Destroying our heroes – William Lehman

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Destroying our heroes – William Lehman

So now, I’m told http://www.newsarama.com/29456-brevoort-on-captain-america-steve-rogers-1-shocker-we-knew-it-would-be-like-slapping-people-in-the-face.html that Steve Rogers is, and always was, a Nazi. Ya know, in the great circus that is life, such a little thing as this, and compared to a possible war with China, the disaster that this presidential election is, a Submarine nuclear missile capable North Korea, a president that’s selling our country down the unsanitary estuary, the trials and tribulations of my own  life etc. etal. This is really a little thing, should not bother me, but it does.

I quit reading comic books in fourth grade or so (that would have been in the 1970s) so it’s truly only of academic and theoretical interest… But it still pisses me off, and way more than it should.

The thing is this: we (and by we, I mean society and specifically you rat bastard self-designated keepers of society’s values, IE the media) have gone about utterly destroying anything like a good role model, first:

By destroying any dead man’s legacy, if they were the sorts of role models that existed in the era prior to 1970, which could be found.

Then by making sure that everyone knows the failings and falling short of any living man who might step up to be a hero.

Now because that isn’t enough, we’re going to destroy any FICTIONAL character that may be considered a role model!

Then we (again that societal we) will sit around and wring our hands at how the criminal element is so strong, the men are brutes, the women are sluts, drug addiction and crime in the streets etc etc etc.

The author of this particular bit of buggery says: “We knew it would be like slapping people in the face,” confessed Brevoort. “The idea of Captain America means something very primal and very strong to the people of this nation, and they have a very visceral reaction when you get to something like that. You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.”  OK so he admits that he’s trying to piss off his audience…

Now I am aware that there is a certain section of the artistic community that feels that if they’re not offending and shocking their audience, they’re not making “art”.  As an aside, I note that this same set of Avant Guard morons can’t figure out why they aren’t making any money, and write it off to “the fools just can’t understand my work”.   This mind set has however, no place in Comic books for pity’s sake!

I can’t say that I’ll make the coffers of Marvel any smaller by boycotting their work, because as I mentioned, the last time I bought a comic book it was with lawn mowing money.  Still, I think this goes to damn far.

Further I see this as part of a grand conspiracy. Now, hold on, before you tell me my tin foil hat is too tight, I’m not saying that the members of this conspiracy ACTIVELY conspired, each and every one of them, to tear apart the values of the nation.  It’s not that simple.  What I am saying is that the news headquarters for all the major news networks, newspaper conglomerates, publishers, etc (the self-designated arbiters of culture) are clustered in two relatively small areas (I’m talking 40 miles square or so each) and they all know and party with each other.  They all go to the same schools, send their children and protégés to the same schools, and have a “group think”.

We saw our first evidence of that group think back in 1968, when someone that I had admired, and as the child that I was then, believed, told me that the Tet offensive was a horrible defeat, and we had lost Vietnam.  I was raised thinking that Walter Cronkite was “the most honest man on TV”, so when he says we got our butt kicked in ‘Nam, well of course I and my family believed him.  As we know now, that was bullshit.  The Tet was a massive disaster militarily for the NVA, and in fact we never again faced them on the field of battle.  The Tet should have been their Collodion Fields.  It wasn’t, because after we destroyed over half their troops on the field, in exchange for casualties that were damn light in comparison we allowed ourselves to be told we had lost the battle and the war.

It was shortly after that, we started seeing the rise of the “anti-hero” in the media, and on the screen, and we started reading articles about how Audi Murphy was an alcoholic and general dirt-bag, Babe Ruth was an alcoholic womanizing racist, Captain O’Kane and Adm Burke where genocidal, etc…

Oh I’m sure that there’s no one guy sitting back in a room somewhere orchestrating this stuff (though if I had to list a suspect, George Soros leaps immediately to mind) No it’s more of a group think thing, done by conversations at dinner parties, and over drinks.  It’s created by contempt for the masses of this country that live in what these folks dismissively call “fly over country”.

It’s an attempt to “fundamentally change” America (now where have I heard that before?)   And now that they’ve destroyed all the living and dead heroes that they can, they’re going after those that exist only in our imaginations, because in spite of everything they’ve done to date, there are still those that cling to their values of honesty, loyalty, patriotism, liberty etc… and these things are anathema to the left.

There seems to be this idea that if we can just get the kids early enough, we’ll have achieved our goal of making the nation over in our image.  So suddenly we get dark and brooding superman, who wonders if saving the nation and the whole “Truth, Liberty and the American way” thing is right after all.  And we get THIS SHIT, a Captain America who’s secretly a Hydra agent. (of course all of his story to date would indicate that he’s the WORST secret agent in history, as he’s foiled more plots by Hydra, and stopped more global domination schemes by them than Michael Moore has eaten cheeseburgers)  I say ENOUGH.  These clods have not only declared a social-political war for the heart of America, they’ve decided to use my children and grandchildren as pawns in the fight.

Folks it’s time to fight back.  Fight with your wallet, fight with your stories and tales of heroism and bravery, and if it comes to it, fight with that fourth box we really don’t want to break open.

 

411 thoughts on “Destroying our heroes – William Lehman”

  1. My first reaction on reading that bit of news was, “Um, NO.” Besides the obvious (that doing things for political reasons makes bad storytelling, and if you don’t think this particular bit of nonsense was done entirely for political reasons, I have a bridge to sell you), it just doesn’t make any in-universe sense. As you said, “all of his story to date would indicate that he’s the WORST secret agent in history, as he’s foiled more plots by Hydra, and stopped more global domination schemes by them than Michael Moore has eaten cheeseburgers.”

    So, nope. Comic-book characters can be written by authors who do a great job, and by authors who just don’t understand the character (on a fundamental level, even) and screw it up by the numbers. This one is the latter, and for just about any Captain America fan, this particular comic book run Just Won’t Exist™.

    1. “authors who just don’t understand the character”

      I must demur on this point. This is not a screw-up. This is pure hatred and vandalism, defacement for reasons of Leftist propaganda. Every executive and artist who worked on this thing did so in the spirit of destroying something they despise, in order to punish people they despise.

      1. Do not attribute to malic what it adiquately explained by stupidity. They don’t have to be malicious. It’s far more likely that they are simply oit of ideas. This is the downside of comics,having long, muti-issue or even multi-comic story arcs. When each issue was a self contained story, with no greater ambitions, it didn’t matter so much if the stories repeated themslves regularly. Look at the Superman comics of the 1950’s.

        But broader ambitions mean higher expectations, and eventually you rn out of good ideas, and start using bad ones. The death of Superman (who thought THAT was a sustainable story?). The Parliament of Owls storyline in Batman, which retconns sixty years of backstory to give us one more malignant secret sciety in a world littered with them.

        Does the Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressive mindset of “never let the proles have a hero that isn’t us” feed into this? Sure. But ascribing it to deliberate villiany credits the idiots resonsible too much. They are simply hacks who are out of ideas.

          1. And that’s what this is. The Phantom is right that this is malicious, but it’s ALSO stupid. If they truly understood the character, they would have known that the “He was secretly a Nazi all along” reveal is just impossible to believe — and so the puerile stupidity of their juvenile malice is exposed for all to see. And why? Simply because fans of Captain America will never believe, CAN never believe, that this man:

            could ever have been a Nazi.

            And so the malice of the “progressives” is dashed on the rocky shoals of their utter failure to understand the character.

            1. As I put in Twitter their mindset is something like this:

            2. The Stupidity has depth and staying power, too. Back when Marvel’s “ULTIMATES” line was brand spanking new, they were retelling the story of Captain America waking up from his ice-nap, and had him attack Nick Fury because “There are no Black Colonels in the United States Army”.

              Simple plot point, driven by the LIRP assumption that any generation born before the LIRP March Through the Institutions began was irredeemably racist.

              Problem; The first black man to be promoted to the rank of colonel was so promoted in 1917.The fist Black General was promoted to Colonel in 1930, and to Brigadier General in 1940.

              This stuff isn’t hard to look up. And a sense that, while segregated, the Army had a lot of Black officers commanding black troops is quickly born in on anybody who has done any reading whatsoever of modern military history.

              They just didn’t freaking bother.

              2. Ummmm … no. Those were not authentic Colored Negro Black African-American officers they were Uncle Toms who advanced their careers by accepting and emulating the values of the oppressive exploiter Honky culture (it says so right here in my SJW Field Guide To Offenses Big and Bigger.)

                So Steve Rogers, growing up in the racially segregated Hell’s Kitchen environment of the 1930s would have had no experience of real Men of Color.

                Besides, Rogers fought in Germany alongside Fury and the Howlers in WWII, so he would have known Nick Fury was a person of pallor.


                See – that’s Fury just behind and to the right of Cap.

                1. I remember reading the Sgt. Fury comics. Less time separated that point and World War II than now and the first Gulf War. Either Marvel has to continually bump up when Fury was a sergeant, or explain why he isn’t in his eighties and nineties.

                  I don’t even know when they made Nick Fury black, and didn’t know about that until the films hit the TV. Just shrugged and figured it was something PC. Most likely today’s core audience has never read those WWII comics.

                  2. I just figured they wanted Samuel L Jackson. It means Nick Fury is suddenly black but… Samuel L Jackson!!
                    😉

                    2. It’s been a long time and much reading over the damn since, but weren’t Dugan and Jones Fury’s aides commanding SHIELD?

                      Per wiki:

                      Gabriel “Gabe” Jones was born in New York City. He is an original member of the fictional, elite Howling Commandos combat squad of World War II, and the first African-American to serve in an integrated unit. (The U.S. Armed Forces, in real life, were not integrated until 1948, by executive order of President Harry S Truman.) He is one of the close confidantes of Nick Fury, his sergeant. He also served under Fury in reunion missions during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

                      Fury later became the head of the international espionage organization S.H.I.E.L.D., which Jones joined at some unspecified point after the World War II.

                      In 1959, he is shown working with Dugan and Fury, hunting down and executing Nazis.[3] Later in the same year, Gabe assisted Nicholas Fury and Dugan in creating the first team of Avengers. They successfully stopped a Nazi splinter group from gaining a version of the Super-Soldier formula. This team includes, but is not limited to, Sabretooth, Kraven the Hunter and Ulysses Bloodstone.[4]

                      Jones retired from S.H.I.E.L.D. after the events of the Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. six-issue miniseries (1988), but returned to help train a new corps of recruits.[5] This new class is slain by the terrorist organization HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s primary nemesis.[6]

                      Gabe spends time trying to bring down the evil Secret Empire from within.[7] Following the events of Secret Invasion both he and Dum Dum Dugan quit S.H.I.E.L.D. and recreate the Howling Commandos with ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.[8]

                      Gabriel Jones is seen commanding the murder scene investigation of his old friend Clay Quartermain.[9]

                      Jones and fellow Commando Eric Koenig are later killed by Gorgon during a battle with HYDRA, while both were fighting a holding action against enemy forces in order to give time for allies to retreat.[10]
                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Jones

                      Geeze, they abuse characters, don’t they?

                    3. Piffle. They could cast Bruce Willis in the part and it would work.

                      There’s probably a long list of potentially brilliant castings for Fury — imagine Clint Eastwood or that Ford fella, or even Tommy Lee Jones — who would bring as big a bang to the role as Jackson.

                  3. Back before Fury made his transition to a different Pantone scale, they explained keeping him young and in fighting trim with some kind of longevity serum that he and other top agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were dosed with in the sixties during the “Strange Tales” age.

                    Samuel L. Jackson style Nick Fury started back in the early 2000’s with Marvels parallel-universe rebooterrific Ultimates line, which was an attempt to blank slate the Marvel Universe to more modern sensibilities. They made him Samuel L. Jackson because the creators wanted the actor to play him if movie versions ever got made. Eight some years later and we have the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 🙂

                  4. Technically, they didn’t.

                    They made him Samuel L. Jackson.

                    Writer was fanboying over the actor, got permission to ask if he could model his relaunch character on him– and Mr. Jackson said sure, if he could play the character if they made a movie.

                    Explanation I heard is that he’s the son that Sgt. Fury didn’t know he had.

                  5. In the Shield comics, it was “established” that Nick Fury was given a longevity drug that kept him young.

                    The Black Nick Fury was in the Ultimate Time-Line and in the Movie “Time-Line”.

                  6. IIRC, during the 80s or so they had some serum he took regularly that slowed his aging. So he wasn’t suffering from old age like he should have.

                    1. …go away for a bit, don’t refresh the page/catch up with the thread, don’t notice 2-3 people already answered the question. O_o;;

                    2. Clearly a side effect of that serum is to increase the epidermal melanin content of users. That would also explain 😉 why it is not more commonly used.

                      I think they’ve just “forgotten” Reed Richards and Ben Grimm serving together in WWII, meeting Fury & the Howlers in the ETO. In fact, it was in FF that “old war buddy” Nick (now Col. in Military Intelligence) Fury was brought into the contemporary MCU.

          2. They have gotten stuck in the teenage rebel phase.

            A child can believe in adults who are perfect in some ways, good guys who are always good and always make the right decisions.

            When they become a bit older they find out that the war hero had problems with alcohol and the beloved uncle sometimes bullied their father, and father wasn’t perfect either.

            And they think that NOW they are all grown up and smart and know everything. That everything they were taught as kids was bullshit, and the world is really a pretty rotten place, and nobody is perfect, if you dig enough you can always find something wrong in every person’s past and pretty often also in their present.

