It’s Been a Long Time…

Four years. It has been four years since my last post longer than a sentence appeared here on Thoughts on the Edge of Forever, readers. Dear heaven, the fact that any of you stayed, let alone continued to read my posts, astounds me. I am touched. Thank you!

I had better start with the most obvious item on the list: I am not dead. There wasn’t any illness or death or anything that made me stop posting here, either. Most of the problem boiled down to three things: (1) I had to juggle this blog with a new schedule that didn’t leave me a lot of room for writing as I had been before.

Reason (2), the lock downs in 2020/2021 hit me hard emotionally and caused a great change in me. Furthermore, at the same time the lock downs occurred, the franchises I loved went completely off the deep end, which is (3) a big reason why I didn’t come back to this blog. How could I entertain you and give you something to be happy about, when I was so profoundly unhappy with my fandoms? I had other things I was happy about and was able to do, but this blog was meant for me to expound upon my favorite stories and anything incidental I came upon that was worth looking into. For two years I had nothing of the kind to share, primarily because I couldn’t muster the energy to write about old things when the new things stank.

When I reviewed Avengers: Endgame (long after it came out) I was very, very restrained and polite because I thought I had time to get over my feelings about it. Without the lock downs, maybe I would have managed that feat. But the fact is that not even the parts of that movie which I thought were pretty good landed for me. The finale for the MCU hit me in the gut; I had been hoping for a Return of the Jedi style ending. Instead, I got Cap going back in time and coming to the present as an old man while his romance with Sharon Carter was ditched (Emily VanCamp was cheated). Tony died when he didn’t need to die (in the sense that it would have been better for him to live, personally, even though the story worked fine with him dying). We also had Natasha dueling with Hawkeye before throwing herself off the cliff to get the Soul Stone. That SHOULD have hit me in the “feels,” as they say. It didn’t.

Oh, and Gamora’s death in Infinity War wasn’t reversed. I know how the Infinity Gauntlet story ends in the comics – the movie didn’t even come close. It should have; The Winter Soldier was pitch perfect, Avengers: Age of Ultron blended dozens of storylines across decades well in my opinion, and Captain America: Civil War actually FIXED the mess the comics gave us.

(I have discovered that there are people who hate the movie and call it bad, but trust me, film Civil War‘s flaws – and they are minimal – are easily rubbed away. Comic book Civil War? Rewrite the whole thing, using the movie as a guide. That is the only way to read it, because the original comic book version does nothing but destroy the characters and make them villains.)

That final scene between Hawkeye and Black Widow in Endgame should have affected me, and objectively, I know it was a good scene. Johansson and Renner have reason to be proud of it, and actresses who aren’t studying Johansson’s acting in that scene are never going to reach her level of skill. But I still didn’t feel a darn thing watching that scene except anger, and…. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that all I had was anger about it. That anger is why I was late with my review for the movie and why I softballed it; you didn’t need me angry and ranting about the film, readers. It was the closing chapter in the MCU, the swan song of the actors, and the final movie Stan Lee had a cameo in. The series was over. I wanted to let it rest and let the anger, disappointment, and sadness go.

Before the lock downs I had hope that I could find some new fandom to get excited about again. Something that would help bleed off the anger and leave me something to talk about here that would be just as much fun for me and for you. Then we got shut down “for two weeks” that turned into roughly two years, and…it all came tumbling down. Franchise after franchise after franchise got destroyed, and though I knew it was coming for Marvel, I couldn’t get away from the destruction. I had to watch others talking about it over and over and over again, laughing and pointing out how stupid it was and how they knew it would end like this.

I knew it didn’t have to end like this. I knew it didn’t have to end badly at all. That it had never been stupid, that it had never been worthless, childish, or something that was going to go down in flames eventually. But I had to watch everyone else act like all of that was true.

So the anger didn’t go away. Instead, it got worse and almost turned to despair (except I’m stubborn, so…). The world shutting down and locking me up made it all harder to deal with because there was no escape hatch available. That meant I couldn’t muster the energy to post on this blog, because there is literally enough anger going around online to drown the world. You did not need me to add to the tsunami and I wasn’t going to do that to you.

By now, though, the anger’s found more constructive outlets. Yes, I could do an entire list of things I didn’t like about Endgame, as well all the parts of Infinity War that I think could have been done better, starting with having Sharon Carter on the run with Steve and the rest of Team Cap. I wanted their romance on film, darn it, especially after it had been torpedoed so often in the comics.

I also wanted the knockdown, drag out screaming match between the Scarlet Witch and Vision that I was expecting from the films, given he abandoned her in Civil War when he said he would protect her. Infinity War just jumps to them as a couple, without the healing necessary to make it work, while dropping Sharon off a cliff and letting Tony run on the Worst Idea Ever. (Running off to face an alien menace with a teen and a sorcerer who he just rescued from being slowly sliced up with glass knives? I need a rolled-up newspaper so I can apply it to some genius patoot. Because that was blatantly stupid on Tony’s part, and someone should have called him on it in Endgame, only they didn’t. He got to yell in Steve’s face about Steve leaving when Tony is the one who ran off on a harebrained scheme and no prayer. That was not what anyone needed.)

I think the post-Endgame project that hit me hardest was WandaVision. I had already lost a lot of faith in those two as a couple over the years, but I was also reluctant after a point to say so “in public” here at Thoughts. This means that I outwardly accepted Wanda and Vision’s romance for longer than I should have. Meanwhile, in my head, I kept trying to find her a different guy for years, because I knew that her relationship with Vision was not good due to where it ended in the books; I just didn’t want to do something as horrible to Wanda in the comics as what the writers there were (and are) doing to her. (I’ve tried to ignore the comics – oh, how I have tried. It hasn’t worked, and add that to the films going bad, as I predicted years ago…yes, I am angry, readers.)

WandaVision was the ultimate nail in the coffin for me, as it adapted the worst comic book arc to film that I expressly did not want to see either on the big or small screen. Then it tried to make Wanda a heroine after making her a villain. No. No, no, no!!! I hate the Disassembled and House of M arcs in the comics, as you know from reading my posts, so why on Earth would I want to see it in live action? Especially to be followed up with the idea that Wanda giving up her fantasy somehow makes her heroic after the writers had gone to all the trouble to make her actually evil in the show. At least in the comics she literally lost her mind. UGH.

Readers, you deserved better than to have me shrilling complaints about the comics, the movies, and other franchises I have discussed here with no end in sight. There was nothing for me to do at the time but watch everything collapse, and I just couldn’t write about any of my fandoms in a critical manner anymore with all of that going on. It wouldn’t have been a critique, it would have been a tirade, and you deserved better.

