Comics Stuff
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@Rook said:
I believe in a meritocracy, where you get where you belong because of your skills and behavior. No more "<X> is better than <Y>" when talking about sexes, races, credos or orientations.
What I dislike is the idea of equality being enforced where it doesn't belong.
For example I've had debates with people insisting women can be just as fast/strong athletes at the top level as men; that is simply not true. While the average female athlete could kick the ass of the average male non-athlete, there's no way say, a female basketball player at the top level could compete with her male counterparts. They would excel at things where weight or balance are more valued.
That doesn't mean anything else. It's got nothing to do with worth or value. It's not supposed to be a slight on anyone; it's just a fact.
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@HelloRaptor said:
Also, for all of her acclaim, it's G. Willow Wilson, not J.
Lol. At least we all messed up on that. Man, why did I think J?
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@Roz said:
@HelloRaptor said:
Also, for all of her acclaim, it's G. Willow Wilson, not J.
Lol. At least we all messed up on that. Man, why did I think J?
I dunno. Apparently the G stands for Gwendolyn, and she's generally known as just 'G' according to Wikipedia. ;D
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@HelloRaptor said:
@Roz said:
@HelloRaptor said:
Also, for all of her acclaim, it's G. Willow Wilson, not J.
Lol. At least we all messed up on that. Man, why did I think J?
I dunno. Apparently the G stands for Gwendolyn, and she's generally known as just 'G' according to Wikipedia. ;D
My company has a guy who is basically a contract employee who goes by his first initial and I kept being like, yeah but what do I address him as in emails, and they're like, T! I'm like, but what, and then I got over it. But it was a little odd the first couple times.
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I just kind of caught the edge of this whole discussion of Secret Wars. What is this, the fifth "Secret Wars" that Marvel has decided to run? I mean there was Secret Wars and Secret Wars II sometime in the mid-eighties, then there was Secret War in the mid-nothings, not to mention the Beyond! successor to the original Secret Wars books. There was also a Secret Invasion series in there somewhere and now … another Secret Wars?
I'm thinking these "secret" wars are pretty fucking wide open and out in the public eye by now!
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@WTFE said:
I just kind of caught the edge of this whole discussion of Secret Wars. What is this, the fifth "Secret Wars" that Marvel has decided to run? I mean there was Secret Wars and Secret Wars II sometime in the mid-eighties, then there was Secret War in the mid-nothings, not to mention the Beyond! successor to the original Secret Wars books. There was also a Secret Invasion series in there somewhere and now … another Secret Wars?
I'm thinking these "secret" wars are pretty fucking wide open and out in the public eye by now!
Whatever, man. DC has had so many crises you'd think there'd be a DC Crisis Center somewhere.
Crisis on Infinite Earths, Second Crisis, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint...
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Never really followed DC anything in my short stint in the comics scene, so I can't really comment on the Crisis line.
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@WTFE said:
Never really followed DC anything in my short stint in the comics scene, so I can't really comment on the Crisis line.
Essentially, it's even worse. Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, all the crises have pretty much rebooted the universe.
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@Arkandel, I've always simply said "Damn it, let her try it." We dealt with this in the military combat arms, where women were not allowed into certain MOS fields because of perceived "lack of physical requirements". I've always just shrugged and said, "If she can do the job just as good as a common male soldier, she can have the job." But the fear was always over-extension and getting hurt. I can tell you that I've known plenty of women who could load and fire an artillery piece just as good as the men around me, because some of those men were physically small.
The same works in reverse. There are numerous things that women are far better at than men. I have always wondered if the male ego/mind has always 'relegated' that type of work as 'women stuff', then, just so they could feel better about being second-rate.
Thus, in a perfect world, "If you are good at it, you get to do it" no matter who you are, where you come from, what you believe in, or any of that other crap that doesn't matter.
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I think what @Arkandel is talking about can more easily be demonstrated by weightlifting: There are Men and Women's divisions for weightlifting because there are some pretty basic differences in the average-to-high end of physical strength that give men an advantage that can't really be matched in terms of frame size and how much muscle can be stacked on it.
The women who compete in these things are not wilting flowers by any stretch. They are just as dedicated, just as ridiculously ripped, just as focused on proving themselves, but the men's records are anywhere from half again as much (for comparable weight class lifters, i.e. these people all weigh in at X) to three times as much at the high end (men have 4 full weight classes above the top female weight class in world competitions). The heaviest female weight class for lifting barely tops the lightest male class for lifting.
