Why I Hate Halloween – Or, My Hallowe’en Candy Came Early

Normally, I would wait to review the Avengers Assemble episode “Why I Hate Halloween” until more of season four had aired. But given how good an episode it was, and how often I rant and rave against Marvel’s PC posturing, I figure they deserve to know when I think they have done something right.

And I have to tell you, readers, they did “Why I Hate Halloween” just right!!! 😀

For one thing, this episode was entirely lacking in PC appeasement. For another, neither Captain nor Miss Marvel was present. When I saw the title for this show listed on Wikipedia, I thought for sure I would have to sit through another episode featuring Khan and Danvers trotting across the screen, belting out the lyrics to “I am Woman, hear me roar!” for half an hour. I was not looking forward to this episode.

When it started, though, I realized my old friends were back on screen. And it was Hawkeye, one of my top two favorite Avengers, rattling off the introductory details through a series of hilarious zingers.

On top of this, Hulk was smashing down doors and HYDRA goons; Cap was slinging his shield while Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, and Falcon attacked the bad guys as well. I began to smile, feeling my tense anticipation of a lecture dissolve as I did. Far from finding an episode I would hate, a treasure had been dropped in my lap. So I did not look said gift horse in the mouth but accepted the original Avengers’ reappearance with happy eagerness.

I have to tell you, readers, this show delivered. Bonus points, it is almost entirely centered on Hawkeye, who is tasked with protecting HYDRA scientist Whitney Frost (a.k.a. Madame Masque) from King Dracula and his vampire hordes.

According to Assemble, this is not the first time Drac has had issues with HYDRA. Back in World War II, he formed an alliance with Cap and the West to protect his home turf, Transylvania, from a HYDRA invasion. And no, Cap was not exactly happy to be working side-by-side with the vampire-in-chief. But at the time HYDRA was a bigger threat, so he did his duty and protected Transylvania, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the leader of vampires everywhere while he did it.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” only goes so far, though. In the present day Cap and Drac are far from allies or friends.

And on this particular day – Halloween – things really are not going the Avengers’ way. Having just mopped up Frost’s HYDRA base, they find the genius scientist has been trying to augment HYDRA soldiers using vampire DNA.

Yeah, I know. This is a stupendously brilliant idea. Use vampire DNA to make an army of keen-sighted, super strong, super fast soldiers. On paper, it sounds great and nothing could possibly go wrong with it.

But anyone with a lick of sense knows better than to tick off one vampire, let alone the vampire king. This brainless HYDRA woman has just bought herself a mess of trouble, which she does not realize until vamps start popping up in the HYDRA base to get her. Dead vampires are a whole lot less scary than the ones that can jump on you and turn you into a vamp, readers. Just ask Harry Dresden.

Well, the Avengers being the heroes they are, they defend Frost from this first wave of attacking monsters. But they cannot keep her among them and prevent the vampires from getting to her, or her from running away when their backs are turned. So Cap orders Hawkeye to take Frost to one of the team’s hidden bunkers called “the Beach House.”

What is Hawkeye’s immediate reaction? “What?! No way! C’mon, you know I hate the Beach House!”

I nearly laughed out loud. As it is, I was smiling so hard I’m lucky my face did not crack.

Despite his protest, Hawkeye does as he is told. Using a HYDRA sky cycle, he takes Frost to the Beach House, which is actually in the mountains in Vermont. He sets up the defenses for the place and brings Frost inside to wait out the night.

But things get complicated when HYDRA tries to spring his charge from house arrest. They send Crossbones and Crimson Widow (Yelena Belova) to evac Frost, but the two only succeed in getting caught inside the house when Drac and an army of vamps show up.

The king of the vampires tells them to hand over Frost and he will let them all live. (Yeah, sure…) Again, Hawkeye has the perfect comeback, “Not gonna happen, Tooth Boy!”

Again, I nearly laughed out loud.

Hawkeye points out that vampires cannot enter houses unless invited in, stating he knows the rules about how they operate. Since they need an invitation, Hawkeye can keep them out simply by telling them to take a hike. Drac admits he has a point, but then asks what good that will do if there’s no house in which he and the others can stand. He subsequently orders his minions to start tearing the Beach House down, leaving Hawkeye to take charge of the three HYDRA villains in order to fulfill his duty to protect Frost.

I will do my best to avoid spoiling the rest of the story, readers. If I have succeeded in whetting your appetite, please take the time to find this show and watch it. It is worth the almost thirty minutes of your time that it will take up.

But, you ask, why do I like this show so much – other than the obvious reason that it stars one of my favorite characters? It is not just the fact that “Why I Hate Halloween” focuses on Hawkeye. It is how Hawkeye behaves in this episode which made me like it so much.

Going back in Thoughts on the Edge of Forever’s archives, you will find a number of posts about Avengers Assemble’s first and second seasons. In most of them, you will find I have a big bone to pick with Marvel’s writers. During the show’s first two seasons, they portrayed all the Avengers – but especially Hawkeye – in varying stereotypical, liberal ways. Of the seven, Hawkeye got the shortest end of the stick, and I was NOT pleased with that. (See previous posts to learn why.)

Season three of the series changed tack, allowing the heroes to act more like themselves than they had in the prior arcs. This gave Hawkeye a chance to shine, and I duly admitted my contentment with this change. Accordingly, I also expressed my displeasure with the first few episodes of season four when he and the others were forcibly removed and replaced with two PC characters (Danvers and Khan) and one with a liberal chip on her shoulder (Wasp).

This episode showed the World’s Greatest Marksman doing everything I had ever wanted the writers to allow him to do in one half hour package. During this installment Clint got to show his resourcefulness, his compassion, his skills, his sense of humor, and his confidence to the utmost. The writers finally let him prove that he is very intelligent, not to mention quite capable of thinking on his feet when others could be or are panicking. From start to finish, the writers let Clint Barton be Clint Barton. They let him be the mature, confident marksman with the snappy patter and heart of gold which he has been for years in the comics. (High falutin’ time they did this, too!)

They also let the HYDRA jerks pick on him and call him the weakest Avenger, an old jibe which has never failed to get under his skin and make him wonder whether or not he actually belongs on the team comprised of “Earth’s Mitghtiest Heroes.” Hearing it delivered in varying ways throughout the show would have made me angry if Clint had not managed to hide how much the taunts actually bothered him. Only at the end did he admit that the sneers had started to undermine his confidence. Seeing him vulnerable, for just a minute there, made up for the mistreatment the writers heaped on him in the first two seasons.

In turn, the writers also let him teach Frost a lesson or three. A proud woman who is supposedly a genius, I have to say, she came off as dense for most of the episode. Which, actually, is true to life; joining the Dark Side does not make you smarter, readers. If anything, it makes you stupid. Case in point would be this dame’s decision to subject vampires to scientific tests to augment living humans’ natural abilities. Vampires – seriously?! How harebrained is that?! Do you WANT to die?!?

But the most important point here is that the writers for this chapter at long last did justice to their character and his environment. They made a compelling standalone show of great value which restores Clint’s dignity as a character, a superhero, and an Avenger. I am not kidding when I say my Hallowe’en candy came early with this episode. It did, and it was long overdue, readers!

By this I mean that I finally got to see one of my favorite Marvel heroes being everything I knew he was and could be. At the end of this show, I was cheering with delight – even when the writers resorted to the old gag of getting Clint in trouble with the Hulk. Since this time it was the result of an honest mistake on his and Big Green’s part, I can let this one joke slide. It seemed to round out the episode nicely – although why Hulk would think to wear that particular costume after a night fighting vampires is beyond me!

Speaking of the not-so-jolly Green Giant, Hulk came through this show with flying colors, too. So did Cap. Neither of them had huge amounts of screen time, for transparent reasons, but what time they did have was used well and artistically. They also behaved according to pattern, and Cap actually got to tell a joke without looking stiff or uncomfortable doing it. I mean, the only thing the writers did not do with this episode was gift wrap it. It was practically a present to Marvel fans – and Cap, Hawkeye, and Hulk fans in particular. It was almost like a thank-you letter straight from the writers’ desk to the fans.

Of course, some may wonder if this is a sign that things are looking up in the Marvel Universe(s). I rather doubt that. This episode was wonderful, stupendous, and utterly amazing – and it could very well have been a one off. Marvel has a new series of “Legacy” comics out now which I do not like the look of at all. Sam is still using Cap’s suit and shield (and still spewing anti-American claptrap); Jane Foster is still prancing around as Thor, and Ironheart has replaced Tony, who has somehow vanished. This is after he had been in a coma since Civil War II. Apparently, they had him using a holographic interface to communicate with the outside world before he pulled a Houdini (putting the lie to the myth that comas equal permanent vegetative states or brain death when they did this).

It also turns out that HYDRA Cap was some kind of clone or something, not the real Steve Rogers. This means that the Real Cap is dealing with the fallout his dopplegänger caused while he was elsewhere. It seems that HYDRA Cap took over half the world and put a lot of people in front of firing squads or some such thing. Naturally, this totally ruined Real Cap’s reputation now that he has returned from the Nevernever – or whatever Marvel equivalent there might be – to clean up the mess.

You know, maybe they should rename it “Awful Comics” instead of Marvel Comics. There is not much marvelous in these new stories; just a lot of depressing horse pills which leave a lousy taste in readers’ brains.

So no, I do not think “Why I Hate Halloween” marks the beginning of a trend. At least, I do not believe that right now. Considering the pleasant surprise the writers handed me this week, I could be in for more. While such a hope is faint, “hope springs eternal in the human breast,” and I am not going to lose hope that Marvel can right their ship. I am just not going to hold my breath while I hope for it to happen. I like living too much to try the opposite.

Anyway, readers, take the time to look up “Why I Hate Halloween.” This is good Marvel fare, believe me. If you are a Hawkeye hater, you can at least enjoy it for Cap and Hulk. Or the explosions. Or the vampires. And if none of that will win you over… (Author shrugs.) Oh, well. I tried.

Avengers assemble!

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!!!!

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.

A Review of Avengers Assemble’s “Captain Marvel”

It is no secret how this blogger regards Carol Danvers.  I prefer to ignore her existence entirely as a general rule, being particularly insulting when I do mention her.  But there are certain times when this character must be acknowledged and mentioned, or even discussed at length.  Having seen the Avengers Assemble episode “Captain Marvel,” it seems that this is one of those times.  I have largely left my disparaging comments at the door.  This is an entirely different kind of post from previous articles.

One of the men who helped to create the Carol Danvers solo series reportedly stated that a reader of the comics, “…might see a parallel between her [Carol Danvers’] quest for identity, and the modern woman’s quest for raised consciousness, for self-liberation, for identity.” (Did anyone else miss the point of that convoluted quote?  I did.)

