Bent Corner - Comic Books

NPC: Comicsgate’s new slur for non-Comicsgate people

Comicsgate supporters have come up with a new term for people who don’t support their movement: NPC.

It stands for “Non-Player Character.” It comes from table-top roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. The term later migrated over to video games. An NPC is a character in the game who looks and acts like another player but is controlled by the Dungeon Master or in the case of video games, the programming.

The NPC term originally became an insult on 4chan. It was coined to describe people who only have the same canned response to everything. They don’t think for themselves. They’re fake people.

From 4chan:

Why is Comicsgate using the NPC slur?

One of the underlying problems with the movement is most people in the comic book community disagree with its principles. Those who’ve never heard of the movement, once they learn about it, generally have a negative opinion of it.

That’s because it’s a hate movement.

Instead of responding to this reaction with introspection and self-examination, most Comicsgaters react by lashing out against anyone who does not agree with them. It’s what they do.

Up until a few weeks ago, Comicsgaters called anyone who disagreed with them SJWs, soyboys, cucks, waamen, or cultural Marxists. Now they seem uniformly focused on using the NPC slur.

What they fail to consider before referring to their detractors as fake people is that most Comicgaters use multiple sock puppet accounts. Rarely do Comicsgaters post things using their real names.

This is a perfect example:

The trials and trivals of living life as a NPC. pic.twitter.com/m7ozOl7KQc

— ThatUmbrellaGuy (@ThatUmbrella) October 14, 2018

TheUmbrellaGuy is one of the minor lieutenants in the Comicsgate command hierarchy. He has a YouTube channel and he regularly appears on Ethan Van Sciver’s Comicsgate live streams. Mr. Van Sciver claims to own the term “Comicsgate” and because of this claim, when he’s not decapitating a metal Rose Tico figure with a pair of bolt cutters, decides who and who isn’t Comicsgate.

Ethan Van Sciver (Photo: New Jersey Comic Expo)

TheUmbrellaGuy hides behind a fake name. The person he’s referring to in his tweet as an “NPC” is Heather Antos, a real person who tweets under her real name. I find it ironic that in the world of Comicsgate, a fake person can call a real person an NPC.

This irony, like a good many things, seems to be completely lost on members of Comicsgate. Like other popular slurs in Comicsgate, they will eventually grow tired of it and switch to something else. If you want to know what they’ll be calling they believe to be “anti-Comicsgate” in the future, just go to 4chan today. They will undoubtedly recycle a term coined by 4chan and then cast aside when it becomes old. What’s other people’s trash is Comicsgate’s treasure.

Originality is not one of Comicsgate’s strong suits.

Yasiel Puig is ready to bash Glenn’s head in

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?

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

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

Social justice Warriors (SJWs), people on the control-left, got a kick out of this video. Too many of them defended 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 Spenser was ever born. Richard Spenser is 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 and the words you use should always be in the past tense.

Just because you don’t like someone for their political views, doesn’t mean you get to label them a Nazi. Pick another word to use. That 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 all 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, climb 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 torn bodies of your friends, you could then punch all the Nazis you wanted.

You’d probably want to shoot them because they would be trying to shoot you. After all, it’s World War Two, they’re Nazis, and you are not 12-years-old.

Unless you’re able to change time and space, you can’t punch a Nazi in the face. Hey, that rhymes. 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 the middle-aged guy at Comic-Con dressed like Wonder Woman costume is really 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. In other words, they can be Richard Spenser. That doesn’t make them a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Carrie Fisher 1956 – 2016

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.

Otakon to move to Washington DC in 2017

Otakon, the annual anime and manga fandom convention is taking place this weekend at the Baltimore Convention Center. It will be Otakon’s final year in Baltimore. The Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC will begin hosting Otakon starting in 2017.

