We Want Your Wait, What? Questions, Please
Posted by: Graeme McMillan on October 26, 2011
Categories: Podcasts
Tags: Come On That's An Okay Photoshop Job Really Isn't It?, Graeme, Jeff, Podcast, Wait What?
It’s been two long weeks – Well, maybe not that long, I mean the nights are drawing in and everything – but Jeff and I are going to record a new Wait, What? tomorrow and, for once, I’m remembering to not only ask for questions on Twitter, but here, as well. Non-Twitter users! What would you like Jeff and I to talk about? Leave your questions in the comment section and we’ll hopefully almost-definitely get around to them during tomorrow’s recording. New eps should begin appearing again on… Tuesday, I think? Next week, anyway. But ask questions!
Waffles: Great? Or the greatest?
The Trial of the Flash Showcase was a big hit with you guys, what other long burn story line would you like to be collected as a Showcase or Marvel Essential?
Nobody seems to be talking about the Brubaker Cap books all that much. What are your thoughts on them? The main book seems to be vibing J.M. DeMatteis instead of Englehart these days I think.
I will repeat my cheeky question and more serious question from our E-mail correspondence a while back:
Why isn’t Silver Surfer: Parable universally considered Stan Lee’s best work?
and
Why hasn’t Moebius ever made it big in America?
I feel that one aspect of the comparisons between what Marvel and DC do is always missed out on being talked about. Almost every Marvel comic has a re-cap page at the beginning of the issue so theoretically you could pick up any Marvel comic and be on board, DC does not do this, I personally feel that this is part of the reason why Marvel books at least seem more accessible, thoughts?
Discuss your thoughts on the work of Rick Remender. If you are not reading or enjoying his work then why not?
A few months back you made some dire predictions about the future of Vertigo, in the wake of DC’s management changes and the laying off of some editors (For example, I think Graeme predicted the winding down of the OGN line). At this point, it seems like things are going along pretty much as they had been, with no big changes. Any new thoughts on Vertigo’s future? Is it is better shape than we thought?
What
Are
Five
Favorite
Literary
Exemplar
S?
You could always get back to the long-promised Claremont X-Men retrospective. Why that run still dominates the book and makes it what it is to this day, in spite of the fact that people make fun of it as melodramatic, overwritten, or whatever. I glanced at the ‘last’ issue of Uncanny X-Men this week and was struck by that 2-page ‘retrospective’ collage in the middle of the book with Dark Phoenix in the middle: it could have been drawn in 1989! Has NOTHING important happened in this book in the last 30 years?!?!?
What makes the ‘classic’ runs from the 80s still so dominant in the collective comics imagination (or is it just mine)? (I’m referring collectively to Simonson-Thor, Miller-Daredevil, Claremont-X-Men, Byrne FF. And you could name others too.) Is it just nostalgia? The fact that they sold ten times more books per month than even best-sellers do now? Or did they truly culminate and complete the Silver Age, such that everything else is just repeats?
Why has no major mainstream character been created since 1980? (I refer to Wolverine as the last uber-mainstream creation – by which I mean someone who can be pictured on lunchboxes, candy bars, and silly bands and be expected to sell those things in convenience stores to, presumably, people who have never seen a comic book.)
Why have American comics never been able to break away from costumed super heroes as a genre, while in other countries comics are about all sorts of things (and pretty much NOT about costumed super heroes, which are pretty much a US-only phenom)?
OK – don’t feel like you have to talk about all, or any!, of this…
Can you guys say only positive things about Alan Moore? I’m betting not.
For one episode. Just talk about the positive things Moore has done or positive influences. I think it would be an interesting challenge. And you guys are smart, too, so I know it’s possible.
Then you could spend the next 20 bashing him.
Or wait…. One episode talking about only the good work/influences of Moore, Liefeld, Miller, McFarlane, Lee (Stan and/or Jim), Shooter, Byrne…. I think that would be fun. Like, how long could you go on each? And then after you run out of good things to say, switch to someone else before you get tired.
Or say only bad about people like Jeff Smith, Gaiman, Kirby, and any others I’m forgetting. I think both challenges would be interesting.