This description by writer Gerry Conway opens a window into Danvers’ role in the Marvel Universe(s).   From his suggestion it is possible to see that Carol Danvers is intended to be the Feminist epitome:  she is stronger than most of her male compatriots, faster than them, she shoots energy beams from her hands, and she is nigh indestructible.  Feminism’s consistent cry that, “Women are just as good as men,” is perfectly played out in Danvers’ character.

However, the results are far from flattering for women.  Captain Marvel’s most endearing quality is her superpowers; in creating the Uber Woman, Marvel missed the mark by a good many miles.

This is something which Marvel Comics seems to have tacitly recognized, although they have not admitted it aloud in interviews or writing.  Instead they told us in the early 2000s that they were “determined to have the character take center stage in the Marvel Universe.”  Apparently they have chosen to use this time to do this.  They have changed her codename to Captain Marvel, given her a new suit, and a new personality in order to make her a more central character in their universe(s).

But so far these changes have not made Danvers any more important to the brand than she has been for the last five and a half decades.  It is also worth noting that Marvel has tried relabeling the character in the past.  Carol Danvers has worn two other alternate codenames since she debuted as Ms. Marvel; these were the monikers Binary and Warbird.  Neither of these names lasted very long – the writers inevitably ended up falling back on her original codename after trying to make her new guises “stick.”

Why did they have to return to her original name?  Marvel Comics has never definitively stated any reason why, to the best of this writer’s knowledge.  But if I had to guess, it was because her new names were unable to generate an appropriately large and suitably well-paying fan base.

If at first you don’t succeed, however, try, try again.  Marvel is attempting the same rebranding trick now.  This time, though, they have gone a step further by overhauling Danvers’ personality.  Previously Danvers simply changed suits and codenames, while her personality remained intact.  But if the Avengers Assemble episode “Captain Marvel” is any indication, her new characterization is no more helpful than her previous deportment.  If anything, it is far more exasperating.

Instead of continuing in her former mild-mannered, polite aspect, Danvers’ debut episode within the Assemble universe shows her rudely cutting across the male Avengers’ courteous pleasantries and interrupting their valid questions or comments.  But the most aggravating of all is her continuous, offhand dismissals of the men’s warnings and help during combat.  Her attitude, once about as offensive as a pebble’s, has been altered so that she is snobby, arrogant, and Matronizing.  Where she once could not be heard for being polite, now she cannot say “Hello” without it sounding derogatory.

This is not a winning portrayal for the character, and it only gets worse as the episode progresses.  During the show Danvers repeatedly mocks the male Avengers when they extend their assistance and friendship.  She scoffs at their suggestions that she may need their help in the present or in the future.  She also scathingly refuses their offer of a place on the team – which she eventually receives anyway.  Danvers looks down on all the men on the team during the episode.  Yet this should be hard to do if she is supposed to be as good as they are, shouldn’t it?  If they are on the same level, she cannot look down on them.  She has to look them in the eyes.

This does not occur within the show at all.

As for Danvers’ hypothetical “friendships” with the male Avengers, those appear to be non-existent by all but the most desperate measurements.  The most frustrating of these “amities” within the episode is the supposed Air Force/Army rivalry she shares with Cap.  It is true that the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force have something of an affable rivalry.  So do the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps.  But this theoretical source of contention between Danvers and Cap within the episode is nothing less than a thinly veiled attempt to make Captain Marvel look good, while at the same time putting Steve Rogers in her shadow.

What happens, entertainingly, is the reverse.  As he does in most cases, during the show Cap stands above Danvers without half trying.  Cap demonstrates his usual magnanimity, courtesy, and the benefits of his experience during the show.  And he does this with his usual just-a-kid-from-Brooklyn charm.  Danvers on the other hand suffers in this “rivalry.”  She comes across as a small-minded, bigoted, and egotistical fool.  She disdains Cap’s assistance, his generosity, and the benefits of his experience.

This is not a way for ANY character, new or old, to make a good impression on viewers.  It is the best way to lower the audience’s opinion of her.

Falcon is similarly discriminated against by Danvers in her dialogue with him.  Left to fawn over Danvers as if she is a great heroine whom he has always wanted to meet, Sam receives no real reply for his manly deference.  In answer to his admiration Danvers persistently sidelines him in conversation and belittles his ability in combat – until Sam’s considerable technological and flying skills are needed to help save the day.  Then she is all praise and pats on the back.

Sam Wilson deserves better than that, people.  He has earned better.

Thor is also left to play the stereotype.  Thor is made to look like a callow buffoon during the adventure; throughout the show he is clearly supposed to represent the man who is emblematic of the “modern Neanderthal” who would rather smash things than think.  This “requires” Captain Marvel to “rein him in” on several occasions.  She literally grabs hold of his arms in one instance, which is utterly infuriating.  Why?

The Prince of Thunder is entirely capable of thinking, being particularly clever in his own right.  While Thor may prefer banging down the front door to picking the lock on the back entrance, the fact is that he is adaptable to the situation at hand.  To portray him as a backward, muscle-bound rube demeans not only the character but his audience.

We are not amused.

But what stood out to me the most when I was reflecting on this episode is the fact that Danvers and the Black Widow never exchange pleasantries, let alone dialogue, within this show.  Unlike most of the guys, Natasha does not bother to try and interrupt Danvers while she brags about saving the team from being “exploded.”  Most important to note, she also does not join in the other woman’s steady verbal abuse of the men.

I believe that this is something the writers overlooked, and that in future episodes they will try to rectify what I have pointed out.  However, I also believe that there can be no commiseration between these two female characters over the “vanity” of men.  There are two reasons for this.  First, Natasha was conceived as a genuine female character and legitimate heroine from the start.  She was not created as a bone to be tossed to the Femi-Nazis.  Having clawed her way up and out of that mentality when she defected from the Soviet Union, Natasha is determined not to fall back into such a trap.

Second, while Captain Marvel now bashes the guys simply for being men, Natasha respects and appreciates her male teammates much as she always has.  She recognizes the value of her male friends not only for what they can do, but for who they are as men.  For instance, their manhood is what makes them naturally concerned for her welfare because she is a woman.  Even when she is in a situation which she can handle (or believes she can handle) herself, they do not leave their natural male concern for her at the door.

Natasha does not scorn this concern from her male teammates, as Danvers does.  Rather, she welcomes it.  Yes, it can irritate Natasha if the guys are not quite quick enough to figure out her plan and they begin to question her, fearing that she is preparing to do something rash or particularly dangerous.  But if she does end up in over her head, then she knows they have her back, even when she thinks she does not need them there.  The male Avengers’ evident desire to keep her safe does not enslave the Black Widow.  It frees her.  Natasha knows her male friends have her best interests at heart.  They do not want to exploit her, they want to protect her and be there for her.

Why am I so certain of this?  How can I be sure that the writers not only overlooked writing dialogue for Natasha and Danvers but that, if they tried to do it so that the two agreed on the “ineptitude” of men, such a discourse would ring false?

I can be sure of this fact because the Black Widow has been exploited by men in the past.  She was subjugated from her earliest years by the men (and the women) who created and maintained the Soviets’ Red Room program.  She was an expendable tool to them.  This resulted not in self-liberation for her but in a non-existent childhood, during which she was expected to behave and function as an adult.  This was then followed by an early adulthood completely devoid of compassion, friendship, happiness, and respect.  The men in charge of the Red Room did not value Natasha – they used, manipulated, and abused her.  And while they did this they considered her to be “just as good as a man” at her job.

We know how Natasha feels about this.  She regrets her past sins while under the Soviets’ control, and she was so determined that they would never get the chance to mistreat women again that she shut down the original Red Room program, presumably with extreme prejudice.  In the episode “Seeing Double,” the writers established 2R – the rebuilt Red Room program – in the Assemble universe.  Natasha’s first round against Widow wannabe Yelena Belova showed that she desires to end this new program of enslavement in the Soviet mold, too.  Looking at her attitude in this case, how can we think that the Black Widow would turn around and support a twisted feminism which views women in the same unsavory light that the Soviets did?

The male Avengers, unlike her Soviet handlers, do not use, manipulate, or abuse Natasha.  Only the most confused would claim such lunacy.  Natasha is a member of the team by her own choice, and her male friends never ask her to take risks outside of her ken.  On the occasions the risks to her during a mission are considered too high by the men, she usually takes those on herself, always over their protests.  When this happens, she does not accuse them of believing that she cannot handle the crisis.  The Soviets, remember, considered her expendable.  The male Avengers do not.

If you contrast the Black Widow with Danvers, you will see just how boorish, petulant, and childish Captain Marvel’s new characterization is compared to Natasha Romanoff’s.  As an immediate example from the episode under discussion, Black Widow illustrates her high opinion of her male friends when she asks Hawkeye what happened on the mission in Helsinki that Danvers had mentioned.  His emphatic “Do not want to talk about it,” earns an affectionate smile from Natasha, not a scoff of irritation at his imaginary “manly stubbornness.”

Now weigh Natasha’s fond expression against Danvers’ sneering “You’re adorable” remark after Hawkeye saves her from a Kree drone missed in an earlier battle.  It puts everything in perspective and easily demonstrates which woman is the better heroine and person.  Danvers was in the process of asking for help from the Avengers when Hawkeye acted first and destroyed the drone.  He was kind enough to not only to save her from the device but to “spare” her the need to ask for aid, repaying her for her help in Helsinki.  And yet she responds by treating him as though he was a teenager showboating for the lady?  Which knucklehead wrote that brilliant little bit of dialogue?

In their attempt to make the Uber Woman when they revamped Danvers’ character, Marvel Comics has instead made an uber failure.  Carol Danvers is supposed to represent the 21^st century woman?  I would rather be represented by a stray cat.  A female cat may be haughty, but at least she never pretends to be anything less than she actually is.

“But, Mithril,” I hear some of you complain, “everybody says/knows Carol Danvers has been popular throughout her history!  You cannot help but admit that, even if you do not think she is particularly great!”

Okay, let us say for the sake of argument that Carol Danvers is, actually, as popular as Marvel Comics insists she is.  If this is so, then why have they changed her codename throughout her career?  Most heroes who have had many codenames over the course of their history have had to do this in order to find the one which “fits” them best.  It is a bit late in the game for Danvers to still be searching for the perfect moniker.  Her first codename worked just fine.  I know this because I cannot shake the habit of using it in verbal conversation.  I would use it in writing if it would not confuse the issue, but that is not possible since Kamala Khan started using the call sign Ms. Marvel.

