Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Rule 4: DC Comics cancels book for blasphemy.

In an interesting turn of events, DC comics has cancelled a series because of a ShirtStorm.

DC Comics is set to release an outrageous and blasphemous new series featuring Jesus Christ as the sidekick for an "all powerful" superhero.

Let DC Comics know that this comic is inappropriate. It should be immediately pulled from their release schedule.

According to Fox News, the "Second Coming" comic "reimagines why Jesus left earth the first time and is coming back again." Author Mark Russell recently shared a bit about the concept behind his comic. He explained, "God was so upset with Jesus's performance the first time he came to Earth, since he was arrested so soon and crucified shortly after, that he has kept him locked-up since then."

There was a petition associated with this campaign, it got 20,000 signatures. DC decided that they didn't want to be on the news for blasphemy, and folded.
The Guardian was shocked, simply shocked I tell you:

But the comics publisher has now told retailers that the series has been cancelled. The decision follows a 200,000-signature petition from anti-abortion, anti-LGBT conservative campaign site CitizenGo calling on DC to pull the comic. "Would DC Comics publish similar content about other religious leaders, such as Muhammad or Buddha?" said the petition. "This content is inappropriate and blasphemous."

Leaving aside the answer to the question (which is "no" obviously, DC Comics would NOT publish similar blasphemy about Buddha or Mohamed) what's happened here is interesting. For years we have been amazed that a single phone call will cause a school board, a publisher, a TV show, basically any public body to cave in to SJW demands. One single complaint gets nativity scenes deleted from Christmas decorations at City Hall all over the Western world.

Here's one going the other way. That never happens. It never matters how many people complain about blasphemous or otherwise objectionable art, music or video. Governments and media never ever care how many people object to that stuff.

Except this time they blinked. This time, the community at large complained, and DC backed off. Live by the ShirtStorm, die by the ShirtStorm.

I don't view that as a good thing, sadly. What would have been nice is if DC respected their audience and didn't try to print this shock-schlock bullshit. I suspect they cancelled this thing because it is a turkey and they know they're going to lose money on it. The cover art looks like shit, the inside can't be better. No doubt they hoped a nice spicy bit of the usual controversy, where a few Christians yell and then get shouted down by the media horde. Except this time the horde didn't get any traction, and the Christians showed up in numbers. An accountant did the math, and that was that.

What's not good about this is one flavor of mob censorship is not better than another flavor. Lefties. righties, this is not the distinction that makes a difference. The distinction is -freedom-. There is no freedom when all that decides what gets done is the loudest mob. Freedom is telling the mob-du-jour to go fuck themselves and doing what you want.

Therefore, I can't celebrate this as a "victory" of decency against assholes. This is two sets of assholes fighting. What we want to do here is sell guns to both sides, and then run the survivors out of town on a rail. (Figuratively speaking of course. One can't take for granted that some ninny-nanny won't call the cops over a figure of speech, these things must be explicitly laid out.)

4 comments:

Rich in NC said...

I agree with you. This ain't good.
They did punch back twice as hard, though.
I hate pendulums, they take too too long to come back to center and rest.
Rich

crossoverchaos said...

Not good, no. More like a throat-clearing before the real screaming contests start. Would be interesting to watch, though, from a safe distance.

...Unfortunately there is no safe distance.

The Overgrown Hobbit said...

No it's not simply "Two sets of assholes". I think it's one set of assholes finally setting off assholery in resistance.

Because it's the only thing that works.

I mention this only because I agree with you: Under the mob of assholery rules everybody loses. But up until very recently, we've been playing under the "We get to have asshole mobs, and you have to suck it up. Because, you don't want to be assholes like us, do you?"

The asshole mobs have had a gun to the head of civilization for a long time.

So this *could* be cause for (mild) celebration. Teach them that the only way to win the asshole mob game is not to play. MADD worked for the Soviet Union, after all.

The Phantom said...

"Because it's the only thing that works."

The problem with this view is that we have the Middle East for an example. Between Shia and Suni, Jews and Christians, you've got four sides of a cluster fuck that's been going on for nearly 2000 years. You know that all the monasteries down there were built as fortresses on mountain tops? There's a reason for that.

Christians forcing Lefties into silence is exactly the same thing as Lefties forcing Christians to be silent. It is the thing that kills civilizations. You can't live in a city where the wrong coloured hat will get you a beating.

So while it is nice to see somebody besides the fucking Lefties stick up for what they believe in, ultimately warring factions are the thing that will bring down the West.

And of course the cosmic joke of it all is that none of this shit matters in the slightest. In 100 years, will this little scuffle matter? No. Not a chance.