Friday Odds and Ends: Iron (Wo)Man and Whatever Happened to the Friday Links?
Love me or you are a racist. Love me. LOVE ME, DAMN YOU!Brian Michael Bendis, a writer at Marvel Comics, has this to say about changing the Iron Man character from Tony Stark to an African-American teenager:
Some of the comments online, I don’t think people even realize how racist they sound. I’m not saying if you criticize you’re a racist, but if someone writes, “Why do we need Riri Williams we already have Miles?” that’s a weird thing to say. They’re individuals just like Captain America and Cyclops are individuals. All I can do is state my case for the character, and maybe they’ll realize over time that that’s not the most progressive thinking.
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I think what’s most important is that the character is created in an organic setting. We never had a meeting saying, “We need to create this character.” It’s inspired by the world around me and not seeing that represented enough in popular culture.
He displays a tactic commonly used by half-wits in argumentation: say you’re not doing something even while you’re doing it. Bendis, and by extension Marvel Comics, is calling you a racist if you don’t wholeheartedly embrace the significant alteration of a favorite fictional character to fulfill an undefinable quota. 
You must love what they’re doing or you’re not progressive enough.
You can’t just read and enjoy comic books: you must embrace the progressiveness of the message behind them, or you’re racist. It’s quite similar to the chatter about the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot: you’re a sexist Neanderthal if you don’t stand up and cheer the execrable movie trailers foisted upon YouTube.
Have you had enough yet? Aren’t you sick of being preached to by moral imbeciles who not only don’t share your values, but hold you in contempt? How much more of your money, time, and attention are you going to give to non-essential companies staffed by loudmouths who consider you backwards and stupid?
In other news, I’ve canceled the Friday Links feature; regular readers of this site will have already noticed. The Friday Links take quite some time to compile and put together, and I get no more hits from the Friday Links posts than I do my own pieces. I’ve also noticed that a minuscule few of the subjects featured in the Friday Links noticed being linked to, with even fewer acknowledging it in any fashion whatsoever. Three of my favorite sites, Nev Murray’s Confessions of a Reviewer!!, Sean Eaton’s R’lyeh Tribune, and From Zombos’ Closet are still regular reads for me, as they should be for anyone who appreciates good, frequent, original content.
