Comic Books

Yasiel Puig is ready to bash Glenn’s head in

February 18, 2017 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig received a prop from the TV show The Walking Dead. It’s a replica of Lucille, the baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire used by Negan to kill Glenn.

I stopped reading The Walking Dead comic with issue #100. It was the issue that Negan killed Glenn with the barbed wire bat. I watched the TV show until I realized it suffered from the very same plot problems that plagued the comic book: characters are only there to be killed in gratuitous and meaningless fashion.

I found this problem to be worse with the TV show. Actors spent years crafting their characters into layered individuals, only to have them end up decapitated, stabbed, boiled, shot, or eaten.

In the comic, the characters were much more one-dimensional individuals. Also, because of the art style employed, they all looked alike. I never really cared too much when a character died in the comic because it never felt like too much of a loss. That wasn’t the case with the TV show.

Another problem with the TV show is the main protagonist Rick Grimes. He’s played by British actor Andrew Lincoln. The man cannot act. His performances come off as over-the-top and heavy. Think William Shatner with a bad southern accent.

I don’t understand the point of a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. The dangerous part of the bat is the head. That’s where all the kinetic energy is. I don’t see how barbed wire makes the bat more lethal. I guess it could be a defensive measure. The way you defend against someone with a baseball bat is to close the distance with your attacker. Get close enough and you can easily block a baseball bat attack by focusing on the area of the bat closest to your attacker’s hands. Wrap barbed wire around that area and it would make a baseball bat attack much more difficult to defend.

This wasn’t a concern when Negan killed Glenn. It wasn’t a fight. It was execution.

I don’t know what Yasiel Puig is supposed to do with this bat. He should try to sell it on eBay.

So you want to punch a Nazi in the face?

February 3, 2017 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

Some people are actually talking about whether it’s ethical to punch a Nazi in the face.

It started when a protester punched white separatist Richard Spencer in the face. Some described it as punching a Nazi in the face.

People on the control-left got a kick out of this video. Many of them began defending the violent act, justifying it because Richard Spenser is a Nazi. That’s it’s okay to punch someone in the face if they’re a Nazi.

Richard Spenser is not a Nazi. He is not a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. That organization was pulverized and cast into the trash heap of history long before he was ever born. He’s an attention whore with a bad haircut. He enjoys expressing outrageous, racist opinions to get attention.

Nazis were real people. They waged war in Europe from 1939 to 1945. They exterminated over six million Jews. Nazis were responsible for the death and misery of real people. When you compare asshats like Richard Spenser to the Nazis, you’re dishonoring Nazi victims. You should never compare anyone to a Nazi other than an actual Nazi.

Just because you don’t like someone for their political views, doesn’t mean you get to label them a Nazi. Pick another word because that one is already taken, probably long before you were born.

If you want to punch a Nazi in the face, You’re too late. They’re gone. If you want to be a puncher of Nazis, you should have been born in the 1920s. You then would have been able to join the U.S. Army, hop in a Higgens boat, and hit the beaches of Normandy, France. If you could get past all the artillery fire, the machine gun nests, and the bodies of your friends, you could then punch all the Nazis you want.

You’d want to shoot them because they would be trying to shoot you. After all, it’s World War Two and they’re Nazis.

Unless you’re able to change time and space, you can’t punch a Nazi in the face. You could punch someone like Richard Spenser in the face, but that’s not the same thing as punching a Nazi. Don’t pretend for a second that he’s a real Nazi and that you’re a Nazi puncher. At most, he’s a cosplay Nazi, albeit not a very good one.

Richard Spenser is not a Nazi and this man is not Wonder Woman.

Richard Spenser is no more a real Nazi than that middle-aged guy at Comic-Con wearing a Wonder Woman costume is an Amazon princess with superhuman strength. He’s not Wonder Woman. He’s just a guy dressed up like Wonder Woman.

A person can espouse racist views and call for a separation of people based on the color of their skin. That doesn’t make them a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Carrie Fisher 1956 – 2016

December 27, 2016 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

From the Los Angeles Times:

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher, who rose to global fame as the trail-blazing intergalactic heroine Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise and later went on to establish herself as an author and screenwriter with an acerbic comic flair, has died.
Fisher suffered a cardiac incident on Friday during a flight to Los Angeles from London, where she had been filming the third season of the Amazon comedy series “Catastrophe.” Upon landing, she was quickly rushed to UCLA Medical Center, but after three days in intensive care, she died, a family publicist confirmed. She was 60 years old.
From the moment she first stepped onto the screen in 1977’s “Star Wars,” the character of Leia Organa — whip-smart, wryly funny and fearless enough to stand up to the likes of Darth Vader without batting an eye, with an instantly iconic set of buns on either side of her head — inspired generations of young girls to be bold and inspired crushes in generations of young boys.

