Star Wars fans want to ruin Star Wars

Star wars fans are a strange breed, who else wants to actively sabotage something they love? Who would take cinematic gold in the form of The Last Jedi and instead say nope I want rancid fish heads with The Rise of Skywalker. Why would you do that? Well let's explore what it could be.

Perhaps it’s a punk rock defense or gatekeeping. Before Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm Star wars was 6 films, 1 animated movie that confusingly shared its name with 2 other cartoons (all called Clone wars), 2 more cartoons not available on DVD (Ewoks and Droids), 2 TV movies about Ewoks, a Christmas special and an assortment of comics and novels. Everything but the movies had an entrance fee, you had to buy the comics or know a guy who bought them. You also only had 3 good movies, the other 3 movies made that made David Lynch’s Dune look like Sesame Street’s follow that bird (for film screenings of Dune the audience was given notes on the film because test screening audiences had no idea what they watched). So is it a form of gatekeeping? These Star Wars fans are saying to the more casual audience “you didn’t wear a Star Wars shirt when the prequels came out”. Maybe for some, and if that's the case grow the fuck up. Seriously, who cares if somebody just found out what a bantha is or how dangerous the sarlak pit is. You now have a bigger community to discuss how much cooler the Mandalorians are than the Jedi. 

A common complaint from these Star Wars fans against the new content is that Disney made it too political. This has come from Trump supporters trying to start a boycott on Rogue One or strange ramblings on how “it’s SJW” and Solo lost money. But have you seen the Star Wars movies? The original trilogy was about a bunch of scrappy rebels who take down fascism with the help of a space wizard. The prequels were about the rise of fascism, it being embodiment of the Benjamin Franklin quote “the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance”. I don’t think the problem is that the movies were political, it’s that they woke up one day and realised their favourite media doesn’t support their ideology, and instead of being introspective about this they lashed out. Got mad that Princess Leia became a figurehead of “Occupy Wall Street” instead of the correct response of “that's awesome”. Not realising that Leia Organa was always a badass, not just something to drool over when she’s in a gold bikini. They remember the gold bikini but not her choking out the disgusting slug who put her in the costume. Ignoring the context that set up that she was the only one who could defeat Jabba the Hutt (he was immune to Luke’s force powers and they were there to save Han Solo). I don’t see how that’s different to Leia in Last Jedi now using Force powers or Laura Dern now being a purple haired rebel leader.   

A more specific complaint I’ve seen is that they ruined Boba Fett. Umm before the Book of Boba Fett he was just a cool action figure or a guy who was exactly as strong as a clone trooper. I think you want to say Episode 2 ruined Boba Fett or the fact he lasts about 20 seconds in his only on screen fight. The expanded canon didn’t really do him any favours, the expanded canon was a mess of constant contradictions. One source claimed that Mandalorians were bird-like people who were complete pacifists that Jango Fett mercilessly slaughtered and now wears the armour of. Another obsession of these stories is to have Boba Fett fall back into the Sarlak pit, sometimes acknowledging that he’d escaped once before (I think one version claimed he escaped 4 times, I guess he left his keys behind or something).

But a more specific version is that they made him look weak, but his earlier movie appearances didn’t make him look like Hulk Hogan. For those who don’t know, Book of Boba Fett is about the Fett-man having escaped from the Sarlak pit, now being at the bottom of society with no home or money and making his way to the top of the underworld. It takes strength to pick yourself up from the bottom, and a lot more strength than to have everything handed to you. Also the more ethical way, to be unethical is easy. Trust is one of the hardest things you can do, it’s also one of the hardest things to get, to put yourself out there rather than submitting to total cynicism is much harder. And it’s harder to trust when surrounded by thieves, murders and other assorted scoundrels. Book of Boba Fett made Boba Fett more than a cool design, but what they wanted is a boring TV show were he just murders people.

