So far James Gunn’s DC Universe has been a big thud. Two streaming shows mocked or ignored and two movies that failed miserably whether he admit it or not. Plus the announced stuff that’s actually coming isn’t impressing anyone and the stuff that was canceled aren’t being missed. Bleeding Fool contributor Jamison Ashley explains that the biggest misstep is there’s little evidence that there was a plan in place when everything feels so disconnected from each other.
It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit down and get back into this. As it is it took a reduced schedule, semi-vacation, and a need to build a buffer of articles for days when I have nothing else to discuss or no time to write anything to make this happen. Watchmen might be one of the big and influential comic stories, but it’s more interesting for me to analyze than read.
Anyway, last time we looked at the origin of Doctor Manhattan and compared him to his inspiration, Captain Atom. A quick skim tells me this is more about the investigation into the Comedian’s murder, but I have a feeling our main characters will get more exploration so we can compare them to their inspirations. We’ll be following Rorschach around but I think next issue is his exploration as a character so we’ll do the Question comparison next time. Right now, it’s time to catch up on the investigation, which should still tell us something about the ink blot masked man.
“There was a leak at the Kool-Aid factory….”
Watchmen #5
DC Comics (January, 1987)
“Fearful Symmetry”
WRITER: Alan Moore
ARTIST/LETTERER: Dave Gibbons
COLORIST: John Higgins
EDITOR: Len Wein
So this apparently drove the internet insane a couple of months ago but I only saw it on a podcast yesterday, in a video discussing the fallout. No, I don’t mean putting the K-On poster where Bocchi The Rock should of been because I didn’t catch it. A few commenters did or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. Apparently someone said they wanted more female protagonists in anime and he listed a bunch to show that are out there in shows that should have more attention. This, of course, got him hit face first by the culture war and people who know less about anime than the girl he was responding to because some activists don’t just want a seat at the table they’re allowed to have. They want to be head of the table, then have the table made for them alone, then the only one at the table, and then they want that table over there because they don’t have it and insist that’s “gatekeeping”. That’s all I’m saying about all that, but here’s his video responding to his attackers. Watch it if you want. I’m moving on.
While I prefer to have as little to do with the culture war on this site that I can as it’s not the main topic (and yet harder to ignore every day), this did inspire a topic. In the past I’ve done articles on favorite female characters, proving there are good ones out there if you actually look for them. They don’t have to be the protagonist because my favorite character isn’t always the main one. Often it is, but that doesn’t decide whether a character is a favorite. It’s based on how cool they are, would I want to hang out with them, and do they give me some kind of positive inspiration despite not “looking like me”. See, I can’t even escape this crap in the intro after saying I didn’t want to touch it again. I’m not above using the culture war to make an article, though, especially at deadline. If I can hold my buffer for real emergencies, I’d like to.
So while this is fresh in my mind, here are five of my favorite Japanese drawn lady people and I’d totally hang out with them. Note, I said “HANG out”. I specifically chose characters that I wouldn’t be interested in anything romantic or sexual to further prove to anyone obsessed with sex that some of us still believe platonic friendships exist and a boy and a girl can totally chill out and fight aliens with giant robots together…especially given how many minors are on this list. Like the first one!
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Fair enough, but this isn’t something inspired by The Odyssey like Ulysses 31 or the movies she mentions. This is a straight up adaptation that claimed to want to fix “historical” inaccuracies and ground the story in the real world. Which means taking out the gods and monsters, essentially pulling the “myth” from the mythology. It’s also why I’m not a fan of his take on Batman. He also didn’t want to use an orchestra because they didn’t have those back then and wanted to have a better feel for the period. And then he casts people who don’t pass for Greecian as Greeks, ends on a rap song, gets the armor and boat wrong (the boat I hear comes from the Vikings), all of which is actually the opposite of getting the history right.
An original story inspired by Odysseus’ journey, even if it wasn’t in the context of a different genre, I would be okay with. That’s not what this is and why I’m still not interested. It just comes off as another case of pulling the fantastic out of the fantasy and it just sounds dull compared to source material. It’s happened so often with modern adaptations that I really have no interest in it. Glad people enjoyed it, though, but I’ll pass.
“Superhero fatigue is real, but Spider-Man fatigue is not,” says analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations. “This is the first big superhero film of the summer, and there is so much goodwill following Spider-Man.”
When does the hurting stop?
That’s a quote from a recent Variety article about the success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the movie that chose the wrong title given the title’s comic history (like anyone at Marvel Studios or Sony cares). An article that stars with “Superhero fatigue is no match for Peter Parker.” Look, I’m happy for it. It’s been Spider-Man in name and costume design only since the first MCU movie, but at least something they’re doing is working. Congrats.
Hollywood still doesn’t understand the problem. Of course.
Why would they? The narcissistic cool kids who treat the world like they’re still in high school (maybe that’s why Peter is never allowed to get to college anymore) still want to take that geeky stuff and make it theirs because the everything for meeeeeeeeee crowd hates those nerdy comic fans and anything not made for them or the people they want to be like. Marvel Studios, a company founded on whatever characters the previous owners didn’t give the rights away to during bankruptcy and a desire to get the adaptation correct to make fans (the ones who buy all the merchandise) happy while bringing in new fans and casual audiences, have done none of that since the Disney takeover.
There are issues (no pun intended) with the comics right now, too, which the last owners still allowed to happen, like that other “Brand New Day”. The current owners are ignoring the comics completely so long as they have a bunch of names and concepts to ignore everything else to lazily create the “important media”. They don’t pay attention to fan response and leave that to secret activists happily feeding them lies to push their agenda, and creators willing to play ball in the hopes of getting royalties if a character they create shows up in the movies, Disney+, or some video game. Considering they’re not activists themselves, but it’s more ego and greed, and if they have to use the various culture shields to not be critiqued they’ll do it. Hollywood is just full of people playing everyone for suckers, including each other, convinced the existing fanbase is gullible enough to play along. Less and less…they aren’t.
Of course they aren’t the real problem, but the people who opened the door that allowed them to sneak in, the “cool kids” of the everything for meeeeeeeeeeee crowd I mentioned. They didn’t understand why we liked this “junk” when it wasn’t popular, and now that it is they still don’t know or care why. They just assume they can make it better because their perspective is the only one that matters, like the bully that made fun of you for reading comics or playing D&D, or your choice in video games if not games at all that weren’t approved by the high council of them. They failed and continue to fail to understand what we wanted, so the only ones going are those few gullible brand loyalists they did manage to get, critics both professional and personal who need to see it for a paycheck, and nobody who just wants to “own the chuds” who push for things in movies they never watch or comics they never read. It’s tough to have fatigue of something they don’t really make, or at least don’t appear to be anymore. Let’s look at more of this article from Variety contributor Rebecca Rubin.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
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BW’s Daily Video> 10 Reasons Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who Return Failed
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on July 31, 2026 in Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies, WhoCulture.
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