Let me second the Chris Claremont Retrospective. There is still something about his work that resonates today in not just X-Men books, but in team books in general. I’d be curious how you see his influence today in books, especially when you consider how everyone from Morrison to Moore to Liefeld praise his work and his storytelling, yet his work today is almost unreadable.
And if you’re looking to go a bit further, I’d love to see what you think of Marv Wolfman’s work too in the same retrospective. They were once competing Teen books and now they current work is almost unreadable. What happens to good comic writers in their later life that makes them into bad writers? It has to be more than just changing tastes.
While i never thought I’d say this the John Cassaday cover for Secret Avengers was pretty much the worst thing about that comic aside from the terrible OS X Reference. David Aja – Paolo Rivera – Marcos Martin MODERN masters discussion. Everybody loves nostalgia but let’s talk future > Risso / Azzarello Spaceman for A BUCK on cruddy paper. Let’s move it on!
I wanted to suggest something, but I found myself writing Why? Why? Why? Why? over and over again.
Hey, i just got around finishing Hickman’s Red Wing #4 and i thought it was a total piece of crap. The entire 4 issue run was confusing, the characters were lifeless and the artwork was really poor.
But somehow where ever i look online, all i see is good reviews about this book. Seriously am i the only one who thinks Hickman dropped the ball on this one (although the idea is cool).
I would love it if you guys give a comment on the book.
Why is Ed Brubaker’s Criminal consistently excellent and his superhero comics utterly mediocre? Is his X-Men run any good?
1. What announced/rumored 2012 projects are you most looking forward to at this point?
2. As a postscript to FEAR ITSELF: what do Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester fear the most?
3. Have either of you read 100 BULLETS and if so what were your thoughts?
1). What do you guys think of the X-Men gender-bending artwork showcased on io9 (http://io9.com/5853706/behold-the-mother-lode-of-sex+swapped-x+men-fan-art)?
2). What are your thoughts on the number of LSH books on the stands? Does the Legion-brand merit this amount of exposure yes/no/indifferent?
3). Have you guys watched the Syfy show called Alphas? What are your thoughts? So far, I think it has avoided the problems that plagued previous X-lite shows such as Heroes and Mutant X.
4). Can you guys ‘Monday Morning Quarterback’ the creative team changes on the New 52 titles?
Firstly: seconding the 100 Bullets question.
Secondly: given Graeme’s struggles on a recent podcast to find things he’s liked by The Insanely Bearded One, how about lower-key stuff like The Ballad of Halo Jones, or the Top Ten ’49ers mini?
Thirdly: any thoughts on how a Simon Furman penned version of Flashpoint, or Fear Itself, might have turned out…
@MyComicLife – no, you’re not the only one who isn’t enjoying Red Wing (and Jonathan Hickman’s current work in general, since Word Balloon convinced me to pick up FF).
I’ll be trudging to my LCS later today to pick up issue 4, but aside from the Quitely/Darrow-esque detail in the book, there’s been very little to recommend it.
Did you know that the competition-winning ‘pink pancakes’ joke was written by Charlie Brooker in 1999? See http://www.tvgohome.com/020499.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVGoHome
I’d just love for you to discuss Warren Ellis at some point. It doesn’t have to be today, but Warren Ellis’ work seems to be very divisive, even though the echos of his work is felt as much as Claremont’s work.
Really, I think I would just love for you to discuss this particular image:
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2011/10/littlenemo1.jpg
Jeff and Graeme, like you two (I gather from previous “W,W?” eps) I am a big Joss Whedon fan with a sense of diminishing returns on his work (Dollhouse, “Buffy” comic, etc.). Key to my disappointment has been the predictability of someone dying onscreen to motivate another character towards extreme action. It increasingly seems formulaic, like a drab mortal calculus. So, I ask: a) Who will die in the “Avengers,” as someone must (even if it doesn’t take), right?; and b) Would Whedon be so bold as to knock someone off in “Much Ado About Nothing,” although the only death in the play is a faked, temporary one? Thanks for making such a charming and excellent podcast. Waffles all around!
Are you reading Kevin H’s “Ganges”? What did you think of issue 4?
Any chance you checked out “Screamland”? If so, what did you think? If not, I think you should!
