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Yeah, Grant was just running his mouth there with nothing to back it up. As for Galley Wag... He's straight up a racist caricature. His skin is straight black with blobby red lips. He drives the white characters around and talks all funny. Look--if Al Jolson suddenly jumped out from backstage at a play no matter how loud he yelled, "Oh lawdy massa! I isn't ain't racist! I is an alien!" his mere presence is racist in a modern context. I'm not saying Alan Moore was trying to denigrate black people by using him. I completely buy that he wanted to rehabilitate Galley Wag. A couple years ago I was working on an epic Christmas crossover comic and ran into a similar issue, Zwarte Piet, as mentioned above. For those not in the know, in Holland Sinterklass has a slave--no, wait--SERVANT who happens to be a dude I'm blackface. I wanted to include as much Christmas mythology as possible, but that wouldn't fly. What I ended up doing is having the secular Soviet Santa (Ded Moroz) ban him from the North Pole and argue with Sinterklass about how he's inherently racist. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best I could come up with. Making him a regular black dude wouldn't help if you're trying to examine the original character. At best it's "Here's my new not totally racist character Black Pete!" There really isn't an easy answer. Galley Wag is almost certainly the biggest misstep in the League stories.
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Jan 11, 2014 21:15
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Zachack posted:I'd love it if it all started over a disagreement regarding who was more annoying, Walter the Wobot or Maria. I don't really know why Moore dislikes Morrison, or why his dislike of Morrison seems to be so personal. On the other hand, I get the impression that Morrison's problem is less with Moore himself and more to do with feeling like he's stuck in Moore's shadow (one thing he likes to point out is how he had work published first). I think there's also been vague claims of plagiarism and I'm pretty sure there was also some malarkey about Morrison claiming Moore was working behind-the-scenes to sabotage his career. Unbelievably Fat Man posted:A couple years ago I was working on an epic Christmas crossover comic and ran into a similar issue, Zwarte Piet, as mentioned above. For those not in the know, in Holland Sinterklass has a slave--no, wait--SERVANT who happens to be a dude I'm blackface. I wanted to include as much Christmas mythology as possible, but that wouldn't fly. What I ended up doing is having the secular Soviet Santa (Ded Moroz) ban him from the North Pole and argue with Sinterklass about how he's inherently racist. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best I could come up with. I remember when I was younger, I came across (a variation on) this character in the UK Sonic the Hedgehog comic, of all places: 
Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 21:22
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Zachack posted:Since the topic is UK writers, I just finished Moore's run on Supreme and who was Billy Friday supposed to be? Millar? Ennis? A pastiche of writers that symbolize that era? A couple times it felt like something very specific was being referenced but without having read every comic ever I wouldn't be able to place it. Billy Friday was supposed to be a cross between Jimmy Olsen (on the surface) and Grant Morrison, with all of his pretentious ideas and what Moore sees as sneering contempt for his readers and characters alike.
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Jan 11, 2014 21:27
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Unbelievably Fat Man posted:A couple years ago I was working on an epic Christmas crossover comic and ran into a similar issue, Zwarte Piet, as mentioned above. For those not in the know, in Holland Sinterklass has a slave--no, wait--SERVANT who happens to be a dude I'm blackface. I wanted to include as much Christmas mythology as possible, but that wouldn't fly. What I ended up doing is having the secular Soviet Santa (Ded Moroz) ban him from the North Pole and argue with Sinterklass about how he's inherently racist. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best I could come up with. Ugh. I once had to insist to my mother that no matter how much she loved Little Black Sambo as a child, she shouldn't put it on the mantelpiece by the front door. Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:Billy Friday was supposed to be a cross between Jimmy Olsen (on the surface) and Grant Morrison, with all of his pretentious ideas and what Moore sees as sneering contempt for his readers and characters alike. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 21:30
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For all of Morrison's flaws, contempt for characters he's writing is the wrong direction entirely. As for Gollywog, Moore's always been tone deaf about race. I think David Brothers said it best:" Shorter Alan Moore 'We wanted to reclaim the Golliwog, so we gave him coal black skin, bright red lips, a funny accent, & a big dick'"
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Jan 11, 2014 21:40
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Yeah, if you take the liberties to turn Mr Hyde into Hulk, you better apply some effort to do something with obviously racist depictions. Fu Manchu is played absolutely straight, but the underlying hipocrisy in Quartermain and Jimmy Bond is exposed and mocked.
