Chuck's farewell.

[Winged Outlaw]

Originally posted by Bamfette
there was another post here by Winged Outlaw which said pretty much the same thing, but with a decidedly more frustrated tone, but it was deleted by mods because he stepped over the line a bit, but i wish i could put it at least partly back. He and I don't exactly see eye to eye most times, so that's saying a lot.

Yeah... about that. Our heater was busted at work and went into overdrive, cranking the indoor temperature to around 87 (F) degrees. Even worse, outside temperatures were 15-25 degrees all day, and I had to run in and out as I went from the office to the factory and stuff. So basically, I was probably a little sick and certainly very pissed off when I wrote that, so sorry for any offensive content in it. I actually do have that post saved in a word file that I type all my posts in here and other sites (so I won’t get caught online ) but alas, idsunki said it better than I did anyway.

Originally posted by Paty
:mags
Absolutely, diablo. I haven't heard what Chuck is doing over at DC...has anyone? dave and I read a number of DC books...mostly in the batman and Hawkman titles...but Dave actually reads more DC than I do. I mostly like Hawkman... and I did follow Loeb and Lee's Batman/Catwoman saga which was wonderful.
does anyone know what chuck IS doing over there?

As most people here at Nightscrawlers can verify, my vocabulary is quite comprehensive. I learned the use of four letter words AT Marvel..I also learned to tell it as it is... something a lot of people are uncomfortable with...but I find liberating if nothing else. I have a deductive mind...I observe...I gather information from various sources... and I extrapolate from there. And I post my conclusions based on knowledge of the medium and the industry.
Having worked at Marvel for years... loving the company and all it's promise and having observed what is happening there now makes me mad. I show considerable restraint in my language considering just how angry I am...and the language I learned to use to survive Marvel itself. and the nitty gritty still is...if it looks like a goose and it honks like a goose...it ain't a duck! If Marvel doesn't want to be accused of anti semitism, let them stop trying to destroy their premiere Jewish character... a pogrom that has gone on for over a decade and which has been documented as having been aimed at this one character. and why him? You tell me. I am not even Jewish... and I can see it. And if I see something I will say it and get it out in the open to be talked about and discussed by others. Nothing's so dangerous it cannot be talked about.

Paty
:mags

I’d say it’s a rather fantastic (and malicious) stretch to say that Marvel is anti-Semitic because of their handling of Magneto. If anything, Magneto is a walking talking example of how two wrongs don’t make a right. Mags survived the Holocaust, but is using his trauma as a justification for causing more pain to others. He may mean well, but then again the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Furthermore, if Marvel was anti-Semitic, then a) why would they target the GYPSIE Magneto and b) why do they keep giving Kitty Pryde her own mini-series and prominent roles in both the now defunct Xtreme X-Men as well as Astonishing X-Men? Your theory in this case is groundless, and seems to be born out of nothing more than bitterness that your favorite character wasn’t written the way you like.

And hell, Marvel DID retcon Magneto out of Planet X and they’re currently letting Claremont glorify his existence once again in Excalibur. They’re bending over backwards for the “good” Magneto even if the stories themselves are entirely laughable. And yet you’re still pissed. If you’re going to hate Marvel, do it because they can’t seem to write any form of originality into their core books and let their less popular books die due to poor marketing and editorial interference. In the case of Magneto, not only did Marvel clear his name, but Grant Morrison himself stated that it was mostly because of Sublime’s influence that his Magneto caused all that destruction.

In short, you’ve got nothing to complain about when it comes to Magneto, so I really don't see why you continue to force it upon everyone.

[Paty]

:mags
Marvel, itself, as a corporate entity, ISN'T anti semetic. It is owned by Jews, for cry eye. what isaid were are FACTIONS at Marvel that appear by their actions over the better part of a decade to be, if nothing else, leaning that way. And this conclusion is based on years and years of observation of machinations against the most prominent and popular Jewish character in Marvel's stable... Magneto. Kitty Pryde is innocuous... she's a girl... so at Marvel she counts for very little... but Hardass DID take away her star of David pendant, turning it into a filigree first and a pentacle later... and blythely said when questioned about it that "Oh, the inker must have misunderstood..." but the artist said he had put it there correctly and irrefutably as her star of David pendant... and other reports affirmed that it was changed inhouse at Hardass's direction. But Kitty wasn't the big problem...they could parade her and say..."see, we have Jewish characters..." and they did...just as you just did. that's how they work. But Kitty was never as popular as Claremont made Magneto.

