Frank Miller's remains defeatist during a convention in Ireland

Down the Tubes gave some coverage of comics artist Miller's trip to a convention in Dublin, Ireland, where his recent documentary, American Genius, was screened, and his 2011 GN, Holy Terror, is also brought up, which he may have otherwise disowned in a very sad example of capitulation several years back. Most eyebrow raising here is that he actually raises the issue of censorship:

He also spoke about censorship, about how it’s like being trapped, and how “it’s worse than anything, censorship always achieves the opposite of what it intends to”. He went on to say that “through the 1950s, when they clamped down on every foreign entertainment we loved, the most subversive stuff in the world surfaced”. This part is interesting to me, as I am looking at Irish censorship of that time, that relates to comics.

Frank then reflected on entering the film business, and how he was working on Robocop II and he said “I convinced myself this thing would be this thing was going to win an Oscar” and how it was brilliant, and he would fix it, fix it in editing and how “I’d been convinced that something was brilliant, that wasn’t that good”.

Well first, I don't think he was ever a success at writing screenplays himself at the time, nor was he ever successful at crafting a film based on Will Eisner's Spirit, as he once did around the time Eisner passed on. So who's to say he's truly a "genius"? Not really.

But how funny if he's bringing up censorship problems, when he himself, in a way, succumbed to just that when he expressed regret over crafting Holy Terror about 7 years ago? And a lot of good it did him, since the Thought Bubble convention shunned him? All that does is put a damper on his whole argument, and suggest he's not very firm on his positions at all.

There's also the following claim that's bizarre:

Dave Gibbons spoke about Martha Washington, and then Frank spoke about Sin City, the black and white crime comic and how Dark Horse “didn’t flinch”, even though there were no superheroes, and which, at the time, was unheard of. We see a variety of authors, Al Williamson, and John Romita Jr., talk about comics they worked on with Frank, and there is discussion about original art.

Gee, hasn't the writer heard of say, Adam Strange, Nick Fury, and even Jon Sable, Freelance? Those weren't exactly characters known for being superheroes. Why, even the Warlord and Omega Men could be considered non-superheroes within such a universe. Even Marvel's New Universe line, short as it was, may have had characters who weren't superheroes either. We could even add the GI Joe and Transformers comics. Those aren't superheroes by any stretch either, no matter how close they came to having similar adventures. Now, here's more about the documentary:

The film pivots to the 21st century, and after the events of 9/11. One of the narrators explains how he “used nails to scrape the ink into the page because he had such visual visceral response to everything that happened during 9/11 and this was one of his first expressions of his anger and pain” we are told.

“I was still breathing in the stink,” says Frank Miller, visibly emotional, “of concrete, glass and human flesh” and how immense it was going through a “darkness, a sadness and horror”… “it turned into rage later”.

[...] The time shifts twice now, as two hours later, I learned that Frank was at home in New York during the 9/11 attack and tragedy, something I had suspected, but could not imagine. There were no shortage of connections at the time, including its impact his work on The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and, later, for example, his controversial contribution for the anthology, 9-11: Artists Respond. Art and anger, the expression of an artistic response, dealing with upset or trauma through art, it is a very interesting aspect.

I have no idea what the precise contribution was, but is the columnist complaining about something published in response to a horrifying incident where thousands of people were murdered by jihadists? It's bad enough he let's his leftism be clear later in the article. Now we have to hear something's wrong with contributing to what one would think was meant to be a tribute to the victims? Though as I'm aware, at least one special published around that time did contain left-wing messaging, and it's chilling now to wonder if Miller did anything similar. Because as revealed by the following:

Back to the film, which continues apace, and later the music later goes deep, a bass sound, and we learn that that the American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart was a fan of Frank’s work, and tried, perhaps, to use him. Frank talks about how he met Breitbart, and discusses how people have an agenda, and how individuals had an agenda.

This element of the film was very specific. You can see how he is so unhappy with this time, and how he was near “something that gave us Donald Trump” and this was not something Frank was happy with. Frank wasn’t having any part of that (Breitbart News itself reported in 2017 how Miller described Trump as a “buffoon” during a Comic Con panel), and stayed very much away from them.

Obviously unhappy, Frank spoke of how the “propaganda” that Breitbart practised crossed a line into the territory on “no respect”.

Then Frank was asked a direct question: “Do you regret your comments on the other Occupy Wall Street people?” and he responded he was “certainly inconsiderate of the people who were occupying Wall Street, so sure,” and he reflects, “it was very aggressive”.

It's already old news he sadly backtracked, but what's really bizarre is that, at the time he first made the condemnations, he never provided even a single article link to back up his accusations. Let's take this report and also this one as examples. Why didn't he direct anybody to check those out? I never understood that at all. If anything, Miller's retraction sounds like a frantic effort to mend fences with fellow leftists when he didn't have to, and that's another huge problem - he didn't have the courage to part ways with them. I guess being famous was far too important to him than justice. And Breitbart's also problematic for him? For shame. If memory serves, the late Andrew Breitbart was favorable to Israel, and the news site named after him, in a manner of speaking, got a special start in Israel. Recalling Holy Terror, a subject of the American Genius documentary, is supposed to involve an Israeli mentor or something, I must say I find it difficult to understand why Miller has an issue with somebody in real life who was helpful to Israel in his time, unless maybe Miller wasn't so strong on his positions then at the time after all? He certainly doesn't seem to think much now of saying he supported patriotism back then either. And then, turning to the documentary's discussion of Holy Terror, it says:

The film then switches to footage of what I would consider right wing television championing his controversial project, Holy Terror, the film purposely showing its impact, in that regard, feeding the Islamophobic hatred that some people harbour, recognising an aspect of Frank’s past work that I had not expected to see.

“I get that it was complete freedom and a break,” Frank acknowledges, “and it shows… I was not at my best.”

The discussion moves to actors and film aspects, but then comes back to Frank, and he says how he was processing a large “amount of alcohol without even being aware of what I was doing.”

I realize Miller had problems with addiction, as he later told, but this seems like a cheap, all too convenient excuse to say he was almost literally wrong in his beliefs at the time. Wow, he sure isn't doing much to make me think he's worth upholding. Not that I ever thought much of his resume before though, recalling GNs like Sin City seem to comprise the bulk of his output, and hardly anything that could be described as optimistic. That's decidedly one of Miller's biggest problems, and why he's unfortunately overrated. Perhaps that's why, if there's any mistake Breitbart made, it was being too big a fan of Miller's. Also, lest we forget, Miller's art style's become very mediocre over the years, to the point where one can wonder why he continues his artist career, if he does. He even tears down on Will Eisner:

He then spoke about his “biggest feeling about addiction” which was a “sickening sense of missing time”. I thought this was powerful and he spoke about when he sat down with Will Eisner, over dinner, and Eisner did not want to talk about life, or what he had done wrong, but rather he had to go out, “travel the world, and get his heart broken”.

Then we see him talking about how he loves people who tell “heart-rending” stories, and how some people he admires, have made “terrible and tragic mistakes” and how he has to “learn from them, to to learn the true nature of life and what success is”.

One can only wonder if he believes Eisner made a mistake to research Islamic antisemitism, as he did when he was developing his last GN, The Plot. Miller certainly lets down Eisner's memory with this defeatist position, that's for sure, and what Miller says here about Eisner sounds rather forced, like he's looking for an opportunity to rip down on a guy I thought was a respectable mentor to him. And recalling the disgraced Neil Gaiman was a contributor to the documentary, does Miller come to terms with how Gaiman made mistakes? Who knows? It's shameful how he clings to friendship with otherwise unreliable figures, and recalling he wasn't credited to a letter written by Batman specialists in support of the Israeli family of an infant who was murdered by Hamas jihadists, one can only wonder - is Miller really that cowardly he couldn't add his name to the list, assuming the Wyman Institute asked him? That's not helpful at all. What's he "learning" then? The discussion of the documentary continues:

Frank Miller: American Genius is definitely not a piece of propaganda, as it goes to the weaknesses and failings that have occurred to Frank, which I had not anticipated, issues which were discussed included his alcoholism and its effect on him, his anger and the graphic novel Holy Terror, and his take on the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I wasn’t aware that during that darker phase of his life, that Breitbart and Steve Bannon, had become somewhat enthralled and desired to be aligned with Frank.

