So a few people emailed me asking me to say something about Warner Todd Huston’s screed about the issue of Captain America where the tea partiers are shown in a less than sympathetic light. Individuals unfamiliar with Warner Todd Huston may need to know that this instance probably represents the apex of his influence as a professional complainant, as Warner Todd has previously complained about all sorts of other things and nobody has ever taken him seriously. However, Marvel Comics is now owned by Disney, which means that Joe Quesada – never exactly one to court the dislike of anybody other than the dedicated fanboys who will buy comics regardless of how many times he makes Spider-Man sell his soul to save an old lady – apologized immediately, because maybe Disney would fire him or something.
(I jest, of course. Let’s be honest: it makes sense for Marvel to apologize because it’s not worth the hassle of Sean Hannity crusading against them. It likewise makes sense for Ed Brubaker to apologize, because regardless of his personal beliefs he’s got a family to feed and there are more important things to go to bat over than a page out of a licensed character comic book that got some cretins’ undies up in a twist.)
This is a multipart saga, so let us begin.
1.) Warner Todd Huston Is Angry About Captain America #602
Warner Todd was very angry about this issue, and the reason he is angry is this:
In it the current Captain (there have been a few of them, apparently) is on the trail of a faux Captain America that is mentally deranged and getting chummy with some white supremacist, anti-government, survivalists types going by the name of “the Watchdogs.”
That “white supremacist” thing is a sticking point for Warner Todd, and it’s part of the reason he’s an idiot. Here are all the quotes from Captain America #602 wherein the Watchdogs are referred to as white supremacists:
(sound of tumbleweed drifting through empty town)
…oh wait, there aren’t any. Now, granted, the Watchdogs were introduced in 1987, a year after Warner “I Know All About Comics, Dammit” Todd says he quit reading them, so maybe he’s not aware that the Watchdogs, while always overtly right-wing and “traditional values”-y, were never actually portrayed as racists. (Mark Gruenwald, as I recall, wasn’t comfortable portraying them as such.) Similarly, in this issue, there is not one mention of the Watchdogs’ attitudes towards race.
Werner Todd is inferring motivation, plain and simple. He sees a mythical organization of baddies modeled after right-wing extremist militias and assumes they must be racist. There is literally not one thing in the entire comic where you can assume anything about the Watchdogs’ or protestors’ racial beliefs based on their actions. You have to want to see it.1
But there is more:
The Captain tells him, “no it’s perfect… this all fits right into my plan.” After this we find that the Captain’s plan is to send the black man into a redneck bar to pretend to be a black man working for the IRS and to get everyone all mad… because… well, you know that every white person is a racist that hates black civil servants, right?
It feels a bit oversimplistic to point out that Bucky’s plan is actually to draw the attention of traveling Watchdog recruiters by pretending to beat up a civil servant and be all “I hate the gubmint” while they’re watching – because the Watchdogs hate the federal government, you see – but amazingly, Warner Todd was unable to figure out this actually pretty simple bit of plot. Now, granted, Ed Brubaker didn’t write in some expository thought balloons saying things like “Must make this look good… so the Watchdogs notice me and ask me to join them!” but then again I guess he made the mistake of writing above a sixth-grade reading level.
So, there you have it, America. Tea Party protesters just “hate the government,” they are racists, they are all white folks, they are angry, and they associate with secretive white supremacist groups that want to over throw the U.S. government.
My word, why would anybody ever associate tea partiers with racism? Why would anybody dare suggest that extremists might try to infiltrate the tea party movement for the purposes of recruitment? (I’m not even gonna bother collecting hyperlinks about tea partiers being “angry” or mostly white, because seriously now, come on.)
2.) Carla Hoffman Decides To Be Reasonable With A Jackass
In response to Marvel’s nigh-immediate capitulation to Warner Todd’s offense that a portrayal of a tea party rally would even dare hint at tea partiers being slightly racist rather than upstanding moral whatevers, Carla Hoffman wrote a response, to which Warner Todd immediately wrote both a patronizing comment wherein he was offended that Carla hadn’t heard of him and he did too know about these here comical books, and then, not satisfied with that, an additional blog entry, because he decided that Carla was a stupidhead.
This is mostly Carla’s fault for treating Warner Todd as someone interested in discourse. She made this mistake because Carla, at root, is a nice person who wants to get along with everybody. I, however, am not a nice person and I do not give a tinker’s cuss if I get along with Warner Todd or not. The man is a pustule on public discourse and should be treated as such.2
3.) Warner Todd Escalates
Anyway. After Warner Todd complains about how liberals are stupid and self-righteous and don’t understand complex concepts – and how come they don’t just talk politely to old Warner Todd anyhow? – for a few paragraphs, he gets into the meat of his diatribe.
