Let It Not Be Said That I Remained Silent

(feel free to pass this around anywhere, if you find it of value)

They say that if you're wondering what you would have done in World War II, or in the Civil War, or in relation to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, just look at what you're doing now. I'm looking, and I'm not satisfied. I'm not doing nothing, but I could be doing more, and I will try. But in the meantime, let me say what I believe, as starkly as possible, so as to leave no doubt about where I stand. Post your own somewhere! Your opinion is at least as noteworthy as mine.

Climate change will kill us all if we don't stop it. Lots of people are doing lots of things to help, and that's great. Governments and corporations are not doing enough, and many powerful individuals are using their considerable resources to prevent any efforts to save us. These individuals are the enemies of humanity.

Fossil fuels should be left in the ground. All of them. Starting now, or as close to now as possible. This will be tough for us, but this is an emergency and we'll figure out how to cope eventually.

Eat less beef. Ah, I miss it. But I'm told it makes a difference.

Most of our problems, we could eventually figure them out. The trouble is we're on the clock with climate change. We have to solve that now, and all this other stuff is getting in the way. So we have to fix everything now, urgently, and instead everything's getting worse. That's whatcha call "suboptimal".

Don't be mean. That's the main rule. If your beliefs work their way around to where you're telling yourself you have to be mean, they're wrong and you should change them. 

War may be the worst thing people can do, but you can't just let Putin have his way in Ukraine, because if you reward him for attacking Ukraine he'll understand correctly that he can just keep attacking countries.

We shouldn't have surrendered to Covid. We could have beaten it. Still, wear your masks, ventilate your rooms, and stay up to date on your vaccines, because it's still nasty and we can still save lives. Not to mention practice for the next pandemic!

A faction in Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza. I don't care if they're Jewish or what; they're guilty of genocide and are the enemies of humanity. Some people are taking this opportunity to express anti-Semitism, which is not only a type of bigotry as bad as any other, but is also a good sign that the anti-Semite is evil in other ways, and, again, is an enemy of humanity.

There are students and other protestors speaking up for the Palestinians. I think they're great and I support them. Leave them alone.

Fascism is rising around the world and needs to be fought harder, by more people, and by what remains of our institutions. Those who kind of agree with this but who respond by nodding soberly and saying, "yes, but you don't understand, and what about, and...," and do nothing, are part of the problem. The fascists, and those who intentionally support them and their variants, the racists and misogynists and homophobes and transphobes and Christian dominionists, are enemies of humanity.

The fascists aren't quite in charge yet everywhere. But they're having an effect: they're turning up the level of fascism in our society. If you've ever had the reaction of, "well, the only option left to us in this situation is to get a gun. Revolution," that's a sign of fascism. They want people thinking like that, like people have to work things out with guns and no other way.

"Both sides" are not the same. Maybe at one time they were, but now one side is normal, with all the benefits and problems that implies, and the other side is rolling downhill into fascism and nihilism, and gaining speed. You don't have to like it that this is the case, but it's a problem if you don't accept it.

If, for whatever reason, you're on the side of the fascists, and you happen to be reading this, this paragraph is for you. I won't take up my time by trying to refute your beliefs or talking points; you're smart enough to do that yourself, if you want to. The information's out there. I'll just say this: you don't have to live like this. You don't have to keep hating everybody, you don't have to view the world as a bloody power struggle, you can find meaning for yourself not in the degradation of others. It's much nicer for you if you change your ways.

Conservatism is fake. It's hatred, greed, and the lust for power, wearing one overcoat made of high-minded rhetoric that nobody actually believes.

Borders are fake. Let immigrants in. They're people! You know, people?

Abolish the police. I'm not being as "extreme" as I could be by saying that; there are harsher verbs than "abolish".

Trans people are basically harmless (know how I know? Because if one was harmful, we would never have heard the end of it) and just want to be left alone. But, currently, they also need protection from their self-appointed enemies. Do what you can to help.

