Extremely disappointed to hear the comics got woke and political

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by neatoman

I'm not entirely sure what the Reagan connection is, I mostly just know about Reaganomics and "Tear down this wall", if he said anything about nuking the countryside to inspire patriotism or America being a haven for communists you'll let me know. Seems more like McCarthy to me.

Here are the relevant panels as to the motivation of the antagonists in "Survivalists," and the "spiel" in question:

Spoiler:

I would suspect it had something to do with Reagan running on a great deal of his own regressive, rhetoric and conflation of patriotic values with a reverence of past eras--economically but also demographically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_A...#Ronald_Reagan

I would expect this had all sorts of spill-over into fringe rhetoric, much like politics have now, although I wasn't alive at the time for specifics. Laird, however, was.

I think this is just an example of how much we lose sight on exactly how political past works--and in particular past TMNT works, which was the thrust of this--could be. The rhetoric Skonk is parodying (maybe only barely) in the issue was very likely rhetoric readers may have been hearing from family members, or may even have recognized in themselves. Likewise, content considered extremely political now might seem completely apolitical to readers decades in the future, just for changing social norms and lacking the context of the time to understand the controversies it nestled itself in.

This is an honest question: What rhetoric in the past five years do you think Skonk's most closely resembles, and how would readers react to slightly altered--or even identical--dialogue were the issue published today?

Originally Posted by IMJ

That's not what "woke" is.

What is woke?

Originally Posted by IMJ

Well done here - not because of the positioning but for shining an experiential light on a story that many of us probably haven't read.

I would certainly hope that people in this thread would have read the issue in question (and most of Mirage and maybe Archie). Have you not?

For real though, I'm going to guess that on this board, the people who haven't read the issue would be in the minority. Anyone who hasn't, the IDW "Ultimate" Collections are a steal digitally or in paperback, or you can wait for the "Compendium" edition which includes (finally) black and white Tales issues this fall.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Yeah. "Something-something-Reagan, 2nd amendment and people who own guns bad because reasons" is hardly what's going on now.

Though it's always been interesting that the moment Kevin and Peter stopped doing their partnership (#12) that's where Peter chose to take the story. And it's fine. It's just interesting, and shows what interests each one over the other, if left to their own devices.

What is going on now and how is it any different? Concretely?

I haven't read any of Campbell's IDW run, so I genuinely wouldn't know, but I can say that one of the reasons (among others) I jumped off IDW in the 30s or so was its (almost loud) lack of willingness to touch on any real-world issues or things of weight to its author(s), while grappling with them in some form had always been a staple of TMNT comics to me. In many ways, the Waltz run was the outlier.

I don't know if Campbell's actually changed that (certainly it would be a more interesting book to me if it had) or if reactions are simply overblown, and readers who were enjoying IDW's TMNT up to #100 would be welcome to have their own thoughts about it, but it would simply be in good company with nearly all but the Waltz run prior. Even if you were to make an argument like "Oh, well, it was just Laird and Murphy" (I don't think that's true, but for the sake of argument), they were responsible for the vast majority of the TMNT's total publishing content across Mirage and Archie, and set the ultimate tone and mood for the book(s) early on, so I'm not sure what Turtles books we're talking about without them.

Off of the topic but because it's interesting: For Laird, while, absolutely, he lets some unabashedly left-leaning politics into his work, I think what's more notable about his solo work versus Eastman's early on--and I've been noting this during a current reread--is that he's in a hurry to turn the book into a much more cerebral, melancholy affair. Bittersweet, downbeat endings are attached to all three of the Donatello one-shot (largely attributed to him), "Survivalists" and "Doom Dome!," and he's the one who seems to have first locked into the formula that would come to dominate much of Volume 1 and especially Tales Vol. 2 in "1. TMNT leisure activity, 2. They encounter an ancient civilization under a laundromat or some sort of insane, comic-booky weirdness, 3. A somber reminder about mortality or a real-world issue." Laird is quickly turning the book into a somber, bizarre little indie anthology comic at this point, whereas Eastman is still treating it like a platform for fun gags and action, and I think that's pretty indicative of how they'd both continue to view the book itself and the general property over the years. Laird is also the one to set the ball rolling on the downbeat future-era Turtles stories, in "Old Times" for Plastron Cafe.