            Lots of people grow past that, and realize that even if nobody is perfect good is still good and worth fighting for, even if you can’t ever achieve that perfect utopia and there will always be constant backwards sliding, and often though it looks as if things just keep getting worse that’s not really true any more than is the idea that things are always getting better.

            (Damn pendulum. Or tides. There are times – sometimes very long, sometimes short, sometimes in between – when things mostly just stay bad or seem to keep getting worse. Or at least some things are. Then the tide turns and progress towards better – at least on some fronts because it’s hardly ever with everything – is made, again. For a while anyway)

            But some get stuck in that teen phase of development. They are nihilists who don’t really believe in good, and they want to keep shocking the way a lot of teens love to shock (or try) their parents and other adult authority figures (and show off to kids and their more well behaved age-mates), partly perhaps because tearing down is always easier than building, partly because that’s all they can comprehend. They could accept only perfect, but because they know there is no perfect in real life they love to tear down and sully everything that exist while claiming to strive for some future utopia. That future utopia is safe to worship because it doesn’t exist yet, and so can not proven to be every bit as imperfect as everything that _does_ exist now.

            (And the worst about these immature nihilist types – when there are too many of them they can both jump start the dark ages, and make them last a lot longer).

        2. Normally I’d agree with you, and if this was X-Men or something you’d be right.

          But this is the iconic Captain America, and the movies of him are making literally billions of dollars. They know all they need to do is slap the already done stories of the 1970’s on the pages with fresh art, and it will sell. They don’t want it to sell. They want it to end up in a mud puddle, the unopened bales rotting away.

          Don’t forget, these people are the same DBs that infest Vile666, i08.5 and the MaryPoo, and demand pronoun stickers for their name tags at WisCon. They are absolutely in LOVE with hating Captain America. They’re pouting there was no homo-eroticism in the Captain America movie, remember?

          http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2016/05/captain-america-tears-of-sjws-are-sweet.html

          Never try to explain away malice by excusing it as stupidity.

          2. Embrace the power of “and” — they were malicious (stoned) enough to come up with this idea and too stupid to actually anticipate the reaction of either of their readers. (Leonard says give it a try, they might have a clever trapdoor for the end of the story-line, Sheldon declares it is just obviously false, untenable and wrong.)

            And editorial and publishing were cool with it. This is an idea that had to be approved by at least three layers of administrators, NONE of whom was bright enough to say, “That’ll likely drive away what few readers we have left.”

        4. They don’t have to be malicious. It’s far more likely that they are simply out of ideas.

          More likely they just can’t come up with any ideas because of the already-mentioned failure to understand.

          Thus the constant attempt to “remake” the characters, which totally ignores the elemental “there is a thing outside of myself to which I am loyal” idealism involved.

          It sounds funny, but Batman is an idealist. He knows that the idea of justice is real, but that it demands service.

            1. Nah, he’s too big on loyalty to ideals for that– he doesn’t just hate dirty cops because they’re a threat, he takes them as an offense to all that is right and good.

              Not “legal,” but The Law– the ideal that laws of man are an attempt to form in a practical manner.

              1. Batman comprehends the distance between The Law and the police (especially in Gotham) — it is the his raison d’être.

            2. Actually, there’s a Batman alignment chart that shows examples of him reflecting all nine D&D alignments (link to follow).

              2. D&D alignment is an attempt to all the moral issues that the wisest have broken their hearts over for millennia, misunderstand half of them, boil them down into a gaming mechanic. and hand them over to a bunch of sophomoric gamers (some of whom have the excuse of being sophomores).

                Such a result is not exactly surprising.

            3. I’ve always seen Batman as the attempt to write a Lawful Good character in a world where “law” and “good” are often not on the same side. Batman stops criminals, he catches criminals, but he always stops short of actually imposing his own brand of justice on the criminals. He always turns them over to the law for that–even though he knows the problems and corruption that exist within the justice system. I don’t think a Neutral or Chaotic character would do that.

              While Batman sometimes skirts the edges of the law in his pursuit of doing the right thing, his ideal seems to be a society in which the law does do the right thing and those like him aren’t necessary.

        5. I have to agree with Phantom. Think of what Captain American represents, and see what Marvel’s done with him over the years. In calling Captain America a Nazi, they are essentially claiming that everything Captain America believed in is equivalent with Nazi’s. That’s the America of the past. In doing this they’re calling traditional values evil.

          That’s Marvel. And Marvel is a Disney company.

        6. I think you can justify longterm malice. Remember, prior to the Huge! Beautiful! Permanent! Steve-Rogers-is-really-old-now-we-really-meanz-it-guys, these bohos gave us the Dimension Z story arc where Cap spent 10 years in an alternate universe and came back all depressed and alienated from our world.

          They are desperate to erase the character of Captain America with somehow erasing the Merchandise®. In the meantime, they have contempt for their readers while fawning for their money,

  2. Oh i predict they will catch on about the time when Cap sales and or readership tanks. They don’t realize they just shot the entire book in the foot. Marvel, at least the comics division, is apparently doing their best to put themselves out of work. Their precious ‘reboot to make it call consistent with the films’ is now shown to be a sham and the editors and writers they are hiring for the rebooted books are apparently out of touch with the type of people that make up their readership.

    2. Also, the offending phrase in the recent Superman film was “Truth, justice, and all that stuff”

      1. Draven, I date back to when Superman said the words “for truth, Justice, and the American way” on a regular basis.

      2. Give credit where due. The used “stuff” instead of the other “S-word” — you know, the one they can’t tell from Shinola.

    3. Marvel Comics publishing these days is basically a welfare program for insulasr twink millenials who think reading Gawker and Huffpo masked them political junkies and Jon Stewart really IS Walter Cronkite.

      This casting plot twist was a cliche’ when they made Scrappy Do the villain in one of the Scooby Doo movies.

            1. Most of the time in a story world somewhat resembling the real world, the Gang would arrive to “investigate” the mystery only to find that the mystery had been solved by a farmer & his shotgun. 😈 😈 😈 😈

            2. …and that stupid dog made him look bad!

              (Okay, from Scooby Doo to Courage the Cowardly Dog. Definitely feeling warped today.)

    4. How can the tell? Time was you found comic books everywhere. Now you have to go to a comic book store, and good luck finding one of those. The only comic book still around on newstands everywhere is Mad, and I haven’t read that in decades, either.

      My point is what passes for a market isn’t there. My wild guess is that movies rake in more for Disney than the comics, and the comics have gone collector. Maybe that’s wrong, but that’s the feeling. And I’m not surprised to see New Yawk sensibilities peculate up through Marvel.

      Or is it Disney sensibilities? Disney owns them. To be honest, when I read today’s post, my thought was it was just another Mickey Mouse outfit.

      1. Of course, to what degree has this been the result of SJW meddling in the first place?

        I remember the controversy, not too long ago, over creating a woman “Thor”. People who decried the change were called sexist; after all, these people accepted Thor as a frog, for Pete’s sake! The thing is, had Thor been changed into a woman, or had he been a Thor from an alternate Universe, or had they simply had a woman use Mjolnir because she was as worthy of the hammer as Thor was, after Thor had been incapacitated, I don’t think people would have objected at all. Instead, they had to debase Thor, and then change the wording on the hammer (never mind that the pronoun “he” in English can apply to man and woman alike, in a general sense, PARTICULARLY at the time when the hammer was made), and then create this nonsense that “Thor” is a title, not a name.

        It’s this silly messing around with the fundamental character of Thor that’s the problem, not the woman wielding the hammer!

        2. That little bit of rewriting the inscription pissed me off to no end. Absolutely unnecessary even if Thor was going to be replaced, except to hammer home with a 4×4 the point of Thor being a woman.

        3. Actually, Loki is more likely to show up as a female (ISTR the legendary Loki did on at least one occasion). However, the cinematic Loki is a draw for hormone-overdosed teen girls, so they can’t touch that character.

          The good masculine role model, though? Totally acceptable to destroy.

          1. He’s also attractive to ordinary geeky women (a demo they have issues with) and he hits the “villain” ball out of the park.

            There’s also the issue with making Loki trans or cross-dress, given that he’s a villain.

            A very popular one, yes, but it’s almost as bad as the whole make-Elsa-a-lesbian thing– the whole “they’re the villain, so they’re Sexually Other too” thing is a bit overdone.

            1. It’s a bit like the Jareth in _Labyrinth_. The attraction of the predator, even for those who don’t realize that he’s a predator. Charming, fascinating (both of those in several senses of the word), intriguing, and very bad news for anyone who succumbs to his allure.

              1. *nod*

                A good villain is really hard to find; he’s fascinating and sympathetic without being a woobie or designated villain.

          2. In Norse myth Thor did cross dress:

            The giant Þrymr steals Thor’s hammer Mjölnir and demands Freyja as payment for it, desiring the goddess as his own wife. Instead of Freyja, the Æsir dress Thor as the bride and Loki as the bridesmaid, and the two travel to Jötunheimr for the “wedding.” Thor’s identity is comically hinted at throughout the reception (the god eats an entire ox on his own), with Loki providing weak explanations that the giants somehow accept for the odd behavior (he claims that the bride’s immense hunger stems from her not having eaten for the last seven days for her excitement). Mjölnir is eventually placed into Thor’s hands as part of the wedding ceremony, allowing the god to strike down the giants and return home.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Erymskvi%C3%B0a

            As, obviously, did Loki.

              1. Chuckle Chuckle

                There was a cartoon where Movie Loki gets a Mother’s Day card from this eight-legged colt. 😀

              2. Just wait ’til the next Avengers movie Loki shows up in and finds out Stark’s done his oppo research.

                Hulk still not impressed.

                2. I noticed that the Marvel Wiki entry for Loki Does Not Mention that incident in Loki’s history. 👿 👿 👿 👿

                3. Image in my mind.

                  The Avengers are relaxing talking about what they got their Mothers for Mother’s Day.

                  Loki suddenly appears there and starts begging Thor to help him “saying he’s after me again”.

                  Thor asks “Sleipnir” and Loki nods.

                  Thor says “Ok Loki, I’ll take care of it but behave yourself here or I won’t help you next year”.

                  Loki nods and Thor leaves.

                  The rest of the Avengers exchange puzzled looks but one of them starts laughing because he remembers who Sleipnir is and who Sleipnir’s mother is.

                  As he shares his knowledge, Loki looks both annoyed and embarrassed.

                  After Thor returns, Loki remarks while leaving “I should have argued against Odin using that builder”. [Very Very Big Grin]

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleipnir

                  1. Yup. The tricksters among the gods take female shape. There’s a myth where Loki and Odin taunt each other with having borne children and nursed them –a woman through and through — though we don’t know the details about Odin.

        4. Don’t say it . . . Don’t say it . . . gotta say it . . .

          “Who’s that woman with the hammer?”

          “Her? She’s Thor.”

          “If my wife wore that, she would be, too.”

  3. Excerpt from Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, Method 5: Cast Aspersions on the Heroic and Patriotic:

    We see here the products of easy cynicism. Learn to despise the place where you were born, its old customs, its glories and its shame. Then stick your head in a comic book. That done, you will be triple-armored against the threat of a real thought, or the call of the transcendent. Some people have no worlds for God to pierce through.

    […]

    The imagination seeks out the ideal, and beholds its beauty. In doing so, it penetrates farther to the truth than does the sloth of cynicism. Anyone may see a wart or a mole; faults abound in every man; the grime of life tarnishes us all. But the imagination forgives the blemish and attempts to see beneath the grime. When we apply that wisdom to our country, whatever that country may be, can we grow to love her enough to want to correct her, as Virgil and Livy wished to correct their Rome, and Sidney wished to correct his England.

    But if we want to ensure that our young people grow up with the cramped imagination of the cynic, we should, if we cannot ignore the past completely, at least magnify the tarnish on those who came before us. We should emulate God’s creation of man in His image and likeness, but in reverse, as through the wrong end of a telescope. We should make everything small – like ourselves. That will leave us with quite a sense of moral and intellectual superiority. And that’s more deadly to the imagination than were the spears of Hannibal’s soldiers to the Romans at Cannae, centuries ago.

  4. Well, deliberately tear down the obvious heroes … and ignore the quietly heroic and moral, as well.
    You’d think that the usual suspects would be bone-tired of epatering the bourgeoisie, but it seems to be a source of endless fun to those who fancy themselves to be quite the transgressive artist.

    1. A few years ago I started seeing leftists using “John Wayne” as an insult.

      It seems to be a younger demographic doing it, quite likely people who have never even seen one of his movies, though they know all they need to know about them, of course.

      Exactly *why* it’s an insult continues to baffle me.

      1. Because they have heard it used as an insult and he was probably just some silly racist, genocidal misogynist. And because self reliance is taboo today….and because honor, and integrity are flaws.

      2. I always took the insult to mean “he thinks he’s John Wayne” when he evidently isn’t. Like a giant’s robe on a dwarfish thief. Someone who wants to self aggandize and act tough in a situation that doesn’t call for it or that he can’t equal.

      3. Baffle them back. Say you prefer Gary Cooper, profanity optional. 😉

        (Okay, maybe I haven’t fully awakened, but anytime is a good time for a Die Hard reference.)

          1. Billboard on my way to work, has John Wayne on it.

            Quote: “Don’t much like quitters, son.” I forget what the ad is for, but that one stuck with me even as a child. We try and instill those ideals in the youngsters passing through our doors, too.

