Monday, September 23, 2019

One Thousand Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a mental snapshot worth? I've seen
too much, and according to the average person on the street, I may know too much too.
So, what's the big deal?

There's a hashtag out there trending currently: #ShutdownDC and my first thought on
that was, "What did the comic book company ever do to you?" I've been a DC guy all of
my life, and apparently even before it was DC. History states that we're having 80 years
of Batman, AND 80 Years of Marvel comics. Well, one statement is factual, and the other
isn't. At the end of this, I'll let you decide.

Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27 back in May of 1939. It seems weird that I
still have to give four digits, but there you are.... "Back in May of '39, I was just a young
whippersnapper....." In my best old man voice....

Marvel wasn't really a company until the early '60's. Stan Lee started an imprint, and
brought 3 characters with him from his previous company. Sure he created new ones,
and most of those are Marvel icons today. If you pulp an entire run of a comic, does it
still exist? Paper deteriorates at a rapid rate. Thats' why artists use Bristol boards, which
I'm guessing were invented in the UK....

Art must be preserved, and good art must last forever. We must continue to publish or
perish. Who said that first? A simple lookup that will get a link at some point.

Timely comics preceded Marvel, and National Periodical Publications preceded DC. One
company owns all of its characters, and one doesn't. I'll leave the reader to decide who
owns the current iteration of Spider-Man. What if Stan Lee didn't hyphenate? Spiderman
is in the dictionary too.

Batman has fought with the Black Widow as well. There's a serial out there (or was it the tv series?), and I believe all of the videos are currently on the tube that is you if you'd like to watch. Saturday
mornings you could give your kid a nickel and send him to the theatre to watch the big
screen all day. That's not true today. Well, it's still true, but child protective services
might get on your case. We don't want that.

How many laws have changed, or been broken and readjusted in the name of
"Protection?" I don't truly know. Some would believe we live in a police state because
there's drones flying overhead. Big Brother IS watching you about what, 25 years after
the fact? Hint: 1984 wasn't written in 1984. Orwell was a genius. He got most of it right.
If things are done for you, you may be okay. If they're being done to you without your
permission, it's definitely not. Who decides? The media? NO!!! We may have influence,
and I add myself in this category, simply because I've grown up in the business we call
show, and most of you are younger than me. Well, most of the planet, not necessarily
most of my readers. As you may remember, I have only about 2 or 3 these days....

So, media sets the message, and then we can choose to ignore or accept it. If you don't
like the message, don't hate the player, hate the game. The opposite of Love is NOT
hate. It's indifference. Most don't get that.

As a technologist, Bruce Wayne and by extension Batman has figured this out. That's
why we have Waynetech today. I'm pretty sure Bruce has put a backdoor into all of it so
that Batman can watch his city from the Batcave, and get alerted whenever the need
arises. One of the versions of the animated series had exactly that. I believe he called it,
"The Bat Wave."

Really cool opening theme and scenes.

So, on the Marvel side, we're dealing with a Spider-Man story today, and I believe that
Doc Ock is currently inside Spider-Man's body. Well, he transferred his mind there. What
he doesn't know is that he didn't eradicate Peter Parker's. He just pushed it down, or more likely swapped with. Maybe both!!!

There's a lot of Science Fiction out there dealing with mind control, and mind
transference. My thinking is the brain is truly the final frontier, Star Trek's opening
monologue notwithstanding.

Interesting to note that Star Trek as a comic book has been published by both of "The Big
Two" and a third company as well. I believe that 3rd company got there first, and then
Marvel, and finally DC. It's not clear to me whose currently publishing Star Trek, as I
haven't been to a comic book shop since Batman Day, 2019.

I didn't scan the shelves, as I was on a schedule that day.

So, what did you decide?

No comments: