Bad to the bone

Since there are a lot of people who say that America is Mystery Babylon, it might be wise to turn to AA Allen about the matter. He’s one of those prophets who even said that America would get destroyed by Russia for its sins, maybe not in his lifetime, but most definitely in the future where he sees a dying Lady Liberty after getting both stabbed and drunk at the same time (this sounds like a certain Biblical passage about Mystery Babylon), how and why America produces so much morally corrupting media that are even widely accepted by the masses that such media get banned or censored elsewhere. Mind you Denmark even banned a movie featuring the late Shirley Temple, Australia banned Forever Amber where somebody said that the Almighty God would also find this unreadable, and so on in a way others like France and Britain didn’t get to with their own before. True France has Marquis de Sade who produced really vile stuff that got him banned and imprisoned, alongside other activities like killing people and abusing those who’re still alive. But it’s really shocking to think that a country like America, which sees itself as a very Christian nation, producing and popularising such filth that are widely enjoyed by many.

It’s bad enough that at some point in the 1970s when future singer Neil Tennant was working for the British branch of Marvel Comics, he and his crew not only had to localise the comics they were republishing for the British market but also censoring them too. You may know him as one half of the New Wave duo Pet Shop Boys, but even then it’s telling he was charged with making Marvel stories palatable for British readers, knowing the materials they’ll be exposed to would be indecent by their standards. One might wonder why Britain even instigated the Sindy doll, which was a reaction to the worldlier Barbie who’s based on cartoon prostitute Lilli. That does make one wonder if Danish band Aqua seemed uncannily prescient about the revelation that Barbie is based on a cartoon prostitute when they released the song ‘Barbie Girl’ with lyrics that were widely regarded as misogynistic at the time, even if they weren’t immediately aware of the fact back then and like The Prodigy, they might have created a very controversial song by accident and still be seen as sexist despite their best intentions. In the same year, no less! And almost into the new millennium to make matters worse!

America does have quite a knack for popularising and refining such media that their originators don’t get to that many western animations are actually American, for every Totally Spies and Oggy and the Cockroaches (both French animations), there are things like Justice League, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse Clubouse, Gravity Falls (itself no strange to certain allusions), Steven Universe and Power Puff Girls. But it could be that a number of other French animations aren’t widely exported and dubbed the way their American counterparts often got, which also goes for their print counterparts (cartooning/comics) that for most of the part, Americans are much likelier to recognise something like The Smurts but not Pussycat despite having the same author together known as Peyo. It’s similarly unlikely for American readers to have heard of things like Lanfeust, Titeuf and Gaston for most of the part, whereas a good number of Francophone readers have heard of things like Batman and Superman. Some Francophone readers have even heard of lesser known characters like X-Man and Wolfsbane (a female werewolf who’s known as Felina in French, also the name of another character, for some reason).

Maybe it’s not the case anymore given China’s and Russia’s resurgence to power, but with America being Mystery Babylon that it popularises or refines vices and new media alike, often combining the two together to create something as potently popular as it’s potently perilous. Then we get the fact that America is actually under judgement for its sins, for refusing to do good even when it’s told to (and when it does, it’s either surprisingly rare or mixed with the bad things it does) and stuff. It would be particularly frightening if America truly becomes everything it hates about China in the future, that even if it completely doesn’t for the meantime, there’s something strange about where America’s heading. Or perhaps maybe not as it’s always been a really double-minded country on the verge of civil instability at any point, not helped by its strongly bipartisan politics and it’s a place where a porn industry coexists with a substantial Christian media one, that makes for a really curious cultural/national character. Even if places like Denmark, Britain (though it will get judged and dissolved), France and Sweden aren’t any better, America is something else altogether.

If it’s the headquarters of Satan on Earth, then America can also be described as Hell on Earth. Hell in miniature in a way if there ever was one at all, one that makes one wonder how and why it got there. God will save a remnant like he did to those in Sodom and Gomorrah, he might do this to any Christian ministry still active in America. But in the near future that will be all there is them, along with what influence America continues to have in the future, however greatly diminished it will be in the future. It’s already getting undone in countries like Canada and Denmark, but this will be sped up and magnified in the future and may even reach the Philippines one day. That in the future, both the Philippines and Canada will be made highly unrecognisable from then on, where much American influence has been purged from these two. There may even come a time when almost nobody remembers American bands and musicians that much, or other American institutions like DC and Marvel, that it’s kind of shocking to think this might happen to me one day.

