I think more than just bias is that these people are here to give us their answers rather than questions. Sure, there will be "common sense" answers like "Hitler bad," but I feel like a lot of the classic comics like to make people wonder if what happens is for the best? The core difference in our prejudice and the prejudice against mutants in X-Men is that the mutants have powers, and could pose a threat to normal humanity, thus, neither side is blatantly wrong. But when you want to give answers you have to make something blatantly wrong that the average person would never choose, because they don't have sympathy for the disagreements inherit in political actions. People love a status quo, that doesn't make them stupid for not being one of the trailblazers of progressivism. That said, I can't believe some people are still trying to force us back to their past ideals, and they co-opted "woke" for it, what a waste of a perfectly fine definition. tl;dr, In 20 years, we'll be complaining about new things, "woke" is meaningless now, and just talk to people in real life, social media just wants to incite you.
I have stated on multiple occasions, and here's another one: "If you put Magneto and Malcolm X in the same room for 30 minutes. Brother Malcolm would call him a psychopath, and Magneto would call him a pussy." They are not the same.
I mean op is not wrong stan lee made magneto a one dimensional mutant supremacist villain, boring and uninteresting. While Claremont made him not so one dimensional. But magneto always slides to a separatist to full blown supremacist and never really champion for integration outside of when prof x is out of the picture. Malcolm x wanted black people to take care and support themselves as white people weren’t going to. But magneto would be closer to marcus garvy and leave the usa to full blown let take over Alabama and form our own country. Like the comparison was never that good.
@zeroxwarrior Magneto is closer to Che Guevera than anyone else. Also, Stan Lee's Magneto was fine for what he was, a straight up villain. Think of all of the great villains, they were more menacing than relatable and that's just fine.
A villain: "The world did me wrong, so I will lie, cheat, and steal to get what I deserve" A hero: "The world did me wrong, so I shall do right so others won't suffer as I have" However these "modern" writers are writing the "villain" version as heroic.
Well, lying at least is hardly unique to villains, to be fair. And cheating and stealing aren't entirely either. But it's a useful simplification, nonetheless.
@@VeryPeevedThe point was the selfish motivation to wrong others. In the first example, they create more people like themselves, in the second, they prevent it.
It's hard to write a story about good vs evil, when the author themself either cannot make a distinction between the two, or personally identifies with evil.
49:16 this is correct. The x-men aren't popular because of social issues it's the conflict. Humans fear mutants because some of them are dangerous and evil in fact most of the x-men's enemies are mutants themselves. What makes the conflict interesting is that the x-men simultaneously have to defend Humans from evil mutants and mutants from humans and everything else
Like I said in the premiere chat, Stan Lee created superheroes and supervillains, not stand-ins for this or that worldview. Each member of the X-Men have their own viewpoint but could still be friends or at least teammates. Even the villains had different reasons for joining the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants or any other group the X-Men fought. Even the anti-mutant crowd as threats took advantage of real world events to forge a threat for the heroes, not to push one ideology over another through stereotypes and forced allegory. They stood for outcasts in general trying to fit in, and I can relate to that in theory. The only X-Men I connected to was the Evolution TV series as I related to those events as someone outcast in high school but still had people on my side.
You could just as easily make an argument that the X-Men are an allegory for 2nd amendment rights. People will find whatever meaning they want to in stories, that doesn't mean it was the author's intent.
The X-men was originally conceived as a teen superhero team with the most generic origin possible: being born with super powers. But that’s not how they stayed, they became much more than just a gimmick Stan made up. The X-men have also been a product of their time, be it during the 60s counter culture and civil rights struggle, the 70s dissolution of authority and increasingly mature themes in comics, the 80s dark dystopias in the final years of the Cold War, to the EXTREME 90s and directionlessmess and complete corporatization of late 20th century pop culture, to the war on terror and fears of government overreach in the new millennium, to the increasing acceptance of marginalized groups and the pushback to that acceptance, to the complete fracturing and polarization of the US and pop culture fandom and now to today….post pandemic, current high inflation, high dissatisfaction and high sensitivity while ignoring the actual important issues of the day that may lead to Armageddon. Cheers!
Kelly Sue Deconnick told the audience, "If you don't like my politics, don't buy my book." Four years later, she confessed that she was worried that the public had actually taken her advice and stopped buying her book and other SJW comic books. Instead of saying, "Problem solved," as she commented previously, she lamented despairingly that comic book stores were closing. But why? She did not make the connection that she, along with other woke comic book writers, had flooded these stores with issues that no one wanted to buy. So, the second clip shows her complaining that customers took her advice. The video of this lament is also on RUclips. The juxtaposition of the two clips is simply delicious. Pushing woke politics in people's faces and then challenging them not to buy her product did not turn out to be the best business plan for her.
Exactly. And Stan Lee's use of universal truth rather than just promoting his personal politics was key to the superhero genre and what made it so lovable.
No lady was right, just not in the way she believes and ironically literature devil's video explains it pretty well. Comics always had politics but they were commentary that asked the reader to think. Her politics are preachy and secretly villainous.
One big part I do like to note on that: Take the example of nature girl. WHO are she attacking? The suits responsible? No? Ah yes, it was the peasants. Squabble between each other! Leave the elite out of this! We even had similar back in BTAS. They could *not* show the government or the corporations as "bad". Nor ever be held responsible for their actions.
Those of us who remember when Captain America confronted the fact that America no longer upheld the values he fought for, so he threw down his shield and became Nomad.
No. The far better scene they pretend never existed was the one where he protected some neo-Nazi at a speech from a crowd because while he disagreed with him vehemently,, his right to freedom of speech allowed him to spew that hate. Because silencing those because you disagree with them was the truly dangerous path. Now the writers had him attack some randos at a bar because he overheard them using a word he didn't like.
"X-Men was always woke" goes along with the claim "Star Trek was always woke". They confuse classical liberalism (the rights and freedoms of the individual) with modern progressive "liberalism" (the identity and power of the collective).
…but Star Trek is literally communism. The whole shebang. DEI Bridge Crew, no money, free health care, the government just gives you what you need to live. Star Trek has always been extremely woke, if you think communism is woke, it’s just that it didn’t matter to most of the stories they told.
She quotes Sally Ride about how people told her no and she was determined to prove them wrong. Methinks Riri did not understand the message. Or Bendis didn't when crafting her backstory.
Back when JustSomeGuy still had a clear head on his shoulders, he did a hilarious take on that scene, with Riri repeatedly dropping hard n-bombs and accusing the teacher of _thinking_ about the word when the teacher didn't take the bait.
because riri is not written by writters, but by activists that have a deeply warped view of reality where they can't distinguish real oppression from the illussion of woke oppression,.
The real problem is not comics being political or not, its people FORGETTING TO USE WORDS CORRECTLY. It's not entirely the leftists fault, more a product of the times. But imagine how easy this whole thing would be to sort if we used the correct terms like "political propaganda" instead of just the generic, unhelpful term "politics". Yes, politics have always been in comics, but as part of a story, not as blatant propaganda. Activism was an isolated, often depised, political badgering activity, now it's a rotten part of everyday discourse, mudding any converstaion anyone wants to have. Mass media allowed the people who shout all the time to shout more and to more people, and that makes normal speech become invisible.
Exactly, when context is mangled, anything turns into a problem. Which then leads to people hating what the context originated from because you have a bunch of groups shoving thar Roosters and Cats in the pie we call good fking content, that it turns the pie into a rancid mess that mutilated any flavor it had originally. Politics can be turned into something interesting, but there`s a difference between butchering the lore of a story and then there`s Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance who can take political involvement in a story and make it fking amazing without even having to understand the crap or even have to have most of the damn story caked up with explainations to `attempt` to brainwash you into following along. If the `explaination medium` can`t bloody make the material engaging, then its just straight up the difference gap you could get with someone trying to make paint drying on a wall a `political thing` and then you have someone like Yoko Taro or Hideo Kojima who could take that same paint drying on a wall and make it so bat-shite insane, despite its still paint drying on the wall still. Like comparing the drying of the paint on a wall to be the setting in of layers to cover up the cracks and damages under`neath with any large globs of it being excess that leads to lasting consequences like bubbles of paint that has to be `brushed down` to evenly smooth it out and any paint that drips and slides down leads to similar streaks of un-even`ness, just like with businesses that pull highly irrational practices that could damage other involved companies (such as thar reputation) or other people involved all because they are hyper fixated on short term gains such as `quickly getting the paint to cover up problems`, even while they ignore the flies, nails and tape still present and just cover it up and leave nasty protrustions that will need to be ripped out and repainted over and likely result in a entirely un-even layer as a result. But anyway moral of the story: Boot to the heads for all the Sociopathic lunatics who ruin anything they are involved in and maybe have proper basic communication enforced in early education so people remember common sense is also mandatory in businesses, such as NOT sabotage entire business structures for terrible `practices`, since having a bunch of people think they are on some Holier then all that stands above the Heavens Crusade at the helm of things like politics was never a good idea. Especially when the only damn reason these kind of things work is because they been exploiting other companies that give out `free money` to follow so-called practices that harm the product more then promote any form of so-called `healthy censorship` they wanna brag about is so important.
Even then for every issue of X-men that dealt with human/mutant relations you had five where they went into space with the star jammers to overthrow or aid the Shi’ar depending on who was in charge that week, or rode dinosaurs into battle against evil sorcerers in the savage lands. Because even when told through allegory as part of a story people need the occasional break from reality to decompress. I’m convinced that’s why radicals of any sort are so messed up in the head. They’re on course 100% and have long forgotten to take break and enjoy the silliness every now and then.
when superman flies supplies to marines on okinawa i have no problem with that when some third rate woke snowflake stop entire action to tell me that personal carbon footprint is killing planet and i need to get rid of my car i have a problem with that
I just read all of the comics of Ms. Marvel losing her powers to Rogue and becoming Binary, and she wasn't a feminist, just a character going through different experiences.
Carol Danvers wasn't even popular in her original comic run. Hell, there's a reason they put that girl in a coma for a decade while a better character (Rogue) ran around with her powers. And when they briefly had Carol take control of Rogue during one of her comic runs. Carol almost single handedly put that comic out of print so much so they had to back track that decision fast as hell.
I hate how they try to make Stan into some kind of progressive activist. I met the man, he was an entertainer and a storyteller, a businessman first and foremost. The X-Men were no agenda just a blanket appeal to "those who felt they never fit in" and the Stan Lee X-Men also FAILED. Giant Size X-Men is what SAVED the X-Men from obscurity. Chris Claremont turned the X-Men into the JUGGERNAUT it was. Without Claremont spending DECADES writing and guiding the X-Men and everything related to them from the series relaunch until the 90's we would have no X-Men. Modern comic writers are hacks who cannot even write one series for a few years much less a few decades and they cannot write even a single story well.
@@daryltor7608 Yeah most of the people complaining about Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s characters were often complaining about how radical they weren’t 😂 believing marvel tried to uphold the “evil capitalist status quo.” I know this because Stan would often talk to these young activists back in the 60’s & 70’s 😂in terms of complaining customers the situation was mostly the stark opposite back then. There were complaints by certain left leaning activists about how the comics weren’t political enough.
@abrahambobst4602 As much as the existence of Grifters (and hacktivists) has grown in recent years, the audience always changes. The main two examples would be A) People who become one of the audience in their childhood who then grow up , and B) Someone becoming one of the audience years after it existence/started. Quite simply, it's impossible for anyone/anything's audience NOT to change. That's why content changes, because if it was a stagnant pool, your audience would lose interest.
YoungRippa59 said it best about how the X-men was never about the civil rights movement. That was a myth and Stan Lee said it best. Also X-men 97 is woke mess unlike the classic one from the 90s and the books. These woke women need to be fired because they don't support the characters and lore. A character's complex hero's journey story matters more than checking a box for diversity like woke women keep on pushing. It was never heavy handed political biases like the Left says. Tell a good story first.
Sjw: um stan lee himself would agree with the way marvel is going! Its always been about the politics: LD: #presents stans own 10 rules for writing a marvel comic book
This reminds me of ShortFatOtaku's video on media literacy, where he explains that you can apply any kind of political meaning to any story depanding on you political lens. He called it "the fine art of bullshit"
Dude, this is your best video yet! I'm gonna be linking this everywhere! That part about "the world outside your window" actually meaning a universal truth gave me chills.
When talking about x-men, i love the movies way of how professor x and magneto reacted to each other, they hated each other, but still respected each other, and magneto's words about professor x's death says it all, "quite, he has done more for mutant kind then you will ever understand"
If comics were always the way DeConnick depicts them, then they wouldn't be as popular as they were before her crowd changed the stories. For evidence: the poor way they're selling now and how former fans trash what's currently being made. Bruce Banner was raised by an abusive father who killed his mother, if the Universal movie is still MCU Hulk's backstory. He was chased by his girlfriend's father and romantic rival because of the Hulk and it led to ending his relationship with Betty Ross. Then after being on the run he finally finds acceptance and a chance to love again only for Black Widow to sacrifice herself because of her own character arc to save the universe. I think that's slightly worse than some drunken idiot with too many hormones catcalling her or some jerk at work who wants to get ahead talking over her. Bruce also blames himself for her situation and is trying to help her avoid what he went through as the Hulk and she should at least acknowledge that. If she does it hasn't been in any clip I've seen. He wouldn't turn around and give some other lady Hulk powers because she wants to smash stuff like "men" do, ignoring Hulk's whole comic history. I've worked in a grocery store so knowing this is how the writer sees me is not going to win me over. This is how the writer decided to represent me. Also...how does a shopping bag from LAS VEGAS, NEVADA (I think that's where the story took place) end up in the waters of Krakoa in the Pacific Ocean? This doesn't cross her mind? Could the bag have led to shipwrecked people who didn't even know the bag floated up from the wreck of their boat after going shopping while on vacation in Vegas? There is no thought in this story at all and it wants me personally dead. Not a fan.
The thing with how Jenifer originally became She-Hulk, is because she was on the verge of death after being left for death by her mother’s killers that pinned Bruce in a disparate situation while being hunted but the authorities to give her a blood transfusion in order for her cousin to survive. Bruce afterwards when he heard the news Jen had became She-Hulk he was mortified, ashamed and guilty of himself for causing this to her. However, Jenifer informed Bruce that she actually likes being She-Hulk, she considers it her true self and she adores and empathizes with Bruce over the exchange to soon move on as her own woman taking on a lawyer career and being a part of superhero teams such as the Fantastic Four to fill in for Thing and the Avengers for years. Now she berates Banner, to the point of despising him altogether, it’s so stupid they want to make it that she had it the worse for existing as a woman, when the point of her character is that she actually had it easier than Bruce did!