And if Danvers is so popular, why did Marvel feel it necessary to say in the early 2000s that they planned to make her “take center stage in the Marvel Universe”?  If she has “always” been popular with the fans/readers, then they should not have had to do this.  They have not done it with the Wasp, the Invisible Woman, or the Scarlet Witch.  In fact, almost all of their other leading heroines’ monikers remained the same coming into the new millennium, and have remained unaltered.  Why does Carol Danvers need special attention if she has always been – and continues to be – so popular?

Why has Marvel given Danvers such a radical personality alteration?  Costumes come and go over the years, but personalities are seldom revamped in this manner.  If Carol Danvers is – and always has been – as popular as they claim, then why has Marvel Comics had to strive so hard over the course of her existence to make her impress their readers?  Why can she not stand on her own two feet, like all of Marvel’s other famous heroes and heroines have down through the decades?

The Avengers’ Mansion/Tower is popular as well, readers.  It is prominent in almost every comic because it is the team’s base/home, and plenty of stories begin or end there.  Stan Lee said that he used to run into people on Fifth Avenue who were looking for the Avengers’ Mansion.  It was popular enough to prompt people visiting New York City to go out and look for it.

Is it possible – just possible – that Carol Danvers has been “popular” for the same reason as the Avengers’ home?  After all, if the writers and artists place Danvers in every comic they can besides her own solo series, then they may rightfully claim that she is popular based on the fact that she is present in many of the books they are selling.  They do not have to sell record numbers of issues from her solo series for her to be popular.  They just have to sell comics where she is present in some manner to make her so.

The fact of the matter is that Carol Danvers is a token player.  And since token players have no real use or value to readers/viewers, they are almost impossible to keep afloat for as long as Marvel has managed to maintain Danvers’ existence.  This is a feat of determination which deserves applause as such.  But in terms of helping the company, it is just an attempt to maintain an idea which has proved to be more harmful than helpful.

Personally, I think the company would be better served focusing on the heroines they have who are actually emblematic of real women.  Because the character of Carol Danvers will ALWAYS be inferior to these other heroines, and no amount of cosmetic changes or personality alterations will amend that fact.  This is the truth, readers…

… whether Marvel Comics likes it or not.

Until next time,

The Mithril Guardian

Offended, Insulted, and Not Shutting Up

Hey, readers! We regret that we must interrupt this programming with another little piece of criticism aimed at Marvel’s Hierarchy of Seneschals.

Yes, I just called them that. Until they either wake up or are replaced by people who actually know what they are doing, I am not changing that moniker.

Marvel announced that in the next season of their animated series, Avengers Assemble (to be re-titled Avengers: Secret Wars), Jane Foster will debut as “Thor.” Some of you, certainly, see no problem with this. But several other fans, including me, have had problems with this change since it was made in the comics. See the links below to find out how much we dislike it:

http://comicvine.gamespot.com/thor/4005-2268/forums/i-like-jane-foster-as-thor-but-i-dont-1697781/

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/07/say-it-aint-so-stan-female-thor.html

http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?582-By-the-Gods!-It-s-THOR-Appreciation/page52

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/14/female-thor-is-what-happens-when-progressive-hand-wringing-and-misandry-ruin-a-cherished-art-form/

https://voxday.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/men-in-women-suits.html

http://kaimaciel.tumblr.com/post/144803890339/my-honest-opinion-on-jane-foster-as-thor

http://www.comics2film.com/if-she-be-worthy-thor-jane-foster-marvel-101/

While I am not a huge fan of the Prince of Thunder, the fact is that I do like him, and I prefer him as a Prince, that is, a male heir to the throne of Asgard. Jane Foster is an agreeable character, and I would be excited to see her in the TV series. But I would prefer that she debuted as herself: no superhuman powers, no magic hammers, none of the “new” idiocy with which the writers and their handlers have decided to outfit her.

Jane Foster’s strength was once her “mortality,” her humanity. It would not matter to me if she turned up in the cartoon as a nurse or as an astrophysicist, as she is portrayed in the films. She has carried herself well in both those fields of endeavor; as either of these professions and many others suit her character.

Yet Marvel, in its attempts to stay ahead of the latest fads, decided this was not good enough for her. Someone, somewhere, must have complained about the enchantment on Thor’s hammer, which of course read: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall wield the power of Thor.” A lot of people are getting hung up on pronouns such as “he” and “she.” “He” is what they come down against most vehemently nowadays.

To raise Cain (ooh, how gender-specific of me) over such an inconsequential thing is beyond dim-witted. Mjolnir can be wielded by whoever is worthy. That can be a man, a woman, an alien (remember Beta Ray Bill?), or an android (did we all forget Vision that fast?). The inscription is a generic; if a worthy lady had come along and picked up Mjolnir, the only reason Thor would have been astonished was because he is used to lifting the hammer, not sharing it with others.

Thor has been a male character for more than a thousand years, since he was created by the Ancient Norse. And, as others have pointed out, Marvel’s version of Thor has been adored by thousands of girls everywhere right from the get-go. His fan base is not getting any smaller, people, and neither are the crushes on him.

But in an effort to appease the talking heads, Marvel has disregarded the feelings of its fans – you and me – in order to curry favor with the ‘elites.’ Never mind that we are the ones who have supported Marvel all these years, they are determined to continue flogging dead horses in order to receive the praise of people who otherwise sniff condescendingly at them and their medium.

Yes, you read that right. I called this gender-switch for Thor a dead horse. It is a dead horse. It has been a dead horse for decades, but the ‘intelligensia’ is so desperate to keep making money off of it that they insist it is still twitching. People continue to scream about women being oppressed in the United States and Europe because, for instance, they “do not make as much money” as men.

Have a look at these links here, readers, and see if you agree with that assessment:

 

ISIS Burns Caged Women

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/06/06/19-women-burned-to-death-after-refusing-to-have-sex-with-isis-fighters/

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/06/19-yazidi-girls-burned-alive-for-refusing-to-have-sex-with-their-isis-captors.html

http://www.wnd.com/2016/06/isis-burns-19-girls-alive-for-refusing-sex-slavery/

 

Persecution of Christians by ISIS

http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/nun-pleads-for-christians-raped-sold-killed-by-isis/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/425942077231304272/

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/05/report-syrian-christians-cry-jesus-isis-mass-beheading/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3261075/ISIS-sliced-12-year-old-Syrian-boy-s-fingertips-father-Christians-failed-bid-convert-Islam-executed-group-victims-shouted-Jesus.html

https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks/christian-attacks.aspx

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-crucifies-children-for-not-fasting-during-ramadan-in-syria-10338215.html

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/07/02/isis-executioners-spare-no-one-killing-74-children-for-crimes-including-not.html

 

Jihadi Brides

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-s-austrian-poster-girl-jihadi-brides-have-changed-their-minds-and-want-to-come-home-9789547.html

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/577347/British-twin-girl-jihadi-brides-want-to-return-to-home

http://nypost.com/2014/10/10/pregnant-teen-girls-who-joined-isis-weve-made-a-huge-mistake/

http://ijr.com/2014/12/220140-150-women-refused-isis-sex-brides-terrorists-responded-heinous-way/

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/08/12/uk-teen-girl-who-went-to-isis-area-syria-reported-killed.html

 

Rape Abroad

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/10/leaked-document-says-2000-men-allegedly-assaulted-1200-german-women-on-new-years-eve/

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/21/revealed-full-list-of-1049-victims-crimes-committed-during-cologne-new-years-eve-sex-assaults/

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/636944/Cologne-sex-attacks-list-crimes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3684302/1-200-German-women-sexually-assaulted-New-Year-s-Eve-Cologne-elsewhere.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35231046

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/cologne-attacks-on-women?utm_term=.tk5ewAR5Y#.lujLvXlo9

 

Women in the U.S. do not know how good they have it. That is the truth.

Why is Marvel so determined to gender-switch characters like Thor and Iron Man when they have real-life stories like these, which are far more important and only a few minutes from their fingertips, to incorporate into their comics? In the 1940s they lampooned Hitler, and in the 1950s and 60s, they bashed the Communists. But in this brave new world, they are suddenly afraid to so much as mention the beasts that burn women in cages for refusing to be sex slaves? Why would they rather have us watching Captain America be “revealed” to be a secret HYDRA operative, when the real HYDRA (better known as ISIS) is out and about in the world beheading and crucifying children?

Do they really think that we are buffoons with such banal interests that our only care is why the inscription on Mjolnir says “he” instead of “person”? More to the point, readers, is this how you want the people running Marvel to think of you? It is not how I want them to think about me, that is for sure!

But apparently they not only believe we are navel-gazing twits, they are extremely eager to shove that belief down our throats – along with the notion that they “have” to do this because their universe has “too few” super heroines.

That is guff spewed by people who do not know what they are talking about, and I can prove it. Below is a roll call of some female Marvel heroines that regularly see – or have regularly seen – combat in the Marvel Universe:

1. The Invisible Woman/Sue Storm-Richards
2. Wasp/Janet van Dyne
3. Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff
4. Mockingbird/Bobbi Morse
5. Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff
6. Mantis
7. Moondragon
8. Hellcat/Patricia Walker
9. She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters
10. The Blonde Phantom
11. Miss America
12. White Tiger/Ava Ayallah
13. Squirrel Girl
14. Spectrum/Monica Rambeau
15. Carol Danvers
16. Sharon Carter
17. Crystal of the Inhumans
18. Medusa, Queen of the Inhumans
19. Storm/Ororo Munroe
20. Jean Grey
21. Psylocke
22. X-23/Laura Kinney
23. Jubilation Lee
24. Firestar/Angelica Jones
25. Surge
26. Honey Lemmon
27. Go-go Tomago
28. Julia Carpenter
29. Jessica Jones Cage
30. Rescue/Pepper Potts
31. Silver Sable
32. Black Cat/Felicia Hardy
33. Echo/Maya Lopez
34. Firebird/Bonita Juárez
35. Jocasta
36. Dazzler
37. Rogue/Anna Maria
38. Shadowcat/Katherine “Kitty” Pryde
39. Boom-Boom
40. Silverclaw/Maria Santiago
41. Quake/Daisy Johnson
42. Jessica Drew
43. Mirage/Danielle Moonstar
44. Sif
45. Valkyrie/Brunhilde
46. Yellowjacket/Rita DeMara
47. Gamora
48. Lilandra
49. Wolfsbane
50. Elektra
51. Dust
52. Magma
53. Misty Knight
54. Colleen Wheeler
55. Polaris/Lorna Dane
56. Phoenix/Rachel Grey Summers
57. Dagger
58. Torunn
59. Maria Hill
60. Tigra
61. Songbird/Melissa Gold
62. Namora
63. Namorita
64. Darkstar
65. Magick/Ilyana Rasputin
66. Emma Frost
67. Stature/Cassie Lang
68. Siryn/Theresa Cassidy
69. Sasquatch/Snowbird
70. Domino
71. Marrow
72. Blink
73. Kate Bishop

This is by no means a comprehensive list. Still, if this sample inventory has not made your eyes cross, then you should visit this site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Comics_characters:_A. It lists many, if not most, of Marvel’s characters. Scanning through it some years ago, I was left wondering why Marvel seemed to be having so much trouble coming up with new male characters, since they were adding more new females than males!

