Tag: Comics

The Fantastic Four: It all comes down to the Statue of Liberty

The new movie, Fantastic Four: First Steps, was pretty fantastic.  Disney attempted to create a film for the Marvel franchise that would bring people back to the level of the first Avengers movie and the Iron Man film that preceded it.  Fantastic Four was wonderfully not woke, and the characters were all well done.  The acting was top-notch, with significant special effects, music, and story that was all good; it was a lot of fun.  So it is a shame that people are not rushing to the theaters to watch it.  The movie is set in a kind of idealistic 60s art style set into an unknown future, and it had a cool vibe to it.  And it had a great point.  I think the sacrifice of the baby plotline to save humanity is one of those key issues in the human race that should resonate much more than it has at the box office.  But we are talking about trust here, and Disney has lost it.  Marvel has lost it.  After the movie, The Eternals, which features homosexual lifestyles and men kissing in it, Marvel sealed its doom.  Hollywood, in general, was politically way off base and divided the movie-going public from their products, sealing their doom in the process.  I was able to see The Fantastic Four with my grandchildren.  They were interested in it because of the video game Marvel Rivals, so we agreed to take them. The movie turned out to be a fantastic family film, full of excellent ideas and old-fashioned filmmaking.  And the Fantastic Four family itself was one that audiences could all like.  I would recommend the movie and give some credit to Disney for listening and stepping away from their woke agenda as much as possible in this environment.  However, there are some lessons to take away here that might improve things in the future if Disney is willing to listen. I think it’s too late for them; their audiences are never coming back, which is why Fantastic Four is underperforming at the box office.  But it’s always worth trying.

One of the things that is hurting these Marvel movies is that they are too comic bookish for most audiences.  Most people lack a strong interest in quantum physics and the concept of multiple universes.  Comic writers, and now all entertainment writers, have found that the multiverse concept gives them a great deal of creative liberty, allowing them to set their stories within any known historical timeframe.  For instance, this Fantastic Four movie does not take place in a timeline and universe that overlaps with the original Avengers.  Technically, they don’t know about each other, leaving the audience to not invest in the characters.  The story might be neat and fun.  But does it matter to their belief in the reality of the previous storyline?  And I think for most people, the multiverse storylines are just too much for them to invest in emotionally.  Like a dream, people might have them, but they wake up from them never to remember them again, and they become meaningless in waking life.  And that is the problem with the Fantastic Four it doesn’t take place in a world people can relate to.  It’s just far enough out of reality to become prohibitive.  In the original Marvel movies, such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Avengers, people could accept the superpowers as long as the universe itself was part of a narrative world built around a historical timeline, allowing them to invest emotionally in the characters.  For instance, in Captain America, his story takes place during World War II, a conflict that people have a grounding in.  And it was patriotic and gave people what they wanted, a defender of American ideas, which the world is very interested in. 

However, Disney and Marvel in general have been pushing for a post-American world of the global citizen, and that element was certainly present throughout the Fantastic Four.  They essentially have a world where the United Nations is in charge of everything, and Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four is in charge of the United Nations.  In many ways, the Fantastic Four was in charge of the world as a government power, which runs counter to the trend of individual lives being self-governing.  That is an idea that people will reject at the ballot box, and they will certainly reject it with their entertainment dollars.  People do not want to be told what to do, especially from the Fantastic Four.  That’s why it’s dangerous to let these Santa Monica types write these movies from the pier, talking to their friends at a bar.  That lefty political view of existence might be fashionable among 20 to 30-year-olds in sanitized settings, such as in the hip Santa Monica region.  However, the world doesn’t like that idea and will reject it completely, and it has.  They did everything they could with this movie to make it as enjoyable as possible, and it’s fun.  People don’t want the Fantastic Four to govern over them as gods.  That is a rejected premise in the world, and it certainly hurts the emotional investment that people are willing to give to these characters.  The movie doesn’t take place in our universe; it’s an alternative universe to the other Marvel stories.  And it doesn’t have a message that people enjoy; it assumes that movie audiences want to be saved by superheroes.  Not that the audiences want to be superheroes themselves.  So that is a fatal flaw. 

