So you may have heard the news that there’s a new Superman movie in pre-pre-pre-production, with J.J. Abrams producing and Te-Nehisi Coates writing the script.

Details remain sketchy — particularly as there’s no director yet, and Coates probably hasn’t even started writing — but there are rumors that the Man of Steel may be played by a Black actor.

So the usual suspects — the racist Comicsgate dimwits — reacted the way they usually do when there’s a chance for any diversity in comics, film, or any sort of geek-friendly media.

“B-But Superman’s white! Superman’s always been white! It’s a betrayal of the character if he’s not white! MY CHILDHOOD IS BEING DESTROYED!”

These people are so very tiresome.

So there are lots of reasons a movie with a Black actor playing Superman should be made. If it’s got a good script and good director and good actors, obviously, yes, it’d be a great movie, and that’s enough. Wouldn’t it be great to tell the story of the Man of Tomorrow and how he deals with the prejudices of yesterday?

But to be honest, I want them to make that movie with a Black actor because it will infuriate the racists.

I’m tired of Hollywood — and the entertainment industry in general — tiptoeing around these racist (and sexist and homophobic and transphobic) creeps like they’re actually an important audience. These dudes scream every time there’s gonna be a geeky or action movie starring women or Black people or any non-white, non-Christian non-male, and all too often, Hollywood acts like their backwards opinions need to be listened to.

It’s not so. They’ve been wrong about “Captain Marvel” and “Black Panther” and “Wonder Woman” and “Into the Spider-Verse” and more. Their opinions are shit. And Hollywood should relish it when racist dumbwads get angry at them. They’re angry, stupid, racist, and impotent, so fuck them and their backwards, moronic beliefs.

So yes, we need a Black Superman (and a Black Batman, Black Wonder Woman, Black Spider-Man, and Black Captain America) because Hollywood (and the comics industry) have been catering to racists for much too long — and because pissing off stupid racists is all the reason anyone should need.

It’s January 20, 2021, and I hope it’s going to be a good day.

We’re going to get a new president sworn in, and a new vice president. And we’re getting rid of the worst president we ever had, who will hopefully be marched directly to his new cell on Rikers Island, where he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to avoid just punishment for his many crimes.

But of course, despite the valiant efforts of the Japanese schoolgirls in “Cabin in the Woods,” the evil hasn’t been defeated. The Republican Party has, by this point, made it clear that they approve of Trump’s attempted coup and that they would prefer an iron authoritarian dictatorship to any sort of democracy.

And it’s very likely to get worse from there. We can expect more neo-Nazi terrorist attacks, possibly focused on Washington, D.C., Congress, the White House, and national landmarks, possibly not.

With any luck, this will soon work itself out once the insurrectionists realize how unpopular this kind of stuff is. If y’all remember the OKC Bombing back in 1995, the goons in the militia movement were absolutely delighted for the first couple of days after the bombing, joyfully anticipating their much-desired race war and overthrowing the government. And then they realized that no one else was happy about the bombing, and that 99% of the country was good and mad. And the militias shut the fuck up and disappeared into the woodwork for another few years.

Americans love violence — on TV, in movies, and in fiction. When it happens in real life, they’re not so fond of it. When it’s mass violence, and when it’s terrorism, they really don’t like it a bit. And they don’t like the idea of a bunch of Nazi dumbfucks taking over the country and deciding what our system of government is going to be.

So far, Republicans and their allies storming the Capitol are gambling that this’ll be swept down the memory hole, and that their next attack will be more successful. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are gambling they’ll be able to harness these Nazi goons into a new political power base. In both cases, I suspect that’s a bad gamble.

For now, getting Trump off the stage and getting a new president is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean our problems are over.

Well, everyone agrees that 2020 was the worst year since, basically, 2016. And lots of folks expect 2021 to be a much better year, because what could be worse than this one, right?

Predictions are, of course, a mug’s game. No one can know the future, psychic powers do not exist, and the future will always, always, always surprise us.

Nevertheless: Kids, it’s going to get so much worse.

Let’s start off with the obvious. COVID-19 got worse after Thanksgiving, when all the stupid, selfish nihilists had big dinners with lots of people and spread the virus far and wide. It’ll get worse after Christmas, when all the stupid, selfish nihilists had big family gatherings with lots of people and spread the virus far and wide. It’ll get worse again after New Year’s, when all the stupid, selfish nihilists will have big stupid parties with lots of people and spread the virus far and wide.

The vaccines will help, but the stupid, selfish nihilists will insist they don’t want them. Just like they don’t want masks. And they’ll keep spreading the virus far and wide.