An even stranger argument I’ve seen is “Subverting expectations is always bad”. This is just wrong, there would be no point paying attention to any story if it always did what you expected. You wouldn’t need to read anything new if you can predict all the stories. Also Star Wars did this sort of thing in the original trilogy, look at Yoda, he’s introduced as a silly comic relief muppet. It takes him about 10 minutes to reveal that he is in fact the Jedi master.

But “George Lucas had a vision and Disney is ruining it”, have you seen George Lucas’ plans for Episode 7? It was Fantastic voyage in Luke Skywalker's  bloodstream to learn what the midichlorians are (those things that retconned the force to not be mystical at all). 

If George had a great plan for Star Wars he wouldn’t have to go back to re-edit the original trilogy to try and make his prequels fit better. Also he only has a story credit on Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, 20th Century Fox had so little faith in him as a director that they hoped somebody else would direct the movies (their top choice was Ron Howard). 

So was The Last Jedi that good? Yes, it was. Thematically it was about how our heroes are people, flawed, imperfect and grumpy. About how growing up part of that is realising that. Becoming your own hero and making a better future means learning from the mistakes of the past. It was about how you don’t need to be part of a legacy to honour it or to continue it. That we are who we chose to be, not what destiny made us. But Rise of Skywalker undid all of that, and critics rightly lambasted it, not to mention that Emperor Palpatine exists purely to smooth over awful writing. 

Star Wars should be for everyone, not the weirdos that pretend to be the Sith or look up to them. Those people are weirdos, and Zack Snyder’s making for Netflix A New Hope from the Empires point of view so they should clamour to that, have that underperform like all of Zack Snyder's movies.

The Road to Hellboy

Sometimes I think Hellboy comics come from another reality. One where the Comics Code Authority and the moral panic around them never happened. A reality where Marvel didn’t have to pussyfoot around the horror genre and the Silver-Age had horror heroes instead of the angsty Fantastic Four and Hulk. Each volume of Hellboy feels like the best stories from a character with 60 years of history (well maybe a few exceptions). Now I’ve wanted to write about Hellboy for months, he’s even featured in the border to this blog but, what line do I take. Matt Draper already covered how the Hellboy saga is the story of a man rejecting his destiny only to find he has another choice. Instead, let's take a look at Mike Mignola’s pre-Hellboy stuff and see how he evolved into the creator of the series. 

Rocket Racoon

Every bio for Mike Mignola begins with “starting off at Marvel as a bad inker”. But they never seem to point out his first pencilling jobs were The Rocket Racoon mini series (the first one later redubbed “Tales from Half-World”) and 3 issues of The Incredible Hulk (published around the same time). Some may think this was a prestigious job but no, at this point Rocket was a no name character who had only been in a couple issues of the Hulk. 

The Artwork in the Rocket Racoon series less resembles Hellboy and more an episode of Ewoks. Although it does have giant worms (and they’re actually worms not giant caterpillars like the Conqueror Worm). The robot clowns do have a hint of the sinister to them, but nothing else I can really say on topic. Although MCU fans would probably be shocked to find out Rocket’s origin is that he’s a genetically engineered mental health care nurse. 

The Phantom Stranger

Cursed characters get brought up a lot, The role of Superman is said to be cursed and Plastic Man is also said to be cursed because of Jack Cole’s suicide. But is there such a thing as a “blessed character”? If so I’d like to make the case for the Phantom Stranger, he’s a lesser known character for sure but Mike Mignola worked on a mini-series for him this early in his comics career and Alan Moore earlier wrote his issue of Secret Origin. Could this be a coincidence well yes most probably but it’s more fun to think about then all the dead Superman actors.

As for the artwork, it’s starting to look like the Mignola we’d all recognize, the characters are more angular than in Rocket Racoon. Also this wasn’t Mignola’s doing but this comic has some of the worst lettering I’ve ever seen in a comic post-Golden Age. 

Probably more relevant is that Mignola drew his first (of 2) Namor short stories for Marvel Fanfare and these stories have the same feel as a Hellboy short. I should also mention Mike Mignola didn’t script a comic till the 2nd Hellboy mini series “Wake the Devil”.

