salarta

Just went through and unfollowed everyone that Tumblr says has unfollowed me over the past several months, about 10+ people in that time. If Tumblr lied or I made a mistake and you’re still following me but I unfollowed you, drop me a message.

Yeah, I’m basically in “mad as hell” territory at the moment. I’ll calm down eventually. In the meantime, have Clippy.

I might be able to buy that if I didn’t see what Marvel’s doing firsthand.

Years before I saw these articles from Bleeding Cool, I noticed this behavior coming out of Marvel. It started with their treatment of Polaris, how they kept excluding her from her family and refused to acknowledge her long history as a character or use her in any Marvel and X-Men events. Naturally, I wound up wanting to know and understand why, and that spread my awareness beyond Lorna.

I started to discover and notice things. Things like artists told not to draw anything Fantastic Four when drawing sketch cards, or how Marvel wouldn’t send any sort of E-mails out with their Marvel Entertainment account having to do with the X-Men while Days of Future Past was in theaters. How every single event involving the Avengers and X-Men was deliberately designed to leave the Avengers books better off and the X-Men books worse off, how the Avengers books got to dictate what happens to the X-Men with stunts like Havok’s M-word speech.

I noticed more subtle things too, like how Quicksilver wasn’t on any All-New X-Factor covers while Days of Future Past was in theaters, or how Marvel went out of their way to try to make Enchantress look like Polaris on an Axis variant cover instead of actually using Lorna in Axis. They did this while going so far in refusing to promote All-New X-Factor #14, the actual comic where Polaris and Scarlet Witch got to spend time together as sisters, that Marvel withheld the cover until less than a week before the issue hit store shelves.

And now, we have the X-Men and Fantastic Four getting removed from merchandise, cases like shirts with old images redrawn to take the X-Men and Fantastic Four out. And for what? Random obscure characters, random filler, something to close gaps that shouldn’t be there.

Maybe if Marvel had treated Lorna and her family better over the past 6 years, I wouldn’t be here typing this sort of post right now. Six years ago, I jumped on board, started reading Marvel comics bright-eyed and eager for the Marvel universe for the first time in the over 20 years I’d been alive before then. I wanted to see the Marvel universe through this character that I’d grown attached to, and at every turn, I was denied.

And for what? Because some editor out there doesn’t respect Lorna enough to include her in family events she has a huge stake in? Because some executives are afraid Fox might see Lorna and Wanda spending kickass time together like they have on Exiles and All-New X-Factor #14 and make something of it? Are their egos that big, is their greed so insatiable, that they have to stand in the way of so many great things for petty, selfish reasons?

I’m grateful for what little they’ve allowed to happen for Lorna, but that does not change that they have repeatedly ignored and undermined her at the same time, in much the same way a gun is worthless for protection without bullets.

So let’s say, for your argument’s sake, that Bleeding Cool is posting articles just to get page views. None of that changes that they’re right, and they’re giving evidence to back it up. I have absolutely no reason not to support Bleeding Cool here.