Besides that, the hits just kept coming; unless I went back to older material that I was increasingly aware either wouldn’t attract attention or would be destroyed as well if it got too much traction, there wasn’t anything to praise and point you toward. Again, you deserved better than that. You deserved something new, readable, entertaining, and fun. This is especially true after the heck the lock downs put us all through, but at the time, I didn’t have anything I felt I could share with you. To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, there was nowhere for me to go to escape the jailers I saw leering at me from every corner of the world.

Except for one place, that is.

Looking back at my stats for Thoughts on the Edge of Forever, I am surprised and heartened that one of the most popular posts here is a fan fic story I wrote for a friend. I truly did not see that coming – I had more or less quit writing fan fiction between 2016/2017 and 2020/2021, but I didn’t think the Transformers Christmas fic was or would ever be very popular. This despite finding escape in fan fiction myself (some of it really darn good) online during the lock downs. In hindsight, of course, if I could evade the jailers using fanfic, so could and would others. Professor Tolkien made the point that a man in prison will find something to talk about other than prison walls and prison guards, and fan fic reading was the way out for me and many others.

Naturally, that led me right back into writing my own fanfiction. I still have some pre-Infinity War fanfics lying around, along with a Star Wars short I want to finish but haven’t quite figured out how to tie up yet. Needless to say, since Marvel’s Phase 3 finale left me angry and Phase 4 (along with the comics) has been little more than a series of slaps in the face, I haven’t dabbled in any other fandoms for fanfic much. If I get the chance and/or inspiration, though, I might start branching out.

Sharing any of the present fics I have is a big step, however. I was writing them mainly for fun and to make myself happy; even though I shared the fics with a couple of friends, publishing them online for anyone to see scared me to death. But having finally checked back in to Thoughts on the Edge of Forever to find the Transformers fic is so perennially popular, and with a number of fics screaming to be published, I have to ask: Would you even want to read more fanfics by me? Or is fanfic a step too far? I can set the accessibility of posts here on Thoughts so that only you, my followers, can read the fics on my site. I could also post them somewhere else and drop a link telling you when they’re up here on Thoughts. Or would you prefer I make an effort to go back to the old pattern I had here previously?

My schedule is going to make posting erratic at best, so I won’t be here as regularly as I used to be, back in the pre-lock down years. I’ve also changed, which means my writing style has changed. Cliche though it sounds, I’m not the person I was when I posted here last time. The lock downs – in and out of fiction, because I don’t know what else you can call cutting the fans out and spiting them but a creative lock down – and events the world over have made me stretch and move past the person that I used to be.

With luck and a little work, I might be able to write a few reviews and thoughts here again, but all I have right now that is remotely readable is fanfic (at least one of those fanfics is out of season, too). You have hung on with me to this point. What do you say? Ready to follow The Mithril Guardian into the jaws of what is generally known as “fix it” fic?

Let me know in the comments what you think, you wonderful, wonderful people. Have a Happy Easter, and God bless you!

Until next time,

The Mithril Guardian

I Will Not Forget

I saw the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001.  I saw the aftermath of the strike on the Pentagon.  I saw the crater where Flight 93 fell rather than hit the White House.

I saw all these things.  I have not forgotten them.  They are a part of my memory and my life from now until the day I die.

I refuse to ever forget what happened on 9/11/01.  I refuse to forget what was done to us, and I refuse to simply let it happen again.

This is my home, now and to the day I die.  This flag is my flag, and I will love and defend it with all I have, no matter who challenges me for it.

I will never forget!

The Mithril Guardian

Dragon’s Flight

Hey, readers! A friend of mine passed this tribute video on to me a little while ago, asking if I could put it up somewhere for others to enjoy. Since today is mi compadre’s special day, it seemed like the perfect time to share the video!

Apparently the youtuber who made this tribute was thanking his/her subscribers for staying with the channel for eight years. In that way, it also serves as a sign of gratitude between me and my friend, as well as a sign of thanksgiving from this blogger to all of you. Thank you for standing by me here at Thoughts, readers. It means more than I can say.

Enjoy the song!

The Mithril Guardian

 

𝗜 𝗛𝗮𝗱 𝗔 𝗗𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗼𝗻 🐉 (𝗛𝗧𝗧𝗬𝗗 𝗧𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆)

Another Star Wars Fan Film

Whew! I apologize for the extended hiatus, readers, but it has been a wild year! Life has hit us all between the eyes since March, and this author has been no exception to that rule. I have been busy, busy, busy these last few months. Unfortunately, that left me with too little time and mental energy to write posts here at Thoughts.

Although things haven’t calmed down entirely, I think I have enough motivation to get back to some semblance of posting regularity. It’s been difficult to keep up with the calendar or even look at it on some occasions, so there have been several major holidays which have passed me by. Hopefully, those will be the last ones to do so this year. Cross your fingers and say your prayers that will be the case!

So let’s see – there are a couple of Spotlight! posts which this author must attend to before the year is up, and there is a certain film she has to review as well. That particular movie required a lot of mulling over, so this author didn’t get to it as quickly as she wished. Now that she has had (more than enough!) time to consider it, however, perhaps she can do it due diligence.

There are also some books that need reviewing here at Thoughts. They have been shaking their metaphorical fingers at the Mithril Guardian for ages, telling her to write about them already so they can go back to sleep on the shelves. I shall endeavor to accommodate them and move on to other subjects in the near future.

In the meantime, I wish to leave you with this fantastic Star Wars fan film. As stated in this post here, your hostess usually eschews fan films. But some friends have recently managed to convince her to give more than a few a viewing, which has led to some experimental prodding on her part.

Admittedly, not all of my forays into the fan film scene have been – er, fun. Some of these films are downright terrible. But more than a few are good enough to fit into the canon of one or more franchise, if the owners were willing to give them official credence. This is especially true of Star Wars fan films, some of which are so good one could wish that they had appeared in theaters.

Hoshino is one such fan film. While it has some gaps in the narrative that make it difficult to pin down in the Star Wars timeline, it feels like it could have been set in either the Old Republic or at some point in the future of Luke Skywalker’s new Jedi Order. The story is short but not terribly so, and it can be viewed in one sitting.

The first thing about Hoshino that one notices is the CGI, and for good reason. Although the filmmakers did not have a big budget, they had more than enough money to pay for some impressive computer generated effects. This is above-SyFy film grade CG, and it deserves some recognition for being done on what was probably a shoe-string budget.

The actors are also quite capable and know their material well. You can feel the titular Hoshino’s impatience with her training and desire to do more, as well as her teacher’s grief when she pushes past her limits too early. And, whatever part of the Star Wars timeline the film is set in, the undercurrents of subtle menace and fear which tie the whole story together are masterfully conveyed through music and editing.