The film was not afraid of addressing parts of Frank’s life that one would be ashamed of, and I felt that this film was prepared to probe and ask hard questions. It was reflecting on what had happened, and Frank came across as quite remorseful about what had occurred, and repentant.

It is not for me to decide what others will make of the film, or whether they can find any form of reconciliation for the harsh utterances he made and the work that was Holy Terror. I am not and was not impacted in the way others were, who will have felt outrage with validity; that they were impacted, hurt or targeted. My position and privilege protect me, and it is easy for me to consider that to fail is to be human. So it it is to individuals to consider and decide for themselves their view, if they even want to.

Gee, the writer sure is intent on validating the defeatist side of the whole affair. Has he even ever met 9-11 Families? In the near quarter century since the tragedy, people like him never seem to bring up the victims and their families, as if they don't matter. At worst, the defeatists act like they don't even exist. It's a similar situation with Israel post-October 7, 2023. Also note he complained earlier about "islamophobia", and that's pretty telling as well. And on that note, the columnist then proceeds to sugarcoat pro-Hamas movements in Ireland:

This is no scarf to give warmth or comfort. It is an international quilt of resistance, which has been crocheted in rural Ireland by a group of women and their international allies for Palestinian children killed in Gaza. This is “Craftivism” and the quilt is “a gesture of remembrance, resistance, and rage at the appalling loss of life in Palestine.”

Wow, so much feeling for "palestinians", but none for Israeli victims of Islamofascism, huh? Or even the Irish victims of the same? That's the impression one can get from this otherwise one-sided disgust and sorry excuse for a pop culture column, which even proceeds to sugarcoat anti-Israel cartoonist Joe Sacco:

I had picked up Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco earlier in the day, at the Oxfam charity table at Dublin Comic Con. Charity tables at conventions turn up the most unusual things, and I think they add a lovely aspect, so I rummage under the table, and find this amazing book, and I am asked whether it was a good book, as I commented that I had it, even though I was considering it, you can always gift such a book, I reckon, and I respond, “one of the best” I says, “Sacco is brilliant and one might find a path to understanding what is happening now, and an appreciation of the history for sure.

Oh yeah, Sacco's a pure god, but Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are nothing, is that it? Such a disgrace. And no objections to how "palestinians" are indoctrinating their children with the Religion of Peace? There's another sad example of failure right there. The writer then says:

I am back in the room with Frank and many fans, and I have three questions in mind, I have mentioned to comic reading pals over the years, that I have these questions, for some time, that I wanted to ask them of him, long before I knew he would be in Ireland. The third, which sadly I do not get to ask, would be tricky, although possibly the easiest in this setting, as I want to ask Frank “If he hates the Irish”, given his portrayal of David the bomb maker in Holy Terror and The Mercenaries in Sin City as Irish; and I am not altogether sure that the Irish aspect was a positive element in Daredevil, and if Matt Murdoch is crippled by his Irish Catholicism – but I did not get to ask this question. Probably for the best.

My second question was about 9/11 and as you know, I asked this on Monday.

After all the defeatism, one could wonder if Miller really cares about the better interests of the Irish at all, though an even better query is whether the columnist does, after all Ireland's gone through, and even Britain, at the hands of the Religion of Peace, which the Gazans he speaks of adhere to, and many of them even kept Mein Kamph in their houses. What, is that okay if they follow those kind of horrific belief systems? That Islamic indoctrination practically led to October 7, 2023. It even led to the assault on Salman Rushdie. On which note, is Miller aware of verses in the koran like 47:4? There's valid issues that can be made about the "Religion of Peace", and he throws them all away just to remain in the "good graces" of the leftists with whom he produced the documentary.

In the end, I'm very disappointed with Miller, who appears to have made use of the American Genius documentary as a means of groveling for all the wrong reasons. Mike Baron and Chuck Dixon, by contrast, will likely never get a documentary about their careers by contrast. And as for the Down The Tubes news site, it's more like down the drain, seeing how far-left their approach really is, so what business do they have speaking for the medium anyway? Miller has at least a few allusions to WW2 in his writings, and his standings today end up making them look like a joke. Does he also think communism isn't worth protesting? From what I know, Miller was unhappy in the 90s when Marvel put Elektra to more use again, but considering how poor his own viewpoints have become, that's why I don't think Miller has any business complaining that Marvel decided to bring the kunoichi he created in 1981 back into the spotlight again. All that matters is how artistically successful that was, and post-2000, it definitely wasn't much. But then, it's not like Miller's had much to do with Marvel and Daredevil for years now, so maybe he at least understands it's hardly worth it to be so petty. He has recently returned to work with them on a joint project with DC, for a Batman/Wolverine crossover. but again, his artwork has become so forced and mediocre, what's the use beyond the artist's name recognition?

And that's got to be the problem with how that comic's being sold too - just upon that Miller's the illustrator. But that alone doesn't guarantee artistic success, even story-wise. All that aside, my problem with Miller, again, is that he's the kind of creator who's far too obsessed with all that's dark, yet when a serious issue like Islamic terrorism comes about, he turns defeatist, as is already old news. When it comes to brighter storytelling, there's very little of that in Miller's resume, as again, he's just so obsessed with making use of Batman for reasons increasingly pointless. No doubt, a similar argument could be made involving Wolverine. And Miller even has the gall to throw Eisner under the bus. I just don't know what Miller's still working in entertainment for, or why we have to consider Sin City fantastic art any more than anything else. Miller's definitely past his prime, and the defeatist path he's taken of recent only feeds into the narrative the far-left wants to hear. And all this just explains why, beyond Daredevil, there's little else he's ever drawn and written that I've ever cared for.

Marvel's bizarre combination of Muslim Ms. Marvel with dogs

Recently, Marvel published a special titled "Marvel Mutts", starring the Muslim Ms. Marvel who was created as a propaganda vehicle. Here's the information Comic Book Club Live provides:

Join the Marvel Mutts in their very first comic book adventure! Collecting issues #1-12 of the Friday Funnies series, these heartwarming tales – and wagging tails – are sure to elicit a round of a-paws. Featuring Lockjaw, Lucky, Cosmo, Bats and Ms. Marvel’s dearest doggie, Mittens, this pack is packing the cute. So fetch yourself a copy and have a ball with Marvel’s Mightiest Mutts!

This has the effect of being unintentional comedy, or laughable for all the wrong reasons, because anybody who knows what Islam is like knows the Religion of Peace abhors dogs, and look what trouble it's led to in Britain. In the Arabic language, the synonym for dog "kalb", is even used as a slur. It's clear at this point Marvel's not even trying to draw in the followers of the ummah they supposedly coveted in their bizarre leftist attempts to "please everyone" in the past decade or so, because if they did, they wouldn't have made a character with a Muslim background the star of such a vehicle, nor would they have written her owning a dog for a pet.

In the end, the whole premise first concocted over a decade ago has certainly become very dated at this point, and one must wonder how much longer Marvel's going to keep repeatedly wasting money on a political vehicle that nobody's interested in. The same can be said for DC, if they're still depicting Geoff Johns' own Islamic propaganda concoction, Simon Baz, as such a practitioner. It could actually benefit badly developed characters if they put them in limbo for some time, then wrote out the part about their being Islamists and trying something like depicting them as Arab/Pakistani Christians and/or Buddhists instead. Unfortunately, chances they're willing to do that are very slim.

