So it turns out that Red Pill Redditors aren’t the only ones in a tizzy about Marvel comics’ plan to replace Thor (the superhero, not the actual Norse god, all praise him) with a woman. All over the manosphere, jimmies are rustling at the news.
The proudly racist, woman-hating pickup artist guru known as Heartiste is not only outraged by the “gelding” of Thor but also, and even more vehemently, by Marvel’s decision to make Captain America black, which he bizarrely describes as a kind of racial cuckolding:
Liberals are gloating over the recent editorial choices to geld Thor and race cuck Captain America. The former will become Whor, the female Thor, and the latter will become Captain Gibsmedat, the numinous negro who saves the right kinds of white people from the wrong kinds of white people.
“Gibsmedat” – I had to look it up – is a term that ridiculous racists like to use to describe welfare checks and other “goods, services, or material … given predominately to minorities, in exchange for their tacit agreement to reciprocate by not burning down America’s cities.” It’s short, you see, for “gibs me dat.”
Hilarious, huh? The term seems to be especially popular on Chimpmania.com, a site so ludicrously racist it makes Stormfront look tame.
Heartiste continues, lashing out at a “fat white liberal quasi-male named Devin Faraci” for publicly supporting Marvel’s decision to (at least temporarily) give the Captain America costume to The Falcon, another public-spirited superhero who happens to be black:
The fat white liberal face is archetypal. These race traitors all have a “look”, don’t they? Genetics, perhaps, or just a lifetime spent wiping orange Cheetostaches off their porcine mugs. Look at that faggot. He could double as an old lesbian halfway through her hormonal replacement therapy. If ever a face looked as if it was born to have a fist buried in it, Faraci has it.
Homoophia, racism, misogyny, fat-shaming, then back to homophobia before ending with a fantasy of violence. Charming, huh?
Faraci, for his part, has taken that last bit about facepunching in stride, adopting it as his Twitter bio.
Oh, but Heartiste isn’t done yet: he then goes on to accuse Faraci – on the basis of precisely no evidence – of hypocritically living in a neighborhood devoid of “the minorities he jerks off to.”
The anti-white liberal white male is the most loathsome of creatures. More despicable than the minorities he jerks off to, because he fulminates a credo at 180 degree odds with his chosen lifestyle for status whoring feels. Hypocritical, smug, and you just know the first to run from a fight, gathering his skirt up and shrieking like a little girl.
I wonder about the demographics of this pigman’s neighborhood? Anyone care to investigate? I might put up a post in future called “The Leftoid List”, with the names of infamous anti-white leftoid equalist turds juxtaposed with the race demographics of their immediate neighborhoods. Should be illuminating.
That would be illuminating. Not about the “Leftoids” in question, but about the fellow who calls himself Heartiste.
The comments to Heartiste’s article are, of course, appalling, filled with rants about “homos and … leftards” and “social justice fags.” They hit all the “alt right” talking points, from homophobia to racism.
They even manage to evoke the far right’s all-time favorite villain: The Jew. One commenter announces that he
did some half-hearted googling about “Faraci” to see whether his mother had been a jewess or maybe whether he had changed his jew birthname to a more WOP-sounding name when he joined the Film Actors Guild … .
And then there’s this exchange:
(I’m pretty sure that is not the actual Hillary Clinton commenting.)
Meanwhile, another commenter claims that this “anti-White Kulturkampf [is] part of the greatest gencoide ever perpetrated.”
That’s right: Heartiste’s neo-Nazi fanboys think there’s a Nazi-style genocide being perpetuated against them.
Not that they’re particularly shy about advocating violence themselves. One long-time commenter writes:
Meanwhile, another commenter posts the address and telephone number of a guy named Farci living in California; another gently points outit’s up to someone who calls himself Ted Cunterblast to point out that he’s gotten the guy’s name wrong. Yes, that’s right: among Heartiste’s followers, it’s Ted Cunterblast who serves as the closest thing to a voice of reason.
But it’s not just Heartiste and his horde who are angry about white male superheros becoming something other than white or male.
Over on the also-ran Men’s Rights hub The Spearhead, W.F. Price takes a few minutes out from tending to the new baby in the household to bash out some ill-formed thoughts on what he calls “Trans Thor.”
I’m not sure whether this is an attempt to grab some publicity or a true appeal to feminists/transsexuals, but it’s a risky move in the long-term. While adults might tolerate the switch as an amusing diversion, comics are fundamentally children’s literature. …
So I wonder whether this new storyline is intended for an adult audience, and if so, whether it’s a signal that Marvel either doesn’t care about the base market for comics, or has already been surpassed by other companies that appeal better to boys and has decided to give up. …
And if Marvel thinks it can make up for the loss of interest in boys by picking up girls, it’s time to think again. Normal girls (as opposed to future feminists) far prefer feminine characters doing ladylike things — not dominatrix types holding giant hammers. …
Finally, adult women who like Thor will not be all that happy about this. Thor’s main appeal to women is as a Nordic hunk. It’s hard to overstate the appeal of manly warriors with flowing blond hair — especially to white women. Changing Thor into a woman is going to seriously anger some of these female fans; perhaps even more than the men.