Of DC’s New 52 books, which titles do you think have a strong concept but lame execution, and what creative team would you put on that book to fulfill the promise of the concept?
What is your favorite comic by a writer, artist, or cartoonist whose work you don’t usually care for?
1) Previous posters have mentioned Stan Lee and Alan Moore, so how about Stan Lee vs. Alan Moore? The latter has admitted the former was a major influence, and both revolutionized comics with the same agenda: Injecting real world values into mainstream comics. Clearly this was more of a conscious agenda for Moore than Lee, but they were both hugely influential for very similar reasons. Both scored an early coup on revisionism (Swamp Thing was never really Alec Holland he was just a plant who thought he was human vs. Cap’s been frozen in a block of ice since 1945 and he’s now a man out of time!). Both had about a 10 year period when they were shitting gold bricks before getting spent, though after this they occasionally dropped some pewter dingleberries of cleverness. Both were big enough to attain a cult of personality, and then were gracious enough to become the fictional characters that the public believed they were.
2) Steve Gerber’s run on Defenders. That’s it. Discuss.
3) Your thoughts on the Nü 52 now that the second issues are out. What was good and what disappointed and what was a surprise? Will this bring comics back into being the mass media that they were in the 1990′s (I believe they still were then)? Does Marvel need to worry or should they just keep being the best there is at what they do (and what is that exactly)?
4) I’ll put in a second vote for Chris Brown’s query about Claremont’s X-Men. I still compare every X-men comic I read to Claremont’s run, and I can’t help but be predudiced, but if I go back and read those issues I find all the faults that Chris listed stand out, and the run seems very dated (more so than say, Gerber’s Defenders run).
5) Favorite TV show that’s on right now? Favorite TV show ever?
P.S. Aside from Ghost Rider wearing a helmet, what other superheroes would you like to see acting responsibly and setting a good example for a change? (e.g. Wolverine using nicotine patches and seeing an anger management counselor, the Teen Titans getting HPV vaccinations, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones doing couples yoga and taking their kid to Gymboree)
PPS What are your thoughts on the Ultraverse and whether should it be revived (and if so, how)?
Why does everyone think Krypto’s dead?
1. I just finished the first Morning Glories trade and was blown away. Is the rest of the series (up to the present) as fantastic? Does there seem to be a coherent plan by the author?
2. Due to your recommendations, I’ve tried and liked Finder, Morning Glories, and I’m about to start the first volume of Bakuman from my local library. Please keep the recommendations coming, I love those large collections of stories in one volume. Or multiple volumes.
3. Can Graeme make it through one podcast without saying the “F” word? Can Jeff make it through without saying “dude?”
4. Why is Matt Fraction so critically lauded, even a Marvel architect, yet his writing is awful?
5. Could someone who is openly conservative ever get regular work at Marvel or DC? And why do writers feel it is all right to push their political beliefs onto their stories and characters? I’m talking about Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Matt Fraction, Gail Simone, and really just about everybody else.
Ohhhh hold on now. Asking the man to stop using the F bomb would be just about impossible. How about we go for only using it 3x per podcast and things can only be awesome and not f’in awesome.
Jerry –
Bill Willingham is openly conservative, FYI. John Byrne is just weird, not sure if he’s ‘conservative’ exactly, but he’s not a garden-variety conventional leftist like most comic writers seem to be. Is Frank Miller ‘conservative’? Again, I’d say he’s at least not a conventional leftist. Personally, I’d call Byrne and Miller just iconoclastic. Leftists, though, call anyone who doesn’t toe the full party line ‘right-wing’ (and clutch their skirts and start shrieking) so you could throw them in the ‘not liberals’ column. So hey – those big enough names for ya?
As a more libertarian-conservative kinda guy myself, the casual leftism doesn’t bother me much except when it’s expressed in an especially arrogant or snotty manner. Some snotty and stupid cracks about the ‘horrors of the 80s’ (because Reagan and Thatcher were in charge, get it?) in Ellis’ Planetary turned me off (especially since, by the end, I didn’t think that comic turned out that great anyway – if you’re going to be snotty, you better earn the right by being awesome).
