Your Personal Grudge Against Rick Remender Is Hurting Your Causes

Screen shot 2014-07-09 at 10.58.15 PM
from Captain America #22, art by Carlos Pacheco

I was behind on comics from last week, I’ve been busy, and work has generally kept me away from the internet so when I finally got around to examining the #FireRickRemender story I got frustrated.

Rick Remender’s Captain America run introduced Jet Black, a Big Barda pastiche who is the daughter of Armin Zola. She was raised to be evil in Zola’s Dimension Z, she fought Cap there and eventually she got to our world and started working with Captain America and Co. Honestly, I missed the third volume of stories since Remender’s Cap isn’t my favorite run and I’d rather read stuff I want to but this controversy got big so I sat down and read the issue.

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Remender and the Uncanny X-force Run

One person for an entire series spanning from the start to the end of the series is a run right? Maybe between series like Aaron’s Wolverine arc. An artist run is what I want to talk about because I’ve been finishing and starting them and I’ve been wondering what a run is in comics, how writers (and artists) approach them and just how much of this is praying over and over that you get the time you need to tell the story. Remender got a chance with Uncanny X-force.

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A Conversation with Rick Remender

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.”

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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).

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My Problem With Rick Remender

Uncanny_Avengers_Vol_1_3

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.

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Graceland 11/21/12

This week, Ziah gives out awards to each comic totally unlike that other place that won awards and is super great. Anyway, Ziah did this because there were a lot of great things out this week, and he didn’t want to only give a best award. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Except turkeys. I guess it’s kind of an unfortunate holiday.

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