What strikes me more about "Survivalists" than its politics then, is giving the ending to Don's basic sympathy with the idea of cherishing survival, melancholy note that that is. But the issue's politics still can't be mistaken as being anything other than quite loud. Again, I don't think you'd see a similar issue come out today without it raising some stink on this forum, much as those in this thread like to claim otherwise:

Spoiler:

(Incidentally, "Survivalists" is an excellent issue, and much like "Donatello," an important herald of the tone and nature of the book to come, if not quite as good as that one.)

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

But I wouldn't say in a too preachy way.

Not too preachy??

Now, that said, I absolutely hold that up as a strength of Adventures, in particular because it's a kids' title. The impression is very much that Murphy felt obligated to use his position on a wide-reaching kids' book to affect some sort of positive change, rather than simply offer something as insipid as the cartoon was, and that's admirable (especially since he also churned out both a much more fun version of the toy line/cartoon lore and compelling character drama while at it). Even if trite environmental messages were par for the course in the early '90s, the specificity with which Murphy went for them was not--nor were keeping the sites on corporations rather than consumers or introducing many of the book's other issues, from classism to apartheid to a crash course on world religions (to the chagrin of some of the letters' writers, who he lets own themselves by placing them without response between more open-minded commentary) to war to slavery in third-world countries to ... you name it. The book got around. And though it was always didactic, it was getting around to a lot of very non-textbook issues, especially at the time. I think it did leave an impression on those grounds, while also hooking kids with its story, and that balancing act should be celebrated.

If you want to see an author phoning in environmental messages out of obligation, by the way, look no further than the abysmal Archie "Specials." Murphy's always 100 percent sincere in what he's writing, and that shines through.

But, to the point of the thread, what he's writing is always lefty politics, and always touching on things that could, and did, cause controversy among some of the book's right-leaning readers/parents of readers at the time.

That's TMNT Adventures. A darling of this fandom (and rightfully so). To a large extent, that's also Mirage, where he was one of its most prominent voices.

There's no way Eastman could be a leftist. That dude is like obsessed with guns in everything he does.

I wouldn't be so quick to guess at Eastman's personal voting record, although it wouldn't particularly surprise me if he leaned right. (Someone else brought up whether that mightn't cause friction with the rest of the Mirage staff, but ... I mean, it's possible it did, as they didn't exactly all stay tight, right? Anyway.)

But I don't think use of guns in his fiction alone is any solid window into that. I'd be happy to see the Second Amendment repealed, and yet super-duper-shoot-'em'-up-heavy Hellsing is still in my shortlist of manga/comics. I'm pretty sure the Wachowskis aren't rallying for gun deregulation anytime soon, and yet they reinvented standards for Hollywood firearm action. So Eastman liking and homaging John Woo films and other gun action in his comics isn't quite the *ahem* smoking gun it might seem to be. Although this is notably all beside the point of the thread.

On that note, it's worth noting what is actually said of and shown on guns in Turtles comics Eastman has his name on as either co- or sole writer:

Spoiler:

And then even in Bodycount, Casey constantly reiterates his dislike for guns as mentioned in Tales Vol. 1 #1, and Raph apologizes for getting too into them.

You can kind of see where Adventures Leonardo was pulling from.

[Cipher]

**Forgive the double post; ran over the character limit**

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Didn't Cudley send the turtles to the future by mistake where the greenhouse effect caused mass flooding and stuff. I wonder if it was the future-future or like say... 2012 and we already passed that year in real life.

Despite Cudley's promise that it was simply one potential outcome in the first arc, it is the canonical future of that universe. (And, likewise, a similar greenhouse-gas future awaits the Mirage universe.) It is also set 100 years in the future (around 2090-the early 2100s), as mentioned. No 2012 prediction.