@@LegacyComics100 The Disney+ version of Jennifer just found it annoying until she was force to acknowledge she even was She-Hulk. The transfusion was an accident, a few drops of blood transferred when they were in an accident because unlike the comic and previous cartoon appearances, the writers didn't want a "MAN!!!!!" responsible for her powers. Comic Jen was kind of a wallflower until she gained strength and beauty, and became more confident. That's why she embraced She-Hulk. While Bruce's origin is bathed in death and suffering, Jennifer's is based on life and overcoming in the comics. MCU Jen is just based on frustration and quirky arrogance.
I know the Incredible hulk has some flaws but I still think it's a good movie for what it was. I mean the deleted scenes from the movie were genuinely really good. I wished the movie had came out in 2010 though so they can add some of deleted scenes.
It is the three flaws. 1) the parasite. It doesn't matter if they suck so long as the host they are attached to can survive ir. They cling to the big brand properties not because they want to write good stories, but because every comic could fail and yet the company will sustain itself by using the other products... Like games, toys, movies, etc. It is why Amazon could care less if rings of power flopped... Because Amazon supports itself by its main business so it can weather the losses. 2) the outlast theory. It doesn't matter if nobody likes their garbage. If they outlast their foes then the next generation will have nothing, but their garbage to read, watch, and shape them. It is why a lot of these comic book industry has recouped losses by selling the books to schools. So long as there is nothing else in the schools to read for fun besides garbage then by their logic the next generation should be primed and ready consumers of garbage. Also does not help that they can trick the younger generations into looking at it when they remember watching a good movie or a good cartoon and expect the comics to be more of the same... Failing to realize why nobody had read the garbage for the past decade. 3) The three lie system. Product X is awful because Y. Product X is okay because of Z. Product X was always F because it is now our product. Doctor Who is a prime example of this in action. Doctor Who season 11 was racist because it had always been racist. Doctor Who season 12 is okay because they address made up issue. Doctor who season 13 proved that Doctor Who was always woke as seen by the current doctor and you just never bothered to see it because you are the problem. So long as they make that narrative and try to apply social pressure by bots, mobs, and political agendas supporting them... Then they can get away with it. Just look at 40K for the most recent example. 40K is fascist. Then when got 40K isn't that bad and we got the 'the game is open to everyone' tag line with specific rules about going after those who had political agendas. Now? Now we had female space marines loud debate within the last two years... Everyone saying it was stupid. Then we get Black Rock, and Vanguard buying up 11% of stocks and Amazon offering a TV show at the cost of a few demands... And now Female Custodians were always a thing and the 40K universe was always progressive as even the Emperor of Mankind was non-binary! If nobody stops it or the outrage isn't loud enough... They simply use this event to justify their next change... And the next change... And the next... Until the company goes under. The progress of the disease working its curse within a period of less than 10 years. So long as the garbage keeps flowing and sustained by other products they think they can weather the storm.
The legend has been around for a while, but it only became a common defense at Marvel long after Stan Lee had retired from drawing comics (instead mostly just performing cameos in the MCU) and when his health was starting to fail.
Great video. I don't remember where I got this from but i heard that X-men was actually inspired by the holocaust, Isreal, and Palestine. Also, modern artists forget this detail or they don't care, but the difference between Xavier and Magneto is that for the xmen, you're a hero before your a mutant, while with Magneto, you're a mutant first. This is what seperates the good mutants, and the evil ones who want to oppress or destroy their fellow man. Xmen is about fear of our fellow man. Not mlk, malcom x, or black people.
One more thing, the original X-men was not a popular comic, as a civil rights mirror, and did use re-runs to keep the cost down. It was not until writer like Chris Claremont, X-men become one of the best seller. What did he do? More supernatural fantastic things, like the Phoenix, lots of (implied) sex, soap and love drama, with the standard stop the bad guy.
I think the best way to summarize the situation would be that while comics were always left leaning, they were left leaning in a sane way, and people are talking leftism in insane directions so now the old "progressives" are seen the same as the conservatives were. The original, sane, leftists, are turning on comics due to the ridiculousness. See there is nothing wrong with black characters, women, sexual minorities, and other things and that has all been there to some extent from the beginning BUT it's the extent to which it's taken, the replacement, the tearing down of general society, and so on. That's where the problem is. It's that activists always need a battle to fight, when the reasonable ones are won, they create unreasonable ones, and comic fans do not like them using comics as a platform for unreasonable positions. Trying to argue that something was always leftist or always used for activism always has to be tempered by how far it's gone and the sanity of the message. Oh sure to true believers the message is always sane and reasonable, but those people need to gain the perspective that when there is blowback like this they have stepped over the edge, rather than dancing on it. Of course to the insane activist they justify it by claiming there was blowback against the reasonable stuff to, and don't seem to ever realize when or where that line was crossed, perhaps in some cases believing there is no line as it's existential social warfare. To put it in one final perspective, in the old days when those "original activist stories" were told there was both public funding of mental health, and everyone doing printing, including self-publishing houses, generally had policies against "crackpotism". Simply put had someone brought these stories before someone like Marvel, DC, or any one of the fanzines dealing with the older fandoms being corrupted now, they would not have been published due to the insanity involved. Part of the problem is that with the lack of mental health funding, such people have started to corrupt and use systems and so on, as there is no safeguard against them in a system designed to use the standard of "reasonable people" as the law says. An unforseen result of cutting such funding. If half the stuff suggested today was submitted to most of the 60s and 70s activists who did this stuff and became popular for it, not only would they have refused to give it a platform, there is a reasonable chance they would tip off the men in white coats to come knocking on doors. A piece of history a lot of people seem to forget. Reagan wanted to cut costs so defunded that in the 80s, thinking letting the nutters run free would do minimal damage compared to the money that could be saved. Well guess what, he's wrong, instead we have a world where people are denying the very existence of gender and publishers are afraid to say no to them.
It's just bad writing that's the problem. Comics were always left-leaning, just with better writing. Poor writers tend to write Mary Sues, vapid power fantasies, unlikable characters, soapbox preachy dialogue and so forth. Any good writer can get you to agree with their politics at least on that specific issue in their fictional world. A lot of modern writers fail miserably at that. The "woke" push for corporations is entirely marketing spin. "We want to promote diversity and inclusion in our staff" sounds a lot better than "We pay our writers shit and hired people desperate enough to take the job because we want to increase our profit margins by cutting costs on workers and seeing what the cheapest viable product is."
@@taragnor I think bad writing is part of the problem, but the thing is it's actually the smaller part of the problem. A lot of badly written things have been incredibly successful and popular with good ideas and concepts or even proper messaging. Harry Potter for example is not exactly a literary marvel, no offense to JK Rowling. Her ideas though were top notch and the messages in the story resonated with everyone. The problem is you could have the second coming of "The Bard" himself and not sell this stuff. If William Shakespeare himself was challenged to sit down and sell some of these messages about gender not exist, or how there is all this bigotry and crap that doesn't actually exist because activists need to pretend it exists to justify himself, he's not going to be able to pull it off. The problem is that a modern entertainment industry is working with the media to claim there are all these racists running rampant, with cops being incredibly bigoted on average and all kinds of other things. In the meantime when people look outside they don't see that, but they do see them attacking those allegedly bigoted police offices, and the result is the mass looting of stores and an upswing of violent crime, especially in the ethnic communities that should have been revealed to have been a bunch of peaceful hippies the whole time So basically while they are portraying the heroes as the people who support this, and have them beating up straight white villains and all the white heroes being kind of naive idiots at best, in the real world people are beginning to again sort of understand the 1930s world view that spawned characters like Batman in an era when organized crime ran the streets and the police were rendered powerless to do anything. As stores are being looted people sort of get the idea of why having Batman pull up in "The Bat Mobile" and start tearing up gangs of looters, leaving them hanging from lamp posts or whatever, or why a later character like "The Punisher" going into an area known for violent crime in his "War Wagon" and shooting gang members and other violent criminals with the same abandon they target other people might have appeal. Rather, you have the comics telling you these heroes are wrong and a "public menace" not all that different from what happens when a corrupt politician or mind control villain takes over. Sadly though we don't actually have super heroes in real life, though to be fair, it wouldn't shock me if people start trying it for real soon as like many origin stories the police and politicians are providing themselves unable to deal with the problem or even want to admit it exists. I'm getting too long and tangential, but the point is, you can't sell this insanity with even the best writing. That's why it will never work, because while these works are fantasy they still have to be somewhat grounded especially when the point is to address some "real issue". You lose the audience when that "real issue" doesn't exist, and the people who genuinely believe it does are pretty much insane. You can take that away from racial politics and insert most things pushed under the woke umbrella into the same example. I kind of wish people still read nowadays (other than short comments) as I feel these are things that really need to be considered, and the points just don't work in short form. Until the whole problem is acknoledged and this part is also confronted more directly (instead of people talking around it) we will never see a solution. When mainstream entertainment is being written by a bunch of insane pariahs, it's never going to be successful, as the only audience will be people like them, and even if some of them do have money, there aren't enough of them to make it profitable. The stuff these people write belongs in like fringe, arthouse press, I have no problem with stuff like this existing. That said it's not mainstream, nor is it a reflection of any reality at all. Even if some of it was based on real experience as claimed, they are fringe events, and not something the audience is going to accept as normal because it is not. They need good writing, and sane messaging, and that message can be very left wing as we've seen, without going into madhouse territory. They need actual, normal,. left wingers to write this if they want it. Not extremists with an axe to grind who have no talent on top of it.
@@jeremyrichard2722 Good writers can sell anything honestly. When you're writing a fictional story, you control the entire world, so it's relatively easy (if you're at all talented), to frame things however you want. Cops can be brave heroes protecting the people or they can be corrupt, racist and generally horrible. Depends on how you portray them in your story. A vigilante like The Punisher o r Batman could be a hero doing what the cops can't do, or he could be a dangerous maniac who acts as judge, jury and executioner. The funny thing is that it probably doesn't matter what your biases towards real-world vigilantes and police officers, based off what how the author portrays it, you will generally accept that the hero's point of view is correct, at least within the realm of the real world. This is largely because you can highlight the good parts of your protagonist and downplay the bad. The Punisher kills the criminals and we see how a dangerous city becomes safe, he's the hero. The Punisher kills some criminals but many innocents are killed in the process and it only amps up the chaos and murder in the city. We in turn see the Punisher as a villain. This further can be reinforced by showing how bad the criminals he's killing are. Make them really evil. Harassing old ladies, murdering children. Makes the audience hate the criminals and show us how the police do nothing. We will all want to see Punisher put a bullet in their heads. Whatever your angle, whether you want to push xenophobia, feminism, gun control or antisemitism, if you're a good writer you can set the story up such that your story supports that position as correct. A bad writer tries to send a message and the audience turns against them, because they did such a poor job selling it, they come off as the unreasonable one.
Left and right are not good categories. WW2 Germany was a socialist state (national socialism to be specific) yet is called right wing. The abolishes of slaves was done by republicans yet that is called left wing. Trump has voted democrat all his life and was endorsed by a founding member of the black panthers., yet somehow is his right wing. Who decides what is left and what is right? The issue with comics right now is that they are run by marxists.
The X-men being all outcast make me think about Tolkien and the fact he preferred applicability to allegory. X-men are applicable to all outcast (black people, homosexual, etc...) and not just allegory of one specific group. They are hero who fight for a better world for everyone.
Exactly. The X-men will always be ‘the other’, able to represent any group that is oppressed. It doesn’t matter if Stan intended this or not, because this aspect of the X- men was crystallized by Claremont, with Stan’s implicit approval (Stan Lee Presents…)
I don't think black people are out casts,more like oppressed,discriminated against and racism is thrown against them. No one knows if a man is a homosexual unless he tells some one,black people are black all day long,they don't get to pick or chose to tell folks they're black. There're over 300 recorded incidents of black towns being burned to the ground by racist wht people,have homosexuals ever had this happen to them ??? I doubt it.The X-Men are mostly all white,hard to see other whites really hating them,tho.
The situation is even more galling considering how hypocritical these same activist comic pros and modern Xmen defenders are: so denounce Mutant Registration as "hate" but then these same people universally believe in gun control/restriction. Think about it: while mutants in the comic represent "minority" groups/people, unlike the real world where many/most are genuinely helpless in the face of mobs mutants have powers, many of those powers of earth shaking (sometimes literally) magnitude. Unlike humans in the real world, mutants in Earth 616 DO have the power to take over if they organized and weaponized their powers. Mutants are essentially LIVING weapons. The analogy of Xmen being stand ins for real people in the real world falls to pieces when considering how dangerous mutants countless mutants actually are and how quickly incidents like Colombine would be commonplace in a world where mutant exist. How fast would it take of incident like Parkland for these idealists and mutant defenders to suddenly be screaming for mutant registration and restriction if they were real? Since many of the comic pros today clearly are for weapon restriction, then what does that say about the mutant question? The current writers are so interested in virtue signaling and using mutants as wish fulfillment/self inserts/projection for themselves, they don't consider how Stan Lee and Chris Claremont made clear that even the mutant haters were not without SOME justification for their fears when mutants like Apocolypse, Mr Sinister, Namor, the Hellfire Club, the Brotherhood, all start trying to shake up and/or destroy the world. Today's writers are too busy feeling, that they forget to think. There is more to the mutant issue than just "oh they're just a misunderstood minority". They are also insanely DANGEROUS. They are few in number but just a few Omega level mutants could bring down the entire world. Civil rights are one thing but for average humans in earth 616 this is a real existential threat that can't just be smoothed over with a cool Hellfire Gala event.
