CrushingKrisis.com

Posts from CrushingKrisis.com, the longest-running blog in Philadelphia - plus, occasional reblogs from my favorite Tumblrs. You may be looking for my guide to collecting comics (especially X-Men).

[crushingkrisis]

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E1

Wow. Just… wow. The first episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 2 was like the summer blockbuster movie of drag: it had tons of flashy effects and big twists, but the ending wasn’t much of a surprise. The blockbuster status isn’t just because of a cast of 10 mostly-flawless queens, but because the show finally let…

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E1 was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2 Pre-Season

The second season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars starts tonight on both Logo and VH1! That means we all get a second glorious run of weekly drag queens this year, only this time its starring 10 season queens we already know and who I largely love. However, not ever All-Star can enter the Hall of Fame.…

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2 Pre-Season was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

two zoos in two days (and one terrifying capybara)

E’s sister Jenny has stayed with us many times since we’ve lived in this house and they’ve all been pretty boring. This is completely paradoxical, as Jenny is a professional museumologist (I should probably ask her what the real word is) and world traveller who loves nothing more than a zoo – or, even a…

two zoos in two days (and one terrifying capybara) was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Review: Netflix's Stranger Things, Season One

As with the release of any of Netflix’s “bing it all at once” television seasons, this weekend my social feed went from a stray mention of Stranger Things on Friday to a steady stream on Saturday as more and more people began to sample the eight-episode thriller. I didn’t want to be a late adopter this…

Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things, Season One was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Tumblr, I have an important question for you:

How are you reading CK on Tumblr?

I read every post in full!

I read the posts I enjoy, including the "Read More."

I mostly just skim them as I scroll through my follows.

 pollcode.com free polls

Thanks for your feedback! I'm concerned that Tumblr simul-posting might be hurting my Page Rank on some topics, but I also like being able to share things with you here where you spend most of your time. I don't want to make any big decisions without more data to back them up.

[crushingkrisis]

This is not a review of Ghostbusters and I don't like things that are funny

Last night Jake, Ashley, and I enjoyed an acoustic rehearsal on Ashley’s roof deck (sans Zina, whose drums would never make it up the four flights of stairs) followed by a band trip to see Ghostbusters! Long story short: Ghostbusters was a slightly better-than-average summer blockbuster. Almost entire unrelated to that fact: I loved it. I think…

This is not a review of Ghostbusters and I don’t like things that are funny was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

New Collecting Guide: Marvel's Cloak & Dagger (and an explanation of who they are)

I’m happy to share The Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order! It includes every Cloak & Dagger appearance ever published – both together and apart – with notes on trade-reading order and the importance of guest appearances. I know what most of your reactions will be – “Who the hell are Cloak & Dagger?” They’re not…

New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger (and an explanation of who they are) was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Cover songs or originals - which are easier to play?

We held an unusual rehearsal in our dining room today – three hours of running through the Smash Fantastic cover song repertoire, but as fronted by my Arcati Crisis co-writer and BFF Gina.

An incredibly rare, one-of-a-kind shot of the first time Gina and I performed music together on stage (also the first time I sang solo in public!) This was in 1997 at Masterman, peforming “Sharks Can’t Sleep” by Tracy Bonham. From left to right: me, Joanna, Lucy, and Gina.

The strange arrangement is the result of being asked to play a big benefit show during a week where Ashley will be on vacation. It’s a fun show and we love donating our time to it, so Ashley gave her blessing for us to play it with a fill-in vocalist.

Despite you all knowing Gina primarily for her amazing songwriting and intuitive harmony vocals, she is an awesome interpreter and karaoke veteran. It helps that the rest of the band – Jake, Zina, and I – is the same for both Smash Fantastic and Arcati Crisis.

It was a rollicking rehearsal full of surprises – for example, after over 20 years of friendship I found out that Gina loves “Because The Night” as much as I do, but she does not quite know how to sing Queen’s “Somebody To Love.” We also played a rare pair of our own “Holy Grail” and “Better” with Gina on vocals but not on guitars!

The most interesting part for me was the conversation while we packed up. As we were coiling wires, Gina mentioned off-handedly that she found getting the cover songs right to be much more challenging than playing in an original band.

That took me by surprise! Gina is a confident, experienced singer – I would never expect she would be stressed by cover songs. In fact, I invited her to fill in because I thought she’d find singing two hours of covers a relief in comparison to the stress of shredding through our own songs. However, her reasoning resonated: when you’re covering a song, there’s an existing standard to be held to. As great an interpreter as you may be, you’ve got to get the lyrics right and hit the expected high notes before people will even begin to consider if your performance is any good.

I know that’s the reality, but I’ve never considered it that way. For me, cover songs are a fun vacation from the intense challenge of playing original music.

With cover songs, you simply have to capture the spirit of a song people know well. While Jake tends to hew closely to the real basslines of songs, Zina and I approximate their drum fills and guitar riffs. It’s about verisimilitude. If you give a crowd a hint of the real thing, they don’t notice all the elements you leave out.

That works in our favor on songs for which we can’t quite assemble all the elements of a recording, but it also works in our favor – our covers of “Bang Bang” and “Uptown Funk” dress up the more bare originals considerably with additional passing chords, while even on a classic like “The Way You Make Me Feel” Jake has installed a more propulsive bassline that is only implied in the original.

The first time Gina and I played guitar together in front of people! This was in 1998 at Masterman, playing U2’s “With Or Without You” for the departing senior class. Psychedelic water damage courtesy of my Sophomore year apartment.

By contrast, playing originals is terrifying! The only context the audience has are the notes coming from the stage. There is no earned good will or existing song that will put a smile on their face. And, even when you’re in top shape with a set of good songs, it’s impossible to know when they’re good enough.

It’s like doing yoga – you can always challenge yourself to sink deeper into a pose. I have songs that are nearly 20 years old that I still haven’t mastered playing; I found extra harmony on one just a few weeks ago that makes it sound more like itself than it ever has before.

Gina doesn’t have that anxiety. To her, an original song is something entirely under her control not only to interpret, but to shape and transform. The entire point of the thing is that it belongs to you and it might continue to evolve. That’s nothing to be afraid of – it’s a joy.

I was so intrigued that as best-friends and co-writers Gina and I could differ on this point, but it explains a lot about our relative comfort over the years as performers. There’s no disputing that I’m more vivid and energetically myself on stage in Smash Fantastic, just as Gina is obviously transfixing in Arcati Crisis when she settles into playing an original like “Song for Mrs. Schroeder.”

It will be an interesting eight weeks of getting 30 songs ready for this cover gig, but I think I’m even more intrigued by what Gina and I will know about ourselves afterward when we turn our attention back to originals for the first time in three years.

Cover songs or originals – which are easier to play? was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

our supersized supermarkets

I’ve been thinking about groceries, scale, and the American way.

