Future of Comic Books

[Entsuropi]

Actually, i did nothing of the sort Jeffe. I asked a simple question. I expected to get the precise answer that you gave me. I did not imply that you were not.

You seem to have a wildly different concept of respect for the dead than i do Jeffe.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

I think whether you're alive or dead you should be able to poke fun at anyone. It's especially fun when you play a joke on the living with the dead. I find those the funniest.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Well thats the way I read it, remember I asked the questions first... about wether it mattered if she were alive or not and if you had actually read it. Your counter question was just a rude and a personal attack.

Do people in your neck of the woods get taught things like decency and respect for others?

That to me implies  that you think I and the people in "my neck of the woods" weren't taught decency and respect for others.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Honestly, there have been worse portrayals of dead people, and Princess Di in specific than as a super hero.

On the other hand, the royals have the right to be upset.

On the other other hand, due to free speech laws, Marvel still has the right to do it as long as what they do is recognized as fiction.

Whether that's tasteful or reasonable is up to individual opinion, I think.

Two observations though, if a movie presented Di as a rambo-esque action hero, that'd probably cause an upraor. However, if more realistic humanitarian efforts were exaggerated, probably not. neither one is honest, and I don't see how they're that different. How long do you have to wait for someone to be dead before you can start using them in speculative fiction?

[Spriggan]

I think that's a great question Saint.  I've seen parodies of JFK (like in MTV's clone high) and thought it was hiliourious.  Now JFK has been dead for quite a while.  Another US president we can look at is Nixon who only been dead for what 9 years now (colse to how long Princess Di has been dead), and people have been mocking him all the time.  I'm sure it upsets his familiy but you hear no outcry because the general public's idea of Nixon is less favoriable.  You also have to add in the fact that these people are public figures, even in death, and that lowers their right to privacey.  

Here's another example.  A few months ago there was a book about JFK's affairs as president, so outcry but it was more of a media circus about it.  Everyone covered the stroy and I can't remeber hearing someone object to us wanting to know about JFK's private live.  On the other had a book just came out about JFK Jr's love life and maratiel probelms he was haveing and there's been nothing but outcry in the media and from familiy members.  Saying that we should respect the dead ect.

So if there person was not very well liked then there's no problem to it.  And if he/she was well liked then apperently 6 years isn't long enough.  Marvel shoudl try this experemnt again in 4 years to see what the reaction is.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Found a nice article in the UK Guardian

Princess Diana, superhero

Comic book writer Peter Milligan explains why the Princess of Wales is perfect mutant material

Wednesday June 25, 2003

I first became aware of Princess Diana's strange, mutant powers on the day of her death. Speaking as a comic book writer, these powers were nothing compared to the flying, teleporting, lethally oscillating guys I usually deal with, but they were interesting all the same.

I was in my local pub in Muswell Hill, north London, with a mate called Eamonn, soon after Diana died. We raised a glass to her and, I'm afraid, proceeded to crack a string of sick, black jokes about what had happened. Maybe it was just the sort of thing you do when something terrible has happened: a way of warding off demons and bad luck.

However, I noticed that our dark humour had outraged some of the other people in the pub. It wasn't just red-faced Daily Mail readers, either.

A few Irish lads, after tutting and muttering about our banter, eventually decided they had had enough and stormed out. A young black guy found it too much to take, and left. Clearly, Diana exerted a strange, mysterious power from beyond the grave.

Years later, I was writing, among other things, a successful, groundbreaking comic book called X-Force, which I mutated into one called X-Statix.

Its characters have crazy mutant powers, but these powers are really vehicles for exploring our celebrity and fame-obsessed society.

The New York Times called it "a witty blast of media criticism disguised as a garish spin-off of the X-Men". Entertainment Weekly described it as a "cogent, savage deconstruction of celebrity culture in the guise of an X-Men spin-off".

My mutants all have agents, negotiate fees for image rights, open megastores and live the dream. People die in my comic. We even have a character called Dead Girl.

So I thought it was time we had a real dead girl in the team, and, clearly, Diana was made for X-Statix: someone famous for being famous. In the world of the X-Men, the mutants are feared and hated. In X-Statix, they have turned this around and made themselves stars - glamorous, rich and powerful. That seems, to me, to be pretty much what Diana did inside the royal family.

Number one in this storyline, called Di Another Day (I know - it's just the kind of juvenile pun that Eamonn and I were coming up with on the day she died) has just hit the streets, so we're only just gauging reaction.

The Daily Mail's anger was, I suppose, predictable, although I suspect that the Mail's readers are not our target audience.

I was amused to read a source from the palace saying that it was "appalling". I presumed that they all hated and feared Diana, and breathed a collective, establishment-sized sigh of relief when she died.

If any of them actually reads all five episodes of Di Another Day, they will see that Diana comes out of it a lot better than the British establishment.

Indeed, a couple of old palace eminence grise types arrange for this resurrected mutant zombie to be killed. "And this time, let's do it properly," one of them says.