I might end up remembering very little of the American things I grew up on, so little that it’s practically mostly erased from my mind by then. I might not even be using English anymore this often in the future, mostly writing in Tagalog more fluently and often than at present. Another case of US influence getting greatly undone and removed wherever it went, wherever it was and wherever it is. Even then there’s no mistaking that America is quite possibly the most evil country on Earth and will be revoked for this.

The Mountain and The Mutant

I feel one reason why X-Men is more popular than say The Boondocks is that it’s far more palatable to white audiences in how it handles prejudice, especially if it’s conveyed through able-bodied white cartoon characters, combined with bouts of anti-black and anti-East Asian racism every now and then. The way The Boondocks handles racism, especially anti-black racism, is kind of realistic in the sense that even when you have well-intentioned characters like Cindy around, they still resort to racist preconceptions every now and then. It’s like knowing a lot about black people personally, but still resorting to racist ideas of them at the same time (it’s like this before). Or that white people may not be able to completely relate to what black people go through, especially in the western world, which explains Cindy’s cluelessness towards Jazmine’s feelings.

Characters like Jazmine and Riley struggle with internalised racism, but in their own respective ways, where the former denies her blackness and the one struggles to live up to such stereotypes from time to time himself. I don’t think the X-Men stories deal with this a lot, from my experience, but most X-Men writers like Chris Claremont are white. Add to that Claremont admitted he can’t relate to black people that much, to the point where it does explain why black characters are written the way they are in the X-Men canon, especially whenever he’s at the helm. Also in the X-Men canon you have characters like Emma Frost lashing out at South Asians for not understanding her, that and recurring themes of eugenics, where you have a guy named Mister Sinister doing a lot to engineer the perfect mutant. To the extent that X-Men could easily invite a white supremacist reading at any point.

With Storm being the good black woman who barely questions the white people she often hangs out with, Cheryl Lynn Eaton went on saying that she’s so disconnected from blackness that she should’ve been written as a weird black woman or something like this, though she’d eventually write a story featuring her as well. I’d say that she’s a good example of an exotic black person as written by a white person, where seems to be a kind of Orientalism aimed at black Africans that treats them as the antipode of white westerners. Albeit a black Africa that’s forever stuck in the past, whilst the west appears to be oh-so progressive (read civilised). Part of it has to do with that white westerners (until recently in Europe) aren’t really that constantly exposed to African media, let alone for a sustained period of time, as to truly know what else is going on in Africa itself.

White Americans’ exposure to African media is generally far more limited than in Europe, due to the latter’s closer association to Africa by prior colonisation. That’s why things like Afrobeats are popular in Britain, whereas this would be replaced by hip-hop and soul in America’s case. To think if Aaron McGruder had been British, the Freemans would’ve been from somewhere in the Caribbean, with Riley being really obsessed with grime and Jazmine would most likely have a posher name instead. And her father Tom DuBois would most likely be a recent African immigrant or at least the scion of one, someone who’d look down upon the unapologetically Caribbean Freemans to boot. But even then a British Boondocks wouldn’t be that massively palatable to white Britons the way the X-Men canon would for them just he same, despite the prominence of bands like Massive Attack and Lighthouse Family.

Ditto Shirley Bassey, Goldie, Morcheeba, Benjamin Zephaniah and the like. British or not, I guess black people can only succeed in the white mind if they’re into sports or music. But not truly relating to them as people, the way superpowered white cartoon characters do. Looking back more than a decade ago, I went about seeking nonstereotypical African representation in comics. Things might be better now in many ways, but it’s mostly not much different at DC and Marvel. There’s yet to be a Kenyan writer writing the adventures of Storm, the way there’s a Vietnamese American writer for a story featuring Karma. The Shujaaz magazines actually have comics in them, many Kenyans are bilingual in English and Swahili, one of them could’ve been hired to write a Storm story themself. But there are still no actual Africans at X-Men, much less writers, even if a Nigerian got to write a Black Panther story. Ditto making Kenyans write Storm stories themselves, even if they share her cultural background and experiences more.

Whilst The Boondocks might not be without its own faults at times, it does a better job at understanding antiblack racism. Cindy may not seem outright hateful towards black people, but that’s because she’s racist in another way. Meanwhile an X-Men story had a white woman like Emma Frost lash out at South Asians for not understanding her or something, where there are like only five actual Africans in the X-Men canon (Temper, Storm, Maggott and arguably both Apocalypse and his wife, Genesis, as they’re both Egyptians, Egypt is also an African country by the way) and stuff. Temper’s from Nigeria, Storm’s from Kenya, Maggott’s from South Africa and both Apocalypse and Genesis are from Egypt, whereas X-Men has a lot of white characters from actual western countries.