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Jan 11, 2014 22:24
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For a non-US person (and probably some US ones as well), the Golliwog, Minstrel, Pickaninny and Mammy caricatures aren't very well known. I realized this when Scandinavia started playing the restored version of "From all of us to all of you" for the first year 2012. This show is a big deal in Scandinavia and has been on tv every Christmas Eve for 50 years, same bat-time, same bat-channel. In the restored version Disney cut some content, namely the pickaninny doll and another toy that looks a lot like a jew caricature, crooked nose and all. Most people here don't know that the doll is a racist caricature through and through and wondered why "the black doll" was removed, and why television companies were budging to "political correctness". The same year a popular Swedish children's author caught heat after people found out that one of her characters has her appearance modeled on the pickaninny. All the characters are stylized, but in the end Little Heart is visually based on a racist caricature. It's like Dante says in Clerks 2 when Randall tries to reclaim the expression porchmonkey - "It can't be saved! The only reason it exists is to disparage an entire race! And even if it could be saved, you can't save it because you're not black!" and that's what Alan Moore doesn't understand.
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Jan 11, 2014 23:25
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Enid Blyton had Golliwog characters in the Noddy children's books
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Jan 11, 2014 23:43
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:Billy Friday was supposed to be a cross between Jimmy Olsen (on the surface) and Grant Morrison, with all of his pretentious ideas and what Moore sees as sneering contempt for his readers and characters alike. Not Ennis? Ennis would have been coming off of Hitman around the same time as Supreme, I think. Dunno what Millar was doing at that time. Ellis may have been doing Stormwatch. Morrison seems like the wrong answer since I think he would have been doing JLA at the time. Also no poo poo it's supposed to be Jimmy Olsen, the last issue under Moore had Supreme meet the Tomorrow People on the way to the King.
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Jan 11, 2014 23:57
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Or is it Sputnik posted:For a non-US person (and probably some US ones as well), the Golliwog, Minstrel, Pickaninny and Mammy caricatures aren't very well known. I realized this when Scandinavia started playing the restored version of "From all of us to all of you" for the first year 2012. This show is a big deal in Scandinavia and has been on tv every Christmas Eve for 50 years, same bat-time, same bat-channel. In the restored version Disney cut some content, namely the pickaninny doll and another toy that looks a lot like a jew caricature, crooked nose and all. Most people here don't know that the doll is a racist caricature through and through and wondered why "the black doll" was removed, and why television companies were budging to "political correctness". That's interesting. I'm from Denmark, and I would have watched it that year had I known about the restored version. Do you know if it's available online anywhere? I get the feeling most people here definitely know about those stereotypes, they just don't care. We're pretty lax about politically incorrect imagery in Denmark, even today (see: Muhammad drawings), so we also tend to be more open about it in our society, for better or worse. Same goes for stuff like porn. Seriously I heard a radio ad a few months ago that was basically one step away from going "ching chong chinaman". A few years ago our main national network aired a talk show titled "*N-word* TV". Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 00:31
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Morrison's wrong anyway; Tom Strong totally got raped.
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Jan 12, 2014 00:34
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Or is it Sputnik posted:For a non-US person The Golliwogg doll is a ubiquitous British thing. Everyone's mum or gran almost definitely had a lil smiling black caricature to hug. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 00:38
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Mr. Maltose posted:For all of Morrison's flaws, contempt for characters he's writing is the wrong direction entirely. And made him an escaped slave.
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Jan 12, 2014 02:53
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I think it was during the Mindless Ones 2009 annotations that someone defended Moore's use of rape as being not rooted in shock, but in a very sincere outrage and disgust towards sexual violence against women. I don't think that makes his wide use of it not problematic, however it's a lens that makes a lot of sense to me. Madkal posted:I remember there was some implied threats of rape too in Final Crisis. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 03:48
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Metal Loaf posted:I don't really know why Moore dislikes Morrison, or why his dislike of Morrison seems to be so personal. On the other hand, I get the impression that Morrison's problem is less with Moore himself and more to do with feeling like he's stuck in Moore's shadow (one thing he likes to point out is how he had work published first). Probably because Morrison has made indirect pokes at Moore in many books and interviews. He's on record as saying he considers the "mature" approach that pervades comics is due to Watchman, and that it isn't a good thing. Final Crisis was even stated to be an attempt to exercise the cynicism.