We are, unfortunately, living in a society full of deeply stupid people who get all their instructions straight from their Mango Messiah, deeply selfish people who think their convenience and comfort is more important than other people’s lives, deeply nihilistic people who dream of setting the world on fire and dancing in the flames because lolol nothing matters.

What else we got? Kids, terrorism is probably gonna go through the fucking roof.

And we’re not talking about Shadowy Muslims blowing up buildings and shooting up shopping malls. We’re talking about very white, very Christian, very Republican Trump worshipers blowing up buildings and shooting up shopping malls. ‘Cause they ain’t adjusting well to their God-Emperor getting shown the door, and most of them would much rather cast out everything they claimed to believe about the greatness of American democracy, murder innocent people, and live in a full-on fascist dictatorship than deal with the fact that a (depressingly slim) majority of Americans don’t believe Nazis are Very Fine People.

“Well, heck, you’re over-reacting! It’s not like we’ve had a lot of terrorism already! I mean, other than the plot to execute the governor in Michigan. And the bombing in Nashville on Christmas Day. And hordes of Proud Boys, undercover cops, and neo-Nazis running wild and assaulting people every few weeks.”

Honestly, I think they’re just getting warmed up. Here’s this dude who lived through a similarly dumb coup attempt, and he says the terrorist attacks started about four months after everyone thought the nonsense was settled. I suspect America’s conservatives, mostly driven to madness by having to share power with women and brown people, are going to go wild with violence or, for those too sensible to pick up a gun or blow up an elementary school, making excuses for violence.

And the press, addicted to the fat ratings and profits of the tabloid Trump era, will be absolutely overjoyed by it all.

But enough about unimportant national news, right? What about the important stuff? What about comics?!

Heck, I have a really hard time saying much. I haven’t lived within four hours of a decent comic book shop in over four years. I don’t know what the big events are. I never hear anything about comics that are getting the big positive buzz. Sometimes, I’m not even really sure what’s getting published. But it still doesn’t feel good to me.

DC Comics got hit with a sledgehammer this year because AT&T decided they don’t care about comics, only IP. And Marvel’s head honchos are either Trumper loons or racist sock-puppet flatscans — plus their parent company has decided they don’t like the idea of paying royalties to writers. I don’t think any of those make for a healthy company. One willing to starve their comics division to maybe, possibly fund some movies and TV shows, and the other slaved to untrustworthy men and an untrustworthy parent that doesn’t value its creators.

I’m not even very optimistic about the various comics-based movies and TV shows. What I worry about is whether movie audiences decided the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s story was completed with the “Endgame” film — and thus may be unwilling to buy into a new phase of the project with new movies, new characters — but without Iron Man and Captain America, two of the series’ most popular characters.

A lot of the new Marvel movies and TV shows sound pretty interesting — but if the audiences don’t show up for them, can the studio continue to greenlight ’em?

As for DC’s movies — I need to see some more evidence that they’ve abandoned the grimdark dumbness brought on by Zack Snyder.

In both cases, I’m really nervous about the idea of jamming theaters with mountains of superhero movies when we’re not even sure if there’s still an appetite for that much stuff. Overwhelming indifferent audiences seems like a good way to release a bunch of flops and killing off the superhero movie for good.

I’m not a complete pessimist. I think we’ll get COVID-19 under control eventually — maybe by summer, maybe after that. I think the economy will start to claw its way back — but the process will be helped along if the Democrats in the Senate realize they can make some improvements by pushing Mitch McConnell down a flight of stairs. And I think some comics will continue to be very profitable — namely graphic novels aimed at younger readers, including books by Raina Telgemeier, Dav Pilkey, and plenty of others, which generally have sales that make DC and Marvel look like indie publishers.

Still — just because 2020 was bad doesn’t mean 2021 is gonna be a lot better. Y’all be careful out there.

Hey, here’s some stuff I feel like I shoulda mentioned before!

Bullet Point! Baxter, the foster dog we were taking care of a while back, has now moved on to his Forever Home and Forever Daddy off in the distant wilds outside Marfa, Texas. He’s getting along great with his new big brother and greatly enjoying living in the country, where he gets to snuffle his nose in all the wet cow poop he wants. He’s probably forgotten us already, which is really the point of being a foster, to be honest.

The only thing about the whole situation I’m not happy about is learning that he has to get rattlesnake vaccinations now. Who even knew there was such a thing as rattlesnake vaccinations?!

Okay, here’s another picture of Baxter. He’s a good boy!

And next: Bullet Point! Hats off for Richard Corben, superstar comic artist, who died last week. He did art for Heavy Metal, Meat Loaf albums, Hellboy comics, and a bunch of other weird, glorious, gorgeous projects.

