Rodanof42

So an odd confluence of events lead to me drunk tweeting while watching 1995’s classically terrible Mortal Kombat at about four in the morning this weekend (don’t ask). It was mostly uneventful, a few good jokes, mostly banal observations, as those things tend to be. However, it operated as a particularly potent time travel device [...]

Yeah, so:

Today was pretty weird.

At about 2pm this afternoon, I was in the middle of explaining Kafka’s Metamorphosis to a tenth grader of my acquaintance, when suddenly my phone started BLOWING THE FUCK UP. I took a second to look at my phone and saw that I was getting Twitter alert after Twitter alert in response to a tweet by Noelle Stevenson.

I check out her tweet and it’s a screencap of a blog comment calling her a feminazi (sidenote: hey, dudes, if you use the word “feminazi,” literally all you are doing is telling me two things: 1) you don’t know anything about feminists and b) you don’t know anything about Nazis), but also embedded in that comment is an oblique reference to me being really mad about how ladies used and abused my comic book knowledge?

Look, trying to understand this comment with zero context while at the same time answering questions about how Gregor Samsa’s physical condition reflect what was happening to him spiritually was not super easy. (Another sidenote: look, I’m not trying to grammarshame someone or whatever the fuck, but this comment would have been WAY easier to understand if this dude had had less ideas about how women should act and more ideas about where periods should go.)

Anyway, I finally got home about half an hour ago, and I’ve finally read the blog post on which the comment was made, and at last I understand that my name wasn’t pulled out of obscurity at random as an “internet person”; rather, I was mentioned in the post specifically because of my "Batman for the Uninitiated" post.

And so now I know the comment meant this: I would be mad that a woman used my advice on how to get into comics and then complained that it’s hard to get into comics.

If there is any ambiguity on the matter, allow me to clarify:

I do not in any way agree with that shitlord’s opinion.

The VERY REASON I wrote a “Batman for the Uninitiated” post (and a Superman one &c.) is because there are numerous barriers to entry in comics, not only within the continuity itself, but literally in the physical act of walking into a comic store and buying a book, especially if you are a woman. I feel like that is clear in the subtext—if not the text—of the post itself; there’s a reason I try to warn about books that feature sexual violence and talk about the ready availability of digital comics.

I WANT women reading comics. I WANT women making comics. I WANT women starring in comics. If you don’t, you’re a piece of shit, and I’m not sorry for saying that.

(Sidenote: so what if she got into Batman via the Christopher Nolan movies? There are, what—optimistically—500k regular comics readers? The Christopher Nolan movies made LITERAL BILLIONS of dollars. Statistically, they are going to be someone’s introduction to Batman. That’s mathematics, fake nerd.)

If I may borrow from Chris Sims, whose name also got invoked in this discussion: “keep my name out of your mouth, son.”

Don’t make me the arbiter of who’s a fake geek.

Changed my mind. DO make me the arbiter of who’s a real geek and who’s fake.

All right, all you adult women who are just getting into comics and like to cosplay, line up on the left. All you dudes who think these ladies should have to pass some kind of superhero LSAT to wear a cute Batman outfit, line up on the right. Now, everyone who’s a real geek, step forward.

Not so fast, guys on the right.

If you have, as this guy claims, “dedicated a lot of time and money and actual effort to study and dedicate [your]selves to comic books,” and the lesson you took away from a lifetime of Superman, Batman and Spider-Man comics is that it is a cool idea to make someone feel like shit, you don’t know ANYTHING about comic books.

midwest-monster:

broadway antique market

i bought this telegram, because it’s probably the best thing i’ve ever seen.  i’m framing it.  it cost $1.

"In 1987, Akira Hokuto won the AJW’s top tag team belt, the WWWA World Tag Team Championship paired with Yumiko Hotta. Twelve days later, however, the two lost the titles to the Red Typhoons (Kazue Nagahori and Yumi Ogura) in a two out of three falls match. During the finish of the second fall, Hokuto took a tombstone piledriver off the top rope and broke her neck. She wrestled the entirety of the third fall holding her head in place with her hands. This gained Hokuto a reputation for toughness.”

tedx:

Does money make you mean? In a talk at TEDxMarin, social psychologist Paul Piff shares his research into how people behave when they feel wealthy. (Hint: badly.)