More disturbing details about pseudo-creators who've supported anti-Israelism

Some more clues have turned up as to the vile conduct of at least a few of the comics writers previously mentioned here, such as past posts on X/Twitter by Saladin Ahmed. For example, as discovered through here, here and here, and seen in the following screencap:

There's also a bit more involving Nadia Shammus, which appears to be from more recently, before she shut her page, and it even includes people who interacted on the same thread:

This is some of the most truly repulsive stuff I've ever seen littering social media, and again beggars the queries how much longer the Big Two, along with any indies employing these 2, in example, will continue to associate with them. Already, Playboy parted ways with a Lebanese-American "media influencer" named Mia Khalifa, and Marvel would do well to follow their example by parting ways with Ahmed. Lest we forget, all other comics creators who recognize the seriousness of the issues here must also end any and all contact they've had with Ahmed and Shammus until now. In view of the savagery the Hamas committed, this is exactly why no self-respecting comics creator should ever associate with people like them again. Also, lest we forget, Ahmed injected some bad stereotypes into Daredevil.

Saladin Ahmed's Daredevil story builds on antisemitic tropes

There've been at least a few other cases of antisemitic imagery turning up in Marvel's stories in recent years, with at least one other example in X-Men produced by a Muslim adherent, Ardian Syaf, and now author Saladin Ahmed, on the week when Israel was struck by a horrific massacre by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, turned out another example, as reported by Religion News Service:

“Daredevil,” the popular Marvel Comics series, was relaunched this month with a new creative team and several innovations, including a new adversary for its swashbuckling blind superhero that has drawn fire from interfaith scholars.

Starting with a new issue #1, Daredevil, whose civilian identity is Matthew Murdock, is now a Catholic priest in New York City. The nameless new villain, meanwhile, has long horns, a long white beard and a hooked nose — imagery straight out of anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda, the commentators say.

“This illustration draws from an ancient tradition of demonizing Jews in literature and art to portray a clash between good and evil,” said Malka Simkovich, director of Catholic-Jewish studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

“The hooked nose and the beard, as well as the weathered and wrinkled forehead, suggest that the antagonist in question is a demonic rabbi.” It doesn’t help, Simkovich added, that Daredevil is shown fending his enemy off with a cross.

Rabbi A. James Rudin, who recently became the first rabbi granted a knighthood by Pope Francis, called it “repulsive.”

“When I first saw the illustration of Daredevil’s opponent in this new iteration of the comic book hero, I was immediately struck by his resemblance to posters advertising a Nazi propaganda film called “Der Ewige Jude” (“The Eternal Jew”),” said Philip A. Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “One might have hoped that the comic’s creators would have been wary of playing with such hateful imagery in these days of unabashed antisemitic rhetoric.”

Clearly, this guy hasn't paid much attention to Ahmed's own past rhetoric, but what's also offensive here is editor C.B. Cebulski's failure to prevent this. Something tells me Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso wouldn't have taken proper action against Ahmed either, the dismissal of Syaf for his own offenses notwithstanding. Speaking of which, even the artist for this DD tale has blame to shoulder, and, when contacted, defended his approach:

When reached by email on Thursday (Oct. 5), “Daredevil” artist Aaron Kuder vigorously objected to any reading of his art as antisemitic. “If you’re comparing my art to that of Nazi propaganda … Well, that’s just insane. Completely laughably insane. Also extremely and utterly insulting,” he wrote in an email.

“I will point out that in the Nazi propaganda that I’m aware of (I’m no expert) dark hair is also a key component. Also, being short in height is a key visual component. Neither of which are components in the villain design … literally any kind of person can have large facial features and long hair. There is no correlation here.”

Explaining that he never comments on ongoing stories, Kuder said he made an exception because he could not stand by and “be even passively lumped in” with other artists previously disciplined by Marvel who “slipped messages of hate past their editors.”

He may be of Jewish descent himself, but that doesn't make it impossible to be a self-hater who'd rely on vulgar stereotypes, and it doesn't help he's admitting to lack of expertise on the subjects, nor that he didn't make the villain short or have black hair. Even half the details can be pretty bad, to say nothing of subtle.

In 2017, fans discovered antisemitic and anti-Christian messages in the pages of “X-Men Gold” #1, inserted by Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf. The company removed the images from subsequent printings, digital versions and trade paperbacks. In 2021, Marvel removed antisemitic imagery from print and digital editions of its “Immortal Hulk” comic after fans noticed a panel with a jewelry store whose name was rendered as “Cronemberg Jewery” with a reverse Star of David in the window.

Regarding the issue of a Jewish-owned jewelry store in the Hulk, that might've been an overreaction, even if the idea's an easy one. But Syaf's stealthings, that's another matter, and based on his vindictive reactions, that's one more reason why it was offensive, and he thus confirmed something was wrong. Notice, however, that this article makes no serious attempt to ask if Muslim anti-semitism played any part here, nor is there any exploration of how Marvel allowed for anti-white metaphors into the pages of the Hulk, or anti-conservative ones into the pages of X-Men (or even accompanying misogynist allusions).

Some see an irony in Marvel’s history, as the superhero comic book industry was founded by Jewish creators almost a century ago out of necessity, when they were discriminated against from working in the mainstream publishing world.

What's really sad is how Jewish creations and productions were devoured by a mainstream conglomeracy with no genuine respect for their publishers and creators. One that's highly unlikely, even today, to hire right-wing Jews any more than non-Jews of the same political bent.

Gerry Gladston, chief marketing and legal officer for Midtown Comics, the industry’s leading retailer of comic books and graphic novels based in New York City, said this week he was unaware of any complaints about the “Daredevil” issue until contacted by Religion News Service but saw it as an educational opportunity.

Simkovich, meanwhile, expressed concern that without response from Marvel, the antisemitic message will continue to be promoted under the reader’s radar.

“Readers who scan these pages will become inculcated and inured to antisemitic tropes without even knowing that it’s happening,” she said. “They will become desensitized to situations in which such demonization presents an immediate danger to the health and wellbeing of Jewish people.”

At a time when Israel's under attack in many ways, Ahmed's story is practically a gift to antisemites, subtly or otherwise. It remains to be seen if Marvel will take disciplinary action against him for doing something that couldn't have come at a worse time. But back to the main article, they even made sure to inject some kind of moral equivalence:

Not everyone sees the “Daredevil” images as only antisemitic. “The image also seems to pull on anti-Arab imagery,” said Hussein Rashid, an independent scholar whose focus is religion and comics.

“The use of symbols against an adversary or The Adversary is quite common in comics,” said Rashid, adding that “comics, not just Marvel, are replete with images and storylines that continue to reinforce narratives of marginalization.”

This sounds more like somebody trying to imply Ahmed doesn't speak for him, not very convincingly, and simultaneously, he must be alluding to Bill Willingham's Fables, which had a leading villain called The Adversary years before. This strongly suggests the interviewee hated the pro-Israel metaphors in Fables, ditto any pro-conservative ones. Just what's RNS trying to prove here anyway? Also again, no mention of Islam, curiously enough, nor any effort made to explain that Arabic background has nothing to do with this, only the Religion of Peace.

I think Kurt Busiek was once a supporter of Ahmed. It'll remain to be seen if left-wing Busiek's still willing to associate in any with him after this atrocious scandal (I was able to find a result on search engines that gave a clue to Busiek's interactions with Ahmed, seen in the screencap on the side). The same goes for many other comics contributors the industry over. And once again, Marvel's proven they're not honoring the memory of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, or anybody else who did far more for comicdom than people like Ahmed ever will.

Marvel's Sabra comes under assault by Muslim activist group with terror ties

The Council of Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), which has documented connections to terrorist organizations like Hamas, recently ran the following podcast on Facebook, where they attacked Bill Mantlo/Sal Buscema's Israeli character, Sabra, who first debuted in the Incredible Hulk in the early 1980s:

Join us today at 3:00 p.m. ET for a discussion on the Marvel superhero Sabra, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism with American Muslims for Palestine's Outreach Director Taher Herzallah.

From this alone, it's pretty easy to guess where they went with this. No matter how left-leaning Mantlo was in his time as a writer, and no matter how much that influenced his comics writing by extension, it makes zero difference to anti-Israeli sources like these. Whatever they say isn't worth the bytes it's produced on, considering their offensive platforms, for which the FBI later cut off contact with them. It's not too difficult to guess what they think of Gal Gadot as well.