Let’s look at a little Richard Corben art:

Bullet Point! Disney announced a massive buttload of new Marvel and Star Wars movies and TV shows, as well as casting news and photos for their programs, including WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Hawkeye, Loki, What If?, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more.

Can I just say they really need to slow this stuff down a lot? I like superhero stuff as much as anyone, but I’m really not sure there’s that much appetite for so much superhero content on TV and in the movies. I suspect a lot of mainstream audiences figured “Endgame” wrapped up the Marvel Cinematic Universe nicely, and there’s not a guarantee they want more. Better to release one or two movies, see how audiences react, and go from there, rather than jump to a massive glut of Marvel movies and pray people will care.

Besides, why care too hard about Disney stuff when they’re balking at paying their contracted royalties to creators?

Bullet Point! Hats off for Tom “Tiny” Lister, who died just a few days ago. Like most character actors, he had certain kinds of roles he specialized in — namely, the absolutely terrifying black man — with more than enough skill to subvert those roles, whether for comedy, as Deebo in “Friday” or President Lindberg in “The Fifth Element,” or for pure drama, in his small but massively impactful role in “The Dark Knight” as the prisoner who throws the detonator out of the prison ferry.

I can’t say Lister was the best actor in “The Dark Knight,” because he was onscreen for such a brief period. But he doubtless played the part of the most purely moral character in the movie — a man who uses his fearsome appearance solely to preserve life — and he sold the role beautifully.

Bullet Point! It turns out it’s not a good feeling at all knowing that 70 million people and almost every elected Republican at every level of government believes Nazis are Very Fine People and that democracy must be destroyed.

Is there anyone left out there saying we need to reach across the aisle to these people, to learn how they think? Anyone still saying Biden should pardon Trump for the good of the country? I sure hope not, ’cause anyone still saying nonsense like that is a goddamn idiot.

Probably the only way we’ll ever save this country is to somehow get every Trump supporter in the country stuffed into an unmarked grave somewhere — which means it’s probably impossible to save America, ’cause the only people with the drive to execute that many people… are Trumpers and their fellow Nazis.

As I’ve said far too often: (1) if you’ve got the ability to flee the country, do so as quickly as you can. Save yourself, save your family, save your friends, save a few folks from vulnerable populations and (2) The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

Is the election over? I can barely keep track anymore.

Whatever the result — even if the good guys win — it’s still bad news. Because the bad guys — the people who looked at four years of open corruption, hatred, racism, sexism, homophobia, police violence, and Nazi bullshit — still did a hell of a lot better than they should’ve.

So 2016 showed that far too many Americans were comfortable with the Klan, the Nazis, and white nationalist violence. But 2020 showed that they’re not just comfortable with it — they’re eager for more.

On the bright side, of course, is the fact that American voters have strongly rejected Trump twice — Hillary Clinton got 2.8 million more votes than Trump, and Biden is on track to get even more than that. But because the Electoral College is an outdated joke implemented solely to appease white slaveowners in the 1880s, America gets to be the only democracy that periodically tells its voting majority to fuck off.

Of course, Tyrannus Tiny-Thumbs may still figure out a scheme to steal the election, but we’re rapidly approaching the point where only the maddest of the mad will accept that. When even the quivering cowards in the national media are willing to call him a liar, and the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court are fine with telling him to get lost, you’re no longer fighting from a position of strength.

If this were a comic book world, it’d likely be more depressing. In the comics, the supervillains are generally feared by almost everyone. In the real world, however, if the Red Skull or the Hatemonger or the Joker or Lex Luthor tried to take over the world, we know that a lot of people who used to be all about small government, low taxes, and family values, would now follow the villains, ’cause they OWN TEH LIBS or because they want to put non-white people in camps or because you gotta run the government like a murderous, destructive megacorp, or because they just want to cheer as a lunatic murders innocent people.

If Mephisto, the Devil his own damn self, offered up an Antichrist who demanded people brand themselves with his mark to show their loyalty to him, it’d be a heavy-handed summer crossover event that ended with most people refusing to embrace evil. But in the real world — well, we already know how many people agreed to wear the mark in 2016 and 2020. They had hats to show it off, didn’t they?

We’ll be back to doing proper comic book content soon enough, but for now, let’s remember an eternal truth that remains no matter who runs the White House, something agreed upon by Captain America, Indiana Jones, Jack Kirby, and every other good American:

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, and if you haven’t been paying close attention, this might be our last chance ever to vote.