However, the biggest mistake was when the villain, Galactus, who was the size of Godzilla, came to New York to retrieve the baby born to the Fantastic Four, and he looked at the Statue of Liberty with some disdain.  Just saying, nobody is going to get away with that kind of thing these days.  The world wants to believe in the light of liberty coming from a free America.  And that is represented by the Statue of Liberty.  Having a massive villain that eats planets come to the Statue of Liberty as if to say that there are much bigger things in the universe than the idea of America is a bad move.  It might be the view of radical, Santa Monica lefties, but it’s not what the world wants to hear.  They want someone who likes America fighting bad guys.  Not something bigger than America looking down on our country as if to say that the scale of the fight is beyond the political whims of nation-building.  That’s a line that people won’t cross, and they have rejected it at the voting booth and the box office receipts.  It was a dumb scene.  Galactus didn’t try to smash the Statue of Liberty.  He just gave it a look that was demeaning but did not provide commentary.  Yet, audiences picked up on it; the liberal writers of these movies aren’t going to get away with that kind of thing.  People will see another film.  And that is what they have been doing.  The Fantastic Four is a great movie, but people have better things to do, and if the story is not aligned with the politics of our day, it’s unlikely to do well.  The fantasy that artists can rule the world through liberal politics behind commercial films is a thing of the past.  It was never a good idea, but now there are just too many entertainment options.  People tend to overlook things that do not align with their values.  And that is why The Fantastic Four is not doing well, despite being an excellent movie.  It’s too far outside the known world for people to invest emotionally in.  And that’s a shame. 

Rich Hoffman

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Meeting Timothy Zahn: How Comic-Cons predict the future of politics

Predicting the Future by Going to Comic Cons

It’s no different from predicting the weather or an upcoming earthquake.  Some measurements are quite scientific that can be used to measure cultural ability and political sentiment.  For me, those measurements don’t come from the nightly news cycles or the hours of daily talk radio and podcasts, but I learn a lot from places like comic book stores and Comic Cons, such as the one they recently had in Cincinnati during September of 2021.  My daughter is a well-respected artist, and she was at that show and invited me to come on her opening day to help out, which I love to do.  It exposes me to different kinds of people where my age group is not well represented.  Most of the Cincinnati Comic-Con of 2021 were in the 20 to 30-year range.  Last year the event was canceled due to Covid, so I wasn’t sure what we would see.  Happily, the event was a great success, well attended, and there were lots of great costumes elaborately displayed, which I think is wonderful to see.  Mythology at work, where ideas work in people’s minds driving to manifest some form of reality.  From the mind of fantasy to the existence of at least a costume.  When I see that, it tells me that the participants recognize something in these fantasy stories that are attractive to them and care enough about those things to make them into reality.  As I think about the world and the problems that we have in it presently, many of the people in a comic con are at least doing the first step in solving those problems, recognizing that there is one.  Now their recognition may not be rooted in a realistic solution, but the first step in situation solving of any kind is in seeking alternatives to the present reality.  If the world is messed up and these people find comfort in fantasy, well, that says something to me, and I discovered that the Cincinnati Comic Con environment is full of great young minds looking for something positive in their lives.

I have written extensively about Star Wars in the past and how the future progressive problems for the political class currently at work in the world would fall apart.  The latest trilogy of films that have upset Star Wars fans is a perfect barometer for how progressive woke policies are destined to be destroyed in the coming years, especially in the United States.  The America First movement will only pick up steam. The Disney strategy of seeking market expansion in places like China and other places in the world was already showing signs of falling apart before Covid hitting in 2020, paving the way for the United Nations Great Reset.  People, the kind of people who go to Comic Cons, see through a lot of the nonsense.  They don’t care if Disney sells its products to China or some other communist country.  But if they screw around with characters and make them political, well, then there will be trouble.  When Disney and Kathy Kennedy at Lucasfilm decided to kill off Han Solo in the first movie of the new trilogy, they wanted to kill off toxic masculinity and put in his place a girl.  That didn’t go over too well, to replace the gunslinger of space and replace him with a person who had no idea who her parents were and what her job was.  The mistake of Disney to erase the Star Wars past and replace it with some woke, warless future wasn’t going over well with fans.  And they rejected Star Wars sending the studios into a frenzy trying to repair the damage.  Because ultimately, that’s what it always comes down to.  That will undoubtedly be the case in the world regarding electric cars, windmills, health care, and taxes.  Progressive intentions might sound good in an academic setting, but people ultimately decide what they want when it comes to reality. 