Mutants can draw a lot of parallels to real world issues. The connection between any sort of oppressed minority is definitely there and it's pretty easy to see parallels of bigotry and hate-crimes that happen with regards to mutants, as well as a battle for legal civil rights for mutants. There's a lot of common ideas there, the idea of normals being "replaced" by mutants for instance, and people fearing mutants getting any sort of power as they could overturn the existing hierarchy. Lots of forms against bigotry can have parallels here, racism, anti-LGBT hatred and antisemitism. There's is also a parallel with gun control too, especially since the idea that X-Men tends to as the default solution is "good guy with a gun." That is after all what the X-Men are all about, good mutants helping to deal with the bad ones, even when normal people are largely helpless to handle the dangerous mutants. This is of course, just a trope of the medium in general, where superheroes fight against supervillains. I think though that while mutant powers are granted, extremely strong, most actual groups in the world could take over if they were organized and willing to resort to violence on a large scale, so I wouldn't say that's unlike the real world. Like anything comic book oriented, the comic version turns the dial to 11, but any violent organized group is a danger in real life too. It's just more extreme in comics, especially given that governments don't have sufficient number of mutant police officers and military personnel to handle mutant uprisings (who by and large tend to be independents). It's certainly the case that some of the fear of mutants is justified. But that's largely what makes it an interesting situation. Even in the real world, often neither side is 100% correct, but often times over-reactions tend to lead to problems.
"I want a cure!" Said the girl who kills everyone she touches. "You don't need a cure!! We are perfect the way we are!!" Said the girl who controls the fucking weather.
indeed. as there is actually more correct parallel. men and women. mutants are the men in this scenario. far stronger, and dangerous. and an angry man can murder a women or even another man. men have to learn to control their power, to not be threatening to other men, and women, etc. we have to have women only spaces, segregation for restrooms, sports for womens protection. women even outnumber men in reality. men are the minority. But, yeah, these activist would NEVER even consider that. it would break their brains to even consider it. they will insist men need to be lectured, to change, to be castrated, etc..
…Wouldn’t the fault be on whoever littered there instead of the store itself? They just provide the bags for people to put stuff in them, not control what their customers do with the bags
@@LiteratureDevilhe’s a hitman. Of course he’s villain protagonist. It’s objectively true no matter if you agree or not with his rampage. Anyone saying otherwise should be checked in with specific doctors.😂
I didn't realize I was using Stan Lee's own philosophy in my own writing. Great video as all ways. Writing hero's as villain's with political bias. Makes a lot of sense when you look at the current state of story craft within the western world.
"Comics have ALWAYS been political!!!" Comics then: Heroes dealing with being outcasted or the moralities of humanity. Often times, their own in world politics Comics now: COLORED GAY GOOD! TRUMP BAD!
Except their version of 'political' always means 'embracing the left in any and all things'. If it's the least bit non left leaning, they then complain about it.
Many miss the point of mutants, which is they are walking talking nukes. Regular humans have every right to be afraid of them given the amount of destruction they can accidentally cause and the government causing more destruction to detain them. This fear turns to hate and prejudice, which is where the allegory comes in. The mutants are not defenseless, which makes their ostracization more tragic as they were literally born that way and are unable to lead normal lives.
Crazy to think about that She-Hulk scene with Bruce like Bruce didn’t live with an abusive father and a dead mother and now lives walking on egg shells his whole life loool.
I must say, as someone who's aspiring to be a writer, this video and all the others pointing out the tricks to telling engrossing stories, the shortcomings of modern mediocrity, and the lessons taught by writing legends of the past really do give me hope that I might someday create stories that people will enjoy.
The whole mutants=civil rights allegory doesn't work anyway. If kids hitting puberty actually activated powers like exploding things, shooting lasers from their eyes, super-strength, etc., this would be a huge safety issue in real life. There would need to be either some form of special schools for mutants or power dampeners or something. I mean, we all love the mutants (well, the classic mutants, written by sane people), but real life is more complicated than, 'Accept me with no caveats!' Here's a good X-Men story that is political, not politically-biased, off the top of my head (assuming the Krakoa era is over and done): Let's say a politician, a mayor of a small town with access to some decent tech, tries to roll out something like the above for his community (they have a larger mutant community than most small towns): maybe he gives the local mutants a choice between a power-dampening anklet to attend regular school, or they can choose to attend a special school run by an older, more experienced mutant, who can teach basic subjects AND help them control their powers (basically, what Xavier should be doing - maybe this older mutant is even an ex-X-Man or something). Maybe a bad-faith journalist writes up the story or a blog and paints the picture that this mayor is forcing young mutants to wear power-dampeners, which causes some mutant extremists AND anti-mutant extremists factions to show up at the town raising hell. Back at the mansion, the X-Men react to this story typically: at first, some of them are outraged that this mayor is forcing mutants to wear the dampeners, but this is tempered by wiser heads, who can see the article/blog for what it is. They travel to the town, get the full story, and find that it actually doesn't seem that bad. They attempt to calm things down and stand guard around the mayor's office, where the majority of the extremists are protesting. Things SEEM under control, until one of the mutant extremists is able to assassinate the mayor. This kicks off a riot. Maybe the human extremists have gotten their hands on an old sentinel, which they set loose on the town. So, now we have a dead mayor, who was actually a good guy, we have a wild sentinel attacking mutants, we have extremist mutants attacking the humans, and the X-Men/citizens of this town caught in the middle. Maybe the blogger who started this whole thing off is in town again, continuing to rile the world up with cherry-picked facts of the actual story. This is an example of a complex, political story with nuance. This is NOT what we are getting from Marvel comics at all. I'm just some regular joe - if I can come up with this off the top of my head, you're telling me professional writers can't do any better? I believe they can - they have the ability to, I mean. The problem seems to be that their moral compasses are so askew that they can't see where their stories are going wrong. They keep trying to shoehorn their skewed ideologies into stories about heroes, and that's why it's not working, that's why you will get mixed messages when you read a lot of these stories: bc the writers (and editors) themselves are mixed up in their own heads.
Marvel should reflect that if the world outside your window has a lock on the window, and bars on the window, then it might be a good idea to see if you can walk outside and check you have not become a prisoner of your own narrow vision that the window provides.
I both love and live for these longer format videos. They're so well crafted you can listen to them like a podcast or watch it like a regular video if you aren't in the car. And Whether you agree with the videos or not (though I don't think I've ever heard you miss), they give you a lot to think about through your day...easily one of my favorite channels on RUclips. I hope you keep making videos for years to come, you devil you 🤣
@@LiteratureDevileasy to do when you just lie and cheery pic. Hey why didint you talk about when the x-men became popular in the 1980's with Magento retcon to be a holocaust survivor uncanny x men 150 1981, days of future past 1981 or god loves man kills 1982 the comic to get the largest irl backlash on TV for years after the fact. Or maybe the fact the x-men werint popular till they became a minority metaphors.....mayyyybe if you were honest you'd bring any of those up?
@@OneofmanyASMR I did. I addressed how it got popular once it started focusing more on the social conflict. It was a big section, I don't know how you missed it. Also, you said cherry picking! I'm taking a drink! 🤣
@@LiteratureDevil so I went to watch the full section to make sure i wasint misunderstanding. And I did the main thing that thru me was you putting the whole change from uncanny x-men 150 and up to Stan Lee....this is not true? Stan Lee wasint a core part of the creative team in uncanny xmen and then beyond. He didint create the changes you praise other people that would write things like days of future past (the most popular story where explicitly they are victims not heros) and God loves man kills (that explicitly starts with magneto finding 2 mutant children linched). You try to draw a distinct line between the good x men stuff and the bad stuff when that quite frankly not the case. You also don't bring up god loves man kills at least a pretty landmark comic. I do admit by skimimg you're x men section I didn't properly understand what you're advocating and I'm wrong on that. However you're main point is still incorrect. Hell most of the storys that are a landmarks point to 2 things simultaneously. That both magneto AND Xavier are wrong. The brotherhood created the days of future past timeline but Xavier compliance is what lead it to pass. Thinking one day they will change ther mind while things only get worse. Xavier goal of being good enough to be accepted by society is equally as flawed as magneto goal of being so terrifying they can't act against them. Xavier philosophy makes the x men be victims and that what the comics since civil war have dealt with. Edit you also in fact do not bring up days of future past at all. The only commentary you bring up is x-men 150 and a lil bit of the trial of Magento
Comics technically have been political. Even if it’s not intentional. It might not be something we find controversial at the time but can later. Also how a super hero actions were acceptable at one point but not today. Even if it’s just taking down bad guy. How should that bad guy be taken down?
I like modern comics. I get to see characters in new adventures, interact with new heroes, and face new problems and challenges. I think heroes should adapt and change to acknowledge and fight the social injustices of a period. Books like Superman Smashes the Klan and Uncanny Avengers Issue 3 show characters taking a stand when others are too afraid or unwilling to. From an alien immigrant from another world to a group of outcasts who will defend those who once hunted them down, comics may be idealistic and political nowadays, but they always inspired others to take action for what was right.
Social Justice is mob rule. The mob enjoys power over others without taking any responsibility for their actions. They feel no duty to the individual. They are no different from any violent mob that have taken power by force, including political power. The Punisher is a vigilante. He was created by the absence of justice. Which was replaced by corruption. Which cost Frank Castle everything, breaking him as a man who had a deep sense of duty and justice. The very things he fought and bled for his country. So he punishes criminals in his ongoing war against the criminal underworld. Activist writers could never create a character like Frank Castle. Because they could never believe the system could fail a white man. Despite all real-world evidence to the contrary. Because we all know these activists live within their own fantasy world where they are the heroes. Unfortunately, the activist living fantasy has affects in the real world.
That she hulk scene was particularly ridiculous because SHES SHE HULK! Who tf could possibly “murder” her in that context? She spoke as if she was a regular woman. This video perfectly captures what is wrong with how the fans side of this discourse is being handled. It’s the writers bias that is the issue and their obsession with revenge pron.
She-hulk: does her speech Bruce: "uhh huh, thats cute. So tell me, have a group of people attempted to shoot you dead at night? Did your friends build tools, specifically to kill and stop you? Have you ever put a gun to your mouth and woke up in another state because your other self got mad? You came here for advice, but so far all you've done is lived and moved on. If you need me, come and actually talk, till then go back to your normal life. Since its clear you don't care about actually being a good person."
My favorite x man villain has always been sabertooth. Almost Every other villain origin is boo-hoo poor me, people were mean to me because I'm a mutant. Sabertooth is just a psychopath who likes hurting people
This was the mic drop-iest mic drop of all mic drops. You nailed it. The entire thing. Thank you so much for doing all the hard work and research that went into this!!!
(Specifically talking about the "feminist" stuff talked in the first half of the video) What I really dislike about these "social justice" writers is that they are very clearly driven by " *hate* ". They claim to be part of progressive groups such as feminism, but that would be a lie, because such progressive communities are about equality. Such groups are against hate, more specifically hate against the people they're defending (duh). They do talk a lot about that. And these "social justice" writers also talk about the same kind of hate. Great, they dislike the same bad stuff as the group they claim to be a part of... Except these writer's want to do hate against the "oppressors", where as the progressive community want equality, not to just do the exact same thing they're being the victims of. These writer are entitled, and absolutely terrible advocate for the causes they have themselves claimed to be advocate of. Honestly, f*ck em. Who let immature angry teens write stuff *AT MARVEL* ?! Congratulation, Marvel, you've managed to be hated by both the bigots AND the anti-bigots on the topic of politics (Well, A LOT of people hate Marvel nowadays for different reasons than just "the political messaging is done terribly." It's just.... It's just sad honestly.)
I'd argue that ever since civil rights and women's suffrage wrapped, most of those "progressive" groups have done whatever they could to justify their continued existence sans an actual goal left to strive for. They're the reason race relations are now worse than they were in the 60s, and why out-and-out misandry is socially acceptable. They already have equality, what they're fighting for now is protected classes and preferential treatment. So, in that way, the social justice crowd are very much in lock-step with them.
You figure if Xavier and Magneto were supposed to be like this Stan Lee would have made them both black. Lee also wrote Black Panther as a more explicit black super hero, so he would have done it if he wanted.
There's a difference between being "political" and having politics in it and having values or morals with political implications. To use your example: The x-men has internal politics within the confine of the story that is not from the outside. You can draw allegories from the values prevented in that conflict like with civil rights but it is not JUST the civil rights movement. This format is much more forgiving for the author. You CAN write a "political" story and have it be good but it has to show "the" truth in as close to it's entirety as possible. Even if one side is wrong, they have reasons they are wrong that make them seem right to themselves. It is a delicate balance but if you can show "my" truth from the perspective of BOTH sides then you can make it work ... which is why the SJWs have such a hard time accomplishing this. They reject the concept of an actual truth on principle. They don't have the mindset that everyone is working imperfectly to discover the actual truth and so can't understand perspectives other than their own. "My" truth is, afterall, "the" truth.
Activist creators can only view characters through the lens of superficial identity like gender, race, sexuality and ideology, and when they change existing ip according to this lens and comic fans complain about it because it's out of character or injecting real life politics into fiction, the activist creator projects their own mentality onto them (because they lack imagination) assuming the fans just want to preserve their own superficial image on the characters.
I thought it was not up to debate that humans are right to fear mutants: Most mutants are objectively evil and far more powerful than any human being. It's the X-men who are in the minority. Hell, Magneto outright calls himself a "mutant supremacist" What kinda allegory is that??
5 месяцев назад+1
Hell some mutants are world ending threats, why would a normal human NOT be crapping their pants over that. Not to mention the other powers that take away people's will, all it would take is one deranged teen boy with mind control and suddenly you have hundredss of women and teen girls being mind controlled and violated and non the wiser or worse mind controlled into being slaves. As a father of 3 I would be terrified for my 2 girls becoming a sex slave to some freak, yeah I would vote for a Mutant Registration act and Sentinals being built too.
This whole discourse makes me believe that these defensive“fans” and current writers never engaged with Marvel the way myself or to an extent most have been exposed to: Marvel is largely individualistic with moral dilemmas and personal conflict that Stan stated he believed DC lacked when he asked the question “what do the heroes get up to outside of the costume?” So it would be appropriate to write them like this, and share it with many writers who had interesting approaches with the characters over the years: This can be largely be illustrated through my most favorite Marvel character, *The Incredible Hulk.* Through a series of stories, it tells the story of an orderly man named Bruce Banner who cursed himself by his own work through a selfless act saving Rick Jones. Soon Roy Thomas and Bill Mantlo would take over the character to establish the event that’s integral to Bruce Banner’s character through his abusive father who killed his mom through envy and paranoia for young Banner that would cause the Hulk persona to manifest with a hatred for the puny Banner for not saving his monster. Peter David would establish one of the new dynamics with a Gray Hulk(Joe Fixit) who’s the aspects of Bruce he doesn’t let out in sunlight, Joe represents everything that Bruce is too milksop to do, through reckless, self indulgent confidence but even Joe knows where to draw the line when it comes to harming children. Bruce Banner went from a man who detested men who think with their fists until through years he learns he’ll no longer be pushed around that this will lead to Banner smacking himself out of victimhood to properly grief for his dead mother and finally gained self control through Professor Hulk through the trust of the other two Hulks to stop fighting and became a near-perfect unison that retains the aspects of the other two Hulks, Green’s savagery and strength, Gray’s confidence and cunning and Bruce Banner’s knowledge and order. These stories will stand the test of time, while its existence oppose the woke ideology cause what the ideology ultimately means is to renounce beauty, castigate strength, betray your family, burn your homeland, curse your ancestors, sterilize your children, and perish-all in the name of being “considerate.”
