It’s not just fans who come up with incredibly stupid and insane things to be offended by. The general public is just as capable of making themselves look stupid. Take, for example, the recent complaint that the new companion on Doctor Who is too sexy for a family show.
Let’s look at the evidence.

Well, that is a very short skirt, yes. And I guess working as a kissogram is somewhat saucy. And, of course, it goes without saying that in the nearly fifty year history of the show, the producers have never before resorted to trying to use a performer’s sex appeal to get an audience…

Oh. Well, never mind, then.

Joseph Larkin provides us all with a good laugh, and an object lesson in how not to respond to a negative review.

So, let’s get this out of the way first: I’m not a Star Trek fan. In fact, I dislike Star Trek more than I dislike Star Wars. To further put that into perspective, I’m a Doctor Who fan who will hash out seeming continuity errors with friends for fun, and I still think that people who like Star Trek have an unhealthy attachment to the show.

Recently, some footage from the upcoming reboot of the franchise, directed by J.J. Abrams, was shown in London, and Empire had a spoiler-heavy post about it up.

But, let’s look to see how the Trek fans responded:

References are no good if they’re misplaced and misused. Kirk entering the Academy AFTER Uhura? Chekov serving with Pike? I’ve seen better fanfic stories with better consistency, AND THEY’RE SPENDING OVER A HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS ON THIS IDIOCY!?! It’s not honoring canon, it’s meaningless pandering by hacks who haven’t got a clue what they’re doing.

“I agree with Capt April that they’re not following canon but then that would be extremely limiting in what the filmmakers do…”

Shouldn’t that be one of the reasons these jokers get paid more than the average 7/11 slurpee monkey, who could come up with a story just as good as this?

Yes, it’s limiting. The skill and talent to work WITHIN those limits are the mark of creative professionals.

Interestingly, the only other place I’ve seen this particular point articulated in this fashion is in defense of super-hero fan-fiction…

But maybe I’m not being fair to the Trek fans…let’s take a look at what those masters of reasoned and rational debate at Ain’t It Cool News have to say:

Who the hell is he making this movie for? It can’t be the old school Trekkies who’ve kept the franchise going for 40 years with their support and money. Call me a basement dwelling contnuity nerd all you want, but the Enterprise built in Iowa on Earth? Chekov on Pikes Enterprise as a member of the bridge crew? Kirk as a malcontent badboy? This isn’t a just a re-imagining, it’s a big FU to anyone over 30 who’s followed Trek at all over the years. It’s teen angst Trek aimed at grabbing a different demographic than the increasingly older audience that has made Paramount over a billion dollars. If you’re new to Trek you may love it, but it sure won’t be my Star Trek.

I fail to see how any of that is a bad thing. I can’t imagine this mindset. I can’t imagine loving something so much that you want to see it die from lack of interest. Again, I’m a Who fan, and I’m ecstatic that the show is successful and popular again, and if the price I have to pay for that are Rose/Ten ‘ship sites and no resolution over Ace’s fate, that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

So, I go into the comic shop over the weekend, and I see this:

I’d heard of this a few months back and was intrigued enough at the notion of Euro-comics takes on super-heroes to want to check the book out when it came out. I flipped through it…and it looked okay. Not as porny as most Euro-comics, understandably, but still recognizably not an American production. And certainly the sort of thing that I’m curious enough about to give a shot.

And then I take a closer look at the cover, and realize that isn’t a retro-ironic corner box picture of a character from the comic:

No, it’s a fucking ad for Secret Invasion. An ad for a cross-over I have no interest in because of it’s uninspired execution and eye-straining art. A cross-over that, two years from now, will be largely forgotten, a post-script to whatever mega-cross-over event Marvel will be in the middle of.
An ad they stuck, glaringly, in a stupid position on the cover of a comic that stands a strong chance of appealing to people who might not otherwise be interested in reading a Wolverine comic.

Marvel talked me into saving my money by shoving a reminder of a comic I don’t like on a comic I might have liked.

Apparently The Dark Knight was a cleverly disguised pro-Bush polemic:
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

I can see what he’s getting at. I mean, just like Bush’s policies are creating more terrorists, Batman is creating more criminals. And just like Bush’s violations of civil rights, Batman’s are viewed with repugnance by moral observers.
Or were we not supposed to extend the metaphor that far?

In brief, Warner Bros. has continued to drain the poetry, fantasy, and comedy out of Tim Burton’s original conception for “Batman” (1989), completing the job of coarsening the material into hyperviolent summer action spectacle.

What?

A new Batman cartoon is announced.

Comic fans react accordingly:
With a name like Brave & The Bold i’d hoped we’d get a faithful cartoon for the geek crowd, but thats just insane.

Yes, clearly it is insane to design a cartoon for children and then market it to children, instead of forty-year-olds obsessed with the minutiae of their own childhood.

I’m vaguely disappointed that the promo images haven’t prompted this reaction:

But then I remember that if I give it enough time, it will…

DC owes all true Booster Gold fans an apology!

I was really looking forward to this new Booster Gold comic that DC is putting out, “Showcase Presents Booster Gold” because I thought, finally DC had seen the error of their ways and given us a new Booster Gold comic instead of the horrible character assasination Geoff Johns is putting out.

And it’s not DC, under that ragime of Didiot, has once again spit on the face of one of the most imporant and vital characters in comic book history. In this new comic, which is stupidly thick, it’s more like some sort of weird manga type book instead of a real comic, Booster is once again portrayed as a selfish, vain, egotistical man instead of the selfless and noble hero that all true Booster fans know him to be.

I’ve selected a few choice and particularly egregiious panels to show you what I mean, since I CANNOT in good conscience suggest to any of the Booster fans that they waste their hard earned money on this trash!

Booster would never place ahigher priorty on the value of property than on a human life. HIS SISTER DIED! Do you really think he’d be so callous?

Booster would never be so sexist as to demean women by making Black Canary lingerie. I don’t even know what that is, and I don’t want to know, probably another sick fetish of Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison that they forced the other DC writers to include in this book.

I agree with what Booster is saying her, because Superman is a moral failure as a character for failing to take the VERY REAL threat of terrorism seriously and deal with it, but the problem I have here is that Booster would never be so ungracious to another hero as to criticise them in public.

BOOSTER IS A FRIEND TO THE LITTLE GUY! He is a supporter of working Americans and would not do anything that would stop them from having the American dream and that includes owning an AMERICAN_MADE car.

Booster would never have anything to do with the corrupt American film industry an dtheir unpatriotic ways. he’s not some wrong coast Hollyweird elitist scumbag who hates average working Americans. He was a football player, for gosh sake.

I have saved the worst for last

This is just sick. This is some kind of sick caricature of G. Gordon Liddy, another true American hero, and here he is being made to say these awful, not true things about Booster. It’s vile and sick and everyone associated with this book should be arrested if there was any justice in this country.

Something has really gone wrong at DC. This is really just a symptom of a larger problem. What DC needs to do is take the advice of people like my friend who used to work as the assistant to the mail room manager at DC before they fired him because it’s people like him who really know what the problem is which is the free reign given to character disrespecting writers like Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison and it’s all the fault of the incompetent clods in upper management like Levitz and Didio.

This book is just one more disgrace. I have no idea who this Dan Jurgens is who wrote and drew this book, but he owes the creator of Booster Gold an apology!!!