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Over the course of the next six months, an unexpected side effect started to emerge. It first happened, according to the report, when Mr B happened to hear the Johnny Cash song Ring of Fire on the radio. “From this moment on,” the report says, “Mr B kept listening simply and solely to Johnny Cash and bought all his CDs and DVDs.”

When listening to his favourite songs, the report adds, Mr B felt like he was the hero in a movie, and although he played Johnny Cash songs almost exclusively for the following years, the music never annoyed him.

Brain implants made a Dutch man into a Johnny Cash fan. Even better, when the charge on the implants ran down, he stopped being a Johnny Cash fan.

Science, everybody.

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Eric Lewald takes pride in his ass-kicking women of X-Men: The Animated Series and the number of female writers he had on the show. “We always get crap out here when we’re doing shows, ‘This is for boys. Don’t have any girl characters,’” he says. “Margaret was probably the main reason. It was her show. Storm and Rogue’s toys didn’t sell as well. [Usually] they would tell you no matter how good Storm is in the episode, the toys will sell half as many as the male characters. But it was a time when there were no toys selling well for Marvel. We didn’t have the pressure from the toy companies.”

From here.

I wonder how this connects with the oft-cited “They didn’t make enough toys of the female characters” trope? Did the X-Men toys sell half-as-well because there were less produced overall, or was there genuinely less demand for Storm and Rogue compared with Wolverine and Cyclops in terms of toys?

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Obviously we all know that the currency of issue #1s has been devalued of late, and we also all know that when there are so many X-Men titles, most of them are going to be throwaway. Even so, it comes as a surprise to see such a blatant filler issue so early in the run of a new title.

An odd feature of the X-Men line right now is that while the two lead titles are plainly the Bendis books, neither of them actually features the X-Men. By which I mean, they both feature teams that, until a few years ago, would have been given a different name and presented as spin-off titles. The X-Men, by any sensible definition, are the team living in the Jean Grey School. Uncanny is about Scott rebuilding a new group after the collapse of his side of the schism during Avengers vs X-Men; All-New X-Men is specifically about the time-travelling teen group, making it akin to the early nineties Legionnaires spin-off from Legion of Super-Heroes.

That ought to leave the way clear for somebody else to write the actual X-Men and have some leeway to make their book feel significant. But none of the other three titles do feel significant right now, in pretty much any way, and hitting a comedy fill-in issue about a goat seven issues in really brings that home.

Paul O’Brien on Amazing X-Men #7, and the state of Marvel’s X-Men franchise currently.
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In Relief of Silence and Burden

In Relief of Silence and Burden

roxanegay:

I will not write his name. I will not speak his name. I will try not to think his name.

I saw the young man’s video, and the first thing I felt, god forgive me, was pity for this broken man child and his grotesque narcissism and his naked hatred of women, of himself.

“At a reading in Miami, a man asked something like, “Do you think all men are rapists?” I said no because I think nothing of the sort. And still, one is too many.”

The “Not All Men” thing is exhausting/frustrating/depressing/alloftheabove in large part because it is such a straw man argument than nonetheless fails to engage with itself. Of course no-one is making the argument that every single man is a rapist/killer/misogynist, because no-one truly talks in statistical absolutes like that. Nonetheless, by saying “not all men,” it suggests that there’s a threshold for it not being a problem – as if, if it’s only 10% of all men or whatever, that’s just fine. 

The “And still, one is too many” cuts to the heart of that for me. At some point on Saturday, I thought to myself that the correct response to “Not all men” was “Maybe not, but more than anyone would really want and that’s the point.” But even that feels cowardly nitpicking. The correct response is probably “Just shut up and listen.”

Anyway: Read the Roxane Gay piece linked above.

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You Know My Name

A belated thought, re: Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice (which, yes, is a very very strange title all told).

For all of Man of Steel, Superman isn’t called Superman. There’s even the “On my planet, the S means hope” scene to explain the symbol away without having to go anywhere near the word “Superman.” Maybe I’m misremembering, but I could’ve sworn there were thinkpieces about this, convinced that it meant that Warner Bros was afraid of the name “Superman,” as if it were too ridiculous for the self-important tone of the movie.

For the sequel, the character is not only called Superman, but the name is right there in the title – as is “Batman,” making its first appearance in a movie title since… what, 2005’s Batman Begins? That’ll be more than a decade since the character has been named in a movie title by the time BVS hits screens. It’s as if Warners has decided not only to embrace the source material, but – judging by the Dawn of Justice subtitle – overly embrace it. I look forward to future thinkpieces.

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I would love to, but … It’s a mixture of being too lazy and also having been spoilt by writing lyrics. In songs, you can write something that’s only a page long and yet it’s the whole song. I’m reading the new Dave Eggers book [The Circle] at the moment, which is about 490 pages long. The idea of sustaining something over that length, well, I’m in awe of people who can do it. I’m more like a short-sharp-bursts kind of person.

Jarvis Cocker sums up my attitude towards writing a book. Just replacing “writing lyrics” with “blog posts.”
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Yes, All Men

Yes, All Men

chrisroberson:

I’ve mostly kept my mouth shut in this latest round of calls decrying misogyny after the tragedy in Santa Barbara on Friday night, but a variety of reasons. Chief among those reasons is the fact that I am a straight white middle class dude who is the absolute embodiment of “privilege” in American…

Entirely right, especially that last paragraph.