      5. Years ago I would often see the phrase “these American cowboys” in the foreign press. Eventually I realized they did not mean it in a good way.
        It was about the time we elected that ultimate B movie cowboy Ronald Reagan.
        Like most I have my doubts about the Republican candidate, but I was quite delighted to read reports from the current POTUS on his latest apology tour that foreign dignitaries are “rattled” over a Trump presidency. I see no possible reason why most foreign leaders should not be rattled by a strong America, and move quickly to make amends for their actions over the last several years.

        1. Circa 1982, a Briton told me “I still can’t believe your country elected an actor for its President.”

          Reply: “Yes, he acts just like a President…”

          I still think the height of his Presidency was when a staffer called him late at night when he was back home in California, to wake him up and tell him that Libyans had fired on a US Navy vessel. Reagan’s reply was that the Navy knew what to do about it, and he’d look over their report later.

          This was promptly leaked to the press, who hammered him for not taking charge of the situation. But the Navy *did* know what to do about it; that’s what “standing orders” are for, and Reagan was expressing his confidence in the people at the scene. As opposed to, say, a later president who micromanaged an anti-terrorist operation down to the point of telling a rifleman when he could fire.

          [some web searching; the incident was probably in the Gulf of Sidra in 1986.]

          1. The problem with Obama going to bed in the midst of the Bengahzi attack wasn’t that he was abandoning the people there. It was that he either gave orders to the effect, or was content that these orders had been given, for the people who were on the gound to stand down, and not defend the Embassy.

            As bad as it was to blame the event on a video, this is the core of the evil of the event: the people on the ground *wanted* to do something to save the people at the Embassy, but they were *forbidden* to act, and when they *did* act, they did so against orders.

        2. It was that way among the US left, too. That helped put Ronald Reagan in office by portraying him as a cowboy actor. Except, for most Americans, a cowboy is a positive image. The general sentiment was that we were going to play Cowboys and Persians, and that’s exactly what most Americans wanted.

      6. By coincidence, from yesterday’s City Journal mailer:

        http://www.city-journal.org/html/he-was-expendable-14456.html

        TL;DR: “John Wayne’s mistake was coupling his odious views with the kind of muscular, unabashed conservatism that offends the modern progressive mind. If he’d only had the good sense to adhere to approved lefty ideas, 2016 version—like most actors do—then he could have said just about anything and gotten away with it.”

        1. John Wayne was an unabashed anti-Communist — he even bankrolled his own films that had anti-Communist themes. This is why the left hates him and requires others to hate him, too.

          As disappointed as I am in the modern Disney company, Walt Disney was in the same boat.

          1. Okay, this has been bugging me all day:

            Back in the 1970s, I seem to recall there was a black and white film with Don Quixote and Sancho, complete with horse and donkey, set in the present. It was packed full with progressiveness. And – I may be mistaken – it was a Disney film or maybe released by Buena Vista.

            Anyone else remember this?

            1. SCANDALOUS JOHN, with Brian Keith. He thought he was an old-time rancher, driving his herd (one head) to market to save the ranch from an evil developer…

              1. It (or at least parts of it) were filmed at Old Tucson. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a Disney film, we’ll let anyone film here if they’ve got the money.

  5. You want to see what a culture that tears down its heroes looks like? Look to Britain.

    1. yes. My spell check didn’t catch it, and I was so pissed off, I was writing at work on lunch.

  8. The hopeful reaction was this is enraging publicity stunt that will end quickly. The more rational reaction is that these clowns are doing it again. The cynical reaction is that if/when some nutjobs nuke NYC and LA that they will have no idea just how badly they screwed up by eliminating barriers to sanely reacting to such a thing.

    1. Thor as a woman, GamerGate jokes, all woman Avengers, Miss Marvel. Yep, Marvel’s doing it again, with the consent of the Mouse.

      Disney is not your friend.

          1. I did find a “Anvilania National Anthem 10 minutes” clip but while I am evil, even I have limits.

        1. I gather that the Marvel Comics division still operates separately in terms of creative …hem… content, with Disney doing the MCU while sourcing storylines from the comics as they see fit. The Cinematic Universe seems to be a completely separate universe from the comics ones anyway – in a good way.

          1. So far, and than heaven for that because they seem to be levels more true to the traditional characters than any of the new “interpretations”. But do you think it will stay that way? Especially after the movies start falling in profits (which is pretty much bound to happen if they keep making them, people do get tired sooner or later, especially when the movie makers will pretty much inevitably fail to produce any actually fresh new twists for those movies but will instead keep repeating what had already succeeded once or twice or a few times. I’d bet they will turn to the same “twists” the comics already have when that happens).

          2. *nod* The rumors I heard, the only way they kept Marvel from screwing up the movies before they’d fully bought it was with some “…you know if you screw this up we’re withdrawing the offer, right?” type talk.

            Remember how they wanted to “update” Captain America? *shudder*

            1. Proving that Disney is still aware, more or less, of what stories and entertainment still sells to the MAJORITY of the populace.

              That’s why I’m not overly worried about the calls for Elsa to have a girlfriend, or for Capt and Bucky to have homosexual sex in the MCU. Whether the whiners like it or not, Frozen and such are meant to be family friendly, and the markets are still speaking.

              I mean, take a look at the success between Stargate: Atlantis, and Stargate: Universe.

              SGA had characters who looked beyond themselves and their concerns, were likeable, understandable and personable.

              SGU, from what I keep hearing, was a high school drama with less reasons for what the characters did than actual high schoolers did, with a faux strong woman and the usual SJW feminista lesbian bullshit, and it tanked.

              Not really sure how the ‘updated’ Fantastic Four did, personally, but I wasn’t drawn to watching it – the previews just weren’t catching me.

              1. Whether the whiners like it or not, Frozen and such are meant to be family friendly, and the markets are still speaking.

                Means nothing to the SJW, who demand that their view must be crammed down throats. Channel surfing I caught a snippette of something on maybe Cartoon Network pushing that agenda, and Disney crossed that years ago with Peakley and Jumba. The difference, so far, with Disney is that they played it on two levels, When, in the Lilo and Stich series finale, Peakley coyly says over the phone to Jumba, “I’ll wear that dress you like,” adults got it, but it flew over the heads of the younger set. Peakley started with the dresses because it was the best way to hide three legs, but the writers began to imply more.

                No, the kids didn’t notice it. I did.

                  1. Here’s a non-disturbing thing to watch for – and we might be wrong.

                    We were watching Monsters, Inc, and in the opener as Mike and Sully are walking down the street, they came to the kids playing jump rope. One looks somewhat like the Lilo and Stich Peakley, has a mishap, and one of the character calls him by name, which sounds like Peakley. We ran it back and watched the scene again. The kids got excited by it, but we could have made a mistake.

              2. Argument made:

                ‘Frozen’s’ Elsa Doesn’t Need a Girlfriend—She Needs PC Adults to Let It Go
                [SNIP]
                But here’s the painfully obvious reality these hashtag activists overlook: Frozen wasn’t made for them. Like it or not, Frozen was made for children, mainly little girls who are somewhere between the ages of three and eight and who like playing princess. This is why consumers could find the avalanche of Elsa and Anna costumes, clothes, toys and games in the children’s sections of Walmart and Target, not the juniors or adults sections.

                That some millennials are now refusing to exit the realm of make-believe, and worse, demanding that Disney cater to their desires and agendas is a little alarming: what happens in Frozen 2 should be of no concern to anyone past elementary school, unless of course they are the parents of children in elementary school.

                So when twenty-somethings start getting overwrought about Disney cartoons, perhaps it’s a sign that we shouldn’t be talking about Frozen but rather about Peter Pan Syndrome and the many young adults refusing to grow up.

                [SNIP]

                … the issue of sexual identity is simply not one that five-year-olds should be focused on. The elementary school-aged kids for whom Frozen is the intended audience aren’t even close to hitting puberty yet—they don’t need heavy-handed, politically correct messaging about sexuality; they just want magic and action and cool castles and pretty dresses. Can’t we just let them have that? Don’t children deserve safe spaces too?

                [SNIP]

                This is why opposing a lesbian Elsa isn’t about homophobia, but simply about letting children enjoy an Arendelle that is free of adult challenges and political agendas. It would be equally irritating if people were taking to Twitter to demand Disney #MakeAnnaARepublican or #LetKristofGoGlutenFree or #MakeTheSnowmanTheSpokesmanForGlobalWarming.

                And yet, any of one these is still preferable to #GiveElsaAGirlfriend. Why? Because if Disney decides to make the Frozen sequel about Elsa’s lesbianism, thousands of little kids won’t get to see the movie because their parents will decide that their children aren’t old enough to understand discussions about sexual preference. The millennials who feel justified meddling in children’s affairs are certainly entitled to their opinions, but they’re not entitled to demand that Disney produce movies that cater only to their preferences.

                1. So when twenty-somethings start getting overwrought about Disney cartoons, perhaps it’s a sign that we shouldn’t be talking about Frozen but rather about Peter Pan Syndrome and the many young adults refusing to grow up.

                  Does this explain that prime-time live action show based on Disney characters? Didn’t know it existed until last year and someone made an odd Cruella De Ville comment, and I went “Huh?” and had it explained to me. Lately I read something about the show crossing that line, so it might still be on the air.

                2. The kid that started it is 17; so she was the target audience when it came out, at about 14. (Alexis Isabel, if you’re curious.)

                  Most likely, this is along the line of the various popsongs (and associated behavior) about females making out with each other to get male attention.

                  My response?

                  1. You know what they call a guy who (over the male equivalent age range) fails to abandon childish interests in comics, gaming and such all?

                    Nerd, geek, LOSER.

                    This girl’s idea may have caught the internet’s fancy but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a loser concept being egged on by jerks with no interest beyond spoiling things ’cause they never had anything nice.

                    1. Says the guy on a scifi/fantasy writer’s blog… to a 30-something year old gamer… in the middle of a bunch of other geeks.

                      The problem isn’t that she has a childish love of “childish” things, it’s that she doesn’t love it at all. She desires something about it, but wants to use it for another thing– not to love it for what it is.

                    2. Meh. I have had over forty-five years to accustom myself to the fact that the world disdains my interests. I just don’t see why this lassie ought get indulged simply because she ain’t a boy.

                      Which in no way diminishes your point about her wanting to leverage her desires into ruining for other kids this thing she once loved.

                    3. *laughs* Fair enough on the getting use to folks not caring for our interests.

                      I just don’t believe she’s getting slack because she’s a girl, or even because she’s cute, but because she made a pitch-perfect, sexist, homophobic PC proposal– a pretty young female suggesting another pretty young female with serious issues who is– gasp!– not hooked up yet should be a popular, edgy sexuality.

                    5. Hans was ne of the things I most liked about that film. Girls need to learn to see beyond the facade guys put forward and examine the character of the males the meet. Hans was selfless and generous in his acceptance of risks without reward beyond that of helping a person in need.

                      As opposed to Kristoff who merely seemed sympathetic, even though he was handsome, well-off (apparently) and exceedingly well-mannered.

                      It’s almost as if the filmmakers are suggesting it is a good idea to get to actually know a person before falling into bed love with him.

                    6. I think you got it backwards… or I am missing the joke….

                      (I mostly remember Christoph’s name because Anna calls him “Christopher” during the wolf scene, and correcting her is TOTALLY what someone would do in real life– but not what usually happens in a drama)

                    7. I suspect I’ve gotten it backwards. That’s the problem with tapping IMDb quickly for a name.

                    1. Heh. In finding that link I found an even more relevant article:

                      Captain America Breaks Bad
                      Jonathan V. LastJonathan V. Last
                      [SNIP]
                      In 1971, Captain Marvel spent several issues tangling with a sinister organization in Washington, D.C., called the “Secret Empire.” It turned out that this Secret Empire was tied to a political group called the Committee to Regain America’s Principles, or C.R.A.P. And at the head of the entire enterprise was the American president, who was rendered as a lookalike for Richard Nixon.

                      So consider: If Captain America was really a Hydra agent, that means that Marvel comics is admitting that, at least within their continuity, Tricky Dick was the good guy.

                      But the real reason people are sour on this stunt is that it’s a fundamental betrayal of the character. What makes Captain America Captain America isn’t his shield or his superhuman strength. It’s his decency. It’s why he was chosen for the Super Soldier program. It’s what makes him different from all the flawed heroes in the Marvel universe. It’s the core of the character.

                      You just can’t have an evil Captain America. He might be wearing the costume, but the character underneath is unrecognizable. It’s like telling people that Batman doesn’t really miss his parents and just wants to take over Gotham’s criminal underground. It’s like revealing that Magneto isn’t actually Jewish. Or a mutant. It’s like telling us that sweet, nerdy, Peter Parker has been a PUA disciple all along.

                      Now this shift likely isn’t permanent. It’s probably just a gimmick. In six months or a year, Cap will be Cap again. People don’t even stay dead in comics, let alone evil. But all things considered, I kind of wish they’d turned Steve Rogers into a transgendered alcoholic and left it at that.

                      http://acculturated.com/captain-america-breaks-bad/

                    2. The push also greatly ignores a reality that people ignore, but the villain in the movie actually touches on while he’s playing The Good Prince: duty and responsibility. He’s the one who obeys Princess Anna’s leaving him in charge with all he responsibilities expected – taking care of the people, making sure they’re fed, kept warm… alive.