One commentor said:

The Jewish people have so few representatives in comics, do take her away from us

And:

Sabra's young son was killed in a terrorist attack

Yes, it was established, possibly in New Warriors by Fabian Nicieza, that Sabra had a young son who'd been murdered in a terror attack, and that these anti-Israeli movements would invalidate even that viewpoint is definitely reprehensible. The commentor also said:

Did you read Union Jack: London Falling?

In that miniseries, the whole clash-on-the-side between Sabra and Arabian Knight is regurgitated, and Islam is otherwise whitewashed. It's another pathetic example of failure to provide an Israeli with a better depiction. Mostly because in the 2nd part, Sabra gets shot in the eyes, blinding her. Next:

You need to do more research on the character. Your knowledge of her is incorrect

Worse, their standings are entirely deliberate. And all coming from a movement that was an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorism. One more comment made was:

The plot for Captain America: New World Order has not even been released. How do you even know how her character will be portrayed?

Of course, if the screenplay comes within even miles of portraying Israel negatively, that'll be abominable, but not a surprise. Disney and Marvel studios have long been sellouts to anti-Israeli campaigners, and even Steven Spielberg did this almost 2 decades ago with Munich.

So now, another, far more notorious activist movement's damning Mantlo and Sal Buscema's creation for being Israeli, and being written with a background they believe illegitimate. Naturally, you have to wonder why these ideologues want anything to do with publishers that were originally founded by Jewish businessmen, whose viewpoints were anything but aligned with what phony pop culture critics think. It's practically laughable.

Predictably, Marvel studios indicates they'll go the PC route with Sabra

The Times of Israel reported that, as could surely have been expected, Marvel studios went out of their way to answer anti-Israeli activists offended at the inclusion of Bill Mantlo's minor character, Sabra, in the upcoming 4th Captain America movie:

Marvel Studios said it will take “a new approach” to its controversial character Sabra, to be played by Israeli actress Shira Haas, after Palestinian groups criticized the decision to bring the Israeli comic book character to the big screen.

“While our characters and stories are inspired by the comics, they are always freshly imagined for the screen and today’s audience, and the filmmakers are taking a new approach with the character Sabra who was first introduced in the comics over 40 years ago,” Marvel told US media outlet Variety in a statement Friday.

Translation: they'll go so far as to avoid any positive portrayal of Israel, all because they don't have the courage to stand up to Islamic antisemitism. In any case, it was pretty obvious from the start that today's comics publishers and filmmakers wouldn't defend the dignity of the Jewish creators who founded the very industry that today's films are based on. Cartoonist Uri Fink, as noted before, figured this was unlikely to be something admirable, but what's been told now only compounds the impression this'll be something awful when it's ready.

I also discovered the Nerdist website employs a possible Muslim writer who's also a LGBT ideologue(!), and he wrote a smear piece where he said Sabra shouldn't be in the Marvel movieverse. He concludes it like this:

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to put a Jewish hero in the forefront of the MCU; however, putting Sabra, an Israeli government agent, into the world’s biggest blockbuster franchise is a problem. It certainly feels like the powers that be are ignoring the real-life atrocities happening to people. There are already other Jewish heroes that Marvel Studios can include in the MCU. [...]

Ah, so in other words, he's ostensibly saying, "Jewish character = good, Israeli character = bad". But, this kind of shoddy distinction and excuse could easily be used to say, exclude indigenous residents of countries like Holland, who're called Dutch. It could even be used against the Basque of the northern Iberian peninsula where Spain is located. Come to think of it, the approach used in his screed could also be used to say only people of specific ethnicities living in the USA proper are qualified for representation, not foreign-born characters living outside. And he doesn't even care that under the PLO, gays and lesbians are suppressed by their police forces and face terrible persecution. That Nerdist would give a platform to somebody who goes by the kind of ideologies he does is truly despicable, and I will not be linking directly to their site anymore as a result of this disturbing propaganda that entirely omits how "palestinians" are a whole fabrication for the sake of invalidating Israel, and even Newt Gingrich eventually acknowledged this. To think, that nowadays, we have whole sites centered around entertainment topics who actually separate the Jewish creators of comicdom from their homeland origins. This is exactly why old movies like Otto Preminger's Exodus from 1960, based on Leon Uris' book, can no longer be made, because anti-Israelists in Hollywood have almost literally shut the gates to any such projects.

And that's why it's no shock at all when Hollywood kowtows to anti-Israeli movements, with the worst part being whenever those in charge of properties originally created by Jews refuse to defend them, regardless of how specific characters were created in the first place.

Israeli cartoonist warns new Captain America film's portrayal of Sabra could be woke

There's been news - superficial as could be expected - that Israeli actress Shira Haas was cast in the role of the Bill Mantlo/Sal Buscema-created Sabra in Captain America: New World Order. Here's what i24 News is saying about it:

Israeli actress Shira Haas joined the Marvel cast in the fourth "Captain America" film, in which she will play an Israeli superheroine, according to an announcement made Saturday evening at Disney's D23 Expo conference in California.

According to Variety, Haas will play a former spy agent named Ruth Bat-Seraph aka "Sabra," a term used for Israeli-born Jews. She first appeared in the Marvel comics in 1980.

Sabra served in the Mossad and has superpowers, which include extraordinary strength, stamina and speed. She also possesses anti-gravity devices, allowing her to fly through the air faster than 300 miles per hour.

Alas, this alone is not reason enough to watch a film coming at a time when Kevin Feige's turning their screenplays into woke garbage, as the recent Thor installment makes clear. And on that note, YnetNews says veteran Israeli cartoonist Uri Fink is not optimistic. It also tells what he thinks was a case of plagiarism, based on a character he created early in his art career in the late 1970s:

Since Disney announced that Israeli actress Shira Haas will play an Israeli superhero named Sabra in the next installment of the Captain America series, veteran Israeli comic book artist and writer Uri Fink's world went abuzz.

The reason? In 1978, at the tender age of 15, Fink created Sabraman — the first Israeli superhero — who shares some striking similarities with Marvel's heroine, first and foremost, their names.

"I'm getting messages from people who know the character, asking what I'm going to do about it, as if they're encouraging me to sue Marvel and make a killing off the whole thing," Fink tells Ynet.

"It's not the first time. It already happened in 1980 when [Marvel] first created the character, two years after Sabraman, but I didn't think it was right to sue them and I still don't think this is appropriate and that I would make anything out of it. It's just a word. You can't copyright a word. Sabra is just a word."

Sabra is a prickly pear cactus that is very common in Israel and has become a colloquial term used to describe native Israelis — rough and tough on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside.

Fink says it is likely the American comic book publisher drew inspiration from his work back in the day.

"I do believe they saw Sabraman back in the day. There were articles written about it the world over and I gave interviews to various papers, so it is likely they saw it," he says.

"Many guys in DC and Marvel were Jewish back then and the book made it to the Jewish communities abroad too. The comic was in English, and Jewish American guys dug it, it likely reached them, but it wasn't the most polished comic book in the world."

Yes, maybe it's possible, based on how similar their costumes look, although Sabraman appears to have a mask on, while Ruth Bat-Seraph doesn't wear one. That aside, here's where Fink provides a realist view in context of the PC mentality now ruining much of showbiz:

However, Fink voiced pessimism about how the Israeli character would be portrayed by contemporary comic artists.

"Sabra went on to feature in some stories that weren't very pro-Israel, it was already weird back then. So I don't think this would augur well for how she'd be depicted by Marvel now that they've gone woke," he said, using a term that is popularly used to describe people highly alert to social injustices but is also used by some as a derogatory term for a flavor of contemporary progressive leftist ideology which, among other things, is highly critical of Israel.

