Think how the store owners feel.
May the fourth is once again Free Comic Book Day. Tomorrow as this goes out comic book stores will have special free comics (don’t be like that guy) available. The intention is to get more people reading comics by showing comics are great…though given some of the offerings lately it sometimes feel like they used to be great. Let’s just say under writers, artists, and editors who actually care about what they’re doing comics have been great and could be again if we ditched the activists and the people who think Cocomellon needs to be more grimdark, more violent, and less for kids because @#$% kids, they want gore and titties! Except breasts are evil these days or something.
Remember, your local comic store pays for those free comics they make no money off of. This is why I encourage any of you going each year to BUY SOMETHING! Bags and boards for your free comics, something off the shelves, something out of the back issue bins, the dollar bins, the collectables…just try to make this day profitable for the comic stores, dang it! They’re hurting right now because there is so much mediocrity to crap they’re having trouble selling. It’s like the video game burst of the 1980s. And just like those games, the corporations who see these as nothing more than IP to the “important” media of movies and television/streaming don’t really care. So give your local comic store–if you have one anymore–a helping hand this Saturday.
Which is why I’m not sure if I’m going to go given my current lack of finances. If I go it will be more to get advice on selling the comics in my Clutter For Sale list over at The Clutter Reports and just getting out of the house for something other than a doctor. Still, I have gone over this year’s Free Comic Book Day catalog, which sadly has fewer previews than usual, and while the list of what I’m interested in is short, here’s what I’ll try to get if I go.
BW Media Spotlight 
Star Trek’s Prime Directive Vs Real World Cultural History
Let’s be honest: Starfleet General Order #1 is nothing more than a cheap plot device, a way to restrict the writers and cause moral drama. As we’ve gone over in previous explorations (which sadly did not include the above novel as it really didn’t cover it, and I found that depressing in my Chapter By Chapter review), there are two reasons listed for the Prime Directive to be ignored: the needs of Starfleet, which can be interpreted in different ways to work around the spirit of the Directive, and the safety of the ship, which suffers the same problem.
In universe and in the mind of Gene Roddenberry, the goal of the Prime Directive is to push back against a colonialist action, intentional or otherwise. Colonialism may not have been the best thing for the indigenous people and in some cases didn’t do the colonizers much good, either. In practice, however, is it possible that in fact the Directive is part of an outdated view of culture and other civilizations based on a self-interested view of culture and our own hubris?
This is the argument made by the host of YouTube channel Trekspertise in the following video. By looking at the actual history of colonialism in the real history of the real planet Earth, the host goes into why the Prime Directive is based on outmoded views of human culture and cross-cultural interaction in the past…and might be a bit racist, or at least culturalist, as well.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on May 2, 2024 in Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, Prime Directive, Star Trek, Trekspertise.
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