World of Krypton

 

I wrote about these comics last year, but yes during the John Byrne era of Superman Mike Mignola was the Architect of the Planet Krypton. These stories are about as removed from his work on Hellboy as you can probably get with the exception of Action Comics 600. Which has a short about Man-Bat being afraid of Superman. 

The more important thing about this era is that he forged a mentor/mentee relationship with John Byrne at this time and Byrne is credited with scripting the first published Hellboy series “Seed of Destruction”.

Superman 23, Cosmic Odyssey and Gotham by Gaslight

I’ve separated Superman 23 from the other comics because it isn’t Krypton based, it’s fleshing out the back story to the villainess The Silver Banshee. Her origins are all about celtic mythology, something that many Hellboy stories would also borrow from most notably the fan favourite the Corpse. The characters are also now starting to take on Mignola’s famous Jack Kirby inspired stocky look but this is probably better showcased in Cosmic Odyssey. 

Alan Moore once described Mike Mignola's art as “German expressionism mixed with Jack Kirby”, and where better to show off your Kirby influence than a story that has his New Gods and his lesser known Etrigan the Demon. Etrigan in design almost looks like an early rough draft of Hellboy similar to Daredevil's yellow suit compared to his more iconic red suit. Cosmic Odyssey is a must read for any fan of either Mike Mignola or The New gods, also I think practicing drawing Darkseid is how Mignola came up with that granite look that his drawings tend to have.

The one thing Mike Mignola’s art is known for is his deep black shadows, but none of the comics here really have them. Perhaps we shouldn’t credit them to him at all, because Batman: Gotham by Gaslight is where they debuted. For all we know inker for the book P Craig Russell spilt his ink pot on the page and Mignola decided he liked the look. The story of Gotham by Gaslight is possibly one of the best from Batman’s history (so of course The DC Animated film is nothing like it insisting on adding Victorian versions of as many Bat-Rogues as they can). 

Also he drew the covers for “Batman a Death in the Family”

Triumph and Torment/ Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Triumph and Torment is actually my favourite Marvel comic storyline. Unfortunately for this article, it doesn’t really advance Mike Mignola’s style. You’d think Dr Doom tricking Dr Strange into helping him save his mothers soul from Hell would be more of an influence on Hellboy. But on a personal level I actually think Mignola’s Art is better in this book than in Hellboy. If only he hired Mark Badger to ink and colour his later work.

Mike Mignola’s actual favourite pre-Hellboy comic he worked on was Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Now the stories are actually an adaptation of Fritz Lieber’s work, rewritten to comics by Howard Chaykin. The Mignola collection is actually the 2nd time Chaykin worked on adapting these stories into comics, the first was in the 1970’s with Dennis O’Neil writing and Chaykin on Art. Now judging Mignola’s Art this one is a step towards Hellboy as the art is clearly evolving from Cosmic Odyssey. They’ve also taken on a more ethereal gargoyle like character possibly to get away from the homoerotic undertones that barbarian fiction has (even more so if it’s about 2 dudes who travel the world together).

Also check out some of the covers he did for X-men Classic (reprintings of stories from the Claremont era), they’re so Hellboy.

Wolverine Jungle Adventure, Batman Sanctum and X-Force 8

Both Wolverine Jungle Adventure and Batman Sanctum are Hellboy comics with the hero changed. I suppose that makes sense as DC’s editorial policy is if a story can have Batman in it, it will have Batman in it. Wolverine also shares some character traits with Hellboy, they both have a gruff exterior with a heart of gold, both are jaded and think they’ve seen everything, both are the main fighters in their team. 

Sanctum is almost a rough draft of Box full of evil (sadly no monkey with a gun). Jungle Adventure is Wolverine and dinosaurs, Marvel editorial nixed the idea that it would reveal Apocalypse as the mastermind behind the Weapon X programme so it’s now just a fun disposable comic.