Now what reasonable critic can look at these catalogs and conclude that Marvel has “too few” heroines? Marvel’s heroines have always stood with their male counterparts to face down evil. But the fact is that some of these ladies have been and remain more popular than others. This is natural, and their male compatriots have suffered the same ebb and flow of fan admiration over the years. Some characters are simply more popular than others. This does not negate the existence of the less well-known male heroes, so why do people seem to think the reverse is true when discussing Marvel’s lesser known heroines?

Marvel has no need to gender-swap its male characters. Avengers Assemble is a perfect platform from which to show their less eminent or forgotten heroines and heroes. They could even use the series as a stage to create new heroines, the way Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends did in the 1980s.

This post was published for two reasons, readers. One, I have had a burning desire to tell off the ignorant critics of Marvel Comics for quite some time. If they want to evaluate Marvel’s characters properly, then they should do their research before they open their big, fat mouths. If they are too lazy or indifferent to do that, then they should sit down and shut up, leaving the people who do know and love Marvel’s characters to enjoy them undisturbed.

Second, I wanted to make clear to Marvel just how deeply offended and insulted I am, underscoring my latest letter to them. (BTW, thanks for all the views, Marvel. It is sooo nice of you to drop by! 😉 ) They believe that to keep my patronage they have to turn their fictional universe upside-down and inside out.

That is a perfect way to lose my money, not keep it. The Mainstream Marvel Universe which Stan Lee, Don Heck, Jim Romita, and all the others created is my favorite Marvel playground. And I want that universe, with all its flaws and foibles, back. This does not mean that I want the characters wearing their original costumes and hairstyles. I do not want them using radio and ‘60s slang. I simply want their histories and identities to stay fixed as they were originally conceived and, if possible, built up for the better.

Alternate universe spin-off comics, TV series, and movies are fun (with the exception of the Ultimate Universe). But they are not the universes I benefited from first. That universe – the 616 universe – is the one I love best and will always enjoy more than any other.

If Marvel thinks they have to ruin that world in order to keep my interest, then they have made a grave error. I understand that it is not easy to continue a series that has survived for fifty plus years. That is not the issue. The issue is Marvel’s desire to play patty-cake with people who despise them while using them as a tool. Once they are done, they will discard Marvel like a hot potato – and then what will become of the heroes we care for and the ideals for which they stand?

I do not want to see Marvel destroyed. I want to be able to share it with many more people over the coming years of my life. But I cannot follow a bunch of lemmings over a cliff into the ocean, nor will I allow them to lead others over said precipice into said sea. Not without a fight.

Whether you agree with this article or not, readers, think about what you read in the links embedded here. Learning is not simply memorizing mathematic formulae or deciding how to identify yourself. Education is supposed to teach you to how to think, not what you are to think. As long as you can think for yourself, the Enemy will have a more difficult time catching you.

I prefer not to be caught, and so I prefer to think. It is a whole lot harder to escape a trap than it is to avoid it in the first place.

So start thinking, Marvel!

Until the next mess,

The Mithril Guardian

Avengers: Age of Ultron – Hawkeye/Clint Barton

Here we go again, readers. I am back in the world of Marvel movies, thanks in no small part to seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron in theaters after a four month waiting period. And, yes, as you can see by the title, this post is about the only normal human in the Avengers: Hawkeye a.k.a. Clint Barton. So what? He is one of my favorite Marvel characters. I could no more forget him than I could let go of Captain America, Rogue, Storm, Wolverine, or any other character I like.

Now strap in, sit tight, and hold the eye-rolls for after you have read the fan-rant written by this truly wicked blogger! 🙂

Hawkeye has a whole lot more to do in Age of Ultron, and as a fan of this character, I thought it was great to see more of him this time around! I was really impressed by how much he got to do in Ultron, as opposed to The Avengers. Whedon handled Hawkeye well in both films, but had to write the World’s Greatest Marksman a fairly small part in The Avengers. Otherwise, he would not have been able to properly introduce the audience to the Avengers as a team coalescing under pressure.

This is not the case in Ultron. Hawkeye gets a lot more screen time and many more opportunities to show off, such as the time he hits a dart board dead center, when Tony has been plying the thing for a few minutes and only hitting the inner ring. The glare Tony throws him and the “what do you expect?” shrug Hawkeye returns is wonderfully true to form – for both characters.

Another scene where he gets to show off is in the Avengers’ first battle with Ultron. When Cap needs his shield, it is Hawkeye who sends the vibranium “Frisbee” flying toward America’s ultimate superhero, who catches it and uses it to cut an Iron Legionnaire in half.

For those of you who have not read Hawkeye’s profile or followed the Avenger for a long time in the comics, in Marvel’s “mainstream” comics, Clint Barton did time as Captain America after Steve Rogers’ “death” in the Civil War story arc. He was in the role for a few days, tops, before deciding that he did not like “replacing” Steve Rogers. But the reason Iron Man handed him the First Avenger’s uniform and shield is because Clint Barton is one of the very few people on the planet who can handle the shield the same way that Steve Rogers does.

This is not simply because Cap trained him after he joined the team. Doubtless, that training helped, but Hawkeye is skilled in throwing things accurately as well as in shooting precisely. When he throws an item, he often throws it in such a way that it ricochets/rebounds to hit his real target. Thus, he could throw a baseball at someone, who manages to dodge the ball, thinking they have outsmarted Hawkeye. Except that the ball hits a wall or some other object behind them, and rebounds to strike them in the head, knocking them out. Cap’s shield works on a similar principle in battle, which is why Clint can handle it at all.

Hawkeye practices all the time to keep his accuracy this exact, and seeing him toss Steve the shield was an unexpected treat and a half for me! I would like to see him actually use the shield for a couple of throws in Captain America: Civil War, but we will have to wait and see what happens there.

And did I mention that he gets to do some fancy flying in this movie? Clint is a great pilot, and watching him swing the Aveng-jet around in complicated, dizzying maneuvers was fun! As opposed to the scene where his quinjet is shot down in The Avengers, in Age of Ultron we get to see him display his true piloting skills.

Also, remember how Clint flew the quinjet while Natasha shot at Loki using the plane’s mini-gun in The Avengers? Well, in the battle against HYDRA at the beginning of Age of Ultron, this scenario is properly up-ended. Natasha is driving a jeep toward the HYDRA base the team has set out to destroy, while Clint gets to do what he does best: shoot down everything that gets in the jeep’s way.

Perfect! 😀

Now, no fan-rant about Hawkeye’s part in Ultron would be complete if it did not mention his family. If you check out Prognostications for Age of Ultron, Part 4 on this blog and make it all the way to prognostication number six, then you will see that I openly suspected the house in the teaser scene where Cap and Tony were chopping wood was Hawkeye’s house.

Beneath that are a number of theories about what is in the house, and I would never, ever, have believed that the second hypothesis would pan out. I had no idea whatsoever that Whedon would add Hawkeye’s family from the Ultimate comics to the film. And if you had told me at the time that that supposition would come true, I would have said something like, “Yeah, I wish.”

So when a friend told me that Hawkeye had a family in the film, I was flabbergasted, but not in a bad way. I have always thought he would be a good father and husband. When I learned that he is both in the film, I was even more eager to see the movie.

The hints given in the movie about the Barton family’s existence are good, too. When getting treated for an injury sustained while fighting HYDRA, Hawkeye jokes about being made of plastic. Dr. Cho corrects him and says his own girlfriend will not be able to tell where he was hit when she is done with him. Hawkeye quickly mutters, “I don’t have a girlfriend.” But he does not look anyone in the face when he says it, instead gazing at the wall.

Later on, Cap catches Clint on the phone with someone. He says the team has a lead, then asks who Clint was talking to on the phone. It takes Clint a total of five seconds to come up with a suitably evasive but partly true answer. “My girlfriend,” he says quickly. Cap does a double-take, knowing that Clint has professed to not have a girlfriend in the past. For his part, Clint does not seem to enjoy the fib he has just fed Cap. He will not look him directly in the eye and it took him too long to formulate an answer.

Speaking of which, has anyone else ever noticed that Clint seems to have a problem with lying to his teammates? Telling them an outright lie seems to be pretty hard for him. I guess he could flatly lie to HYDRA or some other bad guy if he wanted to, but he seems to be very bad at even fibbing to the Avengers.

Now, because of some early, scathing comments about Age of Ultron, I was worried that I would not like Hawkeye’s wife, Laura. Turns out, I actually think she was really impressive. The comments on the Internet made her sound like an airhead, but that is not the way that she struck me at all. Her husband goes up against modern day Nazis, aliens, robots, and the occasional arms dealer, not to mention brings the rest of the Avengers home without so much as calling ahead, and she takes it all in stride. She supports him all the way around and has his back. That was more than those comments on the Internet led me to believe, I can tell you!

On top of that, it was nice to see Hawkeye showing his softer side when dealing with his children. As I said above, I have often thought he would make a great dad, and seeing him in the role was fan-tastic. If anything, it was the icing on the cake! I can see why Whedon had fun writing for Hawkeye in this movie. I would have had fun writing for him – here or in other stories/mediums!

Interestingly, the family Clint has in the film is not the same as the family he has in the Ultimate comics. Laura is his wife in both mediums, but in the Ultimate comics he has two sons and a younger daughter. The Barton children’s names also do not match their names from the comics. Callum was the oldest Barton boy in the Ultimate comics, and Nicole was his daughter’s name. In the movie, Clint’s oldest son is named Cooper, his second child is a daughter named Lila, and his youngest is Nathaniel Pietro Barton.

I do not know what possessed Whedon to change Clint’s family line up for Age of Ultron, but I am hardly complaining. It is possible that he rearranged the Barton children’s line-up so that they would have a better shot at surviving in the films, as Clint’s wife and children were all killed in the Ultimate comics. I thought the Barton family was just fine in Age of Ultron, and I have my fingers crossed that we get to see them all again – hopefully not as casualties of War or any other subsequent Marvel movie conflict!

Speaking of Whedon, it bears mentioning that the scenes at Hawkeye’s farm were very nearly cut from Age of Ultron. Whedon told Marvel Studios’ executives that he wanted to expand Thor’s vision in the dream well.  They said he could if he cut the “farm scene.”

Whedon told the Marvel Studios executives that he did not want to cut the “farm scene.” The Marvel Execs insisted that if Whedon wanted to expand Thor’s vision, he would have to cut the “farm scene.”  Whedon would not budge, though, and things apparently got nasty.  So Whedon cut a good part of Thor’s visit to the dream well out of the film.