And yeah, Fraction just sucks ass from start to finish. Even Casanova isn’t my bag… But the explanation for his prominence isn’t too complex: sometimes the promising college player just chokes when he gets in the big leagues, that’s all. But the team that got him still starts him for at least a season or two…
Jerry:
FYI, Bill Willingham is openly conservative. John Byrne and Frank Miller are, well, maybe not exactly ‘conservative’, but at least not the garden-variety conventional leftists that many comic writers seem to be. That gets them labeled as ‘right-wing’ by leftists on a pretty regular basis. Those names big enough for ya?
As a guy of libertarian-conservative leanings myself, I don’t find the run-of-the-mill leftism all that bothersome, unless it becomes excessively snotty or arrogant. Some stupid snotty cracks about ‘the horrors’ of the 80s in Ellis’ Planetary were a big turn-off for me. And, since that comic wasn’t really that good in the end, he didn’t earn the right to be a snot.
oops, site didn’t update so I thought the comment was lost, so I did an abbreviated version of it. Sorry about the double post!
— slinks away red-faced —
Chuck Dixon is a conservative, too.
Most Conservatives in entertainment keep it on the down low as an extra level of job security. The Left can evangelize without fear.
Anyway, I was wondering how far you guys thought the second and third issue sales of the New 52 were going to fall compared to the first issues. I’ve been seeing some pretty big stacks on the shelves of my local comics shop.
It’s easier in entertainment to be openly gay than openly conservative. Irony? Anyway, i keep thinking there’s something in the leftish views of editorial/creative staff at DC/Marvel that’s at odds with their business practices… like the female creator controversy at DC recently: i would bet anything most of the editors there identify themselves as 100% enlightened, post-feminist egalitarians. But the actual numbers speak for themselves.
Hey guys,
not really a question, but more of an idea of something I wouldn’t mind hearing the two of you do. Have you ever considered doing a book of the month, or something along those lines. One month Jeff could pick a book, the next month Graeme. It would be announced on the show what the book is so those interested can go a read it or reread it as well.
Just a random idea. Love the show. Thanks for doing it.
“John Byrne is just weird… Frank Miller…? Again, I’d say he’s at least not a conventional leftist.”
Right, because Grant Morrison (cited above as a leftist) could ever be easily categorized as a conventional ANYTHING. And I’d defy you to make coherent sense of whatever political statements cited “leftist” Mark Millar has made — from what I’ve seen, his primary politics lean towards controversy-baiting rather than any consistent philosophy.
If these guys are your examples of “leftists,” than yeah — knee jerk reactionary John Byrne and anti-terrorist violence-porn creator Frank Miller are absolutely rightists.
But as a rule, the arts typically tend to draw people with somewhat unconventional politics. Sure, they may tend towards left-leaning opinions. But I think that’s part of a complex of what draws people into the arts in the first place. Many (not all) schools of left-wing thinking are directed towards change (hence “liberal,” “progressive”)and have an inherent tendency to defy authority and upset the status quo.
We can have an open, honest debate about “liberal bias” in the arts and media when somebody, somewhere acknowledges that there tends to be right-leaning politics (especially in the upper echelons) of finance, law enforcement and military leadership. But that never affects how money gets spent or laws get enforced, oh noes. No matter how many “left-leaning” artists there are, their impact is ultimately decided in part by the guys who hold the purse-strings — and the suits and shareholders often lean right.
Which of the Marvel architects would come out on top in a fight?
When we are going to get the “Wait, What” episode where Graeme does a Wolverine impression for the whole hour?
Wow, some really weird politics going on in this thread:
“And why do writers feel it is all right to push their political beliefs onto their stories and characters?”
Um, This isn’t alright? Or is it only alright when their politics match yours?
“It’s easier in entertainment to be openly gay than openly conservative. Irony? ”
No…not irony…What are you trying to say…exactly?
Wh*t th& f^ck? Th%t’s s)m@ cr+zy Sh8!
Is Chris Brown @32 viewing the ’80s from the point of view of the USA, or of the UK? (Libertarian-conservative seems a more common self-label in the US.)
Sure, as long as they never or rarely ever inject right-wing viewpoints into their work. The only ones who possibly get a pass on this are the ones who are such superstars of the genre that they get more leeway. A total rookie writer can get a left-leaning story published but I doubt he could get a right-leaning story published.
