tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post4272202287836794265..comments2023-11-23T04:26:01.790-08:00Comments on Gone & Forgotten: DC Comics' Most Pointless Deaths...Calamity Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01800364546694770009noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-62391796435913337832014-01-03T08:51:49.596-08:002014-01-03T08:51:49.596-08:00The underlying problem with pretty much all modern...The underlying problem with pretty much all modern entertainment is that everything in it exists to communicate an EMOTION. <br /><br />I'm not sure the creators care if the viewer is responding emotionally or the two are sharing an emotional moment. They just know that people will buy, click, or keep their finger off the remote so long as they content they experience attempts to transmit an emotion. Everything from SpongeBob to the news is scripted, shot, and edited solely to convey or illicit emotion. I am stunned at the utter lack of any real information in the media anymore. Headlines tell bald face lies, articles grossly distort facts, everything is implication and innuendo. But factual? Good luck finding the facts inside all those emotional elements. People often explain (defend) this as an interest in drama. But what is drama? It's just information delivered in an emotionally-structured manner. <br /><br />Sadly, the emotion involved is not really expected to last beyond the moment. The next moment is equally emotionally charged and often not related to the previous moment. Because it doesn't matter. The consumer only cares that emotion is presented or created, and once anything requiring real thought is presented the consumer moves on to the next provider of emotion. We're devolving--as a society--into what Mirandola referred to as animals: creatures of sensation (but no intelligent thought). <br /><br />Older fans or fans of older comics understand that Silver Age DC was primarily plot driven stories designed to touch on the reader's sense of wonder. While wonder is an emotion, a sense of wonder is equally intellectual because it elicited rational thought about the content. Marvel surpassed DC, in part at least, because it was "character-drive," which really means it focused on human drama. But Stan Lee also touched on our sense of wonder. The difference today is that comics seem to have abandoned any interest (or hope) in creating a sense of wonder and just going straight to the emotional delivery. Which is why Didio is obsessed with killing characters. It doesn't have to make sense (in fact, that would be a detriment). It just has to create the emotional moment that current consumers prefer. <br /><br />Didio's greatest sin is that he took away from us the one major superhero universe that reveled in rationalism and converted it into another modern entertainment company--one obsessed with mindless emotional moments.Mr. Preecehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08905636789126738292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-538705663713913382011-02-08T05:55:10.474-08:002011-02-08T05:55:10.474-08:00I'm chiming in a lot on this one, but superher...I'm chiming in a lot on this one, but superhero comics were such a big part of my childhood, and late childhood and extremely late childhood and now I don't read any. And Didio is a large part of the reason for that. When is someone going to start hero RE-construction?Wooly Ruperthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172367982682836576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-51886052364711913602011-02-07T14:56:03.056-08:002011-02-07T14:56:03.056-08:00This sort of article is why I continue to avidly r...This sort of article is why I continue to avidly recommend this blog to...the two other people in my life that are as into comics as I am. But hey, it needs to be freaking read. If I hear one more "Comics have grown up" speech I'm gonna vomit and then scream and then vomit again. The point is not whether or not comics have 'grown up' it's 'what have they grown up into?' Looks like they've grown up into a sexually frustrated serial killer who lives in his basement and carves up the neighborhood kids. Watchmen was great. We all know it, but it was a story that began and ended with a great deal of emotional and thematic impact. It was not meant to be a paradigm.<br /><br />If D'kay D'razz can peel off the skin of an innocent suburban American family only to provide J'onn with a (drumroll please) CLUE!!! as to who did it, then Imma gonna gripe like hell. I guess the smell of freshly flayed corpses is a sufficient scent to set ol' greenskin on the trail, but c'mon! this is the kind of event entire films rotate around. That the shockwaves of this heinous crime are felt for as long as it takes to read the one panel where J'onn stands over the rotting bodies and says something to the effect of 'Hmmm...the particularly brutal character of these murders suggests the work of... no! it can't be!' and then just #*@!&ing flies off again kind of puts me in a state of existential terror. Like what's one family more or less? Entire movies rotate around events with half of this emotional heft. Good Lord, Didio you've crafted a disturbing world.