This was brilliant. I've been wanting someone to make a one shot description and take down of the retardation in modern comics. "The villains are now seen as hero's" is the perfect description of the problem with modern writers.
Whenever either in universe or in commentary someone says people hate and fear mutants because they don't under stand them, I always think that's nonsense. They are feared because they have super human powers that can murder and kill on a scale equal (depending on the power) to even our most dangerous military equipment. Only without any of the control structures around a military force. It's like the twisting the word phobia from fear into hate, while ignoring we have a Greek word for hate, miseo. People don't hate mutants because they don't understand them. They hate them because they do understand them and are scared of their powers and how many mutants turn to criminality.
ben's line of "great power, great responsibility" rings perfectly to this. When peter got his powers, he was quite self centered. it took him his uncle dying in front of him to realise that he has a responsibility to not abuse his power. And he's just 1 guy. I don't think out of the thousands of mutants, many will fully understand that.
Well-said and that's why the civil rights allegory never really worked very well. When a teenager can suddenly make things explode by touching them, we're dealing with a very real, tangible, and dangerous problem. That's not bigotry. That's not making assumptions based on superficial characteristics. Humans would be correct in assuming that these individuals could band together and take over. Gun control may be a better analogy. It reminds me of J. Michael Straczynski's "Rising Stars" comic series, which does a pretty good job of exploring this in a grounded way.
If I ever make my book, I want you to narrate it, I love every one of your videos, and this is no exception! I've been waiting for a proper explanation for a long time now, not that I haven't wanted to do my own research, but I find it hard to know which source to trust. But, like Stan, you're open and honest and proven. Glad to be a subscriber and will stay one, no matter what RUclips bots try to do! (Also I'd love that waifu handbook lol)
Malcom X was very much a black supremacist before he got old and grew a brain. And by that point his damage to his own cause was already done. I can actually see a pretty supportable parallel between him and Krakoa era Magneto.
59:56 not "likely' straight up. Lily Orchard herself calls Magneto a hero, fighting against oppressors in her analysis of the character and just straight up justifies his darker nature. Lily and most of the social justice warriors always had sympathy for these characters because they believe that said characters are the only ones fighting against the status quo versus the heroes of the story who protect the innocent from their wrath and vengeance. The social justice warriors like Lily see the latter as upholding oppressive societal systems, like Magneto who is confused and annoyed against Professor Xavier fighting against him. The social justice warriors believe that if a system is oppressive, *it must be destroyed* and any character who fights against those fighting to destroy that system is villainous. Kind of like fighting for the galactic empire in star wars against rebel groups who raid and destroy worlds for resources.
Truth is, the system is becoming oppressive nowadays, but it’s mostly being done by people like Lily or the SJWs who are in power and have a major hold on politics and the industries than those they believe are the oppressors. I mean Conservatives has been conflated so much with fascism that you can pretty much do another “anyone I don’t like is Hitler.” It’s a funny irony, they love to write stories about rebelling against an oppressive system or regime when they’re an oppressive system themselves.
The bryan singer movies and the X-men legends games introduced me to the X-men comics in the 2000s! X-men yes does have some political allegories but not every X-men story is god loves man kills!
I don't even read comics and haven't since I was a teen in the 90s, but I spent the last hour listening deeply to your dissertation and I believe this might be one of the best arguments I have heard so far. I picked up a comic my nephew was reading a few months ago and the Batman in his book was nothing like the Batman I remembered from my childhood. He was no longer Batman but Bad-Man and the story bordered on the villain being justified. So I went home got my old Comics out of the shed and took them to my nephew, he now sees how modern comics are trying to turn him into a little communist and he's a classic story reader now. I think we might have dodged a bullet!! LOL
When I was reading comics as a teenager, I never really thought about how politics enhanced the stories. Now that I'm older, I now believe that politics is a potential tool just like anything else. You can use social commentary as a means to build worlds and conflicts like X-Men defending humankind, fighting for equality between humans and their kind, all while taking down evil mutants whom are prejudice towards humanity. Then there's the modern day kind of politics, extreme left mentality (progressive, ego-driven ideas, and attacks the opposite direction) that are often bathed in "their truths". Nothing screams narcissism like twisting Stan Lee's quips just to justify turning beloved comic book heroes and stories into a politically biased propaganda machine!
X-men have always been well to me about an outsider finding a place and fighting for other people to find a place where they belong. Well done well done. You earned a subscriber
Is there a husbando handbook? JW. Its a strange world we live in where terror tactics are painted as heroic and acts of compasion painted a villainous.
Imagine placing the Hulk and his situation next to anything and saying "Oh I had it so much harder" no. No you didn't. He was hunted by the military, couldn't love anyone, lost control on a whim, and became a monster. No being a black woman is not worse than being a abomination you're just shoehorning in your idea of a political opinion please at least make a effort to make it fit in
That lady behaves more like the Leader’s brother Mad Man who was envious of Banner’s successes that he turned himself into a monster, except this girl didn’t have to content with having a split personality that completely overpowers her, but it’s the fact she’s black, and marginalized compared to Bruce cause he’s a white man with a PHD.
This is a great video you perfectly articulated the difference between comics of the past and present why old fans dont like what current marvel and dc has done to their characters and stories.
Havnt watched the show but the best response to she-hulks tirade would be something like “Good, you have experience. You’re going to need that.” If she understands the gravity of the situation he could walk away there to leave her to ponder that. If she does not understand the gravity of the situation he could then say “because if you fail, it won’t just be your career that suffers. It will be the innocent bystanders and people around you.” Then throughout the story she would slowly realize that the seemingly arrogant man that keeps annoyingly telling her whats best for her is not trying to control her life. He is trying to help her. She would eventually find out about the bodies in his closet and they would learn to reshape their relationship so that it works better. Perhaps he learns to back off and let her be, stepping in with a lighter touch to remind but not control. Their relationship would evolve into a healthy dose of mutual respect before the mentor is inevitably killed off or forced to leave by outside forces (perhaps dealing with left over trauma from his own ghosts like the family of one of his victims seeking revenge, idk, I didnt read the comics)
being honest, chris claremont run is what made the x-men cool, stan lee original run was not very good, we just have to accept that everyone around stan made his books popular, ditko, jack kirby and later chris claremont.
This is true. I like Stan Lee's stuff, but Claremont supercharged it. He helmed the era that made the X-Men what we know it for. He cranked up the conflict. My main point was that Stan Lee had a good writing philosophy that Claremont seemed to carry. Neither Stan Lee or Claremont's philosophy would match with today's politically heavy Marvel.
Old X-Men comic: Anti Mutant protest attacked by the villains, the X-Men arrive and save the crowd, crowd still boo them as they leave but final panel is one guy saying to himself "maybe not all mutants are bad." New X-Men comic: Anti Mutant protest attacked by the villains, the X-Men arrive and save the crowd, the crowd boo them, the X-Men beat up the crowd for being bigots while a passerby with a pride flag calls them stunning and brave.
Well, there is definitely a room for messaging in storytelling provided the message does not compromise the story and subtly provokes thoughts. If it's shoved into my throat so much it makes me vomit and story is absolutely given up then no thanks.
TLDR: “The true enemy will do their best to include some of your potential allies in the labels you use to identify enemies.” - me, bottom of this essay. --- To use a allegory, If women have it worse they are the minimum wage worker making $17,000 a year by working 2 jobs and barely surviving. No healthcare, shit food, and living with family or friends to afford rent. They’re being hunted on the streets by agents of the system and occasionally killed for sport. Men in this scenario are the factory workers making $23,000 a year, working overtime, living in overpriced apartments also without healthcare dying from overwork, loneliness and workplace injuries. Old school feminists, social justice seekers, critics and etc would point out the societal issues and portray the wealthy businessmen and corrupt government officials as the villains, exploring the nature of humanity by showing the effects of the system on individuals. They might explore the nature of the system by having people that go against it like a decent businessman trying to do right in a system that rewards corruption, or portray the depths the victims sink to when treated so inhumanely. (Or explore other issues, ideas, etc) The modern movement of so-called “social justice warriors” or “woke elitists” that people are criticizing in good faith are different. These groups blame the factory workers for being slightly better off than the minimum wage workers and ignore the fact that they themselves work for the megacorporate interests cause the problems and that want those groups of workers to be divided. Real, actual feminists want to help people, and focus on women as a specific cause, but the term has been hijacked by those who want to tear down those who are slightly better off than them in order to make everyone slightly worse off. It has gotten to the point where many people refuse to use the label “feminist” because its so hated. Meanwhile the corporate interests destroying the country laugh and send the Pinkertons in to kill yet another worker. Whether you are a man-hating, “anyone who disagrees with me is a fascist” woke type trying to tell young men their experience and suffering is not valid, or an antiwoke women-hating “feminists are feminazis” type trying to defend your favorite media, if you are blaming the “other side” for your problems than you are part of the problem. Because playing the blame game helps no one. The only way to move forward is to identify the real issues, find some way to accept other peoples flaws, and work together with those people to address the systematic problems threatening us all. I know it sucks. The “other side“ is unfairly targeting you so you want to target them back. But if you make generalizations of your enemy and target all inside those general characteristics you are helping prolong the conflict. Thats the conflict between potential allies. Because a woman who feels like she is not being heard and a man who feels like he is not being heard should mot be fighting each other about who has it worse. They should be listening to each other and working together to get those voices heard. Videos like this can help identify specific problems, and that can be really useful in defining language that can be used to express ideas. But its really important to use that language to make specific criticisms and avoid overgeneralizing against some “other side”. “The true enemy will do their best to include some of your potential allies in the labels you use to identify enemies.” Personally, I think the above statement is a really good general guideline. If someone is trying to convince you that someone is your enemy, you will want to ask yourself if they are making money telling you that, and whether that “enemy” might be better as even a tentative ally.
What I think alot of these people don't get is it's not even that it's not okay to make your stories about politics it's when the politics ARE the story when it's impossible for anyone to see them in any direction but your own. That is just plain bad writing. Good writing leaves people room to think for themselves and to make their own opinions it doesn't give them an opinion and demand they accept it.
This channel is probably the best one if you want to write good stories but fear your political bias taking away from a good story. Literature Devil is great at pointing out exactly what the issue is with writing, what the mentality causes. For example, SJW heroes being motivated by spite rather than actual justice. Try to catch if your writing is based on spite and not justice.
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I think more than just bias is that these people are here to give us their answers rather than questions. Sure, there will be "common sense" answers like "Hitler bad," but I feel like a lot of the classic comics like to make people wonder if what happens is for the best? The core difference in our prejudice and the prejudice against mutants in X-Men is that the mutants have powers, and could pose a threat to normal humanity, thus, neither side is blatantly wrong. But when you want to give answers you have to make something blatantly wrong that the average person would never choose, because they don't have sympathy for the disagreements inherit in political actions. People love a status quo, that doesn't make them stupid for not being one of the trailblazers of progressivism. That said, I can't believe some people are still trying to force us back to their past ideals, and they co-opted "woke" for it, what a waste of a perfectly fine definition.
tl;dr, In 20 years, we'll be complaining about new things, "woke" is meaningless now, and just talk to people in real life, social media just wants to incite you.
sexual immorality is bad repent
I hate being "that guy", but you should check the pronunciation of Menachem Begin. The correct pronunciation isn't obvious based on the spelling.
Kelly sue is iconic,
Iconic for losing sales!
Fail Simone is iconic too.
Iconic for… and talking rubbish about something that was not a thing fridging.
I have stated on multiple occasions, and here's another one: "If you put Magneto and Malcolm X in the same room for 30 minutes. Brother Malcolm would call him a psychopath, and Magneto would call him a pussy." They are not the same.
Who said this?
@@naamadossantossilva4736 He did.
I mean op is not wrong stan lee made magneto a one dimensional mutant supremacist villain, boring and uninteresting. While Claremont made him not so one dimensional.
But magneto always slides to a separatist to full blown supremacist and never really champion for integration outside of when prof x is out of the picture. Malcolm x wanted black people to take care and support themselves as white people weren’t going to. But magneto would be closer to marcus garvy and leave the usa to full blown let take over Alabama and form our own country. Like the comparison was never that good.
@zeroxwarrior Magneto is closer to Che Guevera than anyone else. Also, Stan Lee's Magneto was fine for what he was, a straight up villain. Think of all of the great villains, they were more menacing than relatable and that's just fine.
I know this to be true, but I hardly had the words for it before now
A villain: "The world did me wrong, so I will lie, cheat, and steal to get what I deserve"
A hero: "The world did me wrong, so I shall do right so others won't suffer as I have"
However these "modern" writers are writing the "villain" version as heroic.
You either die A hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. - Harvey Dent.
Well, lying at least is hardly unique to villains, to be fair. And cheating and stealing aren't entirely either. But it's a useful simplification, nonetheless.
@@VeryPeevedThe point was the selfish motivation to wrong others.
In the first example, they create more people like themselves, in the second, they prevent it.
Well leftists are liars after all.
It's hard to write a story about good vs evil, when the author themself either cannot make a distinction between the two, or personally identifies with evil.
49:16 this is correct.
The x-men aren't popular because of social issues it's the conflict.
Humans fear mutants because some of them are dangerous and evil in fact most of the x-men's enemies are mutants themselves.
What makes the conflict interesting is that the x-men simultaneously have to defend Humans from evil mutants and mutants from humans and everything else
Like I said in the premiere chat, Stan Lee created superheroes and supervillains, not stand-ins for this or that worldview. Each member of the X-Men have their own viewpoint but could still be friends or at least teammates. Even the villains had different reasons for joining the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants or any other group the X-Men fought. Even the anti-mutant crowd as threats took advantage of real world events to forge a threat for the heroes, not to push one ideology over another through stereotypes and forced allegory. They stood for outcasts in general trying to fit in, and I can relate to that in theory. The only X-Men I connected to was the Evolution TV series as I related to those events as someone outcast in high school but still had people on my side.
