I would love for Heimdall to recite this to the all-white-minus-one heroes in Age of Ultron. Sam Jackson could be in the back vigorously nodding his head.
Wonder what Stan would say (off the record after a few snifters of the good stuff) about Marvel’s affinity for breasts since he left. Not to mention the complete lack of forward narrative progress since the mid 1960’s. As a 3 decade long comic book dork that grew up on Marvel, I finally had to thank them for the memories and wish them well. 99% of their output is trash now, and the editors and fancy pants express nothing but disregard for fans, and an unquenchable desire for money and gimmicks.
Edit: This post is not the appropriate place for this rant. Tired and grumpy, and had an axe to grind with Marvel since I got disgusted with the vapid plots, complete inability of any Marvel editors and letterers to employ spell-check, and all those internet porn worthy bouncing breasts that made me feel embarrassed for taking my 12 year old daughter with me to the comic shop.
+1ed, because honest vitriol can sometimes taste refreshing.
Well put Mr Leiber (who had to hide his own ethnic origins to make it in publishing).
Gawd, I hate bigots.
Love that man!
Just don’t drink it in the UAE.
Have you given Marvel Comics: The Untold Story a read yet? The “lack of forward narrative progress since the mid 1960’s” was his idea. The book talks a lot about Stan’s edict that the comics only provide “the illusion of change.”
I’ma put this right here then, seems like the place.
Kurt Busiek reposted this on his Tumblr a few weeks back, in response to a fan who claimed “Diversity is a failed concept.”
He followed it up with a couple of pages of Avengers comics where they fight a clan of bigots called the Serpent, and added, “You may love comics, guy, but you’ve been learning your moral lessons from the wrong side.”
Aaaand I watched 4 Key & Peele videos in a row after viewing this one. Obviously.
I was going to say that people soak up these attitudes without recognizing these attitudes for what they are. But that’s not true. I mean so many people physically attack other people over these differences, and s many more people push hateful dehumanizing rhetoric straight out of the 3rd Reich over these differences - look at the ways they describe disabled people and refugees, in particular - so they have to recognize their attitudes as hate, no way around that.
I don’t know, but there’s a lot of hate, a lot of shitty reasons for hate, and a lot of kicking people who are trying to make do in worse situations, instead of trying to create better situations.
Okay, two more things:
First, I think that, in an unequal society, people tend to create stories to explain the inequality an/or explain it away. So when black people face police violence, harassment, rigged courts, etc. many white people insist that black people are more likely to be criminals. And when disabled people face inaccessible spaces, harassment, disenfranchisement, etc. many abled people say we are making this up.
Second, I gather that bigot comes from a French slur for foreigners and/or non-trinitarians?
I don’t disagree with you that a lot of Marvel is complete trash these days that focus on big events rather than good storylines. That said, in the past year or so Marvel has pushed for a lot more diversity, which was sorely lacking. Thor is now a woman, Ultimate Spider-man is now half-Black/half-Hispanic, they had a gay wedding issue in X-men and their latest Ms. Marvel is a young female Muslim teenager. Ms. Marvel who is actually drawn from what I’ve seen to be a regular female teenager. Today there was the news that Ms. Marvel is Marvel’s top digital seller. So perhaps we might see more of this from Marvel now that they realize it sells (at least in the ever growing online market).
I was on board until the end, where we implicitly should strive to be worthy of the concept of being in God’s image.
The main artist of the new Ms. Marvel comic is Adrian Alphona, known for being the main artist on Runaways (an excellent book), who is pretty good at avoiding the oversexualized body types on teenage characters. His general style tends a little towards lanky characters, but in Runaways one of the best characters was slightly overweight (and had a dinosaur), one of the very few superhero characters with that body-type where it wasn’t made a joke.
It’s rather unfortunate that Marvel has characters who were inspired by the bigotry of the past. The Mandarin comes straight to mind. They went as far as making him green in the 90’s Iron Man cartoon to keep his overall appearance in line with the comics.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