                      The royal families of old had duties and responsibilities, not just endless parties and balls. One of the books, which focuses a bit more on Elsa’s and Anna’s differences/similarities as sisters emphasizes that while Anna is the outdoorsy borderline-tomboy and Elsa the bookish shut-in (as in she enjoyed quiet study, not because of her magic) it subtly showed that Anna as the Second Princess has more freedom and less expectations of her than Elsa has as heir to the throne; while Elsa is constantly preparing for the day she becomes Queen. I saw a bit of likeness between the two fictional princesses and well, Prince William and Prince Harry. (Elsa also closes trade relations with the Duke of Weselton, because understandably, there is no benefit to her or her kingdom to continue relations with a political entity that originally only sought to exploit Arendale, and whose representative actively sought to undermine her rule as well as sought her life.)

                      Those responsibilities mean that Queen Elsa will have to marry and produce heirs; though the alternative is that it would be Anna’s children who become heirs while Elsa is the unmarried spinster Queen. Mind, the expectation, duty and responsibility to marry and produce heirs would’ve been true regardless of whether or not Elsa was male or female, as every Disney Prince before Hans can attest to (Hans being the youngest, he isn’t required to continue the line.)

                      Can’t do that in a lesbian relationship.

                    3. Eh, Magneto was a gypsy, not Jewish, originally. What you can’t change is that he was a Holocaust survivor.

                      The fun thing was that was Claremont’s reworking of him.

          3. That’s how I understand it, too.

            And keep in mind WHY Disney bought Marvel — they got an executive who realized they were getting too girly. They’d been pumping out princess and Tinkerbell movies, and announced a major remodeling at Disney World in which EVERY new attraction was princess or Tinkerbell themed.

            In came a new guy (I can’t remember his name or title, sadly), and almost immediately they announced the remodel plans were being changed to include a Seven Dwarves (not Snow White — the Dwarves specifically) themed ride, and then they bought Marvel.

            And now they’re doing a Star Wars themed “land” at both Disney World and Disneyland. While the new movies are rather annoyingly centered on a female protagonist (seriously, guys, can’t there be a strong male lead? Or even a whiny male lead who is none-the-less the hero, like Luke?), Star Wars is primarily a boy-friendly franchise.

            1. You mean you wish they’d do movies with primary male characters, like Big Hero 6, the Cars movies, Monster inc, the Toy Story movies, Up, Bolt, WALL-E, Ratatoulle, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Treasure Planet, Tarzan, Hercules, Aladdin, Oliver and Company…..?

              I agree that they’re really obviously looking for the male version of the Disney Princess franchise (And it’s freaking awesome!!!!! ), and between Marvel superheros and the Star Wars they seem to have it– but I’m kind of tired of the “Disney never makes movies centered on boys” stuff.

              They do put a lot of money into the princess ones, because they make money like crazy.

              I’m guessing they didn’t make too much on Tarzan costumes, though. 😉

                1. I stuck to animated partly because of that- although Pirates and the MCU shows that they CAN do really great aimed-at-boys movies.

    2. Most dangerous is when people realize the coastal enclaves see the hinterlands as naive and stupid at best, enemies at worst and begin to think they deserve what happens.

    3. While NY and LA might view themselves as “all of America that matters”, the reaction of the rest of the country would be split between “prepare to meet your dieties” and “thanks for cleaning up those pestholes for us, and why didn’t you take out the District of Columbia too?”

        1. The anti-salt thing has approached near-religious fervor in the USA. Many of the restaurants in my area, you have to bring your own salt if you want some on your food.

          My doctor is with the no-salt crowd, but I’ve logged my blood pressure for months with and without, and it doesn’t make any difference in my blood pressure readings, so I’m going with my own data instead of the AMA’s propaganda.

          1. Back in the 1980’s I was watching some backhaul on C-band satellite where some doctor/researcher spoke a few heresies. One was that given a choice between margarine and butter, take the butter as you’ll be better off. Another was, “If salt affects your blood pressure, go find out what’s wrong with your thyroid.”

          2. *laughing* There’s some studies in the biochemist field where they’re actually starting to suggest that the low salt and low sugar totalitarian approach was actually negative for human biochemical health in the long run for the generally healthy human populace. They’re getting screamed at, more or less, for being ‘irresponsible’ by the American Heart Association. I read it in passing some time back, and I take comfort in being vindicated because my blood pressure issues were pregnancy-problem related, and my blood sugar is low, along with my cholesterol – despite my supposedly ‘unhealthy’ eating habits.

            I wonder if the people who think they know better notice that I tend not to have large servings; and the few times I do indulge in large servings of something, I tend not to be hungry for a while afterward, even skipping a meal later on.

            1. I’ve never had someone other than my parents in my youth say “That’s bad for you.” So it is I’ve never had to use my intended comeback “Not as bad as not minding your own business.”

              I’m one of those salt affects blood pressure. I monitor mine daily, and a lot of salt runs mine up. So does garlic, which supposedly lowers blood pressure. Everyone’s different. Too bad those who think one size fits all applies to health haven’t figured that out.

                1. One of my rants about Obamacare has been that just as we are reaching a point when individual biochemical analysis is becoming a practical possibility They are imposing uniform Standards of Care to ensure such individualized therapy never comes about.

                  I have that rant mostly tamed and will not let it out to ravage here.

      2. I keep having visions of a story where someone gets word of a pending [horrible no good bad thing] against certain parts of NYC *looks toward certain media, financial, and political offices* and they rush in, clean out the Met and a few other museums, and get out before [horrible bad thing]. “What’s wrong? You said save civilization and so we did!”

        1. Heh. When I learned about the Colburn Amendment that essentially gave Obama the go-ahead to create any deal with Iran that pleased him, my reaction was “You fools! You may have literally called destruction upon your heads!” If Iran were to send a nuke to Washington, DC, I would have great sympathy for the innocent, but I would consider VERY FEW of those associated with government — elected official or bureaucrat or lobbyist — to be innocent at this point.

          Of course, I don’t know if I’d trust the current Electorate to put together a good, Constitutional government at this point; nor can we trust that the Iranians would choose the right target (they may go after NYC or LA or someplace else instead), but in any case, it’s hard to believe that the Congresscritters in Washington DC has such a poor self-preservation instinct…

          1. Yeah, too bad about all those great DC museums down on the mall – I will especially miss all the really great stuff at Air & Space – but they are all going to be pure collateral damage unless all the “secret” defense stuff they installed after 9/11 can handle something popping up from right affshore from the Nork’s SSBN, or the Iranian equivalent of a nuclear cruise missile launched from a container ship.

            But notice they are slowly dismantling things that would help with those types of attacks, even publically, such as the tethered radar aerostats after one broke free last year. An aerstat radar is exactly thing you’d want to detect incoming cruise missiles, and they are gone now.

            I’m just glad no family or friends lives inside the beltway.

    1. Which makes me want to do something equally mature, like pushing their heads into the commode bowl and flushing.

        1. (DOUCHEBAG observes equivocal evidence that Mary may be or at some time have been promiscuous, goes up to Mary’s boyfriend Jeff): Ha ha! Your girl’s a tramp! Ha ha ha!

          JEFF (hits DOUCHEBAG)

          DOUCHEBAG: Ow! Why’d you hit me? You’re a BULLY! Waah!

          Like that? Only, here, it’s more like DOUCHEBAG makes up the evidence against MARY, isn’t it?

            1. Judging from his antics on Brad’s site, I suspect he’s melted down further.

              1. Yeah. It seems like instead of having two brain cells that occasionally collide in the emptiness of cranial fluid to produce something that only marginally resembles thought, he is left with two separate halves of individual neurons, which, if they collide, result in a bio-electric misfire that results in a pale, broken simulation of thought.

                1. Instead of screeching “EXTERMINATE!” he screeches “SHUT UP!”

                  He’s gone full Dalek. Never go full Dalek.

        2. At my high school the irritating douche-bags were the ones doing the beating up. Until I grew, anyway. Grade 10 was a good year for me. ~>:) [evil smile of victory]

          1. They had toadies who helped them. Some were bigger than the douchebag, but I guess the douchebag had some sort of charisma they liked so they followed the douchebag’s lead.

          2. I’m not talking about the ones who do the beating up.

            I’m talking about the ones who didn’t have that capability, were the rumormongering jackasses, who curried favor by kissing the teacher’s ass and tattle-taled, and who got beaten up *because* they were slimey little shitfucks who couldn’t actually ‘be’ anything but the slimy shitfuck. They weren’t part of the nerd brigade because they’d stab the nerds in the back, they couldn’t be the asskissing yes-man for the popular crowd, couldn’t be one of the asshole bullies who muscled their way into social status and they couldn’t even just BE part of the background crowd because they wanted the glory of the popular crowd, wanted the academic achievements of the nerd brigade, but were good at nothing but shitflinging.

            Pretty much the behavior of every single SJWanker out there.

            1. I’m an Odd, I lacked the social acumen to identify those ones, they all kind of looked the same to me. Hostile dickheads, some would hit, some just mocked.

              Growth spurts rock!

              1. I started identifying them only later myself.

                I stopped growing at 12. I found a (genuine Levi Strauss) jacket that my dad bought for me around that age. It still fits, though a little tight at the upper arms. I looked at it and was reminded why I didn’t ever chuck the thing: it’s got inside pockets large enough for me to tuck a pocketbook novel into.

                1. I was familiar with the idea of inside pockets from an early age. But they almost don’t exist in coats sold in the USA. In my entire life I’ve only seen one, and that’s on the inside of my motorcycle jacket. At least, it’s an extra odd zippered pocket, distinct from the ones where the armor plates are zipped in. While it is quite a spiffy garment, but it’s not exactly fashionable.

                  1. You know how the jackets have pockets you shove your hands into from outside? The inner lining of those were sewn into the jacket’s button and bottom, forming pockets. I’ll have to take a photo or so, because I actually wanted to write a blog post about it. One of my bigger frustrations is the trend toward less pockets, and when they do exist, those pockets are freaking useless, shallow things.

                    2. Took a photo.

                      Stuck a LWaC manga into the top of the lining/inner pocket, and you can see from the stitches where the slot of the outside pocket goes. I think I had another jacket that didn’t have that horizontal stitch that shows where the outside pocket’s opening is, and that one fit books. I hope I haven’t chucked it.

                      I’m somewhat tempted to have this jacket remade, slightly larger, for myself.

                    3. Random techie question:

                      Why did your photo end up as a .PNG? Either your camera spat out a .PNG file (why, when JPEG compresses photos better?) or else you and/or some automatic process on your website converted that JPEG to a PNG — which again begs the question of why? A JPEG is perfectly adequate for photos, and once it’s a JPEG it’s already thrown away some image data, which you can’t get back by converting it from JPEG to PNG.

                      The only plausible reason I can think of for a photo ending up as a .PNG is that your camera is set to shoot images in some RAW format, and the photo-processing software you use defaults to turn RAWs into .PNGs because they’re lossless, and you’d have to go futz with the settings to make the software spit out JPEGs instead. And with this photo, you weren’t trying to be fancy, just quick — take the photo, run it through the software with default settings, slap it on the site, done.

                      Did I guess right? And if not, why *did* that photo end up as a .PNG? Because I’m really curious now.

                    4. I deliberately convert my images from jpg to png for security reasons. Hubby’s military after all.

                      Further, this is not mere paranoia on my part. The SocJus totalitarians have made it part of their modus operandi to wreck people’s lives, and have done so successfully on many occasions. SWATing may not work in Australia but there are other methods.

                    5. I hadn’t thought of that; makes sense. Although wouldn’t it be simpler to just strip the EXIF data from the JPEG? (Though “simpler” does kind of depend on what tools you have available, I suppose.) But regardless, that’s a good reason given Yama’s behavior.

                      Myself, I just turn off the GPS feature on my camera; that’s enough, as far as I can tell, for all the threats that I’m likely to face. But then, I don’t have a stalker obsessed with me.

                    8. Absolutely true. OTOH, living where I do, half the world away from America and a quarter of the world away from Europe, I’m safer from those particular hyenas than most. They can’t threaten me physically, and they can’t threaten my job (my employer would probably take an SJW mob coming after me as a sign that I did something right). So I have less to worry about on that score than most people.

                      I still don’t post my home address online, though. Though if I did, it wouldn’t help them much — first time I came to check out this place to see if I wanted to rent it, I gave myself an extra hour in case I got lost. As a result, I was only ten minutes late getting here. This neighborhood is a maze until you get to know it.

                    10. I picked up an old vest at the thrift shop that has pocket overkill: six big pockets on the front, AND a very large fanny pocket (and a hood — who puts a hood on a vest?) That was a new one on me!

                      [It’s the same style as that blue vest Kostmayer sometimes wears in the 3rd season of The Equalizer. (In fact, judging by how the wear marks match, it may be that very vest.)]

                    12. Useless, shallow, and in many cases, oddly positioned. I have a jacket that I owned for years, and just recently discovered it has pockets. They’re so far back they take some twisting to reach, and they’re big enough to hold a handkerchief. You can stuff a glove in each one (but not two gloves), and then they’ll fall out when you move around, because the pockets are *horizontal*.

                    13. Yeah. They’re not even useful enough to fit a glove or handkerchief most of the time.

                      I”m sure that’s part of the reason why ‘man purses’ have become fashionable recently. I mean, my dad always had a messenger bag, but he didn’t keep his wallet there. Documents, books, paperwork, yes. But not his wallet, phone, or keys. Those were on his person.

                    14. A proper Mens’ sport coat, blazer or suit coat has several pockets capable of holding a couple paperback books each, with inside breast pockets suitable for wallet, cell phone and accouterments.


                      It doesn’t take Annie Hall to realize they can be worn as well by women as by men.