X-force 8 is crap, Mignola’s art is good and it has dinosaurs but all of X-Force sucks. Rob Liefeld shouldn’t write comics for other people to draw, I remember something he said in Stan Lee’s VHS series “Talking with the comic book greats” (bit of a stretch for Liefeld). “I have no interest in writing because what would come out of their mouths would be gibberish” if only he took his own advice. X-Force 8 is the last comic Mike Mignola has made for Marvel (he has returned to DC for some Batman stuff mostly). 

What John Byrne did…

An often ignored fact about Hellboy is that he was co-created by John Byrne. John Byrne also scripted Seed of Destruction and the first two Hellboy shorts but he credits himself as “along for the ride”. But the John Byrne connection goes deeper, Darkhorse comics started a line of “creator owned comics” to compete with Image comics. For this venture they got the most A-list people they could, Frank Miller would make Martha Washington with Dave Gibbons and Big Guy and Rusty. Art Adams would create for Darkhorse Monkeyman and O’Brien and John Byrne now disgruntled with Marvel would make; The Torch of Liberty (Captain America knock off), The Next-Men (X-men but less powerful), Babe2 (She Hulk knock off) and Danger Unlimited (Fantastic Faux). John Byrne’s Darkhorse stuff is connected to Hellboy, The first story was a back-up in Next-Men 11, Abe Sapien guest starred in Babe2 and The Torch of Liberty witness the Birth of Hellboy in seed of Destruction (he was changed in the 2017 Hellboy movie with Lobster Johnson in the only good scene of the movie).

Top 10 Comic Book Artists

 Now I don’t like doing top 10 lists that much, but after the last one well I needed to celebrate good comic book art. It’s an easy format but now I have two options. I can act like I am a great authority on the subject or weasel out by stating it’s just my opinion. I could go for a meta-angle I suppose and mock the formulaic nature of this sort of article causing half of the internet to shrivel up. I also want to make sure that my introduction looks weighty enough so it takes slightly longer when somebody scrolls past to find out who is on the list. For those actually reading this just because your favourite artist isn’t on the list doesn’t mean they’re a bad artist well with some exceptions (Greg Land of course). I will of course in the bulk of the text reference other artists to sound knowledgeable in an attempt to make it seem like I haven’t just listed 10 artists that I like.  

Emma Rios

Have you ever seen comic book art and just fall in love? Genuine question. Rios has her own art style and she isn’t just a token pick to prove my SJW credentials. She brings something genuinely new, I could best describe it as, Steve Ditko mixed with Mike Mignola, with a hint of Tim Sale, creating notes of Moebius with a massive dollop of Vincent Van Gogh. Now I can’t rank her too high on the list as she’s fairly new, she could become lazy and complacent like John Romita jr so lets hope her art continues to improve.

Jim Lee

Jim Lee has the best grasp of the human anatomy of anyone working in comics, but what do you expect from a former med student? Jim Lee is also the best selling comic book artist of all time, but that’s got more to do with the speculator boom. The biggest problem with Jim Lee is his comics aren’t that good at storytelling, in fact some books he’s worked on are complete incoherent trash (Superman For Tomorrow or All Star Batman and Robin). A Jim Lee comic is more a showcase for his amazing two page spreads, and he uses this far too much, almost every other page. Sometimes I think DC should just release a book of wall posters by Jim Lee instead. 

Michael Dooney

Michael Dooney is on here for one simple reason, he drew the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He has done a few comics, but he’s mostly done covers and the box art for toys. Most notably he did the designs for the 2003 Ninja Turtles cartoon but the few turtle comics he’s done are the best of the TMNT and I want to either bully him more or get people to bully other publishers to hire him to do more comics, he does tones of DC Fan art let him draw a Zatanna mini series or something.

Carl Barks

Carl Barks side-stepped nominative determinism by drawing ducks. That's what he did: he drew ducks for disney, creating Scrooge McDuck in his tenure. He was so good at it he continued in his retirement to draw duck softcore porn (No I will not be showing you that). Bark’s Donald Duck comics reinvented the character, when Barks started Donald was your average suburbanite with a streak of bad luck. Donald evolved into becoming a globetrotting adventurer who searched for treasure and got into sword fights with pirates. Barks created a whole new world for Donald and made it believable that this square would go thrill-seeking with his family. Donald is also the most published non-superhero comic book character and hugely popular in France, Germany and Belgium because of Barks tenure. Carl Barks’ Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics were adapted into Ducktales (sometimes replacing Donald with Launchpad because Donald’s speech is limited).

