Rebel Millennials Without a Cause- by Marshall Hoyt

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Rebel Millennials Without a Cause- by Marshall Hoyt

Hey y’all, you probably haven’t seen a post from the youngest Hoyt in a while, I’ve been working tooth and nail. But before I submit a project proposal and prelab tomorrow, I figure it’s time for one of my deep dives into culture… Or at least a nice quick dip.

To those not totally plugged into comics culture, there’s been a bit a crisis going on lately. Now, with all the COVID-19 panic, you might have not even thought about what’s going on with comics. Or, more importantly comic shops.

I’ll be the first to let you know: They’re closing. Forever. These stores rely on new issues and constant input, and all the major publishers have announced a hold on their distribution lines until the virus passes. The comic companies- multi-invested, they’ll live for the most part, digital fronts pick up the slack. Physical comic stores? Well, it’s like a bakery being told they won’t even be offered wheat, or wheat substitute anymore. This is end days for comic stores, so whatever is coming and already on order, has to be knockouts. They have to have Spiderman, or Dark Knight Returns level of sales to survive.

So, like a man on their death bed, the comic stores are begging for a response, for salvation, for a saving grace to be offered by the publishers. The first to respond with announcements is one of the biggest: Marvel. One issue announced earlier this week, and one a couple of days ago. Now these comic stores, they’re looking at these announcements and going: Could it be? Look at engagement! Those views! 650k views on one, and 110k on the other, on comic announcements? That’s huge! So with hopeful eyes they look at the announcements and….

trailblazer

Wait, hold on–

screentime

Wait hold up, experimental what now? You can’t just pretend that makes any sen–

twincest

Okay now you’re just f**king with us. This team can’t seriously be comprised of jokes that 4chan would make about how woke Marvel has become-

b-negative

Ah.

Good.

The blood sucking, flying albino with a bad 90’s Goth outfit is the most believable character in your roster.

Wonderful.

Well at least the other announcement has got to be good. Right?

zoomer x-men

Okay, well, that’s tonal deft to what Zoomers are like and what they like, but, sure, whatever, at least they’re not as bad as that other team.

Although speaking of other team, these characters look sort of familiar…

familiar

You got be f**king kidding me.

Marvel, gender-swapping and race-changing existing characters doesn’t count as doing something new. Granting, seeing what you do with new characters, I guess this is an improvement.

Besides the coming funeral plans for comic shops thanks to the senseless murder by Marvel comics and its weapon of pure woke, this brings into focus the purpose of my post today, because I haven’t given away the dirty little secret about these comics, and I think it’s appropriate to do a short history lesson, and turn back the clock a bit.

Now, a while back, you might recall what used to be the universally acknowledged worst generation of all time: The Boomers. These kids came in droves, rebelled, got high and fucked up, and as a result the majority of them became the divorced parents of my generation. In fact, having parents who were still married was downright rare. Of the 7 different (Official) roommates I’ve had, 4 had divorced parents, 2 had fathers who passed from cancer, and only 1 has two living, married parents. A lot of these kids were being raised by people who never really grew up themselves, and they didn’t know the first things about raising children.

For a long time, Boomers were and still are considered a completely dysfunctional generation. But what became clear about 12 years ago, back in 2008, is that the Boomer’s kids (who ranged from teens entering high school to people in their late 20’s becoming a solid presence in the workforce), well, they had something going on. They had grown up with the transition of technology from bulky CRTV monitors to flat screens, from landlines to smartphones, from notes in class to texts after. These kids were connected, they were with it, they were hip.

They became loud. They were the rebels, the new kids on the block, the “New Generation” that politicians should be appealing to. This new world was their world. The boomers and Gen X might have built the technology they were using, but they weren’t using it like they were. Youtube, Tumblr, Twitter- they weren’t just using these platforms, they began to work at these companies, shape them, mold them to what they wanted the world to be. For a long time, people didn’t take them seriously.

But they got louder, bolder, crazier. And the messaging became clear. Two person relationship? How about a 10 person polyamorous mess? Two Genders? How about 58 and counting? Two equally qualified candidates of different sexes? Have to hire the woman, it’d be sexist otherwise.  Got any Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian or Pacific Islander leads in your movie? If not, you’re just racist, no other way around it. Do you like road intersections? Well imagine everyone’s identity is a car, and we all just drove at max speed towards that crossroads until our cars mangled up into a pile of metal and bones- That’s Intersectionality, baby. Now get on board, or you’re as bad as a group of people that quite literally killed millions of Jews.

This craziness was seen in Comics- Spiderman is black now, Jane Foster is Thor, Captain America is secretly part of Hydra and “Occupy Avengers” sounds like a good idea. In movies- where the cast of Star Wars needed more diversity, Scarlet Johansson shouldn’t be leading in Ghost of the Shell because she’s white and the Ghostbusters (Or any vaguely nostalgic property) would be better done if it was explicitly redone with an all-female cast. Even in public discourse- think there’s only two genders, babies in the womb are living beings or that people breaking the law by crossing the border are by definition criminals? then expect a ban on every social media platform.

But over the past year, something happened.

This insane generation, raised by an insane generation, they were getting old. Noticeably old.

The oldest Millennials were about to hit 40.

Worse yet, in all their time being the “rebellious young advocates”, in all their complaining about capitalism and demands for abortions on demand, they sort of forgot to have kids. In fact, the people they’ve spent the past 12 years yelling at in their generation? they were the ones having all the kids. Even worse than that, these kids understood technology in a way the Millennials didn’t. That doesn’t make sense, I mean, they only grew up on all the most advanced technology of this era. But wait, what about the world they’ve presented the new generation with, the ideals they’ve thrown on banners and the things they fought for? These “Zoomers” will at least appreciate that, right?

Oh Sh*t, they hate it, they hate all of it.

No, wait, when did the Millennials stop being cool? No, we’re still cool, right? We have to be. Time to course correct.

fellow kids

That there, is Daniel Kibblesmith.

He’s the author of that lovely new Marvel group from the top of the article, The “New” New Warriors, and at age 36 he’s part of the older brand of Millennials that just can’t accept his glory days are past.

That’s the dirty little secret I mentioned earlier, these comics are made by  Millennials pretending they know how Zoomers work. Don’t worry, I saved you from his heavily receding hairline with that hat. Along with his strong belief as a Jewish man that we should teach kids that Santa is black, and white Santa is just his husband (No, I’m not kidding), he’s about as stereotypical Millennial as you get. I mean, I’d say more about him, but other than the fact that he used to write for Stephen Colbert, he’s a noted Bernie supporter (In 2020) and seems to have a puppet fetish, there isn’t much more interesting about him. You can discern the rest of his personality from that information, and I encourage you to find me anything he’s posted or said that doesn’t paint him as a perfect Millennial political wonk.

Unfortunately, like his 35 year old counterpart writing that second title, “Children of the Atom”, he’s not as in tune with the Zoomers as he’d like to think. To be fair, I don’t actually think they’re that dumb. I think they’re well aware they’re not the rebels anymore and they’re trying to influence the younger generations as much as possible. But in equal measure, I’ve seen a LOT of failed Millennial attempts to appeal to Zoomers recently, and the Zoomers treated them no kinder than Millennials treated the Boomers. In fact, more than a fair share of Millennials have been on the receiving end of a slapping “Ok Boomer”, much to their dismay.

Panicked and lost as Millennials are though, I am fairly convinced they’re gunning for influencing the generations under them as much as possible. For Zoomers– they’ve pretty much already lost them. The Millennials have gone so far, so quick, and so incoherently, that Zoomer grew up seeing the millennials try and burn the world down, and they ain’t having that sh*t.

However, there are two points of concern. One: professors across the country are freaking out because they’re afraid their lectures will be leaked to right wing publications. Ignoring the fact that you shouldn’t be teaching *anything* on a college campus if you’re afraid that 50% of the f**king country wouldn’t like it being taught as gospel to students, this does give away the game. They are indoctrinating students. I mean, we knew that, but it’s to the point they’re hiding *what* exactly that indoctrination is. Needless to say, I look forward to seeing exactly what BS these professors are pulling, when their lecture notes do leak. Maybe I’ll make a post about that.

Secondly, I want to share quickly my experience a couple of weeks back, sitting down in the library between classes to get work done. Because as I pulled out my work I realized that the woman speaking loudly on the other side of the barrier wasn’t just having any conversation, they were discussing intersectionality. Not just that, a *children’s book* about intersectionality. In her rambling, she said the exact words “I think it’s important to teach children the importance of intersectionality, to influence their politics” to an unknown amount of crazies. I repeat, she finds it important to *influence the politics of children*.  That is beyond evil. I mean even logically, if we’re not allowed to teach Christianity in school, something that roughly 75% of the US population believes in, I don’t think teaching children something *maybe*, at best, 20% of the US population believes in is appropriate. But of course, being appropriate is never part of the Millennial mindset.

Frankly, I don’t know what Generation Alpha, the children and toddlers of today, will be like. I don’t know their political leanings, or their values or aspirations. I know nobody has the right to try and directly influence what they become, and lord knows, with some of the 7 years old drag queens and trans kids insidiously brought out by the Millennials having children in their 30’s, that generation might be beyond f**ked up. But we certainly shouldn’t be encouraging insanity or influencing political leanings.  They should just be kids. Luckily, I think Zoomers will soon become the roaring voice in the wind, and they’ll say “Enough is enough.”

Only time will tell, and time only proves to be a cruel b*tch to the Millennials. A generation who used to be the rebels, the kings, the movement and the change. Now, they’re just an echo of a time fading away, of a culture increasingly mocked, and an ideology turned away from. Soon, it will become clear that Millennials are no longer in control of the narrative, and that they’re not only losing, but they’re lost. In a lot of ways, Millennials are more than just the generation of rebels without a cause.

They are Generation Lost.