A few booths down from where my daughter was, I could see the great Star Wars author Timothy Zahn signing books, all of which I’ve read.  He had his latest book, which I hadn’t yet, book II of the Thrawn Ascendency series, so I went down there to speak with him and talk to him a bit.  It was a rare opportunity, and I couldn’t pass it up.  Now Timothy Zahn is a great guy and a great ambassador for the Star Wars brand with Lucasfilm and Disney, so I’m not going to reveal the contents of our discussion. He’s the creator of the expanded universe.  He started the novel-writing after the movie Return of the Jedi, so I had to ask him how he felt about Disney coming in and screwing it all up by changing the entire story with their dumb movie The Force Awakens.  But I’ve read his Thrawn books since then, and I know where he’s going with this recent series, and after talking to him at the Cincinnati Comic-Con, I am just glad that he’s out there. He’s a great dude, and he and some others now at Lucasfilm with Kathy Kennedy, now pushed into the background, are going to fix up Star Wars and win back their fans.  Listening to him talk only confirmed what I had said about everything 5 or 6 years ago.  And here it was, all happening, just as I said it would.  Zahn held his nose like a lot of people do when they work for big corporations.  I know many people who work at Disney; some are very dear friends who have done the same.  But what I know and have known, which these people suspected also, is that they’d wait out the storm until the corporations learned their lesson and had to adjust to the market conditions. 

Globally, the political hacks think they are in charge and utilize various methods of communism and socialism to regulate all existence.  But when I go to events like these comic cons, it just reminds me that the mind of humankind is still in charge.  The kinds of things people decide to spend their money on and the type of stories they find attractive still indicate what the rest of the world will do.  For instance, even with all their woke corporate policies and insults to Uncle Walt and his frontier America, Disney bent the companies back to facilitate communist China.  But when Disney tried to release their new Marvel movie Shang-Chi to China, the communist country turned them down.  Disney has gone way out of its way to appease China, even sticking Asian characters into Star Wars not because they needed to be but because Disney was sucking up to China.  Well, China sees the wave of the world, and they know that they are in trouble for their part in manufacturing the Covid crises and election fraud, and they are lashing out.  And Disney is the one getting slapped.  Was it worth nearly ruining Star Wars to get a communist government to play nice?  Well, Disney learned too late.  Their actual audience is in America, and they need to cater to that audience.  As I was talking to Timothy Zahn, I saw many Star Wars characters coming up to him looking for an autograph.  I even saw Mara Jade.  But you know what I didn’t see.  Nobody was dressing up as Rose, the Asian girl from The Last Jedi.  The movie that Star Wars fans hate.   What is evident at these kinds of events is that the rest of the world will follow politically.  And the direction will not be toward more totalitarianism.  But to freedom, justice, and the American way. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Hope of Comics

Even though it’s not why I do it, because in the beginning I considered this blog to be a fun extension of my life and my many interests, it has become something bigger and much more literate. And with that come judgments from people who just aren’t very intellectual presently, or perhaps never will be which I consider worthless. The difference between me writing these many articles for myself, which I have for many, many years and sharing them in the form of a blog is that in the back of my mind I hope to help people realize that there is more to life than what they are presently living. I think by any measure I am a very well-balanced person and an excellent thinker. True, I could be another Alex Jones, I certainly have interests in that direction, but I could also be a sports star, or any number of things. But what I am is a lot of things and I like it that way. And I share those things with my audience purely for the sake of their own uses, certainly not mine. What I do for myself is know that I am trying to help people live better and more authentically, and when the refusal of that offer is openly rejected I do get mad about it. I don’t force people to do anything and they certainly shouldn’t expect such a thing from me. The things I do object to in life however is anything that leads to below the line thinking and when I see such a thing I do get pretty vocal about a need to rebel against it erupts. But sometimes even for me the disappointments about how people choose to live and paint themselves into a corner gets to be too much and on those moments I give myself a breath by going to my local comic book store.

