#comicbookresources

Okay! So! I had the final ban from CBR today. This is after between half a year and a year ago where I was threatened with a permaban for making an incredibly tame joke in response to an asshole saying Polaris deserves poor characterization.

Guess why they banned me. C'mon. Guess.

Would you have guessed it was for posting this picture, and only this picture, in the Polaris thread?

In the thread, they were talking about the idea of Zaladane retroactively being Polaris' sister. Anyone with any semblance of a working, functioning brain would grasp on seeing the picture that I was making a comparison with an image, and letting the image speak for itself.

Which means one of two things (possibly both). Either they don't have brains over there, or they were waiting for another flimsy excuse to pop up so they could ban my account.

But here's the thing.

I didn't make this post lightly.

I bided my time for the right moment. This was it.

The impact won't be immediately felt. But it will reach where it must over time, and have the effect it needs to have in the end.

The bottom line is CBR has been on a tear of asinine moderation for roughly a year now. There's no real reason to stay there, and for it to get where it needs to be, they'll need to do a lot of cleaning out baseless bans from the past year and whatever new ones they do until they fix their shit.

 CBR Idiot #1: OMG Spider-Man was totally in character in Civil War his siding with Tony and umasking made total sense!

 ME: That doesn’t really address the question...

 CBR Idiot #2: OF course Spider-Man would do that he’s STARVED for respect!

 ME: Hey CBR do you know if Marvel definitely counts overseas pre-order sales for physical copies cos I want to support the books I love and will buy multiple copies to do it but I don’t live in the US so I just want to make sure I’m not wasting my money.

  CBR Idiot #3: OF COURSE! They count the sales there is no such THING as a company that doesn’t count every penny they get

  ME: Well that’s not true everyone is capable of being incompetent and companies are no exception. We know for Marvel only physical pre-orders of single issues really, really matter to them as SpaceTwinks’ essay said and Brevoort himself said digital sales don’t matter much.

 CBR Idiot #3: OMG just BUY the fucking comic and enjoy it!

  CBR Idiot #4: CBR Idiot #3 is right just buy the comic and enjoy it because it doesn’t matter <even though the Spider-Girl fans buying multiple copies to saved the title from cancellation multiple times meaning it totally does matter because you can directly impact the sales of a book and help it survive>!!111!!!!

“What I love the most about this scene is how they don’t give any more information about her show. Is it a play? Is it a one-woman show? It is a burlesque? There is a chance that we might never know, because Peter can’t let a person finish a goldarn sentence!!”

  Question.

  What is the point of this paragraph as the author literally answers his own question later in the article?

  Is it a pot shot at Spidey?

  Is it padding?

  FFS

    “This freaks the heck out of Gwen, who presumably thinks that Spider-Man has traveled to London on some sort of anti-Stacy vendetta to wipe the Stacy bloodline off of the planet. I imagine a similar vendetta is why we haven’t seen Gwen’s cousin, Jill, in years.”

  I know this is a joke but it doesn’t make sense.

  Jill Stacy hasn’t appeared due to Spidey’s anti-Stacy vendetta that is imagined by Gwen.

  But Spidey doesn’t have one of those.

  It’d had made a more logical joke if the punchline was about JILL imagining a vendetta like Gwen.

“As the issue opens, we learn that Mary Jane;s show is an Off-Broadway play… Mary Jane flirts with his aggressively in front of Harry Osborn… Less expected, though, is Norman Osborn basically telling his son how he would hot he finds his girlfriend.”

  I’ve made numerous spelling mistakes whenever I make a post here or elsewhere.

  The difference is it’s not an actual job I get money for.

  Spellcheck FFS.

  “Randy Robertson then shows up and he and Norman Osborn get into this hilariously overly dramatic fight about drugs on the street.”

  Yeah. An old white rich businessman trying to wash his hands of responsibility having a heated argument with a young inner city African American male about drugs...in the 1970s no less...is ‘overly dramatic’.

  Because in THIS day and age that’d be insane and nothing like that (or something on similar topics) could ever happen so back it’d be even further beyond believable. 

  Check it out from 50:30 onwards.

  What’s annoying here is that MJ intimates that there is a specific reason why she’s doing things this way, but we never actually learn it.”

  It’s very obviously that she is aware of Harry’s drug addiction dude.

  It’s subtext but not unobvious subtext.

  “Anyhow, blonde Stan Lee decides to take this time to get Harry hooked, with Harry’s mind filled with thoughts of MJ and Peter…”

  No. He doesn’t.

  This very panel posted IN THE ARTICLE ITSELF, makes it very clear that Harry was ALREADY a drug abuser before the scene in question. 

