I don't see anything political there. He's talking about how he doesn't like some of the new characters and their characterization.

I feel like 'political' and 'conspiracy theory' as well as few other words have completely lost their meaning.

 

I agree with this for the most part. It was better than all those things. If I were ever tempted to totally trash Roberts, which I’m not (only partly trash him lol), I remember how I felt by the end of AHM and the start of Costa. The opposite of love really *is* indifference. I truly disliked AHM (I know many love it) and after that Costa left me totally cold. That feeling of barely being able to wait for the next issue is something I’ve only got from Roberts and Furman (and sometimes Barber in his better moments), and that is something precious. I loved Dying Of The Light like this even.

However at the same time I am somewhat relieved to leave MTMTE/LL behind because I feel like a change was needed. At it’s best Roberts’ writing was for me the best we’ve ever had. It balanced humour with drama, character and nods to current issues- what I see described as being “too political”. But eventually the stream of humour started to irritate much more than it pleased. The plotting became too thin or fell apart as he panicked trying to tie everything together and had to make trade offs to finish everything. The balance of the best elements fell out of order. And the characterisation...Ultra Magnus was in my view the most egregious example of what I have heard called ‘flanderization’. Awful by the end in my view.

So there you go. I loved it and by the end found it too much. I am neither a hater nor a lover. Just a reader.

 

I'm usually indifferent to a lot of things when it comes to fiction. I really don't have an opinion about quality for pretty much any of it. HOWEVER, Beast Wars and MTMTE are different, I think that's why I was so upset by the decline in quality because early MTMTE was so damn good. If MTMTE was just a mediocre comic I probably would have read it and not talked much about it (like this new stuff).

 

Or depends on how you read it. At the risk of poking the bear, that letter can be read to imply that the only "real X-Men" are white people from North America and calls for every non-white/non-"American" character to be shuffled off elsewhere.

Again, NOT trying to start nuthin'. However, some of the criticisms in that 70's letter closely mirror the arguments made by people that are terrible as opposed to people that are merely criticizing the actual substance of the book.

That said, I think it's more important to note that that a forty year old letter is basically making the same whinging complaints we're seeing today:

1) "[Writer] is terrible and his plots are terrible". - Of Chris Claremont, the man who, love him or hate him, is known for trying to bring complexity to a superhero book.

2) "[Artist] is terrible, too". - Of David Cockrum, the guy whose art is now generally considered iconic pop art of the 70's, with one of the most famous X-Men covers ever:


3) The air of "I know better than people that do this for a living" ever-present through the letter, along with his brilliant plans to deport everyone he doesn't like. These brilliant plants include: 1) having two characters who, IIRC never had a romantic relationship get married and shipped off to "Africa" - not Egypt, Tanzania or Wakanda - "Africa"; 2) kill the German monster man because he can't figure out what to do with the character; 3) deport the Irishman; 4) a request for continued focus on what we'd consider to be "edgelord bullshit" today - i.e. Wolverine's angst.

 

There's a difference. The politics served to enrich the story in X-Men and Dredd (Good examples). The politics in MTMTE, especially the latter issues, only served as a distraction and totally broke up the tone of the story.

Personally, I love political intrigue in my funny books. Books like Saga do it so well that it helps make the book so much better. Even early MTMTE did the political drama really well. It was there, but the reader wasn't being hit over the head with it. There is a difference


There is a difference​

EXACTLY! You've proven my point. If you allow ideology to overwhelm commonsense, you end up with all sorts of silly conclusions that have no basis in reality! That is why it is SO critical that we try to look at things at face value instead of trying to figure out ways to see the 'evil' behind something.

Ultimately, at face value, that guy is a fan of the original team and doesn't like the newer characters. Full stop. That's it. He was expressing his opinion (maybe not in the smartest way) but there is no malice or implied racism in the letter.

Now if you look at the world through the prism of some ideology you can draw all sorts of conclusions to that letter. That's why it's so dangerous to have an ideology overwhelm common sense.

It's like a certain group of people that viewed Harry Potter books as 'the devil's work'.