I would guess that this may be one of the reasons he has removed himself from Marvel Studios (however temporary it may prove to be), aside from the fact that he was directing a great deal more people in this movie than he ever has previously.

I admit, I am going to miss having Joss Whedon behind the Avengers’ films – although it may mean that fewer Avengers are killed off in later movies! 🙂 In all honesty, though, without Whedon helming or having input on the Avengers’ films, I fear we may not have Hawkeye’s family in the movies for very much longer.

And if that happens, I am going to be VERY angry at Marvel Studios’ executives. They may lose a viewer for their films if they decide to make good on the argument they had with Whedon over adding Hawkeye’s family to the movie.

 

Something else I thought was great, and I have touched on this before, is the relationship between Clint and the Maximoff twins. You can find more about that in the post Avengers: Age of Ultron – Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, at least as it relates to the twins themselves. As it relates to Hawkeye, I thought it showed a lot about him.

Clint does not like the twins, really and truly, until the final battle against Ultron in Nova Grad, Sokovia. There, he gets the chance to give Wanda a great pep talk. And, even though it occurs when Pietro dies, he settles for a genuine respect for the male Maximoff twin.

If anything, the reason he warmed up to the two might be due to the fact that he himself has children. And the Maximoffs are still children. They have been since their parents’ deaths; they know how to take care of themselves, but their understanding of the world around them is badly skewed due to a lack of genuine parental guidance.

When Wanda started to fall apart, I think Clint sensed how young she was, mentally, more than he had before. So he responded to her in almost – almost – the same way that he would if it was his own daughter losing herself to panic. Plus, he has been in her shoes in the past. Loki mind-controlled him into being part of his “take over the world” scheme. He knows how being used as a part in something that evil feels, and so when Wanda started down the “this is all my fault” path, he stopped her before she had a chance to become a whimpering wreck. Way to go, Hawkeye!

I think Clint may have seen a little of himself in Pietro as well. The brash, abrasive manner Quicksilver demonstrates throughout the movie is similar to Clint’s own scrappy attitude. Not to mention the two both have a tendency to come up with witty wisecracks and quips in moments of calm as well as battle. And they have been good friends in the comics for a very long time.

Of course, Clint’s friendship with Natasha is better shown in this movie than it has been previously. The two dig at each other good-naturedly and show more of their battle brother-sister habits throughout the movie. This is clearly proved when it is shown that Natasha alone, out of all the Avengers, is the person Clint trusted with the knowledge of his family. He has also apparently prepared everyone in his family to meet his team in case he ever had to bring the Avengers home one day. Why else would they all be so calm about meeting four superheroes – Bruce Banner, Thor, Captain America, and Tony Stark – who otherwise would have startled and frightened most other children and wives?

It is additionally demonstrated that Clint gets along well with the two “science brothers” on the team. I cannot recall anything extremely specific with regard to Banner, but the friendly taunts and jibes Clint and Tony exchange show they have gotten to know each other fairly well, and they have come to trust each other a lot since they started working together.

Thor tends to get “poked” by Clint more than the others, it seems. I am guessing this is because of Clint’s taunt about Mjolnir’s worthiness enchantment. Since Thor is the only alien they have on the team, he is open to a lot of teasing. He has become more familiar with Earth’s cultures since he came to Midgard, but in some ways Cap has had less trouble assimilating to the 21^st century than Thor has.

Also, he is a prince, and he can fly. Clint is going to want to make sure Thor keeps his head out of the clouds even more than he watches Tony’s penchant for getting big headed. Still, since Thor was willing to abandon the battle at the HYDRA base halfway through to get Clint back to the Aveng-jet for preliminary medical treatment, and stayed with him while the others went on fighting, he does not seem to resent Clint’s ribbing much, if at all.

 

I was, I must say, most impressed by the friendship between Clint and Cap in the film. I was watching this in particular because I learned the World’s Greatest Marksman would be siding with Captain America in Civil War. And I was also studying it closely because, in the original “mainstream” comics, Clint and Steve had a tendency to butt heads on almost everything. Clint was Pietro’s age when he first joined the team in the comics and because of that he occasionally felt that he would be a better leader for the Avengers than Cap was.

Well, obviously, this is not the case in the movies. Clint is much more mature in the films, and his friendship with Steve shows that. Mostly it is in little scenes. His saying, “C’mon, Cap!” when Steve goes to pick up Mjolnir was hint number one. When he watched Tony try the hammer, his manner was more sarcastic and disbelieving. He had an idea that Tony would not be able to lift the hammer, and Tony’s declaration that physics would help him do so did not increase Clint’s confidence in him a whit.

But when he encourages Cap, he sounds more convinced. It is as if, were the team to be placing bets on which one of them could lift Mjolnir, he would put his money on Steve. Cap does not lift the hammer, however; probably to avoid embarrassing Thor at what is supposed to be his going-away party. So it is a good thing no one put money on anybody else, because otherwise they would all have lost.

Hint number two is the fact that it takes Clint five seconds to decide to lie to Cap about the call he was caught making to his wife. He has been keeping the secret for so long that telling even Cap about it is a daunting idea. Cap does not like it when things are kept from him, though Clint’s keeping his family under wraps is more sensible than all the secrets SHIELD was hiding from Steve. I think Cap was more than willing to let Clint slide on that one.

But Clint still did not like lying to him. It was written all over his face. And he knew that Cap had realized there was a disconnect between this explanation he had just given and his earlier declarations of not having a girlfriend. But telling Cap about his family in the Tower, when Ultron is all over the Internet and in the surveillance systems, not to mention in every other computer system on the planet, is not a good idea. So, sensibly, Clint told Cap as much of the truth as he safely could.

The third hint comes in Seoul. Cap is hanging off the back door of a truck trailer when he says that he is going after Ultron. Interestingly, it is not Natasha who warns him how dangerous this plan is. Instead it is Clint who says, “You’re no match for him, Cap.”

“Thanks, Barton,” Cap mutters, being quite well aware of that fact himself.

The fourth hint is also in Seoul. Clint lost Natasha when he picked up the Cradle, and for a few seconds, we are once again looking at the original comics. Clint repeatedly asks Cap if he knows where Natasha is, and Cap continually orders him back to Avengers Tower. Then time and space re-converge and Clint does as he is told – though he hits the consoles in front of him to show his frustration and anger.

Last but not least, for all his seeming “impartiality” in the arguments among the Avengers, I was certainly under the impression that Clint was always silently siding with Cap, even when the First Avenger brought the twins to the Tower. Though he says that Wanda’s seal of approval on the Vision will mean nothing to him, his statement is directed toward her, not Steve. Cap’s decision he will follow, but not hers – yet.

I was glad to see that Clint and Steve got along so well in the film. I had been hoping they would, since they have become better friends over time in the comics. They are a lot alike, though getting Clint to admit that takes some serious work.

They are cut from similar cloth and almost always fight on the same side. I do not know for sure, but I do not think they have ever come to blows in the same manner and spirit that Steve and Tony went after each other in Civil War. No matter how angry they have become with each other in the past, they have remained great friends. If anything, their arguments actually appear to strengthen their friendship instead of tearing it down!

Considering how well Clint got off in Age of Ultron, I am hoping he does as well in Captain America: Civil War. If he does better, then you will again be reading a glowing fan-rant about him on this blog, readers. You can put money on that! So, until I write again –

Excelsior!

The Mithril Guardian

Letters to Marvel

Well, readers, as you know I wrote a post some time ago about Marvel Comics’ latest story arc, “Secret Wars.”  That post was called “Stories Matter – Why Marvel Comics’ “Secret Wars” Is Not Marvel-Us.”  I recently found out that Marvel plans to merge its “mainstream Marvel Universe – the universe Stan Lee and his friends established – with its Ultimate Marvel Universe.  This will result in the “All-New, All-Different” Marvel Comics the company promised some time earlier this year.

I am not pleased with this turn of events, as you know, and I just sent two letters to Marvel, listing their storytelling problems and suggesting how they may be repaired. You may read the letters in the rest of this post below.  Be advised, in this format they are rather long.  I had a fair bit to say.

If you are as upset about the proposed merger of the “mainstream” Marvel Universe with the Ultimate Universe as I am, then you may want to try emailing the company yourselves, readers.  I have taken the addresses and instructions straight from the General feedback Page of the Marvel website, marvel.com:

Questions/comments about Marvel comic books 

If you have a question or comment about Marvel’s comic books that you would like to send to our Editorial staff, please direct them to the appropriate department:

1. Spidey office: spideyoffice@marvel.com
2. X office: officex@marvel.com
3. Heroes office: mheroes@marvel.com
4. Hulk, Ultimate & All Ages office: mondomarvel@marvel.com

Please mark your e-mail “OKAY TO PRINT.”

General feedback inquiries 

If you would like to provide us with feedback, please contact onlinesupport@marvel.com or go to http://marvel.com/help/contact and fill out the feedback form.

Thank you for your time, readers.

Excelsior!

The Mithril Guardian

Secret Wars and the “All-New, All-Different” Marvel Line-Up, Part 1 (OKAY TO PRINT)

Dear Marvel Managers/Editors/Writers,

I have recently discovered where you hope to end Secret Wars, fellow writers. You intend to combine the “mainstream” Marvel Universe with the Ultimate Marvel Universe to make “a new universe.” (Thank you for that turn of phrase, Erik Selvig.)

All I have to say to this is no, No, NO, and NO!!!!

Pardon the vehement expression of my feelings, fellow writers, but I think you can hardly blame me. I have enjoyed your “mainstream” Universe since I was first introduced to Marvel. Why would I want to see that universe changed? Why would I want the heroes I have loved in that universe to be destroyed, rewritten, or all around transmogrified?

I think I know why you are doing this. Interest in your Ultimate comics has been soaring, while less attention is being given to the stories you have set in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe, have they not? And instead of asking what you may have been doing wrong with regard to the stories in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe, you have decided to mix and match these two series, keeping Stan Lee’s Marvel Universe and adding your own Ultimate Marvel Universe to it in order to boost interest in the “mainstream” Marvel Comics.

Honestly, fellow writers, this is nothing more than you applying a band aid to a deep, sucking chest wound in order to stem the flow of blood. You have been destroying the “mainstream” Marvel Universe since this millennium began, and now that it is in an almost unrecognizable shambles, you are now trying to keep it afloat.

There is an old fable which might help me make my point, fellow writers. This fable is about a man and his son taking their donkey to market. They pass through a number of towns along the way, and as they go each set of townspeople has their own ideas on how the duo should get to their destination. One set of townspeople chastises the father for making his son walk, so he sets the boy on the donkey’s back. The people in the next town accuse the boy of being a sluggard for letting his father walk while he rides. So the father takes the boy down and rides the donkey himself.

