid the latter.

Any competent bullpen can produce comics this way.

The Marvel bullpen had a lot of good, talented artists.

But it also had

J*A*C*K FREAKIN’ K*I*R*B*Y

The most interesting, the most innovative work in any art form gets done around the edges where the gatekeepers are loath to visit.

“Yeah, sure, whatever, knock yourself out, just have it done by Thursday…”

Low budget filmmakers, late night TV, garage bands, cruddy comedy clubs, fanzines, these are venues where the cutting edge bleeds, where most of the stuff is crap because nobody cares but because somebody cares part of it is dynamite.

Jack Kirby cared, and cared a lot about comics.

So did Steve Ditko.

So did Jim Steranko.

Stan was smart enough to see that and get out of the way.

. . .

So what part of Marvel’s success can be attributed to Stan?

Based on what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, and what I know, I’d say anywhere from as little as 20% to as much as 33 1/3% of any specific title reflects Stan’s input.

Stan was no dummy, Stan had talent, Stan had skill, Stan had good ideas.

But Stan also had little time and even less help.

He’d throw the idea at the artists and the artists would throw their execution back.

Stan, to varying degrees, would refine the story in the dialog stage so that it fit in consistently with the rest of the titles they were publishing.

But the success of Marvel as an entity?

That’s 80% Stan’s doing.

. . .

I said Kirby and Ditko and Steranko loved comics.

Stan did, too, but he loved Stan even more.

He’d spent half his life laboring in relative anonymity.  

His dreams of a serious literary career had come to naught.

His resume’ consisted solely of working for his cousin’s husband’s middling successful comic book company.

He lacked the courage and confidence that the artists in his bullpen possessed, courage and confidence they’d acquired by knocking on doors and chasing after jobs.

In 1961 he stood on the edge of middle age, with nothing significant to show for himself.

And while The Fantastic Four and Thor and The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man may not have equaled the successes at DC, they sure were more than anything he’d experienced before.

And by promoting them, he also promoted himself.

The Marvel method made lengthy continuities and crossovers easier to execute than DC’s formally scripted method.  His lack of time led to multi-part stories and to setting those stories not in mythical Metropolis or Gotham City in real life New York so he wouldn’t have to provide artists with references.

These lengthy continuities and crossovers, as opposed to DC’s standalone stories, got Marvel readers to pick up more and more titles, and to become more and more deeply involved in the Marvel Universe.

Stan interacted with these fans of Marvel comics (and they were enthusiastic, if not numerous).  His column, Stan’s Bullpen, came out every week, whenever a new Marvel Comic hit the stands.  He handed out No-Prizes to sharp eyed fans who spotted errors, getting those fans to read even more Marvel Comics.

“Face front, true believer! Excelsior!”

. . .

For all his delight in leading the fans in The Merry Marvel Marching Society, Stan didn’t lead his bullpen with the same enthusiasm.

Something transpired between him and Ditko.  Ditko famously came in with the finished art for Spider-Man #38, dropped the pages on the desk of Stan’s secretary, said, “That’s that!” and walked out, never to darken Marvel’s doors again.

A few years later, as Marvel characters began booming in popularity and raking in licensing deals, Kirby approached Stan and suggested they present a unified front to Marvel’s owners to demand a slice of the pie they were generating for the company.

Stan asked for some time to mull the prospect over…

…and immediately raced to Martin Goodman and signed a long term contract stating that all the work and characters he and Kirby had created for Marvel were done under a work-for-hire contract, and that the company owed no shares or royalties to either of them.

Kirby left Marvel and, ever the jazz musician’s jazz musician, went over to DC and created new comic book series for them.

Marvel’s onerous work-for-hire contract (essentially by endorsing one’s paycheck one signed away all rights to work one had done) came under legal scrutiny, and when changes in US copyright law created the potential for the Kirby estate to sue to recover the copyright on the characters he had co-created, Marvel sued the estate to prevent them from going to court.

The Kirby estate was blocked again and again in their effort to regain their right to sue, but when the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Marvel capitulated rather than run the risk they might win the right to sue and might prevail.