                    16. Look for vests/jackets designed for photographers. Lots of pockets (granted, odd shapes and may be too small) because they are intended to help cart around spare lenses, bodies, filters, memory cards, etc.

          3. There are a few who are so lucky that I never had access to DMSO and phenolphthalein at the same time and the knowledge of how that combination might be put to… interesting.. uses for people who were truly full of crap.

          5. I never had any trouble being bullied, even though I was smaller then most in JHS, and proto-typical nerd, with odd tastes. In shop class big dumb guy found out I wasn’t paying protection money to anyone, and demanded a quarter a day. I told him no. He threatened to beat me up after school. I told him “No.” A few exchanges later the local equivalent of a gang leader said to him:” Leave him {me} alone. He’s my friend.” That was the last attempt ever for anyone to bully me. I didn’t realize I was his friend.

            A few years earlier in grade school I had helped him out in math, frequently, without 1. Doing his homework for him, 2. Without being told to, and 3. Without making him feel stupid. Being nice to people just because being nice is the right thing to do, sometimes pays off.

            As you get older, and enter adulthood, it’s more likely to get you shafted, but that’s another story….

      2. may I recommend not flushing, just hold their head there, for awhile. at least until they stop flopping around.

        1. Or until you can find a nice, smooth rock to apply to their cranium, as needed.

    2. It’s also promoting a follow-the-leader epistemology. “See, he was a Nazi all along. You can’t trust the evidence against it. We said he was wrong-thinking all along and now you see that he was. If you want to be right just believe whatever we tell you.”

      Of course, this is jiggering the evidence. The fact is that the plot twist makes zero sense: it directly contradicts everything else we’ve seen him do, and it damages the Marvel Universe more than it does the character.

        1. The thrust of that defense being that anybody who takes a comic book seriously is a loser. Never mind that they’re patting themselves on the back for finding fake but accurate proof that Steve Rogers was a bastard.

          They’re typical fifth gen heirs: the didn’t create their wealth, they don’t appreciate their wealth, they don’t conserve their wealth; they just squander it trying to win the favor of “friends” who despise them.

      2. They think we’re as loyal to some Leader archetype as they are, instead of being loyal to an idea. So if they have our so-called Leader type suddenly change to a new idea, they think we’ll blindly follow that Leader.

        They obviously haven’t been paying attention when the term “herding cats” is used to describe our mindset. 😉

        Finally saw the Civil War movie. That line from the comic series about even if the whole world says to move and you need to say “No, YOU move” was used, but not by Steve. It still fit. Because it’s a very good idea, not because Steve Rogers’ comic version said it once, though it was cool that he did.

        1. I had been hoping for that line to be said in the movie, and I was glad that it was.

          But I noticed that it hadn’t been said by Steve. And that was the only sour note for me in that movie. Because it signaled that the writers didn’t know how to write a strong female character without tearing down a male character to “make room” for her. I.e., they had to take away Steve’s line in order to give it to Agent Carter (via her niece) — because they lacked the imagination to give her her own noble line, and because they wanted to deconstruct strong, masculine role models.

          Anyone want to claim that I’m reading too much into it? Look at female Thor, the new Ghostbusters movie, and heck, pretty much the entire modern feminist movement. The only way they know to portray a strong woman is essentially to take a male role and swap a woman into that role — because they’re completely out of touch with the essence of femininity and don’t know how to portray real strong women well.

          Okay, wait, I have to take that back in part, because I just remembered Hawkeye’s wife in Age of Ultron. THAT was the best portrayal of a strong woman that I’ve EVER seen in a comic-book movie.

          So it’s not all the writers who don’t know what a strong woman REALLY looks like. It’s just the SJW writers who have no flippin’ idea.

          2. Lois Lane turns out to be the most badass hero in Batman Vs. Superman. Not what they had planned, I bet.

          3. One of the strongest women I remember from movies was Chris Kyle’s wife. She knew what she was getting into and lived with it, even up to the fateful phone call or door knock. People don’t realize how important mental strength is to the character vs the kung fury stupid shit.

            1. Stephen Pressfield addressed this in his historical novel Gates of Fire with the argument that the reason the 300 Spartans were chosen was not because f their martial prowess (a given for any Spartan soldier) but because their women (mothers, wives and sisters) had the big brass balls to hold their heads high and carry on after their men died for Greece.

          4. Except that they do not understand the male role in the first place, so she ends up a dishonorable asshole.

          5. They may have tried, but I suspect they failed. Maybe they should’ve had her make the usual #SocJus type blatherings that sound nifty to them and then have her niece quote it.

            Problem is, that line is, to borrow from Secondhand Lions, something that people need to believe is true. Though #SocJus needs people to not believe it so if the writers were trying for something they should have left it out.

            There are different people involved in it so maybe the movies haven’t been completely infected.

            Though yeah, Laura Barton is tough.

            (I was more thrown off by 40ish Aunt May, but can live with it.)

      3. During the Bush administration, Marvel wasn’t using comics, particularly Captain America, to wholeheartedly support the war effort. In particular they were not endorsing using every useful means against those with foreign ties to prevent them from engaging in acts of espionage and war. This was actually a subtle cue that Steve Rogers was not the unchanging facade he presented. Him being a secret Nazi is, in fact, the only plausible explanation.

      4. yes, but their excuse on that count will be that this is the new different rebooted marvel universe so all that never happened.

    3. Is it bad that I’m starting to really sympathize with the red skull? At least with that supposedly “evil” recruiting speech?

      Granted I’m well aware that one of the most insidious ways to lie is to tell the truth just right, but I don’t think they were aiming for “red skull recruits by spinning the truth”

    1. That guy is my fricking hero. He’s doing what I’d do, given the opportunity.

      My objection to Canada is that you have to be an ambassador or the Prime Minister before you can get away with doing the obvious. If I decked a ‘protester’ at a military ceremony I’d get three years in jail for stepping out of line.

      In case anyone was wondering, that’s what a police state looks like.

      1. The guy is a genuine hero, not a “sports hero” or a “superhero.” But in his role as Ambassador, his proper reaction would have been to let his security detail handle it.

        Of course, we once had a Vice President of the United States who had the Secret Service hold down a “protester” so he could give him a kicking.

        1. And a president who politely excused himself and waded into a near-riot to pull his Secret Service detail out of the pending scrum.

          1. We once had a US ambassador who was undergoing a training secession when the mantra was “Be a good little hostage and don’t fight back.” Except she “took out” the terrorist and effectively ended the exercise.

            The ambassador’s name? Shirley Temple Black.

      1. You’re right. It needn’t be *all.* Just enough. Sometimes just one man taking action will shame or inspire other men into action. We’re simple creatures, we men. The “somebody oughtta DO something” impulse is in us, too.

        In some, that impulse is more “Aw, HECK NO.” Save a bit less polite. *chuckle*

    3. Also, note that the guy ‘protesting’ looks like every single weak-wristed no life hipster whose very existence is owed to the fact that they live in a culture that tolerates their bullshit, instead of say, oh, an Islamic state, or China.

      1. Are you saying ethnic and cultural Chinese outside of the PRC and USA would kick the shit out of those types?

        1. Kick the shit? More like execute for sowing dissent against the State and Chinese cultural values. Assuming there’s even something like a public execution to begin with. Most of the noisy but insignificant just disappear, likely becoming organ harvest sources.

  11. And my reaction to this, aside from the obvious? This is what makes voting for a Donald Trump palatable. If we’re going to have the name, might as well have the game and at least the opportunity to put some of these people out of our misery.

  12. It’s another marvel marketing stunt. It’ll be a way for them to try and gain notoriety for avant garde bovine scat.

      1. Well, you ingest a healthier diet.

        Your scat is, properly matured, a highly useful and nutritious supplement to any garden. Their scat* is laden with thistles, nettles, brambles and burrs.

        *In such circumstances as they can pass it; more typically they cannot and that’s how they end up so full of it that it comes out their mouths.

          1. Yes, but a steady diet of that tends to sour one’s digestion, evoking emission of noxious gasses.

  13. Well said. This was much more coherent than the screaming fit I had the other day. I’ve also decided that I wont’t stand for it anymore. They can’t take my heroes and if they try, I’ll just make new ones.

  14. Gotta say, this is exactly on track for Marvel and I’m not even faintly surprised. They f-ing HATE Captain America. They killed him ages ago and left him dead for ten years. They made him a murderer back in the eighties, when he killed the Flag Smasher. I still remember that one, I have it someplace tucked away. Steve Rogers, first Marvel hero to kill another person on-screen in his own book.

    I’ll add that this is why, despite loving Marvel comic books, I haven’t bought more than five of them in the last ten years. Because of exactly this sh1t right here.

    Meanwhile, the Captain America – Civil War movie has made a BILLION DOLLARS so far. News on Drudge today, Disney made a billion samoleans out of that thing, whereas Batman vs Superman capped out at a huge-but-not-that-profitable $800 million. Sure it’s a big number, but not when you look at the red side of the ledger.

    And why is that?

    At the most basic level, I’d say its because Batman is portrayed as a brooding nutcase, Superman is a little pouty and not too careful of what he breaks, while Captain America is…Captain America. Holy crap, what a revelation, nobody wants to see evil and mental unstable “heros” in a f-ing superhero movie.

    Of particular note, I spent the weekend recently at an art school doing some workshops. The instructors, mature individuals like myself, maybe a little younger, waxed eloquent over their -disgust- at the big comic companies, and the way they continuously destroyed the value of their own characters.

    The new Captain America book will tank as hard as any comic ever tanked. People like us, who outnumber Lefty squeebs about 10-1 will slag them on the Internet forever. Several bearded hipster dicks who thought this would be a good idea will get f-ing well fired, and life will continue on.

    Or, Marvel Comics will go bottom up and get bought by someone with a brain.

    Because hate does not sell here.

      1. It’s not a swipe. I saw them both, CA-CW was clearly superior to BvS, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. The box office speaks for itself.

        When CA-CW comes out on Poo-Ray, I’ll be buying a copy.

        When BvS comes out, I won’t. It was okay, I wasn’t disappointed when I saw it at the flicks, it was worth the ticket. I said as much on my blog. Warner worked hard, they followed the story-line, they didn’t f- it up like Fantastic Four which is already in the delete bin at Best Buy.

        But the story itself does not fire the imagination, I’m not stoked to see it many times. Whereas CA-CW, that I want to see again.

        Because HEROS, not pouty dudes in suits breaking shit. Frankly the biggest hero in BvS is Lois Lane, she was badass maximus.

        1. While I won’t dictate your tastes or demand that you like BvS, I’ve got to disagree with you on several points.

          For box office, I argue that CW was more easily accessible to a larger base and the franchise has more momentum built up. It’s debatable if that translates into objectively better.

          The swipes I object to are ‘pouty,’ ‘breaks things’, ‘brooding nutcase.’

          So the Avengers never break things? Okay, forgive the momentary snark, but Superman is a different type of hero: he’s got godlike powers and he’s living in what is essentially a world made of tissue paper. Battles that he’s involved with are going to be of a larger scale against comparatively powerful enemies or situations, and that means there’s going to be more risk of damage.

          Then there’s another challenge unique to him: pouty? Call it horribly frustrated. Superman has the powers of a god, but he can’t control everything, he can’t control the human heart or public perception, and he can’t control all the unforeseen reactions to what he is and does, and he’s constantly in situations where for all his great power, there’s nothing he can do, and these movies do a good job of conveying his strain as he’s faced with his responsibility to use his power, along with the knowledge that he could cause death and destruction purely by accident. I empathized strongly with him there.

          I’d say one thing that the Christopher Reeve movie gets right over the new ones were Jonathan Kent’s death. In Man of Steel his death was completely pointless, while the Reeve movie death by heart attack underlined that for all Superman’s power, there are things he can’t stop or fix.

          Then that whole stupid turning back time thing happened, but I don’t want to think of that.

          As for Batman: nutcase? He’s got a rationale for what he believes and what he does. And he doesn’t just brood, he takes actions. His issues influence him, but they don’t completely control him, and Superman helped him to transcend those issues and move in a very interesting direction.

          So yeah, loved BvS. Will be watching it multiple times and eagerly awaiting the next installments.

          1. Funny how they managed to get the Superman character so right in the animated stories.

            Its as if they felt no need to prove themselves sophisticated.

            1. Loved that scene, but I don’t see how it shows up BvS. For one, did you see that property damage in the animated fight? And the animated series has him explain his predicament while the movie illustrates it.

    2. The only Marvel I’ve bought in 20 years was JMS’ Thor comics. And I have to say he had the Iron Man we see in Civil War nailed down: smug, self-righteous and without even a shred of honor.

      Which is why JMS had Thor teach him the real difference “between a God of Thunder and a mortal in a metal suit.”

      It wasn’t pretty.

      1. deadpool is not immoral, he’s amoral. He has values, and stays true to them, beyond that, he’s chaotic neutral. Deadpool’s success was because they played the character right. for humor and irreverent to everything, and they weren’t afraid to say “look, this is for adults, we know adults are watching these things, and we’re going to do an adult show, don’t bring your kids. REALY! DON’T DO IT” that got a great reaction because 1)it’s honest to the character (which this shit about Cap is SOOOO not) and 2) it was FUN, which this shit about Cap also is not.

        1. I’m not a fan of Deadpool but have nothing against the people who like him.

          The garbage being done to Cap is another matter.

          Anybody who “likes” that isn’t somebody I want to know.