The Mango Mussolini in the White House plans to cheat his way to victory, and he’s got the Supreme Court, the Senate, more than a few state legislatures, a few million crooked cops, and a bunch of Nazi-affiliated dumbfucks on his side.

And I’m a bit pissed about that.

I bet a lot of y’all have already voted — through mail or early voting — and your country thanks you. Democracy is worth fighting for, and we’re lucky that we get to join that fight with something as simple as voting — and voting against a fascist, at that.

But if you haven’t voted yet, I feel like it’s important to express just how desperately important that civic duty is, and as a comics blogger, I know the best way to get an important point across is through cartoonish, brutal, furious violence. And so:

Again: Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. And vote Blue all the way down the ballot.

Never forget, friends: The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

This has been an overwhelmingly rotten year, and if we needed another reminder of that fact, it came Friday night when we learned that John Lewis, civil rights icon and one of the best damn people anywhere, had died at the age of 80.

I suspect y’all will remember that Lewis wrote his own graphic novel, “March,” co-written with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. I’d previously reviewed Book One and Book Two, but I was surprised to realize I’d never reviewed Book Three — it was released after I’d mothballed the blog in 2016.

So there’s probably no better time to remedy that situation than right now. Let’s look at March, Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell.

In 1963, the civil rights struggles become more violent, largely because white supremacists were getting more and more frightened and angry. The book opens with the terrifying bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by the KKK that killed four girls. While much of the rest of the country is horrified, whites in the Deep South are largely ecstatic.

From here, Lewis recounts a lot of tough times for the Civil Rights Movement — attempts to register voters in the South that were obstructed by police, judges, and politicians; the death of John F. Kennedy, one of their major supporters; the murders of Mickey Schwerner, Andy Goodman, James Chaney, and far too many other activists; the futile struggle to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates at the Atlantic City Democratic Convention.

And Selma. The campaign to register voters, opposed with fanatical rage by the police. The brutal Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, where Lewis was savagely beaten by police. And the march from Selma to Montgomery.

And finally, the Voting Rights Act of 1964. But the battle didn’t end there.

And the book isn’t a dry recounting of historical events. Lewis tells you the people he worked with, the disagreements, the small moments between friends, the events that mattered, the speeches that drove civil rights forward. Lewis shares meetings with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, C.T. Vivian, also gone last week, and dozens more. It’s not textbook history — it’s human history, recreated before your eyes.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lewis brings us the terrors and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement on a fully human scale. You’re gonna see a lot of stuff in this book that will make you absolutely furious, from the various bigoted sheriffs committing assaults and murders at will (Golly, how the times do repeat themselves) to LBJ, who, though he may have signed the signature civil rights legislation, was still a racist douchebag.

Luckily, you’ll also see plenty of stuff to inspire you, too. Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony, Lewis’ trip to Africa and meeting with Malcolm X, the march to Montgomery, all the people working together to bring about a more equitable world.

Lewis decided he wanted to write this because he wanted to educate young people about the struggle for equality and the right to vote — but parents should be aware that the book is full strong language and violence. It’s not gratuitous — this is the language white racists used. And the violence is not gory, but the smudged and shadowy depictions of assaults and fires and bombings are their own kind of nightmare fuel.

But even if you’re worried about showing it to your kids, you shouldn’t be afraid of reading it yourself. When I was growing up, my history classes always petered out not long after World War II. The Civil Rights Movement was glossed over, at best. So reading this is a valuable education for adults as well as kids.

This one is highly recommended. Go read it. Go read all three books of this series.

What a week. What a week, filled with disillusionment and disappointment and absolutely justified rage.

There are a lot of skeletons getting pulled out of closets and a lot of assholes and creeps taken to task.

Charles Brownstein is out at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund — but he was allowed to resign, instead of being fired. And he got to stick around for 14 years after he’d been accused of abuse. And the CBLDF’s statement is pitifully weak.

Dark Horse Comics has finally given Scott Allie the heave-ho, over 20 years after multiple reports of his abusive behavior. But Dark Horse was only pushed to action after Mike Mignola — no angel himself — threw his support behind Allie’s victims. And there are way too many similar accusations directed at Dark Horse president Mike Richardson.

Warren Ellis, Cameron Stewart, and Jason Latour have been accused by multiple people of various creeper behaviors. Same goes for genre writers Sam Sykes and Myke Cole.

Max Temkin of Cards Against Humanity is out, and the entire company stands accused of widespread sexism and racism.

And to add additional insult to the pile of injuries, it was revealed that Mairghread Scott, who wrote the “Batgirl” series just a few years ago, was purposely excluded from planning meetings for the Bat books, with her plans for the book derailed from on high by the men who ran the meetings.