To learn more, watch the whole talk here»

I have a theory about this, which is completely unsupported by data and might be totally wrong.

I think people like to believe that their choices matter. We don’t like to consider the role that luck and circumstance plays in human life, because it makes us feel powerless and ultimately like maybe we should not even bother to get out of bed in the morning. So we find ways to imagine that we can make our own destinies and that we are in control of our own lives.

To an extent, of course, we are. Our choices do matter. But so do chance and privilege.

But I think most people want a narrative of their lives that is about something other than dumb luck. So if you become powerful or wealthy, you start to think, "This happened because I worked hard," because you did work hard. You think, "This happened because I didn’t give up," because you didn’t give up.

But THEN there is this nagging feeling that haunts you, because you know that other people also work hard and that other people also don’t give up, and that they have not experienced the same success you have.

In short, deep down you know that the game of Monopoly, through chance or through systemic injustice, has been rigged in your favor. And that makes you feel like everything is random and meaningless and you are unworthy of your good fortune, and I think many people respond to that feeling defensively: They want you to know that they made a really amazing decision to buy Park Avenue, a bold and dangerous decision. And yes, they started the game with more money, but lots of people start the game with more money and DON’T make the bold and brilliant decision to buy Park Avenue.

And in the end, this desire to build a narrative of your success that gives you agency within your own life leads to a less compassionate life. It also often I think leads to echo chambers: Because any challenge to your “I earned it” worldview is a direct attack on your feeling that you are in control of your life, you have to surround yourself with people whose own life experiences do not contradict that worldview. This is the only reason I can think of that wealthy people are literally more likely to take candy from children.

The challenge—and this is a challenge for all of us—is to internalize the roles luck and systemic injustice play in our lives while still continuing to try to be good and useful creatures. 

The title of this piece refers to ‘years ago,’ but the subject came up again just this last week. In fact, around the internet and on comics news sites especially, it’s getting to be a monthly thing and has been for decades. And it’s all coming from a piece of conventional wisdom that is as [...]

From the It's About Darn Time Department: In the midst of a renewed push that includes licensed toys and comics, Warner Brothers has confirmed that Batman, the 1966 television show starring Adam West and Burt Ward, will be released on home video some time this year. To say that this is pretty welcome news around here at ComicsAlliance is understating things quite a bit, since some of us have been waiting decades for a complete series set of Batman.

It's not entirely surprising news, though. With the licensing we've seen from the show over the past year, it felt like it was only a matter of time before everything was sorted out between Fox (the producers of the TV show) and WB (who own DC Comics and, therefore, Batman) to get the actual show back in the hands of fans. What is pretty surprising, however, is that the news was broken by Conan O'Brien on Twitter. Really.

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Q: What is Stan Lee's actual legacy? -- @TheMikeLawrence

A: I don't think there could be a more complicated subject to tackle in a single column than this one, because as an industry and as an art form, I think we all have a lot of complicated feelings about Stan Lee. Depending on who you ask, when you ask them and what he's been up to lately, he's a conniving credit-stealer, a shameless self-promotion machine, a "driven little man who dreams of having it all!!!" and got it by coasting on the hard work of others, or he's a charismatic innovator who got put into that spotlight because he's a natural showman, a smiling ambassador of the medium and everybody's friendly comics grandpa. And it's further complicated because you can't really talk about him without talking about collaborators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, either.

That's what makes him hard to talk about, even if you've spent nearly your entire life being aware of him. There's just so much to get through that's filtered through so many angles, and as a result, I genuinely think that he's simultaneously the most overrated and underrated creator of all time.

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kimyadawson:

I just finished watching Bully and decided to post this rough version of an unreleased song. Being a human is hard. Hang in there. I love you.

Kimya played this song at one of the rehearsals for the Carnegie Hall show, and it just tore up everything inside of me. Beautiful and haunting and unforgettable.

aquaeverything:

itmeansnoworriez:

TOKIO makes out with furniture..

TOKIO tries to find different realistic-looking objects, that are actually made of chocolate in a room

Japan remains decades ahead of the United States in the nonscripted television department.