The Wolverines and Northstar are from Canada; the original five members plus the Guthrie family, Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, arguably Professor Xavier and Sage, Rogue, Gambit, the rest of the Summers family, Elixir, Mercury, the rest of the Hellfire Club, Firestar, Hellion, Cypher, Lorna Dane and Multiple Man are from the US. Moving onto Europe, characters like Rahne Sinclair, the Braddocks, Pete Wisdom, Quentin Spire and Chamber are from Britain, the Cassidys are from Ireland, both Nightcrawler and Mystique are from Germany, Pyro’s from Australia and if one argues, characters like the Rasputins, Omega Red and arguably Darkstar are from Russia. There’s a viral tweet stating that the most prevalent X-Men characters are white, able-bodied people. It’s kind of telling that white North Americans, white Europeans and white Russians significantly outnumber those from real African countries by a lot.

You’d really have to look in vain to find prominent Senegalese, Moroccan, Algerian, Ethiopian, Namibian, Rwandan, Tanzanian, Eritrean, Cameroonian, Ivorian, Malian, Ghanaian and Libyan mutants in the X-Men canon, because there are practically none at all and still none to this day. There’s really only one African Caribbean mutant that I think of and she’s Cecilia Reyes, a doctor and X-Men’s African Caribbean representation is also lacking, much less those from actual Caribbean countries to boot. So the tweet’s point still stands that white people from real white-majority countries significantly outnumber those from both real African countries and from the Caribbean, which means the search for more African representation is going to be hard unless if people turn to African media more instead.

But African media will feature African characters and mindsets by default, because they are made for African audiences in mind. The same thing can be said of Caribbean media, but African Americans are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are highly influential in America, but they’re also marginalised and ostracised there. The Boondocks cartoons show this where there is white awareness of prominent black celebrities through the character of Cindy, but there’s not much real compassion for what African Americans go through. Then you have black people struggling with internalised racism that they either deny that they’re kind of visibly black (Jazmine in a way as she’s biracial) or struggle to live up to the stereotypes they’ve internalised themselves (Riley), then you have those who’re truly aware of the racist portrayals black people face like Huey, Riley’s brother.

I don’t think most X-Men writers (who are white) will get these themselves, if Chris Claremont’s any indication, so whenever they address prejudice it’s almost always directed at able-bodied white characters, and more specifically white Americans to boot. But it’s telling which is more palatable to white people and one which isn’t.

Commercialised Cartoons And Spiritual Compromises

Bill Watterson is kind of well-known for not extensively licencing his own cartoon strip, Calvin and Hobbes, for merchandising and while it’s not nonexistent, it’s pretty sparse at best. Compare this to what Charles Schulz’s own Peanuts has, which got licenced a lot to a wide variety of merchandise, ranging from toys and video games, to fabric and clothing. It made Charles Schulz rich but one would wonder if his indulgence of the world would’ve lead to certain problems, whether if it’s his affair with another woman, him losing faith in God over time or whatever those are, that I feel would’ve compromised the messages found in the Peanuts cartoons even further. Bill Watterson is definitely not a saint, but he’s never known for having an extramarital affair, he’s secular enough to live in ignorant bliss.

Maybe it’s not blissful but I guess he never was religious enough to backslide eventually, the same way it did for Charles Schulz and the more Sparky indulged in the world, the more he lost touch of God eventually. When it comes to licencing products for merchandising, it’s not wrong to do this in theory and to some extent in practise, though I feel there needs some boundaries in what can be sold and made into merchandising. Not just to avoid or minimise the dilution of the story’s message, but also to preclude or further contributing to certain problems like idolatry (which I also struggle with), which Schulz may’ve unwittingly played a hand into, the more successful the Peanuts cartoons got. Like supposing I created a cartoon strip called Clive and it involves a civet named Clive and his friends, this cartoon gets popular but I wouldn’t want further merchandising to happen.

One is to keep readers from making idols out of the characters and stories, two the Bible doesn’t have a high opinion of both consumerism and materialism (wisely seeing how material goods fade or disappear over time), three if any merchandise were to occur it would have to be restricted to a handful of items. Something like just fabric, notebooks, video games, toys, books and piggy banks, which is just about it for any Clive merchandise that I can think of. Also four, I don’t want small kids to choke on something by accident, so there’s going to be no Clive nendoroids. All the Clive toys are just plush or soft toys, big enough to not be swallowed by a child by accident, or a dog for another matter. No Clive keychains and whatsoever of this kind, to preclude any possible choking accidents from happening. So whatever Clive merchandise that exists is going to be paltry by design for these reasons.