Since they spared so few expenses making this seven minute movie, I thought it best to link to the Making of Hoshino video. The filmmakers hired an orchestra to make the soundtrack for this movie, so they were willing to go as far as they could stretch their pocketbooks on this story. And while it is not perfect, the results are more than worth it!

I hope you enjoy Hoshino, readers. There may be some more Star Wars fan films that appear at Thoughts in the future. But for now, this one will do.

May the Force be with you!

The Mithril Guardian

 

Hoshino

 

Making of Hoshino

Guarding the Guardians

“Oh, you’ll protect them. But who will protect you?!”

Pitch Black says this to the Guardians near the end of Dreamworks’ film Rise of the Guardians. I wrote an article about the movie some time ago, but these words were not the focus of it. That post had a totally different message from the one I wish to discuss today.

Rise of the Guardians focuses on the Guardians of childhood: Santa Claus (North), Tooth Fairy (Tooth), the Easter Bunny (Bunny), Sandman (Sandy), and their new addition – Jack Frost. In the scene portrayed above, Jack has convinced a handful of children that the Guardians do in fact exist. This has helped North, Bunny, and Tooth to regain a certain amount of strength, since they lost much of their power when Pitch Black (the infamous Boogeyman) persuaded children around the world that the Guardians were not real.

The belief of a few children cannot restore the Guardians to their former capacities, though. They are now too weak to fight as they must to save the children. They intend to battle Pitch anyway, but the situation looks grim for the home team.

It is at this point when Jamie, the one boy who never stopped believing in the Guardians, promises that he will protect them from the Boogeyman (Pitch Black). Jamie’s friends, inspired by his courage, shakily join forces with the Guardians as well. As the Guardians and children face the onslaught of evil, they manage to turn Pitch’s certain victory into utter defeat.

Why is this so important? Why do I make such an issue of it? How many times, readers, have you heard the “elite” and the “learned” talk down the importance of stories, of heroes and villains? If I had a dollar for every snobby crack I heard someone make about good stories and great characters, myself included, I would be one of the richest people in the U.S. (Hey, I have not always liked certain stories, readers – I am human, not perfect!)

Fictional heroes are the equivalent of the Guardians in Rise of the Guardians. They not only “guard” the imaginations and (hopefully) the innocence of childhood, they guard the imaginations of adults as well.

Heroes are, by design, examples of virtue which we are meant to follow. They show us how attractive and healthy virtues such as courage, faith, hope, love, and honor are. They inspire us to dream, to choose the right path, and not in a didactic way but in a way that touches our hearts.

Stories are vehicles for truth. This is not simply factual truths, such as how to ride a horse or to hunt for medicinal herbs in a forest. These facts can be and often are woven into fictional stories, of course, and they are certainly helpful. But most of the truths we find within stories are philosophical and, at bottom, spiritual.

Yet many of us habitually skate on top of a story. Instead of looking through the ice to see what is below, we see what we wish to see reflected back at us. And so we tend to ignore what is truly below the surface of the tale we are reading/hearing/viewing.

This brings me to Jamie’s declaration that, since the Guardians are going to protect him and the other children, he will in turn protect the Guardians he loves. While recognizing their desire and natural right to protect him and the others, he also realizes he has a duty and right to protect them when they are attacked. Theirs is a tie that is mutually beneficial; the belief and love of children everywhere not only sustains the Guardians, it protects them by giving them the strength they need to do their jobs. It makes the circuit of power complete.

Sadly, the critics panned Rise of the Guardians as they have dismissed many movies before it. On one level, we could see this as a sign that the movie they have critiqued is undesirable. On another, we could see it as a sign that a great many people have suddenly and inexplicably lost their capacity to recognize a good children’s tale when they see one.

If you are thinking this second assesment lacks believability, I concur. That is why I take the third view; at least some of the critics liked this film and admitted it, while the majority of them panned it in order to serve their agendas. What agenda might this be?

Here we come full circle again. Remember when I said that fictional heroes were meant to be the Guardians of the Imaginations of children and adults? Well, if you want to destroy those perceptions, you have to go through the Guardians. The “critics” who regularly pan good movies like Rise of the Guardians seem bent on destroying those positive images. In order to do that, they have to tear down the heroes not only in this story, but in everyday life as well, so that everyone will be as miserable as they are.

This is why we must guard the Guardians. As Dean Koontz points out in his novel Ashley Bell, fiction “can deal with the numinous,” something that “nonfiction rarely does.” Fiction deals with “[T]he human heart and spirit. The unknown. The unknowable. Storytelling can heal damaged hearts and damaged minds.” Most poignantly, he also points out that writers can be “doctor(s) of the soul.”

Of course, as Marvel and other companies’ public dereliction of duty shows, not all writers want to be doctors of souls. Mr. Koontz’s stories are filled with human monsters who perpetrate evil on their fellows, and none are worse than those who use a pen instead of a scalpel. This is what the critics who wish to destroy imagination, wonder, truth, goodness, and beauty hate about stories.

If these critics who have chosen darkness cannot be happy, then they wish no one else to be happy. Therefore whatever gives everyone else pleasure – whatever reminds them of the truth, goodness, and beauty to be found in this world and beyond – must be destroyed. This includes good stories with great Guardians of the soul.

As long as we have heroes to inspire us, we will be better able to resist the carping critics’ myriad assaults. Take away the Guardians of Storyland – whether they are Captain Kirk, Odysseus, Robin Hood, or Captain America – and we lose one of our best defenses against those who would destroy our understanding of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Some may think this harsh and cruel. While I certainly do not want to paint all critics of creative media with the same brush, I must point out that it is the fashion now for the “intellectuals” to praise trash and sniff at true art. This is not to criticize all critics. We are weak, fallen creatures, yours truly included. None of us are perfect. The fact remains, however, that there are those who want to destroy our innate love of goodness, truth, and beauty – and they usually like to use a pen or a keyboard when they go to work.

They attempt to tear down the heroes – portraying them as “villains in disguise,” if you will – with words. We have seen far too much of this these days, especially in comic book universes, where former heroic champions are being turned into masters of despair and darkness. (Yes, I am looking at you, Marvel!)

If this is what is going on, then how are we to stop it? We stop it by the simple expedient of saying, “I will protect the Guardians.” We need not use force to do this; permanent determination and a refusal to abide by or accept the proffered precepts of today’s real life Wormtogues is a very effective tactic. When they try to take our heroes from us, we must be like a bulldog holding tight to a beloved toy. We have to clamp down and not let go because these servants of Saruman will lose. As long as we hold tight, we will win.

Who, therefore, will defend these fictional defenders? Who will preserve the characters who are “there when we need them to be,” as Walt Disney said in Saving Mr. Banks? Who will see to it that the Guardians do not face Pitch Black alone? Who will say, “I will protect the protectors”?