The people in the next town say the man should be ashamed of making his son walk while he rides the donkey in ease. The man then puts his son before him on the donkey and they both ride on to the next town. Here the people have a novel idea: both father and son should truss up the donkey and carry it to market, sparing it the long walk.

So the father and son do just that. They tie up the donkey’s ankles, tie him to a stick, and begin carrying him on the last leg of their journey. But the donkey is unhappy with being carried like a dead game animal and begins to thrash and kick. The father and son lose hold of the animal on a bridge, which the donkey falls off of. On impact with the river bank, the animal dies, and now the two have no donkey to sell at the market.

The point of this fable, fellow writers, is that in trying to please everyone, the father and son satisfied no one, least of all themselves. You have done the exact same thing with the characters Stan Lee and his friends gave you, trying to please the talking heads and other “experts” who say they espouse the ideals of the New Millennium. The fans outside these circles have not been impressed with your stories and have subsequently demonstrated their distaste by ignoring your “mainstream” comics, which have suffered the most under this new regime.

But merging the “mainstream” Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Marvel Universe will not save you from the coming crisis of storytelling. If anything, it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Interest may pick up for a time after you make this merger, but eventually, as you pander to the whims of fads and trends, you will cross a line that will make many of your fans lose interest in your 616 comics completely. I cannot guess what that line would be for the multitude of fans, but merging the “mainstream” Marvel Universe with an alternate Universe of any kind would be a good place to start for me.

As I see things, you have a number of problems with your “mainstream” Marvel Universe which you are trying to rectify through Secret Wars and this “All-New, All-Different” fiasco-in-the-making.   These problems are as follows:

 

1. Constant wars and apocalypses occurring semi-monthly in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe.

I have mentioned this before, fellow writers. You are destroying too much over and over again. Your apocalyptic storylines and superhero wars are merely rehashed ideas with different heroes or villains thrown into the fight. You have, essentially, put Ragnarok, Doomsday, and the Apocalypse on repeat.

And your readers are sick of it.

 

2. Adding new characters that get a great deal of “screen time” at the expense of the original heroes and villains, or adding new heroes who take on the mantles of original heroes.

Sure, fans like Kamala Khan. But giving her the codename Miss Marvel is foolish. For one thing, it makes her appear weak, as though she needs a PR boost from Carol Danvers. You do not seem to think anyone would like Khan if she did not have a famous super heroine name attached to her. Kate Bishop had the same problems; you did not seem to think she could float her own boat until you finally gave her the codename Hawkeye. (Or you were trying to replace the original Master Archer with her. Clint Barton, Kate Bishop – their names are too similar for this not to be your reason for giving her his codename.)

At least Patriot got to be himself, through and through, bad and good both.

Worse, for a girl who seems to be eager to join the Avengers, you instead have Kamala fumbling around and getting picked on by Falcon and the other Avengers. Where the Avengers used to support and encourage new members, you now have them tearing Kamala down for being overeager in a fight.

Also, Falcon is still wearing Steve’s suit and using his shield. Do you even have a Falcon in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe anymore, fellow writers? Or has Sam hung up his wings and title for good? If so, that is a real shame, and it means that the first African-American superhero has fallen on very hard times. He can no longer be respected for himself but only because he wears Steve Rogers’ uniform.

You have been giving the fans castor oil, in these instances, under the guise of giving them wine. We are not amused, fellow writers. Not in the slightest.

 

3. Constant killing of the characters with little to no rest in between.

You killed Hawkeye once in two cascading storylines, fellow writers. You have dismantled the Vision so many times I have lost count; Wanda Maximoff has been killed at least twice; Jean Grey has been killed seemingly hundreds of times in different storylines; Wolverine has died many times, etcetera ad infinitum.

No wonder the heroes go crazy so often, and no wonder your readership for the “mainstream” Marvel Universe has dropped. You cannot, it appears, write a story for it without killing at least one hero in the process of telling the tale. These days, you have also begun killing off entire teams of heroes, not to mention hordes, multitudes, and bucket loads of civilians. Have Marvel’s 616 heroes become so irresponsible that they no longer think to evacuate innocent bystanders? I do not buy that idea at all!

Where is the sanity, reason, or entertainment in all this? You can actually tell a story without killing fifty people and a superhero, fellow writers. If you want, I could write a story for you which would do that. So could several thousand other fans – if you were willing to ask them for ideas, instead of pleading with your desensitized focus groups to tell you “what they want next.” Most of us do not enjoy stories which are “really noir, really dark, and at the end everybody dies – again.”

 

4. Mixing and matching romantic couples.

Cyclops and Emma Frost, Wasp and… another guy, Hawkeye’s many different dates – the list is endless, fellow writers, and beyond confusing. Tell me, have you ever read any piece of fiction which had King Arthur married to a woman other than Guinevere? Have you ever heard of Robin Hood loving someone other than Maid Marion? How about Ulysses/Odysseus being married to someone other than Penelope?

No? Good. Then we are on the same page. We, the fans, do not want to see Iron Man dally with the Wasp, Carol Danvers, or She-Hulk. What we want is the continuity of the old romantic pairs we once enjoyed: Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne; Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter; Scott Summers and Jean Grey; Ororo Monroe and T’Challa, Clint Barton and Bobbi Morse, and so on.

We do not want angst, we do not want guilt trips, and we do not want love affairs that run along willy-nilly with no purpose or reason. We are sick, sick, sick, of it; we miss the old Romantic Reels you had running for so long in the comics and which could be relied on to provide markers for your stories. Without these firm tethers, the “mainstream” Marvel Universe has slipped off its axis and has gone spinning off into oblivion.

 

5. Turning “left into right, day into night, wrong into right” until not only the heroes but the readers are thoroughly confused.

So killing a HYDRA agent who is holding a crowd of civilians hostage is bad, but Ultimate Clint Barton’s murder of Ultimate Natasha Romanoff is all right. “Mainstream” Marvel heroes naturally feel bad when they have to take a life while Ultimate Marvel heroes can kill anyone for any reason without losing sleep.

This is foolish and stupid, fellow writers. Cap killed Baron Heinrich Zemo in the original comics – not directly or with intent to get revenge, simply to protect himself and Rick Jones. Understandably, no Marvel hero wants to kill. No one who becomes a soldier truly wants to kill, either. If a soldier or an Avenger does desire that, then something is as wrong with them as it is with Sabertooth.

That does not mean that a hero or a soldier may not have to kill someone in the line of duty. But you have all been chasing your tails down the sewers for so long that you have trammeled your imaginations in these areas. Your stories all transform into nails that you must hammer into place, rather than artifacts which you can chisel and carve in unique, inspiring ways.

This is another major problem you have with the 616 Marvel Universe. Your “no-win” scenarios are recycled over and over again and – no one wins. Yay…???

 

6. Constant rewriting of the heroes’ histories.

So now you have rewritten “mainstream” Pietro and Wanda Maximoff’s history so that they are not Magneto’s children, huh? Just like you revised Sam Wilson’s history so that he had been a gangster in his youth and added another brother to the Summers’ family.

You did not have to do that with any of these characters, fellow writers. You could have left the twins as Magneto’s children, but made a new character, who somehow came to think that he/she might be related to the Master of Magnetism, only to learn he/she is not. This would be a great tactic to use instead of twisting the Maximoffs’ history for a third time.

You could have had Sam mentor someone out of the gang life and into the superhero gig, or given Vulcan a strong, brotherly friendship with Cyclops that eventually ended up like Magneto and Charles Xavier’s friendship.

Instead, you rewrote the characters’ histories and threw everyone a curveball, which leaves fans like me scratching their heads and saying, “Why did the writers do this?” It is sooooo stupid!

 

7. Giving the heroes psychotic “dark sides” they can barely control.

I have had my issues with this for a long time, fellow writers, probably since Professor X’s “dark side” took form in the 1990s. Of course Professor X has a dark side! Everyone has a “dark side,” fellow writers. You do, I do, and the dude up the street has a “dark side”!

That does not make Marvel’s heroes into villains who wear benevolent masks. That makes them better than the villains, because they have chosen to be better than the Dark. Marvel’s heroes know they have darkness in them. They know they have weaknesses in their characters. They accept that. And then they fight their weaknesses, usually at the same time they are fighting the villains who have become one with the Dark inside and outside of themselves.

We fans do not want “heroes” who lose control of themselves at the drop of a hat. We want heroes who keep control of themselves no matter how hard things get, or who redeem themselves when they actually do succumb to their character weaknesses and faults.

–

Look now at the harvest you have reaped: disinterest in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe – the storyline that gave you the multibillion dollar company you are now riding in. You have failed us, the fans, more spectacularly than most other companies would. Do you not realize that you are making your living not with paper and fantasies, fellow writers, but on the hopes and dreams of the fans of the characters you are charged with protecting and strengthening?

The sad fact is that you have not done that part of your job very well of late, fellow writers. Or a great number of you have not. You have pandered to the whims of “popular opinion,” put your imaginations out to pasture in the fields of obliteration, and helped to propagate an urge to destroy in a great many people. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

What do you think the reaction to your misconceived storylines will be?

From where I sit, it does not appear that it will be a pretty reaction. If the 616 Marvel Universe evaporates or is merged with an alternate storyline permanently, then many fans will be greatly displeased and upset. Interest in your comics will plummet, and after that – well, there may not be a Marvel Comics company after a few years.

I suppose this puts me in the position of being a herald sent ahead to give you warning in time for you to change course of your own accord, before the army arrives and you are laid under a mountain of angry letters in your ivory tower.

If that is indeed the case, then as a herald, I have a few suggestions which may help you avoid such a siege before it starts. The customer is not always right, I know. But I do have some ideas which might – might – help you to avoid letting this “donkey” you are leading to market fall off the bridge.

Those, however, will be in my next letter. Until that time – Excelsior!

Yours sincerely,

The Mithril Guardian

Secret Wars and the “All-New, All-Different” Marvel Line-Up, Part 2 (OKAY TO PRINT)

Dear Marvel Managers/Editors/Writers,

In my previous letter, fellow writers, I detailed some of the problems you have made and are making with the stories set in the “mainstream,” or 616, Marvel Universe. In this letter I will list some suggestions which I think may open avenues that may help alleviate this writing crisis you are suffering.