The commenters on The Spearhead, as usual, manage to outdo Price in their bigotry and ridiculousness.
One commenter claims that
This is just another variation on “piss Christ.” Changing a European mythical figure into a woman is meant to humiliate.
Spearhead regular Uncle Elmer suggests that switching Thor’s gender is designed to appeal to actual feminist Nazis:
Himmler was fascinated by Teutonic myths and named his daughter after some Germanic heroine. He was also obsessed with pre-Christian witch cults and blamed the church for mass murder of thousands of witches during the middle ages.
So it fits that making Thor a woman is a move to placate Femi-Nazis.
Meanwhile, Nemo suggests that the gender-switchers are more like old-school Stalinists:
I don’t know, dude. Probably never? It’s not feminists who are suggesting that a punch in the face – or a beheading – is the proper response to a comic book character getting a gender or racial makeover.
Okay, glanced through a couple of books, and…
Stuart Immonen on New X-men: Men have dicks. (Overall it looks as if he’s going for slightly more realistic bodies on both the male and female heroes than most artists.)
Todd Nauck on Nightcrawler: Hm, pretty much smooth between the legs there.
Carmine Di Giandomenico on All-new X-factor: Men have dicks.
Jim Lee on JLA: A bit of a gray area here. Men seem to have some kind of bulge, but it’s mostly vague, very vague… (interesting thing I’ve noticed about Jim Lee, btw, is that whereas he draws ginourmous boobs on women when illustrating Frank Miller’s famous Goddamn Batman train wreck, he draws normal boobs on Wonder Woman in JLA. Wonder if Miller explicitly instructed him to make all boobs ginormous for Goddamn)
Rags Morales on Action Comics; Well, Supes is supposed to have (thin) armour rather than tights here, but he still clearly sports a dick. (Can’t find it now and I don’t remember which artist was on that issue, but I know we have an issue of Action Comics somewhere where Supes arrives at Mars, and is drawn in such an angle as to make Husband spontaneously exclaim “That’s some package, Supes!” I actually did get the feeling now and then with the artists working on Grant Morrison’s run on Action Comics that they were deliberatly drawing sexy Supes.)
So, a bit mixed I guess? This little sample might also bear out the hypothesis that there’s a general difference between American and non-American artists.
Karakora,
It can be uncomfortable talking to your kids about “down there” but then I realized it was my stuff, and my goal is for my kids to be matter-of-factly informed about body parts, good touch, bad touch, and communicating. So my son asked me “where’s your penis?” I said “I don’t have a penis, I have a vagina.” He tried to pronounce it, had some trouble, and then ran away to play. Then when he fell on the bars in the playground in a delicate place, he cried “mommy, I hurt my penis!” Then lots of cuddling, some tears, and off to play.” If in uncomfortable talking about it, he will be. And I never want him to have trouble communicating in that department because there are a lot of predators out there, usually someone you know.
That being said, he is circumcised. I let my husband have the last word on that. I was torn, and leaning toward not doing it. Now I’m just glad I haven’t had anymore boys because I don’t want to have to make that decision again.
I remember reading a description of Golden Age comics artists that included a reference to the team working on Captain Marvel. On one occasion, a visitor was being shown the offices, and the artists were singing,
“Captain Marvel has no balls at all,
No balls at all, no balls at all,
Captain Marvel has no balls at all. . .” et seq.
The visitor was quickly escorted out.
>My collected impression is that male superheros nowadays have genitals, but I admit that I haven’t made a thorough survey of the entire field.
Oh, don’t worry. I’m a very casual and very prejudiced observer of Superhero comics, I simply noticed that the same few artists seem to get reposted whenever the topic comes up.
Well, it’s true now (depending which Captain Marvel we’re talking about).
“So no one should claim that Amanda Waller was made to have that body type in the name of realism, or that realism means that she can’t be fat and in the special forces.”
I don’t want to leave the impression that I was defending this claim on behalf of DC Comics. I’m merely trying to explicate one of the rationales they’ve given for making young Amanda Waller look like the typical comic book female. As I said at the beginning, I think that’s a flawed explanation, at best, as there are many body types they could have chosen to illustrate the point that younger Amanda Waller was super-fit compared to older Amanda Waller. They COULD have, for instance, drawn new, young, “super-fit” Amanda with the same general proportions as older, desk-jockey, “fat” Amanda, only with more musculature. Instead, they go with the typical fitness model template, and offer a lame, semi-plausible explanation when confronted about it.