I should start this discussion by saying that there isn’t anything wrong with enjoying comic books, even as an adult. They can be fun, for sure. But to imagine that comic books offer anything other than lowgrade entertainment is laughable. Comics are not high art (in fact, most of them are horrible even as graphic art) and they most certainly do not equal anything of the sort of deep, consequential literature. Comics are a childish, formulaic, lowest common denominator form of entertainment. It doesn’t make them evil or useless or bad necessarily. It just makes them low-end, fun. They are nothing to be taken seriously. If you are someone that lives for your next comic, or you want to claim that comic books are “art” worthy of serious consideration… you need to get out of your parent’s basement a little more often.
First off, the incidence of a “parents’ basement” joke (with improper use of an apostrophe, way to go you professional writer you!) should be the first and most obvious sign that Warner Todd is a hack of the first degree and that this moment of accidental relevance is indeed the pinnacle of his professional life, and that should make you feel sad if you are a good person. I am not an especially good person, so it makes me feel dark and demonic glee.
Secondly, the fact that Warner Todd declaims comics as “horrible even as graphic art” just goes to show you that he’s an ignoramus who doesn’t know anything about the form generally. But maybe you want specific proof that he’s an idiot in this regard? Here you go:
Let’s start with the visual. Graphically, it isn’t very well drafted. It does have the benefit of being created in the semi-realist style that began to be popular in the 1980s, though, which instantly makes it better than today’s comics drawn in that horrible Japanese Anime/Manga style that has so pervaded the comic book industry of late.
Overcapitalized and barely coherent attack on manga aside, this is excerpted from Warner Todd’s very very long and very very stupid review of Watchmen. Yes, folks. You got that right. Warner Todd thinks that Dave Gibbons’ art on Watchmen “isn’t very well drafted.”
This is the point where you have to just kind of stare. It’s like somebody professing to know a lot about literature and saying something like “Dostoyevsky, he wasn’t really much of a writer” or how they’re very knowledgeable about classical music and saying “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Nothing really special about it.” It’s not that they’re advancing a contrarian opinion, because there are a number of very reasonable critiques one can make of Watchmen – it relies too heavily on a knowledge of the form and is self-referential, Alan Moore is sometimes too self-indulgent in his asides, the pirate story as allegory is forced – but saying that Dave Gibbons’ art and layouts are bad is just so fucking ignorant of the form itself that you have to immediately disqualify the speaker as knowing a damn thing about comics generally, no matter how many comics he collected back before 1986 when he quit collecting.3
(ASIDE: Other things Warner Todd does not like about Watchmen include: Nite Owl not being able to get it up initially for Silk Spectre, Ozymandias winning, the comic’s underlying belief that in order to be a superhero there has to be something more or less wrong with you, and the two Bernies being “unlikeable characters” because they’re Americans being written by an Englishman. No, really. He says all of this. Really, if you want to see the most trite, lazy comics “analysis” I’ve read in quite some time, do yourself a favour and click the link. We could totally have a contest! “Stupidest Thing Warner Todd Huston Says About Watchmen.“)
Anyway. Enough about Warner Todd and Watchmen, the point of which is merely to illustrate the depths of his know-nothingness. Let us continue. After Warner Todd complains at length about Carla saying “welcome to comics” and how he had tons and tons of comics back in the day (which was twenty-five years ago)
The “letter” was written by one Carla Hoffman and is replete with uninformed assumptions, hackneyed pop psychology, all wrapped up in a total failure to observe the first tenet in journalism: contact your subject before you write anything.
I can’t think of anything I’d want to do more than contact an over-ripe douchebag like this guy!
Again, Warner Todd is taking offense that Carla didn’t bother to do her research and find out that he used to read comic books twenty-five years ago so of course he knows everything there is to know about comics. Instead, Carla merely assumed that Warner Todd’s inability to actually discuss the comic in question, combined with his show of naivete over there being multiple Captain Americas, meant that he was unfamiliar with the current state of comics and comic storytelling. I wonder why she thought such a thing!
Of course, this uninformed assumption shows her arrogance. You see, because I criticized the comic book she assumed that I couldn’t possibly have ever liked comics.