Harass and company couldn't stand that Magneto was popular...had a HUGE fan following... a lot of them female! So they first tried to make him NOT Jewish... they could stomach that... if he was, say....GYPSY! Yeah... that'll do it! Gypsy.. doom's Gypsy, so why not Magneto. Cuz It's been DONE, dodos! Mags had been firmly established as of Jewish extraction ... even if he had abandoned the religion... not taking kindly to a god who would let such a thing as the Holocaust happen... and rightly so. But to a lot of people of Jewish extraction out there, Magneto, adversary or not, was THEIRS! they loved him even with his faults.
Fan reaction came down hard and Marvel finally had to back off losing the Jewish heritage part of the identity cuz Claremont had cemented it so firmly in place. So the next best thing was to make him the eeeeevil villain of the early Lee/Kirby sagas... which had been explained away over twenty years of character development by Claremont... and which had the blessings of Stan, himself. Stan said in public forum that "I wish I had done more with the character..." Even Stan liked him better as a complex adversary rather than just a cookie cutter villain. If they made Mags eeeeevil enough, they figured even the Jews would disown him... but that didn't happen either, as hundreds...thousands ... of fans wrote and protested and even threatened to bring the blatant pogrom to the attention of the antiDefamation League! to time and time again, Hardass chickened out of some of the plans he had for the character which had leaked to the fanworld and prompted the reaction before Hardass could make it canon. some of the cryptic references in Planet X are COVERRT "sO THERE!"s to the fans who fought for Mags for over a decade. But if you weren't in on that war, you don't know about it and statements that refer to it may seem overblown and strident... but they arenn't. they are just referring to things that new fans to the genre don't know about....and quite possibly don't even want to know...or think about. There's nothing so disquieting as having someone shout "Hey, the emperor has no clothes!" when you thought the emporor's invisible duds were just fine!

Unless you know the wars that fans waged with Marvel over the soul of Magneto...Unless you know all the history ofthe interoffice infighting that went on ... and apparently is STILL going on... things seem simple. But they're not. If Marvel management ... which is Jewish... had been keeping an eye on things, which they obviously werennnn't... Avi Arad wouldn't have had to hide the scene in the first movie in Auschwitz where Magneto's parents were wearing mogan Davids... that's star of David, by the way... until the last couple of days... sneak it into the film... and swear everybody in the cutting room to secrecy so that Harras couldn't block it...and have it as a surprise bombshell that sent Hardass into a fit of rage...or so I hear. Asswipe went ballistic! Ten years of trying to wipe out Magneto's identity, popularity and character... blown away in one blockbuster movie based on Claremont's depiction of the character as a reasonable complex man! It wasn't until the debacle of Planet X... in a grandiose ploy to once again cement the evil Magneto of the Hardass depiction... that Avi Arad finally took notice and stormed Marvel to bring the characters... not only Magneto... back into line with the heroic depiction of the eighties. The whole scenes with the crematoria was the straw that broke the camel's back... especially for people of jewish heritage. The HOlocause is not that far away in history that some of the survivors...not unlike Mags...are still alive and traumatized all over again by something like this. It was too much. the resultant backlash of administration had to be swift and decisive. And in favor of moderation rather than the rampant avante guarde style that had manifested over the years and come to a pustulent head with Planet X.

children and young people who come into reading the books... some of them straight from the movies... donn't understand all the ramifications of the characters, their development over the years, the politics at marvel that inflences how the characters are portrayed and a thousand other influences that go to make up what we see in the books every month. They don't understand how a character can be portrayed one way for five years under this writer and then do a complete turnaround and be portrayed as the most evil bastard in history under a different writer. And this shouldn't happen. The characters should be written true to a consistant core identity... but editorial is the watchdog of this ... and editorial hasn't been doing it"s job either. Editors at Marvel are little more than glorified gofers who are really too young and inexperienced to do the jobs given them. Editors should be the older, more wise and knowledgable about the business moderators of what the writers are allowed to do. A twenty year old child editing Claremont is ludicrous. Yes... Chris needs editing... as does any writer... but he needs a mature editor who knows what an editor really does... not a child who graduated to editorship from gofer to asst ed to ed by attrition and the fact that he knew how to keep the books moving. And that is how most of the editors at Marvel got their jobs! I saw it happen when I worked there... lo, these many years ago. The policy hasn't changed to any great degree...except to possibly get worse. And the infighting is ferocioous. Everybody wants the well paid, cushy editor's job...