  “Harry then comes up to MJ on campus and acts like a jerk (by the way, is MJ going to college? That hasn’t been established, right?”

  Yeah it has.

    “After he gets rid of Norman at the start of the next issue, Peter gets Harry to the hospital and while he doesn’t outright blame MJ for the situation, he doesn’t NOT blame her, ya know?”

  No I don’t know WTF does that even mean?

    “Then, out of nowhere, Gwen shows up and they’re back together…”

  OMFG Gwen STATED in the issue she was having a change of heart about the situation with Peter.

  The START of that scene was again in one of the pages posted IN the article. THIS one!

TLIID’s Comic Book Characters Celebrate Mother’s Day!

Superman’s card for Martha (back card: Happy Mother's Day. Yeh mother) by Dan Wolff

MODOK and his M.O.T.H.E.R. by Unkiedev

Superboy (Jon Kent) by Jean Sinclair

Alana from Saga, a Mom who’ll literally take on the Universe for her family by Axel Medellin

Mystique and her children  by Nick Butch

Starro by Nick Perks

While Peter is worrying about the situation, MJ comes in (I love that she enters rooms snapping her fingers) and Peter is a total jerk to her…Peter continues to be rude to her when Gwen enters and then MJ and Gwen banter a bit…It is times like these that I think that the retcon that Gwen knew Peter’s identity during this period actually works, as otherwise, why would MJ put up with this dude who is constantly a jerk to her?

 Why has fandom over the past 10 years developed such a weird fetish for condemning Peter Parker and not bothering to look at things from his POV?

Why is he expected to be perfect all the time when not being perfect was the whole point of his character.

Like...yeah he’s rude to MJ.

She’s walking in all bubbly and peppy when the situation is actually incredibly serious and she doesn’t really want to help out, she’s there to sight see.

Peter meanwhile is justifiably incredibly concerned for his Aunt May’s welfare because this incredibly dangerous super villain has grown close to her and visited serious property damage (that he might have to PAY FOR) nearby her.

Like...I think he just MIGHT be allowed to not be the nicest person under these circumstances FFS.

Not to mention he isn’t even that rude to her.

He unenthusiastically says hello to her and tells her that his situation is no laughing matter, which is 100% accurate his MOTHER could’ve been seriously hurt and he might have to pay for something incredibly expensive he might not be able to afford.

Even if MJ DIDN’T know he was Spider-Man she’d rationally be able to cut him some slack for the (allegedly) rude behaviour he’s exhibiting here.

 Again I ask what is up with CBR, and ComicsAlliance, and Tumblr and just about everybody’s weird, weird, weird, werid fetish for like...not bothering to actually consider things from Spider-Man’s POV.

To begin with.

“…which makes her one of the best things an already-amazing film.”

Did CBR, the ‘professionally’ written, corporately owned ‘news’ website mean ‘…which makes her one of the best things IN   an already-amazing film.’????

Second of all.

“See, her name is Michelle, but at the end of the film she reveals she likes to be called “M.J.” Like Mary Jane Watson, get it? But unlike the “Robin” reveal at the end of The Dark Knight Rises, this doesn’t feel annoying or even slightly like a feint.”

It is absolutely a feint and it the only reason it isn’t annoying is because for most fans it bypassed annoying and went straight to shoving a middle finger in our faces.

The reason CBR doesn’t feel this way is because they kiss Marvel’s ass.

“Michelle isn’t Mary Jane, a character who’s been so central to Spider-Man’s history, both in comics and on the screen, but by bestowing on her the nickname “M.J.,” the filmmakers are likely hinting at the importance she’ll have in Peter’s life.”

If we run with this logic ‘MJ’ as a nickname is just intended as a signpost to the audience saying ‘this character is important because she has a name similar to another important character so watch this space. MAYBE she’ll ALSO be a love interest!”

So by this logic she could’ve been like Michelle Osborn. Or in the new movie we could get a criminal who’s renowned for gentelmanry thievery as they rob diamond exchanges and goes by the name Eddie Brock hinting they will be an evil version of Peter Parker in some way despite being nothing like Eddie Brock at all.

Or fuck it lets do a Superman movie where a isolated nerdy high schooler is in passing derisively called brainiac because ‘it’s hinting’ that he will become ‘important’ and maybe have a similar role to that OTHER character called Brainiac despite being nothing like him.

Can you smell the reak of damage control on this idiotic article?

“The most interesting aspect of the revelation isn’t the name itself, but the dialogue surrounding it: “My friends call me M.J.” The emphasis, by both the filmmakers and the character, isn’t on “M.J.” but rather on “friends.” Peter observes that he didn’t think Michelle had friends, to which she responds that she does now.”

