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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 3:01:36 GMT -5
the so-called problems with diversity and comics has nothing to do with actual 'diversity'. when growing up, had this been the Marvel-verse, i'd have been as happy as a clam. i'd have bought more comics, encouraged people to buy more comics. the problem is that 'diversity' has been malaprop'ed into meaning 'you don't have to draw well, you don't have to write well, you just have to whore-out 24 pages to blather your tumblr screeds at readers without learning any craft at all, and the 'everyone gets a participation medal' garbage. political correctness has never harmed comics. 'you don't have to put effort into training yourself to show respect to non white, non hetero, non male, non 'standard steve rogers' garbage showing disrespect to 'non steve rogers' characters HAS. there, i said it.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 5:34:52 GMT -5
so, i had a convo with my protege earlier today, ala the 'diversity' thing. particularly 'current marvel', re the Ri Ri/Ironheart stuff, the Wolverine stuff, the whole sheh-bang (or 'she-bang').
he had a salient comment, so i asked if, with his permission, i could share it here. he agreed, so i will.
like myself, he has no probs with 'race-swapping/gender-swapping' etc. however, like myself, he has a prob with double-standards.
which is the difference between political correctness and hypocritical/lazy sjw @$#!!! .
he said, 'Look, I have no problems with gender-swapping. but fair-go. if some currently female characters could be retconned into male characters, male queer characters, trans characters, and be just as interesting, maybe more so with writer/artist team with work-ethic, why don't we see that? why not a non cis male Rogue, or Ororo?'
I feel he had a very fair question there, and one that sjw editors at Marvel are OBLIGED to answer.
not that they ever WOULD.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 27, 2017 6:21:11 GMT -5
The easiest answer, I think, is that the vast majority of recognizable super-hero characters are caucasian and male.
As time goes by, if we get enough female and non-caucasian characters established, I suppose we'll get to the point they can get reinterpreted. Right now, though, if publishers want to give a new cultural or ethnic background to their old properties, they have pretty much only one way to go... away from the Steve Rogers archetype.
Looking at the image you posted up there, it's not the diversity that strikes me... it's that these characters don't look half as interesting as the colourful roster of Marvel's early days. I'd much rather have Riri take over as Iron Man than have her wear some generic grey armour. As long as the history of the character is not wiped away (the way Richard Ryder's was when Marvel tried to cram the new Nova down our throat), I'm fine with passing the torch. The new kids should, however, be as interesting as their predecessors... otherwise, why bother?
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 6:55:30 GMT -5
The easiest answer, I think, is that the vast majority of recognizable super-hero characters are caucasian and male. As time goes by, if we get enough female and non-caucasian characters established, I suppose we'll get to the point they can get reinterpreted. Right now, though, if publishers want to give a new cultural or ethic background to their old properties, they have pretty much only one way to go... away from the Steve Rogers archetype. Looking at the image you posted up there, it's not the diversity that strikes me... it's that these characters don't look half as interesting as the colourful roster of Marvel's early days. I'd much rather have Riri take over as Iron Man than have her wear some generic grey armour. As long as the history of the character is not wiped away (the way Richard Ryder's was when Marvel tried to cram the new Nova down our throat), I'm fine with passing the torch. The new kids should, however, be as interesting as their predecessors... otherwise, why bother? okay, as a fellow artist, you got me on the clunky-grey-armour point, lol, but i wanna be a pollyanna and hope marvel will show her 'chops' over the next 2 years in her redesigning the suits as Stark did, from clunky grey 'trashcan' to elegant scarlet/gold 'suck this, wounders of women and children!' and if marvel didn't love cancelling stuff after 12 or so issues just to get another #1 out there to bump sales, we could have some fun here. but sjw's are lazy instagramunchers and marvel's been hiring them as editors, so, sadly, there we go.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 27, 2017 7:27:56 GMT -5
You can't blame Marvel for hiring sjw from the net, they are probably paying them less than a McDonald's employee.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 7:33:19 GMT -5
You can't blame Marvel for hiring sjw from the net, they are probably paying them less than a McDonald's employee. okay, since most of us are middle-aged here, my reply: /bangs-head-against-monitor! yet i appreciate your point. though as a counterpoint, Marvel could hire politically-correct people instead of sjw's for the same lack of $$. they choose not to.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 27, 2017 7:50:57 GMT -5
My point being that , in this day and age, people are accepting subpar pay just to have employment.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 8:06:42 GMT -5
My point being that , in this day and age, people are accepting subpar pay just to have employment. oh, yes, and i agree. i'm only saying that things are worse, and will continue to decline in that respect, because the 'standards' have declined.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2017 9:30:31 GMT -5
and if marvel didn't love cancelling stuff after 12 or so issues just to get another #1 out there to bump sales, we could have some fun here. And if retailers and consumers would stop buying #1 issues is vastly higher quantities than #13 issues, Marvel would stop making them. -M
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jul 27, 2017 9:44:37 GMT -5