There are things that can be said in favour of both socialism and capitalism. There are also ways in which both can be abused. I have doubts that we will ever find an economic system that works perfectly for humans, but I think any system will do which preserves the ability of ordinary people to have control over their lives, and no system will do that does not.

Institutions are weak these days. Nothing good will happen unless individuals team up to make it happen; nothing bad will be prevented unless individuals team up to prevent it.

You are more than your job. You are more than your economic role. Luminous beings are we. The most important thing is that you exist and you can do what you want with that fact. Create, think, play, love, eat, swim. It's your life.

This "enemies of humanity" stuff may make me sound intolerant, to some. To which I say: Oh, right, I'm the problem.

The people I've described as "enemies of humanity" have earned the very worst treatment we can conceive for them, right up to torment and execution. But just because they deserve it doesn't mean we should do it. We don't deserve to be torturers or murderers; nobody does. We need to find a way to beat them without killing them, and to find a way to persuade--or, even better, convince--them to join us. If we as humans have jobs that we are responsible for just because we live, these are them.

We, as humans, have been too tolerant of our own evil for too long. We need to stop accepting it, or listening to it, or compromising with it, and start fighting it harder, and to win. I think "civilization" is more of a goal to be achieved than an existing status to be defended. Are we civilized now? Are we civil? Maybe someday we will be.

Honestly, everybody, we can do this. We can. But the golden future won't build itself. Help somebody today.

If I Cannot Bring You Comfort

 It is the Christmas season, for those who observe, which signals the end of the year as measured by the Gregorian calendar, and as such it is time for us to take stock of our time which is ending, and our time which is about to begin. We can start with the Legion of Super-Heroes (remember the Legion? It's a blog about the Legion) and then move on to other matters.

We already knew that 2022 would see the Legion appear in... a miniseries? an arc?... called Justice League vs the Legion of Super-Heroes, which will, apparently, be about both Gold Lantern and the Great Darkness. I'm not super nuts about the only Legion series being a limited run like this, but it's more than we've got now, and, at least, it's part of Brian Michael Bendis's vision for the team.

Speaking of Bendis, in his newsletter (click here for the whole thing) he announced that he's working on developing an animated Legion of Super-Heroes series for HBO Max. The series will be aimed at grownups and will feature his fourboot Legion. Some points:

- this is, of course, very positive news

- the odds that this TV show actually gets made are not great. Not because of any failing of Bendis's or the Legion's or HBO Max's. Just basically because most TV shows don't make it to air

- the previous LSH TV show, the two-season cartoon on Fox Kids, was a respectable success, and its influence on its young viewers will someday be of tangible benefit to the Legion of Super-Heroes franchise; this TV show, if it makes it, could do similarly

- the process of taking comic-book stories and turning them into TV is likely to accentuate Bendis's strengths as a Legion writer and mitigate his weaknesses

- I've long been of the opinion that any successful translation of the Legion to TV must be animated, not live-action, so I think they've made the right decision here

My big takeaway from both of these impending Legion stories is that the LSH does have a future, and I'm aware that that sounds like a joke but in this case it isn't, and that I hope we can all be around to see it.

And while we're all on that... I hope you can all be vaccinated up to your maximum available amount of protection, and can keep yourselves safe from the coronavirus in all the other ways. Ironically--which is the word we use when we don't want to say "ridiculously"--the coronavirus is the least, and most tractable, of the major problems facing the world in general and us in particular. It's no coincidence that all of these problems--I'll list "climate change" and "fascism" as the big two, but there are more--are exacerbated by being denied, promoted, defended, and/or sponsored by a loose but cooperative network of groups and entities whose interest is not in the future but in making the present as bad as possible.

I hope, in 2022, that we (I am definitely including myself in this hope) can do all we can to be part of the solutions and not part of the problems, and that we're wise enough to choose the right ways to do that.

I haven't been writing much on Legion Abstract recently. This is partly because there haven't been any Legion comics to write about. Maybe I'll chip in another article or two here or there. Certainly I'll review JLAvLSH when it comes out. I don't believe in permanent goodbyes on the internet, and this isn't even a temporary one, but if you need to see it in print: I'll never close down this blog as long as I'm alive (although it may sometimes be less active than other times). I have, however, started writing a couple of other projects, and I'll tell you more about them if and when they become something.