The irony is that gays are widely considered to be a more fringe and oppressed group than conservatives, yet in the media, one of the most mainstream, highly competitive and desirable billion dollar industries that many want to work in, it’s actually far easier to be gay than it is to be conservative, at least on the creator level.
Hellblazer – the US. I realize Ellis was probably talking more about the UK.
We’ve had foodies who pair particular wines with particular foods. So what waffle combinations (e.g. waffles and butter)would you pair with reading currently published comics of your choice? For extra credit, is there a waffle combination that you could eat while reading FEAR ITSELF or Rob Liefeld-illustrated HAWK AND DOVE that will not cause you to make offerings to the ol’ porcelain god?
@T:
“Could someone who is openly conservative ever get regular work at Marvel or DC?”
In case you missed it: John Byrne, Frank Miller, Bill Willingham, Chuck Dixon — and let me add Ethan van Sciver — could all be categorized as outspoken conservatives, and probably many more. I don’t know that anybody’s ever done a categorical analysis of the political leanings of comics writers. Have you, T.? Or are you just making things up?
“A total rookie writer can get a left-leaning story published but I doubt he could get a right-leaning story published.”
Do you have evidence to support that claim?
“The irony is that gays are widely considered to be a more fringe and oppressed group than conservatives, yet in the media, one of the most mainstream, highly competitive and desirable billion dollar industries that many want to work in, it’s actually far easier to be gay than it is to be conservative, at least on the creator level.”
So are you saying conservatism is genetically determined? Because I always thought it was a “lifestyle choice.”
Also:
a) Many creative people I know of hate politics in general and only reluctantly align themselves with groups/parties.
b) Even if there were a predominance of liberal POVs among the creative staff, the actual “billion dollar” decisions in the media get made way above their pay grade. How many of the execs and shareholders do you think lean left?
Q: When Rupert Murdoch allows SIMPSONS creator Matt Groening to get away with some left-wing snark about slave-wages for the shows’ Asian animators, what does it change?
A: Nothing. The race-to-the-bottom outsourcing continues, and the profits from the episode go in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket so he can buy another right-wing politician.
And lest we forget:
c) Conservatives are crybabies.
UPDATE: We did a terrible job of answering questions on our first installment back.
So, definitely continuing lobbying questions our way here–we will answer all comers in the week’s podcast! (We swear it!)
As for the political conversation going on here, I’m very torn about what to do about it since (a) I’m a pretty big pinko who thinks the rich have sewn the world up in their pocket; but (b) I really have no wish to alienate listeners who don’t agree with my opinions (though I obviously haven’t hidden them or anything).
As long as you all remember to keep the gloves on and hit above the belt (and maybe I’m wrong but I feel like the conversation more or less has been), I’m okay with all this. I will say, it’s hard enough to get people in the comics industry to even talk openly about their page rate, much less their political leanings, and be able to draw any larger points about the culture at large.
But, hey, it’s a change from our usual “who has worse peripheral vision: Nick Fury or Cyclops?” debates, right?
Look at what I actually said: I said yes, a conservative can get work as a comic writer so long as he never or rarely injects right-wing viewpoints into his work. And I stand by that. I have rarely seen a very right-wing political soapbox in the comics work of John Byrne. Chuck Dixon is very apolitical in his actual comic stories. I have never read an Ethan Van Sciver written mainstream superhero comic that has been overtly right wing and preachy. Frank Miller’s very political in the actual content of his stories, but I wouldn’t quite call his viewpoints right-wing or left-wing. I frankly don’t know what to call his political viewpoint because I can find things in his writing that both lefties and righties would agree with and be disgusted with. I think he’s slightly more complicated.
So again, I didn’t say conservatives don’t get work in comics. What I actually said is they are unable to inject their viewpoints in as openly and continuously and in as preachy a fashion as the average left-wing superhero writer can. And I stand by that.
Come on, keep it classy. Besides, a lefty calling someone else a crybaby is like Charlie Sheen criticizing someone else for having sobriety issues. They just end up looking ridiculous in making the assertion.