That is up to you, readers. The Guardians’ purpose is to guard us, not to protect themselves. For, as I said previously, they get their power from us. Without our affection for and belief in the heroes of Neverland, they are but mirrors of us, pale reflections of reality. They have substance only when loved by us.

For those who think this is stuff and fluff, remember that a painting is a pale reflection of reality. Yet Dolly Madison risked her life to save the paintings in the White House, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, before the British burned it to the ground during the War of 1812. If fiction means nothing, why then did the Christian monks of the Dark and Middle Ages preserve the fiction of the Ancients and write the Legends of King Arthur?

During World War II the Nazis stole plenty of art from the countries they invaded, and destroyed art created by those they hated – Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, etc. Under the Communists, the arts were degraded and used to promote the state, while real art that had survived for centuries was used to build troughs for farm animals. If art, though nothing more than a reflection of life, is meaningless, why have so many throughout history worked so hard to preserve it – or to destroy every trace of it?

The obvious answer is that art is not meaningless. It is not the be-all, end-all. But when it reflects the true, the good, and the beautiful, it is worth preserving. It is worth creating….

It is worth Guarding.

Happy Birthday to the United States Marines!

Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

And as an added gift:

God bless you all!

Semper Fi!

The Mithril Guardian

I Remember September 11, 2001

I saw the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001.  I saw the aftermath of the strike on the Pentagon.  I saw the crater where Flight 93 fell rather than hit the White House.

I saw all these things.  I have not forgotten them.  They are a part of my memory and my life from now until the day I die.

I refuse to ever forget what happened on 9/11/01.  I refuse to forget what was done to us, and I refuse to simply let it happen again.

This is my home, now and to the day I die.  This flag is my flag, and I will love and defend it with all I have, no matter who challenges me for it.

I will never forget!

The Mithril Guardian

Do Marvel Fans Hate Women and Diversity? Not Hardly.

Hey, readers! Did you happen to hear that Marvel’s comic book sales are declining?  If you did not, then you probably missed what Marvel’s VP of Sales, Mr. David Gabriel, had to say about it.  Read on to find out just what he said:

“What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales.  We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character [sic], people were turning their nose up against.  That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked.”  (Source:  http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/787249/Marvel-comics-diversity-Ironheart-Kamala-Khan-female-Thor-Iron-Man-Avengers-Infinity-War)

This is news Marvel apparently got from the retailers selling its comics. While some retailers saw an influx of new clientele, most saw a big drop as people ignored the new comics because their favorite characters – Captain America, Iron Man, Falcon, Hulk, Thor, etc. – were being killed off and/or humiliated, which means that their audience felt depressed and/or mortified.  Marvel’s comic book sales have weakened in proportion to the steady stream of replacement, politically correct characters and stories the company has been trying to shove down our throats for the past three or four years.

I was astounded to see this statement from Mr. Gabriel. I have known for years that Marvel would lose revenue if it abused its audience by maltreating or destroying its characters.  If you have followed my blog for a while, you know this is so.  What surprised me was that a member of Marvel’s hierarchy actually admitted that sales were dropping because of the “new materiel” they were introducing.  I told ‘em this was going to happen, but did they listen to me?  ‘Course not.  And now they are shocked that people do not want to buy comics that make fools of and/or destroy their favorite characters.  Well surprise, surprise, surprise, Marvel!  How could you have missed that fastball?

I can hear some of you fainting right now. You think I am an awful person for celebrating this news, no?  That I hate women and diversity, too, n’est pas?

Well, no, I don’t. Allow me to explain what made me rejoice over Mr. Gabriel’s statement:  what made me happy about his announcement was that he has finally admitted, on behalf of the company he serves, that politically correct characters are turning fans off of the Marvel franchise.  He has finally acknowledged the obvious; that so-called “characters” like Jane Foster/Thorette, Amadeus Cho/New Hulk, Riri Williams/Ironheart, Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel, and Gwen Stacey/Spider-Girl, along with other “new,” “diverse,” and “legacy” protagonists – which are supposedly “meant to bring women and minorities to the forefront of social consciousness” – are really hurting instead of helping Marvel’s brand.

So if I like what Mr. Gabriel had to say, then why am I writing this post? I am writing this post because he and his colleagues are missing the point of why their sales are falling.  Mr. Gabriel says what they believe; that legions of Marvel’s fans hate women and diversity, and so they need to keep doing what they are doing in order to win their “deplorable” fans – you and me – over to their view of the world.  In essence, they are accusing the thousands of people who support their business of widespread bigotry, intolerance, and stupidity; completely ignoring the beam in their own eye to pluck out the mote in ours.

This is what has Marvel fans so upset. This is why they have stopped buying the new comics.  Marvel fans definitely do not hate diversity or women.  The latter is proved by the fact that Marvel already has hundreds of established female characters with existing fanbases – although you would not know that if you were new to the Marvel multi-verse or have only heard about it from the mouths of twits (most comic book film critics).  Go to my post “Offended, Insulted, and Not Shutting Up” for a roll of Marvel’s female characters and a link to a longer list where you can learn about more of them.  The fact is that these reviewers could care less that Marvel has a panoply of female characters for the simple reason that it is not part of their agenda.

As for the idea that Marvel fans hate diversity, this is a laughable argument because it is so easily invalidated. Marvel has been diverse since it was founded, something that is shown through characters like Storm, Falcon, Black Panther, Misty Knight, and Luke Cage, all of whom are black.  Separate sources have consistently claimed that either Black Panther or Falcon was the first black superhero to appear in comics, beating out DC’s Black Lighting.  I think that Storm might predate the three of them, but I am not sure.

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are Gypsies, readers.  Red Wolf, Mirage, and Thunderbird are American Indians; and Colossus and the Black Widow are Russians who have become U.S. citizens.  Then there is Nightcrawler, who is German and who barely resembles a human; Silverclaw, who is Brazilian; Sunfire, a Japanese man who follows the tradition of the samurai, and Bengal, a Vietnamese superhero who lives and works in Vietnam.

If Marvel were not diverse, readers, then these characters would never have been created by Stan Lee and the original writers. If Marvel’s fans hated diversity, none of these characters would have lasted more than one issue.  Before 2015, they were all alive in the Marvel multi-verse, which means they have, collectively, been around for nearly seventy years.  How can people who have kept these characters “alive” for so long hate diversity?  Answer:  they cannot, and therefore they do not, hate diversity.