As I’ve said before, I like every sport there is. The reason I didn’t enter professional sports as a young person was that while I liked the objectives of winning, I didn’t like the compliance of building a team. I always related more to the coaches than the players and the elements of leadership so sports took up too much time and there were too many social stigmas about what success or failure meant and I had other things I wanted to spend time on. But I’m certainly not one who is an either or person, either the life of a jock or the life of the geek who hangs out in comic book stores avoiding life while others chase balls around and get headlines in the newspapers because of it. Those divisions were always absurd to me and still are. I enjoy reading all types of things, including comic books. They are usually full of ambition and the artwork is usually very energetic.

So it was with that zeal that my oldest daughter, my youngest grandson and my wife went to two comic book stores on Saturday which was a combination of Star Wars day and free comic book day. What I really wanted was the new comic about the new Star Wars land at their theme parks called Galaxy’s Edge. I’ve always been a Han Solo guy so I am quite excited that the plot of the new land was featuring him and that it was highlighted in the new comic, and I wanted to get it. I can’t recall the last time a theme park decided to tie modern mythology in this way and I found it very interesting. So for the history of it I wanted to collect it for reflection 50 or 60 years from now in the future. I was also curious how Disney would attempt to tie all these media platforms together into a big unified story.

Much to my surprise they were sold out of the Galaxy’s Edge comic that I wanted at the first comic store, but otherwise it was a very bustling place. I didn’t see any kids there, but a lot of adults and they were all talking quite vibrantly about various comics, the recent Game of Thrones episode, the Avengers climax with Endgame and the upcoming Cincinnati Comic Con which my other daughter is planning to attend as an exhibitor. I couldn’t help but wonder if Socrates ever thought for a second that any culture on earth would have so much mythology produced and that people would gather in a comic book store to talk about them with such passion. I am encouraged by such places, they often restore my thoughts that people are worth saving when I read comics and see the bold desires there that are unfurled by obscure artists revealing their hopes and dreams through fantastic characters that are translated onto colorful pages full of art. There was more art produced just in that one comic book store than the entire Renaissance period of Europe, which I think is every bit as good.

We ultimately had to go to a comic book store in Mason to get my Galaxy’s Edge comic. I picked up far more than I had planned to and I enjoyed reading them later while I watched the Reds game on television and for me, all was right with the world. But more than anything I enjoyed the people. There were a lot more people participating in the free comic book day events than I would have thought which led to a lot of contemplation for me. My daughter and I discussed it over lunch. Her generation has grown up in a lot of hapless situations. The political system has let them down, their educations were a joke, their parental structure often broken. It was in their last hopes for participating in mankind that they go to the comic book store looking for heroes to believe in. Some people would say they were escaping from reality, but what I saw was that it was for their own good. Their love of comics was a survival mechanism to the disappointments of life and I saw in all those people a desire to not just accept a “bla” existence, but to at least learn through the mythology of fantasy characters that there was more to the human experience than just accepting defeat then eventually death.

To say I’m excited about Disney’s new Galaxy’s Edge would be a severe understatement. I read the comic pretty much in the car on the way home because I couldn’t wait to see how everything would be tied together and I was happy with the ambition of it all. I personally needed the break in thought myself. For me it’s never about going backwards. When I get disappointed in the ambitions of the human species, I too look for reasons to feel good about it all again and comic book stores do it for me. They are filled with hope not just in the artists who produce the content, but in the participants. In all their geekdom, they are essentially out for the same thing that the baseball player is, or the golf enthusiast, or Fantasy Football player, everyone wants a win. And if there are things that comics are typically selling, its victories of the human soul overcoming adversity. And unfortunately for most, such concepts are a fantasy. But at least they haven’t lost sight of the need for such a thing.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Man of Steel’ Success: Get ready for The ‘Justice League’!