No, Warner Todd. She wrote that because she’s polite, and because your argument was whining bullshit with little to no basis in reality dependent on your projection. Carla, being nice, made the assumption that you were ignorant rather than stupid and/or intellectually dishonest.
Unintentionally funny was her prosaic proclamation that the Internet spawns “strong opinion” as if my piece was merely that, yet her’s isn’t.
DEAR “PROFESSIONAL WRITER” WARNER TODD HUSTON: Please learn how to use a fucking apostrophe.
Also, Carla’s piece might be opinion – sure it is – but “strong?” She used very mild language. She didn’t use any invective or make a single personal attack – you finding ways to be insulted by her essay doesn’t count, Warner Todd – or indeed do anything other than say “you took it one way, but isn’t it also possible to read it this way?” That’s not “strong.” That’s mild. You know how I know it’s mild? Because she didn’t start making fun of your name and calling you “Weiner Todd,” which I am certain happened to you in high school in between vigorous masturbation sessions over a copy of Vampirella, wherein you had two, count ’em TWO, letters to the editor published.
Or, in other words: stop being a whiny-ass titty-baby, Warner Todd.
Apparently someone forgot to alert little Miss Hoffman that there haven’t been any “Pro-Bush rallies” since about 2003 when he last ran for president. Further, Miss Hoffman obviously has no clue that the Tea Party movement is just as mad at Bush as they are Clinton and Obama.
They were so mad at him that they sat on their asses for eight years until President Blacky McBlackerton got elected! That sure showed him. Of course, Carla wasn’t attempting to suggest that Tea Party rallies were explicitly pro-Bush rallies – why would anybody think that – but instead that the Tea Partiers, rather than being apolitical as per their claim, were merely an extension of Republican activism. Of course, reading that would require the ability to understand subtlety and nuance, which Weiner Todd isn’t good at except for when he’s trying to find proof that Ed Brubaker thinks tea partiers are racists.
Uh, no. Sam Wilson is not his “real name.” Sam Wilson is a character’s name. It isn’t a real person we’re talking about here. This poor young lady cannot tell reality from fiction, apparently.
Weiner Todd here feels the need to take a cheap shot at Carla, who was honestly nothing but pleasant to him. “Real name,” in this instance, of course refers to “Sam Wilson’s personal name, as opposed to calling him ‘the Falcon.'” I assume that Weiner Todd knows this, and had to sit back and have a good giggle in his study – fondly remembering his erotic adventures with Vampirella, who whispered in his ear that he was a true comics fan.
Anyway, there’s an awful lot more in this poor girl’s “open letter” that puts her in a pretty bad light for logic, intelligence, and delusion.
“…which I’m not gonna get into. No reason!”
Since right after her letter to me I replied. (You can see my reply here, too), let’s get to the unhinged, hatemongers that chose to reply to my posting after Hoffman’s.
DEAR “PROFESSIONAL WRITER” WERNER TODD HUSTON: Learn how to not splice a fucking comma.
But anyway, the rest of his article is just Weiner Todd whining endlessly about how commenters at Robot 6 weren’t nice to him after he shat copious and unearned condescension on Carla:
There were, of course, all sorts of distempered name calling and obscene language, the sort we’ve come to expect from the left. There was the ever common “asshole,” the varied spellings of “douche bag,” an occasional “jerk,” and “Nazi.” Even at least one “fucking clown” was thrown in for good measure. But remember, each and every one of these poor youngsters assumed that they were more open minded, nicer, more tolerant than that mean old Warner Todd Huston.
This is one of my least favorite tactics: the “barbarians at the gate” argument, ever beloved of conservative writers on the internet. “Oh my heavens! You have said a swear! That completely invalidates every single one of your points because you are clearly no gentleman, sir! Good day! I must exit before I come down with a case of the vapours!”
For the sake of illumination, let me present how Weiner Todd opened his essay attacking Carla:
These emails and replies to my comic book analysis really brought it home that to be a liberal you must make assumptions of your enemy so that they fit neatly into your preconceived notions of the world and you must never try to ask them any questions to determine if they really do fit into the box you’ve constructed for them. You must assume you are more grown up than those you attack. You must assume that you are more intelligent. You also must assume that people that like the same sort of things that you like must think just like you do. In other words, to be a liberal you must begin every discussion, every consideration of ideological premises, with the base assumption that all good people are just like you. Everyone else is venal, mean, stupid or low. Not just wrong, but evil.