Last night, while our daughters napped under J’s watch, Lindsay and I absconded to Wegmans for a quick shopping trip slash Pokémon catching session. Yes, you read that right – we had an hour to ourselves and we went grocery shopping for amusement. To be fair, Wegmans is definitely like an amusement park for hungry adults recovering from five hours swimming in a lake with two boisterous young ladies.

You could fit an entire French supermarket into this Wegman’s photo. Photo by Flickr User Seuss. 2008, some rights reserved.

I know I’m a little late to coming around to Wegmans – heck, Lindsay grew up shopping at one! Even as I marveled at how Wegmans has every possibly thing (Six different kinds of raw shrimp to choose from! Three different kinds of Tahini! Every single organic vegetable! Liquor and Beer!), I also reflected on the very middle/upper-class American condition of being excited to visit a grocery store that’s as much about leisure as it is about subsistence.

My grocery situation as a small child was all about subsistence. For deli and packs of cigarettes, we had a tiny Vietnamese bodega on our corner, and for other groceries a smallish Stop and Save and Shop or Something on the next block that accepted our food stamps. I remember being mystified by the cheap brands of frozen foods like waffles or steaks that I had never heard of before – because they didn’t advertise on TV.

When an Acme was installed on 80th street it was big news, and the long aisles full of expanded cereal choices and real meat counter seemed like luxuries – likely combined with the fact that we had graduated from welfare with my mom getting her degree and could more readily afford such things.

In college we alternated between a newly-opened Fresh Grocer, which was like a slightly watered-down Whole Foods, and a local Thriftway that Lindsay, Erika and I re-christened “Theftway” for its sometimes-shady customers and peculiar aisle arrangement. Theftway was great for getting cheap name brands, but for anything special, fresh, or healthy we’d take the four block walk to Fresh Grocer.

On our honeymoon the tiny Paris apartment E and I were renting had an impossibly small miniature refrigerator, which meant we needed to restock our food options every other day. That wasn’t so unusual, and the local grocery store reinforced that – it was no bigger than a suburban Wawa and didn’t contain a single super-sized portion of anything. Juices topped out in half gallons, and paper towels came in a max three-rolls-per-pack. When it came to wide varieties, the selection focused on fresh things like cheeses, breads, and juices rather than 100 different kinds of cereal.

We loved it. Bigger doesn’t always have to be better.

Now my local haunt is an impossibly large Giant, which has nearly put our local Acme out of business – it looks dismal by comparison. Not coincidentally, it’s now completely devoid of the upper-middle-class suburban shoppers that used to clog its aisles. After all, Giant has not one but two aisles of healthy and gluten-free foods!

That’s not meant as a knock on GF stuff, since it’s a requirement in our household – more an acknowledgement of the kind of choices that become important to you when you’re not looking for the foods that your WIC check will cover. Recently EV and I had a long wait behind a couple who were trying to figure out what they could cover with WIC checks and what they needed to pay in cash.

After they were finished, the cashier fixed me with a grimace and apologized for the wait. I responded, “No worries, I remember what that was like.”

She gave me a puzzled look in return and started ringing my groceries.

These were my thoughts as Lindsay and I wandered through the stadium-sized Wegman’s. Do we need all of this super-sized choice to be satisfied as consumers? How lucky are we that buying our meals is an act of amusement and convenience? How lucky are we that we can buy them at all?

our supersized supermarkets was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Marvel Now! 2016 – a book-by-book break-down

It’s that time again!

July brings us the October comic solicitations, and that’s the month Marvel uses each year as their launchpad for a new wave of books. That’s the result of an increasingly network television influenced strategy for Marvel’s comic publishing, which sees volumes of books as seasons of a show that it makes sense to renew regularly – sometimes each year.

With their 2016 Marvel Now! initiative, Marvel has so far announced 62 titles, including a stunning 33 new launches or limited series (and that’s with only one X-Men title so far on the slate!). This post covers every single title, detailing what it’s replacing, the creators, how hyped I am, and what it will be about – plus, it points you to the collection & reading order guides where each title will be recapped.

Basically: this is your one-stop resource for all things Marvel Now! 2016.

If a title isn’t on the Now! list, is that a smoking gun that it’s cancelled without a replacement? That’s unclear. For example, Moon Knight releases issue #7 in October, but the issue listed for Now! is #10 – so, these new jumping-on points will be staggered. It could be some of the unlisted books are mid-arc and didn’t make sense to label as Now, or it could be they’re due for a relaunch in the new year. Of course, I expect some of them will simply wrap up in the three months of Now launches.

A-Force #10 – It would make sense for this to be cancelled, as Kelly Thompson now has another ongoing, but it’s also Marvel’s marquee all-female team book.

Agents of SHIELD #10 – While this hasn’t been selling gangbusters, we’re also coming up on a new season of the show, so it would be awkward to be without a book to accompany it.

All New All Different Avengers #15 – This is splitting into both Avengers and Champions

All New Wolverine #13

All New X-Men #14

Amazing Spider-Man #20 – Confirmed to be continuing for now; could get restarted after Clone Conspiracy

Astonishing Ant-Man #13 – Final issue; no word yet on where Ant-Man is heading

Carnage #13

Extraordinary X-Men #15

Invincible Iron Man #14 – Restarting in Marvel Now

Mockingbird #8

New Avengers #17 – Cancelled for U.S.Avengers

Nighthawk #6

Old Man Logan #12

Scarlet Witch #11

Spider-Man / Deadpool #10

Spidey #11

Uncanny X-Men #14

Venom Space Knight #13 – While not confirmed, this would appear to be replaced by the new Venom ongoing

Vision #12 – This is the final issue

X-Men 92 #8

And now, onto the 2016 Marvel Now lineup!

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (New!) Tagline: One More Chance Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Gerry Conway with art by Ryan Stegman Visit the Guide: Spider-Man

This one is intriguing. First, Marvel has been incredibly supportive of classic creator Conway over the past few years . He’s currently their only writer of that amount longevity aside from Peter David. It speaks volumes to see him paired with one of their marquee, big-title artists like Ryan Stegman.

Then, you have the concept of this title, which extends a Secret Wars What-If scenario that saw Peter Parker and Mary Jane still together and raising a child (who, canonically, was miscarried by MJ).

If it wasn’t for Stegman, it would be easy to assume this was a throw-away extension of that What If. However, given that DC just conducted a backdoor relaunch of an old-school, married-to-Lois Superman in exactly the same fashion, I think we need to pay closer attention to this one.

Avengers (replaces All-New, All-Different Avengers) Tagline: Kang War One! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Mark Waid with art by Mike Del Mundo Visit the Guide: Avengers & New Avengers

Marvel returns to their marquee title after a year-and-a-half break, and it’s back with a vengeance – Waid at the steering wheel, the uncanny art of cover-art star Del Mundo on the interior, and a heavy hitting team that keeps the popular pair of Sam Wilson Cap and Lady Thor. This will be one to watch, especially with a long-teased Kang War front and center.

