The Four Color Media Monitor

Around the time the issue of Roy Thomas giving the assignment of creating Wolverine in the Bronze Age first came up, Forbes also interviewed Christine Valada, Len Wein's widow, who doesn't approve of Thomas' wish to get his own credit as the editor who oversaw development of Logan. And what's odd here is that she seems to be claiming it's not about money, in a bizarre "reflection" of what Thomas said:

Christine Valada, an entertainment and copyright attorney in Los Angeles specializing in creator rights issues, took exception to many of the points made in the story. Valada, who met Wein in 1989 and married him in 1991, manages her late husband’s estate, which has been receiving both credit and financial compensation from Disney (owner of Marvel) since 2014. Wein himself died in 2017.

“I’m not privy to what the financial arrangements might be [with Thomas] and I don’t particularly care,” Valada said in a phone interview on April 2. “This is not about finances. This is about stolen valor. This frankly calls my husband a liar for his entire career.” [...]

Valada says Wein remained consistent in his account of the character’s creation since the beginning. While acknowledging that Thomas had assigned him to introduce a Canadian character named Wolverine in The Incredible Hulk, which Wein was writing, Wein said he did all the original research that shaped Wolverine’s powers and personality. Wein, who studied art in college, claimed he even contributed to John Romita’s character design.

This last point is disputed by Herb Trimpe, the artist who drew the first Wolverine stories, who died in 2015. In an interview that took place in 2012, Trimpe said:

“I was in the office a good part 0f the time and I was there when John [Romita] was working on the model for the character. The way it worked was Roy Thomas came up with a concept. It was his. He came up with the name of the character Wolverine and he handed it directly over to John Romita in the bullpen to develop a character sheet, which he gave to Len Wein, who was the writer at the time.”

Trimpe continued, “I don’t want to take away anybody's ability to make a few bucks, but it was it Roy's concept and John's character design. The writer in my opinion gave the character a voice and actually collaborated with the artist in terms of bringing the character to life, which is no small thing, but it's not really the originator of the concept.”

Valada disagrees. She said she has great respect for editors, but said that you can never compare what they do in the course of their staff jobs with the toil that writers and artists put in bringing ideas to life. “It’s their sweat and blood that goes into the creation, while editors go home and collect their paychecks,” she said. “It's simply not true that Roy was in any way shape or form a co-creator of the character. To me, co-creator means that he either contributed to writing the story or he contributed artwork, and he didn't do either. He made suggestions, as an editor does.”

It sounds like Mrs. Valada, regrettably, is not willing to recognize that an editor can come up with a "rough sketch" of the idea they'd like to see realized, and assign them to official writers and artists to develop. Granted, she's trying to avoid making it sound like she only cares about money, which shouldn't be everything. Even so, it's sad Valada doesn't want to acknowledge editors can and do deserve credit for pitching ideas that might not have come about had it not been for their thinking.

But since the issue of valor comes up, how would Valada feel if any of Wein's creations suffered the same kind of woke abuse Thomas' and even Bill Finger's did? Why, how about the time when Brian Bendis made particularly awful use of Wolverine in the Marvel crossover tales he'd engineered over 15 years ago, or even the time when Logan was put in a comics grave for nearly 3 years just several years ago? If Logan's undergone any kind of abuse by Marvel writers that does more harm than good, isn't Valada disappointed with that? It's hard to say you care about valor when you don't say a word about dignity for both the writer's efforts and the creation to boot.

She cited the example of Wein himself, whose career included several notable editorial roles. “The list of characters created while Len was Editor-in-Chief at Marvel is several pages long,” Valada said. “Of course, he was editor of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen at DC [in 1986]. He would never dream of taking co-creator status on anything he edited, no matter what he contributed to the process.”

Point: if Wein didn't pitch the idea himself, and it really was Moore's idea to write Watchmen with DC's approval, then this is hardly the same thing. But, next comes something that makes it hard for me take her side:

“Seeing Roy Thomas's name as a co-creator makes me sick to my stomach,” she said. “The man should have stayed in his lane as the editor, taking his accolades for that, and not try to usurp credit that he's not due and that he has not earned. If I sit back and let this roll by, where will it stop? It’s only going to get worse.”

Valada says it is not too late for Disney and Marvel to walk back this move. “Look what NBC Universal did last week [reversing course after the hiring RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel caused an uproar]. They should say, look, we made a mistake. And people will be very impressed that they were able to acknowledge that in the name of truth.”

Oh, what's this? Something that reeks of political bias, sadly enough. I don't know if Thomas is a Republican per se, but if that's got anything to do with Valada's complaints, to the point she'd run the gauntlet of being rude, then I can't sympathize with her. Besides, it's unclear if she cares about artistic integrity, which seems lacking in this whole affair. So what good does this do?