—Original Image Credit for Marvel Characters belongs to Marvel Entertainment LLC, all rights reserved, content created under Fair Use by means of commentary—

—Final Note, I’d like to add levity by sharing this meme my Canadian Friend sent me—

pew

 

293 thoughts on “Rebel Millennials Without a Cause- by Marshall Hoyt”

    1. See also:

      Does Everyone Have COVID-19 Already?
      That’s more or less the question posed by a new Oxford study making the rounds, especially thanks to a Financial Times write-up. The study posits a scenario in which only 1 percent or even 0.1 percent of people are susceptible to falling severely ill from the virus. If there are 99 or 999 mild cases for every serious one, of course, a bigger share of the population has already had the virus than we previously thought. In the U.K., 40 or even 68 percent of the population might already be immune, per the study’s modeling.

      But crucially, this is a possibility the paper sketches out, not an actual finding inferred from the data. As the study itself puts it, “Our overall approach rests on the assumption that only a very small proportion of the population is at risk of hospitalisable illness.” (Emphasis mine.)

      Now, the paper does show that this assumption can be made to fit the observed death data. But as noted by Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, other, less rosy assumptions fit just fine as well:

      [Tweet Omitted]

      Kucharski goes on to note that other sources of data on asymptomatic infections suggest far lower rates than the study posits. But to know for sure how many folks have had COVID-19 without knowing it, we need to randomly select lots of people and give them special “serology” tests that detect antibodies. The paper’s authors, in collaboration with other scientists, are planning to start doing that, and we’ll know the results soon.

      I’d advise against getting carried away with this study in the meantime, but do keep your fingers crossed.
      –

      1. One of the things I appreciated most was that the authors seem to be emphatic about not assuming it’s real without checking.

  2. These kids came in droves, rebelled, got high and fucked up, and as a result the majority of them became the divorced parents of my generation. In fact, having parents who were still married was downright rare. Of the 7 different (Official) roommates I’ve had, 4 had divorced parents, 2 had fathers who passed from cancer, and only 1 has two living, married parents.

    At one point in high school there were five kids born to parents who were married significantly before their birth (not like folks were counting, but like “there was no chance of the bride going into labor”) and who were still married and with whom the kids lived.

    My family supplied three of them.

      1. This wasn’t official, it came out of a conversation my sister had with one of her good friends. (Parents were married, but gone 6 months of the year or something like that, and it was after her oldest sister was born.)

    2. We need to break the education monopoly, in college as well as in grade school. And we need to stop the pre-K madness.

      Can we convince enough people that they shouldn’t trust the Educrats with their children? Do enough of them even care enough about their children?

      How many of your grade school and high school teachers were both dumber and more ignorant than you?

      1. I suspect a great number of colleges are going to succumb to Wu Flu. Besides their victims discovering that “education” and attendance aren’t necessarily connected, and that the financial aftermath of the shutdowns is going to put a crimp in the “free money!” that they’re used to gathering, I predicts the colleges that survive will have noticeably reduced enrollments.

      2. For IQ, several of them were probably less intelligent than I was– but my family has a lot of very intelligent folks on both sides, so a culture of humility developed in order to keep us alive so I honestly never thought much of it. Even right now I honest to goodness never think about if I’m smarter than someone else, I only get pissed when someone isn’t using what they’ve got and/or insist I go along with them.

        Doesn’t matter how smart someone is, if they know something I don’t and are willing to teach me then they are worthy of being a teacher.

        To steal from several of the best, it’s not what they know, it’s what they think they know that isn’t so– at least when they insist that you learn it, too.

        1. Strictly speaking, I can learn from anyone. I can get a lot from taking a bunch in, chewing it over, and figuring out whose process seems to work, and whose doesn’t.

          Plus, if there are enough people in my field who test less highly than I do, and have not has as many instructional hours as I have had, there will definitely be a bunch of new developments in the field that I will need to learn from people that are on paper less qualified than I. Maybe even less qualified everywhere but in the new thing. In theory; in practice I think we can all work out that I have mental limitations, and may not be very well educated.

          Beyond the formalities of teaching, anyone who takes what they do seriously will get better at it. There are a great many areas I do not work seriously at, and a very great many people whose skills in those areas I ought to respect. Even if those strengths are things that I can’t learn anything I am interested in from.

          I have gotten a ton from a number of people who were not in the habit of reading the books and doing the analysis that I was doing. I would have cheated myself out of a great deal that I have benefited from if I had said “He is just a retired NCO, and doesn’t have a PhD in the subject” or “someone who isn’t an intellectual can’t tell me anything of relevance to academic subject X”.

          I do throw a lot of sneering disrespect around. Maybe I should work on that. On the other hand, there are people who don’t seem to take what they are doing seriously, or who don’t test themselves against subjects where they can fail. On the gripping hand, maybe I am too complacent, and fall into that category.

      3. While quite sympathetic to what you are arguing for, I think one of your arguments is weak.

        A) surveying a group that contains an unusual number of extreme intelligence information junkies is going to over sample the estimate of stupider, more ignorant teachers.

        B) I can learn from someone without them having the same or more raw intelligence than I do. Okay, there is probably a minimum intelligence level for some material, but there is a lot of material that one needs to get down before that level. Okay, knowing the material can be pretty useful. i) Ignorant authorities are practice for checking your sources. ii) Knowledge and intelligence level are still far from the only things a teacher can bring to the table. I’m fairly disorganized, and poorly disciplined, so I’ve gotten a lot from matching myself to someone else’s schedule.

      5. I have a pet theory that the schools would be in much better shape if people had paid more attention when they voted for the members of their local school boards. Also, not just sending their kids off to Karl Marx Elementary and telling themselves that KME is just like the schools they attended back in the day.

        1. Look, I attended Karl Marx Middle School and High School.
          Kind of. The country is was full on socialist and my 11th grade history book ended with the chapter “Communism, the perfect society.” I mean, the schools weren’t called that.
          BUT you’re insulting KME and KMMS and KMHS.
          I read my kids school books. And then I ASSIGNED READING. Because their stuff was so far beyond the stupid Marxism in mine, and so full of outright shameless lies, even I had trouble believing this is what we taught in America.

          1. The problem is that most parents didn’t do what you did, don’t do it and won’t do it. The dirty little not-secret is that most parents send little Jack_of_Spades Jr. and Jill_of_Spades to KME etc. because KME is convenient and “free”. Private schools are too expensive and home-schooling has to get Mrs._of_Spades’ buy-in.

          2. Did the same thing. Plus added educational material. In our case Scouts & sports, with both of us in leadership or coaching rolls to ensure was done right (whether others thought it was right or not, our comments ran to “step up or shut up”, essentially). Then there were our trips to museums, etc., talked about what was being learned. Helped with homework. Taught the math …

            Comment I made at the hometown meeting to the state board that they had regarding the core requirements, no child left behind, and student education certifications required at that time (have since gone the way of the passenger pigeons). Note. Teachers were complaining on how they stifled creativity, were too much work. Other parents were stating similar veins. Me? “I don’t care what you do. Agree the certifications are laughable & stupid paperwork. Whatever. They are items to be checked off, forgotten. As a parent I can make sure they are done and checked off. Anything missing or wrong, we, as our children’s parent, will make sure is taught and understood. That is our job. Just don’t make it harder.”

          3. A late comment (as usual) I came here from Kim Dutoit’s blog and found everything at According to Hoyt just as interesting as ever. My two Leftist brothers, and their Left-of-Mao and Pol Pot wives wouldn’t even notice the lies, and think that Karl Marx was a remarkably prescient “economist” if only things were more “fair”.

        2. Local school boards have very little role in the actual function of schools, any more. Curriculum is typically set by the state school board (and, increasingly, the Feds) and the “professional” staff who view the board as meat shields for their agendas.
          The unions bring in outside negotiators so even at contract time the school board is akin to the local pick-up ball club against the travelling all-stars.
          –

  3. Great article, Marshall, and confirming something I’ve noticed with my Zoomer kid and her friends – they’re a lot more “normal” than the kids before them. Yes, gender identity and sexual orientation is something cool to change up, while in my day you hid the heck out of that type of non-conformity, but I actually see that as a good thing, because the kids are seeing that who I am is not dependent on who I love or what I identify as (Secretary Bird who May be a Dragon, in case you were going to ask). It may be due in part to where I live, but they’re sounding a lot like sane libertarians – keep the government out of my business, and your business is your business until it hurts other people or tramples the flowers.

    I am hopeful for the future, but some of that is because the Dragonette is aiming herself at hard science (meteorology and astrophysics, so weather on other planets?), so as long as she can fake the desired opinions on climate change, she’ll do fine.

  4. As someone born on the tail end of the millennial generation, don’t blame me for this nonsense. (I would also point out that the Zoomers seem to be kind of stupid in their own way, but that’s true of every generation I guess.)

    The worst part about this “New Warriors” thing is that these superheroes seem to have some intriguing power sets and backstories that you could get a lot of storytelling mileage out of if they weren’t irretrievably mired in massive wokeness. As matters stand, however, their character arcs are going to be centered around them discovering how special they are in the face of the white male cisheteronormative fascistic patriarchy, and their powers will be deployed inconsistently and in ways that make no sense whatsoever.

    1. Woke Dora the Explorer is a hilarious mess of fail. She’s portrayed in the illustrations as the leader of the group, the overweight vanilla human who charges in headfirst.

      Frankly, Kibblesmith, having seen clips of his interview about his Wokey Warriors, has body language that just absolutely SCREAMS “please beat me up, kick me in the face and mug me. Daily.”

      1. He also has that kind of pathetic “really too old for this scene” feel of the guy who graduated from college, but keeps hanging around the campus.
        He’s trying to fit in, but it’s all just cringe.

        1. I really hated that the sight of him had me wanting to do all those bully things I had heard of – dunk his head into toilets, kick him into lockers and trap him in there, draw dicks on his faces. I was a bullied kid, but that was the reaction he drew from me! It took me a while to realize WHY, and it was such a visceral one. “This is a weak one. It must be driven from the tribe. It will harm the tribe” was my gut reaction. GUT. Like woah.

      2. I’m now where I have that reaction to a lot of people. The ones who present like entitled 13-year-olds, and then I notice they’re pushing 40.

        “YOU MUST ACCEPT ME AS I AM, PARTICULARLY IF I’M AN OBNOXIOUS JERK! HA HA HA!”

        Well, no, I don’t. Just keep pushing and find out…

        1. Just be aware that enemies are MOST dangerous when they are on the verge of complete defeat. They have nothing to lose by going nuclear.

