Off-Topic Tuesday!

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat amongst yourselves

Comments

[janegray]

Question about Civil War! I checked the wikis and they were no help, neither was google, so I'm hoping somebody here knows the answer.
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SPOILERS
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We know that Zemo was the mastermind behind the attack that killed T'Challa's father plus a dozen others and injured many more. But, was he behind the attack at the beginning of the movie too? The one with Crossbones, that killed the son of the woman who had that talk with Tony? Or were the two events unrelated?

[matrix_dragon]

There's no confirmation Crossbones had any connection with Zemo. As for the mother that confronted Tony, her son died in Age of Ultron, when Ultron decided to use a city as a kinetic kill weapon.

[janegray]

her son died in Age of Ultron

Seriously? I was convinced he was one of the victims of the initial attack, the incident with Wanda...

[ozaline]

Nope he died in Zukovia otherwise she'd have no reason to blame Stark. The attack at the start killed a Wakandan delegation which is what brought them in.

[janegray]

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/23/11745506/netflix-disney-pixar-marvel-lucasfilm-exclusive-september

The blockbuster deal that Netflix and Disney reached all the way back in 2012 will soon take effect. Beginning in September, Netflix will be allowed to stream all Disney films — including Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm titles — in the same window that they'd typically be made available to HBO, Starz, and other paid TV networks. That's still after the Blu-ray and digital releases, but it's much, much sooner than the long and often unpredictable wait that Netflix customers had to put up with before. All Disney films released theatrically in 2016 and beyond are included in the agreement, for which Netflix is reportedly paying hundreds of millions per year.

I really hope this is true for my country's Netflix too. We usually get screwed over with licensing, get "sorry, this content is not available in your region" all the freaking time.

Then again, we didn't even have Netflix until last year. And we still don't have Hulu nor Amazon Prime (though there are rumors that Amazon Prime might be considering a move here within the next couple of years).

:(

[scorntx]

That's weird, given the other day a lot of the Disney films Netflix did have just disappeared ('least that's how it was for mine, and not counting the MCU films, which I don't).

Seems counterproductive. "We'll be allowed to show you ALL the movies... in September. But until then, no Disney films. What's that? You wanted to watch Frozen? TOO BAD!"
(even more bizarre 'cuz they'd just put it on a few weeks before... grr.)

[cainofdreaming]

Such are the ways of corporate negotiations. Unfathomable to mere mortals. And most deities.

[ozaline]

So there was a fire in the upstairs neighbor's suite. No one was hurt and minimal water damage to our suite (none of our stuff was damaged) but we were without power for two days, and are still without hot water... So wasn't a fun long weekend. Though there were a couple of upsides after that.

[joetuss]

Hold the door...*sniff*

[icon_uk]

Ummm.... was that in response to anything?

[janegray]

Spoilers for Game of Thrones.

...

...

Supposedly a character with a name similar to "hold the door" died in the latest episode.

I don't know for sure, I don't watch GoT. But today my dashboard had some very sad posts about the character and the "hold the door" phrase.

[joetuss]

Yes, thank you

[joetuss]

No. I guess there aren't any GOT fans in here.

[rainspirit]

Former ASoIaF fan, got mad at the fifth book and swore off the series forever. And I was reading them all so I could enjoy the TV series, but I decided not to put myself through emotional torture. :P

But I was sad by the spoilers. :(

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

John Rogers linked to an article on Birth.Movies.Death that made me rethink my opinion on DC's Rebirth.

[penguinzero]

I read through that, and... I can't say it's convinced me any. I mean, it points out that the issue is more or less saying 'oh, it totally wasn't Geoff Johns Flashpoint that was responsible for the New 52 era, it was Alan Moore Watchmen! Flashpoint/Barry/Geoff is totally blameless!

Which is just scapegoating. Certainly there's been a trend of people misinterpreting Watchmen and using it to justify dark, gritty stories ever since the late 80s/early 90s. But it wasn't Alan Moore writing the things in New 52 that people have complained about. The people responsible for the things people don't like about DC nowadays -- Johns, Didio, Lee, Berganza -- they're still going to be there, and I can't see any indication that they've actually learned anything. This is going to be one more momentary attempt to change that's just going to make things worse.