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Jan 12, 2014 04:21
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I'm not seeing how what Moore said about Galley-Wag is a weak defense at all. If anything, it demonstrates that a process of research and deconstruction led to the creative decisions made with regard to the character. To me, people on the sidelines clutching their pearls and saying "that's problematic" aren't really contributing anything of worth to the greater discussion about race; I mean obviously the Golliwog has all kinds of hosed up racial connotations, that's WHY an artist might want to bring it into a creative work. Particularly an artist like Alan Moore that has put racial issues to the fore in his work.
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Jan 12, 2014 04:27
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chime_on posted:I'm not seeing how what Moore said about Galley-Wag is a weak defense at all. If anything, it demonstrates that a process of research and deconstruction led to the creative decisions made with regard to the character. To me, people on the sidelines clutching their pearls and saying "that's problematic" aren't really contributing anything of worth to the greater discussion about race; I mean obviously the Golliwog has all kinds of hosed up racial connotations, that's WHY an artist might want to bring it into a creative work. Particularly an artist like Alan Moore that has put racial issues to the fore in his work. V Yeah, you know what, you're right. I was kind of misinterpreting a later part of the text. V Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 04:53
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Timeless Appeal posted:It's lazy because it sidesteps the issue of how Golliwogg looks which is the issue to begin with. It doesn't matter that Golliwogg as a character has merit if he still looks like a minstrel character. Charlie Chan isn't a bad character necessarily, but that doesn't excuse the tradition of yellow face and other stereotypes. He didn't say that, though. I honestly felt that in that lengthy piece of writing, Moore went out of his way to acknowledge that readers are fully entitled to their own opinions, and that they have the permission and space to feel however they want about the work. He specifically said "It is perfectly proper and correct that our interpretation of the Golliwog should be interrogated and questioned." How much clearer could he be?
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Jan 12, 2014 05:36
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Hakkesshu posted:That's interesting. I'm from Denmark, and I would have watched it that year had I known about the restored version. Do you know if it's available online anywhere? EDIT: For example, "Gone with the wind" has a Mammy, but when age 15 me watched it, I thought that it was just her name and didn't know about the stereotype. /E Then again, since Danish People's Party got voted into parliament, the other established parties has been getting progressively more racist (and especially islamophobic), which in turn legitimizes racism in society as a whole. Since we've now had a racist/neo-fascist party in Sweden for three years, I'm worried it's going to happen here too. I found several old versions on youtube but I don't think the restored version is viewable online. I have a feeling Disney would put the kibosh on that post-haste. As for the Muhammad Drawings - well - let's just say there's a reason the paper that commissioned them is ofttimes referred to as "Jyllandspesten-Morgenfascisten" (The Jyllandplague-Morningfascist)... Or is it Sputnik fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 10:44
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Oh yeah, it's a huge problem. Over the christmas break, my entire family went on a collective rant about how Islamic people do nothing but complain, but IF WE SAY ANYTHING the hammer drops. It was loving gross. It's true we don't have the historical context, but I definitely think most people would knowingly feel wrong/uncomfortable defending that poo poo in front of a black person. Maybe I'm just fortunate since my cousins are black, so I have some idea of how it feels.
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Jan 12, 2014 11:41
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chime_on posted:I honestly felt that in that lengthy piece of writing, Moore went out of his way to acknowledge that readers are fully entitled to their own opinions, and that they have the permission and space to feel however they want about the work. He specifically said "It is perfectly proper and correct that our interpretation of the Golliwog should be interrogated and questioned." How much clearer could he be? For any actual interrogation or questioning to happen, which if Moore thinks he did in LXG instead of being vague and disingenuous he's dumber than he's let on over the last 30 years.
