re: last gifset i mean yes and good and i would die for zendaya but the spiderman reboot only exists because andrew garfield was vocally campaigning for a bi peter parker and for michael b. jordan to play mj and sony responded by firing him and signing a licensing agreement with marvel which explicitly contractually obligates marvel to portray spiderman as heterosexual and white

ok this seems to be getting notes outside of my circle so i’m going to add some more context to this

so in a july 2013 interview with entertainment weekly, andrew garfield said that he’d been discussing the possibility of a bi peter parker with marc webb, the films’ director, and matt tolmach, one of the producers. this was just a little over a year before the amazing spiderman 2 was released. choice quote:

so, in andrew’s own words, he was “not joking” about this, and michael b. jordan was not just a random suggestion andrew threw out during an interview - he’d actually discussed the possibility with the director. 

for what it’s worth, michael b. jordan was open to it. in a july 2013 interview with vh1, michael said: 

it’s worth noting that one month prior, in june 2013, it was announced in the hollywood reporter that shailene woodley, originally cast as mary jane, would have all of her scenes cut from spiderman 2. note this excerpt from the article:

okay, so - couple things:

and, of course, one month later, andrew garfield and marc webb were publicly running around comic-con calling for a bisexual spiderman and michael b. jordan as MJ. 

hmm.

now, when later asked about the entertainment weekly interview, andrew claims that he was “joking” and that “it wouldn’t make sense for peter parker to suddenly discover he’s into boys” but then… he delivers a three-minute monologue about lgbt teen suicide and the importance of representation and almost starts crying. so make of that what you will.

then, shortly after comic-con, in august of 2013, stan lee was asked a couple of times about andrew garfield’s call for a bisexual spiderman. his thoughts:

so like… stan lee was not on fucking board. stan lee was talking about “making a couple of phone calls,” and suggesting andrew “said something just to be noticed or to create a controversy,” and intimated, “i hope this doesn’t hurt him in any way.”

and then, of course, andrew was let go from his contract, and sony struck a deal with marvel to reboot spiderman according to a legal licensing agreement - in place prior to the andrew garfield movies, actually - requiring peter parker to be heterosexual and white.

now, earlier this year, andrew garfield took part in a roundtable discussion with several other actors, including dev patel.

at one point, around the 36-minute mark, dev mentions that he regrets participating in avatar: the last airbender, saying:

andrew then replies:

then the interviewer asks, “but why is it not taken?” and andrew replies, “why do you think? why do you think?”

tl;dr andrew garfield and marc webb were lobbying for a bisexual spiderman and sony literally fired both of them, signed a licensing agreement with marvel, and rebooted the entire franchise to ensure that would not happen. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Stooooooooop

Riri Williams by Amanda Duarte

Lewis Tan went on Twitter today to discuss his role in the upcoming show Iron Fist and his relationship with Marvel. He says he gave the role his all… but before that he was fighting with Marvel to let him play the hero, Danny Rand.

So let’s see, he’s young, he’s a good enough actor to be playing a lead in the show, he has 15 years experience in martial arts… Tell me again how it’s not about race and they were just casting the best person for the role? Considering the parts Asians have been playing in the MCU so far we really don’t need more “yellow peril” stereotypes. We need heroes.

Marvel artists turned Black Influencers and Athletes into super versions of themselves.

let me explain something

even if this is brainwashing

even if this is just an act

even if this gets retconned

even if this is nothing more than a gross publicity stunt

it is part of an on-going trend at marvel that shows the appalling lack of respect they have for jewish characters and creators and the bizarre, sickening romanticizing of hydra, a nazi organization.

steve rogers is the creation of two jewish men who took a stand against nazism at a time when it was not popular to do so, and they received many threats for doing so. he was intended to be political; the first thing you see him do is punch hitler in the face. even if this new twist ends up being reversed or made into an elaborate ruse, we now know that marvel is willing to jeopardize this legacy for publicity. they don’t see it as disrespectful to toy around and twist the creation of two jewish men like this.

wanda maximoff and pietro maximoff, the jewish-romani children of holocaust survivors, are actively having their jewish heritage erased by marvel higher ups who say thing like “can you point me to a single story, just one, in which the ‘fact’ that wanda and pietro come from a jewish background is in any way relevant?”. not only this, but their jewish identities are being erased in the mcu and replaced with christian identities (wanda has a cross hanging in her room), while also re-imagining them as hydra nazi volunteers. this from the same mcu that routinely hires jewish actors and actresses and then erases their identities such as with natalie portman, kat dennings, rdj, gwyneth paltrow, and paul rudd; in the cases of some jewish actors like jon berthanal they actively replace his jewish identity with a christian one by making the punisher a (lapsed) catholic.