      3. That’s just… poor tactics. In a combat-oriented superverse, nobody who doesn’t have some kind of defensive enhancement (toughness, super-speed, precog, etc) should ever get into a fight if they can possibly avoid it, much less go first.

        Put the vampire in front, with the shielder protecting the intel guy (who should be nowhere near the fight, frankly), the blaster, and the jack of all trades.

        ________________________________

  5. Got curious– by the Pew figuring, our house (good call on the ‘people they were loudly mocking were the ones having kids’ point, btw) has two Millennials (one under protest that he’s GenX though he’ll accept “the 9/11 generation”), two Zs and four alphas. Their cutoff is 2012.

    1. I know a guy that can help fix your Millennial that protests that he’s Gen X:

      1. His reason for insisting he’s GenX is because that’s what he grew up considering himself– same way that I get annoyed about folks taking my cool Millennial term and using it to mean “kids these days.” I was the FIRST OF THE MILLENNIUM, damn it, even if our school was so pig-stupid that the 2000 class called themselves that.

    3. Sigh.

      As I’ve mentioned before, ANY breakdown into 20-year generations is wrong. Totally. The sample rate is about half of what it needs to be to get correct answers.

      Run your reasoning over again with a 10-year generation interval. You’ll be surprised at how much it clarifies things.

      1. It’s not my reasoning, it’s the Pew Polling demographic setups.

        *I* figure that a much better way of describing a group would be closer to “big event +/- 5 years.”

        So Millennial would be those about 15-25 at the turn of the Millennium, MOST of whom would also be the 9/11 generation, and those born about ’96-’06 would be “post-9/11,” because they do not remember the pre-9/11 world, etc.

  6. The biggest surprise is, given how badly the schools are screwed up, that Gen Y and Gen Z aren’t MORE screwed up than they are.
    But yeah, as with the boomers before them, Gen Y is becoming authority, and rebelling against authority is kind of hard if you ARE authority.

  7. Ah, I see they finally decided to lump those of us born in 1980-82 or so in with the Millenials? Oh, yay. /sarcasm.

    As one of the ‘earliest’ Millenials (apparently–I just turned 40), I have no idea wtf is wrong with most of them. Sure, a lot of them are products of broken homes–but so was Gen X. And while Gen X may be responsible for grunge, they were otherwise somewhat normal. :p (Personally, I’d prefer to claim membership in Gen X. Though overall, I hate the labels SO MUCH.)

    Certainly, I am not single and childless entirely by choice–finding someone in my age group(s) who wasn’t terrified of marriage has proven nigh-impossible. I suppose that’s part and parcel of the insanity, sigh.

    As to what Marvel comics is pulling…holy cow. I still can’t quite believe it’s serious. I mean, they’ve been nuts for years, but…wtaf. This is “we’re trying to kill off our business” level insanity. (And despite the complaints–generally by people who haven’t seen the film, or who had already decided in advance they hated it–the truth is, the Marvel movie side of things is NOT going down this road. Yes, Captain Marvel is the closest they’ve come–and in truth, having seen the film, it’s really, really not anywhere near full on SJW. The *actress* is an SJW twerp, but the movie is fine. The lead was kind of boring compared to the rest of the cast–the cat, Nick Fury, and the Skrulls–but it was in no way a preachy, man-hating lunacy-fest. 😀 )

    I’m sorry for the comics shops…but the truth is I have been buying the (fewish) comics I do for years in digital format anyway. :/ And it seems, with Marvel jumping off the deep end, now is the time for indie comics to break the industry the way indie publishing broke the traditional book industry.

    Hmm. Maybe it’s time to dust off those old dreams of becoming a comic book artist…

    1. The short answer for folks who are currently in their thirties and early 40s is “We’re not Millenials.”
      Gen X ended in 1979. Gen X remembers the Cold War and some may have fought in the First Gulf War. Gen X was working on The Day The Towers Fell.
      Gen Y ended in 1989 or 1990. The earlier members of Gen Y remembers the end of the Cold War and the First Gulf War. They were was in school on The Day The Towers Fell, though the leading edge of that cohort was in college, and perhaps close to graduation. Their childhood ended that day, if it had not already.
      The earliest Millenials were born in 1991. They remember 9/11, but as children, not as adolescents or early adults. The later Millenials don’t remember 9/11 or the beginning of the Long War at all.

      1. No, because the first time I ran into “Millennial” was about ’96, in Time Magazine, and it was for those who were going to “come of age during the start of the new Millennium.”

        Thus the name.

        For obvious reasons, “the 9/11 generation” was briefly popular, though by ’06 or so it wasn’t around much.

        Then it was the moving goal on the “youth vote” (because heaven forbid that the talking head Boomers admit that their kids weren’t “youth” anymore) which roughly faded into calling everybody under 40 or so a “millennial.”

    2. Born in late 1980, and I’m Gen X regardless of what the cutoff date says. I identify a lot more with the “slackers” who just got on with their lives rather than these Dudley-Do-Rights determined to save the world, even if they have to destroy it first.

    3. Even the movies are disappointing.

      In ‘Justice League’ they had Steppenwulf kicking everybody’s asses. Superman showed up, beat him like a rented mule, and then just STOPPED! At the end, Superman froze his scythe, Wonder Woman broke it, and he just folded. He ain’t Thor, the scythe is not the source of his power!

      In ‘Avengers: Endgame’ they had everything all set up for an epic battle between Thanos and Captain Marvel — and then, two indecisive clashes, 15 seconds, it’s over.

      It’s like they don’t know how to movie.
      ———————————
      They were the bad guys, as you say, we were the good guys, and they made a very satisfying THUMP when they hit the floor!

      1. The original Justice League climax was probably better, but they decided to scale it back in reshoots for reasons I can’t fully comprehend. Might be the first time in history a studio spent big bucks making a movie less epic.

          1. “Different” is about all I know for sure. But it was more balanced between the heroes, from what little I can glean (some released pics and rumours). Steppenwolf wasn’t eaten by his own Parademons, I know that much, and the whole Russian family thing was pure reshoot.

            1. One ending that I heard about is Wonder Woman beheaded Steppenwolf and a boom-tube opened pulling his body away.

              At the other end of the boom-tube, we see Darkseid.

      3. The following falls under YMMV. 😉

        With Steppenwulf, I got the idea that his ax was his major weapon and it was making it hard for Wonder Woman to fight him.

        Destroy the ax and then Wonder Woman had a better chance at defeating him.

        On the other hand, I have that movie on disc so I may have to rewatch that scene. 😀

          1. We all know that any weapon such as an ax, spear, gun or bow & arrow is a metaphor for the character’s phallus and thus its breaking is certain to unman him, destroying his will to continue fighting. This is especially true of villains; heroes (who are more in touch with their feminine parts) are able to persist in the face of such devastating psychic castration.
            –

      4. Ehhhh, YMMV. I loved Endgame, and overall I’ve liked and/or loved most of the MCU offerings (they at least still get that these movies are supposed to be FUN, with only a few ‘meh’ entries in my book, though they also have their good moments. I found the whole Captain Marvel movie worth Fury and the cat. :D)

        Haven’t seen Justice League, didn’t have any desire to. I didn’t start enjoying the DCU movies until Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Shazam! and hopefully they keep on in that vein of “fun” instead of “gritty.”

      5. -In ‘Avengers: Endgame’ they had everything all set up for an epic battle between Thanos and Captain Marvel-

        You jest.

        Nothing was ‘set up,’ CM was shoehorned in as a diversity mandate, as was the Charge of the Bitch Brigade, and seeing that contrived, ridiculous moment come to nothing and that feminist cow get literally punched out of the movie made Endgame my favorite flick of the year and the last mainstream franchise that I’ll ever watch. Let the rest of it sink into the muck.

        But even that had it’s downside: CM’s bout with Thanos was originally supposed to be a rematch with the Hulk, who goes back into full Hulk Smash mode one last time to trash Thanos’ ship, but alas, that had to be sacrificed for feminist points.

        Much like in an earlier version of the movie that had Black Widow devote herself to caring for children left orphaned by the Snap. But that had to be cut too: strong empowered womyn can’t want children or lament not being able to have them. Nah, let’s put her in charge instead, and stick Cap in rehab.

        I could appreciate what they did with Thor, since it was a believable response to his pain at failing, but I know there was a mandate to get rid of all the old heroes.

        At least Cap and Iron Man went out heroically.

        As for the rest: adieu Marvel, adieu Star Wars/Trek, Dr. Who and the rest.

    4. “I am not a member of my generation.” is a line I have used.
      Then, some are surprised that I am not pre-boomer.
      Evidently, to some, I radiate Ancient.
      Fine by me, really.

      1. HOPE I die before I get old,
        Talking ’bout my generation …

        Which is why I ignore generational generalization — the denial of individual self in the face of a media construct. I am invincible, I am strong, I am wallaby.
        –

        1. Like much of The Who, that song is a rather bitter commentary. Pete Townsend thought a great deal of the ‘Counterculture’ of that era was drivel.

          1. Check out “The Punk and the Godfather”, where he calls out the Who and “My Generation”.

    5. I would say that if you were an early adopter of cell phones, you count as Millennial as early as DoB 1980. I’m about halfway: Enthusiastic adoption of PCs and consoles, but not the mobile stuff.

      -Albert

      1. Well, given that my parents insisted I carry a cell phone in my car in the mid-to-late 90s,when I was in high school… (It was a bag phone, heh. It only got used to call and say “I’m here” or “I’m on my way home”)

        I still don’t identify as a millenial. I only got a smartphone because Dad gave me one for Christmas in 2012, though. Now I love mine because it doubles as my kindle and my navigation tool, so…

        And my house had a computer starting with a Commodore 64 in 1983 or so. Dad was a computer geek before it was cool (and is now irked that I know more about repairing computers than he does–well, Dad, it’s what happens when one has to be one’s own tech support for a decade-plus!)

        1. That’s about when Dad got our Commodore 64 too, late ’83 or early 84. Jupiter Lander was a game we all loved. Mom got semi-addicted to Tetris on it.

          And no, that doesn’t sound like ‘early adopter of cellphones’. I mean more like talking/texting at every opportunity, already something that teens could be obnoxious with by the mid/late 90s.