So if Marvelites do not hate women or diversity, then why is Marvel losing revenue on its new comic books? Hmmmm…. Maybe these books are doing poorly because the fans, new and old, actually like Thor Odinson as the Prince of Thunder and not some prancing female using his hammer and claiming to be something she is manifestly not. Maybe fans truly liked Bruce Banner as The Incredible Hulk and really hate the fact that Marvel had one of his best friends kill him. Maybe fans are in fact more than a little bit upset by Marvel’s decision to make Steve Rogers a secret agent of HYDRA and a flaming NAZI. Maybe they genuinely like Tony Stark as the Invincible Armored Iron Man who can build his way out of a trap with a broken laptop and some chewing gum, instead of a fifteen year old science whizz-kid who could do her own thing instead of shoehorning herself into his act.

And maybe they do not like one of the first black superheroes – Falcon – being shoved into the role of Captain America, since it smacks of condescension and patronization.  This move by Marvel is obviously meant to appease the PC police.  And by doing this to the Falcon, Marvel’s writers are essentially stating that they think Sam Wilson – and therefore his fans – should not be satisfied that he is one of the first two black superheroes in comicdom.  They would rather destroy the Falcon to make a new, “modern” Captain America that is anything BUT an American.

So maybe the reason sales are dropping is because fans think that pushing Falcon into Steve’s suit, handing him Rogers’ shield, and leaving him to spout anti-American claptrap like a ventriloquist’s dummy actually demeans African-Americans instead of “elevating” them or making Sam “more relevant” to the times.

Yeah, I think these facts may have more to do with your declining sales than sexism or racism, Mr. Gabriel.  Too bad you and everyone else at Marvel have not realized this yet.  Or, realizing it, you have decided that you know what we want because you are the “better and the brighter” of society and YOU are never wrong.  We are just peons who cannot see the mote in our eye.  That might be true, but you are missing the enormous beam in your own eye, buster.

So much for the customer is always right, eh, readers?

The reason I am writing all of this is because the people presently helming Marvel – and their enablers/cheerleaders in the world of critics – do not want more diversity or female characters. They want an emasculated male populace and homogeneity.  They want black to be white, left to be right, and the population of the world to be nothing less than mental clones of them.  Though they are doomed to failure, this does not mean that we can simply sit on the sidelines and let them ruin the Marvel universe(s).  It means that we have to fight back against their dehumanizing push for sameness.

This leads me to another problem that Marvel is currently experiencing. An article at http://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-vp-blames-women-and-diversity-for-sales-slump-1793921500 states that another reason for the drop in Marvel’s sales is due to the increasingly schizophrenic story arcs the company has been churning out for two years. I actually think this problem goes back to at least the Disassembled and House of M story lines.  The reason I trace the problem back that far is this is when I noticed that Marvel was going off the rails. Disassembled and House of M may not have been the starting points, but they were the arcs which made me bite my lip and think, “@&*!, here we go with the death, despair, darkness, your-heroes-are-really-villains-in-disguise downward spiral.”

Just think about it, readers. After House of M the Marvel universe – which was originally upbeat, positive, and generally told decent to good stories – took a nosedive into the muck.  After House of M we were fed the atrociously immoral and disgusting “Ultimate Universe.”  Then we were handed the insipid “New Avengers” storyline and endured the advent of the largely lukewarm “Young Avengers” crew.  We were handed the demoralizing Civil War arc next.  Then we had the sickening Avengers vs. X-Men event; the asinine “Unity Squad” story line, and the Original Sin plotline which led to the putrid rewrite of the Marvel universe(s) in the Secret Wars event of 2015.

According to Beth Elderkin, the writer of the article at io9.gizmodo.com, there have been “at least 12 events and crossovers [in the past two years]. Events, in particular, have become more of a chore than a reward. There’s little build-up or anticipation because you know another one’s right around the corner. They also can completely screw over beloved characters for the sake of drama, like turning Captain America into a fascist as Sam Wilson has taken [on] his mantle.”

She says this makes it hard for new readers to focus, and I will not argue that these endless events do not help new fans to get their footing in the Marvel multi-verse – or, rather, what is left of it. But the problem she does not address is that none of these events or crossovers is positive. These stories are all negative and thus display brazenly the idea that Marvel’s management, who believe themselves the “best and the brightest” (but are truly the dumb and the dimmest), know what’s best for the rest of us. They also continue to drive the homogeneity mantra onto readers’ minds like a suffocating pillow. Not one of these events leaves a reader feeling uplifted and ready to face the world again. How do I know this?

Because that is what simply reading descriptions of these story arcs did and still does to me. And I am not alone, something which Mr. Gabriel’s admission about moribund comic book sales proves. Every last one of the story arcs I listed above may be compelling and addictive to some readers, but to most of us they reek of negativity, despair, and nihilism. How many people want to stew in an emotional/mental/spiritual refuse pile like this? If the downturn in Marvel’s comic book sales is as steep as Mr. Gabriel seems to believe it is, then I think I am safe in saying that ninety percent of normal, everyday people do not want this junk. This means that Marvel is selling to a narrow market which is shrinking day by day.

But why is Marvel having this problem at all? If the difficulty is too many dispiriting events, the company could easily fix the problem by turning the characters over to new authors, right?  Possibly, but from what Beth Elderkin says this entire problem is born of the fact that “….There’s been a steady decline in Marvel’s talent pool, because of better offers and independent retailers. One retailer mentioned at the summit that it’s especially hard to keep talented writers and artists when they can make creator-owned books at publishers like Image. Not only does it give them more flexibility to tell the stories they want, but they also keep way more of the revenue.”

Again, I will not argue with her. Though I have no idea what Marvel pays its artists and writers, I do know that the writers they are allowing free reign in their universe(s) at the moment should not be allowed anywhere near a keyboard or a pen. The “stories” that many of these writers are pumping out are evidence that they are intellectual hamsters running inside fetishified exercise wheels decorated with death’s heads.

So finding new writers for Marvel who have positive attitudes and a love of truth, beauty, and goodness is going to be a challenge. Believing that Marvel would hire these people seems to be asking for a miracle. And if Marvel currently has writers who want to tell true, good, and beautiful stories with their characters, these writers appear to be few and far between. And these people are either barely hanging on to their jobs or they have left for greener pastures.

“All right, Mithril,” some of you say, “if these are the problems, just what are we supposed to do about them? Marvel is a big company and they won’t let just anyone in. They specifically tell aspiring artists and storytellers, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ How are we going to fix a company that doesn’t want to be fixed?”

Good question. There are several options available to fans, readers. If you are like me and my friends, and you do not like the stories which Marvel is publishing, keep doing what you have been doing: avoid their new comics like the plague. This means that their sales will keep plummeting and they will, sooner or later, be forced to clean up their act in order to stay in business. Or they will finally hire people who will do this service for us. Either way, remember that money talks. If your money is not going into their pockets, then the silence will get their attention.

Another option is to become a writer yourself. If you write good stories and books and they sell well, are positively reviewed, and have the masses talking with mouths and wallets, then Marvel will probably notice you.   Then maybe – just maybe – you will get lucky and they will tap you to write for them.

