Monday, August 2, 2021

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More Misguided Hottakes on Black Widow’s Comics History

Posted: 02 Aug 2021 06:15 AM PDT

 

In this sugary Captain Comics column on the Indiana Gazette, he says the following about Natasha Romanoff:

 

2. She was a honey trap

In recent press interviews, star Scarlett Johansson discussed how Romanova — going by "Natalie Rushman" — was just a sex object in her introduction in "Iron Man 2" (2010) before growing as a character. The 2010 Black Widow was so hypersexualized, said Salon.com's Melanie McFarland, that she was "some version of a honey trap."

That was how the character started in the comics, too.

When "Madame Natasha" was introduced in the "Iron Man" strip way back in 1964, she wasn't just a version of a honey trap. She was sent from the Soviet Union to seduce Tony Stark, dressed to kill (literally) in a tight green evening gown, short black hair, opera gloves, a fur stole and, of course, a veil.

"What a beauty she is!" thinks the smitten Stark, who is fooled right up to the climax of the story, because he is a shallow horndog. She even weasels back on his arm in the very next issue, despite betraying him in the previous one.

 

 

Is there something wrong with Stan Lee creating her as such, even if during the 60s, as they didn’t always present their female characters as noticeably sexy as this article would confusingly have you believe? In their reprehensible mindsets, alas, this is. Interestingly enough, it also notes:

 

Black Widow and Daredevil are asked to join the Avengers in 1973. DD declines (he would join several decades later), but BW jumps at the chance.

 

 

If they’re referencing the past decade or so, the problem with DD joining the Avengers much too late is that it was at a time when terrible writers like Brian Bendis drove Marvel into the ground on an artistic level. The puff piece also brings up how, since the turn of the century, Natasha’s canon has been retconned at the expense of at least a few characters and elements:

 

8. She has a complicated past

A character who's been around as long as Black Widow often ends up with more than one origin — if, for no other reason, to explain how they've been around for so long.

The first we heard of Natalia's past, she was a ballerina with the Bolshoi whose husband, Alexei Shostakov, was a Russian test pilot whose death she was trying to honor by turning spy. Turns out that wasn't true.

In 1972, a new origin established that baby Nat's dying mother threw her out of the window of a burning building in 1942 Stalingrad, into the arms of a soldier named Ivan Petrovitch, who raised her as a spy. Turns out that wasn't true, either.

Starting in the late '90s, various miniseries revealed that she was raised in the Red Room, which used drugs and psycho-conditioning to implant a couple of fake backgrounds (thus explaining the earlier origins). She also received pheromonal inhibitors (like in the movie), performance-enhancing drugs and some sort of treatment that has allowed her to stay young and gorgeous for umpty-ump years.

 

Umm, I think it was more around 2004 when this was “revealed”, which here evidently takes the place of “retconned”. So don’t say it “wasn’t true”, because even the earlier renditions co-starring Ivan weren’t “true”, since both are fictional characters, and one paid the price for political correctness, much like the recent retconning of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver’s mutancy and fathering by Magneto.

 

 

And finally, in an addition of insult to injury, the following is noted:

 

10. She died

Romanova died in the 2017 "Secret Empire" story, an event too long and tedious to get into here. But of course she got better.

After "Secret Empire" ended, the Widow was cloned, with all of her memories (somehow) downloaded into her (new) brain. So it's like she never died.

So could the currently dead Black Widow of the movies return the same way? I don't know … but you can bet Marvel Studios mastermind Kevin Feige has read that story.

 

 

 

I’m sure the only stories he’s read are the newest, most PC, and most cynical of all. Secret Empire was the story turning Captain America into a Hydra-Nazi, yet the article remains very non-committal about it, making no effort to point out what a bad story it truly was, nor why following such a terrible storyline in the movies would be a mistake. Assuming of course, there’ll be any more Black Widow movies, which might not happen if the current one isn’t faring well enough at the box office. Natasha Romanova deserves far better than what’s been written in the past two decades.

 

 

Originally published here.

The post More Misguided Hottakes on Black Widow's Comics History appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Johnny Depp Victory: Court Demands ACLU Prove Ex-Wife’s Divorce Settlement Claims

Posted: 02 Aug 2021 04:45 AM PDT

 

Actor Johnny Depp has won a hard fought victory in his ongoing post-divorce legal drama when a judge ruled last week that the ACLU must prove Amber Heard’s claims that she gave $7 million to the civil rights organization, which she promised to do.

 

Depp and Heard split in 2016, and the Aquaman actress publicly stated that she would donate half of her $7 million settlement to the ACLU and the other half to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. According to some sources, Heard only donated $100,000 to the children’s hospital, raising the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s suspicion that she did not donate the $3.5 million payout to the ACLU, which triggered the lawsuit.

 

 

A New York judge ruled in Depp’s favor, ordering the ACLU to provide documentation proving that Heard did, in fact, make the payment to the group as promised. "Mr. Depp is most gratified by the Court's decision," Depp's attorney said to USA Today.

 

The update is related to Heard’s previous complaint against the Washington Post over an op-ed Heard allegedly published headlined "I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath." While the story did not specifically name Depp as an abuser, the actor filed a defamation suit, claiming it was evident she was incriminating him.