[laughing_tree]

I suspect I'll be saying this a lot in the coming days, but... there's no need to take a metaphor or a symbol so literally.

Watchmen functions as a symbol for the darkening of superheros for obvious reasons; I don't think it necessarily follows that anyone's genuinely casting a blaming finger at Moore.

[penguinzero]

It's not as if Johns is being particularly subtle in the writing here, though. He specifically calls out the big story event that kicked off the New 52 era by name ('I tell Barry about the Flashpoint. History changing.'). Barry asks if Wally's sure it wasn't his fault (as the creator of the Flashpoint -- a title we can also give to Johns), and Wally is quick to assure him that no, no, he's absolutely blameless. "It was something else. Someone else." Cue Dr. Manhattan.

This isn't symbolism analysis on the level of 'Moby Dick represents the struggles of the Republic of Ireland, and I have a 300-page thesis proving the subtle connections.' This is closer to the level of 'The character in Pilgrim's Progress named Sloth, who is very slothful, represents the sin of sloth.' The dialogue between Barry and Wally only makes any sense whatsoever if it's Johns trying to speak to the reader and say, 'Yeah, Flashpoint messed things up, but it's totally not my fault!'

[laughing_tree]

The dialogue between Barry and Wally only makes any sense whatsoever if it's Johns trying to speak to the reader and say, 'Yeah, Flashpoint messed things up, but it's totally not my fault!'

Or, alternately, they realize it's unwise to make one of their major heroic protagonists responsible for the corruption of the universe. There are obvious reasons to want to absolve Barry Allen outside of any metacommentary considerations.

[penguinzero]

But that's taking things to a meta level, too -- speaking to the readers in exactly the same way it would be if the message were 'Johns isn't responsible' instead of 'Barry isn't responsible.' In fact, it's the exact same message -- 'the creator of Flashpoint isn't responsible' -- but you're drawing the very fine line between the in-universe creator of Flashpoint and the out-of-universe creator of Flashpoint. Which is fair enough, I guess, but that hardly means other people are 'reading too much into it.'

Especially when the direct connection after that is a link to a storyline and universe that is being used outright for its out-of-universe meta connotations, as it has been constantly in the decades since its release. Watchmen stands for darkness and grittiness in comics, and the Watchmen universe having dominion over the DC universe is what all the problems the DC universe has been having are now attributed to. The symbolism here is absolutely clear and absolutely intentional, and to say we have to refrain from linking one element of the symbolism to its real-world elements while they're relying on us doing the opposite for the next is hardly defensible.

[laughing_tree]

Despite your using it in quotation marks, I never said anything about 'reading too much into it,' a phrase and concept that makes me bristle. Read into it as deeply as you care to. That's great. That's what's art is there for. I've just been putting forth a different interpretation than you and explaining a little of why. Or do you think the only reason I could possibly disagree is because I'm not reading into it enough?

Anyway, moving on... I don't see what you mean when you say my take is also on a meta level. I'm speaking of in-story culpability, like the identity of whodunnit in a whodunnit.

[penguinzero]

Sorry -- you said 'no need to take a symbol or metaphor so literally,' which, coupled with some of the other things you've said, sounded to me like trying to dismiss the notion that it was symbolic at all.

That said, what I mean by your interpretation also being meta is that you said it was to make 'one of their major heroic protagonists' not responsible for Flashpoint. That's meta -- DC trying to spin the image of one of the characters in their stories, not something that grows organically out of the narrative. Looked at purely from an in-universe perspective, the whole scene is terribly awkward and makes little sense. The event in question is repeatedly referred to as 'the Flashpoint,' which was its title as a marketing event, and not something you'd naturally use to refer to 'that time the whole universe got mucked up due to time travel.' Barry's first response to this isn't 'how do we fix it' or 'what can I do to help' or anything particularly heroic -- it's a nervous, self-conscious focus on whether or not anyone can blame him for this. And Wally's response is flatly definitive -- no, absolutely not, you had nothing to do with this (even though the bulk of the evidence would say he was at least involved), it was totally all someone else's fault. A more moderate response -- like 'even if you were involved, there was something bigger going on' or 'you might have contributed, but there was someone behind the scenes' -- would have left open room for Barry to be less than perfectly innocent (and, in my interpretation, Johns, too).