If you do manage to accomplish this feat, then I would add the caveat that you do your best to keep your eye on the prize. Put your slippers under your bed, as Denzel Washington advised, so that you always have to kneel down to get them in the morning. You got where you are by telling good, true, and beautiful stories, and this is what you want to do with Marvel’s heroes. Keep that goal in mind and you should be fine.

If you are not much of a storyteller, and you are already speaking by not buying Marvel’s comics, then you can always write letters to Marvel in order to explain your displeasure with them. This is what I do; I watch Marvel’s movies, read the older comics, and critique the cartoons. Besides blogging about the characters I enjoy as much as I can, I also write letters to Marvel’s top echelons, telling them what I think of their new comics (and I don’t think much of them).

You can do this, too, readers. Marvel has five different email addresses where you can send letters, as well as a section for general feedback on their website. I have never gone that route, so I cannot tell you what to expect if you try it. However, if you write letters to Marvel, put OKAY TO PRINT alongside your email’s subject heading and send it to one or all of the following addresses: onlinesupport@marvel.com, spideyoffice@marvel.com, officex@marvel.com, mheroes@marvel.com, and/or mondomarvel@marvel.com. And do not be threatening when you write to them.  Believe me; they will notice your letters, even if they are politely phrased.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and we Marvel fans have more right to be squeaky than that posse of small-minded critics and “cultural gatekeepers” do. Unless these people actually buy Marvel’s comics in droves (which they very obviously do not), they are not the audience the company has to please. It was our money that made Marvel what it is today, not the critics’ pens. I say it is high time we reminded Marvel of this fact.

For myself, I will continue to do all of the above. I know I sound as though I am crusading against Marvel’s hierarchy, and I guess I am, after a fashion. But I am doing so as a customer who desperately wants to preserve an enjoyed and admired product, so that I can pass it on to others to enjoy in the future.

I want to be entertained by Marvel for many more years, readers. Right now, they are not entertaining me OR legions of their fans. They are trying to force their view of the world on us through these “new,” PC characters, destroying the good and great and true ones in the process. That is cultural bullying, which is a form of intellectual tyranny. It must be stopped. The only way that we can convince Marvel’s management to right the ship is to tell them why we are not buying their product. But we have to actually tell them if we are to have any hope of returning Marvel Comics to the good, the great, and the true, which is timeless.

Until next time, readers….EXCELSIOR!!!!

Thundercats – HO!!

I have been meaning to write a post about this subject for a while.  For those of you who have no idea what in the world I am talking about, no worries.  This blogger does not expect everyone to know everything about the things I enjoy, just as I hope no one expects me to know a thing about rocket science or the life span of a great white shark.  So hold on tight as I try to explain the subject of today’s post.   It might take a while.

Thundercats was a cartoon series which debuted back in the 1980s.  It focused on a species of humanoid cats.  The nobility among this race were called Thundercats, while the common folk were known as Thunderians.

I have always been a sucker for cats.  So when the series reran at odd hours during my childhood, I would scramble to watch the episodes.  To recap the general plot:  Thundera, the home of Thundercats and Thunderians alike, was a planet which somehow died.  Think Superman and Krypton; the core was unstable or something like that, and the planet went ka-blooey as a result.

A number of Thundercats and Thunderians escaped the planet’s destruction.  One such group of Thundercats included Cheetara, a character based on the cheetah; she could run 120 mph on a morning jog – and faster in combat.  There was also Tygra, based on the tiger, whose bolo whip could make him invisible to the naked eye.  He and Cheetara were hinted to be a couple.

Then there was Panthro, the strongest cat of the group; he was based on the panther.  There were the Thunderkittens, Wilykit and Wilykat, fraternal twins, sister and brother.  They were based on wildcats, but you could not be sure which kind from the look of them.

Jaga was the wise, Obi-Wan Kenobi magician/mentor in the group.  No one has any idea what kind of cat inspired his appearance.  And, last but most important, there was the young heir to the royal throne of Thundera – Lion-O, the future Lord of the Thundercats.  Yes, he was based on the lion.

Oh, yeah, and then there was Lion-O’s nanny, Snarf.  No idea what Snarf was based on; he was the only cat who walked on all fours most of the time.  The Thundercats walked like humans do, unless they had to climb or run up a steep mountain as fast as they possibly could.

Anyway, Lion-O and his escort, along with the convoy of ships following them, ended up under attack from a group called the Mutants.  The Mutants were humanoid animals, mainly resembling Lizards, Jackals, Vultures, and apes (these were known as Monkians).

The entire convoy except for Lion-O’s ship was destroyed.  The Mutants boarded their ship in the hope of recovering an ancient Thunderian weapon and the heirloom of Lion-O’s house:  the magic Sword of Omens.

Naturally enough, the Mutants were repelled.  But the ship was heavily damaged in the battle and would never make it to the Thundercats’ planned new world.  The best it could do was the third planet in a small solar system in a dinky galaxy.  (There was, apparently, intergalactic travel in the original Thundercats series.)

The trip was too long for the group to survive outside of suspension capsules.  Because he was the oldest, Jaga did not enter a suspension capsule, which could retard but not stop the aging process.  He piloted the ship to the Cats’ new home but died before the ship crash landed on Third Earth, a wild world with ancient secrets.

Lion-O was the second Thundercat to awaken from suspension, the first being Snarf.  Once he was awake, Lion-O realized he had grown to a full adult during his years of suspension.  The pod seemingly malfunctioned and did not slow his aging as much as it should have, since the Thunderkittens remained the same age as when they entered the pods – they were older than Lion-O.  He looks to be about thirty, if not slightly younger…

But his mind is all twelve year old boy.  Add a big dash of leonine pride to that, and you get the general recipe for the Thundercats series.

Third Earth at first seems hospitable enough.  But on an adventure out of camp, Lion-O runs into an ancient evil that has slept on Third Earth undisturbed for centuries:  Mumm-Ra, the ever-living mummy and self-proclaimed ruler of Third Earth.

Yes, this is kind of corny.  But there is a bonus point about this villain which I always liked.  Mumm-Ra could never stand the sight of his own reflection.  If soundly beaten in a fair fight by the Thundercats, he would retreat with dire warnings about how bad their next encounter would be.  If the Cats were hard-pressed, they would use any reflective surface that they could find to show him his own face.  The sight of how ugly he was would drive Mumm-Ra back to his black pyramid and into his sarcophagus, so he could regenerate and keep being “ever-living” – especially after the fright of seeing the evil etched into his own skeletal face.