Sadly, her first official appearance in 1981 is nothing to write home about, because of the troubling moral equivalence and downright sloppy writing that permeated the story, and some of that unfortunately questionable scripting that took place in the original Hulk #256 where Sabra officially debuted (she may have made her first appearance 6 issues prior in a cameo) is further elaborated upon here. First:

In a move that is already thrilling some Jewish audiences and stirring controversy among other international fans and activists, Marvel Studios announced that an Israeli comic book hero will appear in the next installment of its Captain America movie franchise.

Seriously, I find it dismaying, no matter how much it does happen, when audiences just go bonkers over the mere announcement, when the finished product can be anything but a celebration. And the original debut is just why it could be thought otherwise:

Sabra (also the word for an Israeli prickly pear, which has a bristly outside and soft and sweet inside, and is used as a nickname for an Israeli person) is a Mossad agent and police officer with superhuman speed and strength. The 1981 comic that first prominently features her involves multiple quotes and plot points that would be seen as taboo in a contemporary Hollywood blockbuster.

In the comic, the Incredible Hulk mistakenly ends up in Tel Aviv, where he befriends an Arab boy who gets killed in an attack by identifiably Arab terrorists. Sabra — real name Ruth Bat-Seraph — witnesses the attack and assumes Hulk is in cahoots with the terrorists. She attacks Hulk with “energy quills,” weakening him, but the Hulk explains that the boy was his friend — and references the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Boy died because boy’s people and yours want to own land!” the Hulk tells Sabra. “Boy died because you wouldn’t share. Boy died because of two old books that say his people and yours must fight and kill for land!”

This is all delivered without any genuine quotations from the Judaist Bible/Torah or the Islamic Koran/Hadith provided. What Mantlo injected was incredibly embarrassing, and it makes little difference that it's a "product of its time". That doesn't make it any less poor. This is another example where people don't realize that a specific storyline where a character debuted is, unfortunately, the result of bad writing rushed into production. That the sea port in Tel Aviv isn't even portrayed very accurately is the least of the tale's problems.

Things are not getting better when seeing a columnist for the far-left Forward exploit the moment for confusing propaganda:

Even as the MCU has made efforts to stare down institutionalized American racism and overreach of government surveillance a la the Patriot Act, many still view these movies and shows as little more than military propaganda. (The studio has, in fact, partnered with the military quite a bit.)

He makes it sound as though the army's anything but influenced by leftism. That aside, it's loathsomely reprehensible how this puff piece builds on anti-American propaganda of the sort that claims the USA is "systemically racist". And it's just like them to cite Civil War as though it were a positive example, when it was most definitely not. Once, superheroes, if they fought each other in the past century, it wasn't over partisan politics, and IIRC, in the Avengers/Defenders War of 1973, it was over misunderstandings, and communications with a paralyzed Black Knight that got warped by Loki and Dormammu along the way. Yet these propagandists on the left never care.

Introducing the Israeli counterpart to Captain America, then, whose comic origins tie her directly to the Jewish State’s intelligence agency, has raised eyebrows. It’s scarcely surprising, given how over at DC the mere casting of Gal Gadot as an Amazon from a fictional island generates perennial outrage.

A critic on Twitter wrote that Sabra’s powers will include “demolishing Palestinian homes with her mind.” Many others noted how Sabra’s debut, in an issue of “The Incredible Hulk,” featured the killing of an Arab child (the word “Palestinian” is never used) so that Sabra can have a teachable moment. As we delve into the controversy a little more, let’s start there.

At least this is making clear that, no matter the content of the upcoming film, antisemites reject Mantlo's creation from the outset. Then:

She first shows up in 1980’s “Incredible Hulk” No. 256 “Power in the Promised Land!” She mistakenly believes that the Hulk is working with terrorists and the two fight. In their final confrontation, the Hulk cradles the body of Sahad, an Arab boy he befriended who was killed in an explosion caused by terrorists. The Hulk then lectures Sabra about the toll of the ongoing conflict.

“Boy died because boy’s people and yours both want to own land!” the Hulk yells. “Boy died because you wouldn’t share!” (Remember, this is the Hulk talking.)

What makes the Hulk even angrier is that the crux of the conflict is because of “two old books” (i.e., the Quran and Hebrew Bible) and “now boy is dead — but boy didn’t even read books!”

Many online have rightly noted how Sahad, who first tells the Hulk about the “two old books,” is a racist depiction of a Palestinian kid. He is illiterate, steals and lies to tourists for money. The only other sort of Palestinians the issue shows are terrorists. If this is indeed the nuance we can expect from Sabra’s corner of the world, there’s reason for concern.

Now, let's hold on here for a moment. The kid tells Hulk about the books...yet he's illiterate and never actually read either?!? If that's not some of the most slapdash writing, I don't know what is. Of course, why does the columnist keep insisting on referring to the Arab boy in focus as a "palestinian", and not as an Arab or even a Moslem? Funny how the columnist doesn't suggest maybe the boy should've been a Jewish child instead, since that way, Mantlo could've proven he wanted to at least try to provide insight on Jewish society from a child's perspective.

But Sabra has had a few decades to develop and she has gone on other adventures — helping to keep the son of an ambassador to Israel from turning into the next Adolf Hitler; becoming an advocate for mutants; even working alongside a Palestinian teammate called (sigh) Arabian Knight.

Overall, she’s a pretty minor character with just 50 appearances and it’s far too early to tell what her role in the new film may be.

Oh, and what's this here? I thought Arabian Knight, introduced an issue later, was of Egyptian background, and this sorry excuse for a columnist is taking this out of context too? I'm sorry, but this only compounds the perception he's telling all this out of contempt for Israel, to undermine its birthright history, and suggests he doesn't respect Golda Meir, who refuted the "palestianian" propaganda decades ago. He does make one fairly accurate observation, though:

While some will always balk at the idea of featuring an Israeli superhero at all, this may, in fact, not be where much of the world is at, even as many rally behind BDS. That said, it’s more than likely the film will face a ban in the Middle Eastern countries that have yet to normalize relations with Israel.

Even after the Abraham Accords, don’t expect Haas to be walking a red carpet in Saudi Arabia for the premiere. That new world order is still out of reach.

That is bound to be the case, sadly. If a number of Muslim dominated countries wouldn't screen Gal Gadot's movies, there's no reason to assume this'll be any different.

Through this, I found a Twitter thread posted by Simcha Gross, an assistant professor on ancient Jewish history at the University of Pennsylvania, who found the 1st full tale guest starring Sabra cringeworthy after researching it. He describes the following, in example:

Sahad tells Banner "sometimes it is very hard to be an Arab in Israel. Both my people and the Israelis say that this land is theirs. They could share it, but two very old books tell them they must kill each other over it." Some oversimplification for you! 7

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

Sahad also tells Bruce "Me, I don't read books." In this issue we encounter only two types of Arabs in Israel; terrorists, and a kindhearted illiterate child thief/con-artist. As for Israelis, we only encounter police officers, soldiers, and Sabra. Not good. 8 pic.twitter.com/AIXP1gGgEy

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

Not quite, in regards to Arabs: the adult marketeers who yell, "stop, thief!" and give chase are not just Arabic, they're clearly identified as Moslems by the keffiyes they wear on their heads. But, the point about the pseudo-citation of the Bible/Koran is well made, mainly because the boy, as indicated, didn't even read books.

The Hulk takes Sahad's body and flees, with Sabra in pursuit. Here comes the denouement of the story, as the savage Hulk informs Sabra that the Israelis and Arabs are the true savages, mimicking Sahad's geo-political analysis: 12 pic.twitter.com/3TjGQVBpbD

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

I did think it was odd, in addition, that it's made to sound like Sabra never actually cared about the child in the first place. There's many stories built around the problems of misunderstandings. But this, from a political perspective, really takes the cake. The way it's set up also has the effect of watering down the serious issue of Islamic terrorism, which was just as relevant a topic in the early 80s as it is today.