Spoiler:

This was a long series of responses, but: Is whatever IDW's doing now really that much more left-leaning or didactic than much of Mirage and Adventures? ****, I kind of want to see it if it is. Even if just Laird, Lawson, Murphy--they were the defining voices on those books. If they weren't your thing, I can understand taking issue, but a melancholy touching on current issues, often somewhat (or very) left-leaning if one is looking to label them, was part of their DNA. In that regard, IDW's vehemently apolitical Saturday-morning action serial approach was kind of the odd man out. Again, for better or worse, but I can't understand drawing a line on that if those series are still in your good graces.

I think another thing that's apparent is that come ten years time, people will look at whatever is raising hackles over being too political, too woke for genre comics today, and not see in it anything controversial at all. Chronological distance tends to obscure that, such that we can look at something like #12 in Mirage and somehow come away not seeing anything pointedly political at all.

--That was all about TMNT comics. This next bit isn't, but was too ridiculous to not respond to.--

Thanks to Geena Davis, there's an actual group working in Hollywood right now whose entire job is to go over every script and ensure it has the "acceptable" number of gays, trans, and non-whites in it, before anyone can even think about producing it.

1) You haven't seen a blockbuster movie in the past few years that didn't have gay characters in it?

2) Movie studios are going to play to their bottom line, so if there's focus-testing for this that or the other thing, including diversity quotient, that's nothing new. If it hurt their bottom line, they wouldn't go for it. As with all focus-tested results, some results will feel clunkier than others, but these aren't worth singling out anymore than a hot-babe or muscly-dude quotient would have been for studio projects prior. If you want something that doesn't feel cynical, you'll have to look outside of tentpole films, and that's been the case for, god, decades, and to some extent forever.

3) You're arguing about the boogeyman of a (studio-elected) mandatory minimum for representation in a certain scale of project. There was a mandatory cap in decades prior, which was zero. Was that better?

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

In 1988, the United Nations presented a report about the consequenses of global warming. A new. wave of environmentalism (the first was in the early 1970's) spread. During the upcoming years, climate was on everyone's lips, but the proposed solutions were never as extreme as during later waves. This peaked in June 1992 when the Agenda 21 was adopted during the United Nations Environmental Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Captain Planet was launched in September 1990, and Toxic Crusaders had already aired in mid 1990. So, eco-awareness was a big thing in comics and cartoons during those years. Of course, TMNT Adventures also attempted to ride that wave.

[mrmaczaps]

Originally Posted by Cipher

I wouldn't be so quick to guess at Eastman's personal voting record, although it wouldn't particularly surprise me if he leaned right. (Someone else brought up whether that mightn't cause friction with the rest of the Mirage staff, but ... I mean, it's possible it did, as they didn't exactly all stay tight, right? Anyway.)

But I don't think use of guns in his fiction alone is any solid window into that. I'd be happy to see the Second Amendment repealed, and yet super-duper-shoot-'em'-up-heavy Hellsing is still in my shortlist of manga/comics. I'm pretty sure the Wachowskis aren't rallying for gun deregulation anytime soon, and yet they reinvented standards for Hollywood firearm action. So Eastman liking and homaging John Woo films and other gun action in his comics isn't quite the *ahem* smoking gun it might seem to be. Although this is notably all beside the point of the thread.

You ***want*** to be enslaved by the Government? No firearms puts all lives at risk & everyone in MORE danger.

Eastman is an opportunist. Of the bunch, he seems most guarded about what he believes but I still wouldn't call him a conservative at all. Its all about the money there....

I would like to hear more about the tank he bought & what ever happened to it. Lol

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by mrmaczaps

You ***want*** to be enslaved by the Government? No firearms puts all lives at risk & everyone in MORE danger.

Yes. I want to be enslaved by the government.

Eastman is an opportunist. Of the bunch, he seems most guarded about what he believes but I still wouldn't call him a conservative at all. Its all about the money there....