Were you to say that it's somehow sexist to make 'the girls' have 'their own little league' and they should be able to compete with the men on equal terms, they would basically never place. It would effectively be like letting heavy weight class lifters compete directly against light weight class lifters, all across the board.
DISCLAIMER: None of the above is meant to imply that women shouldn't serve in combat, or aren't just as capable of being soldiers or at all manner of athletics and etc. I don't believe that to be the case. It is the case, though, that sometimes physiology plays a distinct part in giving advantages to one gender over another, and people ignoring that in the name of pushing 'equality' is, I think, what @Arkandel was getting at. I could be wrong.
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@HelloRaptor No, I get that. I am completely agreeing. I just kind of take it a step further: "Let her try." Step up to the scales, and give it your best. Place where you can.
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I think "let her try" is a pretty damn good philosophy. Because sure people love to say big things like "men are just built better at X than women," and maybe they are on average, but it also means there's a lot of instances where women are just not allowed to compete or qualify at the same level EVEN IF they're capable of it.
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But more onto comics, who is reading a bunch of Marvel now and can tell me what's even worth it. I had a whole bunch more Marvel on my pull a year or two years ago, but I've dropped them title by title for various reasons. (Gillen's run on Iron Man was terrible, Remender's run on Captain America caused unhealthy levels of fury, Hickman just could not have anything happen on his twenty Avengers titles, etc.) Now my Marvel pull is down a selection of solo titles (Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Daredevil, Storm). I just nabbed the #1 issues for A-Force, Runaways, and Spider-Gwen (plus the first of the second arc of Spider-Woman) to check those out, and liked all of them so will probably be grabbing future issues. But now EVERYTHING IS GETTING REBOOTED or whatever, and I was too jaded by Marvel events to keep up with Secret Wars. (No, Marvel, I don't want an event that is apparently involving all of these other past events of yours that I didn't like?) I don't even know what to try pulling!
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I have moved on to treating comics like shows, but even more so. If I am not engaged with a television show that I probably would like in its entirety, I wait and binge watch it.
Comics I binge almost exclusively. Because waiting a month for a ten minute read (at most) is a hell no. Heh.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin said:
I have moved on to treating comics like shows, but even more so. If I am not engaged with a television show that I probably would like in its entirety, I wait and binge watch it.
Comics I binge almost exclusively. Because waiting a month for a ten minute read (at most) is a hell no. Heh.
I'll probably get around to binging Hickman's whole Avengers story now that's it wrapped/wrapping. I do like binging comics in between Wednesdays.
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I just read Azzarello's Luthor. It was pretty good.
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@Coin
See I love the crisis thing because while it reboots continuity it also harkens back to it.
All the silver age Justice League Justice Society team ups we titles Crisis something, or Something Crisis. that is why DC titles Crisis on Infinite Earths that. It was the final time you would have both a Justice League and a Society, now it in no way worked out that way in hind sight but it was the original plan. -
My problems with the Crisis stories (I cut Marvel more slack with this really because they have so far only done it once) is that a story is about conflict, tension, and resolution of that conflict in some way. Comic books do this plenty, but when DC specifically comes up with these multiple crises they are phoning it in. The motivation for them to tell the story they try to tell in these is robbed of its tension for me because of the meta nature of it. Clearly they are looking for excuses to rewrite continuity, and not in a way that respects the ongoing storylines.
Even more of an offense to me is characters who die but don't stay dead. Marvel is just as bad about this as DC. It is impossible for me to take seriously any story-based tension where a character might die or is depicted as dying. It is not a surprise when dead characters are brought back from the dead. In fact, it is pretty much cheap when it happens now.
The second reason more than the first is the reason I stopped reading comics.
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Some characters come back for reasonable reasons. The first time Jean Grey came back, she came back as The Phoenix, and that made sense (even if Cyclops was a humongous dick). She was The Phoenix. She resurrected. That makes sense. But that was like five resurrections ago. How about we stop?
But, for example, fucking Barry Allen came back for no reason. Then it turned out it was secretly Zoom. AWESOME. NICE FAKE OUT.
... and then he came back for real and Wally got shunted to the side. Fuck you, dude.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin Or Oliver Queen. Or Hal Jordan. Or Superman. Or Jason Todd. Or Bucky Barnes. Or Peter Parker. Or...
It's fine if someone wants to write the story about how characters have their lives risked or are just this side of death, but if they actually cross the line into DEAD and are brought back at the convenience of some future writer then it cheapens not only the past story but any future stories told. Now I will not believe in the risk these characters take.