Here's another Forbes article about veteran Thomas' role in the creation of Wolverine 5 decades ago, and his reasons for development:

In 1974, Thomas was working under Stan Lee, who was Marvel’s publisher at the time. According to Roy, The impetus for Wolverine’s creation came from the fact that roughly 5 to 10 percent of Marvel readers were Canadian. Thomas wanted them to have their own hero to root for.

Roy said he was thinking of animals that live in both Canada and the United States to liken Marvel’s first Canadian character to in both name and demeanor. Two animals stood out, a badger and a wolverine.

“I thought about the two of them and Badger, well, it's a good enough name. As a matter of fact, there was a character— an imitation of Wolverine started a year or two later after he became big who was called the Badger and ran for quite a few years,” Thomas told me over Zoom in late February.

“But I just thought, Badger, it sounds like the verb. It kind of means to annoy. You badger somebody. And so it wasn't quite as good a name,” Roy said. “And Wolverine had that kind of wolfy sound and the V in it. There was just something about it.”

I wonder if this helped Mike Baron to create Badger the following decade, since the character name was left easily accessible? I assume that's what Thomas was talking about, though it took nearly a decade after Wolverine's introduction in the pages of the Hulk for Baron to first produce Badger at the original Capital/First Comics.

But honestly, Thomas' motivation for creating Logan has since unfortunately been exploited by tons of liberal propagandists to produce all sorts of leftist social justice propaganda under the claim that "everybody should have their own hero", even if it means basing their creation upon ideology rather than nationality, and now, look what kind of woke damage has occurred since. Make Wolverine Canadian if you must, but it shouldn't be simply because there's plenty of folks in the great white north who read Marvel's output. It should be based on entertainment value, and without it, that's exactly why Logan's been brought down as a concept since along with sales figures.

After Thomas had the name, he remembers going to one of Marvel’s top writers for the story, Len Wein, who was writing The Incredible Hulk at the time. Roy previously wrote for the title.

“I called in Len and I told him [five] things,” Thomas stated. “I said, ‘I want this character in right away.’ Because I just wanted to establish it soon. I said, ‘He's Canadian. He's called Wolverine. And like a wolverine—’ It's a small animal so I wanted [him] to be short.

“Most of the heroes are all six feet, six and a half feet. I wanted this to be a short hero. And the other thing was that wolverines are especially noticed— badgers, that could have worked for it too, is they're noticed for, the wolverine, in particular, [noticed] for attacking animals up to 5, 10, or more times their own size. I mean, they don't just defend themselves. They sometimes attack. They're just vicious creatures. So I wanted him to be especially ill-tempered and kind of fierce.” [...]

Thomas trusted Len’s writing ability and left him alone while he crafted the story. That trust would yield some key details to the character that fans still cherish 50 years later.

“Len, on his own, besides this kind of background of this Canadian secret organization that was in charge of Wolverine and so forth as Weapon X kind of thing; he came up with that. And he came up with the idea [the claws] were made of adamantium, which is the hardest substance known,” Roy recalled.

“I didn't have anything to do with that, but I was particularly happy since I had invented adamantium for an Avengers story a couple of years earlier. And so I thought, ‘Well, that's cool.’ But that was up to Len. Once I did my little bit, I was content to have him do the rest of it.”

On adamantium metals, yes, that was put to use in stories involving Ultron. So, Thomas does have something that can help strengthen a claim to giving the assignment as editor to a writer/artist.

Thomas also trusted Wein’s ability to edit. He primarily left the revisions up to Len as well.

“I kind of let Len do his thing and probably every word in there is entirely his,” Roy said. “And he worked, of course, with the artist who was then drawing the Hulk, Herb Trimpe, who I always have [credited]. I know Len did. A co-creator kind of, of (Wolverine) because you draw that first story, you have to do so many things. But sometimes, he gets left off the list of creators. But I feel the guy who actually drew the first story and set up all those things has to be counted too.

“So it was really a kind of a committee. I came first, but then you had John, you had Len, you had Herb Trimpe. Maybe Stan (Lee) was the only person who wasn't involved. He finally saw a cover thing, he says, ‘Yeah, that's good.’ That was it. Because he wasn't intended to be a big character.

[...] The Incredible Hulk #181 is now considered a holy grail comic, with even low grades commanding thousands of dollars, and #180, with the cameo, demands a pretty penny these days as well. The first-full appearance of Wolverine (#181) was published in November of 1974, though Thomas notes back then it was customary for a book to be in stores around two months before the pub date.

