News
Believe it or not, we’re still trying to move our archives over from the blogspot address. Apparently the blogspot content was just too large, and it’s caused various problems. It looks like we’re almost done (hopefully Monday.) There will still be a lot of cleanup after that, but hopefully it’ll be worth it to have everything in one place at last.
On HU
In our Featured Archive Post I explain that Darwyn Cook is no Marston/Peter.
I write about Bruce Springsteen, undisputed Boss of swollen bombast.
Derik Badman with the penultimate entry in our Wonder Woman roundtable discusses the style of Harry Peter.
Sean Michael Robinson on Anne Frank, the Carpenters, and copyright.
I put up a downloadable blues and gospel mix.
Darryl Ayo Brathwaite on why comics readings don’t work.
Read about the comic that broke Tucker Stone’s heart.
Ng Suat Tong is unimpressed with Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem.
I set up different interpretations of Zen for a duel to the death (or possibly to enlightenment, whichever comes first.
The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) is happening here June 16-17; check out details here.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Splice Today I talked about why straight people need gay marriage. (Andrew Sullivan linked!!
Also at Splice I review the industrial doom of Author & Punisher.
Also at Splice I talk about the paleness of Dark Shadows.
Other Links
Interesting post on polyamory and gay marriage.
Isaac Butler on theater, copyright, and public domain.
Freddie deBoer with a great post on the triumph of geek culture and the endless whining of geeks.
Some horrifying info about wrongful birth laws.
Darryl Ayo Brathwaite on superheroes making speeches to other superheroes and similar poor choices.
That really was a diversionary review of Dark Shadows because, of a lot of movies that a charge of lack of diversity could be leveled at, that isn’t really one of them. The very Lovecraftian New England setting would not have been accurate if it wasn’t exclusively honkified.
Well, I do talk about that a good bit in the piece.
Also…Lovecraft was really obsessed with race. Absent the fear of miscegenation, the setting can’t really be called Lovecraftian, I don’t think.
Really? I always think of New England as Lovecraftian in general, what with all of the pasty white people. Didn’t really see Cthulu et al as representing anything about misegenation either
Oh, Lovecraft’s racial views aren’t a secret or anything; he’s quite explicit about them at various points. Here’s a longer version of my take.
Re Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows” (which we have no plans to see — looks too lightweight by half — wasn’t the TV show itself, as I recall (yes, I saw it when it was first broadcast, though couldn’t catch it all the time) pretty Caucasian? Therefore “integrating” it would be arguably untrue to that aspect of the original?
And, as a vampire from the 19th century, wouldn’t Barnabas’ reaction to free blacks be the audience off-putting “Who’s your master? Why aren’t you picking cotton?”
I don’t think it would be any more off-putting than the jokes they make about women doctors and such. It would just make him look like an idiot, which a lot of the jokes do.
The original was caucasian…but this wasn’t true to the original in lots and lots and lots of ways (the pacing is completely different, it’s consciously funny, etc.) I don’t think faithfulness was really all that much of an issue.
But, isn’t being a racist idiot far more unpalatable?