          But most of us DoB ’80 kids probably count as the tail end of Gen X. By the time helicopter parenting and school misrule got completely out of control, we were already teens and pretty close to being grown up. Still young enough to get screwed when Clinton’s mishandling of the economy gave way to the 16 years of socialist presidents after Bubba.

          -Albert

        3. My dad was programming computers in high school (he graduated in 1960) and continued to do so until he retired. First computer in our house was an IBM that he had “on loan” from a client so he could write programs for it. Predictably, I was a bit of a Luddite in college and didn’t want to use the dang things.

      2. *laughing* You just reminded me of the days when I had to finally get one, metaphorically kicking and screaming, after refusing to get one for two years into college life, because some of my professors would mass-text us if we were not going to have class due to meetings, and would assign us work through it.

        I got this orange peanut-shaped Alcatel thing, because it was cheap. It was weird and not common, not like the popular Nokia phones of the day, and I have to say, I grew to love the thing because it had a BELT HOOK and I would hook it on my uniform skirt, under my blouse. It was never in danger of being snatched either. It was tough too; I dropped it so many times and it never got scratched. Once I dropped it as I was walking and it got kicked down a flight of stairs. It was fine after I put the battery back in. It was also BRIGHT ORANGE so I never was in danger of forgetting it on my desk.

    6. Born in ’80. I’m an X-er, damnit.

      And yeah, I’m kinda sad for the comics. I still want to buy older stories in physical format, which I think is probably what still fuels most of the funds for DC and Marvel – people buying the older stories, in graphic novel format/omnibus/etc; but personally, I go over to the manga aisle most of the time these days, because the stories are just so much more interesting now.

      Webcomics still seem to be a thing, but it seems to require a very regular schedule these days (no more Megatokyo-style gapping, while occasional long breaks seem to be forgiven by fanbases) and there seems to be demand for the translations of Chinese, Japanese and Korean webtoons (as webcomics are now known, to distinguish them from the previous iteration) and webnovels. I’ll admit though I haven’t any idea how well English-culture-created webnovels/toons do, as they strike me as (in my very insular, personal experience sort of way so don’t take me as a shining example) very word of mouth (though our most successful example is still The Martian); and I’m hoping that they’ll get the viral-spread instead that seems to occupy Instagram/TikTok in our general social consciousness somehow. (Personally, I’d like to know where those sci-fi/fantasy compilations on Amazon that sell for a dollar but have amazing book covers get the book covers from.)

      The art/comics that I do glimpse now and again as being very successful have Patreons as a regular thing, and that’s frankly not friendly to folks like us who have unapproved-of political points of view (ergo, the normal folks who aren’t dazzled brainless by Wokeista IDPol.) I’m not saying don’t go for it, but you’d probably need to be VERY careful about separating personae online.

      1. You might consider checking out Royal Road if you are looking for free webnovels. A few of them have become successful enough to make it to Amazon, and won quite a few Washington awards.

      2. >> “Webcomics still seem to be a thing, but it seems to require a very regular schedule these days (no more Megatokyo-style gapping, while occasional long breaks seem to be forgiven by fanbases)”

        Dresdan Codak goes weeks between updates, but the author seems to be managing.

        Incidentally, I just noticed he has a new T-Shirt some of you might appreciate: “Think globally, act locally. Preferably with fire.” It’s here: http://dresdencodak.com/2019/11/29/new-t-shirts-and-stickers-and-mugs-oh-my/

      3. Sigh. Had a geezer moment today upon referencing Prince Valiant … although the person to whom I was talking might have been old enough to have had a chance to know the strip. his strong accent suggested Jorge wasn’t reading American Sunday funnies when the Prince was active. Looking back at the heyday of newspaper comics, when artists like Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Milt Caniff and others were plying their trade is to realize the degradation of illustrative art in popular culture.

        Even if all those things were before my time, they were there for those willing to search them out. Sadly, we shall never see their like again.
        –

        1. I saw a couple of old comics, that belonged to my Dad, that were from that era. I don’t know what happened to them. They may have been destroyed in the flood of 2009, or the termite invasion of our library around 2001-02. (We lost most of my Dad’s beloved set of The Story of Civilization, which he saved up for and was one of his first purchases after he got work. I have a couple of the surviving volumes.)

          But yeah, the art was often gorgeous and had a flair for cinematic drama, in illustration form, and the stories, while I no longer remember them much, were engrossing enough that I remember sitting next to a stack of my Dad’s comics and reading through them. He had a bunch of Tales from the Crypt and similarly veined titles as well.

          IIRC Prince Valiant was my mom’s thing back then.

          1. When I was doing newspaper archive research, I lost far too much time reading “Terry and the Pirates,” “Flash Gordon,” “Prince Valiant” and others. I have two volumes of the “Terry and the Pirates” collected series, but haven’t gotten around to buying the rest.

          2. It is staggering to recall the adventures of the Prince from Thule once occupied a full page of the Sunday comics section — and not the shrunken mediocrity of today’s newspapers but the full glorious 15 by 22 inch pages those sections once were.

            America between the two phases of the World War enjoyed a wealth of illustration. Not just Rockwell on the newsstand every Saturday, but the comic strip titans I’ve mentioned. It is amazing to consider Foster’s departure from the Tarzan strip to draw Val & Aleta’s adventures brought as his replacement the dynamic Burne Hogarth.

            All included in your daily paper at no extra charge.
            –

    8. If you grew up in 1980-82, your entire teenage/ “young adult” life was Gen X. The music was The Smashing Pumpkins, the movies were the Breakfast Club, the TV was the Simpsons (insert similar titles and musicians, but if you were GenX, these things work. I could have said Stone Temple Pilots, Scream, and Beavis and Butthead). Even if you didn’t watch or listen… you knew. I didn’t hear the term “Millenial” until I was nearly thirty. Looked like a bait and switch to me.

      On the male side, many of my friends who are single and childless tell me horror stories of the women they’ve dated- worse are the divorced men starting over at forty. They’ve tried to date younger. *shakes head* Not been good for the lads. Gals either.

      Men when I was growing up wanted to get married. It was something that you did, something that made your life complete- a man was something of a failure if he couldn’t find *someone* to be his bride. Oh, it was never specifically stated, but a young man knew this in his bones. I could rant for pages, how the sexual poltics changed, and how both men and women are much the poorer for it, but for anyone in that age range, well, if you’re paying attention at all, you already know. It’s a sad thing for both of the sexes. Apart, we are less complete.

      As for Marvel, well, they’ve made their bed. The mathematics of it just don’t add up. The woke left is somewhere around 1.8% of the country I read somewhere. These are the intersectionalists and the pronoun people, the perpetually attention starved that desperately feel the need to go not just full potato, they cosplay vegetable puppets and they *mean it.* They aren’t funny or interesting anymore, if they ever were. Yet companies take them seriously- and when they do, their business suffers. The woke twitterati don’t read comics. Not in numbers enough to justify a print edition, maybe an occasional webcomic- but definitely not a major comics universe.

      There’s no reason not to scribble away a bit here and there. If I ever pick up the pen again, I might just put that Gree Nude Heel storyboard into comic format one day. *chuckle* You might just find an audience for your comic ideas. It’s not like there’s serious competition in certain sectors these days, is there?

      1. > Gree

        Likely just a typo, but let me introduce you to writer C.C. MacApp. He wrote SF from 1960 to 1970, mostly short stories, and now seems to be entirely forgotten.

        Nine of his short stories concerned humanity’s war with the Gree, a multi-species hive mind which absorbed other species by means ranging from suborning their cultures if they didn’t resist, to mind control that turned them into meat puppets if they didn’t like the idea.

        Sound vaguely familiar?…

        MacApp’s first Gree story hit Worlds of IF in August 1964; he shared the cover with Heinlein’s “Farnham’s Freehold” and one of Laumer’s Retief stories.

        “The Slaves of Gree” from IF: https://archive.org/details/1964-08_IF/mode/2up

        1. How could you even mention “Farnham’s Freehold”?? You MUST be a RACIST. You KNOW that book has been banned from all libraries and is very hard to find. I bought a First Edition just to make sure it would not corrupt some innocent mind.

  8. The enemies of the New New Warriors:

    The Misgenderer
    Micro-Agressor
    Captain Brexit
    NeckBeard

      1. I dunno. The Babylon Bee works pretty hard to publish satire… To bad it gets swiped as policy ideas so often. Tough job, that, and good on them for giving it a try.

        I could see someone so deep in the crazy, they think villains of that sort… work. Crazy, I know. But, well, these are the people that are taking Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders serious. That doesn’t give me a lot of hope for their sanity or common sense.

  9. The New Warriors are a parody, right? I mean, no one could possibly name their heroes “Safespace” and “Snowflake” and expect to be taken seriously. This is Marvel realizing that they went over the woke cliff and thinking that they might as well play it for laughs, isn’t it?

    3. For another takedown of the New! New Warriors, see John Wright at www dot scifiwright dot com
      There are a few articles on that as well as one on the Old! New Warriors.

      Main article http://www.scifiwright.com/2020/03/fat-chance-and-her-amazing-friends/

      Another article shows what could be done for the concept by a writer who’s willing to do the work to to something decent. I’ll go with John’s take; this trash is deliberate.

      FWIW, John’s The Last Straw is a lengthy, hilarious fisking/takedown of the Disney Star Trainwreck. I read the multi-part series, and it might be released on eBook by now. (It was originally published as part of a kickstarter, but I haven’t followed that.)

        1. Had to check out the dates because the “Wearing The Cape” series has The Crew who are construction workers with super-powers who among other things clean things up after super-being fights.

          However, Damage Control pre-dates the first Wearing The Cape book. 😉

          1. Marvel’s Damage Control was (it seems to me) the last gasp of the old Marvel sensibility that has running gags like the New York tailor who sewed all the second-string supervillains’ costumes and had a running account with Bruce Banner for regular shipments of purple pants. I miss that.