I'm honestly irked every time I see an emphasis on back issues sold on the speculator market, instead of how they've since become available in trade collections, paperback and hardcover. And it makes no difference that Forbes is a business magazine. That aside, would Valada have had any complaints about the late Trimpe being given clear credit for his role as artist in Wolverine's creation, if Trimpe hadn't received it properly? If not, then again, it becomes a case of selfishness. I do recall though, that the late Steve Ditko had fallouts with Lee in past decades over how he was credited as the creating artist for Spider-Man, even taking issue with Lee's statement he considered Ditko his co-creator (he said he takes issue with the word "consider"). I think Ditko was overreacting, and it's sad, because it was making far too much of a fuss over something I'm sure Ditko was given residuals over as time went by, and Jim Shooter did make an effort, however flawed, to ensure creators got certain residuals based on use of characters when he was Marvel's EIC.

I suppose the best way to give writers credit is if they receive first billing, the artist second, and the editor third or fourth. But to say editors aren't allowed even remote credit will only next lead to situations where even the inkers, colorists and letterers won't get any either. And there's doubtless plenty of those kind of employees from decades past who deserve credit of their own for bringing these creations to light. To say Marvel fans still cherish key details about Logan 50 years later, however, ignores that today, after so much deconstruction by woke writers and editors, there's not much left in terms of key details that anybody can appreciate. When bad writing and art become the norm, it's hard to appreciate anything going forward.

Labels: good artists, good writers, history, Hulk, marvel comics, msm propaganda, X-Men

Entertainment Weekly tells that the fishy TV and film scriptwriter Beau deMayo broke his silence after being fired from X-Men 97, to tell why he wrote an episode that gets rid of Gambit, a direction which I decidedly am not pleased with, based on how it reeks of the illogical dislike for a fictional character that was common at the time Chris Claremont created him, and the thinking is doubtless still prevalent today:

“Lotta questions and so I'll momentarily break silence to answer,” he said. “Episode 5 was the centerpiece of my pitch to Marvel in November 2020. The idea being to have the X-Men mirror the journey that any of us who grew up on the original show have experienced since being kids in the 90s. The world was a seemingly safer place for us, where a character like Storm would comment on how skin-based racism was ‘quaint’ in One Man's Worth [the season 4 opener for the original X-Men animated series] . For the most part, to our young minds, the world was a simple place of right and wrong, where questions about identity and social justice had relatively clear cut answers.”

However, DeMayo noted that his worldview shifted after the September 11th attacks. “Things weren't so safe anymore," he explained. "Grassroots populist movements began to rise around the world as a whole nation struggled to deal with collective trauma and fracture at the seams of every diverse demographic. The effects we still feel today, and have only been exacerbated by more collective traumas like COVID or several recessions."

DeMayo said that he wanted the episode, which ends with a harrowing attack on mutant haven Genosha that kills Gambit and Magneto, to reflect the pain of real-life attacks on safe spaces. “Yes, it looked like Gambit's story was going a specific direction,” he said. “The crop top was chosen to make you love him. Him pulling off his shirt was intentional. There's a reason he told Rogue any fool would suffer her hand in a dance, even if it ended up not being him suffering. But if events like 9/11, Tulsa, Charlottesville, or Pulse Nightclub teach us anything, it's that too many stories are often cut far too short. I partied at Pulse. It was my club. I have so many great memories of its awesome white lounge. It was, like Genosha, a safe space for me and everyone like me to dance and laugh and be free. I thought about this a lot when crafting this season and this episode, and how the gay community in Orlando rose to heal from that event.”

“Like many of us who grew up on the OG cartoon, the X-Men have now been hit hard by the realities of an adult and unsafe world,” DeMayo continued. “Life's happened to them. And they, like we did, will have to decide which parts of themselves they will cling to and which parts they'll let go of in order to do what they've been telling humanity to do: face an uncertain future they never saw coming. As Trask told Cyclops in the premiere: ‘you have no idea what it's like to be left behind by the future.’ Now the X-Men do, and like each of us, they'll have to weigh whether this is a time for social justice — or as Magneto preached at his trial — is it a time for social healing.”

It sounds on the one hand, like deMayo exploited Gambit to serve as a gay metaphor, and on the other, that he'd off Gambit is quite off-putting. The character was one of various victims of the illogic of attacking fictional characters instead of how they're scripted in past decades, and this direction is not improving upon that kind of embarrassment that's long infected fandom. Sure, Remy leBeau may be resurrected in this cartoon so long as it's still on the air, but even so, this direction is not something I can approve of, period. It's long become so cheap. One can wonder which is worse - killing Gambit or turning him into a gay metaphor. And look at that - the mention of "social justice". That's pretty telling.