You could just as easily make an argument that the X-Men are an allegory for 2nd amendment rights. People will find whatever meaning they want to in stories, that doesn't mean it was the author's intent.
@@AkuTenshiiZeroBut people aren't born with guns, and not everybody is fit or responsible enough to own a gun now, isn't it?
@@DonVigaDeFierroin free America, people are born with guns 😂
The X-men was originally conceived as a teen superhero team with the most generic origin possible: being born with super powers. But that’s not how they stayed, they became much more than just a gimmick Stan made up. The X-men have also been a product of their time, be it during the 60s counter culture and civil rights struggle, the 70s dissolution of authority and increasingly mature themes in comics, the 80s dark dystopias in the final years of the Cold War, to the EXTREME 90s and directionlessmess and complete corporatization of late 20th century pop culture, to the war on terror and fears of government overreach in the new millennium, to the increasing acceptance of marginalized groups and the pushback to that acceptance, to the complete fracturing and polarization of the US and pop culture fandom and now to today….post pandemic, current high inflation, high dissatisfaction and high sensitivity while ignoring the actual important issues of the day that may lead to Armageddon.
Cheers!
Kelly Sue Deconnick told the audience, "If you don't like my politics, don't buy my book." Four years later, she confessed that she was worried that the public had actually taken her advice and stopped buying her book and other SJW comic books. Instead of saying, "Problem solved," as she commented previously, she lamented despairingly that comic book stores were closing. But why? She did not make the connection that she, along with other woke comic book writers, had flooded these stores with issues that no one wanted to buy. So, the second clip shows her complaining that customers took her advice. The video of this lament is also on RUclips. The juxtaposition of the two clips is simply delicious. Pushing woke politics in people's faces and then challenging them not to buy her product did not turn out to be the best business plan for her.
Comics may have always been political but that was never the only thing they were.
Exactly. And Stan Lee's use of universal truth rather than just promoting his personal politics was key to the superhero genre and what made it so lovable.
No lady was right, just not in the way she believes and ironically literature devil's video explains it pretty well. Comics always had politics but they were commentary that asked the reader to think. Her politics are preachy and secretly villainous.
@@rsync9490 mhm
The last time they were close to this bad was the Reagan era and believe me those comic sucked too.
One big part I do like to note on that: Take the example of nature girl.
WHO are she attacking? The suits responsible? No? Ah yes, it was the peasants. Squabble between each other! Leave the elite out of this!
We even had similar back in BTAS. They could *not* show the government or the corporations as "bad". Nor ever be held responsible for their actions.
Glad to have people proving these usual lies wrong. Because the people using it take advantage of people not knowing the full details.
“Men are so scary!”
Also…..
“Open boarders! No one is illegal!”
That ending hurts. Modern Marvel disappoints on pretty much every item in that Marvel Bill of Rights.
Those of us who remember when Captain America confronted the fact that America no longer upheld the values he fought for, so he threw down his shield and became Nomad.
No. The far better scene they pretend never existed was the one where he protected some neo-Nazi at a speech from a crowd because while he disagreed with him vehemently,, his right to freedom of speech allowed him to spew that hate. Because silencing those because you disagree with them was the truly dangerous path.
Now the writers had him attack some randos at a bar because he overheard them using a word he didn't like.
@@dbsommers1"I don't like what you said, but I will fight to the death to allow you to say it."(horrible paraphrase)
"X-Men was always woke" goes along with the claim "Star Trek was always woke". They confuse classical liberalism (the rights and freedoms of the individual) with modern progressive "liberalism" (the identity and power of the collective).
Justice, basic human rights and dignity versus resentment, spite, and envy.
This.
It is wrong to call them progressive liberalism. They are marxists, which makes them anti-liberalism by definition.
…but Star Trek is literally communism. The whole shebang. DEI Bridge Crew, no money, free health care, the government just gives you what you need to live. Star Trek has always been extremely woke, if you think communism is woke, it’s just that it didn’t matter to most of the stories they told.
Thank you!
If Professor X was real, modern day activists would call him a Pick Me who has internalized mutantphobia.
Oh, man. I never had to think about that as a possibility. That feels grimy because of how true it is.
Depending on the writer in the comics, he sometimes is just that.
Kinda like calling A black man who hates Snoop Dogg an 'Uncle Tom'.
@@Americanbadashh and depending on them, he can just go "ehhh, f*ck it, Magneto was right"
and you two just showed why lore consistency is important.
Stop saying "get your politics out of comics" and start saying "get your proselytism out of comics".
We might as well start.
Proselytism is more accurate, but not as catchy. How about "Get your PROPAGANDA out of comics" instead?
This puts into words why I feel so repulsed by the woke "heroes".
Modern heroes are mainly just selfish villains but painted as heroes. As Plinkett said, it's something most might not notice - but their brains do.
15:42 That Riri scene is oddly meta. Usually the writers just have the character be oppressed; but Riri's complaining that the teacher is supportive.
When I first saw those panels, I was dumbfounded.
She quotes Sally Ride about how people told her no and she was determined to prove them wrong. Methinks Riri did not understand the message. Or Bendis didn't when crafting her backstory.
Back when JustSomeGuy still had a clear head on his shoulders, he did a hilarious take on that scene, with Riri repeatedly dropping hard n-bombs and accusing the teacher of _thinking_ about the word when the teacher didn't take the bait.
because riri is not written by writters, but by activists that have a deeply warped view of reality where they can't distinguish real oppression from the illussion of woke oppression,.
@@draketheduelist The downfall of JustSomeGuy is really sad.
The real problem is not comics being political or not, its people FORGETTING TO USE WORDS CORRECTLY. It's not entirely the leftists fault, more a product of the times. But imagine how easy this whole thing would be to sort if we used the correct terms like "political propaganda" instead of just the generic, unhelpful term "politics". Yes, politics have always been in comics, but as part of a story, not as blatant propaganda. Activism was an isolated, often depised, political badgering activity, now it's a rotten part of everyday discourse, mudding any converstaion anyone wants to have. Mass media allowed the people who shout all the time to shout more and to more people, and that makes normal speech become invisible.
Exactly, when context is mangled, anything turns into a problem. Which then leads to people hating what the context originated from because you have a bunch of groups shoving thar Roosters and Cats in the pie we call good fking content, that it turns the pie into a rancid mess that mutilated any flavor it had originally.
Politics can be turned into something interesting, but there`s a difference between butchering the lore of a story and then there`s Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance who can take political involvement in a story and make it fking amazing without even having to understand the crap or even have to have most of the damn story caked up with explainations to `attempt` to brainwash you into following along.
If the `explaination medium` can`t bloody make the material engaging, then its just straight up the difference gap you could get with someone trying to make paint drying on a wall a `political thing` and then you have someone like Yoko Taro or Hideo Kojima who could take that same paint drying on a wall and make it so bat-shite insane, despite its still paint drying on the wall still. Like comparing the drying of the paint on a wall to be the setting in of layers to cover up the cracks and damages under`neath with any large globs of it being excess that leads to lasting consequences like bubbles of paint that has to be `brushed down` to evenly smooth it out and any paint that drips and slides down leads to similar streaks of un-even`ness, just like with businesses that pull highly irrational practices that could damage other involved companies (such as thar reputation) or other people involved all because they are hyper fixated on short term gains such as `quickly getting the paint to cover up problems`, even while they ignore the flies, nails and tape still present and just cover it up and leave nasty protrustions that will need to be ripped out and repainted over and likely result in a entirely un-even layer as a result.
But anyway moral of the story: Boot to the heads for all the Sociopathic lunatics who ruin anything they are involved in and maybe have proper basic communication enforced in early education so people remember common sense is also mandatory in businesses, such as NOT sabotage entire business structures for terrible `practices`, since having a bunch of people think they are on some Holier then all that stands above the Heavens Crusade at the helm of things like politics was never a good idea.
Especially when the only damn reason these kind of things work is because they been exploiting other companies that give out `free money` to follow so-called practices that harm the product more then promote any form of so-called `healthy censorship` they wanna brag about is so important.
Even then for every issue of X-men that dealt with human/mutant relations you had five where they went into space with the star jammers to overthrow or aid the Shi’ar depending on who was in charge that week, or rode dinosaurs into battle against evil sorcerers in the savage lands.
Because even when told through allegory as part of a story people need the occasional break from reality to decompress.
I’m convinced that’s why radicals of any sort are so messed up in the head. They’re on course 100% and have long forgotten to take break and enjoy the silliness every now and then.
when superman flies supplies to marines on okinawa i have no problem with that
when some third rate woke snowflake stop entire action to tell me that personal carbon footprint is killing planet and i need to get rid of my car i have a problem with that
I just read all of the comics of Ms. Marvel losing her powers to Rogue and becoming Binary, and she wasn't a feminist, just a character going through different experiences.
Carol Danvers wasn't even popular in her original comic run. Hell, there's a reason they put that girl in a coma for a decade while a better character (Rogue) ran around with her powers. And when they briefly had Carol take control of Rogue during one of her comic runs. Carol almost single handedly put that comic out of print so much so they had to back track that decision fast as hell.
I hate how they try to make Stan into some kind of progressive activist. I met the man, he was an entertainer and a storyteller, a businessman first and foremost. The X-Men were no agenda just a blanket appeal to "those who felt they never fit in" and the Stan Lee X-Men also FAILED. Giant Size X-Men is what SAVED the X-Men from obscurity. Chris Claremont turned the X-Men into the JUGGERNAUT it was. Without Claremont spending DECADES writing and guiding the X-Men and everything related to them from the series relaunch until the 90's we would have no X-Men. Modern comic writers are hacks who cannot even write one series for a few years much less a few decades and they cannot write even a single story well.
He kinda was, people were complaining about the characters. Jack and Stan still kept writing about it.
@@daryltor7608 Yeah most of the people complaining about Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s characters were often complaining about how radical they weren’t 😂 believing marvel tried to uphold the “evil capitalist status quo.” I know this because Stan would often talk to these young activists back in the 60’s & 70’s 😂in terms of complaining customers the situation was mostly the stark opposite back then. There were complaints by certain left leaning activists about how the comics weren’t political enough.
As always when it comes to a question of what changed, the content or the audience, the answer is Both.
I don't think the audience really changed, it's just that hackivists were allowed into the comics industry where they don't belong.
@abrahambobst4602 As much as the existence of Grifters (and hacktivists) has grown in recent years, the audience always changes.
The main two examples would be A) People who become one of the audience in their childhood who then grow up , and B) Someone becoming one of the audience years after it existence/started.
Quite simply, it's impossible for anyone/anything's audience NOT to change. That's why content changes, because if it was a stagnant pool, your audience would lose interest.
YoungRippa59 said it best about how the X-men was never about the civil rights movement. That was a myth and Stan Lee said it best. Also X-men 97 is woke mess unlike the classic one from the 90s and the books. These woke women need to be fired because they don't support the characters and lore. A character's complex hero's journey story matters more than checking a box for diversity like woke women keep on pushing. It was never heavy handed political biases like the Left says. Tell a good story first.
Sjw: um stan lee himself would agree with the way marvel is going! Its always been about the politics:
LD: #presents stans own 10 rules for writing a marvel comic book
This reminds me of ShortFatOtaku's video on media literacy, where he explains that you can apply any kind of political meaning to any story depanding on you political lens. He called it "the fine art of bullshit"
😂😂😂 exactly
Dude, this is your best video yet!
I'm gonna be linking this everywhere!
That part about "the world outside your window" actually meaning a universal truth gave me chills.
Awesome! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
Stan Lee is the real hero, even years after his death his words and stories still manages to surprise and inspire me to be a good person ;-;
When talking about x-men, i love the movies way of how professor x and magneto reacted to each other, they hated each other, but still respected each other, and magneto's words about professor x's death says it all, "quite, he has done more for mutant kind then you will ever understand"
If comics were always the way DeConnick depicts them, then they wouldn't be as popular as they were before her crowd changed the stories. For evidence: the poor way they're selling now and how former fans trash what's currently being made.
Bruce Banner was raised by an abusive father who killed his mother, if the Universal movie is still MCU Hulk's backstory. He was chased by his girlfriend's father and romantic rival because of the Hulk and it led to ending his relationship with Betty Ross. Then after being on the run he finally finds acceptance and a chance to love again only for Black Widow to sacrifice herself because of her own character arc to save the universe. I think that's slightly worse than some drunken idiot with too many hormones catcalling her or some jerk at work who wants to get ahead talking over her. Bruce also blames himself for her situation and is trying to help her avoid what he went through as the Hulk and she should at least acknowledge that. If she does it hasn't been in any clip I've seen. He wouldn't turn around and give some other lady Hulk powers because she wants to smash stuff like "men" do, ignoring Hulk's whole comic history.
I've worked in a grocery store so knowing this is how the writer sees me is not going to win me over. This is how the writer decided to represent me. Also...how does a shopping bag from LAS VEGAS, NEVADA (I think that's where the story took place) end up in the waters of Krakoa in the Pacific Ocean? This doesn't cross her mind? Could the bag have led to shipwrecked people who didn't even know the bag floated up from the wreck of their boat after going shopping while on vacation in Vegas? There is no thought in this story at all and it wants me personally dead. Not a fan.
The thing with how Jenifer originally became She-Hulk, is because she was on the verge of death after being left for death by her mother’s killers that pinned Bruce in a disparate situation while being hunted but the authorities to give her a blood transfusion in order for her cousin to survive. Bruce afterwards when he heard the news Jen had became She-Hulk he was mortified, ashamed and guilty of himself for causing this to her. However, Jenifer informed Bruce that she actually likes being She-Hulk, she considers it her true self and she adores and empathizes with Bruce over the exchange to soon move on as her own woman taking on a lawyer career and being a part of superhero teams such as the Fantastic Four to fill in for Thing and the Avengers for years.
Now she berates Banner, to the point of despising him altogether, it’s so stupid they want to make it that she had it the worse for existing as a woman, when the point of her character is that she actually had it easier than Bruce did!
@@LegacyComics100 The Disney+ version of Jennifer just found it annoying until she was force to acknowledge she even was She-Hulk. The transfusion was an accident, a few drops of blood transferred when they were in an accident because unlike the comic and previous cartoon appearances, the writers didn't want a "MAN!!!!!" responsible for her powers.
