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sounds like fun!
though a nice tagline might be “the adventures of the swearing professor!”

For a minute there I thought Marvel had put out yet another Avengers book.

Quote:
” Dick Cheney, is a rifle toting, grimacing hard ass (okay, that’s not too much of an exaggeration). Vladimir Putin’s head is dwarfed by his giant army hat. …and Cheney come across as super villains. Okay, that last part really isn’t much of an exaggeration.”

And, Brad Curran comes off badly by interjecting his personal political views- which is not much an exaggeration.

This review would have been fine, without the “Not much of an exaggeration” comments. What the creator of the comic believes is okay to relate, but the jumping on the Cheney-bashing bandwagon in a review is unprofessional, even at the semi-pro blog level, for a non-political blog.

I’ve always viewed myself as being a centrist, only to see the liberals shift me to the right, not because my views changed, but because their positions shifted to the left of me far faster and more extremely than the right-wing moved in the other direction.

I know most of you people at CSBG are liberal leaning, but could you please leave it out of your comic reviews? It’s bad enough when educators do it in their classrooms (in either direction).

1. I once walked out of a 400-level college history class, concerning US History 1789-1826, because the professor spent most of the class bemoaning the vast right-wing conspiracy that had dominated US politics (BTW, he considered LBJ, Carter, & Clinton Right-Wing Fascists, so you can imagine what he thought of Reagan and GHW Bush), spent more time attacking Rush Limbaugh than discussing the issues that led to the war of 1812, and told us to ignore our textbooks’ description of the Founding Fathers (itself, left-center in outlook) as being false, and insisted that they were all elitest snobs that were royalty-wanna-bes. I didn’t drop the class, but made sure to come back to the class for its teacher review (and I gather those that toughed out the class made similar reviews). I never saw that class offered again while I was at the school.

2. I did the same for a Comparitive Religions course where the teacher showed an overwhelming Christian bias in depictions of other religions, so it had little to do with my own political beliefs, and more to do with being confronted by someone trying to ramrod demonstrably off-subject or overly-biased material down the throats of a captive audience.

If you want a non-biased view of comics, read the comics not reviews. Any reviewer is going to interject theier personal biases on some level. Some might be more obvious than others, but you learn to live with it or quit reading the reviews.

People don’t insult about Dick Cheney to be cool, people insult Dick Cheney because he deserves it.

Grow a thicker skin or go hide in the basement.

Cheney has an approval rating roughly equivalent to ebola, and it’s still too high. About the only criticism that can be leveled at this Dick Cheney reference is that it’s too easy, too obvious of a joke.

Simply, if you’re showing up in comic book review to defend Dick Cheney it reflects more poorly on you than anything else.

And if you want to pat yourself on the back for how awesome you are in your opposition To People Who Have Offended You By Having Differing Opinions, do us all a favor and just get a LiveJournal.

Basara, I notice you don’t object to Brad saying that Putin being portrayed as a supervillain isn’t much of an exaggeration. I understand that you have an anti-russian bias, but can you please leave it out of your comics blog comments? Thanks.

I just wanted to clarify these issues, as one of the creators of the comic. Dick Cheney we have no bad feelings about portraying as a villain, due to the fact that he operated and constructed organizations that completely broke many human rights violations including methods of torture and unjust warfare operations. I know a lot of people rag on Bush, but I think that Bush is sort of clueless to a lot of what Cheney did early on in his first and second terms. By the end of his presidency even Bush began to see Cheney’s proposals as being completely immoral, shown by the fact that in his later years of his term he began to over rule and over turn all of Cheney’s proposition (this can be found by doing a little reading of the Post or the Times, or listening to some public radio).

As for Putin, I harbor no ill will towards Russia or Putin. The man is a stern ruler, but he has brought his country from the depths of poverty and picked them up shaping one of the worlds largest super powers. We portrayed him as a “Villain” who is more interested in protecting his own country and securing his countries future, which he has stated in Newsweek and Times that his goal is to help reform his country (not to say that they are perfect every country has poverty and problems, but he has brought a thriving economy from the ruins of a poorer nation).

I encourage all discussion on these issues, as we can all learn from each other, but please, no blanket attack statements, if you guys have opinions, back them up with some reasoning.

thanks guys, hope you pick up the comic, keep your eyes out for the next issue, coming in a month or two.

Klaus

Hey, Klaus.

I’m no right-winger here, and I agree with everything you said of Dick Cheney, but you are far too kind to Putin in your comment. Putin has a lousy track on human rights issues and has a considerable authoritarian bent. That he took a country that was poor and shaped it into a superpower is hardly cause to excuse it, correct? Or should we praise a monster like Josef Stalin for making Soviet economy thrive too? (And no, not saying Putin is as bad as Stalin, but I think you know what I mean).

You can’t attack Cheney for being immoral, and then judge Putin only for his “efficiency.”

Hey Rene,

I’m curious about the specifics of Putin’s human rights issues. I am aware of his suppressing media outlets in his country, even to the point where some have accused the government of having killed people opposed to his policies (obviously that would be horrendous). However, I do hold Cheney in a league of his own, the man seems to harbor no single shred of dignity or virtue. I would be interested in hearing more about Putin’s lousy human rights track record (I know there is a class division and many poor slums still in Russia).

The comic has a satirical tip of the hat to the “Red scare” ear. I simply didn’t want people to think I was condoning any sort of Anti-Russian sentiment. But I am interested in hearing more information about Putin you might have. The information for the comic regarding Putin was specifically about his Arctic Sovereignty policies and diplomacy.

thanks again.