Open letter to Marvel Comics re: death of Nightcrawler

No spoiler alert because if you are worried about a character death being spoiled, get a life.

Okay, comic companies... enough. Just stop killing characters.

I was going to say stop killing off heroes to boost sales, but no. You have gone too far. I am now taking away all of your toys until you can learn to behave.

I am fucking sick of all of these pointless character death events. It is so fucking shallow and manipulative and it just makes me want to stop reading comics.

I didn't buy the death of Superman, Captain America, Batman, Cyclops, Colossus, Jean Grey (this time), or all of the rest of it. I knew that all of these characters will come back shortly. All you are doing is forcing someone to write a story later when they come back from the dead. The story will be tedious and the explanation will make no sense. If we are really unlucky, Nightcrawler will be brought back with new powers and a new attitude.

Fuck you. Just tell a fucking story, assholes!

Animated superhero movies

More news on the animated superhero front (this is starting to become a theme), DC Animation has suddenly announced the cancellation of many planned projects. The reason they site is poor sales on the Green Lantern and Wonder Woman movies.

Now, I thought Green Lantern was great. I'd love to see a sequel, but I'm not sure what they could do with it. The last one had the origin story and Sinestro as the villain. However, the Wonder Woman movie sucked. I'm just so tired of seeing Wonder Woman as a whiny feminist.

YOU CAN'T BE A FEMINIST IF YOU BARELY HAVE A CONCEPT OF GENDER!

Not really. Feminism is a reaction to a masculine environment and Diana isn't from a masculine environment. Now, it would make perfect sense for her to adopt a somewhat feminist attitude, but you still have to think of it through an alien point of view and not make it conform to Steinem conceptions of feminism.

Anyway, because of this, they are canceling not only the proposed sequels but also Aquaman, Batgirl: Year One (an awesome comic), and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (a classic and somewhat inappropriate for kids comic).

This is a really dumb move and it sounds to me like the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. Clearly, these animated movies are not being developed for fans as much as for movie producers. They are kind of like high-budget storyboards for people who don't have enough imagination to look at a comic and see a movie.

Even if Wonder Woman failed, the point is to excite interest and create a prototype for a Wonder Woman movie. What DC should be doing is making animated movies of everything they want to market to Hollywood. Naturally, as much as I'd love to see Batgirl: Year One and watch it with my niece, it doesn't accomplish the larger goal of selling film properties.

In other animated superhero movie news, Marvel has announced that Shout! Factory is going to be their new distributor of animated movies. This is awesome because Shout! puts together a lot of excellent DVD packages and is kinda indie. They distribute Home Movies, Johnny Carson, Greg the Bunny, Inside the Actor's Studio, MST3K, and even stuff no one likes like The Goldbergs! So I don't know if Shout is selling out or Marvel is reaching for alternative venues. You decide.

Supposedly, this isn't just Marvel Animation, but Marvel Knights Animation. I'm wondering about the distinction. Marvel Knights was a line aimed at a more mature audience with a sophisticated take on (usually) failing properties. I wonder if there is any relation.

It looks like they'll be producing Astonishing X-Men: Gifted (based on Joss Whedon's script, but this is actually my least favorite of the four stories in his run), Iron Man: Extremis, Spider-Woman, and Black Panther.

... Hmmm... this sounds suspiciously like a "motion comic" to me.

Sea of Love

Feeling sad... but that's okay. Just wish I had someone to share it with.

Press play.

I heard a "sex worker" on my daily podcast this morning and I developed a little crush on her. Her name is Antonia Crane and she has an MA in creative writing. She pushed a couple buttons with me. It's not hard to do nowadays. I feel like Daredevil at the beginning of that crappy movie... like I have to get into an isolation tank so that my nerves aren't constantly overstimulated.

She spoke to something in me. She describes the pervasiveness of the sex industry as a reaction to "volcanic loneliness," that is to say, loneliness on the verge of exploding. But she also talked about the legal basis for the sex industry in that it is sex as a form of expression and therefore free speech.

It's the connection that it was all about. The host said he never indulges in sex for pay (unlike many of his peers), not for moral reasons, but because what he really wants is the intimate, emotional connection. She comes back to say that many people come to her precisely for an intimate connection they can't get elsewhere. Not a fuck. She describes banging a man in the ass with a strap-on and making him look in the mirror while she called him her bitch.

Most would look on that as a psychological disorder (and it probably is in one sense or another), but there is no doubt that it is a transformative experience... no matter which side of the strap-on you're on... and therefore artistic. In a moment of uncontrolled passion, they have switched the gender roles beyond role-reversal and into the extremes of sexual depravity... but reversed. That does something to your brain. That is an experience that is so extreme that you can't go back. You just have to tunnel through it and see what it makes of you.

I've come to realize that a large part of what I'm look for in love is an intellectual challenge. I am always looking for a woman who can keep up with me conversationally. But more than that, I'm looking for a woman who challenges the things I take for granted or the things about me which are "normal" simply because it is easier to be normal. This has given me a great appreciation for particularly sexual and perverse girls... women who wear their persona like a Halloween costume... women who feel a need to challenge preconceptions and like to splash around in still waters.

But when describing what you love, you are always going to leave out more than you can say and there is more to it that you don't even know.

The last time I talked about my "ideal woman" on a blog, they were mostly fictional characters and I've started trying to transition to real people (albeit celebrities, so not that real). I fell for Zoe Saldana from her recent Daily Show interview. I've had a crush on Zooey Deschanel for a long time now. I'm developing something of a crush on Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza...

It's funny how some guys obsess over models. I mean, all of those women have great bodies, but I develop crushes on personalities. I didn't fall for Zoe Saldana because she was the Na'vi chick or Uhura (though, HOT)... it was the grace and character that she demonstrated in her interview which won me over.

Still, celebrities are larger than life... in a way, sexually expressive women are also larger than life. After all, how can a guy distinguish himself before a girl that all men want to fuck the moment they see her?

The older I get, the more mythic women seem to be. There are a lot of girls around... some of them are even cute and interested in me, but it just isn't enough.

Tim Gunn critiques superhero costumes

I just think these videos are awesome. Tim Gunn does a great job critiquing popular superhero costume. He takes it seriously and, as a fashion expert, he understands the visual impact that superhero costumes are supposed to have.

What's Golden - Jurassic 5

Aside from being a great song, this is just an awesome music video. It's not too flashy, but the cutaways and transitions are fantastic.

Taking stock of things...

Out of mind. Be back maybe.

Also canceled: Wolverine & the X-Men

How is it that I found two new cartoons that I love and they are both being canceled? Spectacular Spider-Man was canceled after two season but Wolverine & the X-Men didn't even make it that long!

I had a few issues with this show, mainly the name. I imagine this name was forced on the writers in order to tie into the recent movie that bombed. Although Wolverine is placed front and center and leading the team in this incarnation, there is plenty of time devoted to the other characters and this show has pretty much all of them.

The plot was basically Xavier gets sent to the Days of the Future Past universe (a dystopian future where mutants have been placed in concentration camps by Sentinels) and sends his consciousness back in time to instruct Wolverine on how to stop it.

It was probably the most accurate interpretation since the 1992 series, but the animation, dialog, and stories were a lot better.

I wish we could have seen season two.