Our nerdy, fun hobbies have been infested with abusers for years — and it’s not a recent phenomenon, judging from all we know about Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, and Forrest J. Ackerman. We’ve known all this for years, and so many people have been yelling about the ongoing problems with racism and sexism in comics for decades. And the same damn shit keeps happening over and over and over.

I don’t think I have any solutions to offer. I mean, I’ve got my ideas for what should be done — the CBLDF, Dark Horse, and Cards Against Humanity should cease to exist, for one thing. All three organizations are tainted to their core and have swept abuse under the rug for far too many years. I don’t think they’re worth preserving. But we also know that won’t happen, and there’s unlikely to be any significant improvement at any of them. They’ve been built on abuse, and they’ll continue to abuse.

If Ellis, Stewart, Latour, Sykes, and Cole want to work toward redemption, that’s on them, and good luck to ’em. But I don’t plan to support them for a good long while, until they’ve been able to show they’ve improved their behavior in concrete, unquestionable ways.

And right now, I kinda feel like sci-fi and comics conventions were a mistake almost from the beginning, and I kinda wish they wouldn’t come back in the post-COVID world. Yes, I know lots of creators make a decent sum of money from making appearances at conventions, and I wouldn’t want anyone to give that up. But it sure seems like conventions have turned into creeper-fests. And the cons themselves rarely do enough work to keep the creeps under control.

Solutions more solid than that? I wish I knew. Keep supporting creators who aren’t abusers would be the obvious thing — if only we knew which ones they were. And support people who’ve been victimized by abusers. Many of them were forced out of jobs by abusers, and they deserve better than they’ve got.

I’ve got plenty of excellent stuff to review right now, but I just can’t get interested in writing up any reviews. So I ain’t gonna.

I will note a minor change here on the blog — I’ve deleted my link in my blogroll to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I did it for the following two reasons.

First: The past week has been a rough one for comics fans as we deal with the fact that a lot of comics creators, both prominent and obscure, have spent years abusing women, particularly creators trying to break into the industry. And one of those abusers is Charles Brownstein, the CBLDF’s longtime executive director.

And they’re not new or obscure accusations either. They date back to at least 2005, and were updated by the Comics Journal article in 2018. CBLDF has largely shrugged this all off. It’s not a good look for any organization that’s supposed to be focused on protecting comics creators, either back then or today.

Second: This is something that has irritated and mystified me for the last three years. The CBLDF defended neo-Nazi Milo Yianopoulos.

Wait, you say, was this related to a comic book he made? Nope, it was just a book he was getting a generous advance for writing. It had nothing at all to do with comics.

But wait, you say, was he being censored? Was his book seized by police or banned by the government? Nopers, friends, what was happening was that common ol’ private citizens and advocacy groups, unhappy that any publisher felt comfortable giving an abusive neo-Nazi — best known for trolling, doxxing innocent people, and giving winking approval to pedophilia — a generous advance for writing a shitty book, began organizing boycotts of publisher Simon & Schuster. And the CBLDF decided that was an unfair infringement on the sacred rights of a multi-national publishing corporation.

And no, it didn’t make a lick of sense to anyone else either. And the organization has never bothered to explain themselves to all the folks asking why. Frankly, it felt like they were offended that anyone was talking back to them, or maybe just hoping it’d blow over quickly before any comics creators decided to stop letting them sell autographed comics…

It took me longer than it should have to remove the link in my blogroll, partly because I only started blogging again just a few months back, and partly because I was privileged enough that I’d managed to forget both these incidents.

So give money to your favorite creators’ Patreons, drop money in your favorite bloggers’ tip jars, and contribute to the Hero Initiative. But let’s allow the CBLDF to fade away, hopefully to be replaced by an organization that doesn’t approve of Nazis and doesn’t assault women.

Okay, I’ll grant you it’s really difficult to think of any crisis at all other than the COVID-19 crisis right now — but I noticed that today is Earth Day. And the current state of the planet is really not great.

Oceans are heating up, air and water quality are getting worse, weather is getting more chaotic as climate change runs wild, and our current kleptocracy is rolling back every common sense regulation preventing megacorps from burying us in toxic waste.

And there ain’t no simple solutions, especially when the country’s being run by a nihilist death cult that wants most of the earth dead for the sake of profit and a few braying giggles.

And now, in a vain attempt to lighten the mood: a small collection of Earth- and environment-themed comics covers:

So enjoy your Earth Day. Make the simple changes you can now — but don’t forget that politicians and corporate polluters are the people truly responsible for all this.