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Jan 12, 2014 15:51
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Mr. Maltose posted:For any actual interrogation or questioning to happen, which if Moore thinks he did in LXG instead of being vague and disingenuous he's dumber than he's let on over the last 30 years. Help me out here, because your syntax is not clear and I don't know what exactly you're talking about. Are you saying that Moore is not really serious that people should question and interrogate the use of the Golliwog? Or are you saying that Moore didn't interrogate and question the concept of the Golliwog? Because if it's the latter, I disagree. He might not have done it in a way that makes you feel comfortable or okay with it, but I actually think the disingenuous thought here is the suggestion he didn't do any "actual" work before putting the character into the comic. Are people so hung up on the appearance of the character that they can't go deeper into the work? Simply noting that Galley-Wag is based on a historical racist caricature of black people doesn't even approach meaningful criticism in my opinion, because it should be self-evident by just looking at the drawings. I admit that I'm mostly ignorant of the broader criticisms of Galley-Wag which must have been occurring on various tumblrs or whatever, but what I'm getting in this thread is that people might think that Alan Moore is ignorant of the historical implications of the image, which is pretty baffling.
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Jan 12, 2014 18:17
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I don't think people think he is ignorant. That would at least be excusable. Well truly ignorant, not I got caught so I am pleading ignorance.
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Jan 12, 2014 18:25
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I'm saying that Moore is correct in saying that interpretations of figures should be questioned and investigated, but I'm saying that the use of the Golliwog in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a piss poor effort at investigation at best. He's certainly not ignorant about it being a symbol of racist othering, but he's certainly not done much beyond it either.
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Jan 12, 2014 18:32
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Karma Tornado posted:Morrison's wrong anyway; Tom Strong totally got raped. I always thought that was one of the most interesting things about Tom Strong.
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Jan 12, 2014 19:16
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gently caress Kirkman. Hollywood Reporter posted:Calling the 111th issue of Invincible "three number 1s in a row," Kirkman said that the series will change in the wake of its current storyline. "I think people will be surprised with the direction that we're going in," he told the audience of today's Image Expo in San Francisco, saying he shift in focus and scale will seem like a new writer has taken over the series -- one he called "The Walking Dead Robert Kirkman" because of what he joked would be "an increased amount of horror and misery" in the series.
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Jan 12, 2014 20:22
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Isn't Invincible already a misery parade of eyeball shrapnel? I'm sure this next gritty onslaught of violence will totally be shocking and invigorating.
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Jan 12, 2014 20:45
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Squidster posted:Isn't Invincible already a misery parade of eyeball shrapnel? I'm sure this next gritty onslaught of violence will totally be shocking and invigorating. Nah, it did that for one volume then went back to mostly just people getting bloody/beaten up instead of literally disemboweled (and then getting better anyway) for a couple volumes.
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Jan 12, 2014 21:33
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Squidster posted:Isn't Invincible already a misery parade of eyeball shrapnel? I'm sure this next gritty onslaught of violence will totally be shocking and invigorating. Invincible was one of the first books I picked up in trade form when I got all gung ho about comics 5-6 years ago. I binged through a ton of it then went... 'ugh, I can't stand one more intestine or eyeball or compound fracture, I just can't.' And that was it.
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Jan 12, 2014 21:37
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I've never really understood the tone of Invincible.
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Jan 13, 2014 01:34
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Timeless Appeal posted:I've never really understood the tone of Invincible. Remember being a kid playing with action figures? Sometimes I would sit and arrange mine and work out the most intricate (for a kid) stories and carefully place them all over a room. Then sometimes I would put them all in a pile and punch the poo poo out of them. That is the tone of Invincible.
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Jan 13, 2014 01:49
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It used to be a fun story of modern, young superheroics a la Ultimate Spider-Man. Then it became panels of Ryan Ottley drawing people who get turned into spaghetti bolognese while Robert Kirkman does his best to cover all the artwork with his torturous word balloon layouts and wordswordswords
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Jan 13, 2014 01:53
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When Kirkman doesn't let his innate Kirkman bullshit overwhelm everything with gratuitous violence and bullshit deaths, it's still a fun young superhero story that revels in the freedom of being in its own universe, allowing for actual status quo changes. And then, y'know... Kirkman tries to get up hype by going BWAHAHAHA IMMA KILL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE AIN'T THAT FUKKEN SHOCKING
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Jan 13, 2014 01:56
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I'm not usually very keen on comics with that degree of ultra-violence, but I like the characters in Invincible (and some of the other series Kirkman's spun out of it, like Wolf-Man), so I've kept up to date with the hardcovers. I guess it's because I started reading it when I was 14 and never really grew out of it. It's actually a bit of an odd-one-out on my bookshelves, which are otherwise populated with 1980s Marvel collections. Speaking of Image superheroes, does anybody know if Dynamo 5 is done? Did the miniseries after the main series not sell well enough to justify continuing it? I remember Faerber said he and Julio Brilha were working on what would have been Vol. 6, but I guess that was a while ago.