And I'll end this post with this, which strikes me as also to be appropriate for an end-of-the-year summary.

Over the last couple of years, I've started coming out to my friends and family and other people as agender. This isn't exactly a new thing. No need to share the specific details, but all my life I've had a very distant relationship with masculinity, and recently I've come to understand that it's because masculinity wasn't actually a thing that was for me at all.

Why am I telling you this? You don't really need to know it, and I don't really need you to know it. It doesn't make a difference to my Legion opinions that I'm neither dude nor chick. But I do have a couple of reasons.

First, I've always understood that the value of coming out is in its effect on other people: first, people who haven't come out themselves can see more people they can identify with and become comfortable with the idea that people like them belong in the world, which they do. Second, people hostile to LGBTQ+ people will increasingly get the (accurate) sense that they are outnumbered, and will be more likely to change their opinions or at least shut up about them if they don't change them. Both of which are worthwhile goals.

Plus... I'm white, and male-passing, and in a sense I've not been subject to transphobia my whole life. See, "agender" is a subcategory of "trans" in this sense: I was assigned the gender of "male" at birth, and have now said that that is not my gender. That's trans. It's true that the word "trans" has connotations that don't really resonate with my experience, but that's neither here nor there. So I don't reject the label.

But while I can look back on the considerable amount of bullying that I experienced much earlier in my life and say that, in retrospect, it was partly based on being a precocious agender kid, I didn't know that at the time. They called me "gay" (and other related terms), sure, but as far as I knew, they were just wrong about that. (Also, being gay and being agender are not at all the same thing, but that's a nuance that would have been lost on these kids.) So in my mind, I wasn't being picked on because of something that I was that wasn't hurting them, and therefore I didn't beat myself up for being it, and so was spared one specific kind of damage. In retrospect, they were clearly picking up on something about me, but since I had no idea, there's a level on which it doesn't count.

But there are any number of trans people out there for whom that's not true. They've had to deal with a lot of static while knowing what it was the whole time. So what I'm intending here is to stand with them.

(FAQ: Are you changing your pronouns? Nah; I've had about fifty years of getting used to he/him. But if you want to refer to me as she/her or they/them, that's okay too. I'd a lot rather be called "she" than "Matt".)

There's still a lot I don't know about this topic. There's still a lot I don't understand about myself. I'm no expert. (And a lot of the answers one finds boil down to, "it's different for everybody! You get to decide for yourself!" Great. Thanks. I'm sure that's right. But it's no help.) Having said that, if anyone is coping with something similar and thinks it would help to kick it around with me, please let me know; I'm happy to do what I can.

So my last thought here is, let's all be ourselves in 2022. And let's all get to work. Tired as we all are, there's a lot that needs to be done. The truth is somewhere here.

Vacation

Now that Legion Lost has been cancelled, I'm down to just one DC title (Legion of Super-Heroes) and no Marvel titles. I am still vacating them.

I'll start regularly buying more DC and Marvel comics that I think I'd like as soon as I feel better about doing so. But since I announced I wasn't, we've had the Gail Simone thing and the Orson Scott Card thing. So as of right now, DC's making it real easy for me to keep my money in my pockets.

That's all.

Dissemble

I don't know if you've heard, but the Avengers movie is coming out this weekend. It seems like a lot of people want to see it and it's pretty good in its soulless blockbustery way.

As stated before, I'm not going to go see it.

You don't have to either, you know. You can, obviously you can, but you don't have to. If you're not crazy about how Marvel treated Jack Kirby (among other things), you can always say, "You know what? My life will be just as good if I don't see this movie as it is if I do." It is an option. You could even let Marvel know about your decision and why you made it.