I would like to hear more about the tank he bought & what ever happened to it. Lol

Eastman's political persuasion being "opportunist" is absolutely something I can buy. Outside of him though, Mirage (and certainly Archie) tended to put out books with some regularity that I think would have been fodder for "get woke, go broke" criticism today, were either their publishing shifted to the present or current audiences shifted back in time. (And heck, basically were, just using different verbiage. Scope Adventure's letter pages, and I'm sure Mirage caught some never published.) Even the "I hate guns" asides present in Eastman's own issues (Tales #1, Vol. 1#14), would have engendered an angry YouTube rant or two.

Either comics both now and then are worse off for it, or the rhetoric now has become more kneejerk and overblown. You can probably guess which way I lean, though not if you're as bad at guessing that as guessing my motivation on political stances.

[ChosenOne]

[Cipher]

Lol @ it only taking four posts on a comic book to get to speculation on my sex life.

Never change, y'all.

[Leo656]

I have no dog in this but that is the choppiest gif I've seen in like 10 years. Blargh.

[Cowabung-Gal]

Originally Posted by Cipher

What is woke?

Woke is genderbending, racebending, and/or queerifying established straight white male characters for token points. Woke is taking a big dump on the American flag while proudly waving the Marxist flag. Woke is making every female character an unstoppable, one-dimensional Mary-Sue while making every male character a weak bumbling idiot, you know, for “girl power”. Woke is making at least 60% of the cast LGBTQ+. Woke is calling fans the “enemy” simply for criticizing poorly written non-white/gay characters that were only added in for representation.

Sheesh, I tired myself trying to explain it.

[Cipher]

Thank you for taking the time to answer. Responses and a few questions below.

Originally Posted by Cowabung-Gal

Woke is genderbending, racebending, and/or queerifying established straight white male characters for token points.

Got it.

Woke is taking a big dump on the American flag while proudly waving the Marxist flag.

What does this look like, in a comic book?

Woke is making every female character an unstoppable, one-dimensional Mary-Sue while making every male character a weak bumbling idiot, you know, for “girl power”.

Got it.

Questions: Which books do or would you say are close to doing that?

Is it worse, the same, or better if male characters are unstoppable but female ones don't play much of a role? Also, can you think of any books that do, did, or were close to doing that? I can come up with a few.

Woke is making at least 60% of the cast LGBTQ+.

Why does this matter?

Woke is calling fans the “enemy” simply for criticizing poorly written non-white/gay characters that were only added in for representation.

Got it.

Question: Is this is substantially different from having it out in letters columns with people writing in angry over religious representation in stories, or other political aspects?

Overall questions: "Woke" (the thing that you get to go broke) seems to pertain mainly issues of representation, right? Especially ones seen as pertaining to active political debate? Is that substantially different from working in a stance on other issues that have been part of active political or social debate, as past TMNT books have done? If these subjects are central to the author's experiences, should they be kept out of the book?

[hypered1]

The term 'woke' is entirely misused these days: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...dpfdKvZBvbKsOI

[CyberCubed]

There is a quota of the number of gay/lesbian characters before something can be woke. It used to be about black characters now it's about orientation.

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by hypered1

The term 'woke' is entirely misused these days: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...dpfdKvZBvbKsOI

Woah, now! That definition sounds like it could apply to quite a few Mirage and Archie books.

But everyone was okay with them, so that can't be it.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

There is a quota of the number of gay/lesbian characters before something can be woke. It used to be about black characters now it's about orientation.

What is the argument being made here in regards to Black or gay characters then?

That we need to keep them ... under ... a certain limit? ... To not be woke and go broke?

You're totally right that these same arguments would have applied to Black characters in the past. Thanks for pointing that out! What would have been the acceptable cap on them to prevent this trend toward wokeness?

[hypered1]

Originally Posted by Cipher

Woah, now! That definition sounds like it could apply to quite a few Mirage and Archie books.

But everyone was okay with them, so that can't be it.

Well that's what you get when the ignorant try to weaponise that which they do not understand.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

There is a quota of the number of gay/lesbian characters before something can be woke. It used to be about black characters now it's about orientation.