When Stan would go on vacation, Marvel employees would tremble.

Stan hated personal confrontations, and rather than fire someone face-to-face, when he would go on vacation it would befall some other member of Marvel management to discharge the employee.

(Stan would feign ignorance when he came back, and would promise to “see what I can do” to help the discharged employee, but of course that never happened.)

. . .

Stan’s hard work promoting Marvel as a brand paid off, and by the mid-1970s he and the company were dominating comics sales.

Ancillary merchandising and marketing varied from year to year as audience interest ebbed and flowed, but Stan was always quick to make sure his name got mentioned in every press release, his cameo in every live action movie and TV show.

And to be truthful, it was hard not to like Stan.

He bubbled over with energy and enthusiasm, he tirelessly promoted Marvel (and himself), and constantly engaged with fans.

For me, one of the highlights of my professional career was to pass Stan in the hallway of Marvel Productions in the early 1980s and to have him recognize me and call me by name.

I felt I had arrived.

Stan’s daily involvement with Marvel diminished over the years, first because he moved to California to make deals for Marvel movies and TV shows (not that many at that time), later because he no longer connected with the story telling style Marvel evolved into.

He formally split off from Marvel in the late 1990s (though retaining a healthy retainer from them) and got involved in a number of questionable ventures.

Our orbits intersected again during the short lived existence of Stan Lee Media (SLM), ostensibly his effort to create a new brand of superheroes for a new century, in reality a stock manipulation scheme that saw people sentenced to lengthy prison terms and the mastermind behind it fleeing to Brazil.

Stan, it should be pointed out, was as much a victim as Merrill Lynch in all this, but it also reflects a key shortcoming in his character.

I had, thanks to the intercession of Mark Evanier, been briefly employed as Stan’s vice-president of creative affairs for SLM.

From the beginning of our employment, I and most of Stan’s other staff wondered how SLM was supposed to make money, and couldn’t follow the business strategy of Peter Paul, the former lawyer turned convicted drug smuggler who had insinuated himself in Stan’s life.

Something was rotten in the state of California, and the more one questioned the wisdom of Paul’s strategy, the more likely one was to be shown the door.

When it became apparent my neck was next on the chopping block, advice from Steve Gerber and several other former Marvel employees helped me secure a nice severance deal. The advice they gave was to approach Stan first before he had to bring the matter up, point out the fit didn’t seem to be working, and allow Stan to fall over himself in his eagerness to settle the matter without any negative confrontation.  Which I did, and which he did, and we both came away happier for it.

Shortly after that, the company imploded as the stock manipulation became apparent, and Paul’s secondary scheme was revealed to use the same copyright provision Marvel and Stan fought against re the Kirby estate to lay claim to Marvel characters.

Stan moved on from there to POW! Entertainment, another effort to capitalize on Stan’s celebrity status, and while that company was legit, it did not generate the response they anticipated.

During that period, however, thousands of missing pages of Marvel artwork was discovered in a storage unit Stan rented.

The official story was that these pages had been accidentally scooped up when Stan left Marvel’s New York office, but that doesn’t pass the smell test.  Those pages were supposed to be returned to the original artists; selling them as collectibles was an ancillary form of income and one that comics publishers allowed (the art having been transferred to either print film or digital files by that point).

Another thing that didn’t pass the smell test was the “lost” original outline for the first Fantastic Four story, a one and a half page document that had been displayed under glass at SLM office.  The story of how it was “found” seems awfully suspect, and more than a few of us think it was a =ahem!= “recreation” typed up at a much later date.

POW! tried promoting him as a still viable, still vital creator, but anyone who had a meeting with him knew how much of his success rested on the talents of his co-creators. They tried promoting him as still current in pop culture, but he was too old and frail to sell that idea.

They actually tried circulating a “fake Stan Lee™”, an actor hired to go and do a Stan Lee impersonation at local conventions, but that idea quickly died an embarrassing death.