  

Adam Kubert

We all have our ideas of what comic book art should look like. For me what Superhero comics should look like is Adam Kubert’s art. That should be enough praise to give the son of the legendary Joe Kubert, the founder of the Joe Kubert school. But I can actually say the same thing about Adam’s brother Andy, and if I put them both on the list I’m just saying “this art style is better than others”, which isn’t true no one style is better than others it’s all subjective. No what separates Adam from Andy is that Adam drew Neil Gaiman’s 1602 which is in a completely different art style and still looks good (unlike Andy trying to copy Frank Miller on DKR the Master Race).

Akira Toriyama

The only Mangaka on this list. Akira Toriyama to most people is a one-hit wonder known only for DragonballZ. But there is so much more to him, and even Dragonball gets viewed myopically as nothing but fights. Toriyama is great at visual storytelling so much so the Manga is understandable without translation. His fight scene choreography is so memorable that kids will imitate it on the playground. There’s even more, like his use of slapstick comedy or his world design for the Dragonquest and Chrono Trigger video games. Hell, even Dragonball is set in a great fantasy world with flying cars and dinosaurs at the same time (and you don’t question it, you just say cool). 

Gill Kane

If you drew a comic that is often credited with ending the Silver-age, shouldn’t you be a well known name in comics? What if you created one of the Justice League’s big seven? Well Gill Kane did both by pencilling Amazing Spider-man 121-122 better known as “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” and created Green Lantern (the good one Hal Jordan not Alan Scott). So call it personal bias because my two favourite superheroes are Spider-man and Green Lantern but he deserves to be on this list. Most of Gill Kanes work was when Marvel and DC expected artists to work in their house style, so it takes a good look to tell his art from Nick Cardy, Carmine Infantino or John Romita Sr. Kane on his run on Action Comics worked in a new style, a style of his own that clearly inspired Mike Mignola, a more minimalist style that took inspiration from the Max Fleisher Superman cartoons and CC Beck. 

Jack Kirby

The most obvious and cliched pick of them all. But sometimes a cliche is true. Jack Kirby probably in his career created more well known characters than any other artist. But what Kirby is best at is storytelling, he made comics the melodramatic medium that they are. Nobody in a Jack Kirby comic is narked; they're consumed by a rage hotter than a thousand exploding suns. Their joy is like a million birthdays at once and they’re not sad they’re in a depression that a lesser man couldn’t escape. Of course critics of Jack Kirby will complain about his anatomy, but they don’t get it. Kirby before working in comics was an inbetweens animator at Fleisher studios and this rubbed off on him. Their anatomy isn’t wonky, it's rubber hose, it stretches and shrinks to convey greater movement. I think 2 quotes from Jack Kirby will explain why he was so good “Comics will only break your heart” because he put his all into comics, experimented to make his craft better and got very little praise in his lifetime or money. “I feel my characters are valid, my characters are people, my characters have hope. Hope is the thing that’ll get us through” because he gave us heroes, heroes to look up to, ones that won’t let us down. They might be flawed but they try to do the right thing and by reading them maybe they’ll rub off on us and we can make the world a better place by their example.

 

Chris Bachallo

Jim Steranko made a name for himself by using unusual panel formats, Chris Bachallo took one look at them and went I can do better. Chris Bachallo must be claustrophobic because his characters are rarely boxed in. He never uses a normal panel layout, and as offbeat and quirky as they are they’re always understandable to the reader (well a western reader and manga fan reads in a backwards N as opposed to the normal Z). 

