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Wednesday 10 April 2019

SJW you mean Superhero right?


Ever come across an insult so non-sensical it makes you wonder what could anyone mean from it, if so you’ve not seen an internet comment section about something related to Marvel comics, Star Wars or Doctor Who. Yes I know such a phrase SJW standing for Social Justice Warrior, this phrase makes even less sense in the context of Superhero comics, the premiere superhero team is called the Justice League because they fight for Justice. I genuinely wonder what people expect from comics if they use this term, like do they want Spider-man to refuse to help a hispanic family from a burning building or did they think that Lex Luthor was the good guy not the guy who fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”. The term SJW is synonymous with the Alt-Right and if you don’t know who they are they’re Trump supporters, members of the KKK and the kind of people who think “Hitler didn’t do anything wrong”, and there claim of any form of ownership over comics as an art form is questionable at best. 
So other than ranting online what have these groups done to try and control the Comic book industry; well there was organised harassment of Marvel Assistant Editor Heather Antos because she had such a role in the company and a vagina, the most ridiculous incident was over her posting a photo of her and her friends drinking Milkshakes. While you could argue that her having an assistant editor’s role and very few writing or art credits means she hasn’t earned her seniority a more useful form of harassment would be to send her unsolicited Thor scripts. 
Let’s not forget the Breitbart scandal that removed James Gunn temporarily from the Director’s seat of Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3. What was it over? 8 year old bad jokes about the things Bryan Singer (Director of the Fox X-men movies) actually does (Singer has of course had minimal backlash, he even while it was public knowledge he had molested an non-consenting 14 year old boy directed an Oscar winning movie). Of course thats what they’d have you believe however it was over Gunn being critical of Donald Trump and his policies and not his offensive jokes, similar celebrities got targeted by Breitbart include; Kathleen Kennedy (head of Lucasfilm) Patton Oswald, Sarah Silverman and Dan Harmon however their attempts to remove them from high paying media jobs. 
Of course we can’t forget the poor victimised Richard Meyer who lost his job because of the mean Mark Waid who told his employer Arctic Press, that he wrote hate speech all over the internet under the name “Diversity and Comics”. Wait a second why is Meyer the victim, well he believes he is and has decided to sue Mark Waid claiming Waid abused his power as a writer and editor for Marvel and Archie Comics and is now trying to censor him and is working on a court case to defend his free-speech, but it’s not like Waid went and deleted all of his crap, or all the people on his side claiming that those who side with Waid are “Virtue Signalling idiots”. Virtue Signalling of course meaning a person affirming their beliefs and fighting for whats right which sounds a lot like a group of fictional characters, what are they called, oh yeah Superheroes.

Lets not forget the recent Captain Marvel hoopla, which had groups “review bomb” the upcoming movie to reduce it’s Rotten Tomatoes score. This lead to Rotten Tomatoes changing it’s user review policy which now allows studios to delete any review they think is spam. But why did Captain Marvel get this treatment, well Black Panther and Wonder Woman both did get this treatment, but to lesser degree. Black Panther got annoying “White Panther trolls” who had that one joke. Wonder Woman was made by DC after 3 critically panned movies, it also has a whole host of other problems, some being story changes that seem to be made to appease the Alt-Right like her origin being set in World War 1 not 2 because we can’t just have Wonder Woman punch Nazi’s, or not injuring Steve Trevor just winding him because having her altruistically protecting a man would offend these people, or having the Amazon’s be lead and worship Zeus thus replacing the roles and function of 2 women from Wonder Woman lore (this could be them assuming that Zeus is the only greek god audiences know but thats another from of insulting). That was just what was on screen in the Wonder Woman movie, that doesn’t include known rapist Brett Ratner producing the film and raping someone during a set visit, though after the woman spoke out against Ratner the films star Gal Gadot said she would not do a sequel if Ratner was involved only for the whistleblower to then turn around in the press and accused Gadot of helping Ratner rape her. 
Of course there was a more moderate response of why is Captain Marvel a big deal we had Wonder Woman, even ignoring all the above problems, Captain Marvel was written by 3 women (beating the previous record for women writing a big budget superhero movie by 2 which was previously held by Guardians of the Galaxy) and one man and was directed by a duo (featuring a man and a woman), while Wonder Woman was directed by a woman, but a non-writing Director (which to me means responsible for all the blame and undeserving of the credit) and a writing team of all men which included Zack Snyder (for story only), who is an outspoken Objectivist (a far Right philosophy) and director of the movie Suckerpunch so incoherent and confusing I genuinely think it was actually pro-rape but I’m not sure. Zack Snyder also directed the previous DC Movies that Alt-Right activists have been known to target the fans of for recruitment into their causes.
Lastly I can’t mention the outrage Captain Marvel’s leading lady Brie Larson caused by saying “Can I be interviewed by people who aren’t 40 year old white men”, which Menninists (a group of Men’s Rights activists who deal exclusively in petty first world problems) interpreted as I hate all men everywhere, no men should see Captain Marvel. I can say as a White man Captain Marvel is an Awesome movie. Larson decided to use her powers as star of the movie to help movie journalism become more diverse, which is a good thing, but not to mention some of the creepy shit male interviewers say to actresses on press tours for movies, standard are drooling questions about their costumes, but some are outright disturbing like Kate Mara while promoting Fant4stic got told outright by an interviewer that he “liked her toes and that he had a toe fetish” and that was how he introduced himself. 

Alt-Right Comic fans hate Kelly Sue Deconnick, I remember seeing someone make a big stink of her saying “if you don’t like my politics don’t buy my book”, as if this is an unreasonable thing to do and she should be villainised for this statement. In the same interview they got the snippet she commented on people’s belief that Superhero Comics should be apolitical and that they have some belief that they used to be, but the question is when? when was the first SJW Comic book? well for hiring somebody who wasn’t a white male to work on it was Will Eisner’s the spirit, and while the Spirit to some might be the movie where Samuel L Jackson ramblings about eggs and Scarlet Johanson wears a bunch of fetish outfits but it was an important landmark in comics hiring the first female artist Toni Blum (who used other pseudonyms and her real name was Audrey). The Spirit also had the first Black sidekick in Ebony White and although his appearance now is a racist stereotype he was still a first and a progressive move as he often helped the hero and was a character. But it’s not like Will Eisner had any more impact on comics like creating a whole format? wait he did Will Eisner wrote a Contract with God which is often considered the first Graphic Novel the format that most comics are written for and makes up 8/10 of all comic sales now, which nullifies the other claim that SJW characters don’t sell comics because they don’t sell monthly comics but, they sell loads of Graphic Novels. This doesn’t even mention the fact that the biggest award in comics is named after Will Eisner.
But when where Superhero comics Alt-Right friendly? well the 1940’s Captain America and Wonder Woman where punching Nazis, the 1950’s Superman was fighting the Ku Klux Klan and calling them un-American scum, the 1960’s Marvel’s readership where so left-wing they created Iron Man an industrialist billionaire to try and get another opinion in the book, the 1970’s when Green Lantern was accused of being racist and was replaced with a black guy, the 1980’s when the X-men are culturally diverse group of misfits fighting for Civil rights? I guess the answer must be the 1990’s when Marvel filed for bankruptcy. Which is symptomatic of how selfish these people are, they want to take Superheroes away from little kids, Superheroes who are designed to give exciting adventure stories for kids and teach them not to be shi