Why the move? Because the Baltimore Convention Center hasn’t aged gracefully. From the official Otakon website:

The primary driver for this move is the state of the facilities in Baltimore and their uncertain future. The Baltimore Convention Center has not aged gracefully and there are proposals to replace both the BCC and the Arena over the next five years. Any upgrades would require at least a temporary move and would result in disruptive changes in our facilities regardless of the final outcome.

The Arena is the Royal Farms Arena located a block away from the Baltimore Convention Center. I haven’t been there is years, so I don’t know if it too has not aged gracefully.

Another problem with hosting Otakon in Baltimore is the city itself. Parts of Baltimore are dangerous, not the kind of places you’d want to go dressed up as Sailor Moon.

You also never know when the Baltimore police will kill someone. It happens all the time. When it does, there’s good chance there will be riots and the city will burn. Black Lives Matter.

There’s a reason the HBO series The Wire took place in the city of Baltimore.

A man walks past a burning police vehicle, Monday, April 27, 2015, during unrest following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Gray died from spinal injuries about a week after he was arrested and transported in a Baltimore Police Department van. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

I’ve been to Otakon only once, and I didn’t care too much for it. Although my interest in Anime and Japanese pop culture is not the greatest, I do have some interest in it. What stood out the most was how rude and obnoxious everyone seemed to be. I had more people bump into me at my one day there than I had the prior twenty years combined. I’ve been to Star Trek cons. I’ve been to comic book cons. The fans at Otakon are just different.

Another thing I don’t like about Otakon is the price. They don’t sell single day tickets. The event takes place Thursday through Sunday. If you want only to go to Friday’s convention, you have to purchase a four-day $100 membership. They get away with this because they cater to hardcore fans, the type of fans who wouldn’t dream of going to Otakon for only one day.

I’m a much more casual fan of anime and Japanese pop culture. My casual fandom isn’t conducive to forking over $100 for the privilege of attending a convention for one day.

Captain America is a Hydra sleeper agent

Marvel Comics retconned the hell out of one of its most prized pieces of intellectual property last week. They made Captain America a Hydra sleeper agent. Not only did they make Steve Rogers a Hydra agent, they did it by adding it to his backstory. We see that he and his mother were recruited by Hydra back in 1926. That means everything Steve Rogers has done in the past 75 years as Captain America has been done by a Hydra sleeper agent.

To drive home the point that Captain America is evil, we see him murder Jack Flag.

Captain America is a Hydra sleeper agent - Bent Corner — Can you fly Jack Flag?

At least it looked like Captain America murdered Jack Flag. He chucked him out the back of an aircraft without a parachute. Then again, Marvel might have retconned Jack Flag so that he had the power of flight, or maybe he’s actually Thor.

I think Thor is a woman now, so I doubt he’s Thor.

I imagine hardcore fans of Captain America are pretty distraught over this. The writer who wrote Steve Rogers Captain America #1, the comic the retcon took place, has reportedly received death threats on social media. Although I don’t support or condone death threats, even fake ones on social media, I can certainly see how someone could be upset over this.

Imagine someone reading Captain America books for years, spending thousands of dollars on Captain America collectibles only to find out that he was a Hydra agent the whole time. Some people have a strong emotional connection to comic book characters. There are people who have had Captain America tattooed on their body, not because of how he looked, but because of what he represented.

I’ve never been a fan of Captain America

Captain America always seemed a bit too patriotic, almost as though he was trying to compensate for something. I imagined he was the type of guy who would always try to get you to join him in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every 15 minutes. You love America Steve, we get it. Now give it a rest.

Then there’s the way Steve Rogers obtained his superpowers. He was a hapless weakling until they injected him with Super-Soldier Serum. In other words, they gave him performance enhancers to make him into something he wasn’t. He was Lance Armstrong before Lance Armstrong. At least Lance Armstrong was pretty good at riding a bicycle before taking performance enhancers. The same cannot be said for Steve Rogers. Without performance enhancers, he was nothing.

Sometimes comic books can be really stupid. Captain America retconned as a Hydra sleeper agent? This is one of those times.