It’s pretty much in the middle between the extensive merchandising of Peanuts and the sparse merchandising of Calvin and Hobbes, but I feel the way Peanuts turned out for Schulz became something of a curse in disguise for him. Like the more successful Schulz got with the Peanuts cartoons and the associated merchandising, the more he did things that are unacceptable. Whether if it’s him being okay with one of his children converting to a heretical denomination, himself having an affair with another woman, or backsliding over time that perhaps Peanuts’s own success trapped him into a web of sin. Commercial success seemed to lead to spiritual compromises for Schulz, leading to certain consequences like dying from cancer or something. Death may not always be a weapon against God, since it’s sometimes something he uses to draw others closer to him.

But in the case with Schulz and Peanuts, despite starting out strong in God, it seemed Schulz lacked any spiritual integrity to minimise the problems that arose from his cartoons’ success at the very least. If the love of money is the root of all evil, then it shouldn’t be surprising why Sparky turned out the way he did. He was okay with his cartoons being endlessly mined for merchandising, but his spiritual life faltered over time that he declared himself to be a secular humanist towards the end of his life. What good is it for somebody like Charles M Schulz to gain commercial success, yet forfeit his spiritual integrity for this? It would be horrifying to think of Sparky as suffering in hell, tormented by his demons, but that’s unfortunately where he is in eternity. A man so spiritually compromised as to go further in his sins, he certainly wasn’t that abusive to his wife and family, but he did things he shouldn’t have done.

Moreso that he created stories that constitute a chunk of people’s formative years, that perhaps doing a Watterson would’ve proved better for his spiritual health. Charles M Schulz sunk into a sunk cost fallacy when his comic strips got really successful, at any point where he could’ve bothered to limit the merchandising to things that really matter spiritually speaking, the spiritual message in those cartoons got diluted over time. We don’t have frequent stories of Peanuts dealing with the End Times, consequences of sin and others, even when these could’ve just as a Peanuts film openly retold the story of the birth of Jesus Christ on Earth. There are nary this much Peanuts cartoons about the problems with witchcraft and the like, so it seemed the spirituality of the Peanuts cartoons was on its way to getting emptied and vacated.

Spirituality might as well be an afterthought, compared to the extensive merchandising it got. If there’s something to learn from Charles M Schulz is to unlearn his bad habits that lead to his backsliding towards the end of his life, never prioritise the love of the world over the love for God, forsake the love of money to be closer to him. This mistake led to more mistakes, leading to a gradual dilution of the cartoons’ spiritual messages. Peanuts may have gotten more commercially successful, but at the expense of Schulz’s soul and closeness to God.

Diversity and Comics

Not so much in the DEI sense of the word, though it does come in the lines of it, but more in the sense of topics being told and offered. The problem is that the comics industry is largely patronised by geeks, so the topics offered tend to be things that interest them a lot. Like if you really want to read a comic book that’s about dog predation, you’re bound to be almost out of luck because you’re more likely to encounter yet another superhero story or something similar. These kinds of stories certainly do exist but they are rather rare, same with something like church cats and though there are those that come close, however such treatments are rare in the world of cartooning.

Although regular old cartooning does address a wider variety of topics and subject matters than most comic books do, but comic books make up a substantial number of cartoon books being published at this point. Not necessarily always a majority but rather something that makes up a good portion of the cartoon sector within the publishing industry, that even if you run into books containing cartoons you’re also likely to run into something like The Flash or My Hero Academia. Even if these kinds of stories risk being off-putting to those who don’t care about superpowered battles at all, whether or not they actually dislike those but still.

This is one diversity that deserves to be talked about, though some suspect that part of the problem is that many comic book cartoonists and writers aren’t this well-read. Not that they are unintelligent but that they have almost nothing else to tell stories with, which is why it’s easier to run into retreads of Superman’s backstory than to tell stories about Aquaman stopping dogs from eating turtle eggs. This may even be encouraged by editors themselves, who are afraid of going off-brand with these kinds of stories. If they did, they risk facing reader backlash or something like that. So there’s one possible reason why you don’t see more stories featuring the latter subject, it’s too controversial and divisive.

Given how DC and Marvel are so reliant on appealing to their most devout readers that they can’t be bothered to go left field, lest they risk alienating their biggest patrons. Something like this has already happened multiple times before, so this is why these two are increasingly cautious with the sort of stories they publish and condone. So they can’t be bothered to take further risks without alienating their most loyal readers a lot, given these two are practically cult brands at this point in time. Given this has developed over a long period of time as to be nearly inseparable.