And, just in case we missed the point of the savage hulk pointing out the inhumanity of the various actors in the conflict "It has taken the hulk to make her see this dead arab boy as a human being. It has taken a monster to awaken her own sense of humanity." 16

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

And here, it is silly and superfluous to use those kind of descriptions for her personality. Now, you could argue it wouldn't be entirely implausible for the Hulk to dish out an ill-informed lecture. There were other times when he was depicted taking questionable positions, and in Hulk form, Bruce Banner could be mentally messed up (let's also note that in later years, around the time Peter David became writer, multiple personality disorder was emphasized circa issue #377). Even so, the script by Mantlo is very slapdash and the product of people who resorted to cheap paths instead of firm challenges. Not many may realize it, but Sabra's early entries, unfortunately, were not very good, as this story suggests.

And considering Hollywood's track record in the past few decades on the subject of Israel's history, that's one more reason why I'm not optimistic this new Capt. America sequel would respect Israel, let alone Sabra herself. Let's remember, Feige is a bad lot, and has already proven so with the most recent Marvel movies containing wokeness.

Entertainment Weekly absolutely loves the Muslim Ms. Marvel for PC reasons

Entertainment Weekly predictably gushes over Marvel's worst propaganda production to debut since the time Axel Alonso was their EIC, and the TV show based upon it:

As portrayed by Iman Vellani, the personality and aesthetic that has already made Kamala an icon to so many fans remains intact with the Ms. Marvel show. She is still an avid superhero fan who makes her own Avengers fan-fiction, she's still the child of Pakistani immigrants who live in Jersey City, and she still pursues her own superhero responsibilities with exuberance once her powers manifest. But every adaptation necessarily brings about changes to fit a new format, and a very noticeable one is that Kamala's powers work very differently on screen than they do in Marvel comics.

In the Ms. Marvel show, Kamala manipulates energy into physical constructs like stepping discs or a giant fist. We're only two episodes in, so the full mechanics and potential of her powers have yet to be revealed, but so far they bear a striking resemblance to the Green Lantern ring from DC Comics — especially since Kamala's ever-present wrist bangle seems to play a key role in her powers. Lots of thought went into this change, as Amanat explained to EW in a Summer Preview interview last month. Since Vellani is set to star alongside Brie Larson's Carol Danvers and Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau in the upcoming film The Marvels, MCU architects clearly wanted Kamala's capabilities to line up more visibly with those energy-based heroes.

Considering how paltry sales of the comic were (little more than 20,000 copies or less, and they never actually gave clear figures for digital sales), one can only wonder what they believe they're accomplishing by lecturing everyone that the character seriously has fans despite the ideological components souring the milk. The Capt. Marvel movie from 3 years ago was so overrated and pretentious that to cast a character developed as Khan was with politicized components does nothing to improve perceptions of what Marvel studios set out to do at the time. All this news does is make me glad I'm staying away from the Marvel-based movies.

Kamala Khan is defined by many things — her religion, her ethnicity, her hometown — but most of all, she's an incredible teen hero. In addition to fighting supervillains, she also faces struggles relatable to any modern young person: Drowning in extracurricular activities, finding a balance between work and personal life, trying to do right by both her family and friends.

The best thing about her original, physical powers is that they fit right into these teen problems. What young person hasn't woken up one day to find some part of their body suddenly mismatched with the rest?

This is meaningless if the whole story builds on divisive politics and whitewashes what the Religion of Peace is built on, which unsurprisingly, the magazine has no issues with. Not to mention it's laughable how they base the gushing here on the character proper, rather than the writing/artwork. EW is decidedly irrelevant as a showbiz magazine, and this is further confirmation of that.

New Jersey magazine sugarcoats G. Willow Wilson

Last year, the New Jersey Monthly fawned over state native G. Willow Wilson, the Islamic convert propagandist hired by Marvel to create the ultimate propaganda product that's really put a stain on their reputation, and predictably, she made use of victimology:

When Marvel Comics approached G. Willow Wilson about creating the first female, Muslim superhero for an ongoing series, Wilson didn’t respond with unbridled enthusiasm. “You’ll have to hire an intern just to open the hate mail,” she warned editors Sana Amanat and Steve Wacker.

Indeed, the 2013 debut of Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel—a Pakistani-American, Urdu-speaking, body-morphing, teenage crime fighter living in Jersey City—raised the ire of Internet trolls and some far-right websites. But it also did something neither Wilson nor her editors anticipated: It marked the beginning of a remarkably successful run that would comprise more than 50 issues and 10 compilations, including Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal and Ms. Marvel Volume 9: Teenage Wasteland, winners of the Hugo and American Book awards, respectively. Ms. Marvel (a cocreation with artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie and editors Amanat and Wacker) would gain Wilson accolades for her writing and for the realization of a minority character whose complexity made her much more than a token Muslim in the largely white Marvel universe.

When they speak so snidely and contemptuously of "far-right", you know something's wrong. All they're doing is implying contempt for communities like 911 Families for a Safe & Strong America, along with whites. Indeed, what's skin color got to do with any of this? Are they confusing religion with race to boot? All this does is hurt the reputation of Stan Lee, a white man himself, in the process. No doubt, Wilson also indirectly resorted to the now classic accusations of "islamophobia", which is nothing more than an excuse to avoid serious questions and other issues regarding the Religion of Peace. As expected, no sales figures were given at the time the magazine first wrote this, nor are any questions asked whether the Muslim Ms. Marvel book was kept going as long as it did for the sake of propaganda at all costs.

Wilson’s personal life is similarly unconventional. Brought up by nonreligious, white parents, she converted to Islam at 21. Though she moved to Colorado with her family when she was 14 and currently lives in Seattle with her husband and two school-age children, she continues to be inspired by her New Jersey childhood.

Born in Long Branch, Wilson grew up in Marlboro. The diversity she encountered there had what she describes as “a tremendous impact” on her life and subsequent work. “When I was in elementary and middle school,” she says, “I had classmates from all over the world. I was one of the very few white kids who weren’t also the children of immigrants, and tons of my classmates were South Asian, East Asian—so to me, that’s what normal was.” Moving to Colorado and entering an overwhelmingly white high school, she adds, was “quite a shock.”

What exactly is the big deal for a white person to move to a school where the students are mainly white too? This is peculiar, like somebody's suggesting that being white is synonymous with "wrong". And that's just one of this modern world's problems, where everybody's making whiteness out to be entirely a bad thing. Funny thing about Wilson stressing the students in the former school came worldwide, she doesn't say whether any came from backgrounds like Hungary, Denmark, Uruguay, or even Armenia. As a result, what she says comes off more as superficial talk of a SJW that doesn't add up to much of anything.

Wilson’s first exposure to comics was in fifth-grade health class, via an anti-smoking comic starring Marvel’s X-Men. She was drawn in by the characters, she says, not so much for their superpowers, but because “they always seemed intuitively to know what the right thing to do was.” That was especially appealing to a young woman with a contemplative bent, who would spend much of her life musing over issues of philosophy, spirituality and religion. That she’d become a writer was almost preordained. “I can remember answering, ‘I want to be a writer,’ pretty much as soon as adults started asking me that question,” she says.

As a kid, she recalls, “I thought about things you couldn’t see more than the other kids around me seemed to”—a tendency that came to a head in her late teens. She’d read about Islam in some of her classes and was struck by how the religion’s teachings seemed to reflect her burgeoning worldview—particularly, the idea that neither bad experiences nor good represented God’s judgment, but were simply “part of the challenge of being human, the hurdle that’s put in front of you when you’re born.”

And this is a predictable whitewash, with taqqiya accompanying it. Why no mention, for example, of Sura 19:4294? If she won't be more open about anything in the Religion of Peace, she's not saying anything worth pondering.

She might well have converted then and there, but on the road to Islam, she encountered a major stumbling block: the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists. “It took a couple of years for me to circle back to it after that and grapple with the idea with fresh eyes after this horrible tragedy had happened,” she says.

What's fascinating is how she refused to wake up and acknowledge the more violent themes in the Koran, like Sura 47:3-4. That she remained superficial on the issues involved only compounds the perception she remains dishonest and cryptic about the Religion of Peace's exact content.