Not the only option, of course; some people have decided to just not see it in the opening weekend, reasoning that this will deny Marvel and Disney the prestigious early numbers. I don't put a lot of weight on the early box office being that much more valuable than the overall take, but they must decide, and it's certainly another option. And then a lot of people have decided to see the movie, but also to donate to the Hero Initiative, and I can certainly see the logic of that, so there's one more option for you. Or you may just decide that this is not an area where you want to expend your protest energy, and see the movie or not strictly according to your particular tastes in leisure. It's all okay with me, not that you need my approval.

I do urge you, though, to do something to try to make the world a better place, as you understand it, in some way. It's a target-rich environment out there.

I wrote about this kind of thing before, you may recall, and earlier this week I finally let DC and Marvel in on my thinking. I sent this letter to Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada:

Dear Sir:

I'm writing to tell you I won't be buying your comic books any more.

To elaborate: I'm a longtime superhero comic-book fan and blogger. In February I got to the point where I wasn't comfortable buying DC and Marvel comics, or watching any of their spinoff movies and TV shows, and stopped. I suppose I should have written this letter then, but I don't think the timing makes any difference.

It's not because you're not publishing anything I like. For instance, I'm going to miss Fables so much it hurts, and I was really looking forward to trying Mark Waid's Daredevil series. (Although I should say that I plan on continuing to buy DC's Legion-of-Super-Heroes-related comics, because I don’t want to stop blogging about them.) But enjoying comics doesn't outweigh other considerations.

You can probably already guess my reasons for taking this step: your treatment of previous creators and their heirs, like Siegel and Kirby and Moore and Friedrich (and recent events surrounding Chris Roberson have certainly not changed my mind); your portrayals of female characters; your corporate owners' attempts to make copyright more and more restrictive.

DC and Marvel are the great pioneers of the superhero genre, and the discrepancy between your companies’ actions and the ideals represented by your characters is striking and unpleasant.

I'm disappointed that it has come to this. Please give me some reasons to revisit this decision; I'm willing--no, I'm eager--to do so.

Regards,

Matthew E

I don't expect it'll have any effect. Or not much. I figure I'll get a couple of form letters back, something like that. I suppose DC might decide to be hardasses about it and try to come after my blog legally; there wouldn't be much point to it but it's theoretically on the menu. The important thing is that I feel better, and that makes it worth doing, because certainly DC and Marvel weren't doing anything to make me feel better.

Legion of Super-Heroes #8 Review

Apparently Chris Roberson has cut his ties with DC Comics. I gave Roberson a hard time for the, oh, density level of Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, but I still liked him as a writer and will continue to seek out his stuff. Looks like that's the only Legion writing we're going to get out of him, which is everybody's loss. He cites this blogpost as his reason for not wanting to work with DC any more; it's certainly an excellent blogpost and I support Roberson in his decision. I had my thoughts on just this kind of thing earlier this year; they're available here if you missed 'em and are interested. (Oh, and, don't forget: The Avengers is hitting theatres pretty soon; make sure you don't go to see it!)

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

Invisible Kid disrupts a theft but some of the thieves manage to get away with the goods, at least as far as Mon-El and Ultra Boy. Unfortunately, the thieves sent out a bunch of copies of the booty, which turns out to be the chip that makes Tharok Tharok; Brainiac 5 speculates that someone's trying to put the Fatal Five back together.

Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl show up to take Cosmic Boy out for a night on the town in Istanbul. Cosmic Boy may be reuniting with Night Girl and Lightning Lad has to do some real work for a change and stop a lightning storm from getting out of control.

Review:

A slight issue. Felt like a fill-in. Here are the things it got done:
- screen time for Invisible Kid, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad
- kicking off a Fatal Five story
- walking back Geoff Johns's breakup of Cosmic Boy and Night Girl
- giving us some Lightle and Cinar art

All of which are worth doing. (Depending on how you feel about Night Girl. Me, I like her.) But it doesn't really add up to a comic book.

The first story was best: interesting villains, good action, real stakes. Only thing I didn't like about it is that the Legion came off looking like a bunch of chumps. But I guess that's par for the course in the superhero life.

