zslane

I'm not in touch with recent comics history enough to recall that, but regardless, I disagree with that criticism. Creating new characters to fill "inclusivity niches" and broaden diversity is exactly the right approach, IMO. Anyone who criticizes that is basically against any kind of diversity in comics at all. And I call BS on them.

There's organic character development, planned from the start, where such background details are revealed little by little as readers get to know the character, and then there's sudden (from the reader's perspective) changes piled on in order to check off a box from an editorial diversity agenda. I feel that if the word comes down from corporate HQ that there suddenly needs to be more diversity in the company's line of comics, the superior approach is to create fresh new characters that meet those diversification needs. Gender bending, race bending, and out-of-the-blue sexual identity reveals are lazy, transparent, and usually dismissive of the existing character history in a way almost guaranteed to piss of long-time readers.

I'm not in touch with recent comics history enough to recall that, but regardless, I disagree with that criticism. Creating new characters to fill "inclusivity niches" and broaden diversity is exactly the right approach, IMO. Anyone who criticizes that is basically against any kind of diversity in comics at all. And I call BS on them.

In the movie Starlord were just some goof that fell into different adventures and had to be saved by his friends all the time. 
His chief virtue was that: "He is not a complete dick".
Starlords iconic status (if it is iconic at all) only exist to us the viewers, the rest of the universe sees him as a nuisance. 
Its not exactly a role that needs to be filled in the eyes of the people. This is a step down for the Black Panther character who popularity is about him being an African high tech king and hero. With the whole lost world aesthetic going on. If anything him going to space should lead to a Wakandan space empire like they have in the comics, not him being a rouge trading adventurer! No matter how much more successful he is at it than Quill was. Because Quill kinda suck. He has lots of flaws. His approach if you can even call it that have nothing in common with Tchalla at all and those two would definitively not go on similar paths. Black Panther in space should be something way grander and more epic than just "same as Quill but more successful".
I cant get over the fact that this is just executives playing around with different brands. 
 
And I tell you something else. While "What if" had lots of good stories over the years they also had a lot of bad and I think this "what if blue hat man put on a red hat"  kind of approach to stories infected the mainstream comics too and made them worse.
 
Time travel- Alternative dimensions - Alternative timelines - All mean two things. We are going away from the streets. "The world outside your window" and we are just getting the same characters over and over again just in different variations. These two factors wounded the comics long before the usual suspects came along to finish them off. A wound I suspect did a lot more damage than the casual observer thinks.
 
 

I’d have to agree. I used to spend about $50 a month for comic books, even after I moved to L. A. but that tapered of to less than  $10 after 2007, then mostly independents. It dropped to nothing in 2016. The old writers and artists aren’t around much any more and the quality of writing is just awful, especially in the last 4 years. 

————————————NO SPOILERS——————————
 
 “What If....T’Challa became Starlord?
 
    Well....This does confirm a long held belief of mine.   Peter Quill is a moron.  He couldn’t pour pi$$ out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the sole. The episode does however show what a clever character can do when played smartly. (All players & GM’s should take notes.)
    Once more, the episode was well thought and well written with many (if not most) of the primary characters played by the original actors including the final performance of Chadwick Bozeman who did himself proud on a project many actors would have phoned in.
   A very fine outing and like the last one while it could have benefited from expansion to a one hour format left me wanting to see more of this world.
   

Under Iger's regime, Feige had almost sole discretion over Marvel Studios. He was middle-management only in the sense that he did not have oversight over all of film production (that was Alan Horn), nor over the entire Disney Empire (that was Iger). But when it came to Marvel Studios, for better or for worse, the buck stopped at Kevin Feige. He is "old guard" in the same sense that Bob Iger was, having benefitted greatly from Iger's philosophy of how to run the business.
 
I don't think Bob Chapek is under any illusions as to what camp Feige is in. But there's a bit of a stand-off here since Chapek has all the power on paper, while Feige has a lot of power on the ground. It remains to be seen how this will all pan out. I just hope that this civil war within Disney doesn't ruin Marvel Studios, or the progress made for Star Wars by Favreau and Filoni, in the process.

Are you guys misspelling it FACERIP on purpose?

