Mendicant Bias
A quiet man of many talents who likes few things better than a morning spent blasting through HALO campaign levels. Better known as Didact, he writes about game, politics, philosophy, heavy metal, and other things at Didact's Reach and can be reached at [email protected]
Having finally sorted out a few pressing but mundane personal issues, it’s time for me to get back to work.
Comic book fans were recently greeted with the news that beloved fan favourite comic character Catwoman is, under the stewardship of DC Comics writer Genevieve Valentine, now a canonical open bisexual. Fans, casual or otherwise, might be forgiven for asking precisely why the most well-known and highly-regarded of the Dark Knight’s love interests has suddenly had her sexual preferences changed. Ms. Valentine’s answer was typical boilerplate Social Justice Warrior-speak:
When I was first plotting out what I expected to be a six-issue arc, there were a few emotional beats I considered indispensable. One was Nick, around whom Selina’s moral axis pivoted and whose death would set up Antonia to be both guilt-trip and threat to Selina – a contestant for the throne, even if neither of them wanted to think of it that way. Another was finding time for a few key moments with Batman, particularly in the first issue to set up their connection even when at odds.
And one was establishing Selina as canon bisexual.
She’s flirted around it – often quite literally – for years now; for me, this wasn’t a revelation so much as a confirmation.
For those of you who left your Babel fish at home this morning, or who are unfamiliar with the way mealy-mouthed Leftists disguise their vile poison pills with a coating of honeyed words, allow me to translate:
Making Catwoman a bisexual doesn’t make her character more interesting. It doesn’t make the plot points better. It doesn’t make her on-off relationship with Batman more intense or involved. I didn’t make this change to the canon because it improved anything. I did it because I could.
This particularly flagrant abuse of common sense and human decency was brought to my attention by a reader of my own work, who commented that Ms. Valentine’s qualifications for writing a story arc for such a prestigious character really amount to little more than her ability to write fan fiction.
Yes, I know, she’s also won a Nebula Award. But given that the Sad/Rabid Puppies campaigns proved beyond any shadow of doubt that sci-fi and fantasy awards are now given out based on ideology rather than merit, the fact that Ms. Valentine won a Nebula Award for her work makes her about as well qualified to write comic books as the fry cook at your local greasy spoon is qualified to be the head chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Abusing Our Patience
Sadly, this sort of nonsense is neither new nor surprising. Like video games, movies, SF/F novels, and virtually every other medium of entertainment, comic books and graphic novels—which once told epic, visually enthralling stories about the never-ending battle between good and evil in ways that could be enjoyed by both children and adults alike—have been thoroughly infiltrated by the tiresome and tedious ideology of social justice.
Like all ideologies, it is blind to reality and is therefore incapable of understanding what makes for a truly great story. Instead, social justice focuses on evils in society, real or imagined, and tries to correct them through essentially a lot of very irritating finger-wagging lectures.
And unfortunately for us, SJWs have gotten very good at infiltrating and then mutilating yet another medium that we love. The leftist infestation within the world of comic books is deep and severe. Several months ago, Jim Goad did a great job of documenting just how bad it’s gotten:
- The Norse God of thunder and war, and protector of Mankind, the mighty Thor himself, is now a woman; worse, Thor is a feminist when s/he isn’t pulverising baddies with his/her/its mighty hammer of war.
- Peter Parker has been replaced as Spiderman by a half-black, half-Latino chap named Miles Morales.
- Bubblegum pop comic book favourite Archie was killed by a right-wing gun nut as he valiantly sacrificed his life to save his good friend, a gay black Congressman pushing for a “sensible” gun control bill.
- Superman, the very embodiment of truth, justice, and the American way, has renounced his American citizenship because… actually, I can’t quite tell why, but it has something to do with Iran and BADFEELZ.
- Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, is gay and married to another man;
And on it continues.
Our favourite comic book characters are turned into grotesque parodies of themselves in the name of “inclusiveness” and “realism.” Of course, SJWs being what they are, it must be remembered that they always lie. And they are lying to themselves when they argue that all of this revisionist trash is about making comic books more “realistic”.