Now as for the comparisons to the Pulse nightclub: curious Mr. deMayo doesn't have the courage to mention the perpetrator was a Muslim jihadist named Omar Mateen. Why, deMayo's superficial reference of 9-11 is also defeating, because there's no mention of the Religion of Peace's role, nor al Qaeda. And did deMayo ever consider the former nightclub attendants like this one, who turned to Christianity and left the practice of homosexuality? Why don't their experiences count?

Even the citation of "grassroots movements" is fishy, and hints Mr. deMayo wrote all this from far too much a leftist viewpoint. What Gambit tells Rogue is also potentially insulting. So I think it's better not to tune in to what already reeks of far-left influence that makes even the most questionable moments from past X-Men stories look tame by comparison. If deMayo was let go by producers, it's just as well, but the saddest part is, leftist scripters will still influence the cartoon going forward, so long as it continues broadcast.

Labels: animation, golden calf of death, golden calf of LGBT, history, islam and jihad, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, terrorism, violence, women of marvel, X-Men

North Jersey has some history of the Heathcliff comic strip's late creator, George Gately, who created the rowdy kitty 5 years before Jim Davis did Garfield (and the latter's popularity soon overtook the former's):

Two rows of fresh fish chill on ice outside the Elite Fish Market in the colorful port town of Westfinster. From behind the counter, the fishmonger, Mr. Schultz, looks on incredulously. “Geo Gately,” in faultless looping script, is written on the wall above his head. His ire seems focused on a striped feline, who stands upright in swim fins atop the fish-filled rack. The cat is wearing goggles on his head and a delightedly devilish look on his face. He's holding a spear.

The image, from the cover of a 1989 Heathcliff comic book, is a classic take on the original fat cartoon cat. Unlike his portly peer Garfield, who arrived after him on the comic strip scene, Heathcliff chose raw fish over lasagna, milkman over postman, street over house. Gruff, sarcastic and adorable, the hellion-turned-icon found joy in mischief, pain in baths and satisfaction in thwarting the boisterous neighborhood bulldog, Spike.

All of it was conceived by George Gately, a former Bergen County resident of rare talent. Born on Dec. 21, 1928, George Gately Gallagher was raised in Bergenfield. After graduating from the town's high school, he attended the Pratt Institute in New York City with a view to profiting off his creativity through advertising.

His fate had long been sealed, however. For Gately, ad work proved far too stifling. Gately would later say he wanted to be a cartoonist from the first time he picked up a pencil.

Doodling was encouraged by his parents. Arguably, it was in his blood. His older brother, John Gallagher, was also a well-known cartoonist and would help him pen “Heathcliff” in its heyday (George may have dropped his last name professionally to avoid confusion). After Gately’s 1998 retirement, his nephew, Peter Gallagher, picked up the pencil and ensured the strip’s survival. [...]

Named for the character in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, "Heathcliff" premiered in print in 1973. The tabby quickly gained a following. In Gately’s 2001 obituary in The Los Angeles Times, the newspaper said 900 protest letters forced the paper to reinstate the strip after “Heathcliff” was pulled in 1974.

After capturing the 1970s, the street-smart cat peaked in the '80s. Two separate animated series had Mel Blanc voicing the cat. An incomparable legend in voice acting, who powered Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Barney Rubble, Blanc solidified Heathcliff’s status as an endearing wise guy.

Ever relatable, the rotund cat steals, but he also stands for workers' rights. He has a loyal best friend in innocent Iggy, an ever-out-of-reach crush in sleek Sonja and a less-than-ideal role model in convict "Pops" Heathcliff.

That Heathcliff had a voice in the cartoons is surely the oddest part of adapting to cartoons, in contrast to how Snoopy's animated counterpart in the Peanuts cartoons usually didn't speak. Ruby-Spears and DIC, who oversaw the 2 productions, must've decided it was the best way to compete with Garfield, whose own cartoons began just 4 years after Davis launched the strip in 1978, while Heathcliff took at least 7 years to be adapted. And Marvel published a series in the mid-1980s, originally under their Star imprint. Much like Garfield, I also read Heathcliff in my youth, and found it amusing in its own way, even if it's idea of surreal comedy differs from that of Garfield's (and unlike the latter, the former's daily strips were often single panel, in contrast to Garfield's 3). And I sure hope that, as a strip that may still be in publication via Gately's nephew, it still retains a decent sense of humor that isn't tarnished by the political correctness that's become a sad staple today.

Labels: animation, comic strips, good artists, history

Gamespot has an interesting list of manga and graphic novels based on video games that're on sale at sites like Amazon:

A huge list of Halo novels are up for grabs, including the first three entries in the original Halo book series Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, and Halo: First Strike. In total, there are 20 Halo books eligible for the B2G1 offer, including various other sub-series like the Forerunner Saga and standalone entries like Halo: Epitaph.