I’m not sure what’s more impressive here: the sheer volume of projection on Weiner Todd’s part, or the fact that this is just a long series of personal attacks largely unjustified by the rest of his column where he then complains about other people’s personal attacks. For people like Warner Todd, “civility” isn’t anything to do with attitude or manners; it’s to do with specific words. It’s a set of rules – don’t say this, don’t say that, but this and the other are permissible – rather than a sense of respecting other people. When you understand that attitude, you understand a lot about Weiner Todd.4
- Now, granted, the Falcon is leery of hanging out with the tea partiers in the book. But guess what: Sam Wilson is a black liberal. Do you think black liberals want to hang out with tea partiers generally? I’m sorry, but when did we get so, ahem, politically correct as to demand that tea partiers be perceived equally by citizens of all colours and creeds as upstanding and moral figures in a work of fiction, and even so by fictional figures who would reasonably be leery of them were they real people? Warner Todd, you big ol’ Tolerance Bear, you. [↩]
- Also, he is the only guy I have ever seen who manages to look worse both with facial hair and without. If he is going to learn anything from comic books, it is the value of a mask. [↩]
- “Hey, guys! I know a lot about music! I stopped buying albums back in 1986 but I still know lots about them! Do you guys like Duran Duran? They’re pretty awesome, right?” [↩]
- And, one hopes, why I completely abandoned any attempt at civility after the first paragraph of this entry. [↩]
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all wrapped up in a total failure to observe the first tenet in journalism: contact your subject before you write anything.
It’s an interesting criticism he makes, since, as far as I can tell (and I mean, from my ctrl+F search – I refuse to read his stuff) he didn’t bother to call, e-mail or write to Marvel Comics before he opened his fat yap.
Can I move up to Canada with you, MGK? I’m a dynamite housekeeper and soon to be elementary art teacher. Also, easy on the eyes and I can cook.
I’ll promise to keep the gentleman callers to a minimum.
No I won’t.
Short version: My country is retarded.
I have that issue, and I agree nothing really made the Tea Baggers look racist. Anyway, the comic pretty much made the Tea Baggers look like a bunch of angry white people who are anti-government and that seems to be accurate. Anyway, most comics are more logical and internally consistent than any political views Weiner Todd has.
What kind of name is Warner Todd anyway? It sounds backwards.
Anyone who uses the basement arguement needs to be disqualified from commenting on anything. Ever.
Is mostly a lurker, but runs a comic book store, and would just like to say “kudos, sir.” So, yeah, kudos, sir.
Do you know why stupid people exist? So the rest of us can be inspired — inspired, I say! — to come up with new lurid insults. They are just so fun to read.
This post made my day. You, kind sir, rock!
MGK: Every political movement you have ever been a part of has been mostly white, right? I hope you’re not suggesting it’s different when you do it.
Strangely, I neglected to ever carry a sign with a veiled racial slur on it to any of the polling stations where I have voted. But since it’s exactly the same thing, I’ll be sure to do that next time.
He says of his Watchmen review in his blog that “I wrote a decade ago,” yet the most recent footnote comes from 2006. I guess time flies when you’re Warner Todd Huston.
Since nobody else is doing so, I’m going to support Warner Todd on a few points.
His use of the apostrophe in ‘parent’s basement’ may be accurate if the person he is addressing only has one parent.
The art in ‘Watchmen’ isn’t that great. It is competent– you can always tell what is going on, the characters are easily distinguishable and do look consistent from panel to panel, which does make it better than a great deal of comic art. But still, it isn’t that great. I know that I’m upsetting a lot of people by saying this, but it’s true.
That’s about it. I can’t think of anything else to defend this guy for. He does appear to be a mean-spirited idiot.
However, may I point out that by spending so much time and effort in attacking this guy that I’ve never heard of, you come across as (somewhat) Warner Todd-ish.
Sorry.
Another suggestion regarding the “controversial” plot point in Captain America might be that it’s really hard to infiltrate a small town as a hugely muscled stranger (who likely has some “mask-lines” besides). Todd’s a self-flagellating jackhole.
“Strangely, I neglected to ever carry a sign with a veiled racial slur on it to any of the polling stations where I have voted. ”
Why not? It’s not as though you’d actually be making a racist slur. In reality, you’d merely be the vessel the sign used to bear symbols possibly construed as identifiable language by a certain percentage of the population. It’s definitely not anything you could be held responsible for in a public forum.
So, the first thing tomorrow I’m going to do is call my father and make sure I’m not related to this jackass. And just when I was getting around to Charlie Huston.
quoting on wyrmsine:
“Why not? It’s not as though you’d actually be making a racist slur. In reality, you’d merely be the vessel the sign used to bear symbols possibly construed as identifiable language by a certain percentage of the population. It’s definitely not anything you could be held responsible for in a public forum.”