Three new Thundercats were later added to the roster.  Lynx-O, a blind Thunderian based on the lynx, became the team’s living voice of wisdom; Ben-Gali, based on the Bengal tiger, became the team’s new weapons expert.  Lastly we had Pumyra, based on the North American puma or cougar.  She and Ben-Gali looked to be about as perfect a couple as Cheetara and Tygra.

To a child, the world of the Thundercats, even if it is odd, is wonderful.  I never needed any explanation for anything when I watched the series re-air as a small viewer.  When I was older and looked up the series, I left the incongruities of the stories alone.  What mattered to me were the characters and the morals they imparted during every episode – because in the eighties, every cartoon series had a moral in each episode.  Or very nearly every series had a moral in every show.  Such contemporaries of the Thundercats as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Transformers, for instance, had a moral to each story.

Characters in He-Man would lecture the audience directly at the end of every show, whilst Transformers let the moral lie in the story.  Thundercats followed Transformers in that regard, being only a bit preachier in the way the characters spoke to each other.  ‘Course, they were trying to teach a twelve year old future king who had grown to adulthood in his sleep how to be mature.   They had a pretty good excuse.

Even after Thundercats was canceled, there was still a fan base to appease.  I have no idea how many older children watched and enjoyed the series when it came out first, but there must have been enough.  After a while comic books were made to show the ongoing adventures of the Thundercats.

And, as the saying goes, it all went downhill from there.

I looked up the comics when I was trying to find out more about my favorite childhood series.  What I discovered in this search was utterly appalling.  Thundercats had begun life as an innocent children’s show, and I was not the only one naïve enough to have expected the comics to maintain that tone.  What I and other fans of the show found was that the innocence of the series had been ravaged and destroyed by the comic book writers.

After a few glances through the descriptions, I stopped reading, since I wanted to be able to sleep at night.  So I only know of a few things which I can say against the comics.  But it is enough.  If you are a child or have a child with you, stop reading here and/or send the child away NOW.

The writers for the comics had Cheetara captured at some point in their stories and raped by Mutants.  This was bad enough for me; Cheetara had been my favorite Thundercat growing up.  It got worse, I quickly found:  somehow, the two Thunderkittens had also been captured by Mumm-Ra in the comics.  The Ever-living Mummy then decided to use them as sex slaves – both sister and brother – for his personal amusement.

Reading this the first time, I nearly threw up on the keyboard.  Thanks to the reviewers on Amazon who had not been so fortunate, I knew that I never wanted to pick up a Thundercats comic book in my life.  But the knowledge has never really changed my opinion of these “stories” and the writers who created them.

And the thing is, these awful incidents in the comics were not only disgusting, they were illogical.  Throughout the TV series the Thundercats always made sure to keep tabs on each other.  They always came to the rescue if one of them ended up in trouble.  The idea that Cheetara could be captured, let alone raped, without the Thundercats making sure that the perpetrators suffered the consequences is more than slightly unbelievable.

This also makes the capture and corruption of the Thunderkittens impossible to consider.  The Cats made sure to take care of the Kittens; if ever they went missing, the adults would tear off after them.  That they somehow allowed the Kittens to be captured by Mumm-Ra and never tore the planet apart in at least an attempt to find them is totally out of character.

From left to right: Tygra, Wilykit, Lion-O, Wilykat, Panthro, Snarf, and Cheetara

This was one of the reasons why I became worried about the new series which aired in 2011.  The new Thundercats TV show drew a great deal from the comics.  It added species which had never been in the original series, gladiatorial combat, and made the entire storyline far less sunny and happy-go-lucky.  It also subtracted Mumm-Ra’s vulnerability to his own reflection, replacing it with the vampiric weakness to sunlight.  Previously, Mumm-Ra had never had a problem moving around in the day time.  He is, after all, an ancient mummy, not a vampire!

I did enjoy some of the additions to the new series, readers.  But always in the back of my mind was the worry of just what the writers might pull from the comics for the series.  The darker tone of the show did not ease my fears.

Pumyra 2011

The last straw came at the end of the first and only season of the new series.  This episode saw Pumyra turn on the Thundercats and join with Mumm-Ra, who apparently had taken her as his paramour in the bargain.  The fact that the writers would turn the originally sweet, innocent Pumyra into this was absolutely infuriating.  I was more than glad that the series died quietly after this episode.

Nevertheless, that does not mean that the writers are off the hook for what they did to this character – and that goes double for the comic book authors!  The original Thundercats series, the writers for the new TV show reportedly said, was “too much like a Sunday morning cartoon,” to be appealing to modern day audiences.

Well, duh!  That was the point!!!  That was what it was!!!!  No one in the 1980s had a problem with Sunday morning cartoons.  They especially did not mind if they had kids!!!!!

As for no modern audience being interested in the original series or “Sunday morning cartoons,” what are I and other fans like me – cat food?  We enjoyed the original series just fine the way it was!

And that is just the point.  These new writers did not want to reboot the series from its original foundation.  They wanted to change the premise of the story entirely.  Doubtless, the comic book authors felt the same way when they began crafting the comics for the Thundercats.

This really stuck in my craw, for one reason and one reason only:  the new writers felt the original show was too guileless – too innocent – to attract audiences today.  And I believe they are flat-out wrong in this indictment of the earlier TV series and others like it.  If you follow the in-crowd, you never try anything new.  So how will you know whether audiences today do or do not like and want “Sunday morning cartoons”?

But it is what this attitude highlights that I find most upsetting.  What is it with the urge in our “modern” age to destroy innocence?  From abortion to kindergarten programs which teach children about sex, it is horrifying to see just how far we have fallen in so short a span of time.  The world will rip apart the innocence of childhood and children as they grow up.  Why do we have to help it with comics like the ones about the Thundercats?  Why do we have to have television shows which do the same thing?

The answer is:  we do not need these things.  We really, truly, do not.  The fact that too many of us want to make them in order to be “hip,” “cool,” and to impress the people in the “right circles” is not a need.  It is following the crowd and supporting, ironically enough, the status quo which these mainstream moguls claim they want destroyed.

Marvel, DC, and most other “children’s entertainment” venues are doing this as we speak.  Even Disney is engaged in this disgusting game.  Disney has more than a few live action television shows which degrade boys and girls, making caricatures of the players in the stories and thereby the actors who portray the characters.  They are supposed to be funny, but I can tell you that I have never found even one thing comedic in the advertisements for these shows, let alone the actual episodes.

I do not know about anybody else, but I am absolutely fed up with all of this.  I am tired of the implication that I am backward, out of touch, and a rube because I like innocent pleasures and naïve kids’ shows.  As if any of the writers who have turned the art of professions meant to entertain children into lewd pap has the moral authority to tell me or anyone else that!