The second story, on the other hand... well, was it really a story? There wasn't any conflict in it, unless you count Lightning Lad's chore, which is about as routine an affair as I can recall.

Here's my question. Who would be trying to put the Fatal Five back together? Not a lot of candidates I can think of. Basically just the Five themselves, and not all of them. Obviously not Validus (whoever Validus actually is, now that Garth and Imra have Garridan back). I doubt the Persuader would bother. There is no Tharok at the moment (right?). Mano, don't know. There is no Emerald Empress at the moment, that we've seen, anyway, but maybe the Eye could be doing it on its own? I could see Caress or Flare wanting to do it; it was their one shot at the big time. But could they?

The problem with anybody else doing it is they have to know that the Fatal Five can't be controlled. Is anyone out there stupid enough to believe that Tharok or the Empress or Validus will take orders? And if they can't be controlled they why exactly would you want them around? Which brings us to one possible answer, as the Dominators are exactly stupid enough, and they might not need to control the Five anyway; they might just want to turn them loose on the U.P.

Levitz has gone to some trouble, with his portrayal of Brainiac Five, to make it clear that he isn't just arrogant, that he actually does care for his friends and respect them. Still, he's a lot more arrogant in this run than he was in Levitz's second run; read 'em back-to-back and see for yourself. It's not entirely to my taste; I prefer Brainy when he's nicer. Like in the cartoon. That was good.

Notes:
- what's the deal with the Interlac on page 2?
- so the Legionnaires go out on the town in their regular costumes, huh? I guess it makes it easy for new readers
- Saturn Girl sounds like she's planning on dancing with some other guys after Garth

Art:

First story, by Steve Lightle: 51 panels/10 pages = 5.1 panels/page. One double-page spread of 6 panels.

Second story, by Yildiray Cinar: 43 panels/10 pages = 4.3 panels/page.

Nice to see the boys back again. In particular check out Cinar's take on 31st-century Istanbul on page 14 and Lightle's designs on the thieves (specifically I'm not sure how he got away with Jerl. Jerl looks like a Phil Foglio character, and I mean that in a good way).

Membership Notes: Nothing much interesting here; just that Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad are still on the off-duty roster.

Following up on Last Month's Rant

Funds have been dispatched to The Hero Initiative.

Just so you don't get the idea that I'm all mouth.

Vacate DC and Marvel

DC and Marvel are coming out with a lot of stuff in the next while that I really want to buy.

For DC, there's the new Earth 2 series, which I'm quite curious about. They're collecting Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld and All-Star Squadron in Showcase editions, both of which I could quite easily bite on. Justice League: Generation Lost is going to be out in trade one of these days; I'd like to get that. Also I can't help but feel like I'm going to want to start reading the regular Justice League comic once it gets going.

Marvel of course has a couple of series that I've been waiting for the trade on, Daredevil and Annihilators: Earthfall (I'm not so much on the Annihilators themselves, but Rocket Raccoon has become one of my favourites), in addition to New Mutants, which is on my pull list.

So it's a shame that I won't be buying any of it!

But it won't do.

Now let me go back to the beginning and explain why.

You don't have to be paying attention very closely to know that the world has got some problems these days, and you can list them as well as I can if not better. And it looks like it's getting worse, and more and more stuff to deal with keeps showing up. And you know what? I'm tired of not doing anything about it. What am I, just going to sit around and read Green Lantern Corps while the world goes to hell around us? I am not. I hate the feeling that I'm not helping, or not doing enough, and reading all these outrageous stories about evil bastards who get away with everything, and it's just no way to live.

I remember reading, in the last couple of years, about some protest somewhere. I forget what was being protested, but it was something that was certainly worthy of protest. Anyway, the powers that be sent the cops in, like they do, and the cops beat up a bunch of peaceful people and arrested some others for nothing in particular, like they sometimes do, and kept them locked up, and so on. And I thought to myself, wow, if something like that ever happened to me, they would have made an enemy of me for life. I would want nothing less than to destroy the entire country. Then I thought, well, that's messed up, isn't it? The only reason why I don't want to take a stand is because I haven't had anything brutal happen to me? Do I have to be pepper-sprayed before I'll get off the couch? That's no way to make a decision! So I'm not waiting, and I'm not letting it become an emotional decision.