We’ll also be getting a .1 flashback storyline threaded into these issues that addresses the already heavily re-addressed period where Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye joined the team, written by Waid and with art by Barry Kitson (tagline: Earth’s Mightiest Shoes To Fill).

Black Panther (returning with #7) Tagline: The Crew: Come At The King, Best Not Miss Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates with art by Chris Sprouse

The first few issues of Coates’s thoughtful epic have been largely well-received by fans and we know he’s already turned in scripts through issue #11. Sprouse isn’t a terrible fit to try to keep some continuity with launch artist Brian Stelfreeze, although it was certainly thrilling to have an all-black creative team on this character – it paid off in Stelfreeze’s carefully cultivated character, costume, and architecture designs.

Black Widow (returning with #7) Tagline: No More Secrets Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Mark Waid & Chris Samnee with art by Samnee.

This title only has a few issues out but has already been a major hit with fans, and Marvel is now being quite explicit that Samnee is behind the wheel as the plotter with Waid simply along for polish.

Bullseye (New!) Tagline: Man Without Hope Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Ed Brisson with art by Guillermo Sanna

The first of many villain-centric titles on this list, though Bullseye can fairly be called the highest-profile and most well-developed of them all. Perhaps this telegraphs a Bullseye appearance in Season 3 of Daredevil on Netflix? If you recognize Brisson’s name, it may be as a longtime letterer – he’s newer as a writer. He mostly been on creator-owned and licensed titles to date with nothing by Marvel.

Cage! (Limited Series) Tagline: Christmas Comes Early Hype Factor: Creators: Written and drawn by Genndy Tartakovsky Visit the Guide: Luke Cage

The creator of Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars has long flirted with this out-of-continuity Cage series, and finally finished it up on his own so Marvel can get it on the racks. While that’s excited a mass of fans who thought this series was destined to be a mere rumor, some have taken umbrage with the white, Russian-American Tartakovsky focusing on Cage’s blaxploitation roots (and on how he’s illustrated that).

I see the issue clearly, but can also appreciate a creator wanting to return to the essentials of a character who has since evolved significantly. That said, as a cartoony, out-of-continuity series, this isn’t for me.

Captain America: Sam Wilson (returning with #14) Tagline: #TakeBackTheShield Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Nick Spencer with art by Daniel Acuna Visit the Guide: Captain America

While Spencer’s profile has exploded with attention on his Hydra-Cap storyline in the other Cap title, his Sam Wilson has been an incredibly solid effort. With Acuna still on board for art, this is a run where Spencer’s strong long-term plotting can really blossom.

Captain America: Steve Rogers (returning with #7) Tagline: Hail Hydra! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Nick Spencer with art by Jesus Saiz Visit the Guide: Captain America

This is a second arc of Spencer’s controversial Hydra Cap, and given the preview art and tagline it doesn’t look like he’s ready to let up on the mystery quite yet!

Captain Marvel (replaces Captain Marvel (2015)) Tagline: Divided We Stand Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Margaret Stohl with art by Ramon Rosanas Visit the Guide: Captain & Ms. Marvel

Marvel has lost the plot with Captain Marvel in a post-DeConnick world, despite featuring her as the lead character in Civil War. Can novelist Stohl bring a magic touch to the character as she did on her well-received Black Widow novel? She seems like the kind of writer that Marvel would allow to steer Carol up to her movie debut, but so did the last team they assigned to Danvers and they’re gone now!

An interesting aspect of this relaunch is that Captain Marvel is now exactly where she saw herself in the House of M reality a decade ago that brought her back into the limelight – a hero known to all. Is she ready to deal with that as her actual reality?

Champions (replaces All-New, All-Different Avengers) Tagline: Change The World Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Mark Waid with art by Humberto Ramos Visit the Guide: Avengers & New Avengers

In the wake of Civil War II, Marvel is collapsing many of its younger heroes down to this team – the first to revive the Champions name since the 1970s! Fan reaction to Waid’s Avengers has been lukewarm, and with the addition of characters like Teen Cyclops and Teen Vision this team is even more watered-down than that one was.

Adding the disfigured drawing of Ramos and the WTF name and this would be a total flatline with fans – except, Waid and Ramos were the team behind the celebrated DC teen hero book Impulse. Still, those sorts of “recapure the magic” combos from Marvel haven’t always been successful (see the J.M. DeMatteis & Keith Ian Giffen 2005 Defenders series).

Daredevil (returning with #15) Tagline: Man Without Faith Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Charles Soule with art by Ron Garney Visit the Guide: Daredevil

Same as it was last fall – Soule on Daredevil is a dream come true, and Garney is one of the best artists working today. That he’s still around a year into the story says that Marvel is really putting weight (and dollars) behind this title.

Doctor Strange (returns with #12) Tagline: Bloody Reunions Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jason Aaron with art by Chris Bachalo Visit the Guide: Doctor Strange

Marvel keeps this A-list team intact on a book that will have all eyes on it with Doctor Strange making his film debut – but, this isn’t the only place to get your Strange fix, as Marvel is planning to explode him into a new multi-title franchise!

Doctor Strange: Mystic Apprentice (New!) Hype Factor: Visit the Guide: Doctor Strange

Supposedly an origins-type series for Doctor Strange; he’s already had two in the past decade.

Doctor Strange: Sorcerers Supreme (New!) Tagline: Ripped From Their Time to Save Ours Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Robbie Thompson with art by Javier Rodriguez Visit the Guide: Doctor Strange

I have no interest in a book predicated on a time travel plot, especially when there are so many present day magic users being neglected in the Marvel Universe. My attention perks up a bit when I see Thompson’s name (he’s been solid on Silk) plus Rodriguez (great on Spider-Woman). Despite that, it feels like Marvel simply took the next best Doctor Strange pitch after Aaron’s whose creators were free and promoted it to series to take advantage of the movie – it doesn’t sound essential.

Deadpool (returns with #21) Tagline: Madcap Recall Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Gerry Duggan with art by Mike Hawthorne Visit the Guide: Cable & Deadpool

With the Total Recall shout-out on the cover, who knows where this is headed!

Deadpool & The Mercs For The Money (returns with #4) Tagline: Mo’ Mercs Mo’ Monkeys Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Cullen Bunn with art by Iban Coello Visit the Guide: Cable & Deadpool

This is actually a second volume of a 2016 series of this name, relaunched to ongoing after an initial mini-series. With a mega-successful film under his belt, it seems Deadpool has earned back the sideline series he had in the early 10s before their sales flagged. Bunn is a longtime expert at tossaway sideline Deadpool, and I can hardly argue with Domino in a starring role.

Deadpool: Back in Black (Limited Series) Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Cullen Bunn wirth art by Salva Espin Visit the Guide: Cable & Deadpool

With the success of Duggan’s Deadpool flashback issues and the character’s general penchant for parody, Marvel keeps going back to the well with more retcon series to insert Deadpool into events that predate his debut. This time we’ll see him donning the symbiote suit after Peter Parker manages to rid himself of it after Secret Wars.

