#amwriting #comics #comicsgate — #Marvel Waste Yet More Money on PR

#comicsgate — #Marvel Waste Yet More Money on PR

So the big news from #comicsgate today is that Sana Amanat, VP of content and character development, has revealed Marvel used Stan Lee to condemn #comicsgate and it’s supporters.

Or to put it another way: Sana Amanat misled an elderly man — who was involved in various court cases and allegedly had his blood stolen to autograph comics — to come out and tell people to stop criticising her for being bad at her job. That is assuming Sana Amanat was the one who thought this was a good idea — maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t — but regardless she was the person that popped up the Reveal podcast to ‘reveal’ the information.

And she is the person, presumably given her job title, responsible for the creation of the characters that people have been complaining about.

But settle down kids, Grandpa has told you to behave.

So what is the Reveal podcast? I hear you ask.

And frankly why should anyone care? After all podcasters are like comic book readers, fat, Cheeto dusted losers in their mother’s basement, spouting conspiracy theories and fake news.

Not this one, baby… take a look at these credentials….and stand in awe… of the internet of the future….

Yes that’s right, it’s a corporate non-profit NGO, that tells you the facts, and only the facts, and never speaks ill of any corporation — providing they slip them enough money through the back-door, and into the tax-free, money laundering Utopia of ‘charity’.

As an aside, there was a time when the ‘left’ used to oppose this sort of thing. When they would say such dumb things as, ‘if we taxed charities, we could fund universal free health care.’

Sadly those days are long gone.

But don’t worry, as that list of sponsors has a long history of connections to the eugenics movement. And on no account pay attention to The Center for Investigative Reporting being founded in 1977. Because there is no need to worry..

“ We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but all editorial decisions are made independently, not on the basis of donor support.”

So it must just be my new glasses, that I notice this podcast hits every point pumped out by the Marvel PR machine, with regard to #comicsgate, and Disney more generally with regard to other less than popular products.

According to the blurb…

“ There’s a new battlefield in the culture wars: comic books. The alt-right now has gotten in the business, led by a buxom, Confederate flag-waving superhero named Rebel and a white vigilante who turns immigrants over to ICE.”

In case you are wondering, what he is talking about is the comics being produced by Vox Day, who is interviewed in the broadcast.

That would be the same Vox Day who was roundly told to sling his hook when a few weeks ago he announced he was going to copy-right the name comicsgate to produce a line of comics.

Let us stop for a moment, and consider what #comicsgate is.

And yes, I realise there is the explanation that runs along the lines of ‘it is about making great comics, without overt political messages, that are fun and exciting,’ and at that point people add on all sorts of things like: soy-filled, Nazi, SJW, bigots… etc.

But come with me over to the comics pages of indigogo, or kickstarter, or Amazon, and tell me what you notice about the projects that don’t fund, or the comics that don’t sell… is it the art? Is it the story? Or is it that no one has ever heard of either the writers or comics?

I would suggest the latter.

And if you agree, then ask yourself why have you heard about “#comicsgate” titles like Cyberfrog or Jawbreakers?

No, no, no… answer honestly… none of that yes but, no but…

Now ask yourself, why don’t more people apply the business model: build an audience, be connected with your audience, and provide them with a quality product with good customer service.

But back to the fantasy world of Marvel/Disney PR, bought and paid for journalism.

So having set up the premise that Vox Day is #comicsgate(when he isn’t), and he is bringing out comics using the imprint comicsgate (when he isn’t) based on ‘the South Will Rise Again”, they move onto to talk to Chuck Dixon, an artist who used to work for Marvel and DC but got blacklisted.