His style is not just made up of weird panel layouts; he has a unique style of character, which may not be to everyone's taste. If you don’t like your characters a bit on the cartoony side then you’ll probably want to stick with his Shade the Changing man but to me he is the definitive Doctor Strange Artist. Also the comic I’m most excited to read is Non-Stop Spider-man, I can’t wait for the trade to come out so I can see Spider-man bounce around the page.

Honorable mention Klaus Janson

When you say artist that’s almost synonymous with penciller. That’s the interpretation I had for this list, although some of the artists on this list did their own inks, it’s mostly defined by pencil work. But Klaus Janson is the greatest inker ever, want proof? He can make Frank Miller and John Romita jr look good (well not as bad as normal he doesn’t redraw their art). He has a skill that is unfortunately overlooked as many think Inking is just tracing. Klaus Janson wrote the book on inking and in it there's a whole chapter dedicated to that debate most famously seen in Chasing Amy.

Another Honourable mention even though he's not as good, but he's trying would be Instagram.com/KBen_on_Art

John Byrne

I actually questioned this decision, because the title of best comic book artist is high praise. Not for his actual art, but because of what's come out of his mouth (or more accurate keyboard). John Byrne has always been a controversial figure in comics, from an early feud with his hero Jack Kirby to his more recent comments. Some of his feuds he has been in the right and was standing up to bullies in editorial, he’s even shown he can change his mind. Earlier in life he was homophobic but after learning he was wrong created Northstar the gay superhero (Northstar wasn’t allowed to be out and proud because of Marvel Editor-in-chiefs stronger homophobia). But as it stands I’m not sure John Byrne’s mind is in mint condition anymore. He now sits on his little forum espousing ignorant views to it’s 600 members who he’ll ban at a moment's notice for disagreeing with him and call them a “Micro-brain”.  How he got like this I don’t know, and how anyone will get him to see the light also baffles me. Maybe it’s from years of not getting the credit he deserves for Co-scripting Dark Knight Returns (even being the one to add a girl Robin), or reinventing Superman for the modern age and being prophetic by making Donald Trump his archenemy. All I know is Byrne drew the best Fantastic Four, X-men, Superman and She Hulk while managing to get a good balance between anatomical detail and storytelling. So I just want to say John Byrne’s art is alway welcome, his views are not. 

Greg Land and The Robot Apocalypse

 Pointing out that Greg Land is a hack, fraud or charlatan is nothing new. Thousands of other blogs have written about his tracing of random sources and calling it his own art. So why would my take on the worst remnant of the speculator boom be any different from the others. Well because Greg Land’s “Art” is the first step to a fully automated comics industry, one devoid of soul or originality. Where comics aren’t created by devoted artists who have studied what came before them but copy pasted crap that devalues the medium. Don’t believe me, read on true believer… 

It is often said that “Nobody gets into comics to make a lot of money” but if you think that you forgot about the speculator boom, when comic stores sold box upon box of Rob Liefeld knock offs to investors who’ve never read a comic. Greg Land started his career in comics during this period of time. So how did he start, well he traced Jim Lee’s Wildcats, renamed the characters and self published it. This work caught the eye of Crossgen comics, whose founder Mark Alessi (nicknamed by Mark Waid “the Donald Trump of comics”) a soul mate. Crossgen comics was set up as a company that would publish creator owned ideas, but instead Alessi insisted it would work like clockwork so if a writer missed a deadline they would be replaced with Alessi’s other soulmate and noted Comicsgater Chuck Dixon. Land worked on Sojourn where he started what he’s best known for tracing porn. After Crossgen folded and was sold to Disney (the speculator boom was now dead, buried and ready to be uncovered by archeologists) for one million dollars. Greg Land jumped to DC Comics and worked on Nightwing but was fired for tracing the previous artist on the book. He then ended up at Marvel, where he still works now. Marvel’s Editor in chief Joe Quesada has commented on Greg Land’s art with “it’s not fair to fire him for what fan’s have alleged”. I do wonder if his opinion has changed more recently since Dark Horse comics have taken legal action against them (Greg Land traced panels from one of their comics). 

With the Biography done, how does this lead to the fall of humanity?

