I made sure to eat turkey, catch Santa in the parade and celebrate my annual tradition of watching Road House
This time, I do my best to tackle the connection between hip-hop and comics, and finally — finally — explain my feelings about that piece of shit The Big Bang Theory in a way that is both concise and reasonable.
As always, if you’ve got a question you’d like to see me answer, just tag it on Twitter with #AskChris or shoot an email to ComicsAlliance at gmail.com with [Ask Chris] in the subject line!
I always thought that the real problem with the Martian Manhunter was that he was a Marvel hero trapped in the DC Universe. Like you say, almost all of his powers are duplicated by other Justice Leaguers, so the thing that makes him unique is that he’s trapped in, and fighting to save, a world that hates and fears him. If you give him a life outside of the Justice League, you lose that, just like once Captain America went from just appearing in Avengers to co-starring in Tales of Suspense and then his own comic, he stopped being the Man Out of Time and started accreting touchstones in the modern era, like Sharon Carter and The Falcon. Or maybe Silver Surfer when he was trapped on Earth would be a better Marvel analogy. Either way, MM has to be the backbone of the League, because, if he’s anything else, if he’s not hiding in the Watchtower, then he loses his uniqueness, his alien quality, and really does become the Backup-Emo-Superman. It’s a double-bind. Even Ostrander, if I remember right, kept him in outer space half the time, and while he was on Earth, he either only interacted with other super-heros or else he was being tracked by a government agency. There was no real attempt to give him a Jimmy Olsen (call me, DC).
Re: comics fans not liking hip-hop, isn’t it that we’re all a bunch of old white guys, with atrophied tastes? (I.e., as you say, generational reasons.) Though I don’t know if that demographic of the comic fan base has any data behind it.
Speaking for myself, I haven’t come across any rap or hip-hop that’s grabbed me, but I haven’t looked real hard, either. There’s probably something out there (almost all country music bores me, but then there’s John Prine.)
So maybe it’s not just hip-hop. Maybe it’s just the general malaise that has begun to set in by age 50. “You kids get off my lawn!”