If you already have preconceived notions about stuff rattling around in the brain, then yea, you're going to think that letter is somehow 'problematic' and needs to be 'canceled'. At face value, it's just a dude that isn't happy with the new characters.

I do agree that the letter does have a ring of nerd elitism. Still, that doesn't mean that there is this implied racism or bigotry in that letter.

One other thing. Criticizing poorly conceived characters IS criticizing the substance of the book. The characters are the main focus of the book. If the character is boring then the book is probably going to be boring. Look at Superman, he is generally a boring character that draws a lot of criticism. The reason his book is good -- at times-- is that he has an interesting cast of characters he interacts with. On his own, though, he isn't that fun of a character.

Finally, yes it's good to deconstruct literature and to look for some implied meaning, but when it comes to stuff like fan mail or some silly comment on the internet, it's ALWAYS best to apply Hanlon's razor.

This just reminds me of all the nuts that said I was a sexist because I don't like Windblade. As if my opinion of a fiction character is a way to make a sound judgement on my views on actual women in the real-world. You only arrive to idiotic opinions like that when you view the world through a prism of some stupid ideology.

I just wanted to focus on this real quick. Yes, by current standards, this does read as bad. However, if you remove today's standards from the letter, it's not nearly as bad.

I still think the letter falls squarely within the realm of Hanlon's razor. Trust me, it's too easy to be the type of guy that reads negative intent when there is none.

 

@Scoff I felt the same way. Grimlock is one of my favorites and while I extremely disliked the Scavengers, one of my biggest beefs with IDW 1 is how they (IMO) mishandled the Dinobots. We saw them as a team for 4 issues in Maximum Dinobots. I wish we could have seen the band get back together.

As for the politics, I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, it works in some comics, like Judge Dredd and X-Men, but it felt very forced MOST of the time in IDW1. I’m pretty sure if the focus had been on the survivors’ struggles and relationships in relation to the War most people would have been fine with it, but that is not what Roberts wrote and he even said as much - he expressly said he was setting out to write a sitcom like Red Dwarf using Transformers and while it worked for a while, it felt apart at the end as he focused more on sitcom than transformers.

 

Also, the letter from X-Men... I’m not sure but I am pretty sure the writer disliked everyone who wasn’t an American, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or are least someone he could fit into that mold, hence why he wanted to get rid of Colossus (Russian), Storm (African), Nightcrawler (blue AND Catholic and German), Banshee (Catholic and Irish), and Beast (blue). Wolverine gets in on the fact he’s Canadian and we all know how close the U.S. and Canada are. While the letter may have been a product of its time, and there are similarities between some MTMTE/LL readers, I think bits it’s slightly unfair to lump everyone who disliked the comic in with that guy. Yes, there were people who (wrongly) hated the book because the dislike LGBTQ+, but saying you dislike the book because it had LGBTQ+ characters is different than saying you dislike the book because you read it as vilifying religious characters or for having an extreme center of left position and pushing it relentlessly, which is probably also a product of our times.

 

I don't think most people think everyone that disliked MM/LL is a horrid person. There's been no shortage of legitimate criticism of the book from both its fans and it's detractors. Oftentimes, it's the same criticism. The break point is generally whether or not the "nearly mutually agreed upon bad points" are enough for you to not like the book. That's about it. Some of the murky areas pop up, however, when someone says they don't like how the gay character was written, or how the transgendered issues were handled - not because they intrinsically don't like those things, but because they believe they were poorly written.

Stuff like that is when the fights start for any number of reasons because just overall lack of communication. Errors/issues start to appear when you have: 1) personal ideology/politics fueled by passion; 2) failure/difficulty to properly convey ideas in words; 3) failure to interpret/comprehend statements; 4) lack of interest in actually discussing the underlying issues; 5) good old fashioned ignorance.

That conflagration of those five often overlapping events usually results in polarization as well as the occasional person to start digging in their heels in reaction to wherever the first volley of insults/hate comes from.

