The Stupid, It Burns

Seriously, I try to write more positive posts about comics. I mean, I love comics! There’s so much great stuff in comic books, both old and new, and I wish more people read them and took them seriously. I always enjoy this blog more when I can talk about the fun and awesome side of comics.

But holy guacamole, sometimes the Big Two just make it too danged hard to think about comics in a positive way.

Obviously, there’s the bit about Marvel killing off Charles Xavier in the newest issue of their AvX crossover nonsense. I honestly have trouble getting too excited about this one — not because, as the creators said, that Professor Xavier is boring and irrelevant — Cyclops and Emma Frost seem a lot more boring and irrelevant, and they’re the ones who the creators clearly love the stuffings out of — but because it’s been done before. Xavier has been killed off so many times, for all kinds of dumb reasons, and he always gets brought back. Because Charles Xavier is a good character, and the fans like him a lot, and they keep putting him in movies. So of course they’re going to resurrect him in a few months. I’m really more irritated that Marvel thinks everyone should care about yet another pointless character death.

Now something that does make me wanna kick the slats out of certain Marvel creators and editors is this “Avengers Arena” thing where the creators assemble a bunch of good teenaged characters, many of them with big fan followings, many of them coming off of well-received series, and promise to kill most of them off.

In other words, yet another shallow, mostly brainless exercise in cheap bloodletting, once again of teenagers, because apparently, comicsdouche manchildren think it makes ’em look “mature” instead of like the standard comicsdouche manchild.

Everyone knows it’ll probably end with X-23 as the winner. Yeah, even though they’ll “kill” her in the first issue to make everyone think they’re shaking things up.

Interestingly, there’s not a lot of dirt-level stupidity going on right now at DC Comics. Doesn’t mean DC isn’t still winning the Stupid Sweepstakes. After all, the Diane Nelson/Dan DiDio/Geoff Johns/Jim Lee/Bob Harras band of idiots already has amnesiac sex-addict Starfire on their tally, as well as the “Superman will never date Lois Lane” idiocy, which really trumps anything Marvel can do for stupidity.

However, I do want to point you to this excellent post by Siskoid on DC’s astoundingly bad communications and public relations problems. Try to imagine a major media company that has less skill at talking to the public or the media — I doubt you can do it, can you?

And as long as we’re dropping links in here, read this powerful essay by Brandon M. Easton on racism in the comics industry. It’s depressing how common this crap still is, isn’t it?

And that’ll do it for me, at least ’til Friday Night Fights this evening. Let’s everyone cross our fingers and toes and hope I can come up with something positive and uplifting to say next week…