Superheroes, White Male Gaze And Colorblind Casting

Just a quick post while this is still on my mind.

So, if you travel in the same geeky circles I do on the web, chances are you heard the rumors about Michael B Jordan (The Wire, Chronicle) being considered for the role of Johnny Storm/The Human Torch in an upcoming Fantastic Four reboot.

Courtesy of Comic Book Resources Facebook Page

Numbered Things I Love and/or Hate: DC Comics (Over the Last Decade)

When we last left off, I was expressing my opinion on the current mainstream comics landscape with regards to Marvel Comics.Well, it is only fair to give the Distinguished Competition the same treatment.

So, DC Comics. They...have not been having as good a time as Marvel has. Despite releasing two of the most lauded and respected films of the last decade (and an apparently middling follow-up; I still haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises) and an excellent run on video games that the new Injustice: Gods Among Us is shaping up to continue, everything else has gone kinda...bleh. Their one time dominance of animation has dwindled down due to killing off those few shows that were growing into themselves and becoming much more developed (good night, Young Justice and Brave and the Bold) while replacing them with half-hearted clones of previous successes (seriously, Teen Titans? Seriously? And I'm not even bothering with Beware the Batman). The live-action department hasn't been doing much better, with Arrow pretty much the only non-Batman property to remotely stand for any length of time. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the elephant in the room: the New 52. A editorial and marketing crapstorm of epic proportions. With every hit, another two titles got knocked out before their first storyline got finished. But with Man of Steel on the horizon (although still involving Nolan) and the comics universe now reaching a weird state of equilibrium, can DC get back to being top dog once again?

Numbered Things I Love and/or Hate: Marvel Comics (Over the Last Decade)

In a effort to jump-start my blogging juices, I decided to try something new. Since list posts seem to be the most popular type of post you can do, I am going to view-whore for all its worth with this one! So Welcome to Numbered Things, a hopefully recurring feature where I condense everything I love and/or hate about a particular thing into easily digestible chunks for the time-starved and attention deficient!

Today's topic: Marvel Comics. home of flawed heroes, complex villains, and a much more realism-oriented world than the distinguished competition. Recently undergoing a renaissance in pop culture relativity thanks to the success of Marvel Studios and the Avengers experiment and now part of the Wonderful World Dominating Conglomerate Of Disney, Marvel the company is riding high. But the comics arm, arguably the flagship of the company, is hitting some nasty bumps in the road. I can't say why that is for anyone else, but I can give my unasked opinion on the subject.

So, without further ado, let's talk about...

All images courtesy of marvel.wikia.com

A Bit of a Rant

I have been doing a lot of introspection lately.

I find that I am an odd duck. Well, odder than most. It seems that I crave the attention of any other latchkey child turned internet attention whore, but I feel unable to actually attempt to do the work to get it.

It’s like this: I am technically a genius. I say “technically” because I can put the numbers on the board, but I rarely do, mostly because I find that it just brings on more trouble than it is worth. This is because members of my family, while usually quite caring and such, have the really annoying habit.

They think that just because I use big words, I can do all the shit they can’t do.  Even worse, when I am unable to do those things to satisfaction, they look at me like I shot up a classroom or something. It never seems to sink in that I can’t simply pick up a topic and know it immediately, or even if I could, that I would even want to.

Look, I don’t know accounting alright? I didn’t go to school for that, and for a good reason: I HATE ACCOUNTING! I thought bookkeeping was what all those librarians were pissed at me for! The extent of my knowledge of the accounting profession is: if you can’t pay someone, buy Quickbooks. There. That is all I know. And that is pretty much all I want to know, BECAUSE I DON’T GIVE A SHIT!

That goes for the following:

Web Site Design (beyond the basics)

Taxes

Tire Sales

Auto Repair

Insurance

Charter Bus Services

ANY AND ALL TYPES OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT. I HAVE SEN WHAT IT TAKES TO OWN A BUSINESS, AND I DON’T WANT TO OWN A GODDAMN BUSINESS. FUCK OWNING A BUSINESS. YOU JUST FUCKING PAY ME, AND YOU GET YOUR WORK DONE. I DON’T CARE ABOUT BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR. I DON’T WANT TO BE THE MALE OPRAH. I DON’T GIVE A SHIIIIIIITTTTT!!!!

GAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Now look. This doesn’t mean I don’t have dreams. But nobody gives a shit about my dreams.  No, let me correct that. If I have a dream, then I must be able to explain exactly how I am to achieve this dream in a reasonable amount of time, and how it would benefit the person I am speaking to, oftentimes my dad.

Oh God, my dad. I have expressed my….displeasure with his sense of “helping” me before. And the more I think about it, the more I realize exactly how much he screwed me up. Through extensive research into my past, I have discovered that my dad has been either wholly responsible or somehow involved in every traumatic psyche-shaping event in my life. From my fear of swimming to my fear of failure, he had some part in it.

Does it make any sense to require that your child explain, in detail, how playing RPGs and/or video games are going to make said child rich and successful? It is if I wanted to play a game of flag football with my friends, and the only way I could was to spell out my plans to get into the NFL. It is stupid, it is selfish, and it is emotionally scarring. Parents, please, let your kids have fun. They are FUCKING KIDS. They have no idea what the hell they want to do with their lives. They are supposed to explore that as FUCKING KIDS. They play and pretend so that they can understand the world and themselves. Just because I could read at two years old (note: I did this so I could order my own goddamn Happy Meal and make sure they had the right toy in it), it doesn’t mean that I am some exploitable commodity who has to justify his worth. Or, maybe I am. It is what he taught me, apparently.

And from there, came my fear of failure, and by extension, my lack of desire to try anything new. Why would a person want to risk looking bad or not being successful if they have someone harping on how much I need to be successful? All it does is make a person only want to stick with the safe and easy. The things they know they can’t mess up. By demanding this person justify their ambitions, you pretty much kill any ambition they have. Nobody wants to follow a dream if they have to keep explaining why they even have it.

Thank God I was never a child star.  I probably would have made Gary Coleman look like Dakota Fanning (who, as of yet, I have never seen to be all that crazy for a kid star. I don’t get why so many people seem to want her screwed up, and in the same breath, complain about Lindsay Lohan. You people are fucked up.).

Okay, I am rambling, and really, I don’t know if anyone is going to find this worth reading in the least. I just wanted to put something down on this blog, if only to start breaking the habit. I don’t like being afraid of change, and I really do want this to take off. So I am going to force myself to write something, anything, every day and put it on this site. It may not make too much sense at the time (ADHD is like that), but at least it will be something different. And who knows, you might just like it.

Just don’t tell my dad. I don’t want to have to explain this.

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