Though both of them used to publish a much wider variety of stories being told before, but because DC and Marvel have grown so closely entwined with superheroes that could explain why despite sharing the same owner as Hanna Barbera does, the new Captain Planet comic had to be outsourced to another publisher. No surprise that Dynamite also publishes the Space Ghost comics as of late, since I feel Warner Bros sees DC as largely for the DC world. This could’ve been the case before as Jonny Quest had a comic book published before but not by DC, not to mention Captain Planet first appeared in stories as published by DC’s rival Marvel.

Admittedly, this was before Warner Brothers bought Turner Communications, but it’s not hard to see how and why Warner Bros sees DC Comics as a brand separate from its other brands. Or for another matter, how Disney sees Marvel for the same reason for most of the part. Even if Disney now owns Marvel, Disney comics proper are usually done and published outside of Marvel. Marvel is a separate brand and is treated as such for most of the part, with Disney comics being outsourced to other publishers who’re lucky enough to not only have but also retain the Disney licence for long.

I remember somebody going by the name of Jed Alexander said that these two prioritise brand consistency over anything else, not that it’s wrong to run a business but when comic books constitute a huge chunk of the brand’s shared universe it can be hard to break out of it. DC’s very own Vertigo lasted for a generously long time but then it gave way to DC Black Label, which emphasises more on recognisable DC characters this time. So this goes to show you how Warner Bros doesn’t see DC Comics as its comics publishing division, but rather as a brand to maintain and take care of.

Not that there’s anything wrong with managing brands, this explains why DC has some expectations to adhere to. So even if it were possible to pitch a comic book series that tackles the problem of dog predation, or one featuring Aquaman addressing the same it would be too controversial for DC Comics to go through so it’ll get rejected right away. So this means that even if you have comics writers who have something to put on the table, it wouldn’t be accepted immediately if it’s actually too divisive and controversial. Then you have comics writers who know nothing else to write about, so it’s easier to retell Superman’s backstory than to write a story where Aquaman confronts dogs eating turtle eggs.

This is a real problem that scientists and journalists alike know, though it’s something that rarely shows up in comics if present. It could be a combination of both where a number of writers and editors alike are hesitant towards things they’re not particularly used to, something like the subject of dogs attacking wildlife, that it’s something they wouldn’t willingly enjoy addressing in any way. So such stories aren’t just rejected but also never addressed at all at worst, so it’s not going to be something that you’d ordinarily encounter in the DC Universe. Superpowered battles are de rigeur, having Aquaman confront dog predation would be too out of the blue.

So this could be partly why comics and especially western comics aren’t diverse in terms of the kinds of stories being offered, not necessarily in the lights of DEI but in the sense of stories about the Medici and well, the Gucci family. Maybe these do show up, though rarely at that. It’s kind of bad when there are more prose nonfiction books about the Medici, than there are comics featuring the same (let alone outside of Italy, since these could exist) that speaks volumes about the things both writers and editors condone. I can’t name a single comic book that I know of that features something like the Rothschilds, which tells you about how comic books have largely come to pander to a minority.

This may not always be the case, but it makes sense why comics are the way they are. Like many of them are often written by people who have little else to say about the matter, it almost always relates back to geek culture in some way or another. Maybe not always but it’s often like this with many comics at this point. This is getting better at this point, though it remains to be seen if there’ll be more comics authors who are interested in these sorts of things. It is getting better though it’s more widespread outside of superhero comics and possibly outside of Anglophone comics, see also Japanese comics (AKA manga) to give you an idea of what others are talking about.

Though unfortunately, it seems Anglophone comics are hamstrung by many things. But most especially a near-overreliance on familiar brands like DC, Marvel and the like, that makes it risk-averse to certain concepts and themes in some regards really.

Geek-cartoony

A word that I use to describe the way geeks do cartoony and the like, though it does vary in style it’s got more to do with the overall atmosphere, themes and air it deploys and carries. To give you the difference between geek-cartoony and normie-cartoony, I present to you these illustrations.

This is normie-cartoony as taken from this website, not that it’s any less fannish but it’s not so greatly fannish compared to geek-cartoony and it reaches out to a wider audience. It’s not that fannish because it doesn’t indulge in geek fan interests that much, so it’s unlikely to make a lot of references to things geeks are into. Another example of normie-cartoony would be this one from the New Yorker.

Though it does overlap with geek-cartoony, the difference has more to do with the overall theme and air. Even if it does have anthropomorphic animals, it doesn’t necessarily target furries as much as the band Kiss doesn’t necessarily target Goths even if both dress in black. Geek-cartoony tends to uniquely address things pertaining to geek culture in some form or another.

