Evertying about Rebirth is a mess. I put up a video to some friends talking about things I didn’t like and I didn’t even get all of it right. I was mad because Snyder was going to be on Batman proper with King writing, and I just wanted anyone else writing. But not that’s only the REBIRTH ONE SHOT issue. Which is good I guess. But if they could of made this thing more confusing I’d like to see how.
I know I should hold back my opinons until the books are out. But them doing all these dumb things with it really colors how I feel going in.
are you kidding this is amazing
this is a magificent distillation of every metanarrative about reboots and retcons and also fiction fictitiously inspiring similar fiction, choking on itself as loudly as possible
this is a cellphone recording of grant morrison eating a huge meal, only played in reverse so you see him vomiting out every course
this is the truest form of the Bleed, a multiverse suffering from irreparable internal injury
I look forward to reading the Wikipedia summary of all this silly shit in a few years.
I have been reading Berserk over the last few days. I mean I have seen the Japanese anime as a youth but I did not expect a woman to masturbate to the memory of burning people alive as a child. I knew it would be rapey but the most rape. Filthy and vile, incomprehensibly violent imagery illustrated incomprehensibly violently and pornographically lurid and complacently indulgently. More dragonball-y hentai than expected. Unsettling. Very compelling, have read thousands of pages. Undeniable visual accomplishment.
Berserk is one of my all-time favorite things, but it’s really hard to recommend because it’s difficult to describe how much sexual assault there is in it while also convincing people that it’s worth reading.
well that and how hard it is to find some volumes.
Blue Spring is great. Also literally one of the least popular comcis in america, selling something like 5000 copies over a few years despite national distribution and the hypetrain surrounding Tekkonkinkreet
Farnese is the best character in Berserk, yes.
There’s also a movie that’s p good with great soundtrack to boot.
more dumb superhero stuff: marvel just turned a character created by two jewish men as an answer to Nazism during ww2 into a double-agent of a Nazi-based organization, like not “he is now” theyre trying to pass off captain America as having always been a member of Hydra and the creative team has responded to the outrage from their fans + fans in the jewish community by basically laughing and saying “but we love the character”
Well as many articles have pointed out, this is a plot twist that has happened multiple times. Part of it is rooted in the idea that by all right Captain America is the vision of a perfect Nazi if you just shift his morals one way.
Also, though, the problem is the state of comics today. A one off or two issues buried in a run with this ‘story’ is just a weird aside and playing with a weird idea.
Now it’s a minimum of 6 issues, decompressed, with a new number one, creative staff, and advertising push. I think that’s where the problem is. The big two aren’t making comics, they’re constantly trying to generate ‘events’ and ‘buzz’
But I think you’re pretty spot on with the problem. The heart, the idea, the speed of what spawned all of this is pretty much lost at this point.
the worst part for me is how they act like this doesn’t affect the characters legacy and value. ive seen kids on twitter like - they’re contemplating getting rid of books that helped them get through mental health issues and serious stuff in their lives because this just kind of invalidates cap as a whole
I mean. Ok. That sucks. But they’re so far down this hole I doubt they care.
I wonder if the MacGuffin that the issue reiterates on a number of times that has reality warping and time travelling properties, and that the Red Skull has used in the past, will have any bearing with the rest of this story arc, of which we’ve only seen the initial chapter.
something something New 52 something something Joker something
I don’t read superhero comix
It’s cute that DC are still really pissed at Alan Moore.
In the rare moments where I feel communicative and keep thinking about dumb Marvel superhero comics, I’d rather try to discuss other stuff, but everything in such a field seems to be impenetrable, incommunicable, untraceable. I’m stuck in a certain state of knowing in-story nonsense from skimming slices of the past six years.