Zelda fans who want to experience alternate takes on the storylines from the video games can grab the full manga adaptations of The Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, plus select volumes of the Twilight Princess manga. If you prefer your fantasy a bit grittier, there are also several Witcher books and graphic novels to choose from, as well as select Dark Souls and Bloodborne comic collections.

If there's any special discount sales, they may be past at the moment, but I'm sure these adaptations are worth it if they're manga from Japan.

Labels: licensed products, manga and anime, sales, technology

Collect Space announced there's a comic book that's been prepared about the history of Vulcan rockets, drawn by employees of United Launch Alliance:

Vulcan, United Launch Alliance's (ULA) new heavy-lift rocket, was not the result of having to flee an exploding planet, being exposed to gamma rays or even surviving the bite of a radioactive spider, but it does have an origin story compelling enough to warrant it having its own comic book.

Or so struck Cory Wood, ULA's senior graphic designer, who led the creation of "Ignition! The Origin Story of the Vulcan Centaur Rocket," the first (and perhaps only) issue of the aerospace company's new celebratory graphic novel.

"I'm sort of a big nerd. And so in thinking about it, how do you tell the story of something that has taken this much time, this much effort and all of these people's intelligence and background to make it successful?" said Wood in an interview with collectSPACE. "It just felt like that superhero moment that needed its origin story told. And a comic book, that's how you tell a superhero's origin story, right?"

ULA's CEO Tory Bruno, who is depicted in "Ignition!", revealed the comic book's existence on social media on Friday (April 5), three days before its physical debut at Space Foundation's Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Attendees will be able to pick up a copy while ULA finalizes its plans for making the comic book available to the general public. (A digital version can be found on ULA's website.)

This could, with the cards played right, make for an ideal focus on astronomy in comicdom.

Labels: history, science, technology

Something most remarkable was performed by quite a few comics contributors, old and new, who've had writing/art/editing credits on Batman over past years, as the Times of Israel reports:

Fifty creators of the iconic Batman superhero character signed a petition urging the governments of Egypt and Qatar to press for the release of Yarden and Shiri Bibas along with their two red-haired sons, Ariel and Kfir. All four family members have been held hostage in Gaza since October 7.

The family was kidnapped from Nir Oz by Hamas terrorists on October 7, a day that saw 3,000 terrorists infiltrate southern Israel to massacre 1,200 Israelis — most of them civilians — and kidnap 253 people into the Strip. Mother Shiri and her sons were captured separately from her husband Yarden.

One of the iconic images of the family that has been circulated since their capture shows the four wearing Batman apparel. Ariel, 4, is a dedicated fan of the Gotham City protector.

The petition was sent to Egyptian and Qatari ambassadors in Washington, DC, on April 12. The effort was organized by Dr. Rafael Medoff, historian and director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

“These comics creators have spent decades developing a hero who fights for the innocent and stands as a beacon of hope for his community, and we’re trying to channel that spirit through this effort,” Medoff told The Times of Israel. [...]

Some of the Bibas petition’s high-profile signees include Mike Carlin, DC’s head of animation; longtime DC publisher Paul Levitz; and former president of Warner Animation Sander Schwartz.

The petition was also signed by some of Batman’s veteran writers, including Chip Zdansky and Mark Waid. Leading artists from the franchise who signed include Mark Bagley, Dan Jurgens, Denys Cowan and Amanda Conner, the celebrated artist behind the Joker’s girlfriend, Harley Quinn.

“As members of the community of Batman writers and artists, we are contacting you concerning the young Batman fan who was taken hostage by terrorists and held in Gaza since last October 7,” said the creators.

“Moved by the many anecdotes of Ariel’s affection for the iconic character who has become a symbol of hope and justice for so many, we implore your governments to exercise all possible leverage on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to immediately release the Bibas family, and all the Israeli hostages, from captivity,” said the petition.

Well this definitely is amazing, considering how quite a few of these same creators, even the veterans, have taken such a lenient position on Islam in the past, and on that note, maybe it'd be a good idea to remind everyone why they still have fences to mend, and not just in the sense they've acted as apologists for the Religion of Peace in some way or other.