Comic Jen was kind of a wallflower until she gained strength and beauty, and became more confident. That's why she embraced She-Hulk. While Bruce's origin is bathed in death and suffering, Jennifer's is based on life and overcoming in the comics. MCU Jen is just based on frustration and quirky arrogance.
Plant girl would have been in the brotherhood of mutants in the 70s and got her butt kicked by the xmen.
I know the Incredible hulk has some flaws but I still think it's a good movie for what it was. I mean the deleted scenes from the movie were genuinely really good. I wished the movie had came out in 2010 though so they can add some of deleted scenes.
@@rsync9490
Nah she would have been with the marauders. The brotherhood might have been a bunch of racist terrorists, but they still had standards.
“It will make Reddit angry” as a bar to clear is so low you need a shovel and an hour to find it
And somehow there are people out there that claim they don't understand why most people don't like modern comics🙄
They're either playing dumb or just real life supervillains who want people to bow to them.
People who compare Malcom X to Magneto, really don’t understand his positions like…at all.
It is the three flaws.
1) the parasite. It doesn't matter if they suck so long as the host they are attached to can survive ir.
They cling to the big brand properties not because they want to write good stories, but because every comic could fail and yet the company will sustain itself by using the other products... Like games, toys, movies, etc.
It is why Amazon could care less if rings of power flopped... Because Amazon supports itself by its main business so it can weather the losses.
2) the outlast theory.
It doesn't matter if nobody likes their garbage. If they outlast their foes then the next generation will have nothing, but their garbage to read, watch, and shape them.
It is why a lot of these comic book industry has recouped losses by selling the books to schools.
So long as there is nothing else in the schools to read for fun besides garbage then by their logic the next generation should be primed and ready consumers of garbage.
Also does not help that they can trick the younger generations into looking at it when they remember watching a good movie or a good cartoon and expect the comics to be more of the same... Failing to realize why nobody had read the garbage for the past decade.
3) The three lie system.
Product X is awful because Y.
Product X is okay because of Z.
Product X was always F because it is now our product.
Doctor Who is a prime example of this in action.
Doctor Who season 11 was racist because it had always been racist.
Doctor Who season 12 is okay because they address made up issue.
Doctor who season 13 proved that Doctor Who was always woke as seen by the current doctor and you just never bothered to see it because you are the problem.
So long as they make that narrative and try to apply social pressure by bots, mobs, and political agendas supporting them... Then they can get away with it.
Just look at 40K for the most recent example.
40K is fascist. Then when got 40K isn't that bad and we got the 'the game is open to everyone' tag line with specific rules about going after those who had political agendas.
Now? Now we had female space marines loud debate within the last two years... Everyone saying it was stupid.
Then we get Black Rock, and Vanguard buying up 11% of stocks and Amazon offering a TV show at the cost of a few demands... And now Female Custodians were always a thing and the 40K universe was always progressive as even the Emperor of Mankind was non-binary!
If nobody stops it or the outrage isn't loud enough... They simply use this event to justify their next change... And the next change... And the next... Until the company goes under.
The progress of the disease working its curse within a period of less than 10 years.
So long as the garbage keeps flowing and sustained by other products they think they can weather the storm.
Ah, someone who knows what's up. Way to put it into words with the 3 lie system.
How interesting that this legend about Stan Lee was only born after the man died and was unable to refute it.
The legend has been around for a while, but it only became a common defense at Marvel long after Stan Lee had retired from drawing comics (instead mostly just performing cameos in the MCU) and when his health was starting to fail.
Great video. I don't remember where I got this from but i heard that X-men was actually inspired by the holocaust, Isreal, and Palestine. Also, modern artists forget this detail or they don't care, but the difference between Xavier and Magneto is that for the xmen, you're a hero before your a mutant, while with Magneto, you're a mutant first. This is what seperates the good mutants, and the evil ones who want to oppress or destroy their fellow man. Xmen is about fear of our fellow man. Not mlk, malcom x, or black people.
One more thing, the original X-men was not a popular comic, as a civil rights mirror, and did use re-runs to keep the cost down. It was not until writer like Chris Claremont, X-men become one of the best seller. What did he do? More supernatural fantastic things, like the Phoenix, lots of (implied) sex, soap and love drama, with the standard stop the bad guy.
I think the best way to summarize the situation would be that while comics were always left leaning, they were left leaning in a sane way, and people are talking leftism in insane directions so now the old "progressives" are seen the same as the conservatives were. The original, sane, leftists, are turning on comics due to the ridiculousness. See there is nothing wrong with black characters, women, sexual minorities, and other things and that has all been there to some extent from the beginning BUT it's the extent to which it's taken, the replacement, the tearing down of general society, and so on. That's where the problem is. It's that activists always need a battle to fight, when the reasonable ones are won, they create unreasonable ones, and comic fans do not like them using comics as a platform for unreasonable positions.
Trying to argue that something was always leftist or always used for activism always has to be tempered by how far it's gone and the sanity of the message. Oh sure to true believers the message is always sane and reasonable, but those people need to gain the perspective that when there is blowback like this they have stepped over the edge, rather than dancing on it. Of course to the insane activist they justify it by claiming there was blowback against the reasonable stuff to, and don't seem to ever realize when or where that line was crossed, perhaps in some cases believing there is no line as it's existential social warfare.
To put it in one final perspective, in the old days when those "original activist stories" were told there was both public funding of mental health, and everyone doing printing, including self-publishing houses, generally had policies against "crackpotism". Simply put had someone brought these stories before someone like Marvel, DC, or any one of the fanzines dealing with the older fandoms being corrupted now, they would not have been published due to the insanity involved. Part of the problem is that with the lack of mental health funding, such people have started to corrupt and use systems and so on, as there is no safeguard against them in a system designed to use the standard of "reasonable people" as the law says. An unforseen result of cutting such funding. If half the stuff suggested today was submitted to most of the 60s and 70s activists who did this stuff and became popular for it, not only would they have refused to give it a platform, there is a reasonable chance they would tip off the men in white coats to come knocking on doors. A piece of history a lot of people seem to forget. Reagan wanted to cut costs so defunded that in the 80s, thinking letting the nutters run free would do minimal damage compared to the money that could be saved. Well guess what, he's wrong, instead we have a world where people are denying the very existence of gender and publishers are afraid to say no to them.
It's just bad writing that's the problem. Comics were always left-leaning, just with better writing. Poor writers tend to write Mary Sues, vapid power fantasies, unlikable characters, soapbox preachy dialogue and so forth. Any good writer can get you to agree with their politics at least on that specific issue in their fictional world. A lot of modern writers fail miserably at that.
The "woke" push for corporations is entirely marketing spin. "We want to promote diversity and inclusion in our staff" sounds a lot better than "We pay our writers shit and hired people desperate enough to take the job because we want to increase our profit margins by cutting costs on workers and seeing what the cheapest viable product is."
@@taragnor I think bad writing is part of the problem, but the thing is it's actually the smaller part of the problem. A lot of badly written things have been incredibly successful and popular with good ideas and concepts or even proper messaging. Harry Potter for example is not exactly a literary marvel, no offense to JK Rowling. Her ideas though were top notch and the messages in the story resonated with everyone.
The problem is you could have the second coming of "The Bard" himself and not sell this stuff. If William Shakespeare himself was challenged to sit down and sell some of these messages about gender not exist, or how there is all this bigotry and crap that doesn't actually exist because activists need to pretend it exists to justify himself, he's not going to be able to pull it off.
The problem is that a modern entertainment industry is working with the media to claim there are all these racists running rampant, with cops being incredibly bigoted on average and all kinds of other things. In the meantime when people look outside they don't see that, but they do see them attacking those allegedly bigoted police offices, and the result is the mass looting of stores and an upswing of violent crime, especially in the ethnic communities that should have been revealed to have been a bunch of peaceful hippies the whole time
So basically while they are portraying the heroes as the people who support this, and have them beating up straight white villains and all the white heroes being kind of naive idiots at best, in the real world people are beginning to again sort of understand the 1930s world view that spawned characters like Batman in an era when organized crime ran the streets and the police were rendered powerless to do anything. As stores are being looted people sort of get the idea of why having Batman pull up in "The Bat Mobile" and start tearing up gangs of looters, leaving them hanging from lamp posts or whatever, or why a later character like "The Punisher" going into an area known for violent crime in his "War Wagon" and shooting gang members and other violent criminals with the same abandon they target other people might have appeal.
Rather, you have the comics telling you these heroes are wrong and a "public menace" not all that different from what happens when a corrupt politician or mind control villain takes over. Sadly though we don't actually have super heroes in real life, though to be fair, it wouldn't shock me if people start trying it for real soon as like many origin stories the police and politicians are providing themselves unable to deal with the problem or even want to admit it exists.
I'm getting too long and tangential, but the point is, you can't sell this insanity with even the best writing. That's why it will never work, because while these works are fantasy they still have to be somewhat grounded especially when the point is to address some "real issue". You lose the audience when that "real issue" doesn't exist, and the people who genuinely believe it does are pretty much insane.
You can take that away from racial politics and insert most things pushed under the woke umbrella into the same example.
I kind of wish people still read nowadays (other than short comments) as I feel these are things that really need to be considered, and the points just don't work in short form. Until the whole problem is acknoledged and this part is also confronted more directly (instead of people talking around it) we will never see a solution.
When mainstream entertainment is being written by a bunch of insane pariahs, it's never going to be successful, as the only audience will be people like them, and even if some of them do have money, there aren't enough of them to make it profitable.
The stuff these people write belongs in like fringe, arthouse press, I have no problem with stuff like this existing. That said it's not mainstream, nor is it a reflection of any reality at all. Even if some of it was based on real experience as claimed, they are fringe events, and not something the audience is going to accept as normal because it is not.
They need good writing, and sane messaging, and that message can be very left wing as we've seen, without going into madhouse territory. They need actual, normal,. left wingers to write this if they want it. Not extremists with an axe to grind who have no talent on top of it.
@@jeremyrichard2722 Good writers can sell anything honestly. When you're writing a fictional story, you control the entire world, so it's relatively easy (if you're at all talented), to frame things however you want.
Cops can be brave heroes protecting the people or they can be corrupt, racist and generally horrible. Depends on how you portray them in your story. A vigilante like The Punisher o r Batman could be a hero doing what the cops can't do, or he could be a dangerous maniac who acts as judge, jury and executioner. The funny thing is that it probably doesn't matter what your biases towards real-world vigilantes and police officers, based off what how the author portrays it, you will generally accept that the hero's point of view is correct, at least within the realm of the real world.
This is largely because you can highlight the good parts of your protagonist and downplay the bad. The Punisher kills the criminals and we see how a dangerous city becomes safe, he's the hero. The Punisher kills some criminals but many innocents are killed in the process and it only amps up the chaos and murder in the city. We in turn see the Punisher as a villain. This further can be reinforced by showing how bad the criminals he's killing are. Make them really evil. Harassing old ladies, murdering children. Makes the audience hate the criminals and show us how the police do nothing. We will all want to see Punisher put a bullet in their heads. Whatever your angle, whether you want to push xenophobia, feminism, gun control or antisemitism, if you're a good writer you can set the story up such that your story supports that position as correct.
A bad writer tries to send a message and the audience turns against them, because they did such a poor job selling it, they come off as the unreasonable one.
Left and right are not good categories. WW2 Germany was a socialist state (national socialism to be specific) yet is called right wing. The abolishes of slaves was done by republicans yet that is called left wing. Trump has voted democrat all his life and was endorsed by a founding member of the black panthers., yet somehow is his right wing.
Who decides what is left and what is right?
The issue with comics right now is that they are run by marxists.
The X-men being all outcast make me think about Tolkien and the fact he preferred applicability to allegory. X-men are applicable to all outcast (black people, homosexual, etc...) and not just allegory of one specific group. They are hero who fight for a better world for everyone.
Exactly. The X-men will always be ‘the other’, able to represent any group that is oppressed. It doesn’t matter if Stan intended this or not, because this aspect of the X- men was crystallized by Claremont, with Stan’s implicit approval (Stan Lee Presents…)
I don't think black people are out casts,more like oppressed,discriminated against and racism is thrown against them. No one knows if a man is a homosexual unless he tells some one,black people are black all day long,they don't get to pick or chose to tell folks they're black. There're over 300 recorded incidents of black towns being burned to the ground by racist wht people,have homosexuals ever had this happen to them ??? I doubt it.The X-Men are mostly all white,hard to see other whites really hating them,tho.
if they make the conversation about how to get more power, then they have already fallen to the dark side. star wars taught me at least that much.
The situation is even more galling considering how hypocritical these same activist comic pros and modern Xmen defenders are: so denounce Mutant Registration as "hate" but then these same people universally believe in gun control/restriction. Think about it: while mutants in the comic represent "minority" groups/people, unlike the real world where many/most are genuinely helpless in the face of mobs mutants have powers, many of those powers of earth shaking (sometimes literally) magnitude. Unlike humans in the real world, mutants in Earth 616 DO have the power to take over if they organized and weaponized their powers. Mutants are essentially LIVING weapons.
The analogy of Xmen being stand ins for real people in the real world falls to pieces when considering how dangerous mutants countless mutants actually are and how quickly incidents like Colombine would be commonplace in a world where mutant exist. How fast would it take of incident like Parkland for these idealists and mutant defenders to suddenly be screaming for mutant registration and restriction if they were real? Since many of the comic pros today clearly are for weapon restriction, then what does that say about the mutant question? The current writers are so interested in virtue signaling and using mutants as wish fulfillment/self inserts/projection for themselves, they don't consider how Stan Lee and Chris Claremont made clear that even the mutant haters were not without SOME justification for their fears when mutants like Apocolypse, Mr Sinister, Namor, the Hellfire Club, the Brotherhood, all start trying to shake up and/or destroy the world.
Today's writers are too busy feeling, that they forget to think. There is more to the mutant issue than just "oh they're just a misunderstood minority". They are also insanely DANGEROUS. They are few in number but just a few Omega level mutants could bring down the entire world. Civil rights are one thing but for average humans in earth 616 this is a real existential threat that can't just be smoothed over with a cool Hellfire Gala event.
Mutants can draw a lot of parallels to real world issues. The connection between any sort of oppressed minority is definitely there and it's pretty easy to see parallels of bigotry and hate-crimes that happen with regards to mutants, as well as a battle for legal civil rights for mutants. There's a lot of common ideas there, the idea of normals being "replaced" by mutants for instance, and people fearing mutants getting any sort of power as they could overturn the existing hierarchy. Lots of forms against bigotry can have parallels here, racism, anti-LGBT hatred and antisemitism.