Well his art style is something artificial intelligence can copy, machines have no imagination they can only copy and replicate. They also have no idea how to read emotions and are quite poor at identifying different faces. One look at a page of a Greg Land comic will show he can’t do that either, he’ll reuse the same pic for 2 different characters and they’re just recoloured or the same character will have a completely different face in the next panel. Also according to his comics O-Face runs the entire gamut of women’s emotions. Anytime a man is screaming in a Greg Land comic he looks like he’s jizzed himself so it’s not just women just that he’ll trace for. But with men he’ll also trace pro-wrestlers or once infamously a meme. His run on Iron man was limited because he could only use poses from the first Iron man movies (also Iron man’s armour changes between panels). Similarly his Fantastic Four run was hindered by lack of resources because he traced Bryan Hitch’s depictions of The Thing. 

Now I don’t think Greg Land is actually a robot, but he draws and thinks like one. I realised this fact after reading House of X/Powers of X. Which was luddite propaganda but it’s about Professor X betting the survival of mutantkind on human’s imagination and ingenuity against machines' cold calculations.  Isn’t that what makes us human, the desire to tell stories and make art. Surely to be human is to work on your own art, struggle to get better at your craft? But Mr Land won’t understand that he thinks he broke into the industry quite late at the age of 25 (if you didn’t know most people make it into comics late 30s to mid 40s).  

Keep Ganon Evil!

 You read the title, I stand by it, despite it being a popular idea. The idea of a redemption story for “the king of Evil” is the worst idea Nintendo could make with the exception of the next Mario game having a sex-tape between Wario and Princess Peach. 

Ok why can’t a redeemed Ganon work? Firstly it would mean that Nintendo couldn’t use the character again. The legend of Zelda has one playable hero, Link and to quote Yoshinori Kitase on the creation of Cloud for Final Fantasy 7. “The protagonist has all these secrets to unravel. He isn't a straightforward hero like Superman; rather, he has many mysteries, self-doubts, and a real dark side.” But instead of Superman, he could’ve easily said Link. Link is your straight forward, happy-go lucky hero to muddy the water with the idea he isn’t the helpful hero would undermine the franchise. Link is so good because he is fighting a villain so evil. Link has no doubts and the player (who is embodying the role of Link) has no reason to doubt his motives. This would ruin the game, because unlike other games Legend of Zelda is more simplistic escapism, you want to go to a world with clear cut heroes and villains because the real world is messy. You want to go to a world were the biggest problem can be stopped by fighting an evil warlock in a duel.

In Windwaker Ganon gives a speech about why he did his horrible acts. His reasons were that the “desert is cold at night”. Yes that’s it, that’s why he attempted 3 different genocides. He was trying to alleviate the suffering of a people who are perfectly adapted to the desert climate. Yep, he infested Hyrule castle town with the undead forcing thousands from their home because he didn’t know what a blanket was. He fed the Gorons, (Rock people who live by a volcano) to a dragon because he couldn’t make a fire. He froze the Zora (fish people) because, well, he had no justification. 

No Ganon was originally the king of the Gerudo, being the only male he was their king or the god. All the female Gerudo fulfilled his every wish, but that wasn’t enough. He grew more and more jealous of the king of Hyrule because he wanted to be the only one who was worshipped. So the Gerudo became bandits, so that Ganon could have more and more. Once he had enough wealth he tried to overthrow the royal family and take the Tri-force. But he was only worthy of one third, he did not have the Wisdom to use it properly or the Courage to do what’s right (those thirds belong to Princess Zelda and Link). His lust for power transformed him into his perfect avatar and drooling pig. Later in Breath of the Wild he became an entity of pure evil energy called “Malice”. Ganon is  not a nice chap.

 

So why would anyone want a redeemed Ganon, well it all comes from fan art. Because somebody drew a hot Ganon the concept of physiognomy came into play. Nothing from the previous games would support anything else, but people libidos overrule the fact he’s literally called “the King of Evil”.

How Influential was TMNT?

