Saturday, August 29, 2015

The Week in Geek 8/26/15

So, This Week in Things The Nerd Sites Aren't Talking Nearly Enough About, Marvel just signed Ashley A. Woods, a woman of color. Now, it could very well be that this is in response to the somewhat deserved (and maybe not completely deserved) backlash they've received about not having as much black talent as they could. But honestly, a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction. And after seeing a sample of her work from Niobe, the comic she's doing with Rue from the Hunger Games, this is an impressive step in the right direction. I would direct you to more of her work, but apparently, her site is down due to all the traffic she's gotten since the announcement, so yeah, there's that.

And This Week In The Internet, anytime you feel down, any moment you feel as though life is giving you entirely too much burden to bare, watch this and I guarantee you will instantly feel better about your own bullshit. This happened for me. It will happen for you.

Also, This Week In Promoting My Own Shit, I was very happy to announce that my webcomic, Neverland: The Untold, is scheduled for its debut on September 15th. Katie Coats and I are unbelievably excited to be sharing this story with you guys. We promise to try and keep it as compelling as possible for you. The first story is unlike anything else I've ever tried my hand at. The website is just about finished, so thank you for all the email inquiries. We'll start building a database so I can keep you guys updated on everything including, events, new pages, fan art, etc. Thank you all for the outpour of support going into September. It means more to us than we can express. 



My review on David Walker's EXCELLENT Cyborg solo comic is up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. Feel free to read, comment, share at your leisure as always. You know the drill.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

The Other Side of Representation in Comics

So, earlier this week, I was doing research online for what might turn into a Black Nerd Problems article sometime soon. And anyone who knows me or even follows me on Twitter or Facebook knows that my doing research on the internet equates to my finding a new awful inner layer of the internet that I never knew about before. Fortunately, I didn't quite find that but the past few months put me onto a new degree of naysayer geeks I didn't really know/acknowledge previously.

In this case, it's the New Marvel Defectors (that's not a thing, internet...it's just my term). New Marvel Defectors generally have a problem with the direction the company is taking in being more socially inclusive (more female characters, Black Captain America, Woman Thor, etc). The biggest complaint I hear is that Marvel's approach constitutes as lazy writing and that instead of repurposing existing characters to take up the mantle of an existing white superhero, they should just make new characters.

Now, let me first state that this IS AT LEAST HALF TRUE. Yes, the Big Two SHOULD be developing new characters and, mainly in DC's case, working a little harder to develop existing characters of color and non-binary characters. However, let's not pretend that this isn't something that's actively happening. There's been an all woman squad of X-Men in a series that's run right up until Secret Wars, I believe. Al Ewing had a great run on Mighty Avengers, a book about Luke Cage's Avengers team that consisted mostly of characters of color. All New Hawkeye is basically a buddy hero book that highlights Kate Bishop every bit as much as Clint Barton. And, of course, before that, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye basically splits up to two individual self sustaining stories, one with Barton vs. the Tracksuit Mafia, the other with Kate Bishop vs. Madame Masque. And of course, there's G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, which is a great look at identity, race and coming of age. The people that think original inclusion isn't happening just aren't looking close enough.

Second of all, even with creating new characters, it still misses part of the point of representation and what we're telling little kids (because sometimes, we forget that kids read this shit, too). I like Superman. I've liked Superman ever since I was a kid. My first example of what it meant to be a superhero was Superman. When I played Justice League with my friends, I wanted to be Superman. Once, a kid told me that I couldn't be Superman because he was white and I was black. I knew everything there was to know about Superman. I knew and lived by (or at least TRIED to live by) his ideals. But the kid boiled it down to mere skin color because that's all he knew. I'm not calling the kid racist, of course. For him, it was a matter of aesthetics although it speaks to so many levels of colorism.

Despite cynicism being trendy nowadays, the superhero is still hugely tied to the latter day mythologies of modern culture for now and for always. They are fables inextricably tied to the values by which we live, the hope we pass down from generation to generation. They link us. Sometimes, they even shape us. When you tell people to create new characters instead of breaking the gender/color boundaries of the existing franchises, you're telling a whole readership of children that no matter how much they look up to Captain America or Thor, being black or a woman or gay or whatever you are....means that Captain America will always be off limits to them on some level. You saying that a white person is allowed to take that character's place (as has been the case with Captain America, Batman, Daredevil that I can think of right off the bat), but never a black person or a woman. You're essentially chastising them for wanting to have the attributes of an awesome character that they really like.