There's is also a parallel with gun control too, especially since the idea that X-Men tends to as the default solution is "good guy with a gun." That is after all what the X-Men are all about, good mutants helping to deal with the bad ones, even when normal people are largely helpless to handle the dangerous mutants. This is of course, just a trope of the medium in general, where superheroes fight against supervillains.
I think though that while mutant powers are granted, extremely strong, most actual groups in the world could take over if they were organized and willing to resort to violence on a large scale, so I wouldn't say that's unlike the real world. Like anything comic book oriented, the comic version turns the dial to 11, but any violent organized group is a danger in real life too. It's just more extreme in comics, especially given that governments don't have sufficient number of mutant police officers and military personnel to handle mutant uprisings (who by and large tend to be independents).
It's certainly the case that some of the fear of mutants is justified. But that's largely what makes it an interesting situation. Even in the real world, often neither side is 100% correct, but often times over-reactions tend to lead to problems.
"I want a cure!" Said the girl who kills everyone she touches.
"You don't need a cure!! We are perfect the way we are!!" Said the girl who controls the fucking weather.
@@taragnorReally? What kinda "oppressed minority" can outright kill its opressors with their fucking mind?
indeed. as there is actually more correct parallel. men and women. mutants are the men in this scenario. far stronger, and dangerous. and an angry man can murder a women or even another man. men have to learn to control their power, to not be threatening to other men, and women, etc. we have to have women only spaces, segregation for restrooms, sports for womens protection. women even outnumber men in reality. men are the minority. But, yeah, these activist would NEVER even consider that. it would break their brains to even consider it. they will insist men need to be lectured, to change, to be castrated, etc..
…Wouldn’t the fault be on whoever littered there instead of the store itself? They just provide the bags for people to put stuff in them, not control what their customers do with the bags
You would think so lol
Common case of blaming the guns, not the shooter...
Except it's not a gun... it's a literal plastic bag...
33:36 which John Wick used the excuse of his trauma dog being killed to “do something” where the only thing he’s good at is killing. It’s a tragedy.
Yes. I even hold the belief that he might just be a villain protagonist.
@@LiteratureDevilhe’s a hitman. Of course he’s villain protagonist. It’s objectively true no matter if you agree or not with his rampage. Anyone saying otherwise should be checked in with specific doctors.😂
I didn't realize I was using Stan Lee's own philosophy in my own writing. Great video as all ways. Writing hero's as villain's with political bias. Makes a lot of sense when you look at the current state of story craft within the western world.
Yep 🔥
"Comics have ALWAYS been political!!!"
Comics then: Heroes dealing with being outcasted or the moralities of humanity. Often times, their own in world politics
Comics now: COLORED GAY GOOD! TRUMP BAD!
Except their version of 'political' always means 'embracing the left in any and all things'. If it's the least bit non left leaning, they then complain about it.
So a United States lawyer attacks a police vehicle, and damages United States property...shouldn't she be fines, and even disbarred?
Many miss the point of mutants, which is they are walking talking nukes. Regular humans have every right to be afraid of them given the amount of destruction they can accidentally cause and the government causing more destruction to detain them. This fear turns to hate and prejudice, which is where the allegory comes in. The mutants are not defenseless, which makes their ostracization more tragic as they were literally born that way and are unable to lead normal lives.
9:51 I loved it when Linkara reviewed X-Men Green and declaring "THIS COMIC SUCKS!"
He did 😂😂😂😂
Well, it DOES. Really badly lol
I’m genuinely shocked Linkara said it was bad given he proudly proclaimed he was an SJW back in 2017
@@LiteratureDevil He also described it as an environmental story written by someone who HATES environmentalism.
The problem is not even with politics, its with the fact that modern comic books are usually a huge pile of steaming shit (Mostly Marvel and DC)
This is the best break down on the topic of all the ones I've seen. Good job!
Much appreciated!
Crazy to think about that She-Hulk scene with Bruce like Bruce didn’t live with an abusive father and a dead mother and now lives walking on egg shells his whole life loool.
I must say, as someone who's aspiring to be a writer, this video and all the others pointing out the tricks to telling engrossing stories, the shortcomings of modern mediocrity, and the lessons taught by writing legends of the past really do give me hope that I might someday create stories that people will enjoy.
Stephen Amell (CW's Oliver Queen/Green Arrow) said he learned a lot from good show leads. He learned a lot more from bad show leads.
The whole mutants=civil rights allegory doesn't work anyway.
If kids hitting puberty actually activated powers like exploding things, shooting lasers from their eyes, super-strength, etc., this would be a huge safety issue in real life. There would need to be either some form of special schools for mutants or power dampeners or something. I mean, we all love the mutants (well, the classic mutants, written by sane people), but real life is more complicated than, 'Accept me with no caveats!'
Here's a good X-Men story that is political, not politically-biased, off the top of my head (assuming the Krakoa era is over and done):
Let's say a politician, a mayor of a small town with access to some decent tech, tries to roll out something like the above for his community (they have a larger mutant community than most small towns): maybe he gives the local mutants a choice between a power-dampening anklet to attend regular school, or they can choose to attend a special school run by an older, more experienced mutant, who can teach basic subjects AND help them control their powers (basically, what Xavier should be doing - maybe this older mutant is even an ex-X-Man or something). Maybe a bad-faith journalist writes up the story or a blog and paints the picture that this mayor is forcing young mutants to wear power-dampeners, which causes some mutant extremists AND anti-mutant extremists factions to show up at the town raising hell.
Back at the mansion, the X-Men react to this story typically: at first, some of them are outraged that this mayor is forcing mutants to wear the dampeners, but this is tempered by wiser heads, who can see the article/blog for what it is. They travel to the town, get the full story, and find that it actually doesn't seem that bad. They attempt to calm things down and stand guard around the mayor's office, where the majority of the extremists are protesting. Things SEEM under control, until one of the mutant extremists is able to assassinate the mayor. This kicks off a riot. Maybe the human extremists have gotten their hands on an old sentinel, which they set loose on the town. So, now we have a dead mayor, who was actually a good guy, we have a wild sentinel attacking mutants, we have extremist mutants attacking the humans, and the X-Men/citizens of this town caught in the middle. Maybe the blogger who started this whole thing off is in town again, continuing to rile the world up with cherry-picked facts of the actual story.
This is an example of a complex, political story with nuance. This is NOT what we are getting from Marvel comics at all. I'm just some regular joe - if I can come up with this off the top of my head, you're telling me professional writers can't do any better? I believe they can - they have the ability to, I mean. The problem seems to be that their moral compasses are so askew that they can't see where their stories are going wrong. They keep trying to shoehorn their skewed ideologies into stories about heroes, and that's why it's not working, that's why you will get mixed messages when you read a lot of these stories: bc the writers (and editors) themselves are mixed up in their own heads.
The problem isn’t politics it’s THEIR politics
Marvel should reflect that if the world outside your window has a lock on the window, and bars on the window, then it might be a good idea to see if you can walk outside and check you have not become a prisoner of your own narrow vision that the window provides.
I both love and live for these longer format videos. They're so well crafted you can listen to them like a podcast or watch it like a regular video if you aren't in the car. And Whether you agree with the videos or not (though I don't think I've ever heard you miss), they give you a lot to think about through your day...easily one of my favorite channels on RUclips. I hope you keep making videos for years to come, you devil you 🤣
Hey! Really glad you enjoyed it. I think I'm moving to longer videos. I think people prefer them in this podcast era and I can give more context.
I have had university classes far less than this.
Ironically, they all made feel like I was in hell
Very nice work. Clear examples and good ways to counter "the comics have always been political" arguments.
Glad you enjoyed!
@@LiteratureDevileasy to do when you just lie and cheery pic. Hey why didint you talk about when the x-men became popular in the 1980's with Magento retcon to be a holocaust survivor uncanny x men 150 1981, days of future past 1981 or god loves man kills 1982 the comic to get the largest irl backlash on TV for years after the fact.
Or maybe the fact the x-men werint popular till they became a minority metaphors.....mayyyybe if you were honest you'd bring any of those up?
@@OneofmanyASMR I did. I addressed how it got popular once it started focusing more on the social conflict. It was a big section, I don't know how you missed it.
Also, you said cherry picking! I'm taking a drink!
🤣
@@LiteratureDevil so I went to watch the full section to make sure i wasint misunderstanding. And I did the main thing that thru me was you putting the whole change from uncanny x-men 150 and up to Stan Lee....this is not true? Stan Lee wasint a core part of the creative team in uncanny xmen and then beyond. He didint create the changes you praise other people that would write things like days of future past (the most popular story where explicitly they are victims not heros) and God loves man kills (that explicitly starts with magneto finding 2 mutant children linched).
You try to draw a distinct line between the good x men stuff and the bad stuff when that quite frankly not the case. You also don't bring up god loves man kills at least a pretty landmark comic.
I do admit by skimimg you're x men section I didn't properly understand what you're advocating and I'm wrong on that. However you're main point is still incorrect. Hell most of the storys that are a landmarks point to 2 things simultaneously. That both magneto AND Xavier are wrong. The brotherhood created the days of future past timeline but Xavier compliance is what lead it to pass. Thinking one day they will change ther mind while things only get worse.
Xavier goal of being good enough to be accepted by society is equally as flawed as magneto goal of being so terrifying they can't act against them. Xavier philosophy makes the x men be victims and that what the comics since civil war have dealt with.
Edit you also in fact do not bring up days of future past at all. The only commentary you bring up is x-men 150 and a lil bit of the trial of Magento
Comics technically have been political. Even if it’s not intentional. It might not be something we find controversial at the time but can later. Also how a super hero actions were acceptable at one point but not today. Even if it’s just taking down bad guy. How should that bad guy be taken down?
I like modern comics. I get to see characters in new adventures, interact with new heroes, and face new problems and challenges.
I think heroes should adapt and change to acknowledge and fight the social injustices of a period.
Books like Superman Smashes the Klan and Uncanny Avengers Issue 3 show characters taking a stand when others are too afraid or unwilling to.
From an alien immigrant from another world to a group of outcasts who will defend those who once hunted them down, comics may be idealistic and political nowadays, but they always inspired others to take action for what was right.
Social Justice is mob rule. The mob enjoys power over others without taking any responsibility for their actions. They feel no duty to the individual. They are no different from any violent mob that have taken power by force, including political power.
The Punisher is a vigilante. He was created by the absence of justice. Which was replaced by corruption. Which cost Frank Castle everything, breaking him as a man who had a deep sense of duty and justice. The very things he fought and bled for his country. So he punishes criminals in his ongoing war against the criminal underworld.
Activist writers could never create a character like Frank Castle. Because they could never believe the system could fail a white man. Despite all real-world evidence to the contrary. Because we all know these activists live within their own fantasy world where they are the heroes. Unfortunately, the activist living fantasy has affects in the real world.
That she hulk scene was particularly ridiculous because SHES SHE HULK! Who tf could possibly “murder” her in that context? She spoke as if she was a regular woman.
This video perfectly captures what is wrong with how the fans side of this discourse is being handled. It’s the writers bias that is the issue and their obsession with revenge pron.
also the military never shot at her meanwhile bruce is the worlds most dangerous hobo
She-hulk: does her speech
Bruce: "uhh huh, thats cute. So tell me, have a group of people attempted to shoot you dead at night? Did your friends build tools, specifically to kill and stop you? Have you ever put a gun to your mouth and woke up in another state because your other self got mad? You came here for advice, but so far all you've done is lived and moved on. If you need me, come and actually talk, till then go back to your normal life. Since its clear you don't care about actually being a good person."
Another awesome vid LD. Thorough and hard hitting at the end there.
Took a LONG while to put it together, lol. But I think it was worth it.
My favorite x man villain has always been sabertooth. Almost Every other villain origin is boo-hoo poor me, people were mean to me because I'm a mutant. Sabertooth is just a psychopath who likes hurting people
You need to listen to the words of Stan Lee He clearly stated the characters he created were never woke.
This. Mutants were created because he was tired of coming up with origin stories, when it was easier to write "born mutant".
This was the mic drop-iest mic drop of all mic drops. You nailed it. The entire thing. Thank you so much for doing all the hard work and research that went into this!!!
(Specifically talking about the "feminist" stuff talked in the first half of the video)
What I really dislike about these "social justice" writers is that they are very clearly driven by " *hate* ".
They claim to be part of progressive groups such as feminism, but that would be a lie, because such progressive communities are about equality.
Such groups are against hate, more specifically hate against the people they're defending (duh). They do talk a lot about that.
And these "social justice" writers also talk about the same kind of hate. Great, they dislike the same bad stuff as the group they claim to be a part of... Except these writer's want to do hate against the "oppressors", where as the progressive community want equality, not to just do the exact same thing they're being the victims of.
These writer are entitled, and absolutely terrible advocate for the causes they have themselves claimed to be advocate of. Honestly, f*ck em.
Who let immature angry teens write stuff *AT MARVEL* ?!
Congratulation, Marvel, you've managed to be hated by both the bigots AND the anti-bigots on the topic of politics (Well, A LOT of people hate Marvel nowadays for different reasons than just "the political messaging is done terribly." It's just.... It's just sad honestly.)
Absolute facts. Each and every word.
I'd argue that ever since civil rights and women's suffrage wrapped, most of those "progressive" groups have done whatever they could to justify their continued existence sans an actual goal left to strive for. They're the reason race relations are now worse than they were in the 60s, and why out-and-out misandry is socially acceptable. They already have equality, what they're fighting for now is protected classes and preferential treatment. So, in that way, the social justice crowd are very much in lock-step with them.
I'm so glad you're back man! Please never stop making these videos.
You figure if Xavier and Magneto were supposed to be like this Stan Lee would have made them both black. Lee also wrote Black Panther as a more explicit black super hero, so he would have done it if he wanted.
There's a difference between being "political" and having politics in it and having values or morals with political implications.
To use your example: The x-men has internal politics within the confine of the story that is not from the outside. You can draw allegories from the values prevented in that conflict like with civil rights but it is not JUST the civil rights movement. This format is much more forgiving for the author.