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Jan 13, 2014 01:57
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Listening to Kirkman talk about his original (fake so the publishers would accept it after initially rejecting it) pitch for The Walking Dead makes him sound like a total hack, because the story he presents has insane potential: Basically, he was going to write the same straightforward zombie apocalypse but after a bunch of issues it would be revealed that the zombies are just the first steps of an alien plan to exterminate the human race. There would be minor hints in the early issues, weird unexplained things etc., that would eventually build up to the reveal of the aliens but the readers would at first have no clue about them. After the aliens are revealed it would turn into an epic scope sci-fi. Instead we got the generic but "edgy" Walking Dead. timeandtide fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 02:26
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moot the hopple posted:It used to be a fun story of modern, young superheroics a la Ultimate Spider-Man. Then it became panels of Ryan Ottley drawing people who get turned into spaghetti bolognese while Robert Kirkman does his best to cover all the artwork with his torturous word balloon layouts and wordswordswords I can think of few art styles less suited to gore than Invincible's clean bright colorful layouts, but here we are.
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Jan 13, 2014 02:27
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Coming in a little late, but I'm really kind of confused how the Gally Wag is what a lot of people here consider the biggest misstep of LoEG, or at least The Black Dossier. Yes, he's a character whose original context is offensive and problematic. Alan Moore knows this and deliberately uses him knowing this. Then he makes him a Deus Ex Machina, providing Alan and Mina an escape, and also has a freaking super power that significantly stalls the bad guys. Meanwhile, it's this book the fans have been waiting years for because of all the promise of lore explained within, and Moore lets his just-finished Lost Girls porn comic crap all over it. Sure, there were parts I enjoyed quite a bit--the main narrative was gripping, I found the Wooster & Jeeves/Lovecraft story hilarious, and the all-too brief glimpses we got of other iterations of the league made me wish we got full books for each of them, but (and this is coming from me, so it really says something) there was just way too much sex just barging in and interrupting the story like, the whole time. A little here and there is okay, but did the Fanny Hill diary contribute one drat thing? For that matter, did Fanny? All she did was travel around screwing everyone that would make up the 18th century league, including the happy couple of the Scarlet Pimpernel and his wife, who it apparently just takes walking into the room to turn sex-crazy, bisexual, and polyamorous, again in the 1700s, according to Moore.
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Jan 13, 2014 06:54
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Lost Girls wasn't just finished. It was a project he started in the 90s and had tons of publication issues. I think your perception of the past as being more chaste than the present is the exact notion that Moore was rallying against to some degree with his inclusion of Fanny and the sexuality she brought to things. We're also talking about a comic that's also been heavily about sex since the earlier volumes. Hell, one the most memorable moments of the first two volumes is a man raping a rapist to death.
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Jan 13, 2014 23:15
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Yeah, you have to remember that Black Dossier was primarily an experiment in/celebration of form. All these different types of popular entertainment, from standard comic to Tijuana bible to pulp prose to pop music (the intended-but-never-realized LP of "Immortal Love"). So a reproduction of old-style porn chapbooks isn't that off. And then there's the story, which was all about how the powers that be try to control entertainment to control culture. In that context, Gulliver's league all being sexual libertines (not too unlikely, given the time frame and the characters; look up Ben Franklin's hobbies sometime) does make sense. Also, like any good comic writer, Moore enjoys a good filthy joke.
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Jan 14, 2014 01:20
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I know Lost Girls was started nowhere near that time, but it still remains that he finished the third volume right around the time he was working on The Black Dossier. I'm not saying that LoEG should be chaste, I'm saying sex was clearly at the forefront of his mind at the time, so he rammed a lot of it (giggity) into the book. Moreso than what you see before and after. Wait a second. Something just occurred to me. Black Dossier is sometimes overflowing with sex and nudity. Vol. 2 and Century have their fair share, but not as much. Between Vol. 1 and the first book of the ongoing Nemo trilogy, there's practically none. I wonder if this symmetry is somehow deliberate?
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Jan 14, 2014 02:06
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