Death of X (Limited Series) Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jeff Lemire and Charles Soule with art by Aaron Kuder

Marvel has been progressively doing a worse and worse job handling X-Men since 2012, and I don’t think this will be the book to change that. However, Marvel wouldn’t be wasting time (and two headline writers) on this flashback to the time directly after Secret Wars if there wasn’t something revelatory to be shown by depicting it. Is there a blockbuster reveal for the X-Men here other than Cyclops’s fate? Or, is Marvel simply hoping to further cross-pollenate X-Fans into Inhumans territory?

Foolkiller (New!) Tagline: The Doctor is [In]Sane Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Max Bemis with art by Dalibor Talajic

One of many villain books Marvel is throwing at the wall to try to make stick this go round. As a lifelong Marvel reader, I had to look up this character to remind myself of who he was – not a great sign. Say Anything frontman Bemis has yet to write anything that has stuck out to me, though some liked his out-of-continuity Worst X-Man Ever.

Gamora (New!) Tagline: Deadliest Woman In The Galaxy Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Nicole Perlman with art by Marco Checchetto Visit the Guide: Guardians of the Galaxy

Finally, after years of stewing, the Perlman Gamora series is here – and it’s with perhaps my favorite current Marvel artist, Checchetto! The likelihood that this series was being held back was due to it being a potential dud seems pretty low given Checchetto returning from Star Wars work to illustrate it.

Guardians of the Galaxy (returning) Tagline: The Epic Final Arc Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Brian Bendis with art by Valerior Schiti Visit the Guide: Guardians of the Galaxy

We’ve seen plenty (perhaps TOO MUCH) of the Guardians on Earth in the past few years. I think the bigger story here is the tagline – Bendis’s run is almost over, so who will be writing Guardians when their second movie hits next year?!

Hawkeye (replaces All-New Hawkeye) Tagline: West Coast Avengers Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Kelly Thompson with art by Leonardo Romera Visit the Guide: Hawkeye

I adore Kelly Thompson, and it seems like Marvel editorial understands completely the types of titles she was born to writer. Handing her Kate Bishop in her first solo title is perfect – not just because Thompson can handle Bishop’s sass, but because she’ll also be willing to burst the bubble of perfectionism the character usually floats within.

Invincible Iron Man (replaces Invincible Iron Man) Tagline: I.M. Woman Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Brian Bendis with art by Stefano Caselli Visit the Guide: Iron Man

I’ve already covered this one in depth. There are a lot of challenges inherent in Bendis writing this character – chief amongst them his repeatedly failure to write compellingly about identity on his similarly race-bent Spider-Man. However, the net positives – and possibilities – are positive.

Infamous Iron Man (replaces International Iron Man) Tagline: Iron Doom Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Brian Bendis with Alex Maleev Visit the Guide: Iron Man

Of all Bendis-plus-artist team-ups, his work with Maleev is consistently the most-inspired despite it never being a surefire hit (see Spider-Woman, Moon Knight). However, the villains-turned-heroes formula from Bendis is a known winner with fans based on the gangbuster sales of Dark Avengers. The fascination of seeing Doctor Doom playing hero – and detangled from Fantastic Four – should draw tons of fans.

Iron Fists (New!) Tagline: A double dose of living weapons! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Kaare Andrews with art by Afu Chan Visit the Guide: Iron Fist

After completely ruining Iron Fist’s mythology in an unattractive series rife with nonsense and then swearing off Marvel due to his rude treatment by editorial, Kaare Andrews is back for more and he’s introducing a pint-sized sidekick to Iron Fist!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I’ve loved Andrews’ bizarro take on superheroes before and I’m sure there are some people out there delighted by this development (especially due to Afu Chan’s marvelous art). I can’t help but see this as a massive missed opportunity as Iron Fist is about to explode into prominence by appearing on Netflix’s Luke Cage series. This should be helmed by a creator with the track record of Duggan, Hopeless, or Pak.

Jessica Jones (New!) Tagline: Alias: Jessica Jones Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Brian Bendis with art by Michael Gaydos and covers by David Mack

She’s finally back – Jessica Jones returns to a starring role for the first time in a decade, helmed by the team that created her back in 2001. This is quite the high-wire to walk in the wake of a Netflix Jessica Jones series that squandered all of Bendis’s deft character work in favor of playing out a handful of issues of Purple Man’s torture at length.

Will Bendis bring back Purple Man to center this book? How will he write our previously unstable, unreliable hero now that she’s married with a child and is an occasional guest Avenger? I look forward to finding out.

Kingpin (New!) Tagline: Man Without Flaw Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Matthew Rosenberg with art by Ben Torres

The recent history of Marvel’s villain-centric series tells us this will likely wind up as a limited series or “maxi-series” with a finite shelf-life of 6-12 issues. Rosenberg is a relatively new comic writer who penned a Quake one-shot and some Secret Wars tie-ins for Marvel in the past year. This could be a great, noirish, non-superhero-y crime book if Rosenberg gets things right, and that’s something Marvel is lacking at the moment.

The Mighty Thor (returns with #15) Tagline: The Asgard / Shi’ar War Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jason Aaron with art by Russell Dauterman Visit the Guide: Thor

This represents a major branch-out by Lady Thor into the wider universe of Marvel, both figuratively and literally. The Shi’ar have been mostly out of the spotlight since the end of the War of Kings saga despite a few pokes from the X-Men titles. This should be thrilling, unless it’s just Aaron’s way of biding time – so far ever chapter of his epic has felt pretty essential.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (returning with #13) Tagline: Smarty-Pants Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Amy Reeder & Brandon Montclare with art by Natacha Bustos

This decidedly different superhero title following a black girl scientist and her red dinosaur friend was one of Marvel’s biggest gambles heading into All-New, All-Different Marvel. Readers have been largely positive on the story, and it’s a rare book with both a female writer and illustrator, so it’s really gratifying to see it make it into a second year of storytelling!

Moon Knight (returns with #10) Tagline: Personalities Disordered Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jeff Lemire with art by Greg Smallwood Visit the Guide: Moon Knight

Despite my initial misgivings, this Lemire Moon Knight focused on the character’s craziness has gone over well with readers. I’m looking forward to reading the first trade!

Mosiac (New!) Tagline: Hero With a Thousand Faces Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Geoffrey Thorne with art by Khary Randolph

Marvel has been hyping this new Inhuman’s book for months now as a sort of heroic Quantum Leap, with Mosiac occupying the bodies of different characters in each issue. That sort of pseudo-anthology isn’t a sweet spot in Marvel’s sales and their Inhumans interest is weak.

The x-factor here is Thorne, a black actor turned-writer who has done everything from TV writers’ rooms to novels. Marvel is hit-and-miss in making good use of that kind of blockbuster talent – let’s hope Thorne sticks.