You are, most definitely, a law student.
(Ok, here’s the deal: first, English is my second language, so I apologise if by any chance this sounds as a personal attack and not a friendly snark. Second, my in73rn37 3di7 skillz (or however the fuck you’re supposed to misspelll) so that’s the best i can manage for a quote. Suck it up)
Man, I’m drunk (just finished finals!) and that was a long parenthesis… Ummm… Yeah, Todd Houston sucks!!! Heh, someday I’ll tell you guys about Argentinian politics (where you can choose between a left that has as much respect for the rule of law as a Simpsons’ Republican character, and a right that is as evil as a real Repblican (yeah, anywhere else in the world, i’d be a lefty, here, i just dread having only two directions)) it’ll be FUN! MGK will end up french kissing Harper! And Zenrage… well, you’ll probably get the footage you need to sink at least three right-wing nuts!
That vitriol he did against Manga sure was a a laugh.
Also, re this:
“Uh, no. Sam Wilson is not his “real name.” Sam Wilson is a character’s name. It isn’t a real person we’re talking about here. This poor young lady cannot tell reality from fiction, apparently.”
I love how he intentionally forgot about the concept of “fiction” just for this jab right here. That would be like me calling a person who loves The Prestige stupid for believing in magic.
mary, just as a case in point, when Warner talks about:
which makes [watchmen’s art] better than today’s comics drawn in that horrible Japanese Anime/Manga style that has so pervaded the comic book industry of late.”
…What you have to understand is that he’s simultaneously saying that Watchmen’s art is bad according to some nebulous and unstated criteria (which is a fail on his part – critics are somewhat obligated to show their working out on this front) while at the same time asserting that Anime, Manga and comic book artist Yoshitaka Amano, who’s work on Sandman looks like this, is substantially worse than Gibbon’s.
(though thinking about it, has this warner guy seen transmetropolitan? Because if he has problems with Nightowl’s impotence…)
I think the most annoying part of this idiot’s ramble is his references to Carla Hoffman as “little”, “young lady”, or a “poor girl”. I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest of this twit’s articles (Look! A correctly used apostrophe!), but I doubt he would argue with a man like that. But of course Carla Hoffman is a woman, and therefore too silly, naive, or emotional to intelligently converse with men about something as serious as comics. Now go back to the kitchen little lady and make him a sandwich while he watches Fox News, but don’t forget to put on the Vampirella costume later tonight.
Excuse me, “are his references” Whoops.
What kind of name is Warner Todd anyway? It sounds backwards.
Leave the poor man alone! Clearly his singular surviving parent was an ESL speaker of spanish, and so put Senor Warner’s name down on all the important government documents in the spanish fashion of putting the surname first.
[…] Christopher Bird on the Captain America/Tea Party kerfuffle. […]
Clearly the best response Marvel can give to this is to have the offending sign read “Huston is a moran!” in the reprints.
Am I the only person amused by the following:
1) In Huston’s reply to Carla Hoffman he writes:
“Uh, no. Sam Wilson is not his “real name.” Sam Wilson is a character’s name. It isn’t a real person we’re talking about here. This poor young lady cannot tell reality from fiction, apparently.”
2) In his review of Watchmen he writes:
“After a page of Rorschach’s journal right away the reader is treated to the gritty realism the series will feature as the super-hero named The Comedian (real name Edward Blake)…”
(Second paragraph below the headline Book One)
http://www.publiusforum.com/watchmen/watchmen_part04_bk01.html
http://www.publiusforum.com/2010/02/14/instead-of-understanding-them-liberals-feel-definitions/
3) In the same review, on the same page, seventh paragraph beneath the above-mentioned headline he also writes:
“The Nite Owl (real name Dan Dreiberg), a fattened, frustrated, unsure, sexually impotent super-hero retiree. Ozymandias (real name Adrian Veidt), the “smartest man in the world” and former super-hero. Dr. Manhattan (real name, John Osterman), a blue skinned fellow who we later find out was mutated by a lab accident into a molecular manipulating super-being now working for the US government. And Manhattan’s aging girlfriend, the Silk Spectre (real name Laurie Juspeczyk)…”
4) He does it with Ozymandias again later in the review:
“To further the mystery portion of the story, there is an assassination attempt upon “the smartest man in the world”, Ozymandias (real name Adrian Veidt).”
