Vicarious Frothing at the Mouth

Not everyone who reads this blog follows comics, and of those that do, I don't expect that they all follow superhero comics terribly closely. But if you've been paying attention to the travesty of Civil War that Marvel's been foisting on us (to great sales success, by they way)--even following at a distance--you'll have a good time reading Greg Morrow's rant on the subject and its subtext at Howling Curmudgeons. He's not sometimes called Frothing-at-the-Mouth Lad for nothing. The story's subtext of the War on Terror has been fairly obvious all along (Marvel was even explaining it to mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and NPR when it all started), but Greg absolutely nails the meta-subtext of the growing disillusion and mistrust of the Bush administration being echoed in similar feelings among many comics readers toward Marvel editorial. Considering Civil War at face value, Marvel is trashing its characters and their history for an ill-conceived storyline. I suppose we can't completely rule out the possibility that Marvel might still somehow deftly pull all this together into some sort of grand storytelling coup, but I don't see how it could happen. And even if they did, there's been enough damage to Marvel institutions at this point that they wouldn't come out unscathed. Essentially, I no longer trust them to be responsible caretakers of the characters I've enjoyed for years. And Civil War's phenomenal (by modern standards) sales figures to the contrary, I'm not the only one who feels that way. Oh, and don't forget to enjoy Spider-Man 3 this weekend.

Speaking of Howling Curmudgeons, congratulations to them on four years of blogging. Chris Maka put together some stats of the more than 900 posts from a dozen contributors (and one emeritus). I haven't been on board the entire four years, but I would've bet that I'd made more than 41 posts (I also would've bet that I hadn't written more about Kryptonite than any other contributor). I guess that means that I have to get on the stick with more posts. Congratulations, guys! Here's to four more years and beyond.