Ms. Marvel (returning with #12) Tagline: Not So Marvelous Hype Factor: Creators: Written by G. Willow Wilson with art by Takeshi Miyzawa Visit the Guide: Captain & Ms. Marvel

I’ve yet to read any post-Secret Wars Ms. Marvel, so I can’t say if the quality has sustained.

Nova (???) Tagline: Coming Soon Hype Factor: Creators: TBA Visit the Guide: Nova

Fans are reading this promo as a tease of the return of Richard Rider as Nova. I enjoy Rider and his evolution via the Annihilation era of Marvel’s cosmic books, but Marvel had a much better thing going with the young Sam Alexander as Nova than with a Rider retread.

What could make this successful is keeping it adult and rooted in deep space adventure – as Marvel is really lacking for that right now with the neutering of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Occupy Avengers (New!) Tagline: Taking Back Justice Hype Factor: Creators: Written by David Walker with art by Gabriel Walta Visit the Guide: TBA, but will likely be referenced in both Avengers & New Avengers and Hawkeye

It’s hard to know what to expect from this title, which features an odd combo of Hawkeye, Cage, and what seems to be Jessica Jones on the cover. Given the implication of the title and Hawkeye’s recent in-comic actions, this could represent an insurgent, populist version of The Avengers (which would previously earn it the title of “Mighty”).

While that doesn’t sound too thrilling, Walta has become Marvel’s secret weapon on thoughtful, subversive titles – his appearance here indicates there could be more than meets the eye.

Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! (returns with #11) Tagline: Black Cat Scratch Fever! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Kate Leth with art by Britney Williams

Leth’s Hellcat has been a sleeper hit of Marvel Now, especially with the first trade edition now on the shelves and reaching a whole new wave of YA fans who aren’t into single issues. I think this title has entered the pantheon of Marvel YA Gold along with Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.

Prowler (New!) Tagline: Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Sean Ryan with art by Jamal Campbell.

A big ol’ yawn from me on this one – of Spider-Man’s peripheral rogue’s gallery, there are many characters I’d rather see with this book – primarily amongst them Wraith. Ryan bopped around several specials and annuals before landing Nova as an ongoing, which didn’t garner much attention.

Punisher (returns with #7) Tagline: Into The Wild Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Becky Cloonan with art by Steve Dillon Visit the Guide: Punisher

Cloonan’s Punisher was one of the latest-breaking Marvel Now series, and so far it’s been positively received. Given that we now have an official green-light for Punisher to return to Marvel’s Netflix Universe, I suspect he’ll maintain a marquee team on his book.

Power Man & Iron Fist (returning with #10) Tagline: Harlem Burns! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by David Walker with art by Sanford Greene Visit the Guide: Luke Cage

The persistent critique of this off-kilter book has been of a nagging Jessica Jones as a supporting character. With her back to her own series, perhaps this can keep the focus on its two heroes and avoid that particular gendered stereotype.

Rocket Racoon (New!) Tagline: Grounded and Hounded Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Matthew Rosenberg Visit the Guide: Guardians of the Galaxy

I’m not convinced that Rocket Raccoon has much of a raison d’etre without a proven YA writer like Skottie Young behind the wheel to create cross-generational appeal. While I’m excited for Rosenberg on Kingpin, I’m not so sure this will be a great fit for him – I expressly do not want a grounded, tough-as-nails, adult-oriented Rocket book.

Silver Surfer (returns with #9) Tagline: Every Relationship Needs Space Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Dan Slott with art by Mike Allred Visit the Guide: Silver Surfer

One of the bests comics being created today continues. Every month with a new issue is a gift.

Slapstick (New!) Tagline: Don’t Try This At Home, Kids Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Reilly Brown & Fred Van Lente with art by Reilly Brown & Mike Norton

Fans are a blend of agape and aghast that Marvel is launching an ongoing series of this short-lived 90s hero – a living cartoon in the real world. Yet, Van Lente has proven his strength on comedic projects with a hint of pathos. And, Brown is back as a writer (he’s typically a penciller) after an audition on Cable & Deadpool: Split Second. This one might have some surprises in store.

Solo (New!) Tagline: Alone Again … Naturally Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Gerry Duggan & Geoffrey Thorne with art by Paco Diaz

I’m more than a little annoyed to see the reliable Duggan on this tossaway title rather than Iron Fist revamp, but I love that he’s paired with new Marvel writer Thorne who is creating Mosiac. That gives Solo the best writerly pedigree of all the seemingly throwaway anti-hero titles, and Diaz is usually terrific, but Solo is probably the character with the most anonymity out of all of the upcoming villain books.

Spider-Gwen (returning with #15) Tagline: Miles and Gwen, sitting in a tree… Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jason Latour with art by Robbi Rodriguez Visit the Guide: Spider-Woman

Spider-Gwen has retained decent sales and hasn’t stopped tickling fans thanks to Latour’s deftness with reimagining Spider-Man’s early years through an alternate lens. It’s amazing that this in-demand team is still intact going on two years with the character – Rodriguez must be having a lot of fun!

Spider-Man (returning with #12) Tagline: … K-I-S-S-I-N-G Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Sara Pichelli Visit the Guide: Spider-Man

I’d typically be tempted to leave you with a “Bendis keeps writing Spider-Man,” but I also must point out that Miles has now been aged enough that he’s making out with the still-young alternate timeline original love of the original Peter Parker, Gwen Stacey.

That puts another interracial kiss front-and-center on a Marvel cover after last year’s between Sam Wilson and Lady Thor, plus the ongoing relationship of Jones and Cage). On one hand, as half of an interracial relationship, I really appreciate that level of visibility and support from Marvel! And yet… there are other layers of representation and diversity to show and tell us about.

Spider-Man: The Clone Conspiracy (Limited Series) Tagline: Dead No More Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Dan Slott with Jim Cheung Visit the Guide: Spider-Man

The thing about Dan Slott, aside from his internet behavior making me want to skip reading his books, is that he plays the best long game of all of Marvel’s current writers. That’s because he’s actually playing the long game, considering he’s been writing Spidey for the better part of a decade now. That means Spider-Man stories can have big pay-offs the way comics used to for the past five decades before Marvel started playing creator-go-round every few years. I’m excited to see what this entails despite myself (and despite Slott).

Star-Lord (replaces Legendary Star-Lord) Tagline: Grounded and Busted Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Chip Zdarsky with art by Kris Anka Visit the Guide: Guardians of the Galaxy

After two years, Sam Humphries run on Peter Quill has ended – and it’s a major surprise to see who is picking up the reigns of this leading man! Chip Zdarksy is an actual crazy person, and his sardonic world-view comes through loud and clear on the farcical Howard the Duck. If anyone can bring the Chris Pratt voice to Quill, it’s Zdarsky – especially in combination with the increasingly-reliable Kris Anka. PS: Expect some beefcake-y art from this one, Zdarsky and Anka won’t be able to resist.