Her adopted religion and its Middle Eastern roots inform much of her writing, which has been widely praised for its deft genre blending and its inspired interweaving of mythology, religion, philosophy, folklore, history, technology and current-day politics. Her 2007 graphic novel, Cairo, for instance, sets a drug dealer, an expat, a journalist and an Israeli soldier on a search for a stolen hookah housing a genie. The protagonist of Alif the Unseen, winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, is a hacker in an unnamed Arab emirate who’s drawn into a fight against state censorship, aided by a magical manuscript. Her second novel, The Bird King, takes place during the final Spanish emirate and recounts the relationship between a royal courtesan and a mapmaker who possesses supernatural skills.

Considering how much censorship the left's advocated for the sake of defending the Religion of Peace, it sure is weird she'd write a book about the subject, when she herself isn't being open about her belief system. Also, who knows how the Israeli soldier in her book is depicted? What if it's most negative in the extreme?

In spite of her immersion in fantasy, reality is important to Wilson, and depth of character matters to her at least as much as diversity. Initially, she says, the publishing industry’s interest in diversity “was very cosmetic and surface level”—unlike Wilson, whose characters have always been complex, no matter their racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds. “All I really try to do,” she explains, “is tell stories with as much compassion and accuracy as I can.”

Wilson doesn’t see herself as an ambassador for diversity. “I’m a white convert,” she says. “You can’t really take my experience and extrapolate anything meaningful about the American Muslim community from me.” Still, says critic Emily Barton, “her religious background, combined with her apparently natural, boundless empathy, bring a strong moral sensibility to her work.”

Umm, the Arab community, from which the Religion of Peace originated, is by and large white/caucasian, and the way she makes it sound like her alleged experiences don't make her fit to say much based on her background only makes this all the more insulting to the intellect. Why no mention of apostates from Islam, and what they think of the belief system she goes by? And has she ever met with the aforementioned 9-11 Families to understand their viewpoints? Obviously not.

It's good if she's no longer employed by the Big Two (last time I looked though, Saladin Ahmed sadly still was), though even now, they could still be open to employing propagandists like her, no matter how poorly the products she writes actually sell. The damage people like Wilson have caused to the literary industry in general is far reaching, and will take eons to repair.

Update: in a related item, I also found this message written 2 years ago on the leftist Captain Comics site, where the poster makes a most head-shakingly naive statement:

I just finished G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen. Loved it, and here's my Goodreads review:

For once, a book club selection I made! I've been meaning to get to this for awhile. It's a fascinating combination of cyberpunk, fantasy, and a little romance. Set in an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, it tells the story of hacker Alif's resistance efforts. When the state identifies him he must go on the run, with the help of djinn he has met. In the end he foments an Arab Spring-like revolt (which Wilson imagined before it actually happened). Puts a wonderfully human face on Islam in the process, and the djinn are convincingly portrayed as not quite human.

As realists wonder, what's so "human" about a religion built on the kind of horrors the Religion of Peace is? Absolutely disgusting how somebody goes out of his way to sugarcoat a serious topic.

MSM fawns over new Muslim Ms. Marvel TV show, and spins negative reviews as trolling

When the new Muslim Ms. Marvel TV series premiered, the BBC predictably made sure to sugarcoat the whole affair, and take everything out of context, warping it all to suit their Orwellian visions, not to mention villify any Marvel fans galled at the hijacking of the franchise for the sake of far-left ideologies:

Ms Marvel comes to our screens via Disney+ today with lofty fan expectations, following other critically acclaimed Marvel shows such as Wandavision and Loki. The online buzz around the series and glowing reviews from critics ahead of its release point to Disney having another hit on their hands. However, success for this hero wasn't always guaranteed.

In 2013, when Marvel announced that they were reimagining the comic book character of Ms Marvel – originally a blonde superpowered military hero – as a Muslim Pakistani-US teenager called Kamala Khan, it was considered a controversial and risky proposition. Comic books, for the most part, have traditionally been male-dominated and white-centric – something Kamala was the antithesis of. Other attempts to diversify characters, such as creating a biracial Spiderman, had attracted backlash from some very vocal quarters of the fandom. In 2017, Marvel's vice president of sales stated that feedback from retailers indicated that readers were being alienated by the push for diversity. "What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity," he said. "They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not."

Ah, so here, they're distorting it to make it sound like the people they speak of didn't want any female characters at all. (Do they realize that makes it sound like said readers aren't heterosexual?) What most realists didn't want was characters being built around political activism and indoctrination tactics, as the Khan character was, with Marvel replacing the original bearer of the title, Carol Danvers, with a brand new one whose existence was almost entirely centered around her being Islamic, and all without being honest about the content of the Koran. This BBC article, like so many others of its ilk, all but obscures that there have been Black/Latino/Asian charcters well before this, and most of the earlier ones prior to 2000 weren't built on the heavy-handed leftism seen nowadays.

Yet the performance of the Ms Marvel comic books demonstrated otherwise. "Ms Marvel almost immediately became a hit comic and one of the biggest sellers online," says Dr Mel Gibson, an associate professor at Northumbria University and a comics scholar. "It absolutely leapt in sales to what could be considered non-traditional comic book readers – such as females, Muslims, or Pakistani Americans for example. The idea of who reads comics and how they read them was changing. It helped draw in new folk and diversify the fan base."

By mid 2018, even without a live-action TV show or movie, Ms Marvel had sold more than half a million trade paperbacks. Kamala Khan's arrival into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not just some PR exercise: the popularity of the character demanded it. "A huge reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was – apparently – an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this," wrote G Willow Wilson, the writer who helped craft Kamala Khan, in 2017.

Unfortunately, even that claim of huge-selling paperbacks is sketchy at best, because there's no clear data provided by leftist Bleeding Cool - who originally wrote the latter claim - that the paperbacks were actually bought. Also note that little more than 60,000 copies for as many as 9 volumes were actually printed. But this awful puff piece does reveal what kind of leftism Wilson goes by, and it's laughable at worst, because it's taqqiya (deception).

Kamala's faith certainly does differentiate her from the overwhelming majority of her comic book counterparts. The depiction of Muslim characters in comic books has often been problematic, but there was an especially tricky path to tread in a post-9/11 world. It is a testament to the team behind Ms Marvel how deftly they navigated it. Wilson weaved together storylines and interactions in a thoughtful and nuanced manner that prevented characters from turning into stereotypes. Her familiarity with the religion is understandable – she is Muslim, after all – but some of the specific details that went into her writing made me often wonder if she was secretly Pakistani as well.

"I just thought it was so interesting because I can see how different Kamala was from other personifications of Muslim or Arab characters in previous comics – notably other characters like Dust who were exoticised and where there is a whole element of orientalism going on," says Dr Gibson.

But he doesn't think it's interesting no attempt has been made to date to introduce an Armenian character with emphasis on his/her background? Or how about Arabs/Pakistanis with non-Islamic backgrounds like Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, as Bahrain happens to have? Why do only Muslims matter? When they make it sound like only one, very bad belief system should apply, that's insulting to the intellect.

According to Sue Obeidi, director of the Hollywood Bureau for the US Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the importance of Ms Marvel being a strong, authentic female Muslim character cannot be overstated. "Islam has no shortage of heroic Muslim women in its history. When you look at Aisha [bint Abu Bakr] or Khadija [bint Khuwaylid] – they were one of Islam's first heroes. They were powerful, brave and independent women with their own agency. If this character embodies some of the great attributes that many Muslim women are renowned for, you can't go wrong because that means that the character will also represent the faith well."

And this is also taqqiya, because it obscures how, as described in the Koran, Aisha was 6 years old when Mohammed took her as a child bride, and consummated said marriage when she was 9. That's hardly somebody in a position of independence or agency. But the pure disgrace coming from the BBC is nothing new. If anything, it demonstrates why they're one of the worst English-language news networks overseas.