I'm just going to start doing stuff. And you have to too! You have to. Because look. There are too many things going on for any person to pay attention to all of them. I can't fix everything--assuming I can fix anything--and neither can you. Division of labour is our friend here. I'll pick out some things that I care about, and you pick out some things that you care about, and that guy over there can pick out some stuff that he cares about, and between all of us we'll cover everything. I'm just one person, but there are a lot of one-persons out there, and you're another. I can't tell you what to do, but I know this: you can see something that you want to fix. It's in your mind right now. Go fix it!

(In some ways these blogs are a one-way conversation. See, for all I know, you're already doing what I'm talking about here, and I'm late to the party, and you're becoming very impatient with me. If so oops sorry.)

Going to be a slow process. You know; not like I don't have other stuff going on. And let's face it: I've got a job and a mortgage and small kids; I can't afford to hang out with the Occupy people for any length of time, or get sent to jail, or... So: what I can. Already I've given blood, for one thing; been a while since I've done that. I've made a list of worthwhile charities I want to give to. I've got letters brewing. Other ideas in the hopper. Maybe it's not a lot, but it'll be more than nothing and I'm not going to stop.

And one of the things I'm going to do is to stop buying DC and Marvel comics, and tell them that that's what I'm doing, and why. Not such a big sacrifice, maybe... I was looking forward to all the stuff listed in the first couple of paragraphs, and also I realized that I'm going to have to stop picking up Fables in TPB. That's gonna hurt. But there's no help for it.

(Note: I will continue to buy, read, and review Legion-of-Super-Heroes-related comics from DC. Inconsistent? Hypocritical? Maybe so, but it's the way I'm going to do it. Be pretty silly of me to keep doing the blog without reading current LSH comics, for one thing, and for another, Legion Abstract is at least a small voice in the world of superhero comics, and I'd have a hard time finding another one. Plus I've become fond of it over the years. So I'm going to do what I have to do to keep the doors open. (Also note: Legion Lost is about to enter a big crossover thing with Superboy and I don't know what all. I'll get the LL issues and that's it. Let's see if DeFalco knows how to make his story self-contained enough.))

(My local comic shop will not suffer for my stance here. Most of what I buy from them is not DC or Marvel anyway. Princeless, Sergio Aragones' Funnies, the Captain Blood series from SLG if they decide to continue it after all this time, Dungeons & Dragons, the WordGirl digests from Kaboom!, Irredeemable... there's all kinds of good stuff out there from other companies, and I'm looking forward to it too.)

Here are some reasons why I'm Vacating DC and Marvel's comics. First, I'm unhappy with the way they've been treating their creators of the past: Kirby, Siegel, Friedrich, Moore, et al. Second, I am quite unhappy about how they and their corporate masters have been pushing for more restrictive copyright laws, laws that are designed to concentrate money and ownership of culture in large corporations, at the expense of the rest of us. Third, they certainly could be doing a better job with their non-white-straight-male characters.

These aren't my demands, you understand. I have no demands. I'm saying, I don't like that and so I'm not buying your comics anymore. I'm not saying, if you do A B and C I'll start buying them again. No: no promises. I'd like to start buying them again, but I'm not going to until I feel all right about it, and I don't know what can make that happen. That's DC and Marvel's problem.

Looking back over what I've just typed... I don't really think that my anger is coming across here. Because why should I have to type out all this stuff to tell it to you just because they are being jerks? Is it fair? These guys try to step on everybody and because of that I have to take the step of not reading what I really want to read? (Not reading does not come easily to me.) This is where it has gotten us: I don't care what I want anymore. I feel like reading Daredevil? To hell with me! Who cares what I want! These corporations want us to sit down and shut up and read comics and thank them for the privilege and I will not give them what they want. And if I don't like it then that's just too bad.

