Random Musings Blog #68! · 2:53pm Feb 4th, 2018
Welcome to my (sporadically posted) Random Musings blog!
This blog is divided into three sections:
1. Moth's Random Thoughts: The everyday little thoughts and idle musings I have throughout the week.
2. Shit Zef & Moth Say: Fun little conversations Zef and I have will be collected in this weekly feature.
3. The Comic Book Rant: My thoughts on American comic books and why I hate them.
MOTH'S RANDOM THOUGHTS
The everyday little thoughts and idle musings I have.
- Had a silly thought for a parody mecha show title: Robunger. I guess it'd involve a mecha that only got half built, so it's just the butt?
SHIT ZEF & MOTH SAY
Some of the wacky exchanges Zef and I have on a daily basis.
Zef: ...oh man, Akane would vent SO MUCH if she had Twitter
Zef: She would be VICIOUS
Moth: XD
Moth: [Nabiki] Wow, sis. Twitter gives you 280 characters and all you do with is it tweet twice as much "bakabakabaka"?
Zef: XD!
Zef: AND she RTs her own baka tweets
Zef: And Likes them
Moth: XD
Moth: And attaches pictures of mallets
Zef: XD
Moth: You know what just occurred to me about the EG universe a little bit ago?
Moth: That whole phase where the girls wore nothing but Ugg boots...
Zef: That is, the first three movies and a slew of shorts?
Moth: I just...just realized how much godawful foot odor would result from that.
Zef: They fill their Penelo Boots with talcum powder every day
Zef: They shove their foot in there, a tiny cloud is expelled
Moth: XD
Zef: Rarity is actually lime-colored, she only looks white because of all the talcum powder she puts in her boots
Moth: XD!!!
Zef: Hmm
Zef: Yeah, I see the dongs are fully dipped in hard chocolate crust
THE COMIC BOOK RANT
Why Moth Hates Comic Books
I've always loved superheroes and the lore surrounding them. Whenever I'm exposed to a comic book character for the first time, or a new factoid or comic storyline via secondary media, I go wiki diving to learn all about it. I've researched a ridiculous amount of comic book lore over the years. I've watched dozens of superhero movies, both live-action and animated, based on comic book properties. I've watched hundreds of hours of animated adaptations of my favorite superheroes.
I've read maybe five actual comic books in my entire life.
I hate comic books. I hate the format, I hate the medium. I hate the inconsistencies created by dozens of writers jumping in and out of a series, retconning things, changing things, reinterpreting characters, and generally fucking shit up. Most especially, I hate how it's impossible to follow a single ongoing story arc in American comics without obsessively following multiple titles because a story that starts in, say, Batman's Ass #143 doesn't continue in Batman's Ass #144 but rather in Lois Lane Buys Eggs #47, and then in Joker's Hangnail #3, and then in Green Lantern: Drunk in Public #1.
It's bad enough that they do shit like this, but when you don't have a dedicated comic shop in your neck of the woods? That just makes it so much worse.
Then, too, you have the way comics write themselves into corners, then are forced to do a "crisis reboot" every 10-15 years or so to "fix" it--and then they go and do the same stupid shit all over again, and along the way they retcon good things about their characters and write in new, canon bullshit things about them.
In the last 20 years, there are only two comic titles I've actually wanted to read, both from Marvel, and one of these days I will: Spider-Gwen and The Superior Spider-Man. But for the most part? Fuck comic books.
But, again, I love the characters, worlds, and lore. Which I can get from reasonably well-done animated adaptations. Batman: the Animated Series is one of my all-time favorite shows. Actually, pretty much the entire Classic DCAU is right up there with it, including Static Shock. Adaptations are great because (again, when they don't SUCK) they distill the characters, concepts, and action down to an easily digestible, enjoyable package that you can just sit back and nerd out to in small doses. You don't have to get bogged down in hundreds of pages of inanity, insanity, and frustration. You've got your story in 30-minute to 2-hour chunks, you've got all the continuity you need, you've got the "perfect" versions of the characters (again, usually), and you've got all the little canon and lore nods that send you to Wikipedia and have you grinning.
That's what I want out of my comic fan experience. All the FUN STUFF...without any of the actual comics.
