Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

xp, lol
translation of that tweet for non-geeks: https://www.reddit.com/r/theblackpanther/comments/2uy0sy/spoilers_namor_got_what_was_coming_to_him/

Good interview with Coates in Paris:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/be0a6d8c-610e-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html

Whatever the reasons, all good.

Disagree. If TNC really has something to say in the medium, he and it would be better off doing something of his own, rather than servicing IP for a division of Disney that is hostile to creator's rights, and just this month continued its active attack on the direct market with a program of really lame, insulting co-option of 25 years of African-American creativity from a different field.

Let me also note that it's gross (and ill-boding) that none of the reporting on this seems to know whether there's an artist, or if it's Stelfreeze if there is.

If he has something worth saying, he has probably considered the pluses and minuses of writing a book that will sell a copy to 100 dinner parties vs. writing one of the most high-profile black superheroes (or characters) in the medium.

Or maybe he hasn't, and just wants to write a book that was probably quite important to him as a youngster.

well his place in the culture has declined quickly

he's been a comic fanboy and aficionado for a long long time, if he's doing this he's doing it because he wants to and he thinks it will be fun and he believes he can acquit himself well with the character and it's a bucketlist dream.

haha y did i read those comments in the interview

haha yeah that is....precisely what i thought the comments section of a financial times article about TNC would look like

pluses and minuses of writing a book that will sell a copy to 100 dinner parties

dinner parties... in ivory towers, right?

2015 Macarthur Genius recipient

hope he uses that grant money to justify more wicked twitter burns

off to a good start
https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/648801203778899968

maybe he hasn't, and just wants to write a book that was probably quite important to him as a youngster.

p sure I didn't speculate anything about his possible childhood fandom, but that if I had, I would have said that the entire system of creator exploitation, refusal to pay royalties, and decades-long attempts to demolish the DM in the name of market share is only able to be Marvel's ongoing MO because of relying on authors' childhood fandoms

it is tough for me to cast a stone at the guy for getting to play in a corporate toybox that he has some affection for; i would totally draw the avengers if they asked me.
it would look like shit, but i would do it.

I'm kinda w sic on this tbh

well he could always make his own comic with brand new characters and try to get someone to publish it and then get his target audience into it

or he could compromise, write a comic attached to a character that's strongly linked with television and movie properties that are seen by millions and get an audience for his ideas about race and equality who have no idea who he is

itt we give suggestions to the guy who just won a macarthur genius grant about how he should start his comic book writing career

^^^

he got that grant for doing comics?

for his ILX posts

bill clinton was a rhodes scholar, obama a nobel peace prize winner, no second guessing them either

Clinton's run on Power Pack was pretty good though

I'm neither second-guessing TNC's money-earning choices nor casting stones at his personal decisions: I'm disputing the proposition that WFH done for this company is an unalloyed good.

(A pebble cast, but still far more of a general principle: not knowing who your collaborator on a piece of work will be is also not an augur of untouchable quality in the end result.)

My argument about the HHV covers takes in a two-decade* ongoing history of Marvel corporate literally trying to eradicate the DM, and the repugnant, largely-blackface-ing cooption of dozens of non-comics artists' work in a fashion inherently designed to NOT bring light onto them for an audience, let alone a wider or different audience - countering "this one guy probably liked punchy punch books when he was six" - yes, probably! not disputed! - doesn't actually prove that whatever the results, or the motivation of editors responsible, this PR is a shining symbol of "all good."

* (Heroes World was '94, right? I'm on Zing.)

I'm disputing the proposition that WFH done for this company is an unalloyed good.

I'm on your side here, sic, but I'm kind of thinking ilx is not the audience most ignorant of these issues?

what he said. I haven't bought anything from marvel in six years.

Yeah, literally no-one is seriously making that proposition.

xp well, except the unlimited package but that falls under my "streaming is evil and i'm accepting that" rubric

https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/648972779518357504

dying

Yeah, literally no-one is seriously making that proposition

There must have been a display error between the c & p ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i JUST noticed his GZA/Genius avi lmao

https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/648973948416335872

*salute emoji*

lol that avatar

i JUST noticed his GZA/Genius avi lmao

― zoso def (m bison), Thursday, October 1, 2015 2:37 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omgg

My argument about the HHV covers takes in a two-decade* ongoing history of Marvel corporate literally trying to eradicate the DM

I'm pretty confused on this point - how are those variants helping to "eradicate the DM"? That's pretty much the only way you can get them - B&N and Walmart aren't going to have the hip hop covers. Marvel may have pulled their comics from B&N, there was an issue with them being put out too early or the consigning company (B&N uses a middle-man for comics at least) not paying for the books or something.

It's off topic here but retailers are to blame for stupid variants - if you're bumping your numbers beyond a sellable amount to get a hip hop variant (the thresholds were crazy - 150+% of a previous title IIRC), that's on you. Likewise over-ordering to speculate on variants you can actually sell for a premium (the HHV covers are free to order if you meet the threshold so they won't command a premium). If retailers were smart they'd order the numbers they can move and any variants they qualify for are a bonus, insurance against the titles that flop. After you blame retailers, then it's consumers - they're the ones who want Skottie Young covers of every goddamned title and pay $65 for a J. Scott Campbell variant to see a female character with enormous boobs.

I think the debate about the corporate comics market was what we were trying to avoid, but does deserve its own thread, especially with multiple ilxors with good data on it.

T-NC writing for Marvel definitely a point in the discussion about something or another though

Considering that Marvel's previous Voice of Black America is a very white English ex-ILXor, it can't be bad news.

huh what? who

the writer of Mighty Avengers!

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n23/thomas-chatterton-williams/loaded-dice

thats a brilliant review. ive not read the book, as i dont particularly care for his brand of martyr-ish afro-pessimism, no matter how 'well' its written (every excerpt i have read seems steeped in a kind of masturbatory grandiloquence), so perhaps my opinion is moot, but ive read enough excerpts, and so far, they just make me think that hes a skilled writer, but not a particularly novel thinker. im not sure he has anything all that fresh to say, that might challenge anyone, black or white, on debates around race. all he seems to do is reinforce the liberal status quo.

ive read enough excerpts

all he seems to do

ta-nehisis coates is far from unimpeachable, but c'mon

i was not talking about everything he has written, just this particular book.

btw I don't agree or disagree with the review (haven't read the bk or much Coates), just wanted to know what some of the fans here might think of it.

afro-pessimism

!

not my term.

i thought that referred to the continent of africa

im not sure he has anything all that fresh to say

did you already forget the part where you said 'pessimism'

can you point it out to me please?

coates is open about the fact that he's not saying anything new; that's not his project.