  11. Well, I mean… I’m figuring it’s my job to teach the kids about both God and politics. ^.^; We’ve been reading the Tuttle Twins books lately, which are basically restating classic liberal economic concepts into elementary-age contexts. (The twins’ favorite food trucks are being put out of business because a restaurant owner got his friend the mayor to pass a bunch of stifling protectionist laws to prevent them from doing business! Now the customers will have fewer choices. How can we stop this?) I figure if I don’t give them building-block concepts, they’re going to be super vulnerable to anyone with a good line. (I… need help teaching about God, as a recent convert. What a time for the churches to close!)

    On the whole, I’m hopeful you’re right about the Zoomers. My main Z concept is a college junior I’d known and liked as a teenager, thoughtful and bright… But she went to college and fell into every SJW meme and cause in the universe. But she’s also studying to be a sign language translator, so maybe that’ll get you a different result than engineering. X_x

    (And… my almost four year old has insisted she wants to be a doctor consistently for two years. I thought they were supposed to change their minds daily. Agh!)

  12. The name “kibblesmith” presumably means “one who makes kibble.” So Daniel Kibblesmith is simply following the tradition of his ancestors by making a dog’s breakfast of a comic.

    2. Cringe: nemesis to Safe Space. Has the power of AWK-WAAARD!
      Chan-Tan: the personification of all the Chan’s chans powers combined. Nemesis to Screentime.
      Conservathot
      Jordan Pederson

      1. The Micro-aggressor and her companion, The Snark.
        The Canceller.
        The Spell Czecher.
        –

  14. I would say they’ve lost their minds, but it’s more like they never knew where they were in the first place.

  15. Recovering comic nerd here. I #walkedaway in about 1992/93 when Marvel and DC appeared to be running themselves into a bridge abutment, then backing up and running into it again and again. Nothing I’ve seen in comics since then has enticed me to come back. Thank God for the movies, eh?

    Take a look at the character design there. Take a look at the ART. Whoever is responsible for that ought to be fired and never work in comics again. -I- can do better than that. I have done better. Young Relative my tame Zoomer running wild around here can do better than that.

    When you see something like that being released in a crisis like this then it tells me a couple of things. The people in charge are not serious about keeping the company afloat, and they don’t give a single f- about their supply chain. Not a single one.

    What’s really annoying, to me anyway, is that Marvel and DC are -behind- with this stuff. ALL the other labels, the little ones like Dark Horse that no one pays any attention to, they’ve long since gone there. They went MegaUltraWoke back in 2015. Its been magic backpacks and Grandad’s Internet Gas for five years with those guys.

    They’ve decided the comics will be (another!) venue for straight-up propaganda, and that’s what they are. If every single comics store in Flyover Country goes broke, that’s just a bonus. Because f- those redneck trash kids, right?

    Well, Woke is a slur among the Flyover People, and the Zoomers are making some dank memes out of all this Millennial Wokeitude.

    For myself, they haven’t gotten a dime of my money in nearly 30 years, and Zoomers are reading manga.

    1. The market for translated manga is huge, and not just confined to anime convention dealers’ rooms any more. Libraries have wide selections of manga, and Amazon has plenty in both paper and digital format. Out of curiosity I checked their Kindle offerings and was able to get the first volume of each of half a dozen manga series free without going through more than a few search pages.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if the traditional superhero comic ends up pretty much dying out. Not completely, but whatever survives will be pretty much a niche market as the successful creators of sequential narrative art move toward a more manga-like model.

      1. They are certainly doing their very best to strangle superhero comics to death. I don’t think they can, because the -idea- is too excellent. But they can certainly kill Marvel Comics and DC.

        1. Wearing the Cape is already an RPG; I’ll bet good money someone is going to ask about that.

                1. I’m going to have to write fanfic. Just keep Green Lantern alive. I know that there are many GL’s, but Hal Jordan, Earth’s first GL in the Silver Age, is dear to me. The thought that your imagination can make you a hero is what drew me to Green Lantern. Also, two great animated movies.

                2. Not a series I read or am going to pick up, awesome story even without that!

                  ❤

                  Thank you so much for sharing it!

                  *****

                  Last night I'm walking up to bed, reading, and laugh; husband asks what's up. I ended up explaining it as a pissed off military guy filing a requisition to hire the Wicked Witch of the West.

                  1. Wait until you get to the part where he sends the Wicked Witch the paperwork as a present. You can just see the ???s over her head.
                    It’s not typically a fandom I read, can’t even remember how I stumbled over it, but it’s self-explanatory, and you don’t need to have read the original stories to understand and enjoy these ones. One of the cases of fandom being better than the source. There is one later part where one of the canon characters shows up who has the same name as the Karsite captain, but they are never in the same scene at the same time.

        3. In Grant Morrison’s memoir cum history of the comics industry, Supergods he admits that he, Alan Moore (with The Watchmen and others (mostly Brits imported by American publishers) thought they had deconstructed and destroyed the American comic book.

          It is very difficult when an industry detests its product and despises its customers.
          –

          1. At least Alan Moore wrote some good deconstructions, with lots of interesting characters and stories.
            Sadly, too many of his later imitators try to ape his style without making things interesting.

          2. Kurt Busiek did some work reconstructing it. Astro City is not perfectly even, but it has excellent stories in places.

            “It strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We’ve been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it’s time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it’ll do.”

            1. BTW: while at store the other day I noticed video releases of Red Son and Krypton: The Complete Series. I gather the latter suffered serious wokieness but did anybody here see it on SyFy (I think that’s where it appeared; if it’s CW forget it) or know whether the first is worth the time it wants for watching?
              –

    2. Message is much easier to write than story, and Woke far easier than Character. Comics are a dead form, any way, catering to adolescent male power fantasies — a circumstance requiring drastic effort to re-shape kids’ innate moral compass toward the re-Trued North.

      Oh well, I’m the type of guy who is ever talking down
      Where comic nerds are well, you know that I’m around
      I tease ’em and I feed ’em ’cause to me they’re all the same
      I bug ’em and I please ’em they don’t even know my name
      They call me the panderer
      Yeah, the panderer
      I talk around, around, around
      –

        1. I hate the art. Does everything have to look like it was done by the people who did The Fairy Oddparents? I didn’t mind that they did something similar for My Little Pony (I haven’t watched it, but I heard good things about the story) but screenshots of She Ra screaming like an annoyed bratty preteen? Yeah no. I only found out about the reboot a few days ago and I just noped hard. I actually think that the positive presentations in Phineas and Ferb are why they don’t have a release of the whole TV series in DVD/Blu-Ray. Can’t have clever and self-entertaining kids, now can we?

          Sargon did a good show about how the Wokey Warriors were actually a condescending condemnation of the Millenials as a ‘well this is as far as you go in terms of virtue and aspirations, the embodiment of what we can expect of you as heroes’

          1. Disney Plus has Phineas and Ferb. But not in order. (Yup, not in production order or chronological order. And halves of shows are even attached to the wrong episodes.)

      3. I saw the ‘artwork’ and then read of the description of what passed for story. The originals had some heavy-handed moralizing, but at least had some hint of story and fun. The new thing… like is said about other things, there is only the one, really. When only the bad guys can have and be for individualism? Not worth my bother.

        Who knew that to be a Supervillain all one had to do was think for oneself?

  17. And FWIW, not all “Boomers” are the same. My cohort (born too late to remember JFK’s presidency; I can just kinda-sorta remember what might have been his funeral on TV) are nothing like the “classic period” Boomers. As I used to comment bitterly: “THEY got Woodstock. WE got disco!” We also graduated into a job market that was glutted to the gills because the earlier Boomers had taken all the jobs.

    1. I recall hearing about this ‘sexual revolution’ and ‘free love’ and other things. And then.. just I began to comprehend it… the thing that would eventually be named AIDS happened. I read of it when it was still just a strange outbreak in Kaposi’s sarcoma in a population that shouldn’t get Kaposi’s…

      1. “Free Love” is an idiocy the Left keeps coming back to, like a dog to its vomit. Hell, Victoria Woodhull was advocating Free Love in 1875!

            1. I’m a tail end Boomer and freaking out about turning 60 soon. Also freaking out about retirement.

              1. You’re not a tail-end boomer. You’re one of mine. Reagan’s kids. Boomers finish around 54 or 55. And those years are up for grabs, to be fair. People in them chose which way to fall.

                2. My brother and sister were born in the 50’s. I was an oops! Doctor told her that she was sterilized.

            2. And the divorce lawyers … although I am willing to entertain a argument they are a sub-segment of STDs.
              –

        2. Love without commitment, without cost is not free, it is nonexistent. Free Love, like Jumbo Shrimp, is an oxymoron (no reflection on Orvan who is indubitably an oxysage.)
          –

      2. When I was high school, herpes was getting the press. AIDS came after, but since it was not only incurable but fatal, stole the show.

    2. Disco hit when I was in High School. I listened mostly to classical music for a couple years. I still have Mozart & Vivaldi vinyl I bought back then, I’ve since grown to love some of the Prog Rock from the period but still just tolerate Disco.
      As to that job market, I got lucky. I learned darkroom work in my teens and was a good enough photographer (and a passable, if not exciting, writer) to work at some small newspapers in that period. Not a lot of money but enough to be self-supporting.

      1. Vivaldi? *shudder*

        I hate the baroque period, mostly because of having to pour through the music collection to find baroque pieces that weren’t “The Four Seasons” for the first play in college I was Sound Designer for. The director specified “No Vivaldi, Period” but I had to cheat and use a couple of his lesser known works.

        1. Awwww. (I adore Vivaldi. And I enjoyed the heck out of the Vivaldi Metal Project when I found it awhile back 😀 )

          But then, the baroque period is my favorite. I think it helps that although I did many, many years of instrument playing, I did not have to play much baroque. :p

        2. I enjoy baroque, but I’m an organist, and the patterns and technical demands fascinate me. Plus it sends you into some odd corners like Spanish baroque, and Italian, which had some Odd influences on Bach, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude and others.

            1. Meh – if it pleases you, go for baroque.

              The entire program is available through PBS streaming and probably (I haven’t checked) Amazon Prime. Very enjoyable fifty-three or so minutes. Episode 1 looks at Vivaldi, his influences and his influence (YoSeb Bach was apparently a big fan) and some AMAZING facts.