A new year. A new start. A new chance to make a change. Long-time readers of this site may know that we at ComicsAlliance are proud cheerleaders for a more representative industry. We like political correctness. We like feminism. We like diversity. We want the industry at large -- and the superhero publishers in particular -- to embrace these things.

To that end, we have a few suggestions for how superhero publishers might change in 2014. Some of you may look at this list and say it's too ambitious, or that we're asking for too much. We say this list is a good start. These are our ten resolutions for the industry.

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Q: Do you think that, for all their superficial campiness, the Adam West Bat-villains are actually the least likely to reform or even feel bad about the crimes they've committed? -- lego-joker

A: I'll be honest with you, folks: I got this question on Tumblr a few days ago, and while I wrote a (relatively) brief answer over there, it's something I've been thinking about ever since. Fortunately, it's my column, which means that the only rule is that there are no rules. And, you know, the weekly deadline. That is a pretty serious rule if I intend to stay employed.

Point is, there's a very simple answer to this question, which is that it's absolutely right. The arch-criminals of Batman '66 will never, ever reform, mostly due to the fact that nothing is ever meant to change on that show. There's a status quo that has to be maintained, one that's even more strict than the one in the comics. But at the same time, that lack of momentum says a lot about how those characters and the world in which they live are constructed.

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2014 promises to bring a flood of amazing work from a raft of talented cover artists, writers, web cartoonists, interior artists and mangaka. ComicsAlliance has looked at the new projects on the horizon and made a pick of 14 comic creators who we think will make an impact in 2014. Our hope is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that there are 140 amazing creators on the cusp of creating something great in 2014 -- but these are our picks of the creators to keep an eye on.

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Following domestic hardcover releases of Alejandro Jodorowsky and the late Moebius' acclaimed 1981 series The Incal and its prelude, Before The Incal illustrated by Zoran Janjetov, Humanoids will complete the trilogy/tetralogy/quadrilogy (we'll explain, we promise) for fans in the US. Coming later in 2014 are the first-ever US releases of The Incal sequels After the Incal and Final Incal.

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Yes. My actual favorite moment in Batman ‘66 — aside from the Joker declaring his goal to become king of the surf and all the surfers — is in an episode with Catwoman where Batman implores her to turn her life around so that they can be together. I think it’s in “Catwoman Goes To College,” an absolute favorite of mine. The show was pretty up front about the idea of an attraction between the two characters (probably because I don’t know anyone who isn’t attracted to Julie Newmar, regardless of sexual orientation) and they played up to it. Even though they never really got out of the “campiness,” it was played straight, as this temptation for both characters, if one of them could just give up what makes them them, they could actually be happy together.

Batman asks what they’d do about Robin if they were together, and Catwoman stops for a second, thinks, and goes “Oh. We’ll kill him.”

It’s so matter-of-fact and bluntly stated, and Newmar plays it as the most logical solution to the problem. The way she delivers it, it’s that she can’t even comprehend why there would be a problem with ostensibly killing Batman’s son. She wants to be with him, he wants to be with her, they don’t want some kid hanging around ruining their romance, and murder gets him out of the way. She’s not even malicious about it, it’s just a simple necessity.

West, who doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the acting he did on that show, just sags when she says it. It’s the moment where he realizes it can never work. She’s a criminal, he’s a crime-fighter. She can no more stop breaking the law than he can stop upholding it — it’s in the fabric of who they are. They’re doomed in that way, stuck with these immutable personalities.

Related: I think this is why they could get away with only mentioning the Wayne murders once in the entire three-year run. They made Batman such a square because he’s the embodiment of upholding the law — he’s such a cop that the cops call him when there’s trouble. He can’t get out of that, and the villains can never get out of being villains. It’s fatalistic, but in a morality-play sort of way that I think often gets lost in the perceived hokiness of it. 

PS: This should’ve been an Ask Chris. I coulda gotten like eight thousand more words out of it!

Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Rulin’s from January 1st, 1943. Still relevant.