Eventually POW! and Stan dissolved their formal relationship, and POW! sold out to foreign investors, leaving Stan to his own devices. 

The man who always feared not having somebody to work for was finally on his own.

In his latter years, Stan appeared in the news again and again, this time as an elderly man abused by at least some of his caregivers.

Stan sure could pick ‘em, huh?

That’s not the sort of publicity anyone deserves to have, much less endure.  The abuse included dragging him around the country to conventions to promote…something.

Footage of him in a very disoriented state, being told how to sign his own name for autograph hounds who had just paid a hefty fee for same, outraged his fans, even those of us who recognized his complicity in his own misfortune. 

. . .

Uncle Hugh did not age well. For a man so worldly and debonair, he never recognized when it was time for him to leave the party.  After a while his hanging on became an embarrassment, like the old geezer trying to teach the young kids all the hot new dances such as the foxtrot and the twist.

Aunt Helen was more savvy in that respect, and she found that by stepping back a bit, she could wait for the occasional question to be directed at her, and for her answer to be taken seriously instead of with an eyeroll.

Uncle Forry was indeed a bit “off”, downright creepy in fact, and while much of his influence on others was for the good, a significant portion was not.  We look back and say “we shoulda known, we shoulda known” but the truth was he validated our interests when no one else would, and for that we were willing to overlook a multitude of sins.

And Uncle Stan?  He lived long enough to become a cautionary tale…

. . .

It’s impossible for me to dislike Stan.

Roz Kirby, Jack’s wife, hated him with an unholy passion, but she earned that right.

Steve Ditko clearly had an axe or three to grind, but he’s maintained his silence.

Steve Gerber had his friction points with Stan, but in the end bore him no animosity.

Another comics pro, when news broke of the discovery of the missing Marvel artwork, shook his head and said with a rueful smile, “Stan never fails to disappoint, doesn’t he?”

Stan the Man.

The man who was Marvel.

The mythmaker of modern superhero culture.

We want him to be as heroic, as noble as the heroes he wrote.

But he wasn’t.

He was all too typical of too many people.

Too anxious.

Too easily swayed.

Too eager to succeed.

Too quick to take short cuts.

He loved his wife.

He loved his daughter.

He was charming and gracious in person, and there are few meals I’ve shared that were more delightful than those SLM business lunches.

There was good in him, but not enough strength.

We want our heroes to be strong.

Stan the Man.

Stan the human.

R.I.P.

  © Buzz Dixon

[justforbooks]

If Stan Lee revolutionized the comic book world in the 1960s, which he did, he left as big a stamp — maybe bigger — on the even wider pop culture landscape of today.

Think of “Spider-Man,” the blockbuster movie franchise and Broadway spectacle. Think of “Iron Man,” another Hollywood gold-mine series personified by its star, Robert Downey Jr. Think of “Black Panther,” the box-office superhero smash that shattered big screen racial barriers in the process.

And that is to say nothing of the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor and other film and television juggernauts that have stirred the popular imagination and made many people very rich.

If all that entertainment product can be traced to one person, it would be Stan Lee, who died in Los Angeles on Monday at 95. From a cluttered office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in the 1960s, he helped conjure a lineup of pulp-fiction heroes that has come to define much of popular culture in the early 21st century.

Mr. Lee was a central player in the creation of those characters and more, all properties of Marvel Comics. Indeed, he was for many the embodiment of Marvel, if not comic books in general, overseeing the company’s emergence as an international media behemoth. A writer, editor, publisher, Hollywood executive and tireless promoter (of Marvel and of himself), he played a critical role in what comics fans call the medium’s silver age.

Many believe that Marvel, under his leadership and infused with his colorful voice, crystallized that era, one of exploding sales, increasingly complex characters and stories, and growing cultural legitimacy for the medium. (Marvel’s chief competitor at the time, National Periodical Publications, now known as DC — the home of Superman and Batman, among other characters — augured this period, with its 1956 update of its superhero the Flash, but did not define it.)