I think it makes more sense to say that when it comes to superheroes in the comics, being 100% straight is the assumed default unless clearly and unequivocally shown otherwise. This is, after all, the genre and medium that didn't put any focus on sexual identity for its first couple of decades (and why would it? it's not relevant), and then was made even more squeaky clean by the imposition of the comics code in the 1950s. It is only relatively recently that issues of sexual identity have been directly addressed in mainstream superhero comics. And it wasn't something that became an editorial agenda until a few years ago. So I'd argue that the burden of proof falls on showing an unshakably non-straight character with zero hetero inclinations, since 100% straight has been the assumed default for over eighty years.

I think it makes more sense to say that when it comes to superheroes in the comics, being 100% straight is the assumed default unless clearly and unequivocally shown otherwise. This is, after all, the genre and medium that didn't put any focus on sexual identity for its first couple of decades (and why would it? it's not relevant), and then was made even more squeaky clean by the imposition of the comics code in the 1950s. It is only relatively recently that issues of sexual identity have been directly addressed in mainstream superhero comics. And it wasn't something that became an editorial agenda until a few years ago. So I'd argue that the burden of proof falls on showing an unshakably non-straight character with zero hetero inclinations, since 100% straight has been the assumed default for over eighty years.

There's obviously nothing wrong with having an opinion that doesn't toe the company line (in this case, Disney's). However, there are consequences to one's actions, and if you are a highly public figure and your highly public actions conflict with the optics your employer depends on for the integrity of its brand, then you must be prepared to accept the consequences. That is simply how the adult world works.
 
So if you are an actor working for Disney, then by all means have whatever political opinions you want, just don't express them on social media unless you are content to sabotage your relationship with Disney in doing so. Gina Carano only has herself to blame; I just hope she feels that speaking her mind--as was her right to do--was worth it in this instance.

While it may not be "unrealistic" for a teenage character like Tim Drake to explore/discover his sexuality on a deeper, more authentic level, it feels jarring to readers because of the decades-long understand they've had of him. To readers, he's been straight for 32 years regardless of how old he is supposed to be in continuity. In fact, in-continuity age strikes me as a weak metric for justifying things like this because superhero character virtually never age. And just like their age, their core identity is not meant to change drastically over time either. That's why it feels sudden and contrived that Tim Drake is "revealed" as bi-sexual. It is so clearly an attempt to appear progressive, pandering to the identity politics of the moment, while sacrificing the decades-long relationship readers have had with the character in the process.

I try to not pay attention to the political opinions of actors as much as possible. 
 
On one hand, I'm always playing catch-up when their opinions land them in hot water. But on the other hand, I don't have to agonize over the opinions of famous people who, by and large, aren't any better informed on the issues than the brainless idiots on both sides who I seem to discuss politics with on various news sites on a daily basis.

From a business perspective, it might have to. "Go woke, go broke," isn't just a catchy, politically-incorrect slogan. It appears to reflect broader marketplace realities. If comic book companies want to stay in business, they may have to abandon the progressive notion that superhero storytelling doesn't have to be limited to what sells, which, it would appear is action/adventure, not clumsy diversity plays and diversions into the narrative margins (e.g., romance).

This.

I need romance in my superhero action/adventure stories like I need onions in my lemonade. I don't care that Iceman is gay, or that Tim Drake is bi-sexual, any more than I care that Batman is straight. It just isn't relevant to the kind of stories I want/expect from the genre. Green Arrow could have a foot fetish and Wonder Woman could be into light bondage, but I don't care. Some folks will say romance and sexuality adds verisimilitude to the characters, the stories, and the genre as a whole, but I disagree. Again, onions and lemonade.

Disney also has a long history of paying visual fx studios only half of what they were contractually obligated to pay them for services rendered and making them sue for the other half. Disney is in many ways the Evil Empire. However, visual fx artists are not unionized. They are much easier to screw over. Actors, (screen)writers, directors, and producers have unions to protect their interests, at least in theory. Every studio in business works hard to exploit every possible loophole in their contracts with the unions, and the unions work hard to enforce--to an absurd degree sometimes, just watch the nonsense that goes on during live action shoots--the terms of those contracts. It is an ugly battle waged on both sides, and if actors aren't "getting their due" then it is either their agents, legal teams, or union reps who failed to negotiate the right deal; the studio is under no legal or ethical obligation to interpret the terms of a contract so as to favor the talent over the studio. In fact, I'm quite certain that there are millions of Disney shareholders who would hold Disney exec's feet to the fire if they ever did so.