He explains why he is working with Vox Day…

“ He approached me. I didn’t know much about him, I still don’t know a whole lot about him, but this is the first time in my experience that I’ve gone to work on a job and everybody’s concerned with who is publishing it and their background, their beliefs, and everything else because this guy is … Man, is this guy a lightning rod. I don’t agree with a whole lot of what he says but he was offering me an opportunity to create our own work. He had a funding thing and he had a distribution deal set up. He admitted that he didn’t know what he didn’t know, so he wasn’t telling me what to do, he was asking me what I should do or what would be best for me and all the rest of it. Offering me an opportunity and didn’t tell me what to write, and still has not told me what to write, so, to me, it was just an opportunity to be free of the kind of constraints that are put on you at the major companies, the political correctness constraints. I wasn’t interested in doing a book that was political. I wasn’t interested in doing a message book.”

And so it goes on, but the thing to note in the interview with Dixon is that they don’t ask him what it is he is actually working on. Presumably we are meant to believe that it is he making ‘the Dixie Chicks Great Again’…

Though for those interested, here is a review of his actual comic, Avalon. And no, it is not ‘alt-right’, or even ‘alt-light’, it is a pretty standard super-hero crime comic.

It should also be noted that Mr Dixon is also working with the real bette-noir of the Marvel PR machine, Richard C Meyer: on another not ‘alt-right’ comic, Devil Dog.

But you can see how this ‘honest journalism’ is working. They are pitching Vox Day, who isn’t #comicsgate, and then they are going to bring on Sana Amanat to soft-soap and schill for the company.

Oh but first we have to bring on Chelsea Cain, and have the moustache twirling cis-white-male hate mob tie her to the railway lines, to add to the hypocrisy of Sana Amanat’s ‘SJW Marvel Hero’ act. I say hypocritical for reasons that will become apparent later.

Funnily enough Chelsea Cain is part of #comicsgate: she is certainly using the business model — but don’t tell John Layman — she has built name recognition, has an audience, and is using it to promote her forthcoming comic, Maneaters. Her problem is that the audience she has, is busy trying to destroy #comicsgate, rather than using the hashtag to promote her work.

And again I ask you… how many of the people listening to this NPR broadcast, weeping into their hankies at Ms Cain’s tragic tale are going to buy her comic? As opposed to say Ms Cain getting down and dirty with That Umbrella Guy on a livestream.

Yes, fine he has slagged her off, and she would take flack from the chat, but Chelsea Cain has a comic to sell, and it wouldn’t be hard to spin the story that she was forced by Marvel to do the feminist schtick, that she didn’t want to do it, they forced her and now she is black-listed.

As Mindy Wheeler has pointed out Image require her to hit sales targets, and that the row between Nasser Rabadi and John Layman is no reason to boycott Image.

I’m just saying…

Interestingly, Chelsea Cain in her interview does get to pitch her book…

“ The Handmaid’s Tale meets Cat People. It’s about teenage girls who turn into killer wild cats when they have their periods, just like in real life.”

Yes, fine the pitch is a bit lame, and may well appeal to NPR listeners who have finished weeping into their hankies and are steadying their nerves between drug commercials with a slug of gin.

Memo to Chelsea… watch the Wolfman with Oliver Reed….

And so having paid to create the narrative, Marvel wheel on their big guns, to explain how this Kultur-Kampf (that isn’t) is just so unfair to poor old corporate Marvel, who never did nuffin, and just trying to be fair, to the down-trodden, the oppressed, the voiceless…

So how did you create Ms Marvel?

“ She came really out of conversations about my childhood, and the idea that we needed a character for the young Sanas of the world, as my old boss Steven Wacker said. The bigger idea was about creating a character who was yes Muslim, yes South Asian, yes of course, a girl, woman, or teenager. Really someone who was relatable and that any fan would fall in love with.”

Yes because who doesn’t love an openly racist idiot who runs an illegal prison, and has seemingly no awareness or ability to learn anything? I’m talking here about Ms Marvel, not Sana Amanat, but then given Ms Amanat’s obsession with ‘browness’ and the Marvel obsession with evil ‘whiteness’… given her job… maybe I’m not.