I don't think so. It could be the 90s and you could make a movie or comic or whatever about a group of black friends and no one would say that was "woke."

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't think so. It could be the 90s and you could make a movie or comic or whatever about a group of black friends and no one would say that was "woke."

So what changed? The content or the reactions?

And to get back to the focus of this thread, did TMNT comics ever change (except under Waltz), or do we just feel different ways about what topics they touch? (This is assuming Campbell's even brought back topical/personal writing period, and I still feel like maybe everyone's blowing things out of proportion and IDW is the same reference-oriented light action serial it's always been + like, a gay character, but heck, I'll at least check out IDW Collection 14 now to see.)

(Also, for Mirage/Laird: Was this woke? Or was it okay because she wasn't didn't make up a high enough percentage of the cast?)

Spoiler:

Also holy **** that name that's so bad

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I have no dog in this but that is the choppiest gif I've seen in like 10 years. Blargh.

You mean "BlARRRgh".

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Cipher

So what changed? The content or the reactions?

Content.

(Also, for Mirage/Laird: Was this woke? Or was it okay because she wasn't didn't make up a high enough percentage of the cast?)

Spoiler:

https://i.imgur.com/4KZVHff.png

Also holy **** that name that's so bad

Some blink and you miss it thing from Vol. 4? No. Not woke. Just a "who cares?"/"who even noticed?" thing.

[Cowabung-Gal]

Originally Posted by Cipher

Why does this matter?

Let me better explain it so that I won’t come off as some homophobic bigot.

I didn’t say if 50% of the entire cast was LGBTQ+. I said at least 60%, because unless you were making an actual LGBTQ+ comic/movie, that would be considered unrealistic overrepresentation and even pandering. And often the authors who are more worried checking inclusion boxes end up making poorly written characters that actually end up offending the targeted minority groups. And woke is all about pandering.

[Cipher]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I haven't read IDW TMNT since somewhere around City Fall but from what I gather, basically there was 100 issues that were story-driven then suddenly said story was forcibly grinded to a halt and everything was made to be about LGBTQ and Lizzo-style body positivity stuff and the like.

I swear I'm going to read this and it's going to be, like, exactly the same string of old-version references and Saturday-morning action drama + more LGBT characters in the past and occasional glances at real-world topics that matter to the author. The last things I heard about the book were that it was working in Tokka and Rhazar, the Punk Frogs, and Venus.

But: Overarching plot grinding to a halt to touch on issues personal and political of import to the author feels a lot like ... past TMNT comics? If it's actually that, and if it's not as good as (I think) the Mirage and Archie writers were, that could be due to other craft failings, but I don't see the idea that it would be on principle anywhere. I just don't really see the difference between working in some LGBT issues or body positivity or whatever else, if the topics are tackled sincerely, and Laird taking swipes at far-right rhetoric in the '80s or Murphy ... literally any of the things Murphy touched on ... in the '90s. I would argue the Mirage and Archie books tended to be more personal-topical than explicitly political-topical, but they were still touching freely on things that had at least some political and social debate. Frankly, touching on LGBT experiences, etc., is pretty far on the personal-topical side as well.

Originally Posted by Cowabung-Gal

Let me better explain it so that I won’t come off as some homophobic bigot.

I didn’t say if 50% of the entire cast was LGBTQ+. I said at least 60%, because unless you were making an actual LGBTQ+ comic/movie, that would be considered unrealistic overrepresentation and even pandering. And often the authors who are more worried checking inclusion boxes end up making poorly written characters that actually end up offending the targeted minority groups. And woke is all about pandering.

Okay, so, more questions:

1) Is the current TMNT comic 60 percent LGBT? If not, then is it fine?

2) If the story is about a gay community, can it have a 60 percent+ LGBT cast? Or is that topic inherently woke and bad?

3) What's the difference between pandering and sincerity if the author cares about the topic they're tackling? Does the distinction matter?

Related and to keep this focused, were Mirage or Archie TMNT ever pandering? (I would argue yes, in the non-Murphy Archie specials, but outside of those.)