Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Sorry guys, I got into this review, and realized I had a lot to say about the comic book industry, characters, and how people perceive people who want more diversity.   It all does tie into Matt Murdock/Daredevil eventually.

I was looking up Marvel's latest sales and recently fell into the hell hole of Brietbart when I clicked on a link, not realizing it led there.   I read some of the comments and felt a bit ill, but the guest is: they believe that anyone who wants diversity and progressive storylines also hates the thought of white men as superheroes - um, not true - or anything that's conservative.   (Matt Murdock, who also goes by the name Daredevil, the Man Without Fear, is Catholic.   The reason I bring this up is Christianity and traditional family values - which often correlate to religious values - seem to be under attack.)   I've been thinking about this, as well as some breakdowns of who buys what.   (Messier than it seems: female led titles, and people of color as leads do lead to a more diverse audience, but they can also appeal to white liberals.   Furthermore, women don't only buy female led titles.   As a teen, I picked up comics that were mostly mixed teams - with, yes, quite a few women - or that had male leads, like Wolverine, whose titles I slavishly bought and followed.)

I do enjoy diversity, particularly when written by diverse creators, as I feel it gives me a point of view that I haven't read.   But I enjoy a lot of white male superheroes; have since I got dragged into a comic store as a girlfriend of a boy who loved comics.  I saw zero appeal at the time, until I stumbled upon both X-Men and Wolverine.   Wolverine was my first comic book love, and you don't forget that; I still have soft spot in my heart for him, although I'm not quite as fond of Old Man Logan in general.   Daredevil was the superhero I ended up connecting with the most; I own a bust of him, and of no other superhero.   (I thought I was going blind when I was in the teens, and was so serious about this I learned braille.   Daredevil, as a blind superhero - despite his abilities pretty much erasing his disability - not only appealed to me, but in a lot of ways gave me comfort and helped me overcome my fear.)   At that point, I needed that: white, black, blue, or yellow, man, woman, trans, gay, straight, Jewish, Christian, whatever.  I didn't care.  I just wanted that blind superhero, I needed it desperately.  

I don't even want Matt Murdock changed or replaced.   While I enjoy the new Wolverine, Laura Kinney doesn't have the same nostalgia, didn't make the same connection with me, as Logan did.   I like my white, male superheroes.   But I like a lot of the women superheroes, the black superheroes, the Muslim and Jewish superheroes.   (I am Jewish, just full disclosure here.)   Matt Murdock is slightly more conservative than other superheroes because of his Catholic upbringing - but he's not imposing that on anyone.   It doesn't become preachy.   And while I understand that many other series, as well as Daredevil, have become too liberal for some readers, they only have to stop reading.  Should Marvel go to a heavy conservative, much less alt-right, position, no doubt they'll have liberals dropping titles.   They have instead made the choice to keep politics out of their titles.   Probably a smart move: I enjoyed comics before they became politicized as they have now, and I liked them after - mostly because they were mouthpieces for how I felt.   (A lot of comic writers are liberals.   I suspect the comics will lean that way, even if they aren't as politicized.  I do wonder what will happen to The Champions, which was a heavily liberal mouthpiece - and which I loved for making all the statements I loved.   Slightly worried, but I will simply stop reading if it gets too weird for me, say so, and then move on unless I'm asked about it in the future.  Or I suspect this will happen.)

And what's weird is now I feel like I have to defend myself: no, no, I can have a vagina and like male superheroes!  Or maybe explaining why I can be white, and liberal, and still like white heroes.   And the thing is: if superheroes weren't interesting, I wouldn't read them.  I stopped reading the black, female Iron Man because I had too little time and energy to keep up with yet another title, and because I was already more invested in heroes like Daredevil, Moon Girl, Blue Beetle, and the like.  (Same  with Infamous Ironman, which starred another white boy, but I found myself more interested in because of the villain-to-hero aspect, and why that happened and how it happened.)   But, yes, the point is: I can like what I like.   I'm a little unsettled by everyone trying to unpack what I like and bottling it up by race or liberal or not.   That's not how it works all the time.  I liked Logan because he had to struggle to keep cool, because he had interesting journey, and I liked DD because the blindness resonated with my own fears.  I like Moon Girl because she hangs out with a huge red dinosaur - at least at first.   Now I love her for being smarter than so many of her peers and struggling with that, because I did, too.   I like superheroes for various reasons.  Or I have holes that I fill with literature: emotional, mental, or just holes in my knowledge.   I use different titles to fill those and I can't always tell what will strike my fancy.  

This storyline - which has been going on for a couple issues - is a confessional - quite literally.   Daredevil is finally revealing how the Purple Man - or his children or both - managed to get the whole world to forget he's Daredevil.   Not only that, every time I think I have a bead on what's happening, it changes.   I'm loving being continually surprised, without feeling like anything that happens is nonsensical.   Most of this takes place in Matt Murdock's mind while Zeb Kilgrave tries to manipulate him into doing the worst thing he can think of.   It's quite telling.   

But the ending.  Ah, the ending is the real kicker.