Interestingly, this leads to situations where I know things I shouldn't know that people who actually read comic books don't know. For example, I know ALL the different Lantern Corps, what powers their rings, and what their rings do. Amusingly, most comic fans I talk to don't even get how the Indigo Rings work--I keep getting suggestions that Fluttershy should get the Indigo Lantern ring in Comes a Crossover.
Hahahahahahaha. No. I'm giving that shit to Abacus Cinch.
So I take it you're not a fan of Linkara?
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I don't follow ANY vloggers/Youtubers except Vannamelon.
This, this right here, this sums up all my feelings on comics and sadly even some manga. When clamp started doing that I stopped buying their stories. I also hate it when superhero shows on tv do a bunch of crossover episodes that don’t make any sense if you don’t follow all four or five shows that they decided to shove in there (I’m looking at you CW). But yeah I can’t stand the way American comics run anymore. You’ll love Spider-Gwen though. I’ve read the original run and the first few issues of Radioactive spider-Gwen. They were fantastic.
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Vannamelon is brilliant!
I loved comics as a kid, and still love the format. But I never really read many ongoing stories or superhero books. Mostly I read a lot of Disney comics which were just a bunch of one-shots. I did start following a few ongoing stories in the 80's during college but not for too long. Bought a lot of Star Trek comics which tended to be one-shots or short arcs. Today about the only comics I read are MLP.
I have a few really old Star Trek comics published by Gold Key. I think they just saw a few pics from the show and were given a description from someone who saw one episode while in a drunken stupor. Had things like flames shooting out the nacelles AND the rear of the central hull, Spock blurting out "Holy satellites Jim!", and talking about FTL being impossible.
My method for reading comics? .....Atop the Fourth Wall when Linkara's not burning a bad comic.
There are individuals on YouTube who recap comics and comic book storylines,,,,,,but yeah, what with how the companies try to bring in new readers with reboots, it really further alienates them due to the nature of said rebooting plus everything else you've gone over.
That was why I could never get into superhero comics. I have been meaning to check out Spider-Gwen at some point.
I like webcomics, mostly because they seem to be written by fans of comics who take the time to make sure bullshit like that doesn't happen. Relatively recently i started reading this one, called Spinnerette. It's almost a parody of Spiderman, yet it takes itself fairly seriously, too. There's a ton of interesting side characters, the world and lore are well developed, and if you want to skip the side-stories, you could. There's an archive of the various 'books', so you can skip the ones that aren't part of the main plot. Some 'books' are only available when you purchase a compilation volume, but those are usually side-stories and if they're brought up later you can understand the jist of things through context. There is a 'crisis' event, but it's once again a parody, so it works.
Just thought I'd advertise for them, I really love the story
How dare you impugn Batman's Ass! I'll have you know that's the best Bat-comic since The Tiny Bulge in Robin's Tights.
*snerk*
Yeah, I agree with you about comics in general. If you don't spend a hundred bucks a month to follow them obsessively, you'll be lost within a year. I never understood why women aren't more into comics, because they're soap operas with people who can shoot lasers out of their eyes, fly and junk like that. (Really. Look up John de Lancie's early work in Days of Our Lives. Some of those story lines are less believable than anything he did as Q or Discord.)
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I personally know more than a dozen female comic geeks. Also, maybe shit like Power Girl turns them off?
Your complaint about comics seems broadly similar to mine: every time I find myself really enjoying a comic, it seems that one or two arcs later it gets handed to a different writer who goes off in a completely different direction.
One comic I quite like that I never would have expected to like would be the Mega Man adaptation from Archie. It's reasonably kid-friendly without being childish. (On the other hand, there's Empowered, which honestly has great writing and storyline when it gets going, but spends way too much time playing to fetishes.)
I haven't followed any proper mainstream DC/Marvel stuff in a long time.
Huh.
You know, as much as I love the characters and a good portion of the animations from superhero comics...I have never read an American comic book.
...don't think I'm ever going to start.
Fluttershy would be Hope or Love...or maybe Rage on a bad day. Definitely not Indigo given how the rings really work...
ON he Comic rant. Yeah I hear where you are coming from.
These days if I read a comic it's cuz i'm getting a graphic novel to read a story arc or a crossover. Hell the last comic I bought was the Justice League/MMPR crossover from last year.
I personally think that Fox would make more money selling the movie rights back to Marvel than they would in making another Fantastic Four movie.