Thanos (New!) Tagline: Ongoing Evil Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jeff Lemire with art by Mike Deodato

Marvel has had past success with Thanos as an ongoing star and he has the eternal heat of Marvel film fans now behind him. Lemire excels on weird, non-heroic solo series, and he’s paired with the always-spectacular Mike Deodato. Unless Lemire’s concept is a wide miss, this will be a must-read series.

Silk (returning with #13) Tagline: One Big Happy Family Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Robbie Thompson with art by Tana Ford Visit the Guide: Spider-Woman

Of the trio of spider-women, Silk has been on the bubble without the fan heat of Spider-Gwen or the history of Spider-Woman. It’s positive to see her still running with Thompson behind the wheel.

Spider-Man 2009 (returns with #21) Tagline: Family Feud Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Peter David with art by Will Sliney

Marvel is pleasantly surprising me with their dedication to this David/Sliney jam, which if you add the prior volume’s issues is now into the 30s and closing in on the length of the original 46-issue run. I haven’t read much since Spider-Verse, so I need to catch up!

Spider-Woman (returning with #13) Tagline: Trick or Treat! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Dennis Hopeless with art by Veronica Fish Visit the Guide: Spider-Woman

It’s a pity that launch artist Javier Rodriguez is off to other work, but fantastic that Marvel snagged Fish from Archie after some recent spider-lady work. If I’m not mistaken, this will mark the first time Hopeless has been paired with a female artist on any of his female-led titles – I’ve very interested to see the resulting tone.

Squadron Supreme (returning with #13) Tagline: Finding Namor Hype Factor: Creators: Written by James Robinson with art by Leonard Kirk

Marvel is really insistent that this one is going to last despite non-existent fan interest. Given the tagline, I suspect Robinson has some final tidying up of Namor to do as a character before Marvel puts this title down for good.

Thunderbolts (returns with #7) Tagline: Caught In The Act! Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jim Zub with art by Jon Malin Visit the Guide: Thunderbolts & Dark Avengers

This book has relatively low hype levels thus far despite being a major relaunch on the heels of Winter Soldier’s appearance in the Standoff crossover and the Civil War movie. Bucky Barnes hasn’t been able to maintain his own title yet. That could mean this is a final arc.

The Totally Awesome Hulk (returns with #15) Tagline: Big Apple Showdown Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Greg Pak Visit the Guide: Hulk

I’m happy this title is still out in the world and will simply note that the promo cover here has collected six superheroes with Asian-continent lineages into one image without even touching X-Men and that is awesome.

U.S.Avengers (replaces New Avengers) Tagline: America Assemble Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Al Ewing with art by Paco Medina Visit the Guide: Avengers & New Avengers

This is a tongue-in-cheek continuation of New Avengers as an ultra-patriotic title with the same creators and the core of Sunspot and (a newly white-skinned) Sunspot intact, plus Squirrel Girl, a future Cap, and the return of Red Hulk. Fans have found Ewing’s Avengers a little light-weight, but many have enjoyed the personalities.

Ultimates2 (replaces Ultimates) Tagline: Who Chained The Cosmos? Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Al Ewing with art by Travel Foreman.

A direct continuation of Ewing’s hyper-popular, universe-spanning, big-thinking team with seemingly no cast shakeups and the beautiful art of Travel Foreman (who I adore from Animal Man). This will likely continue to be awesome.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (returns with #16) Tagline: She’s here to eat some nuts, kicks some butts … and fly somewhat Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Ryan North with art by Erica Henderson

With the recent end of Chip Zdarsky’s run on Howard The Duck I found myself holding my breath while scrolling through these announcements in search of the similarly quirky Squirrel Girl. Luckily, North and Henderson are continuing their hilarious and heartfelt run on the title. It’s hard to believe we’re up to #16 already on a second volume, and even harder to believe that the joke of a Squirrel Girl ongoing simply has not run its course!

The Unbelievable Gwenpool (returns with #7) Tagline: G.W.E.N.P.O.O.L. Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Christopher Hastings with art by Gurihiru

This improbable parody character continues to have a hold over readers as the combination of two of the hottest things at Marvel – Deadpool and Spider-Gwen. I’ve yet to read her, since she hasn’t hit trade yet, so I’m not sure how hype to be about its return.

Uncanny Avengers (returns with #15) Tagline: Going Rogue Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Gerry Duggan with art by Pepe Larraz Visit the Guide: Uncanny Avengers

This title has cemented itself as a sort of X-Men Legacy: The Next Generation as a Rogue-headlined mash-up of many B-List characters (aside from Cap and Deadpool). The addition of Cable makes it even more of a lure to X-fans – honestly it could be Marvel’s best X-book at the moment.

Uncanny Inhumans (returns) Tagline: Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Charles Soule with art by Kev Walker.

Let’s get down to it: Marvel has put their all into Inhumans for two years and it’s just not happening. It’s selling in the range of a tertiary X-Men title and Marvel has quietly slid the Inhumans film off of the schedule. Despite the addition of fan-favorite Kev Walker on art, this is just another background title for Marvel at this point – as evidenced by the crash of its supporting title.

The Unstoppable Wasp (New!) Tagline: Nothing’s More Unstoppable Than a Teenage Girl Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jeremy Whitley with art by Elsa Charretier

While I’d typically be underwhelmed by a replacement Wasp headlining her own title, this is notable for Whitley, who pens the popular YA title Princeless. Charretier is fresh from DC’s Starfire and has a simple, retro look reminiscent of the late Darwyn Cooke. This could wind up as a monster young-readers title if Marvel markets it well.

The Unworthy Thor (in addition to The Mighty Thor) Tagline: Ultimate Redemption? Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Jason Aaron with art by Olivier Coipel Visit the Guide: Thor

This book is the biggest bombshell of the Marvel Now announcements – Thor returning to ongoing status after two years as a supporting character in his own title accompanied by returning Thor artist Coipel. This is a can’t-miss comic that will likely see Aaron begin to clue us in as to what rendered Thor unworthy at the end of his Original Sin event.

Venom (replaces Venom: Space Knight) Tagline: Lethal Arrival Hype Factor: Creators: Written by Mike Costa with art by Gerardo Sandoval

Between the “Lethal” tagline and the vicious cover art, this doesn’t look anything like Flash Thompson! That means we’re getting our first significant return to another character in the symbiote suit since Dark Reign in 2009. This is a decent team, but I’m a big Flash-as-Venom fan – if it’s not him in the suit, I don’t see a lot of value in this relaunch.

I don’t think any other comic company in history has published so many titles that start with U! For even more delightful dissection of this line-up of books, I highly recommend the Comics Alliance roundtable – it’s a group of like-minded folks who add a lot of useful context and thoughtful analysis to some of these selections.

Marvel Now! 2016 – a book-by-book break-down was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Monsters and Maps (both digital and physical)

Yesterday EV and I visited The Academy of Natural Sciences for the first time together!

A T-Rex skull, as shot by EV!