For example, Levitz, when he was in charge of DC comics, vehemently refused to greenlight Frank Miller's story that later became Holy Terror, yet Levitz had no issue going ahead with a collaboration with the Kuwaiti publishers of a propaganda comic called The 99. Waid was once involved in the writing of the storylines that led to Age of Apocalypse in X-Men, which drew a bizarre moral equation between Israel's officials and the PLO. Zdarsky's quite a woke leftist ideologue himself, as is writer Andrew Farago, the museum curator who attacked Comicsgate and blocks even Jewish X posters who could support the hashtag. Jurgens once wrote an apologia tale for Islam in the pages of Superman, as did Mike Grell in Iron Man during the early 2000s, and should it be mentioned it's ludicrous and offensive how a lethal villainess like Harley Quinn is being depicted with a Jewish background? After all, chances they'd do something similar with a Moslem character are next to nothing.

The writers who signed onto Wyman Institute's petition who do impress me more are Chuck Dixon, Ann Nocenti and even Steve Englehart. The latter 2 are leftist, to my knowledge, but unlike a lot of modern ones, seem to recognize the advantage of avoiding divisive statements, on social media or otherwise.

No stranger to Batman lore, Medoff penned an essay for a book called “Theology and Batman.” One of the book’s central themes is the theodicy — or sense of redemption — Batman brings to the world by vindicating goodness over evil.

Many of the creators of Batman, Superman and other superheroes were of Jewish descent. Quite a few books and essays have been written about how these creators were influenced by Jewish history while at their drawing boards.

Yes, but whatever the background of the creators, those of more recent times aren't exactly helping matters, if the latter of these 2 examples says something:

Earlier in 2024, an issue of DC’s “The Penguin” remembered that Bruce Wayne — Batman’s alter-ego — is Jewish. The moment came when Bruce Wayne referenced his handkerchief as being a Hanukkah gift from his father to his mother.

In a “Batwoman” reboot released in 2006, the character Kate Kane — Batwoman’s alter-ego — was reintroduced as a Jewish, lesbian cousin of Batman, demonstrating how comic artists both shape and reflect their times.

And they don't think this is even remotely insulting to the intellect the Kane character's depicted as lesbian solely for woke brownie points? And implying Wayne could have some Jewish ancestry (in some past renditions, it was established his ancestry was from Scotland), will not work if the writing is as woke as it's become lately. To imply Bruce is even bisexual only damages the character's image/reputation all the more, and is an embarrassment to Bill Finger and Bob Kane's legacy. Let us be clear. Those writers and artists who've joined Dr. Medoff's petition did the right thing. But unless they can prove they're repentant, and writers like Jurgens and Grell won't boomerang back on apologia for Islam tomorrow, what good is this project going to do in the long run? Add to this the unlikely scenario any of these creators will show the courage and altruism to work on a comics project tackling Islamic terrorism, and that's another frustrating issue right there.

Besides the above news, Dr. Medoff tells on Israel National News how Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Truedeau's acknowledged that Hamas is evil, and mocked them in his newspaper strips:

One of America’s most beloved newspaper comic strips has dared to poke fun at Hamas. Get ready for controversy!

In the latest Sunday installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doonesbury strip, a fictional anti-terrorist fighter—known as “the Red Rascal”—bursts into the bedroom of an actual Hamas leader, Ismail Haniye, who is living in Qatar.

The cartoon shows Haniyeh enjoying luxurious accommodations, and identifies him as “one of three Hamas leaders worth billions, who enriched themselves with donor money intended for impoverished Gazans!”

Garry Trudeau, the writer and artist of Doonesbury, has dared to acknowledge a fact about the Hamas leadership that most of the mainstream news media prefer to ignore. [...]

What makes this Doonesbury strip even more interesting is that Trudeau has been strongly critical of Israel in the past. His view of Hamas is not motivated by any kind of built-in pro-Israel bias.

Not only that, but Trudeau has been extra sensitive concerning Muslim reactions to controversial cartoons, such as the one about Mohammed that was published in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Islamist terrorists responded to that cartoon by massacring twelve members of the magazine’s staff.

Trudeau accused Charlie Hebdo of engaging in “hate speech.” He argued that the magazine's publication of the cartoon was unjustified because it constituted "attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority."

But the Doonesbury creator can’t count on any of his past statements to protect him from a furious reaction to his criticism of Hamas. Pro-Hamas extremists in the United States are not known for their ability to calmly and rationally discuss differing points of view—especially when somebody reveals uncomfortable facts about their heroes.

Obviously, it's to be unfortunately expected Islam's sympathisers will react poorly and horrifically. Why, they could act the same way towards any and all of the above Batman contributors, and that too will be terrible, if God forbid it happens. Of course, one must wonder at this point if creators like Trudeau are repentant for the harm they caused by blaming the victims in horrible incidents like that in France. If not, then while it's amazing on the surface he'd attack Hamas as the evil entity they are, any failure to acknowledge he was wrong to blame Charlie Hebdo and other victims of Islamofascism in France ruins everything. I do vaguely recall at least a few Doonesbury strips that were negative to Israel, and so it sure has taken Trudeau a lot of time to show the courage to acknowledge that jihadist organizations like Hamas and PLO are barbaric evil incarnate.