I should point out here, that if you cast you mind back to the 1990’s there was a hoo-haa about the ethnicity of villains in films. Apparently this promoted prejudice. The biggest of these rows was about an Arab baddy in a Schwarzenegger film, I think it was True Lies (the one where he shoots up a sky-scraper with a Harrier), which in turn led to a wealth of work for white English actors… which may or may not confirm the theory that it promotes prejudice…. but regardless is worth considering the next time someone starts wittering on about representation…. and why there are not enough ‘minorities’ in film, TV, Comics etc…

And at this point you might want to hold onto your sides, in case they split.

“ I was surprised at how well the book did.”

“ Us too, trust me.”

How they are defining success here, is that the book sold well to Libraries. In terms of the actual numbers shipped (we don’t need to get into the debate about shipped copies counting as sold) it didn’t do so well. And ask any author, the regular royalty cheque from people borrowing your books, or from periodicals to which you have contributed, is most welcome. What I am saying is, getting books into libraries, at discount and bulk discount prices, is not a measure of success… particularly when you are cutting the pay rates of writers and artists.

But Ms Marvel did about as well as…

“ Marvel also launched a female Thor, a Korean American Hulk, and a black Captain America.”

These all failed as stand alone characters, with the character either reverting back to the original or being shuffled around into various other titles. The strong rumour being that the only reason Ms Marvel struggled on for so long was that it would have been a total admission of defeat for Ms Amanat.

But to be fair, it is a new character, and new characters take time to build. However to claim that she is a character “that any fan would fall in love with” is either a threat, delusion or marketing speak.

And given that Ms Amanat goes on to say…

“ You know you’re talking about the 40s, and 50s, and 60s, where white men controlled everything. The natural predilection for men creating everything is creating content for themselves. The focus was specifically on a lot of white male heroes.”

I think it is safe to say it is delusion.

I realise that this ‘podcast’ is meant for NPR listener’s, who by now is so drunk on gin, that the are using the speed dial to order every drug being advertised (whether they have the illness or not) without bothering to watch the last third of the advert listing the side effects: and I know this is racist world of ‘Adolf’ Amanat, but at some point surely someone has noticed that she has said the character is based on her, or are we just meant to not notice.

Nor are we meant to notice that this is one of the primary complaints of #comicsgate, that the ‘characters’ and hiring practices of Marvel are specifically based on external surface traits and not on the quality of the art, writing or story.

Yes they might have been the dreaded white men back in the day, but they created good enough stories that the comics survived the 40s, 50s and 60s, and in some cases ran for 100s if not 1000s of issues. Without the need to constantly relaunch, bugger about with the numbering, and rely on press outlets to guilt the gullible into saying the Emperor’s hat look nice.

Oh what does it matter, the NPR listener has suddenly become interested in Tena pads. Which is lucky, since I think I am about to wet myself…

“ I think after the movies came out in the last 10 years, and I want to give credit to the studios, it’s become this really big global mainstream phenomenon. People always knew who Peter Parker was, the cartoons existed. Marvel was really you know at the back of people’s minds, but the movies allowed the Marvel brand and the Marvel roster of characters to literally go global. Because of that, because audiences were opened up, we were able to interact with them in a bigger way and take more risks. Also at the same time, while we’re creating all of these sort of newer characters or experimenting with sort of the wider female roster of heroes that we’ve been able to do in the last 10 years, we knew that more people were waking up to seeing themselves in our comics.”

Again this is one of the major criticisms of #comicsgate. That people go to the see Thor or Ironman, and they get excited, and go down to the local comic shop only to find Jane Foster and Riri Williams. It makes no sense, either to do this, or claim that the films do anything for the comic sales.

And neither does the idea that people want to see themselves in the comics. Yes, perhaps if you are ten, you may very well run around with a parka streaming out behind you thinking you are Batman, but that isn’t because when you picked up a copy of Batman he was a ten year old kid running round with a parka streaming out behind him.