Third paragraph of the below page:
http://www.publiusforum.com/watchmen/watchmen_part04_bk05.html
5) And with Rorschach again on the first paragraph of the next page:
“Book six is Rorschach’s origin story. As could be expected, Rorschach has “issues”. Predictably, as a child he was abused by his prostitute Mother who didn’t care for him. He was also a social outcast that turned violent when accosted by bigger kids on the street. We find out that Rorschach (real name Walter Joseph Kovacs)…”
http://www.publiusforum.com/watchmen/watchmen_part04_bk06.html
I wonder what we are to make of this.
Please tell me he really did have letters printed in Vampirella.
All I can say is “Kill Whitey!!!”
What a dumb cunt.
Look, I’m not trying to be jerk here, but who is Warner Todd Huston? It sounds from the comments and from the tone of the article that he’s well known. Am I that far out of the comics knowhow that I have never heard of a prominent blogger-type? Or, you know, what?
Heh…weiner.
Richard, don’t feel bad, I didn’t know about him either and I follow political blogging. Looking at his writing (at an uber-right wing website of course) he’s just another crappy right wing blogger who couldn’t come up with a coherent argument to save his life. It’s like someone gave a youtube commentator a weekly column.
[…] current kerfuffle, and points out previous appearances of politics in the pages of Captain America. Christopher Bird and Bill Reed, meanwhile, respond to political commentator Warner Todd […]
Richard,
He’s only “well known” because HE says he’s well known. I for one am upset over the handful of brain cells that I lost while reading some of his comments on that CBR page and on his own website, with his “ho ho ho I’ve sure mad a bunch of comic book nerds mad!” nonsense.
If comics are so low-brow and inconsequential, why’s this guy getting into such a snit over a comic?
Mary Warner:
“The art in ‘Watchmen’ isn’t that great. It is competent– you can always tell what is going on, the characters are easily distinguishable and do look consistent from panel to panel, which does make it better than a great deal of comic art. But still, it isn’t that great. I know that I’m upsetting a lot of people by saying this, but it’s true.”
no, it’s not “true.” it’s your opinion. please don’t confuse the two. some of us like gibbons’ art quite a bit.
So…why are we wasting all this time responding to a guy who’s obviously just a troll? Houston’s obviously filled with glee that he got a response from Hoffman that he can scream about and draw inferences from, and that was a polite, mild response. Why is a snide, angry response going to help matters?
The vast majority of right-wing commenters, going all the way up to the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs, exist primarily to stir up shit like this. There’s no point in arguing with them because they know they don’t have an actual point. They just want the attention that comes from controversy. If the responses are angry, which they can twist into “look at these deranged liberals” the way Houston does, so much the better.
There’s no hope of actual debate here, unless you honestly think you’re reaching a third party who might be swayed by this. But if said third party is even seriously considering listening to Houston, there’s probably not much hope there anyway.
@Prankster
You have a sad but valid point.
Even so, it still feels good to vent at guys like Huston on occasion.
Now I can EXTRA rationalize buying the brand new Captain America underpants I found on eBay, because they will be part of a political hootenanny! Thanks, Warner Todd Whoever-You-Are, because I almost let fiscal responsibility talk me out of that purchase.
You let off Quesada and Brubaker way too easily. The correct response to something like this is to 1. ignore it or barring that 2. tell the people involved to fuck off, because they have zero power to actually affect anything until you give it to them by taking them seriously.
I’d like to applaud you, Mary, for expressing a contrary opinion here and there. That really takes guts in a public forum. Though I agree with Nicholas regarding Gibbons’ art… for my part, I do see flaws, but his work is really nothing short of excellent in my eyes… I give you kudos for honest discourse.
That said… Man! That Mr. Huston. What a condescending, hypocritical fellow. It’s hard not to be rude since there doesn’t seem to be much point in trying to be polite to the guy.
So…why are we wasting all this time responding to a guy who’s obviously just a troll?
Because he’s a troll who got Marvel comics to change one of their books to avoid offending a bunch of morons. Kinda ups the ante.
Why not? It’s not as though you’d actually be making a racist slur. In reality, you’d merely be the vessel the sign used to bear symbols possibly construed as identifiable language by a certain percentage of the population. It’s definitely not anything you could be held responsible for in a public forum.
Is this sarcasm? I can’t tell. Anyway, if veiled racism isn’t enough for you, the Teabaggers have got the good stuff too: http://tiny.cc/xvEyo
Thank you Heksefatter!