Under Mr. Lee, Marvel transformed the comic book world by imbuing its characters with the self-doubts and neuroses of average people, as well an awareness of trends and social causes and, often, a sense of humor.

In humanizing his heroes, giving them character flaws and insecurities that belied their supernatural strengths, Mr. Lee tried “to make them real flesh-and-blood characters with personality,” he told The Washington Post in 1992.

Energetic, gregarious, optimistic and alternately grandiose and self-effacing, Mr. Lee was an effective salesman, employing a Barnumesque syntax in print (“Face front, true believer!” “Make mine Marvel!”) to market Marvel’s products to a rabid following.

He charmed readers with jokey, conspiratorial comments and asterisked asides in narrative panels, often referring them to previous issues. In 2003 he told The Los Angeles Times, “I wanted the reader to feel we were all friends, that we were sharing some private fun that the outside world wasn’t aware of.”

Though Mr. Lee was often criticized for his role in denying rights and royalties to his artistic collaborators , his involvement in the conception of many of Marvel’s best-known characters is indisputable.

He was born Stanley Martin Lieber on Dec. 28, 1922, in Manhattan, the older of two sons born to Jack Lieber, an occasionally employed dress cutter, and Celia (Solomon) Lieber, both immigrants from Romania. The family moved to the Bronx.

Stanley began reading Shakespeare at 10 while also devouring pulp magazines, the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mark Twain, and the swashbuckler movies of Errol Flynn.

He graduated at 17 from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and aspired to be a writer of serious literature. He was set on the path to becoming a different kind of writer when, after a few false starts at other jobs, he was hired at Timely Publications, a company owned by Martin Goodman, a relative who had made his name in pulp magazines and was entering the comics field.

Mr. Lee was initially paid $8 a week as an office gofer. Eventually he was writing and editing stories, many in the superhero genre.

At Timely he worked with the artist Jack Kirby (1917-94), who, with a writing partner, Joe Simon, had created the hit character Captain America, and who would eventually play a vital role in Mr. Lee’s career. When Mr. Simon and Mr. Kirby, Timely’s hottest stars, were lured away by a rival company, Mr. Lee was appointed chief editor.

As a writer, Mr. Lee could be startlingly prolific. “Almost everything I’ve ever written I could finish at one sitting,” he once said. “I’m a fast writer. Maybe not the best, but the fastest.”

Mr. Lee used several pseudonyms to give the impression that Marvel had a large stable of writers; the name that stuck was simply his first name split in two. (In the 1970s, he legally changed Lieber to Lee.)

During World War II, Mr. Lee wrote training manuals stateside in the Army Signal Corps while moonlighting as a comics writer. In 1947, he married Joan Boocock, a former model who had moved to New York from her native England.

His daughter Joan Celia Lee, who is known as J. C., was born in 1950; another daughter, Jan, died three days after birth in 1953. Mr. Lee’s wife died in 2017.

A lawyer for Ms. Lee, Kirk Schenck, confirmed Mr. Lee’s death, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by Ms. Lee and his younger brother, Larry Lieber, who drew the “Amazing Spider-Man” syndicated newspaper strip for years.

In the mid-1940s, the peak of the golden age of comic books, sales boomed. But later, as plots and characters turned increasingly lurid (especially at EC, a Marvel competitor that published titles like Tales From the Crypt and The Vault of Horror), many adults clamored for censorship. In 1954, a Senate subcommittee led by the Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver held hearings investigating allegations that comics promoted immorality and juvenile delinquency.

Feeding the senator’s crusade was the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 anti-comics jeremiad, “Seduction of the Innocent.” Among other claims, the book contended that DC’s “Batman stories” — featuring the team of Batman and Robin — were “psychologically homosexual.”

Choosing to police itself rather than accept legislation, the comics industry established the Comics Code Authority to ensure wholesome content. Gore and moral ambiguity were out, but so largely were wit, literary influences and attention to social issues. Innocuous cookie-cutter exercises in genre were in.

Many found the sanitized comics boring, and — with the new medium of television providing competition — readership, which at one point had reached 600 million sales annually, declined by almost three-quarters within a few years.