So, if the conversation is meant on a meta or symbolic level, then the only question is how deep to take it. And given the references to the real comics industry interwoven throughout (Watchmen as a symbol of comics going dark, the heroes robbed of 'ten years' -- which just happens to be how much time it's been since Identity Crisis, often cited as where DC dove headfirst into grim darkness), I think reading 'who's responsible for Flashpoint' as both an in-universe and out-of-universe question is entirely defensible. And when we're assured that Barry, a personal hero of Johns's, and one that he personally reintroduced into the DC universe, and the one he wrote as creating the new timelines in the first place, is totally and indisputably blameless for all this, well...

Anyway, I probably shouldn't get too deep into this. I've already pulled back pretty hard from DC due in part to things like the Berganza scandal, and this is pushing me the rest of the way. So I don't have all that much of a stake in it. But I just wanted to show why it's easily readable as Johns trying to absolve himself for something he was involved in.

[laughing_tree]

That said, what I mean by your interpretation also being meta is that you said it was to make 'one of their major heroic protagonists' not responsible for Flashpoint. That's meta -- DC trying to spin the image of one of the characters in their stories, not something that grows organically out of the narrative.

Call me dense, but I still don't see how that's meta. Because it has an out-of-story purpose, in the sense that it's included to impart something to the reader? Every scene in a story is designed to impart something to the reader. It's just that sometimes it's handled more organically than others. But when it's not handled organically, that's not meta, that's just bad writing.

I'll grant you calling it "the flashpoint," naming it after the book, is kind of meta, but DC has a long history of that sort of thing ("the crisis, "the day of judgment," "the blackest night") so it strikes me as just business as usual.

[venatosapiens]

http://www.savagecritic.com/retailing/the-case-against-dan-didio

In other Rebirth news, Abhay Khosla, whose shtick I generally find terribly obnoxious, reins it in to deliver a stunningly calm, thorough, and brutal argument about the precise ways Dan Didio has failed in running DC Comics. It's absolutely must-read stuff.

[pyynk]

Wow, that is pretty damning.

[informationgeek]

So, Alan Young past away last week at 96. If you don't know, that's the voice actor for Scrooge McDuck (the only one at that). It's sad, but unlike a lot of people recently, he's led a full and long life, so I'm not as upset about this as the others. I'm just happy he was able to be around as long as he did.

How do you all feel about this?

[janegray]

I feel sad that Scrooge's character never got the credit it deserves, especially in the USA. The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck and its sequels/spin-offs are goddamned masterpieces and yet they are so overlooked.

[icon_uk]

Well, it's fair to say that Scrooge got a lot more screen time than Donald or Mickey in the USA, thanks to the huge success of "Duck Tales" ("House of Mouse" might have evened that up a little I suppose.

[bradygirl_12]

The guy was good with horses! :)

[starwolf_oakley]

Alan Young was also a voice in Adventures in Odyssey.

He was also in The Time Machine in 1960 and the 2002 (IMHO underrated) remake of The Time Machine.

[lb_lee]

Holy shit, I had no idea he was still alive in the first place! I assumed he'd passed AGES ago!

I'm glad he stuck around as long as he did. Wow!

[dr_archeville]

Comixology Launches All-You-Can-Eat ‘Unlimited’ Subscription Service

It's like a Netflix for comics (that aren't from DC or Marvel)!

[icon_uk]

Though it's US only and is sort of limited from what I understand, a lot of "taster" type stuff, but it's not a blanket access thing.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

When you have a "Included" list instead of an "Excluded" list it does point out that this is more of a Comixology Limited deal. Hopefully they'll keep adding more as time goes on like Marvel has done. In my opinion though it might be worth a month or two just for the Peanuts collections alone.

[dr_archeville]

Yeah, a friend checked it out and reported that it looks like it’s just first issues and the first volumes of trades, for now.

[skjam]

More new reviews on my blog, including this one of a classic book many people haven't read recently.
http://www.skjam.com/2016/05/22/book-review-uncle-toms-cabin/

[lb_lee]

I FINISHED MY PHINEAS GAGE COMIC! 8D All but one correction is left to do, and it's not due for almost a week! I AM CHAMPION! I am professional! I AM ADULLLLLLT!