Being one of a small but influential bunch of British writers working in the very American world of comics and superheroes, it is nice to be able to inject something peculiarly British into the comic melting pot. In a sense, we're doing a public service, helping to drag some Americans out of their insularity.

In fact, I'd really like to do a story where David Beckham joins X-Statix. He's the perfect example of some whose powers - the ability to boot a ball around - have been dwarfed by his celebrity status.

I'd like to have him run around in a spandex superhero costume, become a homoerotic pin-up, get his nose busted in a fight with the Hulk and, as a result, have millions wiped off his "share price".

Although, somehow, I don't think I'll get that one past the lawyers at Marvel Comics.

· Peter Milligan is the writer of X-Statix and many other comic titles yet to feature in the Daily Mail

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

How long do you have to wait for someone to be dead before you can start using them in speculative fiction?

Well SE, I believe Vericom answered that for us once they set out to get the story of Jessica Lynch. Read something about that and you'll know exactly whats what.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

That article is interesting. The guy respects Di, but he has a not as socially acceptable way of expressing his feelings. He does things to piss people off, but he does them sincerely. maybe I'll check out the collected edition when it his Borders.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Maybe if Marvel donated some of the profits to this it'd be ok for you?

Diana fund in cash crisis

 
By SUN ONLINE REPORTER

THE DIANA memorial fund - set up to honour the late Princess of Wales - has been plunged into a cash crisis due to a costly legal battle with a US souvenir firm, it was revealed today.

Lawyers have frozen all grants to good causes forcing fund managers to ask other charities to fork-out for their projects.

And chief executive Andrew Purkis admitted that 500 jobs at the fund were under threat.

American company Franklin Mint  - which produces Diana merchandise including plates, dolls and jewellery - is suing the charity for £15million.

The court action comes after the memorial fund tried to sue the souvenir firm for using the late princess's image.

Franklin Mint won the 2002 legal battle but now claims the action was a malicious bid to damage its reputation and destroy sales.

The fund said today in a statement: "It has now been established the fund is legally obliged to freeze not only new grants but payment of existing grants."

Millions of pounds were donated to the charity after Diana's death almost six years ago.

And more than 120 good causes benefit from the cash including HIV/Aids treatment centres and landmine clearance projects.

The statement continued: "The fund is determined to find other ways of honouring existing grant commitments."

Charity bosses launched urgent talks with other grant-giving organisations to provide rescue funds.

Dr Purkis said: "We need about £10million in order to pay our existing grant commitments.

"We are going to ask a range of different grant-giving bodies if they can replace the funding if we can no longer fund it from our assets, and then when our assets are unfrozen again, we will reimburse them."

[Fellfrosch]

I find this subject fascinating on a billion different levels. The comic sounds intriguing, the concept of using the dead as characters is one we could write papers about, and Entropy's charged reaction is so out of character (at least based on the little we know about him over the Internet) because he's never cared this much about anything we've ever discussed before.

The only subject of the three that I feel fit to address is that of using dead characters in media, because I used several in my novel (all of them British, oddly enough). That's a slightly different case, since it was an "alternate history" rather than an "alternate present," but in general I think the concept is one of literature's oldest traditions. If nothing else, let's look at King Arthur--a character who, assuming he actually existed, has been 100% altered and adulterated over centuries of stories and legends. Is it wrong to use him the way we have? If not, then why is it wrong to use Princess Diana--is it just because she died so recently? If so, then isn't our concept of respect for the dead really more of a respect for the family of the dead--implying that it's okay to write speculative fiction about a real person as long as nobody who knew that person is still alive?

[Spriggan]

Entropy's charged reaction is so out of character (at least based on the little we know about him over the Internet) because he's never cared this much about anything we've ever discussed before.

Umm Entropy is the most opinionated person I know next to my Mom.  Just look at the gun topic in the rants forum.  You should chat with him, he's way mellow here.

[Fellfrosch]

I didn't say he's not opinionated--he's probably the most opinionated person on the forum, nex to you --I just said that he's never had a reaction this strong or this emotional to any topic we've discussed before. And yes, I've read the stuff about gun control and Iraq and every other political topic we've ever had.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Let me insert another character that will probably get some juices flowing.

Jesus.

Recently the subject of a book titled Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood friend which is certainly blasphemous but also hilarious. This is an actual historical figure who keeps popping up in fiction and nonfiction and still gets people riled up. So maybe even 2000 years isn't enough. Or maybe it just gets bad again. I don't know if it's a direct correllation to "time dead." There are obviously other factors. No one gets bent if you write a story about Nixon. Many do if you write one about Jesus.

[Spriggan]

well now you all can talk about somethign else Marvel has nixed the princess Dai comic

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13196748

[Slant]

Oh man, Marvel wussed out.  Actually I would have read the danged thing for the one simple reason that I happen to like X-Statix.  Although while I certainly think it would have been entertaining to see Di as a comic-book superhero, it would have upset quite a few people.

Sooo...  I guess this means that they should have never used John Wayne in the highly-acclaimed Preacher series.  Go figure.