Hopefully, these suggestions of mine will be of use in preventing the merging of the “mainstream” Marvel Universe with your Ultimate Marvel Universe. If I must “get used to disappointment,” then so be it. I am but a humble consumer, so what you do with your products is completely outside of my control. But I will not be consuming in any way, shape, or form, anything related to the “All-New, All-Different, Barf-Inducing” Universe you plan to create. However, my recommendations for future stories in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe are as follows:

Suggestion Number One is that you restore the Marvel Universes to their rightful places. I would say you will profit more from a restored and rejuvenated “mainstream” Marvel Universe rather than a merger of the “mainstream” and Ultimate Marvel Universes. By “restored and rejuvenated” I mean that the Avengers, X-Men, and other Marvel heroes of the 616 realm would be better off if they were returned to their original mission and character parameters.

This does not mean returning to the outlooks, costumes, or technology of the 1960s. What I mean by “restoration” is that the heroes should have restored confidence in themselves and in the values for which they fight. As Tony Stark says in “Avengers’ Worlds” in the Avengers Assemble television series, the Avengers are an ideal as much as they are a team. The same goes for the X-Men and the other Marvel heroes. They are not fighting for themselves, for personal glory, or simply to fight. They are fighting to protect innocent civilians from those who would do them great bodily harm.

As for the “rejuvenation,” it is helpful to remember that you deal with the fantastic, fellow writers. Time passes for us, writers and fans alike, it is true. But time need not have any noticeable effect on Marvel’s heroes and villains. They are, after all, the archetypes of human nature. Good and bad, human nature has not changed in some time, and it will not be changing in the near future.

So, for me, the history of the characters is fine as it is, or at least as it was before the latest rewrites. If people want to complain that Norman Osborn, Doc Ock, and Red Skull should all be pushing up daisies by now, then they have a right to do that. But for myself, I do not care how old any of the heroes or villains are. I only care that they remain the heroes I have always known and loved – or, in the case of the villains, disliked. I think future and current fans will agree with that assessment as well.

Marvel fans do not need our heroes to be made younger every ten or twenty years, as DC rejuvenates its characters. We are, actually, quite content to have our old friends keep us company from youth to age. King Arthur, Odysseus/Ulysses, and Robin Hood have walked with untold generations of people from youth to death without aging a day, as it were. I think Cap, Iron Man, Professor X, and the other Marvel heroes deserve that privilege as well. They have earned it many times over.

Suggestion Number Two would be that you consider turning away from these constant, universe-ending storylines. You can entertain people just as well with stories where the heroes must save a country, a world, or one family alone, fellow writers. Your predecessors did not have Ragnarok occurring every second Thursday for the simple reason that they did not need to. Neither do you need to do it.

It is not because “times were simpler” in the 1960s that Stan Lee and his friends chose to avoid destroying the world/galaxy/universe every weekend. The 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s were as tumultuous and fraught with peril as the world is today. Stakes need to be raised with each story in a series, yes. But there is a vast difference between raising the stakes and embracing anarchy, which is what you have given fans these last twenty years or so.

If you want some ideas for a good story where the world will not end, fellow writers, then I would suggest you read the newspaper or a history book for inspiration. Or you could talk to veterans of a war – any war. Try talking to the survivors of natural disasters, or other such things. Heavens, you can even ask the children in cancer centers and hospitals what stories they might like to read!

Better yet, ask Marvel fans what kind of stories they would like to see, or find and read their fan fiction. I and other fans all have ideas for stories for our favorite Marvel heroes. And there is no law (to the best of my knowledge) which says that these fans cannot help you write stories for their favorite characters. If other franchises are willing to buy “spec scripts” for their series, then I see no reason why you could not encourage Marvel fans to send in ideas or “spec scripts.”

Perhaps you could even set up writing competitions where fans can send in story ideas or “scripts” on a certain set of dates or for one weekend. These “windows of opportunity” for the fans need not last long; you could accept the ideas and stories from fans over the course of a day or two, and then close the event until the same date next month/next year. Doing this would give you the time you need to process the ideas sent in and to ask fans for clarification of their suggestions/stories – or even to ask them if they would like a job at Marvel.

Fellow writers, the truth of the matter is that if you want to know what we desire, then, you simply need to ask us. Not a handful of us, picked from a certain area to make a focus group of twenty to a hundred, but all of us in a controlled environment, such as the writing competition I mentioned above.   In this way we would each get our say – or our letter, as the case may be – and you would have a better idea of what kind of stories we would like to see. It would also help you to avert storyline disasters like this imminent merger of the “mainstream” and Ultimate Marvel Universes.

This brings me to Suggestion Number Three which regards the addition of “modern” characters to the roster of our old favorites – not to mention giving them the codenames of original Marvel characters – in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe.

I would also like to say that, if you truly wish to have a black Captain America, then please do it in an alternate Universe, not in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe. Yes, I know what you have been “secretly” trying to do with Sam Wilson. It is the same thing Henry Peter Gyrich did when he reduced the Avengers’ roster to seven and made them add Falcon to the team. The Avengers would gladly have accepted Falcon on his own merits, but Gyrich wanted them to be politically correct or some other such biased nonsense. So he forced Falcon to join the team.

Sam was understandably angry about that, and he was right to be angry. Because then, as now, forcing someone to do, say, or choose something in order to win political points is wrong. Then as now forcing Sam to be where he does not want to be damages him, it does not help him.

Sam Wilson, in the “mainstream” Marvel Universe, has the honor of being the very first African-American superhero in comic-dom. He deserves to retain that distinction in the 616 Universe, not to be shoehorned into the 616 Captain America uniform and role. What you have done to him is you have stolen his position and pride from him, as much as Gyrich did in the 1970s. This is not only highly unfair and derogatory to the Falcon, fellow writers, but it is also demeaning to his fans (me among them) as well. He and his fans deserve better treatment from you and a great deal more respect than you have shown to him and to us.

Besides which, mixing and matching heroes and their costumes is proven folly. No one liked having Clint Barton or Bucky Barnes in the Captain America uniform. And neither character truly wanted it. They – and we – prefer to have our “mainstream” favorites retain their original identities, characteristics, and suits. We prefer that 616 Steve Rogers remain Captain America and 616 Sam Wilson remain the Falcon. Do what you like with them in alternate Universes (you have already proven that you like to “play” with the heroes there) but leave the 616 Captain America and the 616 Falcon as they are! In fact, please consider leaving all the original 616 characters as they are.

This also goes for new characters like Kamala Khan as well. And I would note that she would do better as a character if she did not have to live up to Carol Danvers’ old codename. She is, from what I have heard, a widely liked character, and she therefore merits the ability to stand on her own two feet – not on Carol Danvers’ shoulders.

Any other new characters you wish to add to the “mainstream” Marvel Universe should also be able to walk the walk and talk the talk as themselves, not as “replacements” for heroes who have “moved on” to other codenames. As you might have noticed, “replacing” original characters with new ones is more likely to anger fans than to entertain them. Also with regard to Kamala, new young heroes would do better if they had more experienced heroes standing with them, encouraging them, and watching their back.

I am not advocating that new Marvel heroes become sidekicks to current Marvel heroes. That is DC Comics’ shtick, and they can have it. But as you know, previous Marvel writers had Storm and Wolverine mentor Kitty Pryde during her early years with the X-Men. Both characters grew and learned as they taught, molded, and guided the twelve year old into her role as an X-Man. It is very sad to me that other new heroes, like Kamala Khan and Kate Bishop, have been denied that chance. This should not be the case, fellow writers, and it would be better if you could rectify this situation.

As to adding new teenage or twenty-odd year old heroes to the X-Men, the Avengers, and Heroes for Hire, et al, you might try adding one or two characters at a time to the team roster.   This is how Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch were introduced to the Avengers, and it is easier for readers to keep track of one or two new characters – three at the most – rather than chasing around after five or six “newbies” throughout a single story. If it worked for your predecessors, then I see nothing preventing you from following through on this idea. Choose established fact over deluded fiction – what a concept!

Suggestion Number Four covers two issues I have: romantic relationships in the Marvel Universe, and the friendship between superheroes and superhero teams.

First and foremost, can you puh-lease stop the romantic rampage around the May Pole some of our heroes have been going through these last twenty years? I can handle Tony having a different girlfriend every other year, or Natasha finding a new boyfriend a year or two after she and her last man decided they could not get along. I can even handle Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff dating, for crying out loud!

But as I said in my previous letter, King Arthur always has Guinevere, Robin Hood always has Maid Marion, and Ulysses/Odysseus always has Penelope. So why can Cyclops not keep Jean Gray; Steve Rogers keep Sharon Carter; Hank Pym keep Janet van Dyne; Clint Barton keep Bobbi Morse, etc., keep their romances together?

It does not make life interesting – for our heroes or for us, fellow writers – if we are always trying to keep straight which boys and girls go together. We fans like stability, and for writers who pride themselves on keeping Marvel’s continuity flowing smoothly from now until Doomsday, you have not held to this coda in the romantic aspect of the 616 Universe at all.

I am curious as to why you have written the 616 X-Men and 616 Avengers as enemies. The “mainstream” Avengers are on good terms with the Fantastic Four, Heroes for Hire, and SHIELD. For all I know, they may also be friends with superhero teams Alpha Flight, Big Hero 6, and the Winter Guard.

On the other hand, you have had the 616 X-Men retreating from contact with outside teams and people. I see no reason for either this xenophobic exclusion or for any enmity between the ”mainstream” X-Men and Avengers, especially since 616 X-Men Beast, Wolverine, Quicksilver, and Storm have done time wearing an A instead of an X.

I suggest that these two 616 teams should learn to coexist and even rely on each other in times of danger in the future. If the “mainstream” X-Men have a problem and need help, for example, then they could easily contact the 616 Avengers and ask that they lend a hand. What are the Avengers going to do, say no? They have sworn to help everybody who needs or asks for their assistance.

There is no reason I can see why the “mainstream” Avengers would deny aid to the 616 X-Men when they needed help. Members of both teams are good friends with each other in the “mainstream” Universe, despite working for different superhero units/armies. Therefore, it makes sense that the teams would follow the patterns of their members and learn to get along.

Instead of tearing them apart fellow writers, or forcing them to merge (I know about the Unity Squad) you can – and I think you should – allow the “mainstream” X-Men and Avengers to be friends and allies. They are the biggest superhero teams on the planet. It only makes sense that they should learn to coexist with each other. The battles/wars between the teams have led only to the pain and destruction the Avenger and the X-Men have promised to prevent, and it is out of character for them to choose to fight like this, I think.

For Suggestion Number Five, I recommend that you stop having the heroes feel guilty about justly killing an enemy who would not otherwise be stopped. While making this concession to necessity (and reality), the heroes could steadfastly maintain a policy of not committing murder. Should this policy be violated in a major way, they can quite rightly put any hero who breaks that code on parole at the least, behind bars at the most. (Deadpool would certainly qualify as a ‘poster boy’ for the latter category.) Other areas where right and wrong have been “confused” and “made gray” should also be straightened out, fellow writers, if it is at all possible. Your fans will definitely thank you for it!