    5. Oh, guess I can’t agree? You guys really need to realize it’s not leftists that are against you but neo-progressives. The problem to me is so many Americans seem to be focused on Right-vs-Left they don’t realize those two groups make up a huge spectrum of people I hate SJW’s as much as you guys but it’s not helping you by implying all leftists are SJW’s.

      1. Er… How about All Leftists Like A Form Of Government That Creates Millions of Corpses? It’s just a matter of degree and active slaughter versus immiseration.
        Also if you’re European you know bupkis of our right and left, so take a hike.

        1. #NotAllLeftists!

          Denial of fundamental individual rights in preference of group rights is the essence of Leftism, the element which distinguishes them from Liberals (whose good name they appropriated in furtherance of their agenda.)

  15. I saw this and my immediate thought was, “only Marvel fanbois will even care.” The general public doesn’t follow the self-referential, onanistic fever-view that modern comics has become. Unless Marvel is incredibly stupid enough to have the movie version of Cap be revealed as a Hydra agent all along, no one will care, and almost no one will notice. And if they do try to make the movie Captain America into a villain, their box office will tank incredibly quickly.

    2. If they are so stupid as to pull that crap in the movie universe, then for the first time in my life, I will stand up in the middle of a movie and publicly, and LOUDLY, walk out and ask for a refund. I probably won’t get the refund, but I’ll make sure the cinema manager knows that I walked out of the movie, and WHY I walked out. (I’ll be extremely polite to the manager; it’s not HIS fault.)

    3. and yet, I’m not a marvel fanboy, nor even really a fanboy of much. But it pisses me off because it somehow cheapens and steals from my childhood, and surely steals from my Grandkids childhood.

      1. It’s because they’re deliberately punching you in the face. I say we hit them back where it hurts the most. In the paycheck.

  16. Not so much outraged and disgusted so much as irritated. Of course its a publicity stunt done for shock value. They as much as admit it. Of course this is all going to come out as a ruse. Maybe Caps a triple agent. I don’t know. But of course they’ll have to bring him back eventualy, but what irks me is the sheer laziness of it. Like they don’t know what to do with Cap and can’t just write the kind of stories he excels in.

    That said, maybe this is just the first step to a brilliant plot arc, but given the state of Marvel, I don’t have much hope there.

    1. Bob, this is New York City artists punching you in the face. It’s not a mistake, it’s not laziness, it’s not ignorance. It’s a deliberate attack on who you are and what you value in life.

      Just not a very good one, because they aren’t that bright.

      1. A deliberate attack? Fine, have at it. I give Marvel one more issue to explain how this idiocy makes a lick of sense. C’mon, wow me. Give me an exhilarating, engaging plot that’ll boost their sales to the stratosphere and prove that this isn’t just a PR stunt for shock value.

        Not holding my breath though. I call it lazy.

        As for an attack? Okay, same challenge: lay out your argument as to why America and its Captain are the evilest things in the whole wide world (and make it entertaining too). I’ve seen such attacks before, and the best they’ve ever done is point out that America hasn’t always lived up to it’s ideals.

        I say: attack all you want, just let others respond without shouting them down or lying about them.

        But they can’t even do that. Even the attacks are Just. So. Lazy.

                  1. Nope, because some of those Heroes, acting heroically can be females. 😀 😀 😀 😀

      2. It’s been going on for years. The Green Hornet as a bumbling idiot. And the latest Lone Ranger.

        The thing is, they aren’t _bad_ stories. They just aren’t true to the well established characters. Yeah, I know. Name recognition. Marketing. But think about Indiana Jones or Die Hard. They really can make new heroes, and make a ton of money of them.

        Oh. Wait. Too many of the movie makers don’t want actual heroes. They want the slightly not-so-bad Bad Guys to beat the Real Bad Bad Guys, who are probably controlled by white male christian billionaire businessmen.

        I think some of them are waking up. See _Kingsmen_ .

        Hopefully Marvel is watching the backlash at their new idea, and will return quickly to the idea of the Hero.

        1. I think that Kinsmen or rather the reaction in the theaters terrified them. When people applauded and cheered as the President’s head exploded they started to worry about being lynched.

          1. Yeah, a lisping black man as the villain? I can’t imagine the torment some of the studio people went through to let that slide through.

        2. Even outside the realm of heroes, Hollywood seems incapable of remaking any type of nostalgia without resorting to cringe comedy. Even if the source material is dramatic.

    2. They’ve already laid down a bucket of “Oh, it was only an awful dream” escape hatches: Cap feeling out of place in his own body, Sharon Carter in her 40’s (Um, she’s DEAD in an alternate universe), Cap going back to a shield design he hated, etc. They’re just acting out.

      Remember, these are the “talents” who have an inner-city black activist turned suoerhero talking like a white campus organizer as the new Captain America.

  17. And we get THIS SHIT, a Captain America who’s secretly a Hydra agent. (of course all of his story to date would indicate that he’s the WORST secret agent in history, as he’s foiled more plots by Hydra, and stopped more global domination schemes by them than Michael Moore has eaten cheeseburgers)

    I’m sure the handwavium will claim it was All As Planned, but I find myself reminded of what’s said about Straw Larry: Incomprehensible EVIL!

    *facepalm*

      1. “Cue books full of PTSD-wracked doubting himself Steve Rogers.”

        I hate those. If I want to read pages and pages about an angst-filled hero who doesn’t think he can do anything right and fears the world would be better without them, I’d pull out my teenage diaries.

        1. I’ve no desire to wallow in someone else’s depression, when I’m already torturing myself enough on that score. I have no desire to waste more time on the black dog, why would I want to do that reading that kind of angstfest?

          (Currently rereading David Eddings’ Elenium. Ah Sparhawk. So much NOT the angsting emo bitch.)

              1. Bwaha!

                There’s a second one, you know. It has space guns in it. Please signify with green smoke. ~:)

        2. Or dig out a couple of my Feintuch ‘Hope’ books, if I cared to remember where they are stashed.

      3. (1) Have you seen the Dr. Strange previews? Benedict Cumberbunch. Looks awesome, hope the story line is up to it.

        (2) But the Nazi Cap? Best possibility is a collision with an Alternate Universe where he is a Nazi. Yeah, I know. The Evil Twin thing has been done _so_ many times. Won’t stop them.

        Our Cap inside a Hydra that thinks he’s theirs could be fun.

        1. Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange was such an awesome choice. He is PERFECT for the role.

          I really wish they hadn’t done what they did with the Ancient One however. If they really, really wanted a woman to play the role, couldn’t they have picked Gong Li?

      4. I just remembered a Stargate: SG-1 episode where Teal’c was brainwashed by Apophis and Teal’c claimed all his efforts to date was part of a clever conspiracy on his part.

        Of course, it was the brainwashing talking for him. Pointing that out, oh and depriving him of his symbiote (bringing him to the brink of death) helped him break the control.

    2. Dude, they destroyed an entire universe just so they could get rid of a continuity THEY didn’t understand. So of course we couldn’t be bright enough to. 50+ years of tradition balled up and cast aside because THEY know better. Remember how well that worked last time? Neither does anyone else.

      1. Heh. I remember DC’s first Crisis maxi-series (okay, I also recall the JLA/JSA Crisis books, but those only took two issues, not twelve!) continuity demolition, with Marvel’s people smugly sneering “We got it right in the first place.”

        Crow a la mode. Pygmies* standing on the shoulders of giants and seeing how far they can pee.

        *No slur on actual Pygmies intended.

  18. Eh… I always figured he supported and voted for FDR. Strikes me as the sort of guy who would show up at the house of some poor farmer who had a big stockpile of old scrap iron he was saving (didn’t trust the banks, no tax on bartering either) to buy some farm implement with a bunch of G-men, lecture the farmer on how unpatriotic he is for not having turned that in to the metal drive like he should’ve (don’t you know there’s a war on! we all have to do our part!), and leave with all the farmer’s savings and a smug feeling. Remember this: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/captain_america_vs_tea_party/ ?

    It’s not too big a leap from being an American totalitarian to a Hydra one.

  19. Eh… I always figured he was the sort of guy who voted for FDR four times. Not too far from being an American totalitarian to a Hydra one.

    Remember this? http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/captain_america_vs_tea_party/

    I can completely see Cap showing up at the house of some farmer who had saved up a bunch of scrap metal for years to buy a new farm implement (that sort of thing was not unusual: didn’t trust banks, no taxes on barter), lecture the old man on how unpatriotic it was of him not to have turned it all in to the gov’t (don’t you know there’s a WAR on! we’ve all go to do our part!), and help the hired laborers load it onto a truck while G-men hold the old farmer at gunpoint (also not unusual behavior back then either).

  20. I’ve long preferred Capt. Confederacy myself. Either the original white guy or the New South version:

  21. Oh and, this is the reason why I rather spend my money on manga and anime than comics.

    I’ll admit though that I bought a book tied to the MCU because it centers on Black Widow. And MCU Black Widow kicks ass while still being an actual human being. (Seriously, I loved the interactions with her and Capt during the second Captain America movie. The ones with her and Banner in Age of Ultron brought tears to my eyes, and the side ones with Hawkeye’s family. Broke my heart I tell ya.)

    1. Yeah, I’ve been getting into anime lately too. The Japanese seem to have escaped being infected with SJW nonsense.

      1. As I understand it, a lot of their story-quirks/things we’d disapprove of are easy to avoid by avoiding the wrong genera (the view of sexual but not reproductive act stuff, for example) or are extremely backhanded allusions.

        Story is still greater than “statement” for getting well known.

        (From memory, some of the stuff that I utterly adore is actually their version of subversive– a lot of imported Catholic themes, and some of the world-view. :D)

      2. Their crapsack worlds are crapsack worlds for a reason too. As horribly brutal as SAO and She The Ultimate Weapon were, the storylines made sense at least.

        School Days was annoying to me largely because of how pointless most of the character actions seemed to me.

        The sad thing is, erotic game – eroge- visual novels have more plotline than what passes for plot in SJWhingeland. Case in point: the original Fate/Stay Night

  23. Two thoughts:

    1) “You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.”

    There seems to be a large school of artists, call them the “B+ students”, who were very good at memorizing the Whats of what makes good art but not the Whys of it. Thus, they remember that “emotional reaction from audience = good” and believe that any emotional reaction, including “unbelievably pissed off at the artist,” means that they’re creating wonderful art. It somewhat reminds me of a certain internet troll who will not be named but who believes that the fact that people remember his fish semen metaphor means that it was brilliant. He doesn’t seem to grasp that you don’t want people to remember your writing the same way they remember becoming gravely ill and being rushed to the hospital: as a trauma you never want to repeat.

    2) “And now that they’ve destroyed all the living and dead heroes that they can, they’re going after those that exist only in our imaginations”

    I do wonder if these people have ever thought about the next step. So kids stop believing in any sort of heroism, stop believing that its even possible to do anything good without making the world worse, or even BE a good person. And then what? You really think these little cynics are going to make your socialist Utopia, or for that matter, any world that you’d want to live in? Or is it more likely that they will say, “Fashionable minority group X is poor and oppressed? Wow, sucks to be them,” and go right back to playing video games.

    3. 2) “And now that they’ve destroyed all the living and dead heroes that they can, they’re going after those that exist only in our imaginations”

      They think everything will be magically fixed if they can just kill The Patriarchy and all it’s stories. Making us all shut up is the end-game, the flowers and unicorns spontaneously appear when the last eeevile White Man dies.

      It’s never worked before all those other times because Evile White Men are as resistant as cockroaches. But this time for sure!

  25. “…doesn’t seem to grasp that you don’t want people to remember your writing the same way they remember becoming gravely ill and being rushed to the hospital: as a trauma you never want to repeat.”

    *eyes her lovely mug of Chinese soy drink and is glad it is still a bit too hot to drink* Love the description otherwise; had me laughing myself silly.

    That reminds me, did Larry and the rest actually DO the dramatic readings of that crap? Was anyone fortunate enough to attend? You lucky bastards, I bet it would’ve been comedy gold.

  26. This won’t stand, and they know it won’t stand. It’ll turn out that this was Cap from another universe, or someone else playing Cap’s role or Cap having been brainwashed by the Red Skull using Xavier’s powers(*), or Cap pretending he believes some brainwashing took in order to play double agent, or something. Odds are the author already has a fallback in mind. It’s STILL an attempt to trash the character, it’s just an attempt they know they aren’t going to be allowed to get away with.

    Apart from the fact that it’s tearing down a hero for no good reason, it’s BAD ART. Faking out the audience requires audience buy-in, and there’s no audience buy-in here.

    (*) Yes, really; the Red Skull got Xavier’s powers somehow and abused them and all sorts of badness. WTF? He fused his brain with Xavier’s somehow. Someone left Xavier’s brain where anyone could reach it??? And apart from that, I can buy getting the *power* that way, but not the *skill*, and rapidly getting the former without the latter really should drive you mad.

    1. It’ll turn out that this was Cap from another universe

      That’s what I’m thinking they’ll “try” to save themselves.

      Be very surprised if the Cap fans would buy that attempt. 😦

      1. I’m not exactly a Cap fan — I like the character, but I haven’t read Marvel with an regularity in decades, But *I* certainly don’t buy that attempt to undo the retcon as undoing the harm to the character.

        First, it says that Cap’s goodness is entirely a matter of upbringing, and given a different upbringing Cap pledged his loyalty to genocidal monsters, or at least an organization which honors genocidal monsters. Now, I certainly believe that upbringing *influences* characters. But I also believe that biology influences character, and in a mystical quality best known as the soul. Upbringing influences character according to certain rules and within certain bounds. Making Cap a Nazi – which you have to do to make a WW2-era character work for HYDRA – is far outside the bounds I find plausible for upbringing to have changed Cap’s character. This is *especially* true if you’re keeping the same basic upbringing and changing one factor; it wouldn’t be as much of a stretch if we had the Red Skull making a baby clone of Steve Rogers and giving him to underlings to indoctrinate from birth.