For example, if I say: "I dislike the romance between Chromedome and Rewind", some people might assume that I just hate gays, even if I don't and really just don't like the way this gay romance is written because I think it's shallow, contrived, and implausible OR I don't think Transformers should have genders at all because I'm a Furmanist, OR I just don't like romance, period, for whatever reason. All of a sudden people are giving me grief and if I'm of the type of person that doesn't stand for that I'm going to get impassioned and really start hating the book and its fans. In short, there were some people who were legit verbally attacked because they didn't like MTMTE/LL's gay/whatever characters - NOT because they didn't like gays, but because they thought Transformers shouldn't be sexual and/or didn't think the romance subplots were well done. Those are legitimate criticisms. When your attempt to discuss why you feel Anode and Lug were poorly written characters is met with being called a homophobe/transphobe/whateverphobe, some people are just going to react angrily to that. I do think that there are some people that, absent being attacked, would have found MTMTE/LL to be at least OKAY, but the experience overall left a bad taste in their mouth.

There's some context to this, however. This is the internet and there are trolls, and there are thinly disguised people that have an irrational, knee jerk dislike because certain characters/stories have certain attributes. Some people use certain language deliberately to evoke a reaction, but the language is soft enough so that they can retreat and play the victim card whenever they're counterattacked. You know the type. Some doofus runs onto a board, says something ridiculous like: "Hitler had the right idea!" and then blames you for being a jackass when he "clarifies" that he was just talking about the autobahn.

Others are just inartfully setting forth their opinions. Some passionate people enjoy talking in hyperbole or creative, figurative language. When they say "I dislike the way Anode and Lug were written," it comes out: "Ugh. I hate these characters and they should get hit by a bus," which is a bit more charged and bound to get more people reacting than what they really mean. Given that this is the written word, it's often difficult to tell what's what. Stuff like this is a little more cloudy to me, personally. Is inartful language actionable or not? I don't know. I guess it depends on context.

And of course there are racists, bigots, whateverists who are either interested in promulgating poisonous thoughts because they believe them, or for the lulz (do people even use that anymore?), or because of good old fashioned ignorance.

As @GoLion pointed out, "ideology" can have a lot to do with how any given person reacts to any statement. However, when reviewing thing like the Marvel 70's letter, sometimes you just have to look at context clues.

Stuff like the Marvel 70's letter could go either way. As someone that went to school for longer than I'd care to mention and does legal research for a living, I can tell you that even divorced from ideology, there's the issue of determining specific intent in the way anything is drafted. As you picked up, and I think a few others did, sometimes you just gotta use a smell test. Reading it as dispassionately as possible, it's a little off kilter to the point where I could make an argument in good faith that the Marvel 70's letter - in context with both the time and the language used - suggests more likely than not that the author isn't a huge fan of anything not a white denizen of North America. Certain contextual assumptions could be reasonably made, even without dipping into politics or banner waving or anything else.

Wrapping back to what you said: "saying you dislike the book because it had LGBTQ+ characters is different than saying you dislike the book because you read it as vilifying religious characters or for having an extreme center of left position and pushing it relentlessly"... I'd say it depends. It could very well not be. Or it could be totally different. It depends on language, context and intent if you're lucky to be privy to an individual's true intent.

 

I don't think you're wrong. I just don't like the idea of judging a letter from 40 years ago by today's standard. Even if some of the language used has some... let's say questionable implications.

I think the guy who wrote that was genuinely upset by the new X-Men and wasn't trying to come across as intentionally bigoted.

Was the writer an absolute nerd? God yes. Was his word choice bad? Again, yes. Was he trying to be intentionally racist? I can't say. That said, someone with a warped view of the world will look at that and see racism. Just as someone with a warped view of the world can look at the Harry Potter books and see Satanism.

I would rather think the writer of that letter was a dork instead of a racist regardless of the way he wrote that letter. And frankly, I don't think a racist/bigot would want to see a white character marry a black character.

