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mygif

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.

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SilverMoonWolf said on February 15th, 2010 at 10:58 pm

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.

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mygif

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.

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mygif

Anyone who uses the basement arguement needs to be disqualified from commenting on anything. Ever.

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Is mostly a lurker, but runs a comic book store, and would just like to say “kudos, sir.” So, yeah, kudos, sir.

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mygif

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.

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This post made my day. You, kind sir, rock!

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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.

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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.

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Robert Eddleman said on February 16th, 2010 at 1:38 am

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.

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Mary Warner said on February 16th, 2010 at 1:50 am

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.

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mygif

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.

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mygif

“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.

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mygif

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.

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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!

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mygif

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.

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Fred Davis said on February 16th, 2010 at 7:22 am

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…)

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mygif

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.

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Excuse me, “are his references” Whoops.

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Fred Davis said on February 16th, 2010 at 7:37 am

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.

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[…] Christopher Bird on the Captain America/Tea Party kerfuffle. […]

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Clearly the best response Marvel can give to this is to have the offending sign read “Huston is a moran!” in the reprints.

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Heksefatter said on February 16th, 2010 at 10:22 am

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.

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mygif

Please tell me he really did have letters printed in Vampirella.

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All I can say is “Kill Whitey!!!”

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What a dumb cunt.

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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?

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mygif

Heh…weiner.

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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.

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[…] 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 […]

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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.

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mygif

If comics are so low-brow and inconsequential, why’s this guy getting into such a snit over a comic?

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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.

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mygif

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.

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Heksefatter said on February 16th, 2010 at 1:52 pm

@Prankster

You have a sad but valid point.

Even so, it still feels good to vent at guys like Huston on occasion.

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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.

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mygif

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.

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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.

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mygif

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

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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!

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@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

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Thousand Sons said on February 16th, 2010 at 4:06 pm

“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. 😛

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@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.

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mygif

“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.

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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.

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well said MGK

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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)

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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.

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Lister Sage said on February 16th, 2010 at 10:28 pm

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.

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Mary Warner said on February 17th, 2010 at 12:54 am

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.

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mygif

“Seriously: ignore the right-wing bullies and they’ll go away.”

The 2000’s disagree.

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Mary, you’re not impressed by the way Gibbons deploys all those motifs and visual echoes?

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Man, The Satanic Verses SUCKED. Stupid knee-jerk controversies, making boring stuff look sexy when it’s really just extra boring.

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mygif

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.

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Fred Davis said on February 17th, 2010 at 9:20 pm

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!

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Mary Warner said on February 18th, 2010 at 2:33 am

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.

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mygif

This guy needs to be in a musical. “Warner Todd: the Demon Butcher of the English Language.”

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mygif

“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.

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mygif

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

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mygif

Actually, Duran Duran IS pretty awesome!!!

supposed to have a new album this year!

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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

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mygif

“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?

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Consumer Unit 5012 said on February 19th, 2010 at 5:19 am

“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.

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[…] 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 […]

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thedarksideofcomics said on February 21st, 2010 at 5:25 am

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.

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thedarksideofcomics said on February 21st, 2010 at 5:28 am

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.

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Candlejack said on February 21st, 2010 at 4:53 pm

I thought screwing over the poor and embracing their hatred and fear of people not like themselves was their ideology (or is that “idiology”?).

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