all the while they continue to glamorize the nazi organization hydra, playing up the meme status of “hail hydra”, having their employees wear hydra merch and describe themselves as hydra in their twitter bios. they even released a comic about an agent of hydra, intended to be a comedy, slice of life thing. you were intended to feel bad for hank, the protagonist, because he just saw it as a job and joined because of the tough economy, ignoring the fact that this was the case for many real world nazis as well. magneto, a jewish holocaust survivor, was villainized and basically held responsible for endangering the world because he attempted to kill the red skull, a nazi who was setting up new concentration camps. it was also the title in which his paternal relationship with wanda and pietro was erased. the series name was axis. 

this is not cute. this is not the type of stuff that can or should be ignored. this is just further proof of a seriously alarming trend going on at marvel, where they think flirting with nazi organizations is fun and ignoring and actively erasing the identities of jewish characters and the contributions of jewish creators is okay. do. not. ignore. this.

ON STEVE ROGERS #1, ANTISEMITISM, AND PUBLICITY STUNTS

JESSICA PLUMMER 5|26|16

[SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1 BELOW]

Yesterday, Marvel released the first issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers by Nick Spencer, Jesus Saiz, and Joe Caramagna. It’s a pretty boilerplate (albeit beautifully depicted) story of a rejuvenated Steve Rogers back in the field…right up until he tosses an ally to his death and declares “Hail Hydra” in a final page splash. The whole thing is intercut with flashbacks to his childhood of a neighbor inviting Steve’s mother to a Hydra meeting, thus implying that Steve was indoctrinated as a child and has been a sleeper agent of Hydra all along.

This is comics, right? Unleash a shocking twist to get readers to pick up the next issue! Make everything All-New All-Different for a few months until things settle back into the status quo! Have a character behave so incongruously that fans just have to know why!

Except.

Except this is different than having Superman be a jackass to Lois and Jimmy on the cover of some Silver Age issue of Action. This is different than a kiss or a death or a resurrection. This is even different than the usual “wildly out of character” stunts that would normally have readers up in arms, like Batman using a gun.

Quick comics history lesson: Captain America was created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as a superpowered, super-patriotic soldier fighting the Axis forces. He was famously depicted punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first appearance, inCaptain America Comics #1—which hit stands in December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor and before the United States joined World War II, making that cover a bold political statement.

You probably already knew that, but I’d invite you to think about it for a minute. In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we’re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice.

And Simon and Kirby—born Hymie Simon and Jacob Kurtzberg—were not making it lightly. Like most of the biggest names in the Golden Age of comics, they were Jewish. They had family and friends back in Europe who were losing their homes, their freedom, and eventually their lives to the Holocaust. The creation of Captain America was deeply personal and deeply political.

Ever since, Steve Rogers has stood in opposition to tyranny, prejudice, and genocide. While other characters have their backstories rolled up behind them as the decades march on to keep them young and relevant, Cap is never removed from his original context. He can’t be. To do so would empty the character of all meaning.

But yesterday, that’s what Marvel did.

Look, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know how comics work. He’s a Skrull, or a triple agent, or these are implanted memories, or it’s a time travel switcheroo, or, or, or. There’s a thousand ways Marvel can undo this reveal—and they will, of course, because they’re not about to just throw away a multi-billion dollar piece of IP. Steve Rogers is not going to stay Hydra any more than Superman stayed dead.

But Nazis (yes, yes, I know 616 Hydra doesn’t have the same 1:1 relationship with Nazism that MCU Hydra does) are not a wacky pretend bad guy, something I think geek media and pop culture too often forgets. They were a very real threat that existed in living memory. They are the reason I can’t go back to the villages my great-grandparents are from, because those communities were murdered. They are the reason I find my family name on Holocaust memorials. They are the perpetrators of unspeakable, uncountable, very real atrocities.

It’s easy, especially if you’re not Jewish, to think that anti-semitism is a thing of the past. It’s not. It flies under the radar, mostly, until suddenly it doesn’t: with graffiti in Spain, hateful party games in American high schools, vicious threats being flung at Jewish journalists for criticizing Trump. With physical attacks—with deaths—in France. Nor is neo-Nazi rhetoric, which hews closer to 616 Hydra’s shtick, a goofy make-believe thing. Not when the Republican presidential nominee spouts fascist ideology that echoes Hitler’s rise to power and spurs a literal rise in hate crimes against Muslims.

But writer Nick Spencer and editor Tom Brevoort are more concerned with making this “something new and unexpected”; with having “fun” and getting readers “invested in Hydra characters.” Because what’s more fun than downplaying genocide?

