A few weeks ago, a speech by the Marvel character Havok in UNCANNY AVENGERS stirred up a lot of animosity for it’s seemingly downplaying of cultural/ethnic pride in favor of homogeneity. The scene, written by Rick Remender, could be taken as a Havok wanting the general public to see mutants as humans first instead of some outside species, but he refers to the word “mutant’ as “the m-word,” drawing obvious comparisons to “the n-word” as a stand-in for “nigger.”
Archive for Real Talk
Jason Aaron Is A Monster For Making Me Care About Wolverine
[Spoilers Ahead For Jason Aaron's Wolverine Run]
I grew up around Wolverine and was never a super big fan of him. My friends liked him on the X-men but it was that Sega Genesis game that made me not care for him.
I only beat the game on easy. Damn you fake Apocalypse in the Danger Room!
In a game where you got to choose between Wolverine, Gambit, Cyclops and Nightcrawler he was the weak choice. He was the guy who you had to take risks to use. He was the guy who hurt himself when he used his power. He didn’t do awesome kicks and teleport around. He didn’t get to throw cards and use a staff. Even Scott Summers had his optic blasts – but Wolverine you had to run in there. You had to risk everything and punch guys and you had to hide to heal to punch more. That game made me like Gambit and that is a pretty astounding task – though I always liked Nightcrawler the most before.
Thank you Tumblr for the wide variety of X-men gifs I have saved up again
Guiding Lite: Marvel Unlimited
House Marvel Loading Bar – The bubble’s progress means nothing!
Digital comics are still coming along and learning to adapt to the medium. The way that Mark Waid’s Thrillbent works – reducing everything to a single panel that can change is fantastic. It won’t necessarily work for everyone to start and it still doesn’t address the thousands of other comics we have being formatted digitally. After finishing a major Marvel Unlimited binge, I want to talk about what works and what doesn’t on digital comics for computers (as opposed to tablets).
Category: Real Talk /
Tags: marvel unlimited
Remender Causes Havok
So I am a heterosexual white cisgendered male. This pretty much means in the Western world I have it easy. I am free of most racist, gender and sexual biases against me. I say this because I have no direct experience with discrimination based on who I was born as and that makes me incredibly lucky. I can’t speak as someone from a group who is discriminated against but I understand what discrimination is first hand. I do listen to people though, I try and understand their experiences as much as I can. But I don’t think Rick Remender understands or tries to understand what these identities mean based on the most recent issue of Uncanny Avengers (#5).
What We Say When We Get Press Releases: About IDW
I’ve been writing for another site that I won’t name but I end up getting a lot of press releases from the companies – and most comic news sites are in similar positions. You get review copies of comics – that I can’t/wont review for Nerdcenaries due to getting them for another site – and you get a lot of PR emails and from what I recalled about working in a comic shop – you get a lot of them too if you do online ordering.
I decided to actually look through one of them and look at how the company describes – not the product that it is advertising – but itself.
To start off, I went with IDW.
My Problem With Rick Remender
It started with Rick Remender’s UNCANNY AVENGERS #3. A clone of the Red Skull is using the power of Professor X to turn humans against mutants. As the Skull turned his power onto Thor to use the Thunder God’s Aryan features to inspire his new Reich, I realized that there were two other members of the Avengers with Aryan appeal: Havok and Captain America. Then remembered the rest of the team (Wolverine, Rogue, and Scarlet Witch) wouldn’t get kicked out of a country club either.
The Uncanny Avengers were all white, a dynamic not seen in an Avengers or X-Men comic since the 70′s.
Category: Comic Creator Profiles, Real Talk /
Tags: diversity, jon hex, Punisher, Rick Remender, Secret Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Uncanny X-Force, Venom
Danger of Gray Areas: The Hawkeye Initiative and Escher Girls
I am a supporter of both The Hawkeye Initiative and Escher Girls. I believe there is a problem with poorly drawn or conceived sexy images that ultimately lack sexual awareness and empowerment for females but I believe there is ultimately an issue with both projects.
Category: Real Talk /
Tags: escher girls, hawkeye, hawkeye project, redwaw, strong female character, tumblr
Killing The Fake Geek Girl Idea
I am a 22 year old white male who enjoys reading comics. I am pretty sure almost all of you think that I am a geek just for saying I read comics (and running the site and writing comics but ignore that for now). There are some people who would see me reading the great Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors comics and say that reading those and enjoying them makes me lose my geek status, especially since I like them more than most Marvel and DC titles.
At the same time there are guys who say they love video games. Maybe half of the people would say that makes you a geek right there. The other half care about the games. If it is Madden – there goes the geek status! If it is Halo 4 – there goes the geek status.
There are girls who like to cosplay and they make or buy their costumes and wear them at conventions. There are some people who say they are doing it for attention so they aren’t real geeks. They are “fake geek girls.”
Being a geek is such a divisive topic for really stupid reasons and the people who define geeks under the criteria of what you watch, do or say are incredibly wrong because that isn’t what geeking out is about.
Cliché Comics: Or let’s play Genre ball, you already know the rules
When I reviewed the Shadow Annual a few days ago, I talked a little bit about the use of cliché in the story, and how lazy it felt. So, I’m going to expand a little bit on my thoughts on how a stereotypical story doesn’t necessarily mean a bad comic. So, in that vein, I’m going to compare the first volume (Coward) of Criminal, the Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips collaboration with the Shadow Annual by Tom Sniegoski/Dennis Calero. Obviously, spoilers for both.
Category: Real Talk /
Tags: Criminal, Dennis Calero, ed brubaker, Sean Phillips, The Shadow, Tom Sniegoski