1.    Work More And Better

2.    Work By A Schedule

3.    Wash Teeth If Any

4.    Shave

5.    Take Bath

6.    Eat Good — Fruit — Vegetables — Milk

7.    Drink Very Scant If Any

8.    Write A Song A Day

9.    Wear Clean Clothes 

10.  Shine Shoes

11.  Change Socks

12   Change Bed Clothes Often

13.  Read Lots Good Books

14.  Listen To Radio A Lot

15.  Learn People Better

16.  Keep Rancho Clean

17.  Don’t Get Lonesome

18.  Stay Glad

19.  Keep Hoping Machine Running

20.  Dream Good

21.  Bank All Extra Money

22.  Save Dough

23.  Have Company But Don’t Waste Time

24.  Send Mary And Kids Money

25.  Play And Sing Good

26.  Dance Better

27.  Help Win War — Beat Fascism

28.  Love Mama

29.  Love Papa

30.  Love Pete

31.  Love Everybody

32.  Make Up Your Mind

33.  Wake Up And Fight

Mom will break a heart.  Then business as usual.

While the 50th anniversary of the X-Men has received significant attention, another 50th anniversary for a similar team has gone largely unnoticed. Created in 1963 by Arnold Drake, Bruno Premiani, Murray Boltinoff and Bob Haney (though Haney's role is disputed), the Doom Patrol were the oddball, outcast hero team for DC Comics, in some ways the equivalent of Marvel's X-Men -- though the Doom Patrol actually debuted first. And while Marvel's premiere mutants have become a pop culture phenomenon, and have about 37 different monthly series right now, the Doom Patrol have never quite experienced the same success. There have been memorable runs on the title, most notably by writers Grant Morrison and Rachel Pollack, but for the most part the team is largely left unused, and spent their 50th birthday without so much as their own monthly title.

But it wasn't for lack of effort from Travel Foreman and Jeff Lemire. The two creators, whose work on Animal Man ranks among the most praised collaborations of DC's New 52 initiative, pitched a Doom Patrol series shortly after Foreman's run on Animal Man concluded. Alas, it was rejected, but Foreman has revealed art from the pitch, a series he is very much still interested in doing but says isn't likely to happen.

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It’s called Namco High and it’s a browser based dating sim game, developed for Shifty Look by What Pumpkin Studios and Date Nighto LLC under the creative direction of Homestuck’s Andrew Hussie.

You play the cousin of the prince from Katamari (the cousin’s gender is not named) and then you can date various Namco Bandai video game characters. Free characters include Galaga (from Galaga), Lolo (from Klonoa), Valkyrie (from Legend of the Valkyrie), Anti-Bravoman (from Bravoman), Meowkie (from Mappy) and Albatross (from Rolling Thunder); for some extra moolah you can flirt awkwardly with Taira (from Genpei Tomaden), Blue Max (from Sky Kid), Akiho Matsuo (from Wonder Momo), Nidia (from Dragon Spirit), Tomari (from Ordyne), Donko (from Taiko Drum Master), Hiromi (from Burning Force), Mr. Driller (from Mr. Driller), Richard Miller (from Time Crisis), and the three Homestuck character exchange students: Terezi Pyrope, Jane Crocker and Davesprite. Dating packs run about $4.95 or you can get everyone from $14.95.

I have to admit I’m old and I don’t know what I even just typed, except that you can play a high school dating game where Homestuck characters meet Galaga.
 
There’s more information from the developers in this interview, but there’s also this quote from Hussie:

I think I know what the people want, I said. What they WANT, is to be able to manipulate their favorite classic video game characters into a variety of lurid but safe-for-work romantic encounters. What they WANT, for instance, is to cajole a cute Katamari into some sort of kissing situation with the spaceship from Galaga.

For those still scratching their heads, Hussie is the creator of Homestuck, aka MSPaint Adventures, a massive online webcomic/game that has an army of teenaged acolytes. As far as I can tell, this is his first big venture outside Homestuck so…I’ll be curious to see how it works out, if I can figure out what’s happening.

If you missed it yesterday, Shia LaBeouf, star of Disturbia and author of comics including one called Cyclical that involves motorcycles because of symbolism, adapted a Daniel Clowes comic, "Justin M. Damiano," into a short film and showed it at film festivals. Problem is, Clowes and his publisher, Fantagraphics didn't know about it, weren't credited, and weren't paid.

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In late October, a bit of controversy arose when silver age DC Comics artist Al Plastino discovered that his original art from the commemorative edition of Superman’s Mission For President Kennedy — printed soon after the president’s assassination — which he believed had been donated to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, was up for auction. A shocked and upset Plastino spent his final weeks campaigning for the return of the artwork, until the Supergirl and Legion of Superheroes co-creator passed away last month.

Fortunately, DC Comics has fulfilled one of Plastino's final wishes, as the publisher announced it has acquired the pages, and will donate them to the museum, as per the late artist's request.

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The Dark Knight Rises star Joseph Gordon-Levitt is jumping from the DC movieverse to a more Vertigo live action landscape. Deadline reports that the 32-year-old actor and director is "finalizing a deal" to team with Dark Knight trilogy co-writer David S. Goyer to co-produce a Sandman film at Warner Bros., based on the 75-issue comic book series and its spinoffs written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by artists including Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Michael Zulli and Dave McKean. What's more, Gordon-Levitt has confirmed on Twitter that he'll star as Sandman protagonist, Dream, the immortal physical manifestation of dreaming who works to reestablish his role in reality after escaping a 70-year imprisonment at the hands of human occultists.

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The last twelve months offered comic book readers a wide variety of work ranging from the most crowd-pleasing superhero epics to the most idiosyncratic of indies, and the return of old favorites to the emergence of exciting new talent. It was a busy and productive year for the industry, and one we’re pleased to celebrate with what we’re certain will be an uncontroversial, unenumerated list of awards that will prompt only resounding agreement and unbroken fellowship amongst our readers in the comments below. Welcome to part five of ComicsAlliance’s Best Comic Books of 2013.

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This week, Marvel posted a few preview pages from its newly "remastered" first issue of Miracleman. Before the images were even officially released Wednesday, fans had gotten a hold of the new images and posted comparisons to the original black-and-white versions from the magazine Warrior, Eclipse Comics' original issues, and recolored versions from the original Eclipse collected edition.

It seems like any time the major publishers issue a high-profile reprint of a comic that's more than 25 years old, they consider it a necessity to recolor them. Maybe it is. Maybe old-fashioned colors are a turn-off to readers who are used to modern techniques. But I do wonder how much changing the colors changes the actual comic.

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Hollywood can't get enough of superhero universes right now.

Marvel's got its Avengers movie universe at Disney. The X-Men and the Fantastic Four are going to have one at 20th Century Fox very soon. DC is in the midst of building one at Warner Bros. And now, Sony is going to build one around Spider-Man, with movies focused on bad guys. Namely, Venom and the Sinister Six.

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feminist-space:

hotrodngold:

houndingsherlock:

so this guy right here is one class-a asshole

he stated, as above, that he had created this artwork

after he gained 100s of RTs and favs, it appeared on my timeline and i recognised it as the work of Vince Low, who created a series of pieces in this style, paying homage to celebrities, mainly actors, with dyslexia

I read through the replies to his tweet, including “wow”s and “i’m so jealous of your art skill”s, and only spotted one other person who realised this was in fact not this guy’s art, though he completely dismissed this person’s comment saying “that guy stole my picture”……

so, me already being sick of this art theft shit, as i see it every day on the web, piped up

and you can read above (excuse the bad quality) that he completely dismissed me, saying i was “jealous”

ha

what angers me most is that he’s getting praise from 100s of people, and they will keep praising him because they won’t see the tweets where me and the one other person pull him up on it

ALSO, I GAVE THE FUCKER PROOF THAT IT WAS NOT HIS WORK. DOWNRIGHT, PROOF FROM AN ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE THAT THE WORK WAS BY VINCE LOW, AND THE LITTLE DICKHOLE STILL DENIED IT

some may say i’m overreacting, and that i shouldn’t use such foul language, but i am completely sick of this bullshit. i’ve had this happen to me in the past, and it made me less inclined to create art to share on this site.

when you create something you’re proud of, that you put a lot of work into, and someone credits it as their own and people believe them and continue to praise them, even after they’ve been shown proof that they’re lying.. it is one of the most crushing things to ever experience, i know.

so if you experience something like this, it may not make a difference, but you need to at least try to expose the assholes and voice the truth

and please signal boost!!!

we need to try and stop this bullshit, because it is a serious issue.

it gets less better.

Holy shit the original artist called them out and they still swore up and down that it’s theirs. Wtf.