        Second, Cap was given the opportunity to become Captain America because he pled for the opportunity to do something useful to stop Nazi atrocities. It just doesn’t +work+ unless he’s basically the same person he is in the mainline version. Are you trying to tell me that the 17-year-old kid was able to fake that level of passion? And are you trying to tell me the Army did no security checks, or that as a preteen he concealed his involvement in a German organization? Or are you trying to say that somehow coincidentally in that universe HYDRA did steal the super serum and by coincidence tested it in Steve Rogers?

        Third, back in the 1940s HYDRA – whatever it was calling itself then – would have been a pure Nazi organization. They might have found a use for the pre-serum 4F Steve Rogers, but wouldn’t have respected him. They might even have successfully concealed their disdain from him … but I’d bet against it. Cap doesn’t show off his smarts in any flashy way, but he’s got lots of them. and *because* he doesn’t show off his smarts there probably would have been something there to see. Regardless, having helped his Mom once is no *reason* to give HYDRA loyalty. Cap is loyal to ideals. What are the HYDRA ideals? Nazi organization; the ideal is “living space,” aka we kill off a lot of non-Germans so that the Germans can expand onto their land.

        1. I didn’t say it would be “reasonable”. 😉

          I said that it would be an attempt to “dig themselves out of the hole they put themselves in”. 😀

          1. I know. I was agreeing the Cap fans wouldn’t buy it, since as a friendly non-fan I vehemently think it’s nonsense.

        2. It could have actually been a really interesting development. The recruiting process is rarely “hey you want to be a double agent for the Soviets? Awesome!”, and initially relies a lot more on deceit and subtle manipulation. One of the things that really made Captain America work for me in the first movie (I’ll admit I don’t really follow comics) was his naive enthusiasm. Reveal that Rogers was being manipulated by a Hydra handler the entire time and then plot involves him dealing with the knowledge that he’s been furthering the interests of the very organization he was passionately fighting against, while trying to mitigate the damage he inadvertently caused.

          Of course, from what I’ve seen, this is the exact approach that Marvel has chosen NOT to take.

          1. That’s almost exactly what they already did for making Nightcrawler a demon.

            It didn’t work, for similar reasons– although Total Research Failure was involved, too.

          2. Remember that Cap’s early career was being at war with the Nazis who spawned HYDRA, and throughout the rest of the his time out of the iceberg he’s been *thwarting* HYDRA. It’s not plausible he’s furthered HYDRA’s interests more than he’s harmed them.

            Now, an organization of German *aristocrats* (i.e. real-life noble ancestry, albeit probably minor nobility) who opposed both Nazis and HYDRA because it was offensive for German *commoners* to conquer the world (who may or may not also have found Nazi genocide offensive?) Yeah, Cap could have been manipulated by vile people who opposed Nazis and HYDRA for all the wrong reasons. I’m dubious about them doing it for long without him catching on. I never read the WW2 era comics, but the post-iceberg Cap was smart, and he was a genius when it came to people. He can be fooled, he can probably be fooled for months or years, but decades?

          3. I remember when “every move the hero makes accidentally furthers the villain’s agenda” was really popular in videogames. I suppose it’s been long enough that the new generation of writers might find it fresh and interesting.

            … but it takes a bit of skill to do that plot twist well…

    2. Cap from another universe

      So the location of the Capsicle is actually an interdimensional nexus containing an infinite number of Capsicles, and we thawed out the wrong one? Hey, it could happen to anyone …

  27. For all the overly blatant hit-you-over-the-head-with-today’s-lesson moralizing of 1980’s cartoons at least the good guys were the good guys and that was that. As for this? Well, better to go watch some vintage Bugs Bunny.

    1. I re-watched Animaniacs recently, I was amazed and refreshed at how…. non-Progressive… it was.

      1. Indeed! The ‘Wheel of Morality’ was great for poking fun at the Here’s-the-Moral-in-case-we-didn’t-hit-hard-enough endings

  28. Eh… I always figured that Cap voted for FDR four times. It’s not a big leap from being an American totalitarian to a Hydra one. Remember when Capt. America went out into ‘flyover country’ to fight the Tea Party?

    I prefer Capt. Confederacy anyways. The new black chick or the old white one either one. THAT was a reboot* that was done very well instead of the “let’s make him a girl for shock value… should xe be Muslim or transgender… or BOTH?!!” crap that seems popular now.

    * Yes, yes, technically it wasn’t a reboot since the old Capt. Confederacy wasn’t re-written, he just semi-retired and his wife took up the torch.

    2. Given the fact that HYDRA utilizes, not renounces, its Nazi roots, yes it IS a big leap from an American totalitarian to a HYDRA one.

      This is the first I have heard of Cap fighting the Tea Party. I haven’t read Marvel with any regularity since sometime in the 1990s — Claremont left the New Mutants, its straightest arrow immediately tried drugs, and it turned out Magneto had been *lying to his thought balloons* and was never a good guy. (Really? This was the Genosha era, the X-Men had vanished, Magneto wasn’t in regular communication with any of the good guys, it would have been easy to have him run across something to make him change his mind and decide he’d been right the first time…. But nooo, he was faking it including lying to his thought balloons.)

    3. Interestingly, they have actually managed to tick off parts of the happily self-identified SJWs as well. Granted it’s people who figure Cap must have voted for FDR four times and think that’s a good thing, but they’re urging boycotts and ranting about the disrespect shown toward his Jewish creators.

  30. When DC did that Superman renouncing his US citizenship thing, there was a political cartoon of a little boy in his room admiring his Navy SEAL poster. His Superman poster was in the trash can. In the immortal words of Stan Lee, “‘Nuff said.”

    1. Yeah. When Supes, Batman and Wonder Woman and Green Arrow stopped being idealistic was when I stopped reading DC. Hell, it was that comic where Green Arrow brings Green Lantern down to size a bit, and showing him ‘the real America’ was what got me reading Green Arrow.

      1. Didn’t they make Green Arrow a shrieking commie SJW at some point? I’ve missed everything since about 1994, and feel pretty happy about it too. ~:) Probably paid for my truck, not buying all those.

        1. I don’t know about those; most of my comics were sourced from second hand stores in the Philippines; when I was reading Green Arrow, it was during the time he was living in Seattle, with Dinah, and they were running the Sherwood Florist. The shops I bought those at stopped stocking comics that I liked to read at some point, so I missed a lot of story. I picked up an issue where Ollie had his head shaved and he was enraged about having been framed as a terrorist, but I had missed so much I couldn’t really continue. That and the art was so abysmally bad I didn’t want to spend money on it, so I stopped.

        2. Son, at one point they had Thor — the guy in mythology who casually kills a couple of whales so he has something to throw on the barbie while visiting — joining Greenpeace and hunting whaling ships.

          These people are shameless, and insane, and too dangerous to allow around friends and family.

          1. On twitter, one of the people I follow retweeted some recent panel of a female character admonishing Hercules for being too amorous towards a beautiful woman. Asked Herc what his father would think of his behavior.

            You know, Zeus.

            *facepalm*

            4. Somebody once described Zeus as Bill Clinton of mythology.

              I thought I’d better infect some other people with that image. 😀

              1. Nah, Bill Clinton could only wish for (or wish he could handle) the number of women Zeus had. 😉

            5. Highly approving, I would think.

              Though perhaps a bit disappointed at the lack of shapeshifting.

              “Up your game, son!”

  31. Marvel has outsmarted themselves, I think. When they replaced Thor with a woman (yes, apparently the Odinson became unworthy of his own freaking *name*) they could at least accuse their critics of being misogynists. What can they do this time? Say that we only hate this story because we don’t like Nazis? 😉

    1. What can they do this time?
      “It’s just a comic man, jeez!” Delivered in a whining, defensive cringe by a bearded hipster dickweed with a neck the size of a yellow HB pencil.

    2. They have no qualms at sacrificing continuity for ideological purity. Jane Foster, stricken with breast cancer, originally refused Thor’s offer of a magical or divine cure. She would fight her cancer with human means and win or die human, even as she goes off to be Earth’s representative to Freya’s Asgardian Republic. Then they decided Chick Thor would be awesome, so they had Jane Foster be the one who was worthy to wield Mjolnir, Only problem is, turning into Chick Thor negates her chemo, so every time she reverts to Jane Foster her cancer gets rapidly worse, so she either stays Chick Thor (effectively the magical cure she refused) and forfeits her human life and duties to Earth and the Republic, or she dies.

    3. As I understood (paying as little attention as possible to a brilliant marketing ploy that was simultaneously a horrible story-telling move) Thor became unworthy of Mjolnir because he had suffered a loss of confidence and could no longer wield the hammer or even get it up.

      Freud would have had a field day.

      1. Worse than that. Somebody told Mjolnir that Thor had done something bad. Somehow, Mjolnir couldn’t find that out by itself.

  32. Actually, the person to blame is Frank Miller, who began the period of the anti-hero in the late 80s with The Dark Knight Returns. All major characters at Marvel and DC have cycled through the “edgy” Millerization — I’m just surprised that it took so long to get to Cap.

      1. The person who wrote that article understood even less than he thought Frank Miller did. Not that Miller got it right, either, but still.

      1. And yet he turned around in the ’90s and wrote Tom Strong and Supreme, which were the complete antithesis of his ’80s work.

        Ironically enough, there’s a scene in an early Moore Supreme where it’s mentioned the writer of the “Omni-Man” comic has been fired for making the main character a member of Hezbollah. 🙂

      2. Sorry – you’re both wrong. It was neither Miller nor Moore, it was all the semi-talented people trying to capture that edge without having the slightest idea what it actually was or how it worked.

        Sorta the same way certain artists who I will leave unnamed learned to draw comics by tracing Jack Kirby pages, achieving Kirby’s hyper-exaggeration without grasping any sense of the dramatic purpose. Yeah, these were the guys who thought the whole idea was to create original art that they could sell and telling stories was just something that got in their way.

        None of them were fit to trim Eisner’s brushes.

  34. I haven’t bought comics in years,either. I do have a little bit of Disney stock. It’s less than a drop in a bucket to them, but I’m considering selling it and writing Investor Relations to let them know why.

  35. Pingback: You want to lose hope for humanity? This is how you lose hope for humanity. | The Liberty Zone

  36. I’m thinking that Marvel’s “out” is this: back in the ’50s, there was a commie-fighting Captain America. But Stan Lee retconned Cap as having been frozen since WW2. In the ’70s, there was a storyline where the ’50s Cap, who had gone crazy fighting commies and become a deranged racist loon (because anti-communism is racism, I guess?). That guy looked exactly like Steve Rogers and later became a full-out neo-Nazi (swastika armband and everything). Maybe they’ll use him to explain the story. The takeaway is that this is sadly not the first time Marvel has besmirched the image of Captain America. The way the comics industry is headed, it might not even turn out to be the worst.

    1. Yeah, I’ve been arguing for some time that Marvel killed Cap’s character when they retconned away the ’50s anticommunism and put him in the Avengers.

  37. Pingback: How To Piss Off Your Readers | madgeniusclub

  38. No. This is actually completely authentic. The essence of being an American is politically secretly being the exact opposite of what one gave every evidence of being.

    Washington, Adams, Franklin and Jefferson were British loyalists. Lincoln, Sherman and Grant were secretly confederates. Davis, Lee, Johnson, McClellan, and Booth were Union fanatics. George Carver was a militarist who helped the German war effort. Curtis LeMay graduated from the Nagano school. Reagan was a KGB agent. William Buckley thought the great leap forward was a good idea. Bush did 9/11. Trump…

      1. That was an Otherworlds, and he was Jor-El’s father or grandfather, IIRC.

  39. Trump’s income only looks low because he invested heavily in data after 2012. He is going to use his contacts in the Mexican cartels to form death squads. These death squads will liquidate homosexuals, Democrats, the left, and trade unionists around the world. Trump is a Muslim, and is planning to rule his subjects from New York as Grand Mufti.

    1. Amazingly! There are fools who would take you seriously.
      Or, at least pretend to.

      1. I screwed up not putting them in one post. Lincoln and Washington keep it from looking like the raving of some poor sod that needs help.

        Trump is hard to do this for, like Obama. What would I do, say that Obama has a true and deep love for America and the Constitution?

        I really have come up with an argument defending this interpretation of Steve Rogers. Albeit one I have rejected in the past as making him pointless as a character.

        1. To keep it at the same level. Obama is secretly Islamophobic and has barely restrained himself from nuking Mecca.

          1. That’s why the nuclear disarmament. He can’t trust the military to keep him away from them, and he constantly has trouble keeping himself from cleansing Mecca, Tehran, and San Francisco.

    2. and is planning to rule his subjects from New York as Grand Mufti.

      Don’t be ridiculous… he is NOT going to rule from New York City.

      He’s going to rename the city first so he can rule from New Trump City.

      #MakeAmericaTrumpAgain

      1. You know what America needs? A post-apoc dystopia set in Trump City. Because the sci fi flavored polemics on the evils of Nixon and Reagan have aged so well.