With the dimming of superhero comics’ golden age, Mr. Lee tired of grinding out generic humor, romance, western and monster stories for what had by then become Atlas Comics. Reaching a career impasse in his 30s, he was encouraged by his wife to write the comics he wanted to, not merely what was considered marketable. And Mr. Goodman, his boss, spurred by the popularity of a rebooted Flash (and later Green Lantern) at DC, wanted him to revisit superheroes.

Mr. Lee took Mr. Goodman up on his suggestion, but he carried its implications much further.

In 1961, Mr. Lee and Mr. Kirby — whom he had brought back years before to the company, now known as Marvel — produced the first issue of The Fantastic Four, about a superpowered team with humanizing dimensions: nonsecret identities, internal squabbles and, in the orange-rock-skinned Thing, self-torment. It was a hit.

Other Marvel titles — like the Lee-Kirby creation The Incredible Hulk, a modern Jekyll-and-Hyde story about a decent man transformed by radiation into a monster — offered a similar template. The quintessential Lee hero, introduced in 1962 and created with the artist Steve Ditko (1927-2018), was Spider-Man.

A timid high school intellectual who gained his powers when bitten by a radioactive spider, Spider-Man was prone to soul-searching, leavened with wisecracks — a key to the character’s lasting popularity across multiple entertainment platforms, including movies and a Broadway musical.

Mr. Lee’s dialogue encompassed Catskills shtick, like Spider-Man’s patter in battle; Elizabethan idioms, like Thor’s; and working-class Lower East Side swagger, like the Thing’s. It could also include dime-store poetry, as in this eco-oratory about humans, uttered by the Silver Surfer, a space alien:

“And yet — in their uncontrollable insanity — in their unforgivable blindness — they seek to destroy this shining jewel — this softly spinning gem — this tiny blessed sphere — which men call Earth!”

Mr. Lee practiced what he called the Marvel method: Instead of handing artists scripts to illustrate, he summarized stories and let the artists draw them and fill in plot details as they chose. He then added sound effects and dialogue. Sometimes he would discover on penciled pages that new characters had been added to the narrative. Such surprises (like the Silver Surfer, a Kirby creation and a Lee favorite) would lead to questions of character ownership.

Mr. Lee was often faulted for not adequately acknowledging the contributions of his illustrators, especially Mr. Kirby. Spider-Man became Marvel’s best-known property, but Mr. Ditko, its co-creator, quit Marvel in bitterness in 1966. Mr. Kirby, who visually designed countless characters, left in 1969. Though he reunited with Mr. Lee for a Silver Surfer graphic novel in 1978, their heyday had ended.

Many comic fans believe that Mr. Kirby was wrongly deprived of royalties and original artwork in his lifetime, and for years the Kirby estate sought to acquire rights to characters that Mr. Kirby and Mr. Lee had created together. Mr. Kirby’s heirs were long rebuffed in court on the grounds that he had done “work for hire” — in other words, that he had essentially sold his art without expecting royalties.

In September 2014, Marvel and the Kirby estate reached a settlement. Mr. Lee and Mr. Kirby now both receive credit on numerous screen productions based on their work.

Mr. Lee moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to develop Marvel properties, but most of his attempts at live-action television and movies were disappointing. (The series “The Incredible Hulk,” seen on CBS from 1978 to 1982, was an exception.)

Avi Arad, an executive at Toy Biz, a company in which Marvel had bought a controlling interest, began to revive the company’s Hollywood fortunes, particularly with an animated “X-Men” series on Fox, which ran from 1992 to 1997. (Its success helped pave the way for the live-action big-screen “X-Men” franchise, which has flourished since its first installment, in 2000.)

In the late 1990s, Mr. Lee was named chairman emeritus at Marvel and began to explore outside projects. While his personal appearances (including charging fans $120 for an autograph) were one source of income, later attempts to create wholly owned superhero properties foundered. Stan Lee Media, a digital content start-up, crashed in 2000 and landed his business partner, Peter F. Paul, in prison for securities fraud. (Mr. Lee was never charged.)