Despite Philly’s bevy of museums, The Academy has always been a sentimental favorite of mine due to its dinosaurs. As an adult, I realize that it represents much more than that as our city’s Science Museum, but as a kid I was less focused on the “science” part and moreso on the part where I could stand next to a full-size T-Rex skeleton. I still get a special thrill every time I visit, although in recent years that been only for trips to the Philly Geek Awards.

The current special exhibit at the museum is called “Dinosaurs Unearthed,” and it gave me one of my first “kids these days!” shaking-of-old-man-cane experiences directly related to parenting EV (because, as they relate to kids in general, I’ve been having those moments since I was six). That’s because this exhibit presents about a half-dozen animatronic dinosaurs at actual scale, and in some cases kids can direct their sounds and movements via a console of light-up buttons.

As an adult whose love for the museum is rooted in seeing fossils, I wasn’t enamored with this brief experience fill with lights and motion. Granted, it was packed with educational content – with more placards to read to EV than appeared with the displays in the rest of the museum. Despite that, I couldn’t help feeling that it was more of a theme park feature than a museum exhibit. Maybe that’s because as an adult I don’t need to see moving dinosaurs to pique my interest in the creatures – I would have probably been more interested in information about the science of how the animalectronics were built!

A more lifelike adolescent T-Rex, which EV was not eager to spend too much time standing in front of.

Yet, I can’t deny the allure for younger kids who aren’t old enough to appreciate the magnitude of seeing casts of million-year-old bones. Maybe this is just anecdotal, but Unearthed seemed to trend pretty heavily towards toddlers through first or second graders compared to the rest of the museum.

Yesterday also marked a week of living in a world of Pokémon Go. Visiting the Academy also gave me a chance to experience the phenomenon in the city and oh my glam the urban play environment is a totally difference from our barren suburbia (or, apparently, from black neighborhoods, which are measurably underrepresented when it comes to gyms and PokeStops).

I first opened the game during one of EV’s intense dino-button-pushing sessions in the special exhibit (yes, I appreciate the irony) to discover that the Benjamin Franklin Parkway was exploding in a rainbow of gyms and lured PokeStops.

While I didn’t want to spend our time in the museum catching creatures, I was interested to see how many people were doing so given articles about how the National Holocaust Museum was pleading with visitors to refrain from playing out of respect. While there were a few other parents idly playing while kids interacted with exhibits, I never saw a critical mass of gamers. Maybe that’s more about the age-range of kids at this museum or its content.

(It did raise some questions for me about how institutions in the physical world have the right to opt in or out of their participation on digital maps. While a museum like The Academy certainly wouldn’t have the types of objections to play that the Holocaust Museum does, they might have other requests – like making certain exhibits a PokeStop or Gym, or even having certain creature-types spawn in the museum.)

It was when we stepped out onto the street that the app exploded into constant vibrations signaling new encounters. I could barely make it a half block without the chance to capture another critter. We were absolutely besieged with them when we stopped for lunch at Mama’s Vegetarian (another EV first!) and a treat at Shake Shack.

(I sorely miss the food options of working in Center City every day, but not the corresponding money expenditure or caloric intake.)

We eventually made it down to Rittenhouse Square, and it was there that I finally experienced Pokémon Go as a social phenomenon. The park was teeming with obvious trainers orbiting a lured stop in the middle of the park. It was so visible that I felt the need to finally clue EV in to what I have been doing on my phone all week by way of explanation. When EV and I stopped to catch a Horsea in one of the fountains (our first water creature!), folks started chatting us up about where we typically hunt and what sort of creatures we find there.

Despite the allure of digital monsters in the park, I was charmed when EV tugged on my sleeve and demanded not to catch another Pokémon, but to return to The Academy of Natural Sciences to push a few more dinosaur buttons despite being visibly exhausted and in need of a nap. I’m not usually one to accede to every toddler demand, but that was one I was very happy to fulfill.

(I’m sure a facet of that is the fact that we don’t do any electronic button types of toys in our house, but that’s a post for another day.)

Monsters and Maps (both digital and physical) was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Kickstartered: Steve Lichman by Dave Rapoza & Dan Warren

Given that my to-read pile of graphic novels is currently a nine-month backlog and my to-play pile of new games is at least six boxes deep, I thought it might not be a terrible idea to highlight things I receive from Kickstarter as they roll in, rather than whenever I get around to reviewing them.

Steve Lichman, Vol. 1 arrived a few weeks ago, and I must admit I had completely forgotten it existed since the Kickstarter campaign closed in October.

It only added to my confusion that the padded envelope I opened contained a cloth-bound hardcover book the size and heft of a novel with a skeleton debossed onto the cover in gold foil. Had I pledged to support a horror anthology?

In fact, this tome was a graphic novel – quite literally the nicest graphic novel I think I’ve ever received out of my collection of thousands of books. It has all of the external trappings of a beautiful signed-and-numbered 1st edition novel (mine is #5,518) and the paper and reproduction quality of a professionally produced comic collection – all for less than Marvel charges for a crap-quality six-issue trade paperback.

That means creators Dave Rapoza & Dan Warren self-published a literal 250 pages of comic all in one go. Given that the history of Kickstarter is littered with the failed projects of similarly ambitious creators, the quality of this project (and it hitting 1000% of its funding goal) makes more sense when you learn that Rapoza is a professional illustrator who works with client IP like Bethesda (Fallout, Elder Scrolls), Hasbro, and Blizzard (Warcraft), and on concept art for films like the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It’s hard to explain exactly what it’s about. I guess it’s It’s sort of like Seinfeld if Jerry was a Lich and George was Dracula and their apartment was a dungeon? I don’t know, I’m an old, you can probably think of a better sitcom analogy than that after you read a lengthy preview of Steve Lichman on Rapoza’s site. Here’s their Kickstarter video:

As for how I found about this project or why I pledged… I’ll get back to you on that one. It literally doesn’t ring a single bell, and I can’t find mention of it on any of the comic sites I frequent. This might have literally been a blind pledge from browsing the Kickstarter comics section, and it could not have possibly turned out to be a better choice!

Here’s another pair of photos of their marvelous book! I’ve loved the humor first few pages and the illustrations are consistently great, so I’m looking forward to digging into this further when I dig deep enough into my to-read pile.

  Kickstartered: Steve Lichman by Dave Rapoza & Dan Warren was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Using Pokémon Go for interval training (or, how I went from Couch to 5k in one day)

I just ran five miles.

The last time I ran five miles was NEVER. The longest run I’ve ever been on (even with a generous definition of “run”) was The Color Run 5k – and that was with Allie as my personal pace car.

The last time I ran 5k was last night.

I had no pace car these past two days – just Pokémon. I return to you accomplished, sore, sweaty, way more knowledgable about Pokémon Go and with four more levels to show for it, but still not much more of a Pokémon fan than I was two nights ago.

How did mobile game I don’t even love get me from couch to 5k in one day, and from 5k to 5 miles the next?