        1. As much as i like Snow Crash, it certainly has not aged well…. the ‘inflation until the end of time’ thing wasn’t true within a handful of years…

  40. Marvel has been uncomfortable with how to handle Captain America/Steve Rogers ever since Stan Lee stopped writing the character. It is as if Boomer writers (and subsequent) can’t stand the idea of that America being defensible. Simple unabashed patriotism, love of nation, acceptance of the idea that even with all out blemishes America has been an agent of good in this world seems to give them an itch in their souls.

    This won’t last — it is at its core untenable — and they’ll eventually have to roll back the tide as they’ve done with the McCarthyite Captain America and Bucky, the assassinated Steve Rogers and the 90-year-old Steve Rogers.

    The simple fact of the matter is the only way they can sell their comics today is with stunts. A quick check proves that the January 2016 issue (#5) of Captain America Sam Wilson barely broke 29K (29,081)* and it is likely that a number of those went directly into comic store’s back issue inventory. If it weren’t for the licensing tie-ins there’d be no economic reason to waste the paper it is printed on.

    Which of course means that there’s nothing the writers can do to kill the book, so they’re free to destroy the character and impress their friends and the MSM with how “cool” and how “hip” and how “edgy” they are. Because nobody’s reading those comics. In a nation of 330 million people, they’re selling their book to at most 0.0091% of us.

    *In February they dropped to 27,111 issues sold — in a marketplace famous for the OCD tendencies of its audience.

    1. A little additional poking about reveals that a year previous to this the January 2015 issue of this title (pre-Sam Wilson, All New Captain America #5) sold over 50K copies, so we can see the writing on the wall in the Marvel toilet.

      Go back to 1998, shortly after Diamond became sole distributor of comics in North America and we find Captain America moving 81K issues … and in 1969, when Stan Lee (or possibly Roy Thomas, Lee’s heir) was writing the book we see sales of nearly 245K issues (February 1969: 243,699).

      All figures courtesy of sales reported by Diamond Comic Distributors.
      http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2015/2015-01.html

    2. “*In February they dropped to 27,111 issues sold — in a marketplace famous for the OCD tendencies of its audience.”

      But then it sold over 31k in April.
      It’s unwise to cherry-pick statistics. 🙂
      Comics as a market are a fraction of what they were in the 80s-90s boom. (Man, I wish I’d owned my stores back then!) But they’re not in a death-spiral, however pleasing that might be to believe.

      1. If any cherry-picking was done it was done by Google. I picked from their random selection the most recent numbers on the top page.

        31K is still not an impressive number and not so long ago was low enough to get titles cancelled.

        1. Kind of like with sf/f, 7k was enough to get you cancelled when I started. Now it’s a mid-list career.
          The field keeps becoming more… selective.

          1. yeah anything below 50k used to get you cancelled in comics, and 100k was a low seller, 250k was midlist and the big books sold 800k-1.2mil

            1. Follow that link to the Diamond sales figures and you’ll notice only three titles (other than a Star Wars #1 picked up by Loot Crate) selling above 100K copies:

              2 Batman 38 $3.99 DC 110,232
              3 Amazing Spider-Man 12 $3.99 Marvel 105,458
              4 Amazing Spider-Man 13 $3.99 Marvel 103,093

              Numbers 5-7 on the list were issue #1 of relaunched books and barely topped 70K. Get past the top dozen and you’re looking at 50K issues.
              http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2015/2015-01.html

              Keep in mind that most stores are ordering at least three extra copies for back issue inventory. Google supplies the info that in Oct. 2013 that Diamond had 2,638 accounts in the US, which means that back stock alone should produce almost 8,000 issues sold.

              Perhaps stores are stocking more thinly, but we’re talking about 25% of issues going essentially unsold.

              1. yes i know, and when something passes 250k – what used to be midlist- they act like they should celebrate.

          2. I’ve noticed that increased selectivity being expressed in the Hugo award discussions. If the field becomes any more selective it’ll become incestuous.

    3. It was Brian Michael Bendis, I think, who did the Avengers “interview” segment right before Fear Itself where Hawkeye talkjs about starting out as an ex-con punk who resented Cap and ended up desperate for his approval. Even Stark said Cap was one of the two people whose respect he wanted – the other was Thor – so of course he betrayed both their trusts.

      1. Which reminds … Captain Steve Rogers America has been tested and proven true by no less a charm than Mjolnir.

        Continuity? We don’ heed no steenkin’ continuity!

        1. I’m suspecting that Steve faked being unable to move Mjolnir in that Age of Ultron scene. He did knudge it a little.

              1. Yep, that would definitely put the “Hydra all along” crap into dispute. I doubt anyone in Hydra is worthy of Mjolnir.

                1. Alternatively, HYDRA has its origins in the Prussian warrior caste, who likely worshipped and may even have sacrificed to the Norse deities (probably Odin rather than Thor, but …)

                  Puts a whole different interpretation on what it means to be “worthy”, don’t it?

              1. We don’t know what would have happened if Cap had “tapped the hammer on the ground” and after the hammer became the walking stick Cap “tapped the walking stick on the ground”. [Very Big Grin]

                1. Steve Rogers was already a muscle-bound, square-jawed blonde when he picked up the hammer.

                  1. True, but he didn’t have the Power Of Thor!

                    Not that I want to mess with him anyway. 😉

  41. “As an aside, I note that this same set of Avant Guard morons can’t figure out why they aren’t making any money, and write it off to “the fools just can’t understand my work”.

    And their sycophants and cheerleaders in the education world can’t quite seem to figure out why their funding keeps getting cut.

  42. I bought my last comic in maybe 1971, but thereabouts. Comic book fans were either DC Comics or Marvel fans, with not a whole lot of overlap.

    I was a DC Comics fan. The DC superheroes were all superheroes, who knew what they were, and went about their superhero business. Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Batman Wonder Woman. Batman was about the darkest DC hero, due to how he became Batman, but back then Batman wasn’t a dark, brooding character full of self doubt. He was a Hero.
    All of DC Comics superheroes were confident characters.

    Marvel Comics? Not even close. From the beginning, Spiderman was a brooder, unsure of himself. My memory may be wrong, but I did pick up a Thor comic every now and again. Thor was a god, and self confidant, like DC’s superheroes. And the hammer was neat.

    Now it appears all the comics are full of self doubting self loathing superheroes. Blech! Are even Archie comics worth reading for entertainment?

  43. Battle call heeded!
    Sara’s got the right of it: create heroes again. Whatever medium, whatever your art is, even if it’s though patronage: support heroes.
    We’ll win.
    We will win, because like Sauron, these slugs cannot create, only twist into mockery what their better has made. Look at their new titles and re-imaginings: they are pure dreck, one and all. Maybe we cannot save the figures they have defaced: but we can out-create them in our dreams.
    Why? Because we still have dreams.

    1. Because the only way the left holds on to them is by teaching them to UnThink, which is more poisonous than not thinking at all. And when you’re unthinking, you can’t create. (I should write a post on this.)

  44. Perhaps they are just writing heroes that they like? I mean Captain America stands for everything they despise, but if he was a secret national socialist, he would be like…. Their Hero!

  45. The decline in sales is the key datum. Down to less than 30,000 copies a month — this means that Mighty Marvel Comics has sales comparable to Chuck Tingle.

    What we’re looking at here is a classic Leftward Death Spiral. The title — the line — the company — maybe the whole industry are in decline. What’s the rational thing for a good Progressive to do? Sure, they could write stories to appeal to a larger audience and try to reverse the decline, but that’s risky.

    The much safer approach is to steer hard to the left as you lose altitude. That way one can burnish one’s personal SJW credentials and get some national media exposure for being edgy and transgressive. That’s a sure-fire way to ensure cushy gigs (teaching at colleges, maybe the lecture circuit, an animated series on Adult Swim).

    Who cares if you trash the character? Simon and Kirby are dead. Stan’s old and frail. Disney values Marvel Comics only as an IP factory for the movies and merchandise. If you can get those awful neckbeard comics geeks to complain, it proves how clever and right and good you are, because the people who support your dying industry must be stupid.

    (Anybody doubt this is their thought process?)

    Let them destroy themselves. Rebuild from the wreckage or create anew.

    1. Speaking as someone who owns a pair of comic shops… I’m not seeing much of a decline, if any. But I’m apparently the exception to the rule.

      Marvel Comics have been hard-left since the 1980s. Back in the late Eighties, Captain America was routinely making Chomskyite rants about how America was ruled by the “Military-Industrial-CIA-FBI complex” and similar nonsense. If anything, modern Marvel is _less_ overtly left-wing than it was back then (though more SJW-ish).

      The modern comic book market is primarily people who either (a) are themselves left-of-center, or (b) who don’t care about politics, so this sort of thing hasn’t hurt Marvel in a long time. The decline in the comics industry is driven partly by the collapse of the early-90s market bubble (much like sports cards and CCGs, comics have never really recovered from that) and partly by some of the same factors hurting books — e.g. rising printing costs and Internet competition.

      As for this storyline, it’s pretty clearly just a stunt, and they have a pre-placed “out” (the Red Skull came into possession of a history-altering artifact a little while ago). Like all other such stunts, it will eventually be reversed and the status quo restored, because comic book characters are IPs that have to be maintained long-term for marketing purposes.

      1. the Red Skull came into possession of a history-altering artifact a little while ago

        …Okay, he’d do it for exactly all the reasons everybody hates the idea.

      2. Rob, I’m glad you’re doing well; every comic shop I used to visit in NYC and Los Angeles has been wailing and lamenting since before Capital went under,

        But your argument about the comics industry mindset reminds me of my experience walking into a B&N that was holding a robotics competition. Kids and their homebuilt robots were scurrying all over the store, literally… yet that B&N has been steadily shrinking its SF shelf space.

        The kids are building ROBOTS yet B&N and the Big 5 can’t sell them science fiction?

        Marvel movies make literally billions of dollars yet they can’t sell 100,000 copies of the same characters in comic books.

        SOMEONE is misserving their audience, whether through provincialism or malice makes no difference.

        1. In fairness to the idiots at Marvel, average cost of a movie ticket is, what, 14 bucks, max? Average DVD costs around 30. Movie ticket’s good for 2 hours of entertainment, DVD around 8.
          Average comic issue costs 3 bucks, and is good for maybe twenty minutes, tops.

  46. This is a test comment intended to log in this browser. This is only a test.

    Had this been a real comment it would have contained a link to something of general interest, such as this Wall Street Journal article on the Navy’s new rail gun, capable of firing ten round a minute.

    A First Look at America’s Supergun
    The Navy’s experimental railgun fires a hardened projectile at staggering velocity—a battlefield meteorite with the power to blow holes in enemy ships and level terrorist camps
    By Julian E. Barnes

    DAHLGREN, Va.—A warning siren bellowed through the concrete bunker of a top-secret Naval facility where U.S. military engineers prepared to demonstrate a weapon for which there is little defense.

    Officials huddled at a video screen for a first look at a deadly new supergun that can fire a 25-pound projectile through seven steel plates and leave a 5-inch hole.

    The weapon is called a railgun and requires neither gunpowder nor explosive. It is powered by electromagnetic rails that accelerate a hardened projectile to staggering velocity—a battlefield meteorite with the power to one day transform military strategy, say supporters, and keep the U.S. ahead of advancing Russian and Chinese weaponry.

    Range: 125 miles

    Power: A 25 megawatt power plant and large capacitor bank are required to provide enough pulse power to fire the weapon 10 times a minute

    Projectile: A non-explosive bullet filled with tungsten pellets; weight: approx. 25 pounds.

    The Navy now believes it has a design that soon will be able to fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds.

    Besides speed, the railgun also has a capacity advantage. A typical U.S. Navy destroyer can carry as many as 96 missiles—either offensive cruise missiles or defensive interceptors. A ship armed with a railgun could potentially carry a thousand rounds, allowing the vessel to shoot incoming missiles or attack enemy forces for longer periods and at a faster rate of fire.

    [SNIP]

    Railgun research leans heavily on commercial advances in supercomputing to aim and on smartphone technology to steer the railgun’s projectile using the Global Positioning System.

    “Ten years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to build a projectile like this because the cellphone industry, the smartphone industry, hadn’t perfected the components,” said William Roper, the director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office. “It is a really smart bullet.”

    Development of the railgun guidance system is about done, officials said, but circuits in the projectile must be hardened to withstand gravitational forces strong enough to turn most miniaturized electronics to scrap.

    Missile defense by the railgun is at least a decade away, but Pentagon officials believe the weapon’s projectiles can be used much sooner. They are filled with tungsten pellets harder than many kinds of steel, officials said, and will likely cost between $25,000 and $50,000, a bargain compared with a $10-million interceptor missile.

    The electrical energy required to fire a railgun means it is likely to be used first as a ship-mounted weapon. Only one class of Navy ship, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, has such a power plant, officials said. The Navy is building just three of those destroyers, so the Pentagon is working to adapt the projectile to use in existing Naval guns on other vessels, as well as for Army artillery.

    While slower than a railgun, a powder-fired railgun projectile still flies at 2,800 miles an hour, which extends the range and power of existing weapons.

    At Dalhgren last year, military engineers test-fired 5- and 6-inch Navy guns loaded with a version of the railgun projectile. The range of the Navy’s 6-inch guns was extended to 38 miles from 15 miles.

    The Pentagon also tested the railgun projectile in 155mm Army howitzers, successfully extending its range.

  47. Isn’t the first rule of fantasy that you stick to the narrative? The author sets ground rules (i.e. There is a FTL drive, or Magic is real) and you stick by them. This is not mature story telling it is lazy story telling, by people who are out of ideas. If it continues it will kill the character.

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