Discourse Chronicle

The Post said the cartoon published in the paper Wednesday linking President Obama to a dead chimpanzee was not intended to be racist and charged that some critics of the cartoon were opportunists looking for payback.

[…]

The cartoon showed two police officers with a smoking gun standing over a dead chimp with a caption that reads, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

The image is a reference to a chimp was shot dead by police after it attacked a woman in Connecticut on Monday and Obama’s signing of the economic stimulus bill on Tuesday. –Xana O’Neill

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Sept. 11, though, was no fantasy, and thus I approached “The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation,” a graphic novel, with a certain appalled fascination. I love comic books — the “graphic novel” designation is a nice upgrade in nomenclature for the genre, but changes nothing — and I received a great deal of my early moral education from them. And we know, courtesy of artists such as Art Spiegelman, that comic books can handle deadly serious topics the way superheroes deal with emergencies: deftly and well. -Julia Keller

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Marvel and DC have been claiming and attempting to enforce this “trademark” for many years. According to this link (one of several) from the US Patent and Trademark Office’s “Trademark Application and Registration Retrieval system,” Marvel & DC claim a “First Use in Commerce Date” of October 1966. Most knowledgeable folks aggree that this claim is bogus on many levels, but that hasn’t stopped the USPTO from allowing the publishers to register the claim successfully and repeatedly over the past few decades. Digging around the archives via TESS reveals that all TM claims aren’t automatically registered – some are denied. But from what I can tell, they’ve never denied Marvel & DC’s claim.

Apparently, just because the USPTO allows you to register a trademark doesn’t actually mean that they’re endorsing your claim’s validity – they’re just aggreeing that, well, you’ve made the claim (tax dollars at “work,” folks!). I suppose if someone with deep enough pockets and stamina to spare were to take Marvel & DC to court over this, the claim’s bogus nature would be revealed and overcome. But until then, these two “super-gorillas” continue to throw their imagined weight around.

[A posting from Gene Kannenberg, Jr. The Comics Scholars’ Discussion List has spent some time on this issue recently. Sarah Peters, a colleague of mine in the English department, sent me a blurb about it from NPR. None of us are lawyers, so I want to hear a lawyer who works in Intellectual Property comment, especially since issues like trademark and fair use come up frequently on the list. BK]

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Frank Miller, who changed the way people looked at comics with his noirish 1980s Batman graphic novel “The Dark Knight Returns” and his “Sin City” series, says he’s started work on a book where the caped crusader will “kick a lot of al Qaeda butt.”

[…]

Miller says the book will be called “Holy Terror, Batman.” While there’s no telling when it will be released — Miller is known for taking his sweet time with his best projects, and he’s in the middle of a different Batman series — it’s clear that the writer of “Sin City” is passionate about tackling the subject.

But having the most popular comic book characters taking on real-life enemies of the state seems to be more of a rarity today. Captain America fought a terrorist group clearly modeled after al Qaeda a few years back. Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics in Concord, said that after a few popular issues, interest waned.

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Some two decades ago, relations between Europe and the Islamic world were convulsed by the controversy surrounding the publication of the book The Satanic Verses. It is depressing that cartoons first printed in a Danish newspaper last autumn appear to have had much the same effect now. It should not, alas, be surprising. The cultural chasm has, if anything, grown in the past 20 years. Many in Europe today think nothing of mocking the most revered aspects of Christianity — often in a crass, tasteless manner — while the abject corruption and failure of secular regimes in the Middle East have helped to inspire a revival of Islam, including a most extremist strain.

[…]

On balance, we have chosen not to publish the cartoons but to provide weblinks to those who wish to see them. The crucial theme here is choice. The truth is that drawing the line in instances such as these is not a black-and-white question. It cannot be valid for followers of a religion to state that because they consider images of the Prophet idolatry, the same applies to anyone else in all circumstances. Then again, linking the Prophet to suicide bombings supposedly undertaken in his honour was incendiary. The Times would, for example, have reservations about printing a cartoon of Christ in a Nazi uniform sketched because sympathisers of Hitler had conducted awful crimes in the name of Christianity.

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Sgt. Rock was introduced to readers in “Our Army At War” No. 81 in 1959. Although he was called “Rocky” in this story, the template had been set. Later stories written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Joe Kubert fleshed out these humble beginnings and turned Rock into comics’ longest running and most prominent war comics character. The good sergeant became so popular that, by the late ’70s, “Our Army At War” was retitled “Sgt. Rock.” The letters page of any given issue carried missives sent in by enlisted men as well as the usual comics fans.