Notice this one from Penny Arcade, it’s actually part of a cartoon that addresses game development. There are games that do appeal to normies, often the least complex on a computer as well as mobile games. But there are games that do appeal to geeks a lot, these are often more complex as well as delve in subject matters that appeal to geeks. Something like Overwatch (for want of a better example).

Sometimes geek-cartoony and normie-cartoony look indistinguishable at first, which gets evident whenever these are drawn realistically or identically. But the difference lies in the subject matter and overall air it carries, this is precisely the difference between something like The Eltingville Club and Doonesbury. Doonesbury targets a much wider audience, so the themes are things relevant to the general public.

The Eltingville Club addresses things relevant only to geeks, though it’s possible for a geek cartoonist like Zerocalcare to appeal to a wider audience. But the difference here is that even if Zerocalcare puts in geek references every now and then, he still manages to appeal to a wider audience because he addresses and portrays experiences outside of geek culture. That’s why in addition to being a skilled writer, his comics have become phenomena in his native Italy.

The comics he writes don’t always centre on geek culture, despite the references so it’s able to appeal to a far wider audience than than Eltingville Club’s author does. So geek cartooning is highly insular because of the subject matter it addresses and portrays, the stories will always be lost on those who aren’t big on geek culture in any way. It’s also more likely to portray characters who are such fans they might as well be glorified fanfiction self-inserts, as it is suspected with DC’s Tim Drake.

Though it could be argued that normie-cartooning also portrays fannish characters, these characters are much likelier to be into things the general public’s into if at all. If you wanted me to be very honest, a lot of geek pandering comics lack humanity. I’m not saying geeks are antisocial or something, but that the subject matter’s largely for people who’re really into geek culture. Yes I have read comics, but as I get older I get less involved in geekdom.

So these kinds of comics don’t appeal to me as much as it should, but I feel these kinds of comics (and the cartooning) are things relevant to such a narrow demographic that I get immediately left out. Not saying that geeks are massive-shut ins, but that the kind of stories they’re into aren’t always things I like reading. Likewise with regards to stylisation and if one wills cartooning, there’s a greater deal of bombast and a fannish air not found in normie-cartooning.

Witness the difference between two Canadian illustrators, Mary Brianne McKay and Drake Tsui where I feel although the former could be a geek herself (or at least geek-adjacent to some extent) her art’s not that big into geek culture. In Japan, there’s a discussion between what is moe/otaku pandering and what isn’t. There should’ve been a similar discussion outside of Japan, especially when it comes to the peculiarities of geek cartooning and illustration.

I feel there needs one because sometimes the way geeks do cartoons/cartooning and art is sometimes different from what normie illustrators and cartoonists do, which has more to do with the overall air and theme though sometimes it’s evident in how it’s drawn. I guess why the Japanese have this discussion because they immediately know the difference between what is otaku–pandering and what isn’t, especially when it comes to anything moe.

Moe being something that immediately attracts otaku attention, something like cat ears and thigh high tights. It’s possible to deotaku cat eared characters, but to successfully do so would be to allow a wider range of influences into such stories. I have actually done cartoons featuring kemonomimi characters, but they act exactly like normal humans. So there is a difference between mine and the usual kemonomimi manga, which has them act like animals.

(I pretty much blame this on liking Carl Barks comics.)

Geek-cartooning frequently addresses and portrays things geeks are into, not so much that they’re autistic but such stories are full of in-jokes only geeks would get. But this is me rambling on what makes a cartoon geeky or not.

Looks more feminine this way

In the case with superhero comics, for some cartoonists, giving female characters big breasts is sometimes just their way of making sure the characters look female because if they gave them well-developed pecs and smaller breasts they’d look androgynous. Not that busty muscular women can’t exist, the best example I can think of is Rasa von Werder/Kellie Everts. But she’s pretty much the only one I can think of at that, let alone one who isn’t fat but breasts have fat so a smaller chest often has less fat in it.

As I said before, big breasts might simply be their way of making sure they look female. But in the case with many very muscular women, they still have breasts though it’s tricky to pull off because of the way they look. Giving them fatty breasts is easier to draw, than it is to draw a muscular female chest. A muscular female chest is still female, but the breasts are shaped differently due to a combination of both well-developed pecs and low body fat. One of my siblings said that Lisa Lyon had square breasts.

They don’t have the rounded shape typical breasts have, so I guess they’d be really to pull off because of the way they’re shaped. Let alone without experiencing backlash, so it’s going to be tough trying to draw a very believably muscular woman without sacrificing something. Especially if she’s not particularly busty.