              In addition you can mostly listen, the visual content is’t all that important (one wallaby’s opinion).
              –

      3. Loath Disco but really like Funk. Yes they are different/ Funk is Ornette Coleman and Charlie Parker as compared to Disco’s Kenny G,

        The video is spotty at times but the sound is quite good on this P-Funk show from 1978 at New Jersey’s Capital Theater in Passaic. Outstanding musical craftsmanship (Yes, the metal head who usually lings to bands like Megadeth, Slayer, etc., likes Funk).

      4. I was in HS during the late 80’s, early 90’s, which was a second suckfest as far as commercial radio was concerned. Hair metal had gone to mostly tender acoustic ballads, Aerosmith was recording the same song with different titles, and most of my cohort turned to classic rock- Floyd, Led Zep, the Doors, with Rush being the most popular.

        1. The best music that was broadcast in 1980’s was likely aired (along with much utter dreck) on the Dr. Demento Show. And I still am disappointed when I hear the “real” tune(s) and not the Weird Al versions of them.

          1. I believe that is where I first heard Primus- Damned Blue Collar Tweakers.
            Became an instant fan.

          2. You call to mind that period when my musical tastes ran to Afropop*, Brazilian, Celtic and other odd corners of the musical world because it didn’t matter what kind of idiocy their lyrics advocated, I couldn’t understand it.

            As opposed to what was playing on American radio, which I could understand all too well.

            *Yeh, I knew who Ladysmith was before Paul Simon recorded with them. Liked them better without him, too.
            –

    3. “Boomer” keeps getting pushed forward; I’ve seen it defined as up to 1965 now. Which would include the children of the original boomers…

      If they keep it up, anyone born before 2000 will be a “boomer.”

        1. What do you call someone born in ’62, besides old? My Dad and Mom were members of the Greatest Generation. I was the child of their old age.

            1. I’m beginning to think there’s something to ‘kids born during Viet Nam’. We grew up when mass media propaganda was at it’s peak and had formative years (of some kind) during the 70’s, when everything everywhere sucked the most.

              The 80’s were a breath of fresh air that saved us all, but at the time we were taught to hate the ones bringing the fresh air. (some of us knew better then). And now we all have 80’s nostalgia to a greater or lesser extent.

              Reagan’s Kids is as good a label as any.

              I know exactly one person my age (Reagan’s kids, born during ‘nam) who loves the 70’s…. but her parents were immigrants – which allowed them to be happily married sincerely patriotic American during the 70’s, so she was sheltered from The Suck.

    4. I was born in ‘61, but my family didn’t acquire a television until I was 13, so a lot of what was ‘in the air’ slid by me. In spite of relentless propagandizing by The World, I never bought into the Camelot Mystique of JFK, and considered him a second rate political hack with nice hair and good teeth. Which makes the JFK clones the Democrats occasionally run for office a little hard to take seriously. MiGod! They were SOOOOOO excited over President Clinton, and what he had was the hair, the teeth, the advanced case of satyriasis, and maybe half the chops.

      I used to have a lapel button that read “John, Robert, Teddy…two out of three ain’t bad!”

      1. Yow.

        Then, I have speculated that if the events of November 1963 had turned out different would there have been chants starting, “Hey! Hey! JFK!… “?

        1. It always annoyed me that Democrats started the Civil War, and our involvement in the two World Wars, and Korea, and were primarily responsible for our deep involvement in Vietnam…but Republicans were supposed to be the Warmongers.

    5. That’s because you aren’t.

      The whole notion of a “generation” being 20 years is flatly wrong. Think in terms of a 10-year group…with break points roughly at mid-decade. You sound like you were born around 1960. Not a Brat Boomer, but a Baby Buster. The decade group that got stuck with the bills and the cleanup after the Brats (well, half of them) had their drunken, drugged party.

  18. Either tail end Boomer or early Gen X here (My parents are pre-Boomers, but not Greatest Generation. Anyway . . .). I’m closer to Greatest Generation in outlook, Sib is closer to late Gen X/ Millennial. Go figure.

    I bailed on modern comics back when Dark Horse was still going strong with the Star Wars spin off, and when Sandman was still strange and edgy. I stocked up on back issues of Dr. Strange, Nick Fury, and all the X-Men with Wolverine I could find. As for the latest, superwokes? The art’s lousy and the entire premise is sad. How are you supposed to admire and emulate whining characters who have the ability to produce trivia without any sort of context?

    Is anyone else amused how Gen X has disappeared? We don’t exist. There’s a gap between the Boomers and Millennials in terms of politics and marketing and what-have-you.

    1. I was sort of amused by the naming of Gen X (which I suppose I am in… not that I much care) as it was sort of “We have nothing to unify your identify with. You get ‘X’.” And, gee, a generation raised on “It’s okay to be yourself and do your own thing.”* and anything else was expected?!

      * That was SO MUCH of the TV programming aimed my way. In my case, it might have had some effect. I’ve felt a bit ‘outside’ everything pretty much as long as I can remember. Despite some claims, I do not TRY to go “that’s popular, so I’ll skip it.” It. Just. Happens. What’s weird is how the learned hesitation, not barging on in on some things… has resulted in my being invited in, when others trying (too hard?) to get in, get shut out.

    2. The official attitude of Gen X seems to be a “grow up” aimed at both the generation before them, and the generation after. Gen X came of age when Reagan was in office with the attendant optimism, and Gen X’s war was short and victorious (Desert Storm). It’s no wonder that society’s up-enders would rather ignore them.

    3. How are you supposed to admire and emulate whining characters
      Well, that was always my problem with Marvel. I always thought the X-Men were a bunch of whiners – “Oh look at us poor persecuted teens with FRIGGIN’ SUPERPOWERS”

      I don’t think Gen-X has disappeared. They’re just so normal they’ve blended into the background.

    4. Mid-boomer here. SF geek from about 9-10 years old, did a home computer before IBM graced it with the name PC. Comics faded for me in high school (I wasn’t crazy enough to go to downtown Chicago during the 1968 convention, nor interested in Woodstock.), but I picked them up a little bit in college. I rather liked the early ’70s version of Thor, Iron Man, and suspect I’d be proud to have Ben Grimm as a drinking buddy. Dropped them in favor of SF books post college.

      I had to put SF on the back burner when I was working on a Masters in the late ’80s. In ’91, I was finished, but SF just wasn’t the same. My Analog subscription gave me less and less interesting reading, and the stuff out of SF book club sat in an unread, growing stack until I got the hint and quit. Gave away a bunch of books to SIL, and need to do another round of culling.

      The most vocal GenX anti-boomer voice I’ve encountered is The Blogger Who Will Not Be Named, and I lost the last bit of respect for his viewpoints when he embraced the “US Army gave Kung Flu to China” crap. Most of the rest of the “OK Boomer” stuff is from Millennials, though on some occasions, I can understand and actually agree with the criticism.

      1. Waitasec – the doofus did what now?

        US giving the kung flu to the Chinese – maybe that’s what his Russian bosses want him to say?

        ________________________________

        1. Nah, that was a Chinese bit of propaganda, and he bought into it. I never heard any Russian take on it, but for somebody alt-right, there’s a strong steak of anti-Americanism therein. The Boomer-hatred, fine; Voldemort does Voldemort, but *that* lie? Nope.

      2. I have a poster that has the old ‘rainbow’ Apple logo and (pre-IBM) proclaims “Apple ][: The personal computer.” Sure, IBM might have had ‘PC’, but they were late to the term yet took it over.

    5. They play the music we (GenX) grew up with in Trader Joe’s. Last time I was in one I had to explain my reaction to hearing ‘How Soon is Now?’.

      We’re a demographic that’s expected to spend money so they want us to feel comfy. Other than that, nada.

  19. I’m the Oregon Trail generation (“Xennial” is a linguistic abomination and should be shot.) I graduated from college as the tech bubble burst, my age range (within a few years) suffered the biggest financial losses during the housing bubble burst and the following recession, and I am finally getting close to paying off the debt I started to accrue twenty years ago.

    So as you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of patience for people whining about how their generation has had it harder than any previous generation. No sense of history, none at all…

    1. Never-ending threat of world destroying nuclear war is hard to top. Boomers lived with that from birth until 1996. We’re a little weird, that’s probably why.

      Random example, I keep a couple of engine blocks lying around in case I might -need- one really bad someday. It’s not sensible, its just a thing guys my age do. An inventory of all the farms and whatnot around here would probably turn up all kinds of stuff like that stored away “just in case.” Because we were alive for the Cuban Missile Crisis, and you just never know.

      2. Gen Xer’s lived under the shadow of the bomb to.

        At some point after “The Day After” aired I remember plotting the distance from the closest probable targets (McConnell AFB, the POL facilities in El Dorado and North Wichita, the closest Titan II silos, etc.) and our house. It was a the point to all those places where, if the Soviets were reasonably accurate that, a 1 MT air-burst would have no appreciable heat effects and the blast wave would have dropped below hurricane velocity.

        1. Gen Xers are the Punk generation that told the old hippies where to step off. By the time you guys came around “turn on, tune in, drop out” was already old and dusty, everybody knew that the hippies were a bunch of pervy burnouts.

          Long live the Sex Pistols!

          1. Between imminent nuclear devastation and having to follow behind the Boomers as they ruined all the cool stuff is it any wonder Gen Xers motto became “whatever.”

          2. The Sex Pistols are Derivative trash. Entirely contrived by a fashion designer to sell clothes. Punk Was a NYC thing and a late boomer thing. The Ramones were really the first punk band. The Clash, especially the early clash like Career Opportunities were a small step away from Ramones covers.

            I remember being in CBGB underage in the 70’s. They used to make fun of us for having short hair — we were Catholic schoolboys and the alternative was Disco or late prog rock shudder — They’re all dead. Heroin mostly. We used to pick Jim Carroll out of the gutter and take him home to his mother on 204th St. Happy days.

      3. See, I’ve always heard that described as a Great Depression habit…. that people who went through that inflicted on their children. Had nothing to do with any threat the Boomers themselves were under.

    2. I’m trying not to growl every time I see somebody say “unprecedented.” So far I haven’t caught them doing it at the same time as talking about the Spanish Flu….

        2. Definitely, but anyone with enough knowledge of what came before to know something was ‘precedented’ deliberately stole much better source material from the past and so didn’t have to fess up to anything.