Execs and shareholders just want to make money. Once you get to a certain pay grade, you’re not red or blue, your affiliation is green. If letting liberal writers get on liberal soapboxes makes them the most money today and doesn’t piss off sponsors, the execs and shareholders are fine with it. The moment it doesn’t, they won’t be fine with it.
This argument that the blatantly liberal bias in the media somehow must not exist simply because of the supposed political affiliation of the CEOs simply doesn’t ring true.
T. pretty well answered for me. Also I have never seen a message board poster say they wouldn’t read a gay writer. I have many times seen someone say they wouldn’t read a conservative writer, or lambaste a writer with “he’s a conservative” as the most negative, dismissive comment possible.
I don’t see Steve D’s points as I’ve never seen anyone argue that bankers et.a.l. aren’t typically more conservative. But I don’t think editorial/creative (who actually make the entertainment products themselves) really considers them a valid viewpoint, even from the point of being an underserved audience that could be cultivated. Don’t you think there might be a country-music listening audience that would enjoy more Westerns or Christian-themed comics? Sure there is. Would a New York City-based editor push that idea in a Vertigo meeting? Only if they want to be on the next train to Hicksville.
Crybabies? Well, maybe everyone wants to see some entertainment that doesn’t flagrantly disagree with them. Is that so much to ask for?
In the interest of keeping gloves on and not taking cheap shots, I’m going to ignore some jibes from Steve D and say that I think the upshot of this conversation is more interesting than the comment which gave rise to it.
The more I look at the names being tossed around as leftish, rightish, and just-plain-kooky, the more I’m beginning to think that comics is more dominated by hard-to-categorize folks with their own iconoclastic takes on things than anything else. For every quasi-leftish-but-mostly-kooky Grant Morrison or Alan Moore, there’s a quasi-rightish-but-mostly-kooky Frank Miller or Dave Sim. Interesting…
Newsflash! People in comics are weird!
“Thirdly: any thoughts on how a Simon Furman penned version of Flashpoint, or Fear Itself, might have turned out…”
There would have been more transformers. They would have been the real (i.e. the Marvel UK versions) transformers. Life around the world would have been made instantly better because of this.
If the real Transformers somehow didn’t show up then at the very least the action scenes would have had at least some coherence and impact to them. Though that may be down to an older style of comic writing than the relative skills of the authors.
Didn’t Gail Simone talk about either Marvel or DC openly blackballing conservatives?
@T.: “…a conservative can get work as a comic writer so long as he never or rarely injects right-wing viewpoints into his work.”
And I would say it’s rare to ever see ANY coherent political viewpoints in mainstream comics work. Of any kind. Ever. Sure, there are cases where there are sometimes allegorical allusions to politics — CIVIL WAR’s divided nation, SECRET INVASION’s embedded alien terrorist crypto-Muslims. But they usually don’t add up to a coherent viewpoint because either (a) creative and/or editorial is bending over backwards to “balance the issue” or (b) the sheer absurdity of politics in a cosmic, spandex, radioactive-spider-bitten universe quickly stops having any meaningful connection with Reality-as-we-know-it.
Yes, Jakita Wagner said some harsh things about the Margaret Thatcher era in an issue of PLANETARY, but it was more or less a footnote — the real “horror of the 80s” in that story was the “grim ‘n gritty” perversion of existing characters to suit the tastes of a jaded, cynical, disaffected generation — and Ellis’s script was primarily focused on critiquing and questioning the legacy of the (presumably leftist) “British invasion” writers of the ’80s. What other examples of overt politics do you have handy?
c) “A lefty calling someone else a crybaby is like Charlie Sheen criticizing someone else for having sobriety issues.”
Yeah, because it’s right and funny to portray leftists as namby-pamby crybabies — like the peacenik Skrull appeasers in SECRET INVASION, dumbly channeling the Bush-Cheney era mantra that “the liberals want the terrorists to win.” The scene goes virtually unnoticed outside of a few comics blogs. Meanwhile, a few Tea Partiers get portrayed waving signs in Bru’s CAPTAIN AMERICA and it turns into a national goddamn incident.
But what can I say? You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid about the “Liberal Media.” All I can say, as an actual Liberal, is — WHAT liberal media?