This has to end.  It has to stop.  Too many children have already been hurt by this.  They have grown into hurting adults who hurt their own children, either on purpose or in a search to find what they have been told is “ultimate freedom.”  These writers and others like them have sold children into slavery to ideas and misconceptions which have landed them in prison, in poverty, in disease, or in addiction.  And they have sold those children’s children into the same situations.  It has to stop!

How do we stop it?

How was Sauron defeated in The Lord of the Rings?  Aragorn’s army did not stop him.  Frodo’s quest to destroy the Ring, which betrayed itself when Gollum bit off his finger, did the trick.  This demonstrates that, eventually, every tempest of horrors imaginable will end in its own defeat.

And just like Frodo, we can help it along.  We can show our children what innocent shows like the original Thundercats look like.  We can make sure they read good books, see good movies, and hear good music.  We can keep them innocent for as long as possible by making damn sure they are exposed to as little of that other stuff as possible.  The battle started when the Enemy went after our children, readers…

It is past time we fought back the same way.

Reach for the Stars – The Dream Marvel Forgot

Bully:  “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

Steve Rogers: (Panting) “I can do this all day!”

That was one of the best lines in Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger.  I saw that movie after Marvel’s The Avengers came out, but it only confirmed what I had seen of Steve Rogers in that film.  Though I sometimes wonder about Chris Evans, I know there is no need to wonder about Cap.

I am sharing a picture with you today.  It was made for the backs of certain comics issued by Marvel several decades ago – at the time when we were still intent on travel into space.  I have no idea what the “Young Astronaut” program being hyped in the small white print was or is, and I do not really care.  The picture of Captain America standing behind two stargazing children is what I want to discuss today.

A number of years ago, I ended up with some leftover comics.  There was some housecleaning going on, and these books were on the chopping block.  I was asked if I wanted any of the comics, since I had begun perusing them curiously instead of helping with the packing and the cleaning.  I said yes after making sure the original owners did not want them back, then packed the books away for some time.  Oh, I read a few of them, but I was interested in other things when I first acquired the stories.  I felt a little silly reading the comics, too, despite the fact that I loved the characters in them (or most of them).

Also, at the time my ability to read comics was almost non-existent.  I had been raised on normal books, so it took a while before I figured out how the story in a comic book progressed from panel to panel.  In my limited defense, there were no comic book stores in my vicinity, and I usually eschewed graphic novels.  Garfield comics are not nearly as detailed or involved as Marvel’s were, either.  No one I knew at the time was a big comic book reader, so I was on my own.

Eventually, though, I decided to tackle that stack of comics to find out which ones I really could not live without and which could go.  Some of the comics were easy to ditch; they were pieces of story arcs, and I did not have the rest of the story.  Flick, there it goes.  Some of the pieces were not to my taste.  Flick, there they go!   One of them was from the Dark Phoenix Saga – I hated the cartoons based on that storyline, so I was not interested in the comics, period.  Bye-bye!

Others stayed.  They were fascinating, as much for the advertisements as for the stories.  The ads were like snapshots of time.  There are not many comics – or other media, for that matter – which advertise Daisy rifles or BB and air guns these days.  To see them displayed on the back cover of a comic in the same way as video games was refreshing.  It was like stepping into a previous, freer era I had heard about but which I had never really seen in a concrete way before.

Then I closed one of the comics and found the above picture on the back.

It took my breath away.  Literally, all the air went out of my lungs and I know my eyes nearly popped out of my head.  If advertisements for rifles and BB guns are rare today, posters encouraging space exploration have gone the way of the dinosaur in most media outlets.  Even the few we have now are not always this poetic.

You look at the picture and the first thing you see is the blue background.  It makes you sit up and pay attention.  You notice the stars peripherally as the star-gazing figure of Captain America pulls your eye toward the center of the page.  Then you see he has his left hand on the shoulder of a boy who is standing in front of him.  The boy cannot be more than twelve.  He in turn has his left hand resting on the shoulder of a girl who is probably his younger sister.  All three are gazing up at the star above the R in Reach.

If you look closely, you will notice that the boy and girl’s mouths seem to be slightly open.  The sight of the stars hanging above them is so spectacular that they have forgotten to keep their mouths closed completely.

Cap does not have this same look of slack-jawed wonder.  He is looking at the stars in a different way.  You can just imagine him telling the children that, someday, they are going to get to explore those stars.  That he wants them to go where no man has gone before, to see things and new worlds he will never get to explore.  The life of an Avenger, like the life of a soldier, means that you get to visit all sorts of wonderful and amazing places, but you barely get glimpses of them while you are there.  Cap has been to the stars…. but he has never seen them except in passing flashes.

These kids, Cap hopes, will be explorers.  They are the future, the next generation, the heroes of tomorrow.  Not heroes like him – they will be heroes for the territory they open up, the discoveries which they make, and the worlds which they find.

The boy and his sister will not be alone when they go out to do this, either.  They will have each other.  You can see that in the way the boy’s hand lies on the girl’s shoulder, assuring her that he is there for her, as her standing in front of him reminds him that he is not alone.

I think I nearly cried when I saw this picture first.  It still makes my eyes a little wet as I look at it now.  It reminds me of when I was a child, dreaming of being on the starship Enterprise.  It recalls my old dreams about the unending possibilities there would be for being a hero, like the characters I admired and loved and watched so faithfully.

I wish Marvel had more posters like this.  Not posters with just any old hero on them, readers, but posters with a hero who adds dignity and honor to the picture.  Cap does that here.  If you tried to redo this picture with Captain Marvel, or Iron Man, or Black Panther, or Star-Lord, or even my other favorite Avenger, Hawkeye, it would not work.  Because the only hero who looks at the stars in that way is Captain America/Steve Rogers; very few of the other heroes would be able to do it, and even they would fall short of the gravitas he adds to this picture.

Not that I think Marvel would not try to have them do it, mind you; I just know the attempt would fail.  I could hope for it to backfire in their faces spectacularly, but I already know that does not learn ‘em.  To paraphrase Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.”  Marvel is repeating its mistakes over and over again, while expecting a different result.

We live in a crazy world that is always on the brink of falling apart, readers.  I know that.  I just wish that there were not quite so many of us going crazy right along with it, destroying so many good things as we go.  This picture – this understanding of Captain America and Marvel Comics which the writers once had…it was a good thing.  It is too sad that their heirs and maybe even some of the original writers themselves threw it all away in an attempt to be “hip” to get in the good graces of the in-crowd.

In the interest of ending this post on a happy note, readers, please take another look at the photo before you leave.  Feel free to copy it, if you like.  But whether you do or do not, please, look at it one more time.  Look at it and remember it.  Look at it and remember the Latin word for “ever higher”:  Excelsior.  Look at it, and remember your own dreams.

Let’s try to keep reaching ever higher, readers.  Even if it is just a little bit higher than before, a little is better than nothing at all.

Excelsior.