In 2001, Mr. Lee started POW! Entertainment (the initials stand for “purveyors of wonder”), but he received almost no income from Marvel movies and TV series until he won a court fight with Marvel Enterprises in 2005, leading to an undisclosed settlement costing Marvel $10 million. In 2009, the Walt Disney Company, which had agreed to pay $4 billion to acquire Marvel, announced that it had paid $2.5 million to increase its stake in POW!

In Mr. Lee’s final years, after the death of his wife, the circumstances of his business affairs and contentious financial relationship with his surviving daughter attracted attention in the news media. In 2018, Mr. Lee was embroiled in disputes with POW!, and The Daily Beast and The Hollywood Reporter ran accounts of fierce infighting among Mr. Lee’s daughter, household staff and business advisers. The Hollywood Reporter claimed “elder abuse.”

In February 2018, Mr. Lee signed a notarized document declaring that three men — a lawyer, a caretaker of Mr. Lee’s and a dealer in memorabilia — had “insinuated themselves into relationships with J. C. for an ulterior motive and purpose,” to “gain control over my assets, property and money.” He later withdrew his claim, but longtime aides of his — an assistant, an accountant and a housekeeper — were either dismissed or greatly limited in their contact with him.

In a profile in The New York Times in April, a cheerful Mr. Lee said, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” adding that “my daughter has been a great help to me” and that “life is pretty good” — although he admitted in that same interview, “I’ve been very careless with money.”

Marvel movies, however, have proved a cash cow for major studios, if not so much for Mr. Lee. With the blockbuster “Spider-Man” in 2002, Marvel superhero films hit their stride. Such movies (including franchises starring Iron Man, Thor and the superhero team the Avengers, to name but three) together had grossed more than $24 billion worldwide as of April.

“Black Panther,” the first Marvel movie directed by an African-American (Ryan Coogler) and starring an almost all-black cast, took in about $201.8 million domestically when it opened over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend this year, the fifth-biggest opening of all time.

Many other film properties are in development, in addition to sequels in established franchises. Characters Mr. Lee had a hand in creating now enjoy a degree of cultural penetration they have never had before.

Mr. Lee wrote a slim memoir, “Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee,” with George Mair, published in 2002. His 2015 book, “Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir” (written with Peter David and illustrated in comic-book form by Colleen Doran), pays abundant credit to the artists many fans believed he had shortchanged years before.

Recent Marvel films and TV shows have also often credited Mr. Lee’s former collaborators; Mr. Lee himself has almost always received an executive producer credit. His cameo appearances in them became something of a tradition. (Even “Teen Titans Go! to the Movies,” an animated feature in 2018 about a DC superteam, had more than one Lee cameo.) TV shows bearing his name or presence have included the reality series “Stan Lee’s Superhumans” and the competition show “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?”

Mr. Lee’s unwavering energy suggested that he possessed superpowers himself. (In his 90s he had a Twitter account, @TheRealStanlee.) And the National Endowment for the Arts acknowledged as much when it awarded him a National Medal of Arts in 2008. But he was frustrated, like all humans, by mortality.

“I want to do more movies, I want to do more television, more DVDs, more multi-sodes, I want to do more lecturing, I want to do more of everything I’m doing,” he said in “With Great Power …: The Stan Lee Story,” a 2010 television documentary. “The only problem is time. I just wish there were more time.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[beinglibertarian]

Why Debates (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Refusal to Partake) Matter

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused Ben Shapiro’s recent invitation to debate, she not only squandered $10,000 for her own campaign, but also a historical and imperative staple of American politics.

I was the captain of the debate team and a teacher of the debate class in high school. High school debate was incredibly competitive. Despite what some idealists may think, the goal was not to better understand the nuances of the issues and agree on a path forward— it was to win. Often, these debates could be more show than substance. Half the battle was managing appearance and currying favor with the judge. Nevertheless, I would leave every tournament, whether we won or lost spectacularly, with a stronger understanding of all sides of the issues discussed.