It looks like there will be a Man of Steel part two film after all with a Justice League film coming shortly thereafter.  As reported by Forbes at the link below, Man of Steel has made over $125 million during its opening weekend, which was the required amount to get the ball rolling for the DC Comics series of films that have been much talked about.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/06/16/weekend-box-office-man-of-steel-soars-to-125-million-debut/

That is very good news……………….


To read my review of Man of Steel, click here.

Of a particular interest is the speculation that the Forbes article makes about the next Superman villain, Lex Luther:

The big question is of course which side of the critical divide audiences end up on, since the film doesn’t just need to make money but establish excitement for Man Of Steel 2 coming summer 2015 (starring… uh… Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lex Luthor?) and the eventual Justice League film coming summer… 2018?  But for the moment, Man Of Steel has reaffirmed DC Comics as a viable brand for big-scale tent poles just as Marvel did with Iron Man five years ago.  So far, so good…

Chiwetel Ejiofor would be a good pick.  For those who saw Man of Steel, did you notice the LexCorp vans being destroyed during the big climax?

Plus, I was looking at the Superman comic #703 yesterday………the one that takes place in Cincinnati, Ohio………………and took note that the story line between Batman and Superman was a compelling one.  I would expect to see a film between those two characters just ahead of Justice League.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Meaning of Maturity: Comic books and the nudity of ‘Equus’ “HULK SMASH!”

Maturity is a word that was invented to keep the adult population dormant from the dreams of their youth. Maturity is designed to be a concession to mediocrity. When someone says that a person is mature, they mean it as an insult. They intend it to mean that one knows their place, takes orders well and won’t rock the boat. In essence, maturity is the bolts that hold machine politics together. When young people put away the things of childhood to embrace the realism of adulthood, we call them “mature,” or say that they have “grown up.”

Well, more than once, I have been referred to as “immature” by my peers because as a man in my 40’s I still love video games and comic books, just as I did when I was younger. I also still hold to an idealistic state of justice that only exists in the world of comic books. Contemporaries insist that my youthful views have no place in the political arena, and it is for that reason that I write books instead of hold any public office. The characters in my novels are often reflections of events I’ve personally witnessed in actual confrontations with members of the established political arena, and my reluctance to play ball the way they learned to play the game makes them very, very angry. That’s typically when the word “immature” is used.

I grew up with comic books, and I have never left them. Comic book stores were some of the first places I took my children and they learned to read by getting comic books and looking at the pictures and trying to figure out what the words meant. I see comic books as works of art that emit modern mythology that is very much needed. The definitions of right and wrong are very apparent in the comic book universe of youth, which the adult likes to call unrealistic. To the “mature” adult compromises must be made, and the world is shades of gray. That is in essence an incorrect view of life that opens the world to evil.

I can say such things about comic books because I have the context of advanced literature behind me. I have read and enjoyed many of the most complicated literary classics there are, particularly Shakespeare, and can report that the comic book wins over the characters of advanced literature in most every case. For instance, Bruce Wayne as a character is superior to Titus Andronicus because he does not collapse into madness finding himself a victim to a corrupt regime of Roman superiority as Titus did. Wayne took the fight to the corrupt instead of letting the corrupt bring the fight to him, leaving the only measure of redemption available in making a pie out of the dead bodies of the Empresses’ two sons who raped and maimed Titus’s daughter. Batman is better, by far than not only Titus, but Henry the Fifth, Hamlet, and Othello. That’s not to take anything away from Shakespeare but if he were alive today, he would probably write comic books.