So far, if there's one notable name connected with Batman stories whom I couldn't find on the Wyman petition, it's Frank Miller. How odd. Is he really that stupidly regretful for penning Holy Terror back in 2011 that he doesn't have the guts to participate in a project like Medoff's now? Well it's honestly disgraceful, IMO. Come to think of it, when even far-leftists like Kurt Busiek, Ron Marz, Dan DiDio, Joe Quesada, Gail Simone and Axel Alonso can't even contribute, that too has got to be saying something. This isn't just something that should involved Batman contributors, but all sorts of comics creators, even those more into independent productions. I'd strongly suggest Medoff try to contact them as well, and try to convince them to put aside all their vehement leftism and recognize why the message he's sending here is important for all to uphold, not just anybody who's worked on the Masked Manhunter. Calling for release of the hostages - many of whom have doubtless been subjected to torture and sexual violence - is surely the most important part of this whole tragedy.

Labels: Batman, comic strips, dc comics, Europe and Asia, history, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, terrorism, violence

Kidscreen's got more coverage of what analysts predict is the direction Hollywood will be taking, with video games as opposed to comic books:

To track what it calls “popularity score,” Ampere uses a metric that’s based on average global consumer search volumes on the internet for both film and TV projects. The new report assessed the top 10 most popular newly-released projects in 2023 and found that only one comic book adaptation (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) made the list—a significant decline from 2021, when comic book adaptations took up six spots on this ranking, and well below the four spots the category occupied in 2022.

Meanwhile, the 2020s have so far seen the tide shift towards video game IPs expanding into films and series, with films like Detective Pikachu (2019) and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) getting the momentum rolling. The report theorizes that audience receptiveness to this genre was buoyed by a surge in gaming activity during the pandemic, which might explain the boost in numbers—from Uncharted (2022) racking up US$407 million to last year’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023, pictured) entering the billion-dollar club. The small screen has also seen the emergence of successful kids shows adapted from video games, including Angry Birds: Summer Madness and Sonic Prime (which generated more than 82 million hours of watchtime on Netflix in the first half of 2023).

It appears that 2021 was the last year to record a clear-cut dominance of comic book franchises. That was the last time a superhero flick crossed US$1 billion at the box office (Spider-Man: No Way Home), while Marvel Studios’ TV spinoffs continued to attract high engagement and Disney+ series WandaVision reached a peak popularity score that remains “unmatched.”

Last year was particularly tough for most comic book adaptations, with films like The Marvels, The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom facing slow box office returns.

“Risk-averse studios have [already] begun a smooth transition into the gaming realm,” says commissioning researcher Illia Abusaitov. “These adaptations have already demonstrated their capacity to match or even exceed the success of comic adaptations.”

Interesting how unnamed studios are described as avoiding risks, when they've taken the risk of alienating audiences with political correctness, which the article predictably won't comment on. If they're going to hammer audiences over the head with the kind of propaganda seen in the 4th Thor, why do they think audiences will tune out? Simultaneously, is that a good thing if studios are "risk-averse"? What matters is story merit foremost, and without it, they can't be surprised if audiences are discouraged in the end. They've also got to avoid making the alarming mistakes made in casting, like when Warner Brothers cast the disgraced Ezra Miller as the Flash, Amber Heard as Mera in Aquaman, and look how that turned out at the box office. Plus, when the screenplays are as horrid as the former film's was, you can't be surprised nobody would care.

Next, per Indie Wire (via the Daily Wire), it appears even board games like Monopoly are going to be adapted to the silver screen, along with the video games:

Margot Robbie is sticking with toys and games after the success of “Barbie.”

Robbie, through her LuckyChap production banner, will develop an adaption of Hasbro’s classic board game, “Monopoly.” The announcement came Wednesday morning during Lionsgate’s CinemaCon 2024 presentation.

Producing “Monopoly” alongside Robbie are her partners Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara. The upcoming “Monopoly” movie will also be produced by Hasbro Entertainment for Lionsgate, which extended its development rights to the board game adaptation after its December 2023 purchase of eOne. Hasbro had originally intended to develop a “Monopoly” movie that would star Kevin Hart.

[...] The news comes shortly after LuckyChap announced a “Sims” movie on the heels of the blockbuster “Barbie” success and Oscar nominations.

[...] Hasbro Entertainment has more than 30 active projects in development. Other upcoming titles include the animated “Transformers One” directed by Josh Cooley and starring Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, and Jon Hamm, as well as a live-action “Dungeons & Dragons” series for Paramount+.