Debate has a long and proud history in America. During her early years, federalists like Alexander Hamilton would publish hundreds of persuasive essays for the public defending their agenda (e.g. the Constitution, the Treasury), while anti-federalists like Jefferson would respond in kind. Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglass went around the country before the election of 1860, debating the future of slavery and the Union, and founding a style of debate that is still used by high schoolers to this day. A century later, the advent of televised debates further upped the stakes– many argue that JFK’s cool demeanor in the election of 1960, in contrast to Nixon’s sweaty appearance, secured him the election. Ronald Reagan’s comfort on camera (after a long career in Hollywood) gave him a landslide victory.

But debates were not always productive. The hit Gore Vidal-William Buckley debates of the 1960s ended in disaster with Vidal calling Buckley a Nazi and Buckley threatening to assault Vidal in turn. The 2016 presidential debates were equally cringe-worthy, with Trump “guaranteeing there’s no problem” in regards to the size of his hands and penis. Many have used these examples to conclude that the art of debate is dead. Yet they are throwing the baby out with the bath water. Even the most off-topic, circus-esque debates reveal crucial insights about their participants.

Critics argue that these debates are anachronistic because with the polarizing, 24-hour news-cycle, people are already stone-set in their opinions. There is truth to this. Those in Shapiro’s or Oscacio-Cortez’s respective bases are unlikely to reconsider based on a debate. But one must also remember that as many as about 45% of eligible Americans don’t vote in presidential elections at all. As in Trump’s case, engaging but a small proportion of them means political dominance and control of the future of our nation. Debates may not be conducive to convincing hard-set partisans, but they offer those undecided or indifferent the perfect opportunity to see what the candidates believe, and how they comport themselves.

When challenged by Shapiro, Ocasio-Cortez responded that she doesn’t respond to “men with bad intentions.” All the “cat-calling” nonsense aside, one is left to wonder about the provenance of her perception of “bad intentions.” What could be so bad about a debate challenge?

In her case, it’s simple. At the moment, the majority of Americans outside partisan circles have no strong opinions about her, a fact that she could capitalize upon to appeal to a broader swath. A highly publicized debate with a strong opponent would change all that. Her position is made all the more difficult by the fact that she was elected as a populist, democratic-socialist with no background in policy. As is common with populists and socialists (think Castro, Lenin, even Hitler– not that Ocasio-Cortez is Hitler, obviously), her political ascent was predicated on ambiguous, unattainable promises of “free” education, healthcare, wealth, etc. The empty words that have brought her thus far simply would not stand under the magnifying glass of reason and logic. Shapiro’s intentions may be “bad” for those who defend a murderous philosophy, but unequivocally “good” for the country.

Even if Ocasio-Cortez were the best debater in world (and I do not know enough to pass judgement on her rhetorical abilities), her position in a debate with Shapiro, defending socialism, would be onerous at best. An embarrassing gaff could mean losing her star power and skirting her chances at the high office she likely seeks. Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez and her allies have sought every excuse not to participate.

Chief among them have been various slanders of Shapiro’s character (this is a common progressive trope: when you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger). Indubitably, Ben Shapiro is controversial and provocative.  Many on the left have argued that his approach is not conducive to good-spirited debate. Yet they are the same folks who advocate punching Nazis because of the inhumanity they represent. Shouldn’t Shapiro then be validated in acting aggressively towards socialism, the philosophy behind Nazism and Communism, a philosophy which has killed ten times as many as Hitler himself? To put it in liberal-speak, if someone is running for office under such an “offensive” banner, don’t they at least have a responsibility to face the American people and explain their views while being asked the tough questions that are warranted? And is that not exactly what Ben Shapiro has proposed?

In high school, one parent or coach judge decided the fate of that day. In US politics, hundreds of millions are the judge, and the ramifications last for generations. Progressives often say “words matter.” But they have repeatedly refused the opportunity to utter the words that they think matter. It seems actions speak louder than words.

The post Why Debates (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Refusal to Partake) Matter appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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