You CAN write a "political" story and have it be good but it has to show "the" truth in as close to it's entirety as possible. Even if one side is wrong, they have reasons they are wrong that make them seem right to themselves. It is a delicate balance but if you can show "my" truth from the perspective of BOTH sides then you can make it work ... which is why the SJWs have such a hard time accomplishing this. They reject the concept of an actual truth on principle. They don't have the mindset that everyone is working imperfectly to discover the actual truth and so can't understand perspectives other than their own. "My" truth is, afterall, "the" truth.
Activist creators can only view characters through the lens of superficial identity like gender, race, sexuality and ideology, and when they change existing ip according to this lens and comic fans complain about it because it's out of character or injecting real life politics into fiction, the activist creator projects their own mentality onto them (because they lack imagination) assuming the fans just want to preserve their own superficial image on the characters.
I thought it was not up to debate that humans are right to fear mutants: Most mutants are objectively evil and far more powerful than any human being. It's the X-men who are in the minority.
Hell, Magneto outright calls himself a "mutant supremacist"
What kinda allegory is that??
Hell some mutants are world ending threats, why would a normal human NOT be crapping their pants over that.
Not to mention the other powers that take away people's will, all it would take is one deranged teen boy with mind control and suddenly you have hundredss of women and teen girls being mind controlled and violated and non the wiser or worse mind controlled into being slaves.
As a father of 3 I would be terrified for my 2 girls becoming a sex slave to some freak, yeah I would vote for a Mutant Registration act and Sentinals being built too.
GOD I love Stan Lee so much, thanks for ending it like this, I feel inspired
This whole discourse makes me believe that these defensive“fans” and current writers never engaged with Marvel the way myself or to an extent most have been exposed to:
Marvel is largely individualistic with moral dilemmas and personal conflict that Stan stated he believed DC lacked when he asked the question “what do the heroes get up to outside of the costume?” So it would be appropriate to write them like this, and share it with many writers who had interesting approaches with the characters over the years:
This can be largely be illustrated through my most favorite Marvel character, *The Incredible Hulk.*
Through a series of stories, it tells the story of an orderly man named Bruce Banner who cursed himself by his own work through a selfless act saving Rick Jones. Soon Roy Thomas and Bill Mantlo would take over the character to establish the event that’s integral to Bruce Banner’s character through his abusive father who killed his mom through envy and paranoia for young Banner that would cause the Hulk persona to manifest with a hatred for the puny Banner for not saving his monster. Peter David would establish one of the new dynamics with a Gray Hulk(Joe Fixit) who’s the aspects of Bruce he doesn’t let out in sunlight, Joe represents everything that Bruce is too milksop to do, through reckless, self indulgent confidence but even Joe knows where to draw the line when it comes to harming children.
Bruce Banner went from a man who detested men who think with their fists until through years he learns he’ll no longer be pushed around that this will lead to Banner smacking himself out of victimhood to properly grief for his dead mother and finally gained self control through Professor Hulk through the trust of the other two Hulks to stop fighting and became a near-perfect unison that retains the aspects of the other two Hulks, Green’s savagery and strength, Gray’s confidence and cunning and Bruce Banner’s knowledge and order.
These stories will stand the test of time, while its existence oppose the woke ideology cause what the ideology ultimately means is to renounce beauty, castigate strength, betray your family, burn your homeland, curse your ancestors, sterilize your children, and perish-all in the name of being “considerate.”
This was brilliant. I've been wanting someone to make a one shot description and take down of the retardation in modern comics. "The villains are now seen as hero's" is the perfect description of the problem with modern writers.
I never saw X-Men or any of these stories as "Political".
Whenever either in universe or in commentary someone says people hate and fear mutants because they don't under stand them, I always think that's nonsense. They are feared because they have super human powers that can murder and kill on a scale equal (depending on the power) to even our most dangerous military equipment. Only without any of the control structures around a military force.
It's like the twisting the word phobia from fear into hate, while ignoring we have a Greek word for hate, miseo.
People don't hate mutants because they don't understand them. They hate them because they do understand them and are scared of their powers and how many mutants turn to criminality.
ben's line of "great power, great responsibility" rings perfectly to this. When peter got his powers, he was quite self centered. it took him his uncle dying in front of him to realise that he has a responsibility to not abuse his power.
And he's just 1 guy.
I don't think out of the thousands of mutants, many will fully understand that.
Well-said and that's why the civil rights allegory never really worked very well. When a teenager can suddenly make things explode by touching them, we're dealing with a very real, tangible, and dangerous problem. That's not bigotry. That's not making assumptions based on superficial characteristics. Humans would be correct in assuming that these individuals could band together and take over. Gun control may be a better analogy. It reminds me of J. Michael Straczynski's "Rising Stars" comic series, which does a pretty good job of exploring this in a grounded way.
If I ever make my book, I want you to narrate it, I love every one of your videos, and this is no exception! I've been waiting for a proper explanation for a long time now, not that I haven't wanted to do my own research, but I find it hard to know which source to trust. But, like Stan, you're open and honest and proven. Glad to be a subscriber and will stay one, no matter what RUclips bots try to do!
(Also I'd love that waifu handbook lol)
Malcom X was very much a black supremacist before he got old and grew a brain. And by that point his damage to his own cause was already done. I can actually see a pretty supportable parallel between him and Krakoa era Magneto.
59:56 not "likely' straight up. Lily Orchard herself calls Magneto a hero, fighting against oppressors in her analysis of the character and just straight up justifies his darker nature. Lily and most of the social justice warriors always had sympathy for these characters because they believe that said characters are the only ones fighting against the status quo versus the heroes of the story who protect the innocent from their wrath and vengeance. The social justice warriors like Lily see the latter as upholding oppressive societal systems, like Magneto who is confused and annoyed against Professor Xavier fighting against him. The social justice warriors believe that if a system is oppressive, *it must be destroyed* and any character who fights against those fighting to destroy that system is villainous. Kind of like fighting for the galactic empire in star wars against rebel groups who raid and destroy worlds for resources.
Truth is, the system is becoming oppressive nowadays, but it’s mostly being done by people like Lily or the SJWs who are in power and have a major hold on politics and the industries than those they believe are the oppressors.
I mean Conservatives has been conflated so much with fascism that you can pretty much do another “anyone I don’t like is Hitler.”
It’s a funny irony, they love to write stories about rebelling against an oppressive system or regime when they’re an oppressive system themselves.
That's what makes it ironic when they use X-Men to stick it to us. Their views align with Magneto more than Professor X, and Magneto is the bad guy.
He's not a SHE, dude. Stop playing into HIS delusions.
God I hate Lilly.
The bryan singer movies and the X-men legends games introduced me to the X-men comics in the 2000s! X-men yes does have some political allegories but not every X-men story is god loves man kills!
I don't even read comics and haven't since I was a teen in the 90s, but I spent the last hour listening deeply to your dissertation and I believe this might be one of the best arguments I have heard so far. I picked up a comic my nephew was reading a few months ago and the Batman in his book was nothing like the Batman I remembered from my childhood. He was no longer Batman but Bad-Man and the story bordered on the villain being justified. So I went home got my old Comics out of the shed and took them to my nephew, he now sees how modern comics are trying to turn him into a little communist and he's a classic story reader now. I think we might have dodged a bullet!! LOL
When I was reading comics as a teenager, I never really thought about how politics enhanced the stories. Now that I'm older, I now believe that politics is a potential tool just like anything else. You can use social commentary as a means to build worlds and conflicts like X-Men defending humankind, fighting for equality between humans and their kind, all while taking down evil mutants whom are prejudice towards humanity.
Then there's the modern day kind of politics, extreme left mentality (progressive, ego-driven ideas, and attacks the opposite direction) that are often bathed in "their truths". Nothing screams narcissism like twisting Stan Lee's quips just to justify turning beloved comic book heroes and stories into a politically biased propaganda machine!
X-men have always been well to me about an outsider finding a place and fighting for other people to find a place where they belong. Well done well done. You earned a subscriber
Nice! And welcome!
Is there a husbando handbook? JW. Its a strange world we live in where terror tactics are painted as heroic and acts of compasion painted a villainous.
In sumary: 1-storytelling ≠ preaching;
2- Hero's journey ≠ victimy''s vengeance.
Imagine placing the Hulk and his situation next to anything and saying "Oh I had it so much harder" no. No you didn't. He was hunted by the military, couldn't love anyone, lost control on a whim, and became a monster. No being a black woman is not worse than being a abomination you're just shoehorning in your idea of a political opinion please at least make a effort to make it fit in
That lady behaves more like the Leader’s brother Mad Man who was envious of Banner’s successes that he turned himself into a monster, except this girl didn’t have to content with having a split personality that completely overpowers her, but it’s the fact she’s black, and marginalized compared to Bruce cause he’s a white man with a PHD.
Great video. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed!
This is a great video you perfectly articulated the difference between comics of the past and present why old fans dont like what current marvel and dc has done to their characters and stories.
LD video incoming. Looking forward to this. :)
your humor and narration, and editing
I LOVE IT ALL, it makes the video so good, you have no idea how good it is
Havnt watched the show but the best response to she-hulks tirade would be something like “Good, you have experience. You’re going to need that.”
If she understands the gravity of the situation he could walk away there to leave her to ponder that.
If she does not understand the gravity of the situation he could then say “because if you fail, it won’t just be your career that suffers. It will be the innocent bystanders and people around you.”
Then throughout the story she would slowly realize that the seemingly arrogant man that keeps annoyingly telling her whats best for her is not trying to control her life. He is trying to help her. She would eventually find out about the bodies in his closet and they would learn to reshape their relationship so that it works better. Perhaps he learns to back off and let her be, stepping in with a lighter touch to remind but not control.
Their relationship would evolve into a healthy dose of mutual respect before the mentor is inevitably killed off or forced to leave by outside forces (perhaps dealing with left over trauma from his own ghosts like the family of one of his victims seeking revenge, idk, I didnt read the comics)
The difference is also not in the politics but in the concepts.
being honest, chris claremont run is what made the x-men cool, stan lee original run was not very good, we just have to accept that everyone around stan made his books popular, ditko, jack kirby and later chris claremont.
This is true. I like Stan Lee's stuff, but Claremont supercharged it. He helmed the era that made the X-Men what we know it for. He cranked up the conflict. My main point was that Stan Lee had a good writing philosophy that Claremont seemed to carry. Neither Stan Lee or Claremont's philosophy would match with today's politically heavy Marvel.
Old X-Men comic: Anti Mutant protest attacked by the villains, the X-Men arrive and save the crowd, crowd still boo them as they leave but final panel is one guy saying to himself "maybe not all mutants are bad."
New X-Men comic: Anti Mutant protest attacked by the villains, the X-Men arrive and save the crowd, the crowd boo them, the X-Men beat up the crowd for being bigots while a passerby with a pride flag calls them stunning and brave.
Well, there is definitely a room for messaging in storytelling provided the message does not compromise the story and subtly provokes thoughts. If it's shoved into my throat so much it makes me vomit and story is absolutely given up then no thanks.
Let's Rock!
TLDR:
“The true enemy will do their best to include some of your potential allies in the labels you use to identify enemies.”
- me, bottom of this essay.
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To use a allegory,
If women have it worse they are the minimum wage worker making $17,000 a year by working 2 jobs and barely surviving. No healthcare, shit food, and living with family or friends to afford rent. They’re being hunted on the streets by agents of the system and occasionally killed for sport.
Men in this scenario are the factory workers making $23,000 a year, working overtime, living in overpriced apartments also without healthcare dying from overwork, loneliness and workplace injuries.
Old school feminists, social justice seekers, critics and etc would point out the societal issues and portray the wealthy businessmen and corrupt government officials as the villains, exploring the nature of humanity by showing the effects of the system on individuals. They might explore the nature of the system by having people that go against it like a decent businessman trying to do right in a system that rewards corruption, or portray the depths the victims sink to when treated so inhumanely. (Or explore other issues, ideas, etc)
The modern movement of so-called “social justice warriors” or “woke elitists” that people are criticizing in good faith are different. These groups blame the factory workers for being slightly better off than the minimum wage workers and ignore the fact that they themselves work for the megacorporate interests cause the problems and that want those groups of workers to be divided.
Real, actual feminists want to help people, and focus on women as a specific cause, but the term has been hijacked by those who want to tear down those who are slightly better off than them in order to make everyone slightly worse off. It has gotten to the point where many people refuse to use the label “feminist” because its so hated.
Meanwhile the corporate interests destroying the country laugh and send the Pinkertons in to kill yet another worker.
Whether you are a man-hating, “anyone who disagrees with me is a fascist” woke type trying to tell young men their experience and suffering is not valid, or an antiwoke women-hating “feminists are feminazis” type trying to defend your favorite media, if you are blaming the “other side” for your problems than you are part of the problem.
Because playing the blame game helps no one. The only way to move forward is to identify the real issues, find some way to accept other peoples flaws, and work together with those people to address the systematic problems threatening us all.
I know it sucks. The “other side“ is unfairly targeting you so you want to target them back. But if you make generalizations of your enemy and target all inside those general characteristics you are helping prolong the conflict. Thats the conflict between potential allies. Because a woman who feels like she is not being heard and a man who feels like he is not being heard should mot be fighting each other about who has it worse. They should be listening to each other and working together to get those voices heard.
Videos like this can help identify specific problems, and that can be really useful in defining language that can be used to express ideas.
But its really important to use that language to make specific criticisms and avoid overgeneralizing against some “other side”.
“The true enemy will do their best to include some of your potential allies in the labels you use to identify enemies.”
Personally, I think the above statement is a really good general guideline. If someone is trying to convince you that someone is your enemy, you will want to ask yourself if they are making money telling you that, and whether that “enemy” might be better as even a tentative ally.
Marvel died the day Disney bought it. same with Star Wars.
What I think alot of these people don't get is it's not even that it's not okay to make your stories about politics it's when the politics ARE the story when it's impossible for anyone to see them in any direction but your own. That is just plain bad writing. Good writing leaves people room to think for themselves and to make their own opinions it doesn't give them an opinion and demand they accept it.
I will always hold great admiration and respect for Stan.
This channel is probably the best one if you want to write good stories but fear your political bias taking away from a good story.
Literature Devil is great at pointing out exactly what the issue is with writing, what the mentality causes.
For example, SJW heroes being motivated by spite rather than actual justice.
Try to catch if your writing is based on spite and not justice.
wow slow down partner u got his whole meat in ur mouth
This video really needed to be made seeing misunderstanding of the X-Men and Marvel IPs in circulation.