Time goes by so slowly

As to why cartoon characters don’t age, judging by what I’ve consumed (which are comic strips), it’s more to do with that comic strips tend to act as observations and compilations of common human behaviours and circumstances as well as commentaries on various problems and issues affecting people. The characters may not age much, but they still manage to be relatable to people. While it’s possible to have a character age and still be relatable, comic strips by large tend to function as commentaries on people whether through humour, anthropomorphised animals or whatever that floats their boat. Interestingly with many comic strips, it’s not that they lack continuity at all.

But that whatever continuity exists takes a backseat to commentary on or observations of people and issues, as it is with many comic strips and this is also why DC and Marvel writers became so fixated with continuity. It’s not even so much about the illusion of change, but rather having lost the ability to make characters relatable to a large number of people whilst keeping them timeless at the same time. That’s why you have constant fixations over whether or not a story is in continuity, not whether if the story has anything to say about common human situations and circumstances like having a nagging parent (as in Cathy) or social issues like in Pugad Baboy*.

Sometimes the characters do age, but even then such stories don’t lose their ability to be relatable to many people. Even when comic strips aren’t always funny (whether if it’s funny to you’s up to anybody’s guess), they still manage to be relatable to a lot of people. It could be trying to find the right clothes, annoying relatives or pets stealing food as it is with Simo and Friends*. They may not always be funny, but they’re relatable in a way superhero comics fail to be. They can age, even in real time, if cartoonists want to. But they’re always bound to comment on or observe something one way or another.

*These are both Philippine comic strips.

The Lack of Faith of Charles M Schulz

Charles M Schulz is the man behind the Peanuts cartoon strips, he has shaped the childhood of many people who grew up reading those (including myself). At some point he taught classes at Sunday school and even demanded a television crew to allow one of his characters to utter Biblical phrases there or something, but along the way he lost faith in God the more fame got into his head. Or was it this simple? I had a period of backsliding before, which lasted for just two years.

It took some events to get me back to God, most notably the blog Spirit Reports, and again in 2022 when I was sinning a lot or something. But I think the case with Charles M Schulz may not be a matter of simple backsliding, given there’s this person I know online who has taught Sunday school classes before but has a habit of writing smutty Backstreet Boys fanfiction a lot. Despite being a mother of two even, which makes it worse as there’s the chance of her children finding such pornographic materials by mistake.

Or one of their classmates doing it by accident, which means perhaps Charles Schulz’s faith in God may not have been that deep. Perhaps punctuated by his later affairs with a younger woman in the 1970s, despite being the author of one of the most popular children’s stories to date. Quite sadly, this got reflected in some of the cartoons he authored after the affair was known. Schulz was certainly a talented man, but as I said before, his faith in God may’ve been rather shallow.

I’m not saying he’s a closet Satanist or something, but that his faith in the Lord wasn’t that deep which got reflected in the way he pursues relationships with people. If this woman whom I’m talking about likely doesn’t have a deep relationship with God, so did he and that’s probably why despite teaching Sunday school lessons he turned out to either be a backslider or perhaps hardly had any deep faith in God to begin with.

His Peanuts cartoons are globally successful, but his personal life was marked by affairs and failure.

Review of Artists Part Two

Edgar Tadeo

One of the many Philippine cartoonists who have worked on American superhero comics for some time, though unfortunately he comes from the superhero school of illustration/drawing where the women have really big breasts and narrow waists while the men look like bodybuilders. Even if not everybody who works in superhero comics do these kinds of things, some like Bob McLeod don’t do busty women that much. But it’s one school of drawing that I’ve noticed, which kind of emerged at some point in the 20th century and has greatly influenced later Philippine cartoonists.

I actually think some Philippine cartoonists exceed their North American counterparts in depicting such gendered characters and forms at all, consider John Becaro whenever he draws men and women. It’s similar to what Mr Tadeo does, which proves my point that later Philippine cartoonists have not only aped the North American superhero school of drawing figures but exceeded them in some respects. Or at least never outgrew drawing such figures at all, since some contemporary North American cartoonists don’t do exaggerated figures much these days.

Not saying that they are bad cartoonists and illustrators, it’s just that they never stopped drawing these figures. Well it can be argued that there’s a fine line between a timeless aesthetic and something that’s rather dated, but I personally feel since many of the Philippine cartoonists who entered the North American comics industry in recent memory entered during the 1990s and early to mid 2000s so they’re still hung up on that style. Newer superhero cartoonists don’t do these kinds of figures anymore, so it seems even if it may not be true for all of them but still.

