lifeofkj reblogged
A superhero tries to get himself classified as a natural disaster so people can get refunded by their insurance company when he destroys their home during a fight.
lifeofkj reblogged
@copperbadge I know you don’t reblog much cosplay, but I feel like you’d get a kick out of this
Such a kick! Look at these GQ superheroes.
thislovelymaelstrom
cosplay is for everyone!! c:
Source: twitter.com
In the post-World War II era, the Klan experienced a huge resurgence. Its membership was skyrocketing, and its political influence was increasing, so Kennedy went undercover to infiltrate the group. By regularly attending meetings, he became privy to the organization’s secrets. But when he took the information to local authorities, they had little interest in using it. The Klan had become so powerful and intimidating that police were hesitant to build a case against them.
Struggling to make use of his findings, Kennedy approached the writers of the Superman radio serial. It was perfect timing. With the war over and the Nazis no longer a threat, the producers were looking for a new villain for Superman to fight. The KKK was a great fit for the role.
In a 16-episode series titled “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” the writers pitted the Man of Steel against the men in white hoods. As the storyline progressed, the shows exposed many of the KKK’s most guarded secrets. By revealing everything from code words to rituals, the program completely stripped the Klan of its mystique. Within two weeks of the broadcast, KKK recruitment was down to zero. And by 1948, people were showing up to Klan rallies just to mock them.
I ain’t the world’s best writer nor the world’s best speller But when I believe in something I’m the loudest yeller “Stetson Kennedy,” Woody Guthrie
(via wolfpangs)
If Woody Guthrie wrote a song about your merits, you freaking HAD them.
(via delcat)
lifeofkj reblogged
this is legit btw
I mean, there were folkloric heroes like Robin Hood before the Scarlet Pimpernel, but they didn’t really do the secret identity — people might not have known Robin Hood’s real identity but he wasn’t out living a double life and his costume was just what he and his buds wore in the forest, whereas the Pimpernel was actually doing the exact same thing as Bruce Wayne (pampered aristocrat by day, avenging hero by night)
also I wanna point out that the Scarlet Pimpernel was actually the leader of a league of twenty people also living double lives — Baroness Orczy also invented the first superhero team
lifeofkj reblogged
Fiction Week
The X-Men comic franchise has proven remarkably sturdy in the half-century since its launch. They’ve spawned dozens of animated series and four major Hollywood films with a fifth due out this summer. A big part of that is due to its central premise — a minority of superpowered humans called mutants are discriminated against by their government and fellow citizens — which has functioned as a sci-fi allegory for everything from the civil rights movement to the AIDS crisis.
"The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants," Chris Claremont, a longtime X-Men writer once said. “So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice.”
In many stories, those themes are underlined and circled using language from the real world. The X-Men’s leader, Charles Xavier, and Magneto, his nemesis, are on opposite sides of an ideological debate over whether they should try to integrate with humans or not. They’re referred to by writers and fans explicitly as analogs to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In the firstsecond X-Men movie, a teenager revealed that he was a mutant to his parents in a scene that was framed as a kind of coming out. (“Have you ever tried…not being a mutant?” his mother asks.)
But an artist named Orion Martin noted that the X-Men comics have on the receiving end of much real-life discrimination: the main lineup in the X-Men team has been mostly straight, white dudes. Martin nodded to the work of Neil Shyminsky, an academic who’s written about the X-Men's complicated relationship with real-life racism:
[He] argues persuasively that playing out civil rights-related struggles with an all-white cast allows the white male audience of the comics to appropriate the struggles of marginalized peoples … “While its stated mission is to promote the acceptance of minorities of all kinds, X-Men has not only failed to adequately redress issues of inequality – it actually reinforces inequality.”
So Martin decided to reimagine them, recoloring some famous panels so that the main characters are brown — a gimmick that changes the subtext and stakes for the X-people.
In the new re-imagining, Wolverine, known for “his snarling, predatory aggression” becomes “a stereotype of angry black men.” My Code Switch teammate Matt Thompson, who didn’t have a much previous knowledge of the Emma Frost character, said the as black and as white underscored how hypersexualized her portrayal is.