And now, it looks like the MSM has gone out of their way to make a fuss over people supposedly "review bombing" the series on IMDB as well. One such example is Forbes:

Ms. Marvel is currently not only the best-reviewed MCU series on Disney Plus, but at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, that’s even above Black Panther’s 96% score, meaning it’s the best-reviewed MCU show or movie…ever, at the moment.

That’s why it’s noticeable that Ms. Marvel is actually the lowest scored MCU series on IMDB based on its user star ratings. And yes, the answer is that it’s being review-bombed.

“It’s not review-bombing if people just don’t like it,” some will say, but looking at the data, it’s impossible not to see what’s going on with Ms. Marvel as an outlier with malicious origins.

Here are the scores across all MCU Disney Plus series:

Loki – 8.2/10

WandaVision - 7.9/10

Hawkeye – 7.6/10

Moon Knighit – 7.4/10

What If…? – 7.4/10

Falcon and the Winter Soldier – 7.2/10

Ms. Marvel – 6.6/10

So because one mere series doesn't rate above number 7, but is far from being rated at the bottom 1, it's suddenly a scandal? The guy who wrote this is really grasping at straws for the sake of headlines to smear Marvel fans who find the propaganda tactic revolting, but that's what the following pretty much makes clear:

I would absolutely venture that more weight is being given to those first two items, and I’ve been sent examples of closed Facebook groups protesting Ms. Marvel as “replacing” the white, blonde Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel (not what’s happening) and they view a Muslim superhero as an assault on Christian values.

Well it doesn't take much to guess he's not very enthusiastic about Christianity, and probably doesn't celebrate Easter, Lent or Palm Sunday either. I hesitate to think what his view of Judaism and Hinduism is, in that case.

Even Next Shark got in on the exaggerated act:

The inconsistency between the crowd-sourced ratings and critic reviews also suggests something more is going on than viewers simply disliking the new show. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show currently boasts a staggering 95 percent, making it the second-highest rated MCU film or show to date.

[...] Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel serves as representation on multiple fronts. The character is a Muslim, South Asian teenage girl entering a superhero universe that’s primarily been explored on screen by white male actors named Chris.

Chloe Zhao’s “Eternals” also fell victim to review-bombing after its premiere, as did “Captain Marvel,” one of MCU’s few feature-length films centering around a female superhero.

So they don't think Capt. Marvel was even the slightest bit overrated? Or that negative takes on Eternals had any good reason for being that way? As for RT, I wonder if they've deliberately fixed the polls to make it all look higher in user ratings than we'd think; they did after all fulfill Disney Corp's apparent wish to stifle any negative views of CM, a movie that reeked of political correctness and Mary Sue ingredients.

For people making such a fuss over supposed review-bombing, the examples above sure are giving telling hints how biased they really are in favor of the Muslim Ms. Marvel show, all because of the components it's built upon. If a show built on respectable Judeo-Christian values, or even Buddhism, got even the most remote negative ratings, they wouldn't be fussing at all. The way many leftists go out of their way to do spins is hugely dismaying.

Once again, a phony comics fan talks out of both sides of his mouth

I found some more, quite fascinating drivel and double talk coming out of the mouth of one Andrew Smith, who's written the Captain Comics columns for various newspapers in syndication for a quarter century, and isn't doing any better now. Let's first begin with what he said on a topic about Muslim artist Ardian Syaf, who was caught sticking his subtle propaganda into a new X-Men series:

I'd have fired him, whatever the message, even if it's "Hi, mom." Slip a personal message into a newspaper sometime, and see how fast security is at your desk. Publishers have to have zero tolerance for this sort of thing.

Given the content, though, this is extra wrong. It's exclusionary and offensive to X number of readers, and whatever "X" is, it's too high. The correct number of readers who should be offended by your publication is "zero."

Outside of all that, I was amused at Syaf's response that the insertions were messages of "justice" and "love." The inquisition used love as an excuse for forced conversion to Christianity, as have many other religious movements. And one man's "justice" is another man's "oppression," so Syaf could use a little self-examination.

I think Mr. Smith could use a bit of self-examination himself, after discovering the following retweet he posted on his Twitter page, which can be seen in the following screencap:

So he was casting his support for somebody who believes being a Muslim makes them fully qualified to be in the USA? (His Twitter profile said he's also a Black Lives Matter supporter.) Yawn. What else is new? Why should we believe somebody who's basically giving his approval to the Religion of Rape really has a problem with putting quranic verses into the backgrounds of mainstream comic books?

And note to Mr. Smith: if you really recognize it's not the 1950s anymore, then wake up and smell the coffee. We live in a world where bad ideologies, religious or otherwise, has taken a terrible toll upon the world. Who's really missing the numbers here? On his own site, he continued with:

And that is why, if you're the editor, you have to have a zero-tolerance policy.

Since I've been an editor for 30 years, that's really the only viewpoint I know. I can see as a reader that it might be fun, or funny, to allow inside jokes and the like. But as an editor, you just can't let it happen. You can't open that door, even a smidge.

As soon as you let, say, Neal Adams put in something not approved through editorial process, then it becomes a judgment call. Why can't Adrian Syaf put something in, when Neal Adams can? Why, because what Syaf did is "bad," whereas what Adams did was "funny."

Who says? Well, I'll tell you: a judge. Because if you let Adams do it, then Syaf can do it. If you say Syaf can't but a white guy can (with a wink and a chuckle all 'round), then you've got a lawsuit. And it's a valid one that you will probably lose.

If you're a professional, you can't get sucked into the "subjective" game. Either you allow it, or you don't.

And unfortunately, Marvel did, well before Syaf was discovered. They've allowed not just G. Willow Wilson to push a false portrait of Islam, they've also enabled other writers to do the same (Mark Waid wrote a Daredevil story doing this, and also a book called "Champions", which was just as defeatist). When you have a whole company management allowing taqqiya to prevail in terms of writing, it's no wonder the actual abominations could ultimately find their way into books too. So what's this hypocrite's point? Some of the leftists on his site have been upholding the insults to the intellect as well, and Mr. Smith once wrote a fawning review of the Green Lantern issues introducing the Muslim member named Simon Baz. If they didn't have a problem with Islam before, I doubt they actually have one now. The topic will probably be allowed to slip into the past, and when they think the time is right, Mr. Smith and his fellow leftists in the press will go right back to apologia as before.

I don't see any serious change in Mr. Smith's conduct, and if he really understood why the quran is a bad influence, he wouldn't be going miles out of his way to support its advocates.

The Muslim Ms. Marvel is being pushed into animation

I'd once heard the claim Marvel's movie/TV division was supposedly independent of what goes on in the comics company. But this news suggests that's a rather farfetched claim, as now, some of the PC diversity tactics already seen in Marvel's recent output is now being forced into their cartoon productions to boot:

Announced at San Diego Comic-Con today, the fourth season of Avengers will focus on a new team of heroes, in the wake of the disappearance of the usual team: Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jane Foster’s Thor, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Vision. [...]

And this page has a picture confirming it's the Kamala Khan character who's taking the Ms. Marvel role, while Carol Danvers is in the Captain role. I wonder who's in the role of Ant-Man? It won't be shocking if that too has been drastically altered so it's not even Scott Lang.

The live action movie screenplays may not have been seriously affected by this contrived propaganda so far. But that doesn't mean it'll stay that way for long. Even they might fall victim to it sooner or later. In fact, as the Verge has just noted, the planned movie starring Carol Danvers is going to be named Captain Marvel, not Ms. Marvel, suggesting the history involving Mar-Vell of the Kree is going to be conveniently obscured, perhaps because the anti-communist metaphors in the original 1967 premise are considered unsuitable by today's leftists who're also prevalent in Marvel's movie production.

In any case, the news about the Avengers cartoon explains why I'm starting to feel uneasy about supporting their movies, because some of the same people working on the comics are involved in some form or other on the films too. Why must we support them even in Hollywood? That may be just what's encouraging them to keep this up.