I’m not going to pretend to be cool here. I’m emotional. This is emotional. Captain America isn’t even my usual guy to get incandescently angry over the erasure of his coded Jewish history— that’s Kal-El, the Moses of Krypton—but reading this comic made me feel sick to my stomach. Reading the flippant responses of many non-Jewish readers—including friends—has brought me to tears. Somehow a community that gets up in arms about whether or not Batman has a yellow circle behind his logo seems to think that being angry about this is stupid, or indicative of a lack of experience with comics.

So let me be very clear: I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever.

I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait.

I am angry because Steve Rogers’s Jewish creators literally fought in a war against the organization Marvel has made him a part of to grab headlines.

I am angry because the very real pain of the Jewish community has been dismissed since this news leaked on Tuesday night as “Twitter outrage.”

If this story doesn’t hurt you? Good. I’m genuinely glad. I don’t want anyone else to have the gorge rise in their throat when they read the entertainment news. I love comics. I don’t want them to make people feel angry and betrayed. But understand that not feeling that way comes from a place of privilege, and don’t dismiss the concerns of those of us who are upset just because you have the luxury not to be.

I’ve been trying to think of how to finish this post, but I don’t think I can say it better than my friend and fellow Panelteer Sigrid Ellis did here:

And knowing that this wound is temporary, that it’s for the sake of sales and money and a story beat, that just makes it hurt more, not less. How little we must matter, the people who needed Steve to be the defender of the underdog and the weak, how little we must matter if betraying us for a story beat is so easy.

How little must we matter. The people who created Captain America, and Superman, and countless other heroes like them. The people who need him. The people whose history and suffering and hope, as we stood on the brink of annihilation, gave you your weekly entertainment and your fun thought experiment, 75 years later.

I hope it was worth it, Marvel.

X

If you only read one post today, make it this one

fans: what if… Steve Rogers swung both ways…? :^)

Marvel: so you want us to turn him into a nazi after 75 years he spent fighting Hydra

fans: nO THAT’S NOT WHAT WE-

Marvel: done and done

So I usually encourage people buying comics and so on, but guys, do NOT buy Captain America: Steve Rogers #1

As someone who loves and adores Steve Rogers, I feel broken, betrayed and disgusted at what I’ve read. 

So they’ve actually said that they’re retconning a LOT of Steve’s past, specifically in THIS interview so you can see how ‘old school cap’ ties in with Steve being in Hydra all along. -  “ It means on the most fundamental level that the most trusted hero in the Marvel universe is now secretly a deep-cover Hydra operative”

Okay, so let me get this straight. You’ve taken a man who was a great symbol, a symbol not only of a nation – but a beacon of HOPE for people (myself included) and you’ve done this to him. You’ve taken a hero who as gotten me and many others through tough times, with a strong message of ‘things will get better’ and with a RESOUNDING message to stand up for yourself – life long messages that some of us hold close to our HEARTS and you destroy him in a blink of an eye. 

Steve Rogers for me, is someone who I aspired to be, someone who has great messages that I carry with me every day of my life and quote almost on a daily basis. He’s someone I’ve loved and that has brought hope from the darkest places, a literal star in the night sky. I’ve loved watching Steve develop and grow, change and twist, fight mental battles as well as physical. He’s been the subject of my studies, the topic of a dozen essays I’ve written in regards to political symbols and propaganda. 

Steve Rogers was the product of two Jewish creators ( Joe Simon and Jack Kirby )  to combat Nazism, he was created initially as propaganda and used and shown to be fighting for hope and freedom. Steve meant so much more to these men than I can word, I’m sure. But he’s not just a hero, he was a SYMBOL. An iconic character that has carried and allowed others to blossom. You take that and you make him part of HYDRA, you make him a NAZI. And not only that, you go on saying when asked If readers go back and look at older comics, will this hold up? It will. Issue 2 kind of winds the clock back a little bit and lays out exactly how and why things are the way they are. - So you’re going to take years worth of work and tarnish it so your terrible storyline can have some sort of justification. (and here I thought the whole Tony being adopted storyline was the worst one we were going to revisit this year)

Steve was so much to so many people. And now he’s being used as a plot device – When Remender decided to de-serum him, sure that was a bit of a knock-back. He was de-serumed for 666 days and then restored very recently. But now, I’m wishing that he’d stayed old if I had known this was going to happen to his comic. 

As a Steve fan I’m hurt at how distasteful this is, how you would rather make him part of HYDRA rather than work in a team. This is probably the WORST plot I’ve ever read for Captain America. I could prattle on about how many issues I’ve got with it but I think I’ve gone on enough. I love Cap, I love Steve and I’m PAINED by this. It’s offensive to loyal fans, its offensive to a whole BUNCH of people for a tonne of different reasons but hey, if it makes money then who cares, right? Isn’t that Marvel logic nowadays? Who cares if its destroying the symbol that has taken years to develop, grow and flourish and inspire people. 75 years worth of characters, one single issue to deface 75 years worth of work. 