A natural question is, but Matthew, comic books? This is your big cause? Who cares about superhero comics?

Let me answer that this way. No, comic books aren't that important, but I like them, and it ticks me off that I can't even read a comic book without feeling like I'm being complicit with what's wrong with the world. I mean, I'd like it if they (you know, they) could get just one thing right. You guys get the superhero comics right while the rest of us take care of everything else. What would be wrong with that? But oh no. So now we have to take time out of our busy schedule and fix up the comics industry in addition to the economy and politics and the environment and all the rest of it. So instead of asking me that question, go ask some questions of those who created, or are perpetuating, the problem.

While we're at it. Does it make any sense that these two companies can tell stories about superheroes, can be in fact the two companies most associated with superheroes in the world, can hold the damn trademark on the word "superhero", and yet behave in this way? It does not. I mean, stay with me here, I know the difference between fiction and reality, but where do they get off thinking that nobody's going to call them on this dissonance? It's not like they never refer to it when it does line up. Right now DC's doing this charity thing, "We Can Be Heroes", helping to feed people in the Horn of Africa. Which is good. It is good! But it doesn't get them off the hook; I'm sure there were plenty of stories where Luthor had some kind of smokescreen charity himself, not that I'm accusing DC of being as bad as Luthor, and anyway my point is that they can't expect to use these symbols like that on the one hand and then not live up to them on the other.

Another natural question is, but Matthew, the comic book industry is famously fragile. What if people join you in this protest and it becomes successful enough to sink DC and/or Marvel? Don't want that, do you?

Let me answer that this way. I like to think of myself as a reasonable guy. In fact, I insist on being as reasonable as I can, in all situations, because I believe that that is the best way to do it. For everyone. It's no good resorting to violence or destruction; the only way is to talk it out and convince people to come around to your side by the strengths of your arguments. We're trying to have a civilization here. As such, no, I'm not looking to sink any companies, and I have to hope and think that it will not come to that.

With my mind, I think that. That's my mind's opinion. Which is fine, because that's the side of me that gets all the decision-making power, or so I like to think.

But there's another side of me that just wants to rip everything the fuck down.

I don't indulge that side of me. It exists, though, and since it exists, that means that there is a decently wide range of possible outcomes that are acceptable to me. DC and Marvel mend their ways, fine. Great, even. DC and Marvel collapse into chaos, leaving thousands in poverty, fine. Great, even. (I am neither proud nor ashamed of this attitude. What I am is angry; see above.)

Reasonable. To be reasonable. I don't know. I mean, as John Rogers points out, you have to know your swing. And mine certainly involves reason. Calm. Deliberateness, if you will. It's not my place to say that I'm actually any good at it, but I'm sure not good at any other approach. So I guess I'm stuck with that. And I'm glad! But in a sense it's a disadvantage, because the other "side" does not feel the same need to be reasonable. It doesn't seem, in fact, like they have any sense of restraint of any kind. Were SOPA and PIPA reasonable? Is C-11 or ACTA or the TPP? Is it reasonable that Toews is calling us child pornographers if we don't want all our internet activity recorded for the cops? Is it reasonable that Obama says he can legally have anybody in the world secretly assassinated if he feels like it? What kind of simpleton am I to even attempt reason in the face of all that?

Not that crazy always beats sane, or evil is more powerful than good, or any of the things that I've heard people say about situations like that. I don't think it's true at all. But I do think that there's no way for sane to compromise with crazy. And I don't think reason does any good if the people who need to hear it just won't listen.

So that's where I've gotten to with this article: Pick something you care about and fix it. Insist on sanity. Make them listen. Vacate DC and Marvel.

Boycott Avengers Opening Weekend

You'd best believe I'm going to have more to say about this in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, how's about you consider not going to see The Avengers this weekend? Just a suggestion, of course, but if you're curious about why I would ask such a thing, here are some links to articles about it: link link link

Fight C-11

Bill C-11 is mostly good but partly bad. Fight the bad parts here. Occupy culture!