What happened this week, what happened this week. Oh, recently the city of San Francisco turned itself into Gotham City as a ‘Make A Wish’ dream for a kid fighting leukemia, that’s nice. Finally, a breaking news feed on something good for a change. This also brings up a topic, Superheroes. Every other week or when I have spare change I always take a trip to the comic book store, get what I fancy and I see a bunch of superheroes I either know by memory or see as a desperate attempt to bring in a revenue stream or a chance to make something original. Superheroes now aren’t what they used to be back in the 50’s which were the superheroes chasing bank robbers, now they are going to the extreme by battling aliens and stopping the end of the world, so you can say superheroes have gone a long way. The thing that irks me now is this sudden trend of parenting that I’m seeing little by little, there was an article on the L.A Times I read about an angry teacher who gave students letters to give to their parents on this ban on anything ‘superhero’ related which bans reading material with superheroes, Action Figures or even T-Shirts with the image of any superhero. I’m pretty sure that Ban was not passed but the audacity this teacher had to ban something she personally thought was a bad influence was stupid. The article said the teacher wanted this ban to show kids that anything that can’t be solved by talking shouldn’t be solved by fighting. Sure, I agree with the message a little, but that lesson cannot be taught with a simple ban. How about telling kids that ‘knowledge hurts more than fists’ or putting the comics these kids read and idolize into context, not everyone is an alien and not everyone can fly rather than banning everything like an Orwellian twat. While talking to a friend online about this article, he told me “We live in such a fucked up world, I’m sure it’s always been that way but the crap that’s happening now is noticed more. We’re surrounded by harsh violence, the stuff that you cannot hide your kids from and that makes even me, a gorehound, shriek and gag. We live in a violent world, and we should not blame any kind of media for this because media seems to be the only thing that’s giving us an escape from the stuff in Syria and Obama’s lies as well as Right Winged Republican stupidity. Kids need heroes, they need someone to believe in and someone they can connect to and superheroes are what’s in now with all the Marvel films. I‘m 20 and I still collect comic books, so make fun of me while you die from stress and fear in this scary world. I‘ll be relaxing in my bed, reading a ‘Punisher‘ issue from 1992 and living life while entertained.” He proves my point, superheroes aren’t the cause for violence, nor is the media in general so as an outright insult to this teacher, FUCK YOU TEACHER!
Also comics taught about racism and drugs as well as corruption through either subtext or fully showing the thing it‘s against. The 70’s was the start when comics went against the ‘Comic Code Authority’ to promote a message, which was kind of stupid seeing that something like the ‘CCA’ reject the Green Arrow comic for ‘mention Drug Use’ even though it was a used to show kids that drugs are horrible. X-Men taught about segregation using ‘Mutants’ as a metaphor and of course Superman is a metaphor for the common ‘Immigrant’ coming to this new place with a minor difference from the rest of the humans on earth. So comics do more than teach rather than just show homoerotic imagery of dudes in tights beating each other up, it‘s a tool to teach. Also comics have the power to bring emotions out of the reader, just earlier this year I reviewed this Manga titled ‘Legend of Mother Sarah’ which is about a fictional future in which earth is at war with two armies and the book focuses on a Mother who travels from war torn village to war torn village finding her children who went missing after a space station explosion. That book looks like an action packed book, but that book is emotional and at times shocking; the feels on the bus go round and round. I recommend ‘Legend of Mother Sarah’ as an all out emotional read. Also make sure to check out Me and my friend’s picks for favorite comics.
Favorite Comics
Junette:
-Ghost World
-R.Crumb’s Fritz the Cat
-Gen 13
-Dark Knight Returns
-Legend of Mother Sarah
Jebus:
-Sandman: A Game Of You
-The Punisher
-Aliens (Dark Horse Series)
-Persepolis
-AKIRA
-YuGiOh (The non-duelist series)
-The Crow
-Outlanders
Also comics taught about racism and drugs as well as corruption through either subtext or fully showing the thing it‘s against. The 70’s was the start when comics went against the ‘Comic Code Authority’ to promote a message, which was kind of stupid seeing that something like the ‘CCA’ reject the Green Arrow comic for ‘mention Drug Use’ even though it was a used to show kids that drugs are horrible. X-Men taught about segregation using ‘Mutants’ as a metaphor and of course Superman is a metaphor for the common ‘Immigrant’ coming to this new place with a minor difference from the rest of the humans on earth. So comics do more than teach rather than just show homoerotic imagery of dudes in tights beating each other up, it‘s a tool to teach. Also comics have the power to bring emotions out of the reader, just earlier this year I reviewed this Manga titled ‘Legend of Mother Sarah’ which is about a fictional future in which earth is at war with two armies and the book focuses on a Mother who travels from war torn village to war torn village finding her children who went missing after a space station explosion. That book looks like an action packed book, but that book is emotional and at times shocking; the feels on the bus go round and round. I recommend ‘Legend of Mother Sarah’ as an all out emotional read. Also make sure to check out Me and my friend’s picks for favorite comics.
Favorite Comics
Junette:
-Ghost World
-R.Crumb’s Fritz the Cat
-Gen 13
-Dark Knight Returns
-Legend of Mother Sarah
Jebus:
-Sandman: A Game Of You
-The Punisher
-Aliens (Dark Horse Series)
-Persepolis
-AKIRA
-YuGiOh (The non-duelist series)
-The Crow
-Outlanders