Although some heroes' obstacles and outlooks on the world are undeniably linked and shaped because of their race, superheroes are not just men and women built on race. They're ideals, principles, morals and deeds. Yes, Static is an awesome superhero (who occasionally suffers from being in bad comics) and yes, he could stand to be built upon and really SHOULD be built upon, but Superman is a legend, an icon. As great a character as he is, Static is NOT Superman. Representation isn't just building a new foundation for an institution. It's about changing transcending barriers and rearranging the way we look at the old one.

My comic reviews for Archie and Star Wars are available for your viewing pleasure on Black Nerd Problems. Feel free to like, hate, share, comment at your leisure. You know the drill.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Self Care and Shit Like That....

So, there's no entry for this week due to my a). need to decompress and take it easy (or at least easier than usual) as well as b). I need to work on the comic. By the way, for those of you who have been keeping up with such things, Neverland: The Untold is still actively being worked on. Kate has finished some pages that are simply gorgeous and I have the majority of the first story arc scripted. Really, the only thing that's still under construction is the website. Our greatly appreciated tech lady is hard at work getting the site up and running, so we should be ready pretty soon.

Until then, as usual, you can check out my reviews on Planet Hulk, Batman and Ghost Racers, all available on Black Nerd Problems.


Peter Pan from Neverland: The Untold

Saturday, August 8, 2015

The Week In Geek 8/5/15

-So, Secret Wars is being pushed back AGAIN so it'll now be ending in October now. Man, I like this event a lot but for fuck's sake....I'd like it a lot more if Marvel wouldn't drag it along like this. DC and Marvel sometimes have a tendency to suck with these scheduling issues. DC shit the bed last year pushing Forever Evil back so far, rest of the books in the line had moved on past the event and basically gave away the ending. Now, with SW being delayed, there's so many moving parts in Hickman's story, the tie-ins have to be careful not to give away too much story. In truth, they wouldn't have so many problems with scheduling if they'd cut events like this in half. Marvel had the right idea when SW started off biweekly. Despite being so god-awful, at least Convergence got in, told its story and got out. Then again, considering Esad Ribic's artwork, it might just be worth the wait. 

-The Strain, the FX show based on Guillermo Del Toro's vampire apocalypse series, just got renewed for its third season. And despite my liking this show, I have no idea how that happened. I get that FX is doing its damnedest to stretch out this story with a little cinematic nuance and get the most out of the basic plot points, but Christ Almighty....it's the Vampire Apocalypse and the city's reaction to it is, at best, lukewarm. People feel completely comfortable, going to groundbreaking ceremonies, meeting in dimly lit parking garages, putting up "missing" flyers and flirting with cute latin girls in Indian food restaurants. So far, the most exciting plot points this season are a). the flashbacks of Abraham Setrakian Da Gawd and b). the Vampire Black Ops Team....and they just got snuffed out in stupid ass network television fashion, so that doesn't leave us much except the vastly underused Kevin Durand and Corey Stoll, Vampire Hunter which....umm, isn't all that exciting. The major problem is that in the era of existential horror/drama/misery porn like The Walking Dead where people can make the smartest decisions possible and STILL never have a single moment of happiness, it's getting noticeably hard to sit through a show where the characters seem to consistently make such awful decisions. I'm talking about the little stuff. They just stroll right into abandoned places, hardly ever clearing the rooms or even scanning them for vampires. Even Corey Stoll, Vampire Hunter's son, Zach is getting intensely annoying. But this is also a show where the high points maybe balance out the bad points, so it always ends up doing just enough of the right something to justify its continued existence. So, the result is an hour every Sunday where you keep hoping the good will start to actually outweigh the bad instead of just cancelling it out. But probably not.   


My review of this week's Ms. Marvel issue is up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. As usual, feel free to read, like, comment and share as you see fit. You know the drill.


Saturday, August 1, 2015

The Week In Geek 7/29/15

So, this week was (depending on how you look at it) a big week in the world of hip hop....well, the closest Top 40 Radio can seem to get to the world of hip hop. The Drake/Meek Mill slap fight came to a fever pitch.