Of course, we all know the REAL reason she has been drawn this way, and I’m sure that DC artists are under no illusions about it, either.
Meanwhile the comments section here seems to be all about superheroes’ and their balls or lack thereof. Can we please try to be better than those we mock?
Oh wow it just occurred to me, Thor is female now, Thor is a Marvel character, Marvel is owned by Disney. Thor is now a Disney Princess! Which is awesome!
(Looks for comments mentioning testicles, can’t find any. Wonders if Bronas is a bit confused.)
Oh, so in the last page a few people did start talking about bulges. But not before. See, Bro, this is what happens when you don’t read the rest of the thread.
Concern troll is boring.
I haven’t been into comics in years, but the Amanda Waller thing pisses me off so much. I have a very fond memory of an old JLA comic in which she verbally smacks down Batman and then physically smacks down a brainwashed Blue Beetle. It was friggin’ awesome!
RE: Tessa
I recommend this too, but it’s Shannon Hale.
D’oh! You’re right.
RE: Bronas Salk
Meanwhile the comments section here seems to be all about superheroes’ and their balls or lack thereof. Can we please try to be better than those we mock?
No problem, bud, we’ll just all focus on the super-serious mocking and kitties now.
RE: Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III
I have a very fond memory of an old JLA comic in which she verbally smacks down Batman and then physically smacks down a brainwashed Blue Beetle.
I saw that one! I like Ted Kord a lot, but that whole time I was going, “Yeah, Amanda! Kick his ass!”
I know MRAs have no concept of nuance and they probably wouldn’t care anyway, but…
The new Thor is not a ‘sex change’ and has no relation to transgender at all. The guy who was Thor is losing the hammer and a new character who is a woman will be Mjolnir’s new wielder. All these cries of emasculation are ridiculous, it’s the (proverbial) torch being passed to a new character, Marvel’s done this before (with Thor himself) not to mention Captain Marvel’s name passing to Carol and Ms. Marvel passing to Kamala Khan.
> All these cries of emasculation are ridiculous, it’s the (proverbial) torch being passed to a new character, Marvel’s done this before (with Thor himself)…
If memory serves it was once passed to a a horse-headed alien named Beta Ray Bill. But a feeeemaaalllle? That’s over the line.
@pendraegon —
I fully support this chain of logic.
To me it’s not the issue of Amanda Waller being “fit” or athletic in her youth. Yes, that they took a big woman and just gave here pretty much the same body as 89% of other comic book women bothers me.
But what bothers me more is that they took so much more.
The original Amanda Waller hadn’t been a part of covert ops or secret government agencies on her youth at all.
At the start she was poor and not highly educed. She was married with children. The she was widowed and one of her daughters was killed too.
After that she put herself trough college (while still being able to be a mother to here four children) and even obtained a doctorate in political science. She also worked during that time.
She worked as a congressional aide and discovered covert ops. Taking what she observed from those she planned a better version of the Squad that she proposed to the White House. The proposal was accepted and she was put in charge of it.
All of that was important. Most women in superhero comic are young or recruited young. We see a lot of middle aged or older men as heroes or other important figures in comics. But how many now middle aged, got into the fight when they weren’t teenagers, in youth struggled for education and here children, women who also made their own jobs we see?
Making here a special forces, gun wielding, super model just screams “Strong Female Character” to me.
I know, right? How boring! Amanda Waller is awesome FOR her history, which made her stand out from the rest of the cast.
Years back, I read a blogger who once mentioned that men tend to become superheroes because of do-good feelings, or tragedy hitting someone they love. WOMEN tend to become superheroes because of do-good feelings or tragedy hitting them directly. So for example, Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne have family members killed that drive them to superheroism, but they aren’t raped or attacked themselves. Female heroes seem to be more likely to be abused, raped, or attacked directly. (Jade, Oracle, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown…)
Amanda Waller? She breaks this trend. The tragedy hits her children, her husband, not her! I have a hard time thinking of other female heroes who have that happen; these days, if there’s tragedy, it all seems to be rape or physical attack. (Alice from American McGee’s Alice also has indirect tragedy; might be part of why I like her too!) That makes her stand out.
Another interesting reversal of the trope is Guy Gardner, who is abused as a child, overcomes his own rage by becoming a gentle gym teacher, and spends a LOT of his early years soaking damage impressive even by superheroic standards, such as getting hit by bus off a cliff during an earthquake.
LBT: generally true. Although Batman was drugged and raped by Talia – that’s how they still got their son Damian after Batman had said “no”. So it’s completely clear (at least pre reboot, don’t know whether they’ve changed this) that she raped him – Batman had zero memory of the whole event – but I’ve never seen the actual word “rape” used about it.
