“Do you mind? I’m trying to find my lucky coin.”
Voltron: Defender Of The Universe vol. 2 #4
Devil’s Due (April, 2004)
“Paradise Lost” chapter 3: “Convergence”
WRITERS: Dan Jolley & Marie Croall
PENCILERS: E.J. Su & Clint Hilinski
INKER: Clayton Brown
COLORIST: Ben Hunzeker
COVER ART: E.J. Su, Andrew Pepoy, & Val Staples
LETTERING: Dreamer Design
I confuse easy so somebody explain this to me. Boom Studios was doing an excellent job with the Disney Afternoon comics they were making, but rather than expand on that Disney moved them and the Muppets to Marvel to continue it in-house. And then after the final Muppets miniseries failed to do nothing with any of them. Now I’m learning IDW did a Ducktales comic based on the recent reboot, with a collection coming out for the holidays. What was the point?
There’s a second part to the paragraph I ended on yesterday that I wanted to discuss real quick.
Besides, who was going to tell her that if Batman were in the State Department he would be dismissed, and that Superman does not belong in the nursery? Can we put on mothers the burden of determining how many murders a child should have a week, or the job of evaluating in each new comic book the ethics of the jungle?
No, but parents can see some good examples with an open mind, find out what draws the child to the comic beyond the superficial, and try to work with him or her to find a better alternative. Of course, Wertham doesn’t think there is an alternative because the only good comic is an illustrated book. Also, in the first serial Batman and Robin did work for the State Department or some government bureau to fight the Japanese and they fought Nazis in their own comic. (Not Superman, the actual Nazis, which Superman also fought.) And only think Superman has no place in a nursery, depending on how young the children in there actually are.
From here Dr. Wertham will continue to show proof that his message is “working” while condemning anyone who doesn’t see comics as the sole source of bad children. So let’s get back to it.
Here’s the chapter if you need to catch up.
Burning Man in the Marvel Future is kind of weird.
Earth X preview
supplement to Wizard Magazine #77 (1997)
WORDS & CONCEPT: Alex Ross & Jim Krueger
ARTIST: Alex Ross
When I said Earth X was Marvel’s version of DC’s Kingdom Come this preview doesn’t deny it. The idea came in an interview with Ross about how the DC heroes could have evolved into what they were for Kingdom Come, and someone at Marvel got the idea to let him play that game with their characters. Once his schedule cleared up, Ross was willing to do it. This isn’t a comic, but it does explain the world and concept used for the miniseries. So I’m really just reviewing the concept presented since I never picked up the miniseries itself.
Raymond Louis Heenan, aka Bobby “The Brain” Heenan
Nov. 1. 1944 – Sept. 17, 2017
Back when I used to watch professional wrestling the best commentary team was Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. A former wrestler, Heenan made his mark as a manager of heel wrestlers he referred to as his “family”. He would annoy Monsoon (best friends in real life, Monsoon passed away in 1999), insult “Mean” Gene Okerland (the greatest wrestling interviewer ever), and target Hulk Hogan even when they were both heels. However, on Sunday the manager and commentator fans referred to as “The Weasel” went to that wrestling ring in the sky. Heenan had been fighting throat cancer for years but I don’t know if that’s what gave him the final three count. Love him or hate him, he always entertained and made wrestling commentary fun to listen to. My condolences to his family and friends.
The Struggle Against the Comic Book Industry
“Neutral men are the devil’s allies.”
– E.H. Chapin
So are extremist men ready to tear things down rather than build things up.
So here we go again with more of Dr. Wertham’s biased ranting on comics. This time we’re looking at…actually by this point I don’t know what the point is for him to continue. It feels like he’s said everything but he keeps finding more. He hates comics and he’s determined to make the reader hate them too. This chapter he pulls out all the stops. At least I think he does. We still have two more chapters after this. At this point I’m thinking this is more an endurance challenge than a review. If you haven’t been following this series thus far I’d point you back to the beginning because at this point I just want to get this over with. Maybe it’s because I’m already in a bad mood today. That’s not going to be helpful.
Read the chapter first for context. It’s more research than Wertham ever does on the target.
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
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
Chapter By Chapter Special: Seduction Of The Innocent ch. 12 part 3
We’re on part three of this chapter’s analysis and we aren’t even to the halfway point of the chapter. It’s a good thing we usually take a break before the Prize Fight of a Friday Night Fights tournament because it looks like I might need it. But maybe I’ll get lucky. In this section Dr. Wertham is going to tell us that even the supposed good comics are just bad comics that trick our kids better. This is also the section I jumped ahead to because I really wanted to showcase what Dr. Wertham considers a good comic, which is an illustrated book and not an actual comic. Remember, Wertham is comic illiterate and proud of it, and anything that is a new way to tell a story he’s against. I bet he doesn’t even like the newspaper strips he keeps remind the readers aren’t the same as comic books. This section shows his snobbery even more and makes me sad to be a lover of books because he’s the kind of fanatic that keeps me out of fandoms in this regard. And I do love books. I still have an old summer reading promotional poster on the wall of the studio, although it is currently blocked by a video rack due to the current layout. This article series is usually about examining a prose novel one chapter at a time. Books are awesome!
But I don’t think you have to hate books to love comics or hate comics to love books. Comics tell stories their own way, just like books, movies, serials, TV shows, radio dramas, and whatever else they had in the 1950s. To toss a whole medium away because you hate seeing a kid not reading a book…by the way, what if Dr. Wertham could magically wish all comic books out of existence and saw this new wave of kids still weren’t reading the classics or reading at all? What would he do then? Let’s just get on with it.
Here’s the chapter we’re looking at if you’re new.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 20, 2017 in Comic Spotlight, Seduction Of The Innocent and tagged book review, Chapter By Chapter, comics, commentary, Dr. Fredric Wertham, Seduction Of The Innocent.
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