Considering how woke the Barbie movie was, yet regrettably became such a massive box office success, that's why it wouldn't be shocking if a Monopoly movie wound up the same way, and Hasbro might not lift a finger in defense of the classic creation in their care, any more than Mattel did when Barbie was humiliated. And what would a Monopoly movie be about anyway? The mustachioed millionaire mascot going on a trip around the country at the throw of the dice, reading all the Chance and Community Chest cards along the way? Seriously, whatever the producers have in mind is hard to get excited about regardless of how they make it, because ultimately, they're just scraping the bottom of the barrel for pop culture products to adapt into something that doesn't make people think for the right reasons, let alone provide decent escapism. Also note it looks like the Sims game owned by Electronic Arts is being adapted, and frankly, I can't care less about yet another video game adaptation there either.

Hollywood is just making themselves look laughably silly with where they dig to get material for movies and TV programs. And when it turns out to be PC, then it just isn't art.

Labels: licensed products, msm propaganda, politics, sales, technology

Fandom Wire pointed to an interview by Think McFly Think from 2010 with Claremont and the late Wein at the Calgary Expo, where they provided a viewpoint that could've predicted where comicdom's gotten to in the past decade. Let's begin with what Wein says about Nightcrawler:

Len, How did creating Nightcrawler come about?

The thing about Nightcrawler is he started out just as a visual. We had a bunch of characters drawn up, that hadn't been developed yet. We wanted him to be the nicest guy on the team as well as the most Christian, partly just due to the fact that he looks like a very demonic character. We also thought it would be great for him to be best friends with Wolverine, just to really throw people off. Sometimes we would do ridiculous things just for the fun of it, no story arch, no plan, just for fun.

As far as Nightcrawler's ethnicity and his origin, that relates back to the Marketing people wanting every hero to be ethnically diverse and from all over the world.

Since that time, however, Kurt Wagner's religious background has been throughly desecrated, as has how he was birthed, and has there ever been a cast member in X-Men, or other Marvel/DC comics, who comes from a Bulgarian background? Guess not, and today's contributors are so narrow minded, they'd never accept a proposal by a new writer to develop characters like those. That's why the whole "DEI" propaganda that's become commonplace today is hugely phony, and has practically led comicdom into stagnation. Claremont and Wein also addressed the following issue, which has been just as troubling:

What kind of decision making goes into killing off a character?

In some cases it's just a lazy writer, someone who doesn't care about that character. I'll notice someone is killing off a character, and I'll ask them why, they tell me because I hate them, so I say don't use that character anymore. One writer may hate a character they're writing and want to kill them off, but that doesn't mean that when they're done someone else isn't going to come along and love that character, but look now that character is dead.

Other times we'll plan to kill someone off right from the start. It can be for different reasons, they're popularity starts to fade off, or it serves a story arch that may last several months or years. A lot of factors are usually taken into consideration before killing someone off.

Back in the day, Marvel said if they're dead they stay dead, but now you can kill a character today and bring them back next week.

Well I hope they don't think resurrection is inherently wrong. Even then, however, "factors" weren't always taken into consideration, or, it was done very irresponsibly, and very poorly. This part alludes to the offensive illogic of denigrating fictional characters instead of how they're written and characterized. There's only so many bad writers who almost literally got away with their shoddy efforts because some birdbrains chose to bash fictional creations instead of asking for improved writing efforts, on said creations, and even the ongoing series themselves. Unfortunately, this interview doesn't go far enough in making the point, and that's decidedly regrettable. And then, here's what was said about movie adaptations:

What do you think about Hollywood's current infatuation with comic book movies?

It all has to do with the studio executives. Their number one job is to keep their job. They pick books and characters that people will know, and then hire actors that at the same time are "hot", and if the movie fails, they can say how could I have known this would fail.

It's plausible Denial ability!

I've noticed this issue discussed a number of times before: a very aggravating problem with how comics-based products are increasingly sold as films and video games is that they do it according to recognizability, not entertainment value, and hiring actors who're supposedly a big deal to boot can be another fault. This is why we may never see a movie based on some of the "lesser" characters from mainstream, like DC's Atom and Marvel's Killraven, and even if we do, chances are very high now they'll be wokefied for woke's sake. And then we wonder how the quality of entertainment got so bad, because the film producers aren't really interested.

What was in discussion by Claremont and Wein almost 15 years ago still makes for very valid arguments now. But if the past decade says anything, it's that most moviemakers and comics writers have no interest in taking their advice.

Labels: conventions, dc comics, golden calf of death, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, X-Men