 

 

The Daily Mail reported that "claims that emails between those writing the piece show that the ACLU penned the bulk of the WaPo op-ed," and those emails can be read on our earlier reports on this story from June here. Depp’s lawyers demanded the court look into Heard’s claims back in May and now it looks as though the court has sided with Depp and his attorneys on the matter.

 

Pop some popcorn, ya’ll. I have the feeling this is about to get even better. Go Johnny, go!

 

 

The post Johnny Depp Victory: Court Demands ACLU Prove Ex-Wife's Divorce Settlement Claims appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Bill Maher Compares ‘Cancel Culture’ Mentality to a Stalinist ‘Purge’

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 04:45 PM PDT

 

On Friday night’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher reacted to the firings of Olympic officials for their previous words and conduct by calling it a “purge… a mentality that belongs in Stalin's Russia.”

 

Watch:

 

 

"This is called a purge. It's a mentality that belongs in Stalin's Russia. How bad does this atmosphere we are living in have to get before the people who say cancel culture is overblown admit that it is in fact an insanity that is swallowing up the world? … And that is not a conservative position, my friends. My politics have not changed. But I am reacting to politics that have, and this is yet another example of how the woke invert the very thing that used to make liberals liberals. Snitches and bitches, that's not being liberal."

 

Later, he addressed cultural appropriation, saying:

 

"This new idea that each culture must remain in its own separate silo is not better, and it's not progress. And in fact, it's messing with one of the few ideas that still really does make this melting pot called America great. … And that's the great thing about cultural mixing, it makes things better for everyone. BTS can be a hit in America and I can get kimchi on a taco, isn't that better than everyone walling itself off from outsiders? I thought walls were supposed to be bad. But we're living now in a world where straight actors are told they can't play gay roles and white novelists aren't allowed to imagine what it would be like to be a Mexican immigrant, even though trying to inhabit the life of someone else is almost the very definition of empathy, the bedrock of liberalism."

 

The post Bill Maher Compares 'Cancel Culture' Mentality to a Stalinist 'Purge' appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Superman ‘78 Sounded Promising… Then We Saw the Artwork

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 02:36 PM PDT

 

Beginning this fall, decades after Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve's Superman: The Movie introduced generations of fans to a silver screen version of DC's Man of Steel, DC returns to this beloved property to tell new stories set within this world with the publication of Superman ’78 by writer Rob Venditti (Hawkman) and artist Wilfredo Torres (Batman ’66).

 

In Superman ’78, bystanders are surprised and delighted by Superman's abilities, and Lois Lane doesn't (yet!) know that Clark Kent is secretly Superman.  The sheer thrill of seeing a man fly, leap, or stop a bullet will be reflected in this environment where Superman has just been introduced!  Inspired by Donner's classic, timeless style of superhero storytelling, in Superman ’78 Venditti and Torres will remind fans that a man can truly fly.

 

Unfortunately, after stellar work applied to their previous flashback titles like Wonder Woman ’77 and Batman ’89, both the interior artwork and most of the covers for this series look absolutely pedestrian.  Which is a shame, because I have enjoyed most of Torres’ work on Batman ’66, The Shadow, Aliens: Colonial Marines, etc, but frankly I thought these pages were embarrassing.  It looks like he’s tracing a lot of this.

 

For my tastes, it would’ve been far more inspiring and appropriate to employ an artist like Gary Frank, or the fantastic Nacho Castro for this assignment. Perhaps DC will get a variant cover by one of them. A few samples of their Christopher Reeve Superman renditions are below.

 

Christopher Reeve as Superman by Nacho Castro
Christopher Reeve’s ‘Superman’ by Gary Frank

I realize art is subjective, and your mileage may vary, but I’m not impressed with the DC Comics previews of this title and I’m a huge fan of the Richard Donner films. If you like what you see, Superman ’78 #1 by Rob Venditti, Wilfredo Torres, Jordie Bellaire and Dave Lanphear arrives on August 24 with a main cover by Torres, plus variant covers by Evan “Doc” Shaner (open to order) and Torres (1:25).

 

Hopefully there’s an Alex Ross variant cover that hasn’t been announced yet…

 

The post Superman '78 Sounded Promising… Then We Saw the Artwork appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Streaming Series of ‘Waterworld’ is Officially in the Works

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 10:30 AM PDT

 

Proving that in the streaming era, every well-known genre title has reboot potential: A TV series sequel to the 1995 film Waterworld is in the works.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the project is in early development at Universal Content Productions, where the original film’s producers, John Davis and John Fox, have a first-look deal.

Waterworld was the story of a post-apocalyptic world where the polar ice caps had melted (the film was admittedly prescient on the global warming front) and the entire planet was covered by water. Kevin Costner played an underwater-breathing, web-toed trimaran-sailing loner, The Mariner, who came to aid of a woman (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and a girl (Tina Majorino) seeking the fabled "dry land."

The project is planned as a continuation of the film picking up with the same characters 20 years later, though no actors are yet attached. The producers have said that Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) is on board to direct.

 

The post Streaming Series of ‘Waterworld’ is Officially in the Works appeared first on Bleeding Fool.
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