[…]

Today the fictional sergeant is starring in a brand new mini-series titled “Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy.” Written and drawn by Kubert, the new mission takes Easy Company into Nazi-occupied Lithuania to retrieve a hidden treasure that must be returned to the United States by any means necessary. The first issue is on sale now with the remaining five hitting stores on a monthly basis. Check your local comic shop for details. Also available is the graphic novel “Sgt. Rock: Between Hell and a Hard Place” by Brian Azzarello and once again drawn by Kubert.

[General Rock appeared in Superman comics a few years ago as President Luthor’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the “Our Worlds at War!” story arc of 2001, he gives Strange Visitor / Kismet / Sharon Vance a speech about true bravery and unselfish sacrifice, which she understands and demonstrates by rescuing Superman from Imperiex. BK]

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture    

Mr. Mutawa’s Teshkeel Media, based in Kuwait, says that in September it will begin publishing “The 99,” a series of comic books based on superhero characters who battle injustice and fight evil, with each character personifying one of the 99 qualities that Muslims believe God embodies.

[…]

In addition, “The 99” will piggyback on a distribution network Mr. Mutawa is setting up for a parallel project, publishing all manner of other comics in the region. Teshkeel has signed on with Marvel Comics to translate and distribute their comics in the Middle East, and will soon begin publishing Arabic versions of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, X-Men and others. He said he is in talks with Archie and DC Comics for similar deals. He says that Teshkeel has attracted $7 million from investors, based on the promise that he will turn his company into the largest comics publisher in the Middle East.

[Thanks to Drs. Jan Swearingen and Anne Morey for showing me this article. I am unsure about whether or not this effort will be successful because Teshkeel is associating himself with American publishers, which probably carries negative connotations, especially in the Middle East. I remember reading about our country’s humanitarian efforts during the Afghan War being explained by a general in Time magazine when I was researching 9/11 for my undergraduate thesis. His explanation involved taking out a dollar bill and looking at the seal on the back. One notices there is an eagle with arrows in one claw, but an olive branch in the other. The general believed that dropping humanitarian aid packages (medical supplies and food) while running an intense military campaign searching for Osama Bin Laden would ease Arab disdain toward America being in their country. BK]

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

The Boondocks are the misadventures of two African American brothers who relocated from the city to the suburbs with their grandfather. Through their socially conscious perspectives, the siblings discuss the problems plaguing our society today. McGruder has managed to criticize every scope of American culture from the hypocrisy of the government and the Bush administration to the sensationalized circus that the media has become. And now he will take The Boondocks to the next level with a new animated television series based on the critically acclaimed comic strip.

[Boondocks came up during a discussion in Rhetoric and Poetics last week. BK]

category: Comics, Humor, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Television    

In times of social danger and economic turmoil, many psychologists believe that people become more aggressive, more conventional, and less interested in feelings and emotions. A new study published in the latest issue of Political Psychology finds that comic book characters do these things as well. In times of higher threat, i.e. the events of 1979 which included the Iran hostage crisis, comic books contained more aggressive imagery, focused on male characters, and were less introspective. The authors reviewed comic books published between 1978 -1992 frame by frame to judge the amount of violence and conventionalism drawn, the number of women and minorities in speaking or subordinate roles, portrayal of wrongdoing by the authorities, and the amount of reflection (thought in balloons rather than dialogue). In general, the authors found that women spoke less and a significantly greater number of panels were devoted to aggression during high threat periods.

[Ryan Malphurs, a colleague from the English department, is writing about terror and violent rhetoric in the English department. My question about this study is why consider only Marvel titles? Arguably, Superman is a more prominent figure for association with patriotism than Captain America, with a longer history of standing for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” BK]

category: Comics, Politics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

“The ESRB presents publishers like me with the worst of two worlds,” explains Mastiff CEO Bill Swartz. “On the one hand, they beat me to a pulp with their super-strict ratings. On the other, since opponents don’t view their findings as meaningful, I suffer from the prejudice that videogame ratings can’t be taken seriously.”

[The article revisits the “Hot Coffee” sex scandal aftermath surrounding Rock Star Games’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game. Swartz’s comments echo two historical periods of censorship with Joseph R. McCarthy and Fredric Wertham. BK]

category: Gaming, Politics, Popular Culture, Technology