When I first read this on Facebook, I was hoping it was fake news. It wasn’t fake news. Unfortunely, it really happened.

Gail Simone’s new policy on writing comics

December 8, 2016 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

Comic book writer Gail Simone went to Twitter today to share her new policy about the comic books she will write in the future:

I am not writing any more comics without LGBTQ and poc characters, period. It’s weird we have to even make that declaration.
— GAIL SIMONE (@GailSimone) December 8, 2016

The abbreviation “LGBTQ” stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer. I believe only one of the terms must be met to qualify. For example, a person does not have to be both lesbian and gay to qualify. By person, I mean a fictional comic book character. The abbreviation “poc” stands for person of color. Since it isn’t a real person, but a fictional comic book character, the correct abbreviation would be “coc” for character of color.

That could be problematic. Coc sounds like cock. People might think Gail Simone will only write comics that include cock.

Gail Simone's new policy on writing comics - Bent Corner — A cock on a fence.

It’s always interesting when someone announces something virtuous before they do it. If one wants to write comics that include characters from groups not usually seen in comic books, a better way to go about it is just to do it. Allow the public to discover on their own how inclusive you are.

Announcing it beforehand on Twitter spoils the enjoyment a reader would feel when seeing organically that one of the characters is part of a minority group. Now, people will go into any Gail Simone comic looking for the character who satisfies her new self-imposed inclusively mandate. Some may even consider these characters as tokens. That would be unfortunate.

I’m not sure why bisexual gets lumped into the same group as gay, lesbian, and transgender. When a person who is bisexual enters into a committed relationship with someone, presumingly only having sexual relations with their committed partner, are they still bisexual?

Hopefully, that’s something Gail Simone can explore in a future comic book.

Mark Waid sounds absolutely insane

November 16, 2016 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

Comic book writer Mark Waid wrote a long post on Facebook sharing is his feelings on the 2016 presidential election. Spoiler alert, he’s not too happy about how it turned out.

Donald Trump won and Hillary lost. I’m not happy with Trump being our president either. I wouldn’t have been happy to have Clinton as president either. That’s one of the things that made this election such a giant bucket of suck. No matter who won, it was going to be awful.

Mark began his post by stating that his therapist told him that he’s in the grieving stage with the outcome of the election. The post pretty much goes downhill from there.

He then talked about appearing at comic book conventions in red states. Some comic book professionals have vowed not to attend comic book conventions in states that voted for Donald Trump. Mark will not do that. He will attend conventions in red states. He will use his straight white male privilege, some argue to be the most powerful kind of privilege, to create safe spaces at these conventions. He went even further.

From Mark Waid’s Facebook account:

I’m not hard to find at shows. If you’re a fan or creator and are ever, ever made to feel uncomfortable on a convention floor, come find me. If it’s a fleeting thing, just come hang out. If, on the other hand, you can point out the aggressors, I will rain HELLFIRE on your behalf, I PROMISE you. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you that I’ll flip tables on bullies and creeps, and I’ll have your back. And while I’ve never had to use it, I’ve got enough clout to have hatemongers flat-out thrown out of shows, and I am not above those sorts of nuclear options.

I’ve never seen Mark Waid in person. Judging by his photos, he doesn’t strike me as an intimidating person.

I haven’t felt the need to attend a comic book convention in quite some time. It just never seems worth it. Panels are now usually posted to YouTube. You can buy anything sold at a comic book convention online.

Now that Mark is offering to use his straight white male privilege for anyone who asks, it might be fun to go to a comic book convention again.

The next time Mark attends a convention in the neighboring red state of Pennsylvania, I may have to go. I want to see him rain hellfire and flip tables. I don’t even know what hellfire is. Something tells me it’s not nice. It sounds dangerous, especially if used indoors.

Now that I think of it, the last time I went to the Baltimore Comic Con, the fire alarm went off. Everyone had to exit the building. Could Mark Waid raining hellfire on someone have caused the fire alarm to go off?

If it takes too long to see Mark Wade do his thing, I could have my wife go to Mark’s table to have him autograph my copy of Kingdom Come #3. She could then just casually mention to Mark that I annoy her.

It wouldn’t even be a lie. I annoy her all the time. She’ll ask me to do something and I then forget to do it. That’s so annoying.

Once Mark hears that I’ve annoyed my wife, he’s duty bound to find me and rain forth his hellfire upon me. He’s also obligated to flip my table. Considering that I wouldn’t have a table, that might be hard. He promised to do these things on Facebook, so by law, he has to do it.

That sounds like a lot of fun.

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