As a straight male, i don,t know what these guys are whinging about. Canon Rule 63! She’s a busty buxom blonde babe, so it’s still all good ;p And Btw, Steve Rogers was still the first Captain America, Marvel Idiotorial’s hype nonwithstanding; Isaiah Bradley was actually just merely the only successful result of the desperate attempt of the US government to try to recreate the Super Soldier Serum from Dr. Erskine’s vague notes after he was assassinated.
Okay, to be technical here, Batman was not raped by Talia. Batman Inc. #2 (that is, volume 2, the New 52 series) shows that Bruce had already consented to sex. Talia tried to further ensare him with a love potion, but either Bruce switched cups (so that Talia drank her own love potion) or Bruce just resisted the effects. The issue specifically has Talia make a very presumptuous comment which prompts Bruce to ask whether she ‘put something in my drink’–so it’s not exactly clear who actually ingested the potion.
Chaltab: I was going on “Batman and Son” (collection). So here’s verbatim Talia’s and Batma’s dialogue from pages 54-55, right before she drops Damien on him:
Talia: But have you forgotten that night you and I shared under the desert moon above the tropic of cancer?
Batman: I remember being drugged senseless and refusing to co-operate in some depraved eugenics experiment. That night, maybe?
Talia: We chose you, the perfect man, to breed the perfect heir to the empire of Ra’s Al Ghul. And believe me, you cooperated magnificently.
*reveals that Batman’s got a son*
So, in this version at least, it’s clear that Bruce was drugged – “senseless”, even. I guess the dialogue is compatible with Bruce merely rejecting to make a baby but consenting to sex because Talia said she was on the pill or something, but to me the most obvious interpretation is that he was raped. Like, Talia went “Hey Batman, let’s have a baby, it’s gonna have super-genes!” and Batman is like “no, I don’t wanna have a baby with you just because you think I have super-genes” *is too drugged to really know what’s going on, impregnates Talia anyway*.
But I guess it might have changed a bit with the whole new 52 thing (despite Batman Inc supposedly being in continuity with Morrison’s earlier Batman stories… although their universe was rebooted… but of course it was only a soft rebooot… this is confusing.)
No one cares about your boner, RandomPoster.
RE: Dvarghundspossen
Although Batman was drugged and raped by Talia
Yes, but that was AFTER he became a superhero. Lots of superheroes have indescribably nasty things done to them after taking on the mantle. (Guy Gardner suffered something similar, though far as I know, there were no kids from afterward. I think Kyle Rayner did too. They didn’t use ‘rape’ for any of those either.) Also, Batman has been around for a REALLY long time; I’d be surprised if something like that DIDN’T happen to him, after eight years in print. Still really gross though. I wish comics would either get their act together and treat the subject sensitively, or cut down on all that shit.
What I find icky about the whole Batman-Talia-rape thing is that it’s pretty clear the writers, and likely the fanboys too, don’t consider what happened to him as rape. It’s more of a joke to them — ha ha, ole Bats got fooled by a girl. There was never any acknowledgement by any character that happened to Bruce was rape. They could have even had Batman call it rape and brush it off, like “oh you mean the night you raped me?” — followed by shocked reaction from Talia, followed by Batman scowling because he’s so damn strong-willed that nothing breaks him, etc.
Maybe I’m mistaken that it never got called rape in later stories, because I don’t follow any Batman-related titles in the New 52, but I don’t think I am.
As for the new Amanda Waller… there is still much about her backstory they haven’t revealed, so it’s possible some of those things will survive in some form. I know that she is currently caring for her wheel-chair-bound mother, so they haven’t completely divested her of emotional attachments. But yeah, the way they changed her and Harley Quinn’s appearance was very upsetting.
I’ve restricted my regular comics reading to Animall Man (which just ended), Aquaman, Earth-2, Justice League Dark, Suicide Sqaud, Swamp Thing, and Wonder Woman. They’ve all been re-booted well, IMO, with the exception of Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad. And I do have some quibbles about WW’s new backstory, but have enjoyed the ongoing series quite a lot so far.
Earth-2 is especially interesting because it looks like DC is using it to consciously try to build a more diverse vision of their universe, giving us an out gay Green Lantern, a Latina Hawkwoman, and now a black Superman, along with a bunch of other gender-swaps and racial updates to older characters. I support the title largely for this reason, but it is well-written and well-drawn on it’s own terms, and apparently selling well enough that it’s getting a spin-off title this year.
*looks up the new Harley Quinn* What. The. Fuck. Did. They. Do. To. Her??!?!
AND WHY?!?
*goes to cry in a corner* if someone finds a woman in a leotard that looks like a card deck got all jumbled together, tell her to grab a mallet and come bash me back to my senses?