the so-called problems with diversity and comics has nothing to do with actual 'diversity'. when growing up, had this been the Marvel-verse, i'd have been as happy as a clam. i'd have bought more comics, encouraged people to buy more comics. the problem is that 'diversity' has been malaprop'ed into meaning 'you don't have to draw well, you don't have to write well, you just have to whore-out 24 pages to blather your tumblr screeds at readers without learning any craft at all, and the 'everyone gets a participation medal' garbage. political correctness has never harmed comics. 'you don't have to put effort into training yourself to show respect to non white, non hetero, non male, non 'standard steve rogers' garbage showing disrespect to 'non steve rogers' characters HAS. there, i said it. For me, and this actually happened. Not on this forum of course because we are a different breed. But the deal with diversity gets bad when I cannot say what a $hit job Bendis did on making Iceman homosexual in one page of one comic without being homophobic. I don't know about other people, but reading comics, playing video games, watching movies, etc are all escapism for me and I just don't take them too seriously, within the stories themselves. However in discussions where the question is posed about something, answering it shouldn't be a "bad" and "progressive" answer just because it deals with a subject that is volatile. And Bendis did do an awful job with that story. There I said it.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 9:44:37 GMT -5
and if marvel didn't love cancelling stuff after 12 or so issues just to get another #1 out there to bump sales, we could have some fun here. And if retailers and consumers would stop buying #1 issues is vastly higher quantities than #13 issues, Marvel would stop making them. -M I completely agree with you, but how can we, 'here', as readers and creators, get that de-railed train back on the track? I'm not being rhetorical; I've been trying to nut this out for over 9 years, so your answer/input would be gretly appreciated . I mean, great retailers have been stymied by this question.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 9:52:03 GMT -5
the so-called problems with diversity and comics has nothing to do with actual 'diversity'. when growing up, had this been the Marvel-verse, i'd have been as happy as a clam. i'd have bought more comics, encouraged people to buy more comics. the problem is that 'diversity' has been malaprop'ed into meaning 'you don't have to draw well, you don't have to write well, you just have to whore-out 24 pages to blather your tumblr screeds at readers without learning any craft at all, and the 'everyone gets a participation medal' garbage. political correctness has never harmed comics. 'you don't have to put effort into training yourself to show respect to non white, non hetero, non male, non 'standard steve rogers' garbage showing disrespect to 'non steve rogers' characters HAS. there, i said it. For me, and this actually happened. Not on this forum of course because we are a different breed. But the deal with diversity gets bad when I cannot say what a $hit job Bendis did on making Iceman homosexual in one page of one comic without being homophobic. I don't know about other people, but reading comics, playing video games, watching movies, etc are all escapism for me and I just don't take them too seriously, within the stories themselves. However in discussions where the question is posed about something, answering it shouldn't be a "bad" and "progressive" answer just because it deals with a subject that is volatile. And Bendis did do an awful job with that story. There I said it. I thank you very much for posting that, and not because Starlin Adam Warlock is my fave Marv Character My best friends (all comics people) in the Bay Area were Trans, 'no letter in the LGTBIQA Rainbow alphabet', or queer-male/Sapphic. And Bendis writes as if he wants to please my friends, but never hung out with them for 10 hours during an 'after Con/After Party'. Bendis feels 'book-learning' vs 'experience', and that means in turn, any artist illustrating his scripts will be forced, by proxy, to do 'less'.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2017 9:56:09 GMT -5
It's not a new trend though. If you go back to ads from Bronze Age books and look at what places like Heroes World were advertising, there has been an emphasis on #1 issues since at least the mid-70s, so it is decades of learned behavior in the customer base that needs to be undone, which I am not sure it can. The easiest way to get rid of it, I think, is to just get rid of issue numbers and go with Vol. # issues number like magazines and other periodicals do, so the emphasis is on content and not trade dress driving sales. But as long as trade dress (and that's essentially what issue numbering is) is there it will be the emphasis of the collector and completist mentality that drives so much of the monthly sales.
If an issue of Amazing Spiderman were simply labeled as the August 2017 issue, and in the inside it was noted as Vol 55 #8, and the next as the September 2017 issue and Vol. 55 #9, etc. then the trade dress would no longer be the driving force for sales bumps and content would have to be the emphasis.
-M
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 27, 2017 10:11:48 GMT -5
It's not a new trend though. If you go back to ads form Bronze Age books and look at what places like Heroes World were advertising, there has been an emphasis on #1 issues since at least the mid-70s, so it is decades of learned behavior in the customer base that needs to be undone, which I am not sure it can. The easiest way to get rid of it, I think, is to just get rid of issue numbers and go with Vol. # issues number like magazines and other periodicals do, so the emphasis is on content and not trade dress driving sales. But as long as trade dress (and that's essentially what issue numbering is) is there it will be the emphasis of the collector and completist mentality that drives so much of the monthly sales. If an issue of Amazing Spiderman were simply labeled as the August 2017 issue, and in the inside it was noted as Vol 55 #8, and the next as the September 2017 issue and Vol. 55 #9, etc. then the trade dress would no longer be the driving force for sales bumps and content would have to be the emphasis. Very true. The purpose of the numbering initially was to keep track of the issues, to make sure you hadn't missed one along the way. Now that series are rebooted all the time the numbers serve little purpose, especially when series switch titles of revert to an old numbering after a while. "September 2017" works fine, even if it doesn't have that brand new #1 coming this Fall commercial vibe.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Jul 27, 2017 11:09:00 GMT -5
just because something is not a 'new' trend does not mean it's not a BAD trend. for sales. for readership vs 'collecting'. or creativity in general.
like Felarca vs Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, or the bad bands from the Manchester Sound of England in the 1990's vs Stone Roses or Charlatans UK (Confessor knows what I mean).
Same applies to comics.
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