I just think there are too many unknowns to make any real claim of racism. For all we know the person that wrote that was a younger writer that didn't understand the implication of his writing.. Also, and I hate to say it, there are a lot of... sheltered individuals, even as adults (especially in comic stores) that I've encountered that are nice folks but say idiotic things all the time. I don't necessarily assume they're racist just because they might use an unfortunate term. If that was the case... well, I won't go into that.  

So to bring it back on topic. No, I don't think people that hate MTMTE are necessarily bigots. I think it has a lot more to do with people feeling entitlement. They don't like seeing 'their' favorite character acting in a way that doesn't make sense to them. I think the majority of the pushback against Rewind and Chromedome had far more to do with nerd entitlement than homophobia. I knew people that disliked the relationship between Chromedome and Rewind. More often than not the reason they disliked the relationship had nothing to do with having something against homosexuality. The dislike came from the characters acting in a way that the particular reader felt was contrary to what has happened before. That reader isn't a bigot; he's just an overly invested nerd.

To be fair, I have seen some disgusting comments about Chromedome and Rewind. Stuff that was obviously bigoted and disgusting. Those were the exception.

 

No, I see what you mean. I don't think you can come down 100% on either side based on what's in the letter.

As for standards, I don't think this is an issue here. The 70's was an even MORE sensitive time regarding minority rights as opposed to today. "Ship them to Africa" isn't any more or less of an ignorant statement 40 years ago than it was today. I'm also not sure age is an issue. While education and experience/age plays a part in eliminating the wonderful lack of knowledge that can cause some of the underlying issues, it doesn't defray any one instance. In other words, I'm not sure how well saying "well, maybe he won't sound kind of like a racist when he gets older" plays out.

That's the issue. I think a reasonable person could conclude that this guy has issues with race/nationality. We don't even have to get to "warped people". When perfectly normal, functioning, decent human beings can read the letter and go "Uh...", there's a basis for claims of something. If it wasn't, half the lawyers at my wife's firm wouldn't have a job!

At any rate, you can see the issue here - if reasonable persons can disagree about what this guy's message is, or if there even is one, you're going to get to the levels of misunderstanding that can polarize people when you have a book (MTMTE/LL) that touches on sensitive subjects and criticism of the handling of the same which is really the whole point of this exercise. Bad feelings are going to follow, even when everyone on either side is a perfectly fine human being.

 

As I said I can't speak directly for the examples in IDW aside from my dislike of how it handles queer relationships. But I wanna give IDW the benefit of a doubt. There's certainly bad ways of introducing politics. I certainly feel that identity politics was used as a heavy handed way to admonish fans in Marvel Now, but Dredd and X-Men certainly BASH the hell out of your head with a flanged mace with their politics.​

Lemme stop you there. Full stop. I'll try not to get political here but it might dip into it a tad. I'm an Asian, gay man. We should **ALWAYS** seek hidden meaning in complex issues, is because people who harbor ill intentions rarely actually say so openly. This year I had someone I know tell me how Pride parades and events are disruptive and loud, and I questioned that. He was talking about how it might impact the area that they're being held and how people might view the LGBTQ community. I pretty much called him out on that, saying that it's really no different than any other organized event. The discussion eventually went back to the case of the Christian bakers refusing to bake cakes for LGBTQ couples. The smoking gun came when he pretty much said that "People should not be forced to make something disgusting."

See? He spent an hour trying to defend himself but at the end of the day, he was really just being homophobic. Bigots, racists, and all these bad people in 2019 KNOW full well that being openly...bad is horrible optics. It's why they aren't "Racists" anymore, they're "Race Realists." It's why they aren't "White Supremacists," it's "White Nationalism." It's why they aren't "Homophobia," it's "Traditional Family Values."

If you ever hear some of the "popular" racists figureheads, you hear them try to mask everything they do as anything but racism and bigotry. They're doing this because they're trying to convert the middle. They're trying to make people say "huh, maybe they have a point" when that point is literally kill/push out all minorities and homosexuals, etc. This is why it's important that, yes, we absolutely need to look under the hood.