It's what you do when a former business partner accuses you of breach of contract and sues you for countless millions of dollars. You don't continue to merrily skip to my lou with them. You sever business ties and go into legal self-defense mode.

It's what you do when a former business partner accuses you of breach of contract and sues you for countless millions of dollars. You don't continue to merrily skip to my lou with them. You sever business ties and go into legal self-defense mode.

IMO, Black Widow was never destined to be a huge earner for Marvel even without a pandemic throwing a wrench into the works. That's not because Marvel has lost its way, but because some Marvel movies are simply not going to click with a massive audience. And while Disney loves making gobs of money like all studios do, there is actually room in the Marvel line-up for characters that deliver only moderate box office performance, like Ant-Man and Black Widow.
 
The Disney+ MCU streaming shows seem to be doing extremely well, which says to me that Marvel is still on top of their game. I think Shang Chi will only do moderately well, not unlike Black Widow, but mostly because I think there is a smaller audience for the martial arts corner of the superhero genre, not because Marvel has hit some proverbial iceberg. It's hard to say how well Eternals will do because when it is released we will still be under the thumb of a pandemic and we don't yet know how hard Disney is going to push it in terms of advertising. Disney will need to push pretty hard, I feel, because it is just like the Guardians of the Galaxy in that the Eternals is a team of heroes who are completely unknown to the public, and so the public needs to be shown/convinced why they should be excited to see a movie about them.

Sounds likely, but also for the PR push that a big open gives a movie.

The fatal flaw of DiVX was that the studios maintained complete control over the consumer's ability to watch the disc(s) they bought. It was going to be the first home video format in which physically owning the media (a disc) did not guarantee you the ability to watch it whenever you wanted to. Moreover, DiVX threatened to split the marketplace the way VHS and Betamax did, and all the studios and hardware manufacturers who had invested in DVD's development couldn't afford another format war, as they shrewdly realized that consumers would be paralyzed with indecision as to which format to invest in, and so neither would catch on before withering on the proverbial vine.
 
DiVX was a craven attempt by entertainment lawyers to deliver ultimate control of content to their clients and the marketplace rallied against it. I proudly displayed the "No DiVX" logo on my website until DiVX officially died.

A more pernicious problem, in my view, is the rise of cancel culture. That's not "the Man" in action, that's "the people" taking to the streets of the Internet looking for people to digitally lynch for daring to have a different opinion. For example, Grace Randolph recently explained that the reason she didn't give The Suicide Squad an RT rating at all was because she didn't want to deal with the vicious pounding she would take for refusing to board the pro-Gunn support train by blindly praising what she regards as a pretty flawed movie. I was a bit shocked that she was allowing cancel culture to silence her, as I've never heard her express such concern before. Sadly, I think this is only going to get worse, especially for people who make a living on social media.

IMO, Black Widow was never destined to be a huge earner for Marvel even without a pandemic throwing a wrench into the works. That's not because Marvel has lost its way, but because some Marvel movies are simply not going to click with a massive audience. And while Disney loves making gobs of money like all studios do, there is actually room in the Marvel line-up for characters that deliver only moderate box office performance, like Ant-Man and Black Widow.
 
The Disney+ MCU streaming shows seem to be doing extremely well, which says to me that Marvel is still on top of their game. I think Shang Chi will only do moderately well, not unlike Black Widow, but mostly because I think there is a smaller audience for the martial arts corner of the superhero genre, not because Marvel has hit some proverbial iceberg. It's hard to say how well Eternals will do because when it is released we will still be under the thumb of a pandemic and we don't yet know how hard Disney is going to push it in terms of advertising. Disney will need to push pretty hard, I feel, because it is just like the Guardians of the Galaxy in that the Eternals is a team of heroes who are completely unknown to the public, and so the public needs to be shown/convinced why they should be excited to see a movie about them.

You keep beating this drum, but the box office was very poor for everything in 2021. Black Widow is the top earner in domestic box office. There is no way to paint that as a failure of the movie.
 
To me, it simply looks like an average Marvel movie, which is still a good thing, just not something I'm excited enough for to drop $30 on for just me and my wife to see. It honestly has the same vibe for me as all the Disney Plus shows, as a set up for some character (Yelena) for the next phase. Which doesn't make it bad, but makes it less of its own thing in my opinion. (The Disney Plus shows have all been OK, but just a little lacking IMO.)