Ignorant Caucasian Appropriation Attack, Go Go 55!

Grant Morrison should probably sit on his hands the next time he has a "great" idea to create a team of "Asian" superheroes like Japan's Super Young Team or the Chinese Great Ten. That said, he does make a body grateful to belong to a minority group that flies below the radar; as much as it sucks to be invisible or interchangeable, it just might beat being reduced to another one of his cheap collections of attributes and stereotypes. For one thing, Asians of the world, you may speak perfect English, but you will never, ever get the hang of coming up with an English codename. And no, you can't use the name you use in your native language, because it was too much trouble to bother coming up with one. It's so much easier and more amusing to simply apply a white Anglo writer's "they do things fun-nee over there" filter. Enjoy, Shy Crazy Lolita Canary! Shiny Happy Aquazon! Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash! Socialist Red Guardsman! Accomplished Perfect Physician!

(Shy Crazy Lolita Canary, by the way, is a tiny winged girl in a schoolgirl uniform who fights with a voice that sounds like, and this is Morrison's vision here, "the shopgirls in every Tokyo store screaming SUMMMIIMMMMMASSENNNNN!! as loud as they can, at the highest pitch possible and en masse." Deep. The Super Young Team also blatantly emulates/borrows from established, "Anglo" DC superheroes like Superman and Green Lantern, right down to using their logos--and while you could argue that Japanese pop culture does incorporates a lot of cultural remixing, these Japanese characters are presented not as unique individuals with their own names and identities, but as people with wacky names who aspire to be lesser imitations of "Anglo" characters.)

Still, this may be Morrison at the mere cusp of his "creative" powers; he could yet top himself. Why, he could create the Cock Cracker Corps, a bunch of dentally-challenged heroes from the depths of Appalachia. This one gets her powers from meth! That one is a man-billy goat hybrid! Over there is a welfare queen who superpower-pops out another 5 children named Darlene on a weekly basis! Confederate Soldier will never give up the fight, or his 2nd Amendment rights! And as for the Burning White Hood of Purity and Righteousness, a.k.a. Earl, well, best you simply don't ask. Surely Morrison would agree that there's real potential in this one--I mean, if we're going to create racially or ethnically identified teams based on an outside observer's superficial exposure to representation of that racial or ethnic group in selected elements of a country's (pop) culture, then why the fuck not?

Anyway, Morrison's Super Young Team is getting their own, Joe Casey-penned, Final Crisis spin-off mini--Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance--and issue #1 just goes to show that whoever you are, wherever you may be, however dodgy your concept or your writer, no-one can resist the stylish look of the...


Photoshop star brush. Respect!

Drug use will make you sexy... so very, very sexy...

What's next in Demented Dragon's house of hack-rate horrors? Yoko Molotov's Stray Crayons! Now, Amazon lists the Editor on this one as Beth Mashburn. Yeah, the staffer who supposedly has a Masters in English. That's why she didn't bother to edit tounge, wierd (twice!), glamorus / layed, gulitly (incidentally, "fare the night alone" is crap English), rebeled, and experemented / probaly. That's just in 23 sample pages; does anyone over there give a shit? Rhetorical question.

If anyone over there is actually paying Beth Mashburn, for God's sake, stop. You could hire a bright seventh grader to surpass the job she's doing, plus you could pay the kid entirely in popsicles.

Anyway, like the copy says, Stray Crayons is based in the "beautiful, haunting city" that is Louisville, KY. Feast your eyes upon its majesty, folks. Quite possibly this story wishes to be "awesome manga with hot punk rock girls" while also being beautiful and haunting and deep and shit--Maud, our female lead, is a drug-user who's beaten by her boyfriend--but sadly, Ms. Molotov's skills are not nearly up to the task. If you liked Midnight Mirror, this has the same sense of narrative urgency, just with more boob and panty shots. Thrill to 23 pages of Maud talking to herself, sobbing "I probaly look like shit! ...or crazy, because I am an idiot!" and "You're right, I am such a jerk... a whiny little bitch!" while nothing. Happens. At all. It has all the subtlety of a dead raccoon. It's the type of comic where you get a sledgehammer lecture on a young girl's poignant lost innocence, yet the previous page treats you to upskirt action of the same girl.

And there's a sneak peek of Volume 2 on Yoko Molotov's site. It even comes with a "spolier warnin'." That means watch out, there's an awesome phonetic accent inside! An accent the same character didn't have in the Volume 1 preview pages!

Must've been the drugs.

Shoujo stories where girls fall in love with their rapists in 10 pages or less are totally deep and shit

Underage anime girls aren't the only objects of glassy-eyed idolization out there. Witness Wakaranai's response to Avril Lavigne's Make 5 Wishes:

It really just pains me to say the name of ‘manga’ and all it stands for [Including harems, salaryman porn, women working out their issues through yaoi, battling an endless succession of enemies to be the best, and a lasting phobia of pubic hair? -Ed.] being whored out to the mindless cultural retardation of US pop-culture, [As opposed to the intelligent acceleration of Japanese pop culture. -Ed.] to create some soulless marketing abomination which will be lapped up by the unsuspecting public and mistrued as being an actual manga.

Who knew you could Humbert Humbert the concept of manga? The author elaborates in a comment further down:

I don’t actually think manga is inherently better than any other genre or cultural phenomenon just because it’s manga.

Except for two lines down where she says manga "is far less mindless and trite" than Avril Lavigne and what she represents:

But if you think that MTV and its associated musical culture (The pop charts etc) is of the same creative calibre as the average manga release then you should seriously rethink your analysis.

Later on, another commentator on the blog writes:

Wow…..that’s so….disgusting! How could they? Why do people always feel the need to widen their marketing spectrum by invading popular pop-cultures like manga, just for the sake of money?

Manga, on the other hand, when kept pure in race (especially race) and thought (cultures should be kept separate and unequal), is fueled by creative and artistic integrity. Not money. The truth is, such is the publishing industry that editors welcome their artists with stardust kisses and everyone operates on budgets of fairy dew and moonlight ambrosia. Honest.