I saw that too when I skimmed his review and thought it was hilarious. But I only saw the first instance and stopped reading, thanks for pointing out all the other instances I could dare continue looking for!
@Mary Warner
I couldn’t disagree with you more. Firstly, don’t let the limitations of the 1986 printing process affect your opinions. Things were grossly different at that time.
Secondly, Dave Gibbons has a fantastic ability for planning and composition. Not only does he include a myriad of small references inside the work, he also includes subtle cues via layout of the panel. Read over some of the notes on the link below and it’ll illuminate things
http://iat.ubalt.edu/Moulthrop/hypertexts/WM/AN/AN_V.htm
“Also, read my full review of Watchmen, that seminal comic from 1986. I rip it up pretty good as the left-wing, hackneyed political screed it truly is.”
Seriously? This guy sounds like he should write for the New Frontiersman. 😛
@Bringthenoise
Marvel caving to Houston is stupid, but all the more reason we shouldn’t give him more publicity.
Seriously: ignore the right-wing bullies and they’ll go away.
“Seriously: ignore the right-wing bullies and they’ll go away.”
I keep trying to do this, and yet every time I turn on the news, I get more and more depressed.
I don’t think he is entirely unfair to mainstream American comics. I mean, who amongst you can say that they have not railed against One More Day, or gotten into a nerd rage over Secret Invasion or Dark Reign? Who here did not express disgust and yearn for the halcyon days of comics during their childhood when MGK posted the panel of Siege #2 where the Sentry ripped Ares apart? The works of those such as Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman are exceptions – Bendis, Millar, and Loeb are the industry standard.
well said MGK
I cannot help but wish that Flapjacks had responded to Warner Todd Huston.
Also, I hope the offending signs are replaced with some of the racist signs from the teabagger rallies. (Oh, and it needs footnotes, identifying the date and location of each of the teabagger rallies they came from)
Also, Gibbons’s art was very good in Watchmen, but not great… spectacular layouts, but every time I read it his weaknesses with anatomy leap out at me from time to time.
I’m with dan on this. Marvel should have faced this guy head on. MGK shouldn’t be doing this job, Marvel should. You know what is always good for sales? Controversy. Because offended people are always going to complain, but if you confront them and make others look at why someone could be offended you get more people looking at that work.
The Satanic Verses would have just been another work, except it caused such a stir.
I tend to write my comments late at night and I’m often tired, so I don’t always say the things I should. I was really worried today that I might’ve come across as a petty jerk. I guess my comment wasn’t as petty as I thought, but I’m still a little ashamed of complaining about such insignificant details.
Sorry. I’m a bit bothered by all the Watchmen worship sometimes. I don’t object if other people think it’s the greatest story ever– I just get really annoyed when people insist that you have to agree with them about how great it is.
(I do think it’s a fairly good story, just not the masterpiece it’s commonly claimed to be.)
I do think your criticisms of this guy’s rant are completely valid. I just don’t have much to add, other than to say that he probably isn’t worth the effort of this much opposition.
“Seriously: ignore the right-wing bullies and they’ll go away.”
The 2000’s disagree.
Mary, you’re not impressed by the way Gibbons deploys all those motifs and visual echoes?
Man, The Satanic Verses SUCKED. Stupid knee-jerk controversies, making boring stuff look sexy when it’s really just extra boring.
As someone who’s first and last name are routinely reversed, I can’t hold that against this guy. His opinions, yeah. God forbid Falcon should be uncomfortable about going into an angry white right-wing mob.
Prankster, you’re wronng, the right-wing ranters won’t go away because they have lots of people who listen to them. Limbaugh and Beck don’t get an audience because people criticize them, they get their audience because they mix in enough shit that sounds plausible (“Government is wasting your tax dollars!”) that people listen to the craziness (“Obama is a Manchurian candidate! Democrats want terrorists to attack America!”). Speaking up may not help, but staying silent definitely won’t improve things.
the trouble with the Satanic Verse had very little to do with the actual text of the story and a bit more to do with an unfortunate translation error.
You see, Rushdie wrote the damn book in english, and so it later had to be translated into arabic. the trouble is that the phrase “satanic verses” is an english term created by oriental studies professors in oxford for a bunch of heretical “addendums” to the quran that were written/discovered a few centuries after muhammed had died. In arabic though those texts are known by their original arabic name obviously, so the translator and arabic publishers decided to find an equivalent term that more readily fit the english title of the book.