It's quite different when you've actually been on the receiving end of hate. I'm thankful that, in my years after coming out, this is the worst I've gotten, but I know that my fellow LGBTQ folk have suffered physical abuse, harm, ostracization, and worse. These aren't pre-conceived notions that we have. These are very, very real things that happen to us still in 2019. So when I look at letters like that, when I see the racist undertones, it isn't coming from a...pre-conceived notion, whatever that might mean. It's showing just how much people don't like the idea of diversity and inclusion.

Except he isn't actually criticising anything. Let's take it point by point.

1) Why does he think Colossus and Storm are so bad that they should just be married off and sent off to Africa? Where's the justification the critique?

2) Nightcrawler. Poorly conceived? How? Can't have an alter-ego? That's meaningless since mutants don't actually try to do that under Xavier. The whole point of his school is that they can be themselves without fear. Plus, he values Angel, yet Angel ALSO cannot have an alter-ego since he can't hide the wings. Double standard much?

3) Banshee return to Ireland? Why? Okay, not good for the team...how?

4) Now, I admit I'm only a super casual fan of X-Men, and that mainly comes from my love of the SatAm cartoon in the 90s. But replacing Beast? Why? He's smart, also conflicted like Wolverine! Could it be because the letter writer feels he's too different for the group? Going by what has been implied thus far, I could believe it. He literally just wants the original X-Men sans Beast, because a smarty nerd barefoot beefy acrobat guy isn't good enough. I'm surprised he kept Jean Grey in the line up but I guess she has seniority being the OG Sexy Girl of the team?

5) Claremont and Cockrum are responsible for the most popular, most famous, and most legendary, impactful X-Men stories and eras ever. That's all I have to say there.

Even giving the letter author the benefit of a doubt, the letter is at best grossly ignorant, and even if it wasn't MEANT to be racist, it absolutely sounds and pushes a racist narrative.

I'm with you. I absolutely believe that there are people out there that will say you're "X" no matter what the body of your argument and evidence may be. I've seen it happen and I try to step in and defend people if it's possible whenever I see it happen and I feel the "victim" is actually making a point. As for your specifics, I have no insight as I've never seen your arguments.

The worst part of racism...and homophobia...is that people who do it often aren't even aware that they're doing it. Think about it this way. If you've grown up, living your life under a system that either rewards racism or sweeps race issues under the rug and pretends it isn't even there, what do you think happens to you? You adopt social norms that, well, **ARE** racist, but you yourself don't even realize that you're doing anything wrong. That's the thing about power structures here. Okay, sure. Hanlon's Razor. The authorial intent may really have just been a nerd rage against what he sees are bad story decisions. But the body of the letter absolutely reads and comes off as racist. It goes back to the start of this paragraph. If we were never told that what we know is wrong or hurtful, then we can never see what we do is hurtful to others.

 

In all fairness, @GoLion's response to my comment clarified his position. He clearly saw the potential issues and how jacked up that letter is. However, he personally chooses to give someone the benefit of the doubt as opposed to making the immediate assumption that they guy's a racist.

Like you, I don't know if I agree with all of his reasoning. However, @GoLion then goes on to correctly assert that there's no further evidence to determine whether or not the author of the letter is or is not a racist. All we have to go on is a old letter that, as three articulate humans have ascertained, is poorly, if not ignorantly drafted at the very least. That's the gist of his position though - all we have to go on is the "very least". It's one letter. Absent him hurling racial slurs, we can INFER, but we can't fully deduce anything.

That's not to say your position is invalid or that you don't have reasons for your beliefs either. However, if @GoLion wants to give people the benefit of the doubt based on his own experiences or choices in belief... that's not an invalid position either.

Also, just for the sake of being a completest, 60's/70's Angel did hide his wings by use of a binding/harness he wore under his clothes. It was one of the stupidest things ever, as realistically there'd be no way he could do it without looking like a hunchback, but it didn't seem to impede him once he put on a button up shirt.

The point of the X-Men during that time period wasn't to be "out and proud", but fighting "hidden", "mutant" threats more or less from the prying eyes of a world that fears and hates them. The open and notorious mutant didn't appear until the 80's/90's. So... yeah, the 90's SatAm analysis doesn't really apply here.

