SJW Marvel

There may be those of you who think I am kidding about the state of Marvel comics, and the concerted, coordinated effort the Left is making there, as with the Hugos, to blot out everything we love in the Pop culture, and replace it with politically correct doublethink and dullness, virtue signaling and depravity.

Below is a page from the last book of GENERATIONS, where the gimmick is to time travel the diversity-hire cosplay versions of the characters back into the past to meet the original, real heroes in their prime.

Here they are, gathered together.

In the top panel, from left to right, is Sam Wilson the Falcon cosplaying as Captain America. Jean Gray is young Jean Gray.  X-23 is cosplaying as Wolverine. Amadeus Cho is the Hulk. Kamala Khan calls herself Ms Marvel. Ms. Marvel calls herself Captain Marvel. Jane Foster is cosplaying as Thor. Riri Williams is cosplaying Iron Man. Miles Morales is a parallel version of Spiderman. Kate Bishop is calling herself Hawkeye.

In each case, the diversity-hire character is designated by the writer to be cooler and better than the original, and all the surrounding characters applaud the cosplay ripoff version, no doubt to raise their self esteem.

Unfortunately, the ripoff version, at least in the books I have seen, never do anything heroic. Sam Wilson throws one punch during World War Two, and comforts and inspires Captain America who is puking from the stress of combat. Cap, for his part, never throws a single punch during World War Two. After the war, Sam Wilson becomes a baptist preacher and marches for Civil Rights.

If Sam Wilson had been picked to don the mantle of Captain America because he was awesome, that would have been one thing. He was picked because he is black.  X-23 for being a girl. Cho for being Korean. Kamala Khan for being Muslim and a girl. Carol Danvers for being a mannish looking mangirl. Jane Foster was picked to offend the fans of Thor, as a comic book version of a poisoned pen letter, or a brick through your window. Riri and Mile are twofers. Kate is a girl.

The irony here is that Falcon has been around since the 1960’s and used to be his own character with a personality and everything, and everyone loves the movie version of him with the winged jetpack.

Jane Foster has been around for a like period of time.

Carol Danvers used to be a pretty woman with a woman’s personality.

Riri and Kamala are original characters, and have never had a non-SJW version; so they have always been flat, one-tone caricatures with no drama and no depth.

But all the others were once three dimensional characters, now flattened and degraded to this.

Captain America had drama. He was a 4-F who volunteered for a dangerous experiment which augmented his strength and speed. His sidekick died, and he was thrown into suspended animation.

Wolverine had bags of drama. A mutant turned into Weapon X by an evil military experiment given a second chance at life by Professor X.

Hulk was a combination of Dr. Jekyll and Frankenstein’s monster, a man who sacrificed himself to save a teenager from a bomb he himself had built, but who was changed rather than killed by it, and now becomes a monster of titanic strength and rage too dangerous to live.

The original Captain Marvel was a space alien soldier sent to Earth to conquer it, but who fell in love with mankind, and betrayed his home to defend ours.

Thor was exiled to Earth for the crime of falling in love with a mortal female.

Iron Man had shrapnel to the heart, trapped by communists in a cave in North Korea, when he build his first suit as a weapon. The awesome weapon tech was also his prison, since he could not take off the breastplate without dying.

Peter Parker, bit by a radioactive spider, gets the proportionate strength and speed of a spider, but when he at first uses his powers selfishly, his Uncle Ben dies as a result. Tormented by guilt, he now uses his power to fight crime and save a world that regards him as a menace.

Even Hawkeye, who is not exactly an A-List character has some drama in his background. He ran away from an abusive home to join the circus, but became the protegee of the Swordsman, who turned out to be a criminal. Hawkeye was originally a criminal himself, seduced by Black Widow, a Russian spy, to kill Iron Man.

It takes some grit to take on a man in power armor with just a bow and arrow.

Let us contrast and compare with the origin story of the diversity hires.

Falcon is a long established character and sidekick of Captain America who is Captain America because he picked up the shield of Captain America.

Jane Foster is Thor’s girlfriend who is Thor because she picked up the hammer of Thor.

Unlike everyone else who ever picked up the hammer of Thor, it changed her personality and gave her fighting skills, and it is just stupid. Also, she is dying of cancer or something. And for a reason never explained, she calls herself by her boyfriend’s name when she is dressed in his clothing, which would be creepy if it were not so silly.

Except Sam Wilson is now her boyfriend. And she loves the taste of combat. She only feels truly alive while drenched in the bloodshed and rage of war. Like all nurses.

X-23 is an established character and sidekick of Wolverine who donned a cosplay uniform of Wolverine.

Amadeus Cho injected himself with something to give himself the powers of the Hulk, but, unlike Bruce Banner, he does not turn into a subhuman rage monster, so it is not a curse. So it is basically a power he picked up.

Kamala Khan is a Muslim highschool girl form Jersey city, and gained the ability to expand, stretch, and shrink her body in various ugly and ungainly ways, and make her fists into giant balloon-like stupid looking flesh blobs. She wears the dumpiest uniform imaginable, and acts like a cross between a spoiled idiot child, a sociopath, and a fascist. She took on the name Ms Marvel because the name Jihad Girl did not test as well in focus group.

She does not really fight crime, instead she fights white guys, who are the source of all the world’s evils, and she protects her friends like the Lesbian who is in love with a high school Muslim girl who wears a headscarf at all times. Because we all know how ultra-fundamentalist Middle Eastern religious women are encouraged to be sexually liberated and experimentally genderfluid by their families. The writing here is lazy, one dimensional, and stupid.

However, her original story, unlike these others, is an actual origin: she was an Inhuman without knowing it, who was exposed to the terrigen mist of the Inhumans, which activated her power of uglification and balloon fist.

Carol Danvers is an established character. She was exposed to a mysterious energy that turned her into a half-Kree and granted her the powers of Captain Marvel. She is an sidekick of Captain Marvel who took up the mantle of Captain Marvel when he died. She also called herself Ms Marvel, Binary, and Warbird.

This is what she originally looked like

And this

This is what she looks like now

 And this

Also, in the revised version, her father did not want her to go into the military because she was a girl, she was shot down and tortured and escaped from a prison camp during wartime.

Riri Williams broke into a lab at MIT and stole some of Iron Man’s tech, and used his plans to copy his suit.

Miles Morales comes from a parallel dimension where he is the spiderman.

Kate Bishop is a rich man’s daughter who looted the Avenger’s mansion when the Avengers were gone, and took up gear from the Mansion including Mockingbird’s Battle Staves and mask, Swordsman’s Sword, Black Widow’s utility belt, and Hawkeye’s bow.

She was originally called Hawkingbird. She took up calling herself Hawkeye at Captain America’s suggestion because she blamed Cap for something that was not his fault, and he liked her spunk, which reminded him of Hawkeye. She calls herself Hawkeye for no real reason, because she does not have any particular training in archery.

For the purposes of comparison, let us see who won the Hugo Awards in the major categories last year:

Do you detect the pattern involved? It recurs in both examples.

UPDATE: Someone suggested that the composition of the bridge crew on STAR TREK: DIVERSITY had a similar pattern, but I have not seen the show myself, nor do I intend to, so I voice no opinion.

I merely leave it as a question to the reader whether he has seen the show, and, if so, he sees a pattern, and if so, what it is.

About John C Wright

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

September 28, 2017 @ 5:08 pm

Fancies, Musings