Shae Beagle

They are one of those cartoonists that certain pundits say subscribe to the Tumblr school of drawing figures, that’s an aesthetic where cartoony meets moe and diversity. Trying to be both cute and diverse at the same time isn’t that easy to do, especially if it involves trying to portray something that’s not traditionally cute. There are some people who find their drawing style cute, I guess it’s different strokes for different people. It should be noted that somebody like Mx Beagle have gone on the record saying that they didn’t grow up with superhero comics because they couldn’t relate to the characters there or something, something they share with another writer whom I forget her name.

I guess one of the advantages is that they wouldn’t be so beholden to gendered stereotypes the way many superhero cartoonists have been subjected to, well until recently that is but with them being nonbinary this might be one of the reasons why they’re not too drawn to superhero comics. I guess it’s got to do with why so many superheroines are given small waists and big breasts, while the menfolk are drawn like hulking bodybuilders. That may not be entirely correct, but it’s still a good enough guess why they’re not too drawn to superheroes, especially whenever they adhere to gendered stereotypes.

Admittedly, it kind of runs into Tumblr syndrome. But then again, they were never beholden to superheroes so they wouldn’t be beholden to superhero aesthetics either. This gets reflected in the way they draw characters and stories, these characters kind of share their mindset and sensibility. Well, that’s something to consider since superhero cartoonists (well the older ones at that) continue to draw in very binary, gendered modes though you could also find this in romance novels though for very different reasons.

Merchandising and licencing

If I were to do a comic strip that does become successful with many readers, to prevent a backlash I would have to restrict the merchandise to only a doable number of things. These involve notebooks, plush toys, cotton fabrics, pad paper, pillows, posters, cakes, jams, balloons, toothpaste, balls, piggy banks and bags. I leave out keychains and smaller figurines because I don’t want small children choking on them, even by accident and the same goes for pets. I put cotton fabrics, pad paper and notebooks because these are very useful, the latter two for writing and the former for garments and the like.

With fabric, you can turn it into almost anything you want and need. It could be blouses, dresses or pillow cases. It could even be made into blankets, if only the fabric were wide enough. But even then, a comic strip that inspires useful merchandise is something to be happy about especially if it’s something that can be made into wearable garments instead of having to buy clothes with the characters’ likenesses. This isn’t unique to this comic strip as I do recall a Hello Kitten patterned cotton fabric in VC Trading in 2019, there were also fabrics with Disney characters in them.

But I think just by sticking to fabrics (well in here) leads to more unlimited possibilities than one would with pre-made fabrics either featuring the characters’ likenesses or based on what the characters wear, in that you could make your own dress with those fabrics. You could also make your own blouse or skirt with them, the sky’s the limit with them and all the more appealing if the fabrics’ patterns don’t just feature the characters themselves but also on the outfits they sport.

It would be a good business to bank on those fabrics since it’s something that can be made into endless clothing themselves, they could either be sold in shops or be kept for personal use. This proves my point that creating outfits out of these fabrics is more appealing than buying premade clothes based on either what the characters themselves wear or featuring their likenesses. But then again, other than foodstuffs, plush toys and balloons I prefer these products to be useful and perennial as these can be made into a near-infinite variety of things.

It wouldn’t spawn as much merchandise as Peanuts and Garfield have, since I don’t want a backlash to my comic strip and I don’t want it to spawn so much merchandise that would accidentally hurt somebody. I also don’t want it to spawn that much useless or redundant merchandise, especially when you have a big variety of fabrics to work with that can be made into outfits and blankets. Things like books, bags, food, stationery, plush toys and fabrics are fine; figurines, keychains, ceramics and others are out because I don’t want small children and pets choking on them and that ceramics break easily.

I’m not entirely against merchandising, but I don’t want my brand to spawn so much redundant merchandise. Not because some of them are useless and unneeded, especially when it comes to fabrics but also because I don’t want to encourage a very materialistic lifestyle. Not that it’s wrong to have something that you like, I don’t really want the brand to encompass things I don’t like or approve of such as figurines, ceramics and calendars. But that’s also because I don’t want to provide much illustrations for other things, there’s only so much that I can handle.

Again, I’m not entirely against merchandising and licencing but even then I don’t want a lot of other products based on my comic strip for whatever reason. So it’s just limited to a handful of things to get by, some of them are in fact very useful. Somewhat more than when I wrote this, but not as much as other franchises/brands have. Especially when garments aren’t included, if because with fabrics you could just make clothes based on them. Anyways, this minimises or even averts the risk of brand dilution especially when it’s something that involves things the brand’s not built upon.

Particularly in light of things its creator doesn’t approve of.