 

I hope I didn't come across as attacking GoLion. Certainly not the point. But yeah my issue was already noted in my post. As for the letter? Yeah, I tried to make it clear of my concession at the end. I don't necessarily think the AUTHOR himself is racist, per say. But as I said sometimes perfectly fine people can say, or do things that are racist because that's just the environment that they are raised in.

But yeah that line of thought isn't really the scope of TFW so I won't say much more about that.

Yeah, MOST of what I know of X-Men is from SatAm. I'm aware of the basics of the comics due to my love of pop culture history but I don't know much outside of a general survey. I guess I dug myself into a hole here, haha!

 

@GoLion's a trooper. I wasn't so much defending him as summarizing his points. I don't always agree with him but he at least puts thought into what he says and will consider what is said to him which is sometimes way more important than being right all the time if you ask me. At any rate, the issue of MTMTE/LL and it's "progressive" content as being a locus for hate has been done to death, IMO. Not much left on that carcass to chew on.

You should really take a look at classic X-Men, honestly, as they've always been an allegory for social issues. Admittedly, I stopped reading about the time of the Phalanx Covenant and/or the Age of Apocalypse. For a more tongue in cheek, on-point address of the problems with the X-Men, though, I suggest you look up the ADHD X-Men "Songs You Didn't Know Had Lyrics" video on Youtube. You might get a kick out of it.

 

The X-Men certainly can be viewed as an allegory about social issues. I tune out when the comic becomes predominantly about the allegory and less about superheroes fighting supervillians.
Sure, the allegory is great publicity and lures in customers. But it should never be the main point of the comic.

 

I'm not a comic geek by any means at this point, but there does seem to be a lot of people that really seem to want that kind of "on point" allegory these days. I mean, I'm not, but I'm really not the demographic target for the most part.

I really don't know, but it seems to be an issue of taste. Not a lot of people I know want to be preached to, so I get that. I mean, I know I wouldn't want to read a book that's too heavy handed and trying to ram ideas I find silly down my throat. That said, I think the lines can sometimes blur when someone is making a good faith effort to try something based out of someplace "good" but grossly mishandling it as opposed to "rolled up manifesto shoved down an esophagus sideways", you know?

 

Thanks so much for your post PE! Its worth remembering that obfuscating meaning is one of the key elements of supremacist politics. Walter Benjamin writes about this in “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.”

One has a moral obligation to be informed so as to function in civic life without unconsciously harming others. Passing judgement on the past and the present is therefore a moral obligation we have to each other, but the obligation comes with a cost biblically gestured to as the sword of Damocles. To give up on judging our peers (historical or otherwise) is to allow and even beg for domination (and not even in a fun way).

All that said, calling out individuals is rarely productive because of the above dynamics except in the worst cases. Describing systems or environments as supremacist or whatever is productive because in the best sense it allows people to realign. This is why hanlon’s razor is also bunkum. The difference between a malicious act and an ignorant one only matters to the individual conscience, to the wider group of people the effect is cumulative and undifferentiated. Look at Edward Said’s “Orientalism” as a classic on this point.

As for that letter from the 70s. Its clearly fucked considering the political environment of the day. Whether or not the individual actor also wears a klan hood in his spare time is irrelevant; his letter is evidence of a larger environment that we know full and well was a racist one (latter day civil rights movement). The same goes for the goings on throughout this board. Individual actors might not have been this or that, but the cumulative effect was pretty nasty.

 

Man, I've got a lot of stuff to start reading. I'd love to. I'd have to add it to the stack of things I gotta read!

 

I like to pretend that issue doesn’t exist.

Same here. I hate what they did to poor Prowl. Thank Primus that original Prowl has no connection to IDW Prowl. I don’t mind the table flipping thing though.

Who? James Roberts? I hope not. He seem like a nice guy.

 

Whenever i see the phrase go back to Africa I assume I'm dealing with a racist. I've heard it too many times followed by the N-word or something similar.