Like the impending Vote Loki precarious status (versus the past few years of the character’s repeated self-sabotage and redemption arcs against an internalized status quo and legacy of self-destructive, ingrained, hostile behaviours) or how in all those company-wide slices team / C-list characters and supporting cast have been making casual on-panel queer progress (Wiccan / Hulkling have a lot of pages for two gay teens) but I can identify all of incidental acknowledgement of two trans characters + two genderfluid shapeshifters (Angela’s girlfriend Sera and a Moloid in the Future Foundation, said Loki and Xavin the lesbian rebellious Skrull in the Runaways) and how none of this is near any “main” books or legacies. Maybe even try to muse on and ask what the hell is with the ceaselessly-subverted and non-functional American woman leader of the international militarized espionage agency. Probably instead I would just relate how frustrating it is to try and read runs versus multiple annular internal crossover climactic events.
Instead there’s a new memetroversy I’ve also read snippets and recent build-up towards, I guess?
Here's a brain dump of a few recent stories of melodramatic context.
The current hook for a new series surrounding Steve Rogers starts off in how the long-term mid-tier superhero Falcon, black Captain America supporting cast member Sam Wilson, picked up the personage of Captain America because the iconic one was de-powered, and with books constantly highlighting casual racism and presuming the cultural subconscious noticed this at all amongst general diversity changes. In a familiar and obtuse fashion this role was quickly thrown off by a terrible cross-promotion storyline event, which explicitly and directly inverted a broad cast of hero / villain moralities (to represent America specifically as self-serving and self-righteous?). In the following escape from that into a civilization-threatening melodramatic arc a piece of continuity was brought up by the (daughter of the) Red Skull: about a previous incident of a reality-shifting MacGuffin changing said superhero's history into being a planted stereotypical family-abandoning thug.
Then after another (genuine and fun) event specifically produces the title [Captain America: Sam Wilson] and the story continues to serve and invoke with mixing unsubtle light anti-neoconservative screeds with curious blaxploitation. Turning Captain America into a werewolf (again), having the Serpent Society serve as amoral libertarian big business (again) that actively invokes Fox News and Too Big to Fail, etc.
Then there was another event just this spring, specifically regarding the same reality-warping MacGuffin re-shaping histories to rehabilitate many people to offset gigantic amounts of destruct and prison break-outs (which is a whole different unapproachable kettle of world-threatening superheroics status quo). This event re-empowers Steve Rogers, iconic Captain America, to do superheroics again in his own book after a year and a half. It’s also the most recent appearance of the Red Skull, who literally stole the dead Xavier’s brain to gain immense mind-warping power three years ago and directly alludes to using Steve Rogers soon- and this fact isn’t mentioned at all in the current big story here.
On the face of it, here in [Captain America: Steve Rogers] using a familiar twist with a character with more conscious legacy and weight in the internet age was handled miserably: directly presented as a last-page cliffhanger, when storytelling and continuity are buried in the medium under cross-referencing dense monoliths of events and very specific cultural caches of legacy. The company / serial-storytelling kayfabe means the authors have been very persnickety on clarifying anything in hopes people might actually buy and (hate-)read adjascent stories. It does have greyscale flashbacks with individual-focused red highlights, the Red Skull presented as successfully rebuilding a fascist militia HYDRA without those powers by appealing to reactionary fears of minorities and isolationist nationalism, and some supporting characters bring up absurd historical story details that have been discarded by all but continuity buffs and writers over time.
(how prophetic the Squirrel Girl series would be…)
I mean, this is all not of the greatest composed writing and is clearly more for cheap clicks and purchases, yes: I can’t really say I’ve found following along more than amusing or fulfilling to read this over more deliberate whimsy or pretension comics. There’s probably also better-written, critical summaries by others on what I just listed out above, and arguments that no context excuses anything here anyway. The absurd facts of how this is obscure set-up for a controversial temporary trick for some unsubtle political storytelling are just lingering in my head. Marketable event scale and politick with lesser titles just scatters even clearly conscious attempts at storytelling and makes cheap shots nightmarish, regardless or in self-defiance of potential political commentary:
Just finished a bunch of marvel’s events.
The big ones from the past 10 years. Also read jojo till the last totally released arc.
You mean ‘Japan’? The manga about refunding Japan in postapocalyptic Barcelona? Yeah, that one was… a thing. I still find amusing they do all that speaking about carthaginians in Barcelona having an old carthaginian city not too far away.