There is this video that did the rounds a couple of years ago. It is of a comic shop owner describing how he had brought more women into his shop, and of course because women are involved, and this being current year, it was all a great success and everyone lived happily ever after.

The thing that struck me watching him say stuff like, “we dust the shelves”, is the same argument could be made for bras.

I’ll wager if you did a breakdown of the sales of bras, you would find that men account for quite a sizable chuck of the market — and women account for a equally large chuck of the people returning them to get the right size, something more practical, or whatever. But every man, who for whatever reason, has gone into a lingerie shop knows that the shop-assistant will ask embarrassing questions… and they themselves will probably do something daft: like when asked the size, the will do that thing with their hands as if muscle memory will do the trick. Of course were any of this to happen to a woman, it would be akin to mansplaining, or manspreading, and it would be a scandal, and the lingerie shops would be shamed into being inclusive. But it’s just one of those things.

More of a surprise is that given the rates of obesity, the bra manufacturers haven’t cottoned on to the business opportunity.

But the principle is the same. You don’t look at bras, or football matches, or someone threatening to jump from a bridge, or any other form of entertainment when you are older than ten, and seek representation and participation.

“ Also realizing, “Oh wait, if that’s for me too, if I can see myself in a comic, maybe I can actually be a part of the creative process.”

If anything confirms that Marvel are hiring on tick-box quotas and not talent, it is this.

I’m beginning to like this interview. I like seeing PR money wasted because events have moved on. Oh sure it will be used to promote the narrative they have worked out to explain the price rises to cover the shortfall in sales, and the expenses incurred from having so much inventory sat around. But it’s always nice to see a corporation make a fool of themselves.

“ I met with Sana a few days before writer Chelsea Kane went public criticizing Marvel, claiming the company didn’t have her back when she was attacked online. I couldn’t ask Sana directly about those claims, but I did ask her this…”

Which is a neat way of admitting that this “honest” “journalism” was coming unstuck. Not least because the transcript spells Chelsea Cain’s name wrong, and Ms Cain accused Marvel of a lot more than that. If you read the transcript, they have clearly mucked about with the editing, because having set up this ‘slam-dunk’ for Ms Amanat to ramble on about milkshakes and the unfairness of people having opinions of their own, we get this…

“ The way that I look at it is, I am a Muslim American woman who is a Vice President at one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, and have been able to make a lot of big strides. That’s how I take them on because I’m here and they’re there. They can be as upset as they want, but we’re not trying to take away anything from them.”

Well you are.

Or you should be, trying to take their money by selling them things they want to buy.

I realise Ms Amanat, though unfortunately Disney apparently doesn’t, that you think this is all about you, but the last time I looked (with the exception of Ms Marvel) you were not available on the shelves to buy. No-one gives a toss about you, beyond their grievances with your kooky hiring, your daft marketing and your inherent racist and political bias.

But when they get around the ‘terror’ of those poor women, she goes back into fantasy land…

“ We’re not trying to further their public face on this, because I think it’s important that they have privacy and that their name isn’t smeared and continue to be smeared. The more that we repeat it, the more that people will pay more attention and have a bigger target on their backs. We want to make sure that they’re safe.”

Really?

Really?

Really?

So that is why Joe Quesada, the Marvel creative director, went on a three day sperg out, dragging up all those names back into the public. That is why your artists and writers and general hangers on, bring them up all the time: in addition to getting involved in rows and flame-wars with people, often over the most innocuous of comments, that then flare into slanging matches.

To call what Sana Amanat says a lie is an understatement.

And then it’s onto Stan Lee, and blah blah, ‘anonymous hate’, blah blah blah…

But don’t worry, the drunken, drugged up, pampered, NPR listener is by now erratically driving around town looking for their cat…

So this will all be filed for future reference for some other lazy journalist to pick up, in order to further spread the narrative of evil-white-men ruining Marvel’s delusion, to anyone daft enough to listen.