For those of you that don't know or care, Meek Mill threw a fit because Drake didn't tweet any promos for his album. In response, because Meek Mill is apparently a fifth grader, this led to him exposing Drake for having ghostwriters that wrote some of his songs (It's important that we acknowledge that "ghostwriters" are a long standing, behind the scenes part of hip hop and that the ONLY reason this particular case is news is because Drake is a top selling artist who is often lauded for his lyricism), kicking off a huge a much hyped rap battle for about a week. Long story short, Drake completely humiliated Meek and basically re-polarized the public perception of him and his relationship with Nicki Minaj. In the end, I highly doubt the majority of Drake's audience will give a shit who wrote what and the "ghostwriter" stigma will be left to the hip hop heads who are, sorry to say, in shorter supply by the day, but I digress.

SN: By the way, I'm not touching the whole rumored Drake/Nicki love triangle because I'm not in the mood to break down the stereotypes and problematic gender politics of the whole thing. 

But most of this is just context to my real point this week. Early in the week, (S)Hot 97's court jester, Funkmaster Flex threw himself into the beef in the same way Stephen A. Smith throws himself on the wrong side of EVERYTHING for attention, claiming Meek Mill had given him the reference tracks Quentin Miller had recorded that would prove to be a phony. True to form, when the appointed time presented itself for Flex to play the tracks, he just looped music from Rihanna and someone named Fetty Wap. In an attempt to save face, Ebro claimed Meek failed to deliver the tracks. Whether that's true, given their track record, is still in the "decided for yourself" pile. 

Let me break that down for you one more time. Rot 97 took sides in a beef when NOBODY asked them to. Then, when the beef turned out not to be as profitable as they blindly bet on it being, they then threw the person whose side they took when nobody asked them to....UNDER THE BUS. 

As you could imagine, Twitter lambasted Flex and deservedly so. Charlamagne Tha God from the Breakfast Club had the most accurate and poignant statement during his Donkey of the Day segment on why this marks the end of Funkmaster Flex and, ultimately, (T)Hot 97's credibility. 

More than that, it's a testament to why more and more people are walking away from terrestrial radio. It's been clear since the time Flex tried to go to war with Jay-Z over the histrionics of some Android app (if you haven't heard the Hannibal Burress parody, you should) that he and (S)Hot 97 are desperate to throw themselves into the bonfire because their marketing department says their listeners will watch the pretty lights their disreputable corpses make. But also because music just isn't the commodity for Terrestrial Radio it once was.

Comics are actually making some attempt to keep up with the digital age, but even then, we've established before that they have a pretty loyal niche following no matter how vocal the whiners and trolls are. And with newspapers, they're not as bankable as they used to be but even in the age of Google, you still have the attraction of good journalists and personalities that readers will stand by like Ezra Klein or Chris Hayes or....God help me....Charles Krauthammer. Top 40/Terrestrial Radio's attempt to follow that model (extreme personalities; shock radio) will always fail because the music is always going to be what's important (unless you just listen to NPR which is a different conversation because, let's face it, Funkmaster Flex and Ebro Darden are not and will never be NPR) and Terrestrial Radio is just NOT a preferable source to discover (I won't even say "good") new music anymore. Looking past the increasingly obvious fact that airplay is a bought and sold currency, you have wi-fi, bluetooth, smart phones, tablets.....commonplace gadgets that people use everyday before the thought of a radio even crosses their minds. Hell, at this point, cars have built in wi-fi hotspots and televisions have enough connectability to link your laptops and mp3 players (which are basically outmoded, too). I've been an Uber customer for a few months now and I have yet to see a driver that didn't have either Pandora/Spotify playing from their phone, linked to their car. We're at the juncture where if you don't want to hear the same 15 to 20 songs from the same 7 to 10 artists playing in the same two hour timespan (with 20 to 35 minutes worth of commercials peppered in for advertisting dollars), you just don't have to. Hell, we're three software updates away from having the song we want when we want it by literally snapping our fingers. But instead of changing with the times and trying to appeal to their audience, diversifying their playlists, allowing artists who deserve it the opportunity to crossover from Urban Contemporary, the Usual Suspects are breaking their tired backs trying to shuck and jive way too hard. And all it really amounts to is an insult to the consumers which are way smarter than they're given credit for....who you're already actively insulting by not giving them the diversity they're wanting.

Sure, the Meek Mill/Drake beef was funny and the desperation of Funkmaster Flex was, umm, sad....but the demise of Terrestrial Radio is a thing worth discussing.

My reviews for the week on Thors and Star Wars as well as my Top 5 Dead or Alive article on Superman are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to share, comment, like, Tweet at your discretion. You know the drill.