Becoming a member of the decathalon team after barely saying anything to anyone other than blink and you’ll miss it insults and displaying generally isolationist/anti-social behaviour = having friends now? And it’s said to the guy who she literally flipped the bird to for no justifiable reason at all like 2 days before.

“That’s a completely different character than the dance-happy, party-loving Mary Jane who covered her darkness with so much light no one could notice. Michelle is M.J. without all the baggage from decades of comics, or from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie series (or even from Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, from which Shailene Woodley’s scenes as Mary Jane were cut).”

Which is another way of saying she isn’t Mary Jane at all. You might as well say Ned, Toomes and Betty in the movie are ALSO Mary Jane.

And the same goes for Peter. ‘This is Peter Parker without all the emotional baggage and guilt of having killed his father figure by accident and striving to live up to the role model set by him by being heroic despite it causing ramifciations for the normal life he wants’.

Then it isn’t the character then is it so don’t pretend like it is!

“In actuality, Michelle more closely resembles the rebellious Gwen Stacy from Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man comics.”

Okay yes COMPARATIVELY speaking she does more closely resemble USM Gwen Stacy. But that’s like saying in Homecoming the Vulture comparatively more closely resembles the Raimi Norman Osborn.

On a superficial level both statements hold up. Raimi Norman and Homecoming Toomes are both guys in a green suits trying to screw over the big shot suits and do right by his family and threatens Spider-Man’s family when he deduces his identity.

Except really they aren’t because critically Norman is an emotionally distant corporate tycoon/single father to a college student who just wants his approval and is living through a Jekyll/Hyde situation whilst Toomes is a working class average joe who commits crimes of scavenging and is actually a decent Dad to a high schooler.

With Michelle vs Ult Gwen both are ‘social outsiders who reject the mainstream and don’t hang out with the school cliques baby!’

And then the comparisons literally stop.

Ult Gwen was someone who would throw her two cents into a conversation or start one up whether or not anybody listened or understood her. She was a punkishly dressed delinquent who loved her policeman Dad but acted out against the authority he represented. Whilst not standing for bullshit from anyone. She literally pulled a knife on Kenny Kong when she saw him bullying Peter, a kid she hardly knew. She showed up at Peter’s house in the middle of the night unannounced (slightly drunk unless I am misremembering) to like hang out and shoot the breeze.

None of that shit pertains to Michelle from Homecoming so the comparison is weak as shit.

But worse, let’s pretend the comparison was on the money.

Why in God’s name is it okay or at all acceptable to make a character who is kinda sort of Mary jane and has her initials as a ‘signpost that she will be important’…and then make her a version of Gwen Stacy?

I know we have all said to varying degrees of derision that Emma Stone’s Gwen was Ultimate Mary Jane but the antidote to that isn’t to then make Mary Jane in any way akin to Ultimate Gwen Stacy.

WTF is wrong with people seriously!

“While Michelle is unlikely to be killed by Carnage in a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming and then transformed into a version of vampiric organism (aren’t comics great?), there’s a pretty good chance she’ll discover Peter’s secret.”

Does the author even KNOW about Parallel Lives?

Should I even be asking by this point?

“So, Zendaya is Michelle, who is M.J. But she’s definitely not Mary Jane. She’s better.”

How the flying fuck could anybody come to that conclusion?

Mary Jane Watson from the 616 comics is like one of the best female/supporting characters in Marvel comics ever. She’s had 50 years under her belt most of which have been great and showcased a shitton of development. She was bucking social trends in her debut for God’s sake.

The Hell can a character who barely says anything in the course of an entire movie and who when she does talk tends to be just cold or rude somehow magically be better than that?

Well the answers could be

a)   CBR like Marvel as a whole has an anti-MJ bias

b)   CBR like Marvel as a whole holds MJ’s emotional baggage with disdain because emotional baggage is bad despite it being Spider-Man’s bread and butter. Or maybe because it wasn’t there from the start or some shit like that.

c)    CBR are clickbait Marvel mouthpieces

I mean FFS…re-read this article and now outline for me ANY sentences where CBR bothered to point out Michelle’s positive attriubtes.

I’m not even saying she has none. I’m just saying they’ve just said this character who had less than 20 minutes of screen time and like 5 minutes tops of speaking time is somehow better than a 50 year old character who’s been a fan favourite for most of that time and they never once said anything towards WHY the character is actually any good.

All they pointed to was vague bullshit about her now having friends and maybe knowing Peter’s secret identity.

Bah, i’d go back in time to fix all the crisis.