But the remixing also drew attention to the ways that metaphor doesn’t work, and some of the other ways race informs comic characterizations and fandom. So we decided to pick the brains of some serious, thoughtful geeks.
lifeofkj reblogged
sometime I just think about how easy it would be to market superheroes toward little girls and I am filled with rage
like do these people not realize how fucking easy this shit would be
there’s the dazzler she’s like a popstar and a superhero do you know how many 4-12 year old girls would dig that shit
there’s the wasp and her superpowers are seriously like zapping jerks, flying, and being cuter than everybody else. also she’s a famous fashion designer. and she’s better than you. (like she shrinks and stuff too but mainly her power is being better than you)
she-hulk is like this nerdy chick with the power to get bigger and greener and be spontaneously tougher than everybody in the vicinity like I don’t even know a little girl who wouldn’t slit someone’s throat for the ability to be stronger than all the boys when they pissed her off
little girl likes magic? scarlet witch
little girl likes science? invisible woman
little girl likes spies? black widow
little girl likes aliens? karolina dean
little girl likes bionic arms? misty knight
little girl likes flying horses? wow. guess who has one of those? valkyrie. valkyrie does.
My point is that’s it’s so fucking easy so chop-chop, Marvel, get on it. Seriously, I went ten years of my life thinking superheroes were boys. That’s ten years of you not profiting off of my inability to refrain from buying even the crappiest merchandise you offer if it has a character I love on it. Little girls are an enormous market; they will buy all your shit if you just suggest to them that maybe they’d like to.
or you could just keep on not profiting when you could be making money selling literally any object that has enough space to plaster a female superhero’s face on it. that’s cool too.
Paul Dini Tells Kevin Smith about Hollywood's Fear of Girl Cooties
And to think just earlier this week you had the New York Times calling Hollywood about their long time claims about not being able to lead movies. And now you have a big name comic and animated creator telling us exactly what Hollywood thinks of girls when it comes to shows targeted at kids.
Paul Dinis is interviewed on Kevin Smith’s Fatman on Batman podcast this week and during it he explains from personal experience how Hollywood devalues female viewers and female characters. Dini was, of course one of the creators on Batman: The Animated Series. He has also written and produced a number of other animated shows including Batman Beyond in addition to writing comics. The Emmy award-winning creator also had a live-action show targeted to younger viewers call Tower Prep.
In the interview, transcribed by Agelfeygelach Dini talks about the change in how Hollywood views the audience for animation (this starts around 41:00.- bold mine)
But then, there’s been this weird—there’s been a, a sudden trend in animation, with super-heroes. Like, ‘it’s too old. It’s too old for our audience, and it has to be younger. It has to be funnier.’ And that’s when I watch the first couple of episodes of Teen Titans Go!, it’s like those are the wacky moments in the Teen Titans cartoon, without any of the more serious moments. ‘Let’s just do them all fighting over pizza, or running around crazy and everything, ’cause our audience—the audience we wanna go after, is not the Young Justice audience any more. We wanna go after little kids, who are into—boys who are into goofy humor, goofy random humor, like on Adventure Time or Regular Show. We wanna do that goofy, that sense of humor, that’s where we’re going for.’”
Okay, so they want younger kids. But wait, it gets worse.
Dini talks a bit about Young Justice and how it had a sophisticated mythology (he calls them “Buffy style stories) but now they have to be, based on his interactions and observations, funny and … NOT FOR GIRLS… (warning f bombs ahoy!)
I reblogged this interview earlier, but here's more commentary that's worth reading (and a transcript that's a little easier to read).
Source: howtoraiseageek
lifeofkj reblogged
My response to the Wonder Woman casting announcement.
lifeofkj reblogged
youreagoodliar-deactivated20170
On a scale of Loki to Superman how well do you handle being adopted.
lifeofkj reblogged
Captain Marvel stole the spotlight on the cover of the Money section of USA Today! The paper devoted the better part of two pages to an article about the need for more superheroines in the movies. Nothing most of us didn’t already know, but it’s exciting to see it get attention!
lifeofkj reblogged
…for the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble… grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters.
Greg Rucka (via murmurandshout)
Somebody needed to say it.
(via travisbeacham)
lifeofkj reblogged
Superman spent his childhood baling hay on a farm, he’s a working class hero and people don’t like that. Whereas Batman is a billionaire who sleeps until three in the afternoon, puts on a rubber suit and beats the shit out of poor people. Now that’s a wish fulfillment fantasy.