A Hard Dose Of Reality
You mean porn isn’t realistic?!?!?
In fact, if SJWs were actually about making comic books “realistic”—a fool’s errand in and of itself, given that the medium explicitly sets out to be a source of fantasy and escapism—they would depict lesbians as what they generally tend to be in real life: fat and ugly.
And if SJWs were actually about depicting “realism,” they would depict gay and lesbian characters being subjected to severe and abusive domestic violence by their same-sex partners.
Lesbian women experience domestic abuse and violence at rates that far exceed the rates for heterosexual women. The same is true for gay men. Based on what empirical evidence we have, a homosexual man or woman has a roughly 40 percent chance of experiencing domestic violence of some kind at the hands of his or her partner at some point in his or her life.
A bisexual woman’s odds of experiencing the same thing can go up to nearly 75%.
In other words, if Ms. Valentine had really claimed to know how bisexuality works, as she claims to in her blog post, she would have depicted Selina Kyle beating the ever-loving snot out of Eiko, then kissing and making up. That, at least, would have been “accurate.” Might even have made for an interesting story, too, instead of the patently absurd and transparently stupid arc that she has tried to pass off as a “canonical” Catwoman saga.
So let’s discard this ridiculous myth that SJWs are trying to make comics more “realistic” or “inclusive.” In reality, they are trying to legitimise violence and sexual deviancy in a blatant and transparent attempt to make right out of wrong.
If that is not evil and twisted, I don’t know what is.
Turning Back The Tide
Conan the Barbarian on a date.
So, given that we know that SJWs have taken over comics and graphic novels as a medium of art and free expression, what exactly are we going to do about it?
GamerGate and the recent victories won by the Sad/Rabid Puppies slates in the Hugo Awards have shown us the best way to fight back in this war. We will win by first and foremost drawing a clear dividing line between “us” and “them.”
We want comic books and graphic novels that tell great stories. We don’t care about the sexuality of the characters involved, we don’t care who snogs what, we simply want great writers and great artists to set our imaginations alight with their work.
They want to turn comic books into yet another chance to disguise their perversions and evils as normal and right. They want to turn yet another medium that we love into a cultural sewer. They want to take great characters that showed us as children what it meant to be strong, independent, virtuous, and uncompromising in the face of evil, and pull them down so that they become indistinguishable from the very demons that they fight.
If SJWs have their way, someday we will be confronted with the appalling reality of a comic in which Batman—the greatest comic book character of all time, as far as I’m concerned—is not morally any different from the Joker or Black Mask.
Unfortunately, we cannot use an avenue similar to the Hugo Awards to reward comics that tell great stories and ideas. The Hugo Awards are given based on fan input; their comic book equivalent, the Eisner Awards, are given based on the opinions of professionals within the industry. And we already know that the industry has been thoroughly infested with the SJW disease.
So we fight with the one weapon that they cannot resist: our wallets.
Do not spend any more money buying their filth. Not one more cent of your money should go to comics by hack writers like Ms. Valentine. Spend your hard-earned cash instead on the true titans of the industry.
Buy the classic works of legends like Jeph Loeb, who wrote the Hush graphic novels as well as The Long Halloween and Dark Victory; Alan Moore, whose works V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke, and the magnificent Watchmen define to this day what a powerful medium comics can be; and of course the monumental The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
Purchase great works by great modern writers, such as those working on Dark Horse’s Conan the Barbarian series. Not only are these graphic novels (mostly) true to Robert E. Howard’s vision of the indomitable warrior, but they tell great stories with verve and flair. And, thankfully, there isn’t a single SJW-friendly character to be seen in any of them.
Above all, never forget that the SJWs managed to pervert comic books and graphic novels because, once again, the rest of us let them get away with it.
Enough is enough. As with GamerGate and the Hugo Awards, the time has come to make your choice, and take your stand.
Us, or them—there is no middle ground.
Read More: Comics Alliance Publishes Humorless Anti-#GamerGate Comic