Suggestion Number Six: As I have said in previous letters, fellow writers, if you feel that you must change the histories of the original characters Stan Lee and his friends introduced to us, then please be kind enough to do so in an alternate Marvel Universe! The “mainstream” Marvel Universe is your primary bread and butter for the simple reason that it is the one fans – old and new – rely on to understand your alternate universes.

If a particular alternate Marvel Universe tickles a fan’s fancy, then he can enjoy that one in addition to or in preference over the original Marvel Universe. Most of your fans, however, have some kind of respect for the “mainstream” Marvel Universe and use it as a touchstone to navigate your other comic book worlds. Take away the platform of the 616 Marvel Universe, and all your alternate universes crumble to dust. I think you are well aware of that, fellow writers, but your current plans mean that this fact bears repeating – again.

Suggestion Number Seven is this: I mentioned at the beginning of this letter. Should you choose to restore and rejuvenate the “mainstream” Marvel Universe rather than merge it with the Ultimate Marvel Universe, fellow writers, I think you would profit greatly if you choose to restore the heroes’ confidence not only in themselves but in the ideals they fight for.

An ideal is not a fiction, fantasy, or anything so intangible. Nor is it an ideology that people will die for. The uniting ideal of the Marvel Heroes is the protection of innocent civilians from aggressors who would otherwise do them mortal harm. For that reason Marvel’s heroes take a great deal of punishment without looking for a reward of any kind for their service. They deserve to fight for that ideal again, with clear consciences and a right understanding of who and what they are.

Fighting to protect others is certainly not going to be easy, and it will not always be fun. The heroes will make mistakes, they will have accidents, and they will get hurt. But they will know what they are fighting for. They will recognize that they have darkness in them, weaknesses and faults that they will occasionally have to face head on.

But they will know that they can control the darkness within them, that they can choose to reject it. That they can fight it as they battle their physical adversaries. Once again, they will know that they are heroes. That they can, if they fall and fail, redeem themselves with enough effort and determination. And we, the fans, as well as you, fellow writers, will know and benefit from their insight as well.

These are my suggestions with regard to the direction in which I think you would be better served taking the “mainstream” Marvel Comics. Since these letters will be published on my blog – thoughtsontheedgeofforever.wordpress.com – once I have sent them to you, along with the email addresses of your separate writing departments, others may have better suggestions which augment and/or improve on my own.

As a last note, fellow writers, please take the time to reconsider your current story trajectory. If you take that road, you will fail and fall. A better road might be the one I have taken pains to suggest. Your current plan will end in your comic book empire’s story-telling collapse if you do not turn away from it.

That is not something I want, fellow writers. If I did, or if I was indifferent to the “mainstream” Marvel Universe’s survival – not to mention the survival of Marvel as a company – then I would not have written this letter to you, nor used my precious time and breath to give you my opinion.

Do me at least this one favor, fellow writers: please make these letters worth my time and energy, for your own sakes as well as mine.

Yours sincerely,

The Mithril Guardian

Stories Matter – Why Marvel Comics’ “Secret Wars” Is Not Marvel-Us

‘I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?’ (From J. R. R. Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories, 1939, courtesy of www.interestingliterature.com)

I do not know how or why, but I have always been enchanted by stories. They are, to me, perhaps more than most other physical things in life. Stories are my biggest passion.   There are days I could forego lunch, a trip out of doors, or sleep if it meant a chance to read or see or hear a good story, which sometimes makes me wonder if I am not flaming crazy.

The above quote from J. R. R. Tolkien, taken from a post on Interesting Literature, is something I like to read to remind myself that I am not, in fact, crazy. I just happen to really like stories. Why? Well, why are some people passionate about surfing? Why are some people happiest while they are wood-working? Why are other people almost transported to another world while they are doing math?

We each have our talents, our passions. Stories and their characters are mine.

Escape was a word abused in Tolkien’s day as much as in ours. Then as now stories – whether they were fairy tales or great epics – were sniffed at by those who thought they had no worth.   “Oh, stories are good for little children,” they would – and will – snicker, “but once you are an adult, you don’t need them anymore.”

Uh-huh…. And when I reach adulthood, I can stop eating my veggies, right? I think several dozen fitness experts and dietitians would have an apoplectic fit if I pulled that stunt.

The thing I am trying to say, readers, and I may not be saying it well, is that stories matter. The characters in them matter. They always have and they always will, at least until time ends. Stories are avenues of escape.

But escape from what? Reality? Hardly. I may be addicted to stories, but I can tell you that they have not numbed me to reality in the least.

Stories are ways to escape the prisons forged out of despair, hatred, loneliness, and other evils. There are unfriendly things we have to deal with in this world if we are to survive it and discover our destiny. No one sniffs at the working mother whose husband buys her a ticket to the spa so she can get some down time, or the family that heads out to the park for an afternoon to kick a soccer ball around and enjoy each other’s company.

Yet begin talking about a story you enjoy, and you are suddenly accused of trying to escape reality.

I am no psychiatrist, no scientist, no sort of professional or “expert” whatsoever. But I know stories. I know they matter. I know because they are what make me happy, the same way a surfer is happy when he or she is out there shooting the curl. The same way a carpenter is glad when he planes a piece of wood or finishes a chair. The same way a mathematician receives untold pleasure in figuring out or making new numerical and formulaic puzzles. This is why I post about stories so much.

And this is why I have a problem with the direction the Marvel franchise is headed.

Marvel Comics is currently in the middle of some insane storyline called “Secret Wars.” The many alternate Marvel universes have collided with the “mainstream” – 616 – Marvel Universe which Stan Lee and his fellows created back in the 1960s. 616 Iron Man/Tony Stark and Nick Fury have been transformed into villains and have helped to bring this calamity about. Several characters from all the alternate universes are now struggling to survive alongside the 616 characters. The entire universe is in shambles. To top it off, Marvel is hyping an “All-New, All-Different” Marvel Comics line up for the next year (or more) with the roster for the Avengers completely rearranged – Miles Morales will be Spider-Man, Sam Wilson will still be filling in for Cap, Jane Foster will still be swinging Mjolnir and using the name Thor, and by now I cannot recall the other changes Marvel said were coming out.

I do not know who is alive in the Marvel Universe anymore, who is dead, which characters are wearing which superhero identities. My information is fragmented and despair-filled. The Marvel Comics currently in progress are not the Marvel Comics I enjoyed or, I think, that I could ever enjoy given who and what I am. In an alternate reality, I might. But not in this one, and this reality and the one that follows are the only ones that count.

Marvel knows that they can have all sorts of characters wear, say, Spider-Man’s costume, but the only character fans really want to see in the suit is Peter Parker. They know they can put anyone in the Captain America suit, but the only one who anyone truly wants to see holding the shield and standing up against evil is Steve Rogers. They know what works and they know what does not work. Why they have done what they are doing I cannot say. I only know that it has to stop, before irreparable damage is done to the characters they supposedly love as much as we fans do and, more to the point, which they are charged with protecting and strengthening.

They cannot be allowed to continue down this road, readers. If they do, there will be very little of what is good and right left in Marvel Comics for those who follow us in the near future. The films and cartoons based on their characters will suffer similar fates. For the comics are the roots of these newer forms of the tales and once the roots are poisoned the whole tree will die.

But why do I care about this, when there are so many more important things to think about, so many other calamities hitting the world and society? Well, why did Stan Lee care about this?

Why? Why did Stan Lee care? After the Second World War, all the comic book characters that were churned out for the U.S. soldiers and the kids back home in America were shelved. The comic book companies stopped producing stories for them; they started telling new tales with new characters instead. Though he may have lasted longer than some war-era comic book characters like Prince Namor and the original Human Torch, Cap was eventually put away as well.

Stan Lee saw it all happen. He watched Cap get shelved, along with all the other great characters made during World War II, after he had established his footing in the comic book world. He saw Cap, Bucky, Prince Namor, and others get set up on a high shelf by his bosses, because Cap and the others were “not needed anymore.”

Hah. For someone who is “not needed anymore,” Steve Rogers is awfully popular today, is he not, readers? Where would we (or Marvel, for that matter) be if Stan Lee had left Cap to collect dust on the shelves of Timely Comics, before he owned it and renamed it Marvel Comics?

Stan Lee liked Steve Rogers as much as any of us ever have. He brought Cap back because he knew we were always going to need him. He knew the suit did not make Captain America. Steve Rogers made Captain America. So Stan Lee made sure Steve could go on fighting for the nation he loved, inspiring generations of Marvel fans – outside and inside of the U.S. – to keep on fighting for what is right and true and good in this flawed, chaotic world.

He knew we would always need a rallying point, a character so thoroughly American that he could never consider giving up, not even for a moment. In the Avengers’ fourth issue, Stan Lee reinstated Steve Rogers in the fiction of the world. And we have reaped the benefits not only of Cap’s determination and strength but also of Stan Lee’s foresight and understanding of why we need great stories and great heroes.

And yet we are letting Marvel’s current hierarchy and their writers toss Steve around like a yo-yo.

Marvel knows I am displeased with the way they have taken their stories.  I have made no secret of it, sending them various notes showing my displeasure and suggesting how they might do things better since November/December of 2014.  But I am only one voice. I have no power with them, beyond what I have done.  They can, if they choose, ignore me easily. Odds are good that they will ignore me.

But they cannot ignore more than one voice raised against them in protest of their treatment of their characters.  They cannot ignore fans who tell them, “This stops here, and it stops NOW.”

You want to know something really funny about all this, readers?  Thinking about this post, about how to try and get my point across, I suddenly remembered Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  I recalled Steve Rogers speaking into a SHIELD microphone in the Triskelion, revealing to the World Security Council and the clean SHIELD agents that HYDRA had grown up right under their noses, and was planning to conquer the world through the agency that was supposed to protect humanity.

The part I specifically remembered was Steve saying, “The price of freedom is high.  It always has been.  And it’s a price I’m willing to pay.  And if I’m the only one then so be it.

“But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”

So maybe I am the only one who cares about what Marvel messes with in their comic book universe.  Maybe I am the only one in the world who cares about the characters as they were written and who wants to see that foundation built up, not torn down.  And if I am the only one who cares… then so be it.  I do CARE!!!

But, then again…maybe I’m not the only one.   I do not know.  I cannot know.

The U.S. Marines have a saying, “Is this the hill you want to die on?”  Not particularly. But if it is the hill I am forced to fight on, do not expect me to fight by halves.  A fight is all or nothing.  And if I have to die on this hill, standing beside the river of truth, well, you know – there are much worse hills out there on which to die.

So bring it on, Marvel.  I am willing to fight.

Are you?

The Mithril Guardian