 The term influential is used a lot, and sometimes wrongly. Sometimes it's used as a pseudonym for popular but “influential” means it influenced others. A list of the most influential comics would probably include Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, The Jack Kirby era of Fantastic Four, Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury and some more obscure comics like Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg or Will Eisner’s Mission from God (The first Graphic Novel). But Eastman and Laird’s Turtles is often overlooked, and I’m going to explain why it’s one of the most influential comic series.

Simply put the original Ninja Turtles was Punk rock. Like Punk it wasn’t about professionalism, in fact that's part of why it worked. A couple of art school rejects just sat down and drew their comic, giving it a DIY feeling like Punk. The Ramones or the Sex Pistols weren’t virtusos but they had passion and energy. Nobody would confuse Peter Laird or Kevin Eastman’s art for John Byrne’s in fact a common criticism of their work is that it's “amateurish” but that’s part of the appeal. Some fans probably picked up their self published comic and thought “I can draw better than these dudes” but that’s ok, from the drones of The Ramones came more mainstream music like Blondie so the same applies to comics. Without the massive success of the Turtles would Ben Edlund have self published The tick? Not to mention other self published comics like; Xenozoic tales, or Mike Allred’s Madman or The Crow. Would the Image comics founders have left Marvel without knowing that there was a market for comics not made by Marvel or DC? Not to mention the amount of knock offs like Solson publications “Sultry Teenage Super Foxes” or “Cold blooded Chameleon Commandos'', “Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils”, “Pre-Teen Dirty Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos”, “Bucky O’Hare”, “Samurai Cop” (which is the first comic published with art by Jim Lee) or “Reagan’s Raiders” and that’s just from self published comics. Knock off cartoons trying to get a toy license The Toxic Avenger (a trashy and ultra-violent B-movie by Troma) was reworked into a cartoon called Toxic Crusaders, Street Sharks, Biker Mice from Mars, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce go!, Butt Ugly Martians and more. To try and capitalise on this craze Dic entertainment did a butchered dub Kyatto Ninden Teyandee renaming it “Samurai Pizza Cats”, it was so blatant an attempt to copy the TMNT that it even had “They’ve got more fur than any Turtle ever had” sung in the theme tune. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn’t the first self published comic to find an audience and longevity, (that would be Cerebus the Aardvark which we don’t talk about for obvious reasons) but it was the first to have a mainstream crossover appeal. Almost from the beginning they had merchandising offers for merchandise, the famous one is The Playmates toys who made the action figures, but earlier deals they made were with Palladium to make a Tabletop RPG and Solson publications with Martial Arts training manuals. But more interesting and relevant is mini figures for the Tabletop game made by Dark Horse, yes the same Dark Horse known for Usagi Yojimbo and Hellboy. 

Comic book art in the 80’s started to change, the default art style for Marvel was John Buscema’s and DC’s was very similar, but suddenly these elongated hunky characters were changing. Now comic heroes were more muscular and squat, Eastman and Laird weren’t shy about talking about their love of Jack Kirby, going so far as to give Kirby a cameo in the Donatello one-shot and drawing him a Birthday card. But Kirby had fallen out of favour, his art was now seen as more crude like Eastman and Laird’s. Jack Kirby was also now infamous for his failures, like Thundarr the barbarian, Devil Dinosaur and The Eternals. His projects at DC all under performed and were hated by the publisher, but now The Fourth World Saga is considered a classic, Kamandi and Etrigan the demon are also now cult favourites. DC probably thought Jack Kirby’s work for them would replicate his successful Marvel work but I don’t think anything could because when Jack created Captain America,The Fantastic Four or The Mighty Thor for Marvel that was fresh. Even though his work at Marvel wasn’t all hits, Incredible Hulk was cancelled after 6 issues. But the narrative around Jack had changed by 1992 that Image Comics asked Jack to be their figurehead (like Stan Lee is for Marvel). 

Not a bad legacy for a comic that Pawn Stars only valued the first 5 issues of at $250. (note issue one usually sells for about $2000).