What they came up was a term that, when translated back in to english, roughly means “the quran was written by satan”. And there’s a bit in the book where Rushdie also kind of calls all the mothers of all muslims… whores. Which turned out to be a Yo Mama too far.
None of which explains why the hell Cat Stevens fucking cared one way or the other – why are you listening to a fatwah from the Iranian supreme leader mr. Stevens? This is not your cow! It goes; “this random writer is an enemy of islam! Please kill him if you happen to meet him in the street kthxbai” It’s the Ayatollah Khomeini!
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, but I heard once that in a later interview Yusef Islam said that he never supported Khomeini’s death sentence. He claimed that he had been asked by a reporter to explain the reasoning behind the fatwa, and he did, and then the reporter used the quotes to make it appear that Yusef Islam supported the murder of a writer.
It could be that Islam was simply trying to backpedal on what he’d said, but from what I know about reporters twisting people’s words around in many other cases, it does sound quite plausible.
This guy needs to be in a musical. “Warner Todd: the Demon Butcher of the English Language.”
“Seriously: ignore the right-wing bullies and they’ll go away.”
If a child asks their parent for something once, and gets it, then the next time they’ll ask for something five times before giving up. If they get it then, the next time they’ll ask twenty times before giving up. If they get it then, they’ll escalate to one hundred requests the next time.
Bullies are essentially asking for attention, whether children or grown-up blowhards, and growing up has taught them that a combination of persistence and escalation will eventually get them what they want. Ignoring a bully like Warner Todd doesn’t make him go away, it makes him up his game.
The best way to deal with bullies is not to ignore them, but to shut them down.
Apologies for posting twice in a row like this.
Dear sir,
As instructed, I clicked on the link in order to read Todd’s _Watchmen_ analysis and was confronted immediately on Part 1, Pg1 with a lengthy section on everything that Todd hasn’t been involved in. In fact, everything from Part 1, Pg 1 to Part 3, Pg 2 appears to be a memoir of some kind for the author.
In future, please warn people before clicking links that they aren’t reading an interpretation of _Watchmen_; instead, they are reading the biography of someone who has read _Watchmen_. These are not the same things. Especially when the person in the biography really hasn’t done anything interesting.
Regards,
– UnSub
Actually, Duran Duran IS pretty awesome!!!
supposed to have a new album this year!
I like when some of these right-wingers express some undesirable attributes, for example Todd’s reply to Carla’s letter is rife with sexism. And then when it’s called on they always come out with the standard reply it’s ‘political correctness gone mad’
“I can call a her a ‘little lady’ in a condensing way in my hostile reply gadnammit! It ain’t sexist, it’s just folksy charm.”
Yet let’s for fun just pretend that the comic was a deliberate swing at the tea party, and so then labelled by Todd as ‘left leaning propaganda’. So this nut protests and whines and even gets an apology from Marvel being so how do you say -‘incorrect’?
Of course Marvel aren’t being ‘politically incorrect’ (even though it’s a political comment that, in their opinion, is incorrect) Of course not, it’s left leaning propaganda! That means right wingers can whine about it.
If they ever realised that they are being just as big ‘PC police’ as their left leaning counterparts their heads would probably explode
“If they ever realised that they are being just as big ‘PC police’ as their left leaning counterparts their heads would probably explode”
You realize all the big-name conservatives know this and are cynically exploiting their own constituents?
“Uh, no. Sam Wilson is not his “real name.” Sam Wilson is a character’s name. It isn’t a real person we’re talking about here. This poor young lady cannot tell reality from fiction, apparently.”
Is there a word for when someone pretends to be stupid to try and hide the fact that they really ARE stupid?
—
“Seriously: ignore the right-wing bullies and they’ll go away.”
We tried that back when Clinton was President.
Didn’t work out so good.
[…] would never mockingly call a black man “Obama,” as happened in Captain America #602. As MightyGodKing put it: My word, why would anybody ever associate tea partiers with […]
MGK: Warner Todd Huston sounds psycotic to me. I’m just so disturbed that people like him exist. It’s really scary. I read his posts a few times. It’s like arguing with a 12 year old troll. Sometimes I wonder if these kind of people deserve to live.
Seriously, if anyone is immature its not us comic book fans, its these conservatives that are so convinced of their ideology they don’t realize they support screwing the poor over and embracing total hatred of various groups of people. I believe there is something wrong with you if you can’t read his article just laugh at his pathetica attempts at humor and his inability to grasp basic concepts.
I thought screwing over the poor and embracing their hatred and fear of people not like themselves was their ideology (or is that “idiology”?).