<br /><br />(Cue Plinkett voice here:) And don't gimme no Quentin Tarantino/Coen Brothers/Park Chan Wook-inspired crap. The reason those movies work is because time is actually spent on the ABSENCE of emotion. They don't just move on no questions asked. <br /><br />Gotta admit though, I liked it when Black Lantern Ralph and Sue maced the Hawkpeople. Thought it set an effective tone for BN and it sufficiently shocked me. Now I know that it only did so because I haven't read enough DC to be sufficiently jaded to all the bloodbathing.Wilgushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17832001000243197264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-84385594331734083142011-02-07T08:10:21.169-08:002011-02-07T08:10:21.169-08:00I feel like I have an obligation to step in if onl...I feel like I have an obligation to step in if only to suggest that it's probably not necessary to drag the Nazis into this - I mean, feel free to drag the Nazis into this, I just have certain club-rules responsibilities as the site owner to mention that we don't have to. Also, there's no running in the pool area and please return your brandy snifters to the brandy snifter washing bin when you've finished snifting your brandy.<br /><br />Still, we don't need to invoke the Nazis to point out that it's a very small idea, the idea that life has no value. That it's become de rigeur for B- and C-Listers to bite it explosively and with no lasting narrative reasons - someone still owes me an explanation as to why Damage's character arc ended with an blowed-up heart - is really the sin of small minds.<br /><br />One of the things which makes reading comics as an adult so frustrating is that, as adults, we've come to the understanding that the ideas in comics are so BIG that the actual physical stories have so much trouble living up to them - in fact, I've just underlined what is basically the thesis for this blog, that the ideas have so much potential and the stories simply cannot live up to them. <br /><br />DC seems to have found a solution for this problem, specifically by making the ideas smaller. So small, in fact, that as long as a story features a bit of blood, a few explosions and somebody's girlfriend being murdered, it captures the idea completely.<br /><br />-Your Humble EditorCalamity Jonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800364546694770009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-46644620701989535502011-02-07T06:56:49.746-08:002011-02-07T06:56:49.746-08:00I think what BillyWitchDoctor is saying is that Da...I think what BillyWitchDoctor is saying is that Dan Didio is Hitler, and I have to agree.Wooly Ruperthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172367982682836576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-46435613381306276292011-02-05T03:29:26.397-08:002011-02-05T03:29:26.397-08:00Thank you from me as well. I stopped buying DC in ...Thank you from me as well. I stopped buying DC in the middle of <b>52</b>, when I realized DC had become <b>Evil Ernie Kills All the Superheroes</b> without the pretense of satire. A group of nobody superheroes was assembled and promptly shredded (which has since become a recurring DC motif), including a buxom lass who was front-and-center in a splash panel, on her knees, screaming (already a recurring DC motif) as her <i>entire head burned to a crisp</i>. Boobs and guts; gore and hardcore misogyny.<br /><br />And of course it's bled over into Marvel, where the occasional cheap-shot sales-boosting death has also become a mandatory regular event, often with with extra slatherings of grue. Doc Doom ripping a woman's heart out of her torso? YAY COMICS!<br /><br />Bring this up at /co/ and regulars with tripcodes will all-cap you with SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP TARD because some people get very angry when you criticize their masturbation material.<br /><br />It's depressing to see this be so popular (not just in comics, of course, the red flows everywhere now) because...well, screw Godwin's Law. Hitler didn't subjugate an innocent Germany with magic; the horror of Nazi Germany came to pass because people became dehumanized and dehumanized others, and then they found a little man who was happy to justify and implement their own brutality and viciousness.<br /><br />And you know what they say about those who don't learn from history.BillyWitchDoctorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14311279565432013472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-22662889659450600352011-02-04T06:30:57.673-08:002011-02-04T06:30:57.673-08:00P.S. that Tumblr image you have of Black Hand offi...P.S. that Tumblr image you have of Black Hand offing himself is the exact moment I stopped actively collecting DC books. Good thing i flipped through it in the store or I might have accidentally bought the damn thing.Wooly Ruperthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172367982682836576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1243661303845968536.post-63013640737477989372011-02-03T15:36:23.371-08:002011-02-03T15:36:23.371-08:00Thankyou so much for this. Hard to know where this...Thankyou so much for this. Hard to know where this trend started, but the watershed for me was Blue Beetle's seemingly endlessly replayed headshot. And every time they replay it in whatever recap they choose to, isn't the spatter so lovingly rendered, in silhouette or otherwise?<br /><br />One thing I really enjoyed about the first 25 issues of the Giffen/Rogers/Hamner Blue Beetle series was how they managed to deal with his predecessor's death in a meaningful way without ever delighting in the gore.Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17920850424123679006noreply@blogger.com