Grant Morrison during a panel at the Edinburgh Book Festival (via operationfailure)
#i mean superman is wish fulfillment too but for two jewish guys wanting to help people they couldn’t as opposed to like #taking out the privilege of the rich thru violence against the poor #it depends on how you want to define wish fulfillment #but it is true: superman is a working class hero and batman is not
(via anartinsorcery)
#i guess it’s worth mentioning that superman’s narrative was (and remains) heavily coded but that fact is often lost on modern readers #to whom he appears to be an anglo-american masculine archetype and a perfect vehicle for wish fulfillment #you’d think though that people would’ve figured out by now that if straight white dudebros can’t (or refuse to) relate to a character #it’s probably because they /aren’t serving them as wish fulfillment well enough #not because they’re ”not realistic enough” #hence the popularity of batman #and iron man #and wolverine #and the overwhelming dismissal of PoC/queer/women heroes #grant morrison #superman #comics #*isms
(via twoxheartedxdream)
forever reblog, especially with those tags
Funny because I just argued about this only a few short days ago on Twitter with a guy who, otherwise, is intelligent and well spoken. Yet, this idea that Clark is an “othered” figure was totally lost on him.
This is why it doesn’t just make me angry but actually makes me uncomfortable when dudebros get super excited about Batman beating the shit out of Superman.
The last 3 live action adaptations of Superman—-all of which found huge audiences—-have particularly focused on this idea that Clark Kent grows up feeling othered. (In one of those adapations, Clark Kent was actually played by an actor who is bi-racial and was abandoned by his father at a young age btw.)
In several of these adapations, Clark Kent learning to accept his body and accept his heritage balanced with his intense love and identification as a human is not only a right of passage but the driving force of his identity and self-discovery. The fact that a lot of this self-discovery also often includes a human female who accepts him fully and without fear or persecution for his “otherness” is vital and important.
So when I see people talking about how “awesome” it would be for Batman to come into Superman’s movie and “beat the shit out of him”….I’m not just annoyed with you. I’m not just angry at you. You actually make me uncomfortable. Your thoughts about fictional icons and myths make me uncomfortable.
People try to tell me that Superman is simple and naive. They try to suggest to me that Batman’s more psychologically complex stories are where adults REALLY gravitate. And in many cases, they do.
But I actually do think that Batman represents a certain type of naievete. Batman is about trying to CONTROL your environment. He believes that he can STOP bad things from happening. He is forever an 8 year old boy, holding his dying parents in his arms and thinking he can stop this from ever happening again. Batman hopes to eliminate criminals from his world entirely. With his fists.
Superman, for me, has an acceptance that bad things WILL always happen. In many versions, he comes to terms very early in life with the fact that despite his immense power, he cannot stop bad things from happening. That his goal as a hero cannot be to stop bad things from happening, but instead should be about using his gifts to help those in need when the time comes. Sometimes, yes, he can stop a bullet. But he cannot eradicate the darkness that would convince a man to fire it in the first place.
One is about fighting against the dire currents of life, one is about accepting them and trying to make the ride as comfortable as possible. There is maturity and wisdom in acceptance.
Justin Korthof (via cobalt-templar)
That’s what detractors of Superman can’t seem to grasp.
(via cursethecosmos)
I’ve also noticed that they like to mock the glasses as the disguise. The glasses are not a disguise, they’re a distraction.
(via piscine-unrelated)
Batman trains other people to fight in the dark with him. (And don’t get me wrong, I love a good Batman story, and the extended relationships within the canon/fanon are fascinating.)
Superman tries to inspire people to walk out into the light, either with him or by themselves, so there are fewer people in the dark tomorrow. And I think this is right, he knows it’s not a battle that can ever be won, but that doesn’t mean he’s ever going to stop trying.
(via faejilly)
lifeofkj reblogged
egrlfrnd-deactivated20231228-de
(about female superheroes) Toymakers will tell you they won’t sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, You see? It can’t be done. It’s stupid, and I’m hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift. It’s frustrating to me that I don’t see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, ‘My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,’ and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: ‘If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.’ (on whats next for him)And back to the female-hero thing, I’m not going to let nobody do it. It doesn’t have to be me, but it could be.
Joss Whedon on female superheroes, and what pisses him off about the industry via The Daily Beast (via albinwonderland)
These guys are window washers at the children’s hospital in Memphis. After being asked several times by the children if they were spiderman or superman, the workers decided to buy the costumes and actually show up as the superheros. Full story HERE
Luke: Did you kill him? Tony: Of course not, Luke. Carol: Why not? Peter: Uh, because that’s not what we do. Namor: I would not have minded. Clint: I would have been more than fine with it. — From Avengers v4 #12 by Brian Michael Bendis, art by John Romita Jr. And here we have the whole range of superhero morality in one panel.
ouyangdan
Look. I’m not saying Clint holds grudges or anything …