          Cause their stuff was entertaining.

  20. I agree with Brian Niemier’s “lost generations” (lost demographics) concept. Once upon a time, there was a cultural and marketing demographic called “Gen Y” and that’s the genuinely transitional generation in modern America – I think looking at some of the posts this idea (several bloggers have been picking it up) might add more context to what you’re writing about – I think you’re definitely on the right track, personally.
    https://www.brianniemeier.com/2017/11/lost-generations.html

  21. You know the sad thing? If you need to rip off powersets, DoTA 2 and League of Legions both have an absolute *fluff*ton of characters with diverse powersets. Mix them around and you could fill out a hero and villain roster for a dozen different comic book lines before the ripoff became blatant enough that lawyers could get involved.

    This whole ‘parody characters straight out of 4chan’ shows an appalling lack of both imagination _and_ willingness to steal from better creators.

    -Albert

    1. Just bringing back Galactus for another swing would be better than this. The character design is already done, by people who were not zero-talent hacks.

  23. Next there’s a missed writing prompt, might I suggest a REAL challenge?
    Never mind the ‘experimental’ but if you want to give it a go, fine.
    But the big one… see if there is any way to make “internet gas” something not utterly futterly dutterly insane. I have my doubts, but folks here have this creative streak.
    Put your clothes back on! NOT that sort of streak.

    1. Internet gas: nanotech delivered as a vapor droplet, enters the nasal airways, assembles thin-film protein based semiconductor electrode network on the brain and gives you direct-stimulation access to the Internet.

      Comes in one shot nasal spay or handy aerosol Big Boy bottle for LAN parties.

      1. Memetic algorithms that overwrite peoples’ squishyware and turn them into mindless automatons dancing to the tune of a hidden master?

        You mean, like Facebook?

    3. Digimon Adventure happens in a ‘digital world’, which humans can physically travel to.

      Fate/Extra is the version of the Nasu properties which takes place in an ancient extraterrestrial computer inside of the moon.

      So I am willing to suspend disbelief for nonsense that could be extended in that way. But the creator would need to throw me some bones to chew on, to make it worth my interest.

  24. As someone who picked up Fantastic Four on the newsstand I can state with confidence that Marvel has log prided itself on being the “hip, young, pastor who’s not afraid to talk to today’s youth.” They never actually were, they were just less staid than DC. Their periodic efforts at being hip were ever forced ad stilted. Their efforts at Female Empowerment included the cringe-worthy Dazzler, with her in-line skates and disco-wear and who (like Wonder Woman and her bondage scenes) managed to include several panels of our heroine in her underwear every issue.

    Comics are only hip when they are unself-conscious, something they haven’t been in, like, forever. By the time any comic creator has learned enough of the craft to do professional-quality work (a sometimes very low standard) they’re too old to partake of “Youth Culture” and instead come off as pandering.
    –

    1. The comic creators need to just damn well tell a good and entertaining story, and let any “messages” take care of themselves.

      You know, act like NOVEL WRITERS instead of “hip youth pastor.” (Which most of the kids find either creepy or, as you said, lame and pandering anyway.)

      1. Maybe they thought Chick comic tracts were super effective? They certainly bunched their panties about them in the 80s.

        1. Actually, Chick’s stuff looks pretty good compared to what’s passing as comics now.

          [searches, clicks on http://www.monsterwax.com/Tracts.html, checks out a few]

          Just as screechy as the Woke comics, but at least Chick was trying to help people instead of destroying the existing social order. I rule he wins on points. And, frankly, his artwork was better than most of the new stuff too.

    2. Dazzler was fun! It was a great comic for little kids. I was like 9, and it was cool. Needed to replace roller skates with unicorns or pegasi.

      Also, the face makeup was scary.

    3. >> “Their efforts at Female Empowerment included the cringe-worthy Dazzler”

      You’re not the only one who was disappointed:

      1. Doesn’t anyone remember Richie Rich? I loved the conspicuous consumption of it. He also had two married parents.

  25. I’ve been seeing official deepstate media stuff on “Orange Man Bad: These Countries Are Handling This Better” parroting Communist Chinese and Post-Communist Russian propaganda.

    Given the media conglomerates have laid off pretty much all the Boomers as being too expensive, this has to be the Mainstream Millenial Hivemind official coordinated position.

    To which I say: Oops Millenial, wrong again:

    https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-russia-admits-virus-numbers/story?id=69768452

  26. but they weren’t using it like they were
    Boomers understood antecedents, though.
    😉

  27. Those comics aren’t real, right? I saw them in some other news article and figured they were a satirical joke, so I just skipped over them. You mean Marvel is actually seriously thinking they can sell that stuff? Wow!

    2. They thought they could sell Thor-ette and Captain America Agent of Hydra, this is actually less annoying.

      Make you wonder what their sales meetings look like.

      2. Well, they did manage to sell “variant” covers, glow-in-the-dark covers, pre-bagged comics … they’ve no reason to suspect their readers customers will acquire discernment.
        –

        1. They did, but that mostly happened after I’d already quit buying. Death of Superman and Superman’s Wedding are about the only pre-bagged ones I collected, I think I may still have an unopened Death of Superman in a box somewhere. Checking the web, it doesn’t seem to be worth very much. Maybe $100US at the top of the range.

          One gets the feeling that collecting was an 80s thing and now its pretty much over.

  28. This mess has been a long, long time coming and the Wuhan Flu has just sped up the process.

    The only people buying Marvel and DC comics on a regular basis are the fans that have never given up on the comics, people who get copies of the #1 of everything that comes out for collection purposes, and a small number of people that try a few books and realize that their intelligence and wallets are being insulted and give up the series.

    You want a modern Iron Man comic book series? Good luck! The current Iron Man series has Tony Stark deciding that he didn’t go far enough during his run in Superior Iron Man. You know, the one where he infected all of SF with Extremis and billed people $9.95 a month to keep looking eternally beautiful and youthful and healed. Besides, the true successor to Iron Man is Iron Heart, a black teenage girl that stole quite a bit of Stark’s tech and is either has autism or is a budding sociopath hero.

    You want a modern Thor comic? Good luck! The current Thor is Jane Foster-and she still has (had?) cancer. Every time she turned into Thor-and it was made out that she is Thor, rather than it being the name of Thor Odinson, the transformation reverses the chemotherapy that is keeping her alive. And, this is after a major plot point in the previous Thor comics where Thor was looking for magical cures for Jane’s cancer-and she refused because magic always has a cost. Also, because of something that Nick Fury whispered into Odin’s ear, nobody in Asgard is worthy of the Hammer.

    You want a modern Captain America comic book? Good luck! When the Red Skull sounds reasonable-and they were trying to make him out to be a font of alt-right memes-you have definitely hit a middle. Oh, did we mention that Captain America, Steve Rogers-a character that even Superman respects so deeply that he’ll defer to him-has actually been a deep-cover HYDRA agent for over sixty years. Oh, and he hates the racist, sexist, homophobic America that he lives in and wants to fix things.

    Captain Marvel, the shining hope of the Marvel Universe (who, as far as I can tell, is where Marvel sends writers and artist to die without making too much of a mess) has come out as a villain. Which we all knew about four years ago, during the “Civil War II” plot line. Current Spider Man-not his honorable successor, but the “real” Spider Man? A black teenage boy (from the Ultimate Marvel universe, which got collapsed into the “main” universe after “Secret Wars”) who might be bisexual or gay. The X-Men? Well, Wolverine is a girl (not X-23, Wolverine), Logan is openly cuckolding Scott Summers, Professor X and Magneto have combined together to create a racist paradise that is just one “Sieg Heil!” from becoming Nazi Germany, they’ve recruited Apocalypse to work with them, and they’re doing all this because Mutants Always Lose.

    The current new “big” heroes in the Marvel Universe? Miss Marvel, who is an observant Pakistani Moslem girl in New Jersey that was exposed to the Terigin Mists and…has stretching powers; and Gwenpool…who is a OMG! FAN of comic books and thinks that she’s in one and does everything like she is. Or she’s a mutant with reality-warping powers that thinks she’s fallen into a comic book. We’re not sure.

    (And, if she’s such a big fan, how can she not know anything about Deadpool?)

    DC Comics? “Doomsday Clock”…Tom King setting up #100 for the Batman/Catwoman wedding, one we had been waiting for decades, establishing that this is the new status quo…and then kneecapping us for having that hope. Because Batman can never be happy. Oh, and the Three Jokers? The Batman Who Laughs? Baby Darkseid? I don’t even know what is going on with Superman these days, because I don’t care about any of them.

    I don’t care.

    They have burned all of my good will and good thoughts about these characters, and they are doing nothing to try and regain any of my good will. Tell good stories. Respect the characters and the canon. Play with it? Absolutely-but show respect for it.

    Hell, I can’t even enjoy the MCU anymore-they killed off Iron Man and Captain America, nerfed Thor and are probably going to give Jane Foster the hammer, ruined a great chance to have a great character study movie in the Spider Man sequel and trying to set up Peter Parker as Tony Stark’s successor, and are trying to make Captain Marvel into the new “big” character of Phase 4 and 5. I could barely watch Endgame, as the plot holes were huge and stupid. They’re also using the All New, All Different Marvel metaplot for Phase 4 and 5. The ones that gave us character reskins that we didn’t like?

    The New New Mutants, with two characters that I’m surprised we can’t already find better incest porn comics on 4Chan of them yet? The rest are insulting token characters that steal their origins from better characters (Experimental Internet Gas? Freakazoid had a more coherent character origin!)

    Children of the Atom? A gender-switch reskin that will only satisfy the blue-check Twitter mob on how “diverse’ it is. Nobody wants to read it.

    Oh, did I mention that Diamond Distributing is shutting down badly? And, comic book stores buy their comics in advance? And Marvel and DC are offering discounts when they should be offering buybacks?

    The comic book industry for the last 20 years has resembled nothing more than a man shooting himself in the toes and foot with at .22LR pistol. This might be the fatal hit that actually kills them.

    1. (And, if she’s such a big fan, how can she not know anything about Deadpool?)