the industry is a small one and very closed and clique-ish. Harras managed, in his years as EIC , to stock Marvel with people who thought like him. He actually would ask a prospective hiree their viewpoints on MAGNETO...this from someone who went throught the process and reported it to friends... If you wanted the eeeevil magneto, fine... you got the job... if you liked Claremont's depiction of a complex, conflicted adversary... you DIDN'T! Harras stacked the decks... he seeded Marvel with people who would carry out his pogrom of the character...which is probably why Planet X got printed in the first place. they were probably standing around pounding each other on the backs and howling with glee and saying "yeah...yeah... we'll show those steeeeenking FANS!" Refering, of course, to the fans who, over more than a decade, had fought to keep Claremonts carefully constructed personality for the character extant. And that is quite often the tenor of their communications ...when they deign to communicate.

There are multiiiple factions at marvel. Some are, by their actions over the years, very obviously anti semetic...or bigoted to the N th degree. Cuz Marvel's ethnic characters just disappeared over the Hardass years. churches and places of worship ...other than christian... disappeared from background art... for a long while. Ethnic diversity...something which the marvel of the seventies and eighties prided it self for... slowed to a trickle. They couldn't make every ethnic person go away... but they pared the apple to the core. Perhaps now, it will swing back the other way for a while. Claremont has already started in Excalibur... both to restore Magneto, and to reintroduce ethnicity to mutantville. while the dearth of ethnic characters points obliquely to white supremacy bullshit, the ten year pogrom directed specifically at Magneto shouts anti semitism to the very skies. No other character has had so humongously much crap swirling around him specifically, for sooooo long and hard. If it steps like a goose and honks like a goos ...it AIN'T a duck! And if it goes on for over a decade of shennigans, it's not just a passing stylistic swuabble.


The original reboot... Giant Sized number one...which introduced Storm, Nighty, Colossus, Thunderbird, etc, et al... was a deliberate step by Marvel to creat a multi national, multi cultural team. Recent stories, I am told have tried to take away Storm's afroAmerican ethnicity and replace it with a parentage of Moroccan ancestry... better arab than black I guess is their thinking. But that doesn't wash at all... especially not with AfroAmerican fans who love her as one of their own! So too with the jewish fans about Magneto.

OH.. we are off topic... again... sigh... sorry about that...just trying to explain some of the ins and outs, here. Comics aren't sweetness and light storytelling any more. they used to be...way back when... They have tremendous clout with youngsters... they teach values and even morals. they always did. It's just that some of the values being taught these days aren't benign...as they should be... they are malevolent and anti social. Heroes should be heroes. OK... you can do interesting stuff with them... but their core personalities should prevail. That's where the admin at Marvel wants the characters to go back to...for they had strayed sooo far that it was totally detrimental to corporate interests of Marvel. And not economically feasible. And the public let them know it. The books had to come back into line with the Heroic eighties posture.
I think that Chuck's departure from Marvel may have been a conflict of this nature. He wanted to do avant guarde stuff and marvel administration, reacting to the excesses of Planet X, wanted to go back to a more middle of the road approach.
Stylistic differences... happens all the time at the companies. Bottom line is that the company owns the characters and what administration says goes... as long as they keep an eye on it...which they usually don't. Having made their pronouncements, they go back into lala land and expect their wishes to be followed. Heh... dream on, Suits. Writers come and go... artists come and go...the pendulum swings back and forth with policy at the company...just like Magneto's temperment... but with less reason.

I really do hope Chuck does good things over at DC or wherever he wants to go... he is an excellent writer... and there are so many writers in the industry today who don't know how to tell a coherent story that we need all the good ones we can get!

C'est la guerre...
Paty
:mags

[Harlekein]

Oh c'mon Paty, to me you're starting to sound like those people that think the X-Men are pushing a Gay Agenda. Anti-semitism!? Trying hard to de-Jew Magneto!? These conspiracy theories of yours make absolutely no sense.

Ethnic and religious characters have dissapeared over the years? Maybe, just maybe nobody had an interest to write some of these characters, and I'd also like to think that the use of ethnic and religious characters should not be forced, since then they are just devalued into being token characters.