Here’s how its gone down, I’ll write the whole thing up for you because – honestly, it’s not worth reading the comic itself. 

COMIC SUMMARY UNDER CUT; 

Keep reading

apparently hydra steve is more realistic than bisexual steve … wow marvel just … wow

If you didn’t get the hint, I really, really hate MCU. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but what Marvel has done is way too personal for me to be quiet. The one thing I will force upon you with all my heart, is my pure hatred of the Doctor Strange movie. I’m begging you, please boycott Doctor Strange.

What Marvel is doing with this film is inexcusable. I’m Tibetan, and I grew up in America as a child of refugees. My father was a fan of Marvel comics as a child, and one of his favorite stories was Doctor Strange’s, because of his connection to our homeland, Tibet. The Ancient One was a high Tibetan lama who taught Doctor Strange the art of magic. You might think Marvel’s only crime is whitewashing him, but its a lot worse then that. tl;dr Marvel blatantly turned the Ancient One into a white woman, as well as changed Doctor Strange’s original setting of Tibet to Nepal, in order to avoid any involvement with Tibet’s current politics (aka oppression) with Communist China. 

The reason my parents are refugees is because of the Chinese genocide of Tibetans. Tibet is a country occupied by China, and is one of the most oppressed countries in the world. You probably don’t know much about it because China’s position as a global superpower as well as the government’s complete control of media and news. There is no freedom of speech in all of China, therefore national censorship is extremely common and no one who isn’t involved really knows anything. China pretends that all Tibetans are happy and they really do not like anyone even mentioning the Tibet situation, especially outsiders. 

Marvel knows this, one of their main markets is their viewers in China. China has banned a lot of foreign films for long periods of time because of even slight implications of Tibetan oppression (ex: the Avatar the Last Airbender movie). Doctor Strange could get banned if they included Tibet, meaning millions lost. Why bother risking loosing money from China when you can just whitewash everything to cover it up? This is Marvel’s direct statement that they care more about money then human rights, and I’m honestly not surprised. This has always happened, and it will happen again. Literally no one gives a fuck about Tibetans, I’ve seen it happen all my life. Westerners and the Chinese government alike want to hide our oppression, hide our culture until it makes them money, and hide our millions of deaths and losses. If you do happen to be one of the few who do care, please, please, do not support this film and boycott Doctor Strange. 

Pixar and Marvel Parallels

Bonus:

THAT LAST ONE WAS UNCALLED FOR

things i still don’t understand

NerdGehrl reviews Ant-man

Why not this movie?!

(via agentofssr)

An end credit scene promising more for Hope later only raises the question, “Why not in this movie?”

This is what really felt flat to me.  I like Paul Rudd just fine (despite the fact that his career is essentially the personification of [insert character here], he remains the man who brought us Bobby Newport and Sex Panther, by Odeon: 60% of the time it works, every time) but that mid-credit scene, “it’s about damn time,” was frustrating because it was Marvel playfully winking at something that isn’t playful - it’s a huge fucking problem, that they clearly do not see as such.  There’s no promise to follow through.  We just watched an entire movie turn itself on its head, contorting the comic narratives to get a founding Avenger out of the picture because, let’s be real, due to Hank Pym’s history as an abuser, it was remove him, or her - and of course, it would never be him.

Ant-Man is fun, but it’s “fun” in a way we’ve grown past.  What’s interesting to me is that Marvel seems to recognize it, too.  Particularly in the last few weeks, the trailers I’ve seen for the film (that actually feature the film) emphasize the aspects of the MCU that the fans are calling for: Sam’s scene is getting a shocking amount of face-time for how relatively small it is; Hope is featured prominently.  Ant-Man and his powers are a surprisingly small part of the previews, all things considered.  Marvel is absolutely marketing to a fan base they know wants more than White Guy In A Costume (Again) – but ultimately, it’s lip service, with no intention of anything further.

It’s disappointing.  I realized this week I haven’t spent money on anything MCU related this year.  Given how much of my hobby-funds went to Cap 2 in 2014, that’s a pretty big 180 (my wallet says thank you, Marvel).  But at the same time, money talks, Marvel.  I’ll come back when you give me a reason to.  Until then, well, Ant-Man did alright.  Just alright.  When you want to do better than that, you’re going to have to treat the rest of your audience as worth more than an empty gesture.

(via linzeestyle)

Ant-man was a great stand-alone movie, but as part of the MCU it was probably the worst. It was funny and reasonably engaging, but it never actually made me care and it’s just… Such a good example of everything wrong with the MCU.

(via knitmeapony)