      Well, if it was well written, it’s because he breaks the third wall and is thus invisible to her via contrasting power phase vortex rerouted warp generators.

      That said, my four year old knows Deadpool. And fangirls him, which is horrifying.

      1. I remain convinced that Deadpool is either crazy, crazy as a fox, or the best improv actor in the entire Marvel universe.

        (The in-universe explanation for Gwenpool’s ignorance of Deadpool? “He’s so creepy and weird and meta.” WTF?

        2. *lightbulb* I know! She doesn’t know about him because she IS him!

          A chunk of Wade’s self-loathing that became its own character and somehow doubled the Xs.

  29. I’m technically a boomer but I missed out on all the good stuff and got stuck with disco. My wife is technically a Gen-xer but she was the youngest of many (her brother was in Vietnam when she was a baby) so her experience is closer to boomer than not. Divorce was almost unknown among the people we grew up with, That’s not to say it was all happy families, but the families stayed together.

    That said, while there is divorce in my generation most of our children grew up in intact families and most of their friends did too. A few of my cousins divorced after the children were grown and there were broken families among my children’s friends but it was still an exception. I suppose it’s because we realized that you couldn’t choose your children’s friends but you can choose the population from which they’re drawn, up to a point.

    I must live in a bubble.

    it’s all very sad since the first question that comes to mind when I see some fascist clown with a bone in their nose and purple hair is how old were you when daddy left?

    1. By the numbers, it’s more that the “everybody is divorced” thing is not that common– it just tends to happen in groups. Kind of like suicide clusters, but with people being able to do it several times, and thus infect more people, both when they divorce and when they’re defending their divorce. (ESPECIALLY if the divorce was a bad idea, some folks just cannot ever shut up or let anybody else be happy.)

  30. I also ask, since I am completely uncool and never read superhero comics. Is this an actual thing or is it satire?

  31. I really don’t understand the placement of these generational brackets.

    My mother is an early Boomer- doing a little math she was conceived pretty much right after my grandfather got off the troopship. In 2008 I was more than halfway through my 30’s.

    How old are Zoomers supposed to be now? Where does the Millenial bracket end?

  32. I know someone who owns a comic book store. We don’t talk as much as we might… because it seemed to me he embraced the wokeness a little more than I would have thought possible, knowing what I know about him.

    Now I wonder if it was something he really was into, or more a “got to choke this shit down, got to!” in order to survive in his field.

  34. Generation X here. I liked X-Men and Cryptkeeper Comics that my older brother (almost a Baby Boomer) bought second-hand from his classmates. But I never really got into them because there was no end to the storylines. I still remember the disappointment of getting to the end of a Star Wars comic (a Han Solo/Chewbacca reenactment of Seven Samurai IIRC) and finding out it was to be continued.

    My parents were Silent Generation, born at the end of the Great Depression and used to austerity as the depression slid right into rationing. That rubbed off on my generation enough that if you want me to buy a series or watch Marvel movies, or any of that, you’d best be consistently good.

    The young twenty-somethings that I know are pretty tight-fisted, too. Why buy a comic book if you can go online and find some decent serial comics for free or just a one-time payment? Just a few months ago, one turned me onto a retelling of the Persephone/Hades myth.

  35. Gen X here, of the Watergate segment, the ones who saw the first runs of Star Wars & Indiana Jones in theaters, and Knightrider, Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team, plus countless different Saturday morning cartoons on TV. And later watched Bladerunner, Alien, The Thing, The Terminator, Aliens, and others on VHS.

    The striking thing is just how out of ideas Marvel, DC, Hollywood, et al have become- or more likely just afraid of trying something that’s new and different from the established formulas. Consider how many of the older franchises are getting reboots (the Terminator, Alien), or just plain bad sequels (Star Wars, Indiana Jones).

    To be original, one has to be fearless, and fearless is not something that the Left encourages.

    2. (replying to you because I don’t see the big reply option at the bottom)

      Great article Marshall. Good topics (that aren’t the CCPlague.)

      On having children while the others who focus on the Great Goals don’t, I recently watched this clip of a debate:

      Sargon suggests that people (not just women, but women are the childbearers) have a duty to continue the civilization and culture that they were born in in order for the culture to survive. The woman in the debate just explodes into a cascade of ME ME ME I DON’T WANT TO BEAR CHILDREN WE SHOULD HAVE PEOPLE COME HERE AND DO THE REPLACEMENT DEMOGRAPHIC FOR ME and makes the irrational statement that “Good ideas spread” (insinuating that Western cultural ideas will spread naturally, except that insisting on integration to Western culture is considered racist/white supremacist) and proceeds to insinuate later (when Sargon had disconnected due to technical difficulties) that Sargon is racist. The two simp debate moderators go with that.

      At no point ever does Sargon say that he is for FORCING people to have children, but states that he is FOR persuading people that having children and raising them in Western cultural influence and ideas is a GOOD IDEA. But nope, the woman is all “I don’t want to have kids” and tries to pull a win by saying that they agree that ‘good ideas spread’. People in the comments note that she inadvertently makes an argument for Western Empiricism, as reality proves that no, Western Cultural Ideas are not in fact common nor universally accepted, and the only way to ensure the spread of such is through colonization and conquest (which is how the British spread their culture, which is how we see Western Civ these days.) Indeed, the reverse is true (that bad ideas spread, and keep spreading, because the people spreading them either breed, or are actively doing the ‘I will indoctrinate your children’, that Leftists don’t want to do ‘to’ immigrants.)

      The whole culture that is against families, motherhood, children seems to have no problem whatsoever with OTHER men and women taking up the duty they don’t want, imagining that the people who have those children will automagically raise them in Western values and cultural norms and ideas. We see that’s not really the case, as per the examples that we see in Northern Europe and in Britain’s grooming gangs and rape gangs.

        1. Of course — what useful role for men is there in a culture which doesn’t want children?
          –

      2. Thought experiment debate: If there is a draft for women and they are not combat capable, what should they do instead of go to war? Considering as well that men are generally the ones thrown into the meat grinder of war, what are women supposed to do that is equivalent? Would having children to replace the population lost (Spartan expectations of women?) be an equivalent?

        1. Historically, that was a very common argument: men fought wars, women bore children, both were necessary.

      3. If your culture is successful you will (by definition) want to protect and propagate it. If you do not believe it worth your personal sacrifice of bearing and raising children then you are tacitly admitting you do not value your culture. So why should those you import want to protect your culture?

        “Good ideas spread” — but if you don’t think your ideas are good enough for you to put your energies into them, why should anybody else?

        No, you are not obligated to produce another generation — but a culture in which too few of its members are willing to do that is a dead culture and cannot graft others into it without losing its character.

        Fortunately for America (and parts of the Anglosphere) our culture is still able to attract converts … it is primarily that those who’ve been born to it it who’ve squander their inheritance.
        –

          1. Not going to argue that, but I will allow as few of them actually know their culture; all they’ve ever seen is the propaganda evil caricature from our culture’s enemies.
            –

      4. > Great article Marshall.

        [glowers suspiciously]

        Yeah, but in the early days of the blog Sarah’s kids were Robert and Eric. Now it’s Robert and “Marshall”. That’s a pretty bad continuity error, just sayin’…

        [wondering what Eric did that got him written out]

        1. There was this odd (Odd?) incident with a personality transposer that Robert and Eric had built, involving one of Havelock’s hairballs, a video of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and a home-made Roomba prototype . . .

        2. ROFL. Eric turned out to hate his first name. (validating me, because I wanted to name him Marshall Eric.) He’d now E. Marshall Hoyt. Not quite Transnamed, but you know…

          1. Yeah, but when did Terry Pratchett meet him?! At least his “Eric” character was suspiciously similar to the one you raised…

    3. “Consider how many of the older franchises are getting reboots …”

      They’re getting a reboot right up their fundaments, unfortunately.

      I’ve seen the trailer for Ghostbusters: The Next Generation and it actually seems like they liked the original and understood why it worked. I’ve seen lots of lying, filthy rat-bastard trailers in my day, ones with more wit and intelligence in their two ad a half minutes than end up in the whole two and a half hour movie, so I’m not pre-purchasing tickets.
      –

  37. Hmmm, it begs the question: is the New New Warriors

    1) an act of desperation by people who wanna still be ‘cool’ or

    2) an act of knowing spite, deliberately delivering the death blow to the comic book industry?

    1. 3) a desperate act of unoriginality by un-hip people who would rather go broke than admit that their worldview is wrong

      1. It’s simply that “Woke” heroes (does woke preclude heroism?) have never been done “right.”
        –

        2. ‘Woke’ thinks it can allow heroism, it certainly takes itself seriously enough.

          But in reality woke heroism is impossible. ‘Woke’ isn’t possible without ubiquitous irony destroying all existing forms of sincerity. Remember the ironic period?

          There can be no heroism in anything that doesn’t have pre-ironic roots. And wokeness does not.

  38. About comic book stores. Around here, there isn’t a single one that survives solely by selling comics. All of them are heavily into the various RPG and game card gaming scene; and hosting gaming events (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) is a major revenue maker. B&N will carry comic book graphic novels; but you’ll never see monthly/bi-weekly periodicals of them as single issues; but then, they’re not a comic book store, just managed by people with a comic mentality. And unfortunately, they fall squarely in the “non-essential business” category for government shutdown during the COVID-19 season.

  39. Well, with all the stress and looming disaster of the pandemic and accompanying shutdown, this is certainly a breath of optimistic fresh air! Good article! I hope the Zoomers come out okay from the relentless indoctrination from our politicized schools.

  41. I knew that Stan Lee would die someday. I had no idea that an entire industry and literary genre would die with him.

  42. Hmph. I’ve never been a big comics fan, novels are more my preference. But this is a Grade-A mess.

    Personally, I think a writer could do more with lower-powered heroes…who have to be HEROIC because their super-powers aren’t that super. Or powerful. But they suck it up and go in anyway.

    1. Have you read ‘Worm’ the web serial? It’s insanely long but also really good and the central character is a superhero with really kind of crappy powers who gets by with intelligence, persistence, bloody minded determination and heart. And a bit of ruthlessness – not evil just mission focus. It’s refreshing.

      The power interactions are really quite good, and characters use them intelligently!

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