In the aftermath of the brutal police riot on the Occupy Oakland protesters, THE WASHINGTON POST’s coverage pictured a nice cop patting the head of an abandoned kitten in the camp’s wreckage with a snarky headline about how Occupiers are wearing out their welcome. Days later, they publish an editorial fretting about the dire need for Social Security reform, predicated on completely false and misleading misinformation based on right-wing talking points. THIS is my liberal media?
Or the New York Times, which coddled Bush cheerleader Judith Miller, which relentlessly beat the drum of war for Iraq, and which threw Julian Assange under the bus at the earliest opportunity? THAT’s my liberal media?
Or the cable news channels that largely ignored the Wisconsin demonstrations against Scott Walker, and ignored and ridiculed the Occupy movement until it became too big to ignore — while continuing to fawn over the Tea Party, and cover their events even when only 15 people bother to show up? (I’m not holding my breath until CNN lets Occupy host a Presidential debate, as they recently did with the Tea Party.) And what about that notorious left-wing channel MSNBC, which has serially booted Olbermann (for violating a campaign donation policy that didn’t even apply to him), Cenk Uygur (for being too mean to Republican guests), and frequent guest Kos (for being mean to Scarborough on Twitter)… all while keeping racism apologist Pat Buchanan on the air? Is THAT my liberal media?
Yup, that’s your liberal media. Because those are all easily eclipsed by pro-liberal media items in just a single day.
@Chris Brown: “The more I look at the names being tossed around as leftish, rightish, and just-plain-kooky, the more I’m beginning to think that comics is more dominated by hard-to-categorize folks with their own iconoclastic takes on things than anything else.”
Exactly — interesting art tends to embody paradoxes. And work that gets preachy also tends to be extremely goddamn boring. And, for me at least, I usually think that whether I agree with the politics on display or not.
@bad wolf: “I’ve never seen anyone argue that bankers et.a.l. aren’t typically more conservative…”
Yeah, but nobody talks about it like it’s a goddamn conspiracy like “the liberal media.” Sure, creative people may be more likely to be liberal. People in law and finance may tend to be more conservative. These politics may influence their work in subtle ways.
But if you don’t think it’s significant that bankers tend to be conservative, then you missed the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that basically asserted that money basically IS speech.
@Zory: If Gail said that, I’d love to see a link. I’m seeing a lot of sweeping generalities about the liberal bias in comics with basically no concrete examples to back it up.
And — FINALLY — a real question for Graeme & Jeff: What about the politics of superheroing? How “liberal” can a story be when it’s set in a genre world that presumes that might is right?
Are the inherent politics of the DCU different from Marvel?
It’s always struck me that the core characters of the DCU are authority figures — royalty and such — with inherent, inborn power who operate, to some extent, out of noblesse oblige: alien Ubermensch, Amazonian princess, Atlantean prince, billionaire heir, etc.
Meanwhile many core Marvel characters are outsiders, or have had their status undermined, and have obtained their powers through accidents: a nerdy, put-upon student (Peter Parker); a blinded kid from the wrong side of the tracks (Matt Murdock); a neurotic scientist, dominated by military leaders (Bruce Banner); a disgraced surgeon, undone by his own hubris and forced to reinvent himself (Stephen Strange).
@T.: Yup, that’s your liberal media. Because those are all easily eclipsed by pro-liberal media items in just a single day.
…aaaaand I’m still waiting for specific examples besides that one page in an issue of PLANETARY from 10 years back.
In my experience, mainstream media tends to avoid politics or reinforce the status quo.
@T.: “Leverage” creator John Rogers once blogged that people who complained about the liberal domination of Hollywood were the sorts who used partisanship to excuse their utter lack of talent and professional discipline. Because at the end of the day, what matters in the entertainment industry (of which the American comics industry is a small stepsister) is whether you can produce the work on time. Politics is not a consideration except in extreme cases (e.g. the Hollywood blacklist, which targeted left-leaning Hollywood personnel).
For me, people who trot out the “liberal media” canard are not making a logical argument. They’re just expressing a dislike of any media expression challenging the viewpoint that conservatives walk on water and flowers instantly bloom at their feet.
um, I have an actual question:
“Brad Meltzer: Threat or menace”