I have been to live stage plays of Equus where the characters act with fully nudity on the stage and had sex in front of thousands of people, and I can say that the message of Captain America has more meaning, Superman is more profound, Iron Man is more realistic, and The Hulk much more sophisticated. In fact I thought of The Hulk while watching the nude woman on stage in Equus attempting to seduce the naked Alan Strang. Alan in his confused obsession with horses had nothing on Bruce Banner in fighting off the rage that dwells within him. The Hulk is far better theater than Equus, yet it is Equus that gets all the praise in our “mature” society. In fact when Daniel Radcliffe made famous by the Harry Potter films decided to play the part of Alan Strang in a London, and a Broadway rendition of Equus he received a lot of positive media attention because the hero of the Harry Potter films appeared nude, and vulnerable on stage, which was highly commended in the high brow society of maturity. Such performances say to the world that Radcliffe does not plan to be a superhuman hero in all his future acting roles, but is mature enough to play a “vulnerable” parasite who murders horses because he loves them. Natilie Portman received the same kind of praise for her role in The Black Swan for much the same reason.  Anne Hathaway was very naked in Love and Other Drugs, which was designed to show she could be a sophisticated actress and not just a fairy princess.  See Anne Hathaway very nude at the link below for context.

 

However the chances are, more people in society could name off their favorite comic book characters in their favorite Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, or DC Comics than even know that their icon of fantasy in Harry Potter took off his cloths for a Broadway play at 17 years old. That is because it is more important to strive for perfection in the human heart than to yield to human weakness as Alan Strang did in Equus when he cut out the eyes of the horses that witnessed him having sex with a woman seeking to blind them so they couldn’t see his sins.

This comic book morality of mine is frowned down upon by those who give Equus favorable reviews. To me, Equus is just an excuse to get people naked on stage and call it art, when it’s simple pornography. The theme is one of human weakness and I instead find comic books much more honest emotionally. Over the years comic books have kept my moral compass pointed in the right direction. I have had many offers from machine politics in the realm of the “mature” to take bags of looted gold placed at my feet which I rejected many times over in favor of honesty which is the theme of many comic books. If I had taken the gold I may never have had to worry about money, I probably wouldn’t have had the fire to write novels and participate in political reforms. Instead I might be on a golf course patting myself on the back talking about the hot chick that was naked on stage in the Equus stage play and discouraging my children from buying comic books as symbols of childhood.

When I practice with whips in the yard and work to keep myself in shape I am working to give to the youth in my own family something to look up to, because young people need that. It is a sad situation when all they have to idolize are drawn characters on a printed page and stories told out of deep human desire not rooted in sexual tension, but in a sense of justice. The whips shown in the pictures here are the new whips that David Crain is making for me. At the heart of a lot of people who want lessons on how to crack a whip is a person enchanted by Zorro, Indiana Jones, or even the Jedi Knights of Star Wars. In fact David specializes in making very special whips that mimic the light sabers from Star Wars which allows handlers of those weapons to get the feel of using a weapon that is very similar to the sophisticated management of an art form of the Jedi against the Sith in a fight for philosophic control over an entire galaxy.

Comic books and the heroes that come from them are about big ideas, and for that they are called immature by the adult population that has already given up. Most people when gold is laid at their feet take it without question, even if the intention was to purchase their silence and cooperation. They yield to the hero that dwells within them nurtured by the fantasies of youth and justify their weakness by sophisticated stage plays like Equus, which confirms in their weakened state that they are not as corrupt as the poor, deranged Alan Strang. Those poor souls pulled into the depths of maturity would have seen the folly of their actions if they had only read more comic books and seen the intentions behind the bags of money contextually written by artists who still look forward to the greatness of man.

As for my favorite comic book character of all time, it is The Incredible Hulk. I have always identified most with The Hulk since my temper is legendary and has always been something I have had to work on to keep under control. Every now and then it is fun to let my inner Hulk go, but it always seems to get me into a lot of trouble.  When they can’t beat you mentally, or physically, they simply call you “immature.”    The cry for maturity comes from those who are too lazy to match the lofty minds that reach for the stars and have the muscle to get there.  Rather, they hope to keep their enemies at stage plays kneeling before their nudity, their delusion, and their apathy. 


Puny gods of theater and guardians of maturity. HULK SMASH!!!!!!

 ____________________________________________

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“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

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Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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