First, maybe the head of the police union would like me to stop pointing altogether for the safety of the community. If that were truly his concern, that my pointing constitutes gang activity, then his outrage would have been sparked long, long ago. Because as the internet has documented in great detail, I point. I point a lot. Lots of people point. The President. Bill Clinton. Stephen Colbert. Babies. It is the earliest form of human communication.* I’m not going to stop pointing.
That option doesn’t make sense.
One skeptic is Christopher Priest, a former Marvel staffer who in the 1980s became the publisher’s first black editor (under his former name, Jim Owsley) and has written a “Falcon” miniseries and “Captain America and the Falcon” series.
“It feels like a stunt,” he told Hero Complex in an email interview. “It would have felt like a stunt had I done it.” He added that Wilson, as he understands him, wouldn’t become Captain America – and that for the story to work it needs to feel different from Rhodes’ stints as Iron Man.
“Putting the black sidekick in the suit, when everyone knows sooner or later you’re going to switch things back to normal, comes off as patently offensive,” Priest said.
Adding that he’d be “delighted” to be wrong about the Cap change being a stunt, Priest laid out what his former employer is facing: “Marvel’s challenge is to deliver something so affirming and positive that the work overcomes that cynicism. I assure you, Black America will be watching: Does this have real depth, or is it just surfacey costume-switching?”
And he had some other advice for Marvel: “Hire some actual black people.”
The same story also credits Marvel with “mainstream comics’ first same-sex wedding in ‘Astonishing X-Men,’” which might come as a surprise to both Archie Comics and DC.
“Ebonics” may no longer be a socially acceptable punchline for a joke but the Time word-banishment polls reveal that little has changed in terms of white culture’s underlying attitude toward vernacular used by people of color, namely that it is only acceptable so long as it is entertaining.
Things that are great
- the new Ms. Marvel comic
- how awesome the new Ms. Marvel comic is
- how well the Ms. Marvel comic is doing
- like seriously it’s on its seventh printing
- s e v e n t h
- AND it’s the #2 best-selling graphic novel TPB
- AT THE SAME TIME
- and you know…
Go read.
Do you ever get writers block? It hardly seems like an option in the comic writing biz.
many professional writers will tell you that Writer’s block is a myth.
if you are having trouble creatively it is a symptom of something being wrong with the story you are trying to tell or a symptom of another problem in your life that has nothing to do with your craft.
you need to step back and take a look at what you’re doing, why you are doing it, and ask yourself what the problem really is. I have found that many problems for creative people can be solved by getting to work. this is what I do.
try writing into it, painting into it, drawing into it. if you’re struggling you should write about it. get it out of you. also what you’re writing will probably be helpful or inspirational to other people in similar situations because it’s honest and true… If you are doing it right.
and some people are just really lazy and I don’t have anything to help them. they make me of my friends look good 🙂
The best cure for writer’s block is deadlines.
Which Word Should Be Banned in 2015? Vote Now!
Which Word Should Be Banned in 2015? Vote Now!
If you hear that word one more time, you will definitely cringe. You may exhale pointedly. And you might even seek out the nearest the…So, Time was stupid enough to put “feminist” on its list of candidates for this annual poll. And now, in a move that ought shock exactly nobody, 4chan is spamming the vote. Which will work, because even if a counter-campaign forms, there’s no obvious vote for them to rally around. (I mean, “bossy” is the right one, but it’s not going to happen, at least, not in numbers to stop 4chan spamming.
Which, frankly, wonderful. Because I guarantee you that there is exactly nobody at Time who is relishing publishing that article. Katy Steinmetz, the writer who does this poll, is currently thinking, “oh shit, I was sure one of the dumb pieces of slang that win every year was going to take it and I could see out 2014 writing a fluff piece about the word ‘bae,’ and now I’m going to have to write about why people want to ban feminism.” Her editors are thinking “holy fuck, we’re going to get absolutely lambasted for this.” The question of whether to abort the poll or remove “feminist” from the list and ignore all its votes has, I am certain, already been asked.
So I’m voting to ban “feminist,” and encourage everybody to do the same. Because I want to see Time try to wriggle out of their own fucking idiocy in thinking it was remotely a good idea for a major media organization to run an online poll about whether to ban the word “feminist,” as if we haven’t known what happens with online polls since Hank the Angry Dwarf was voted the most beautiful person of 1998. I want to see them try to figure out how to write an article that explains how a bunch of misogynistic terrorists want to ban the word “feminist.”
It’s rare to see this pristine a complete fuckup.