The first step was deciding I was playing – and running – for efficiency. I generally only have an hour to play at night after EV heads to bed if I expect to have time to do anything else before passing out. With limited time to play, I wanted to maximize my level gain and cover a lot of physical ground to try to collect a lot of stuff – both Pokémon and items – since I’m way too weak for my local Pokémon Gyms.

Use item-dispensing PokéStops as waypoints for your walk or jog if they are plentiful enough in your neighborhood, changing pace after each stop.

Go for a regularly-paced walk/jog but stop for all Pokémon encounters, then adding a sprint interval after you catch one. (Using incense helps with this, since it ups your random encounters.)

Maintain regular pace until you see a new Pokémon’s silhouette on your radar, then sprint until you’ve zeroed in on it.

All three of these approaches rely on interval training, which is a core component to programs like Couch to 5k that know it’s not easy to go from couch-dwelling to distance running. Unfortunately, the Pokémon Go map is currently not too useful for planning purposes beyond a few-block radius around your current location. You might chase a prominent creator or Stop only to find yourself in a barren wasteland of augmented reality.

Luckily, Pokémon Go’s maps are based on prior Niantic game Ingress, which does have a whole-world map you can access. The interface is a bit overwhelming and not every Ingress point of interest is a Stop or Gym, so you should read this entire Polygon article if you want to know more (there’s a lot more to know). Plus, a Redditor figured out how to use the Ingress app to predict areas of high Pokémon concentration.

Over dinner, I checked the Ingress map and plotted a five-mile loop around our neighborhood, with a cluster of potential PokéStops on either end and not many in the middle. The Stops refresh on a 5-minute timer once you collect them, so I added about 2.5 minutes of steady jogging from a cluster of stops to each end of a loop so I could double back to collect them again.

(I’ve learned from friends that my non-town of a suburb has a severe PokéStop deficit compared to a swinging little ville like Collingswood, which is in turn dwarfed by a mecca like Philly.)

With my route set, I used all three of the short-circuits above for my run. I set a steady pace until I hit my first Stop, and then I all-out sprinted between Stops to elevate my heart rate with the 2.5 minutes of jogging to break it up.

After the Stops tailed off, I used incense I gained from the Stops to pump up my encounters. By the time it ran out I was at the next set of Stops. I repeated my stop process, then kept up a steady jog until a Pokémon I wanted turned up on the radar, slowing to chase it down and then sprinting for a fresh interval after I caught it.

Since I’d be covering tons of distance and gaining a lot of XP, I did two things when I first left the house.

First, I loaded a Pokémon egg into an incubator, which is powered by the distance you travel. Not only would I make strides (ha!) towards hatching, but it made a convenient odometer.

Then, I cracked a Lucky Egg – which cost me $.62 (since I had never been to a PokéStop before to snatch one). The egg doubles all experience points, which you get from Stops (50xp), captures (100xp; +500xp for a new type), evolutions (500xp), and egg hatches (200xp). I used a second one when the first ran out. Higher levels mean better catches, which makes my limited time more efficient, which makes it worth spending $1.24 a night for me – it’s less than most people spend daily on coffee!

What did I catch? I don’t know. Stuff? Honestly, I was so amped with adrenaline and breathing so heavily whenever I caught anything that it barely registered – I was focused on resting for a moment before more running!

I don’t know if I’m ever going to be interested in gyms or the more natural level progression of the game. Maybe! Right now, I’m happy that it’s the inspiration I need to get my body moving. That’s the habit I’m trying to form – it’s just a bonus if I become a great Pokémon Trainer along the way.

Using Pokémon Go for interval training (or, how I went from Couch to 5k in one day) was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

New Collecting Guide: Doctor Strange (plus, 5 suggestions for new fans)

I’m happy to share The Definitive Doctor Strange Collecting Guide and Reading Order! It includes every Doctor Strange issue ever published with notes on trade-reading order and guest appearances.

Agamatto-eyed readers may have spotted it last week, but as of today the guide is officially out of its beta-release phase and ready to help you collect Marvel’s most-famous mystic.

This is the first of several new and revised collection pages I’ll be highlighting over the next few weeks; you can already see several of them in action in Crushing Comics.

Doctor Strange was one of Marvel’s original Silver Age heroes, debuting in 1963 in Strange Tales, a title he split with Nick Fury. He is a brilliant-but-prideful surgeon whose career is ruined when his hands are injured in an accident, and in his quest to repair them he stumbles into the world of mysticism.

Like Fury, he was one of the few freshly-invented Silver Age solo heroes not to be hoovered up by The Avengers. This was exploited by his inclusion in The Defenders, a team of relative outcasts that also included The Hulk, Namor, and Silver Surfer.

Aside from a brief blip at the beginning of the 70s, Strange starred in an ongoing book in continuous publication through 1996, when his third volume was cancelled with no replacement.

Unlike fellow hot-in-the-90s hero Ghost Rider, Strange got no ongoing revival in the 00s, although he was finally absorbed by the Avengers under Brian Bendis’s tenure (partially due to his participation in The Illuminati).

After playing a critical (some may say “starring”) role in Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers mega-story that began in 2013, Doctor Strange finally found his way back into an ongoing title from Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo in the fall of 2015 in anticipation of his big screen debut in 2016.

I’ve always had affection for the good doctor, but I did some foot-dragging on giving him his own guide due to his relatively low profile in past years. However, with his movie coming up this fall, it was finally time to attack his guide – no small feat, since he’s had over a dozen series and one-shots to call his own plus a starring role in most incarnations of The Defenders.

Doctor Strange: Season One – Marvel produced this modernized Season One retellings for all of their major heroes in 2010. While the movie won’t hew to this exact script, it’s going to give you the gist of what this character is about. It was created by Greg Pak, a very sensitive writer who rarely produces anything uninteresting, and Emma Rios, a brilliant Spanish illustrator who brings a sweep of sketchy lines to the edges of all of her illustrations. This is being re-issued in paperback as Doctor Strange: Strange Origin.

Doctor Strange Epic Collection: A Separate Reality – If you can wait until November, this Epic Collection covers one of the most-reprinted periods of Doctor Strange from the early-70s as written by comics royalty Roy Thomas. Be warned – 70s comics are much wordier than modern ones; they do a lot more tell than show.

Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment – If you want a sampling of Doctor Strange interacting with another Marvel character, the recollection of this 1987 original graphic novel is one of his most highly-acclaimed starring turns as written by Roger Stern and illustrated by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. Movie watchers might not know that Dr. Doom is typically portrayed as one the most powerful magicians on the planet, which makes this team-up something fans had wanted to see for decades.

Doctor Strange: The Oath – This is a charming series from the super-group of Mark Waid and Marcos Martin. Martin’s art means this is a brighter, more classic-looking comic, and Waid spins an enjoyable and self-contained tale.

Doctor Strange Vol. 1: The Way of the Weird – This is Doctor Strange’s newest series, penned by super-hot scribe Jason Aaron (he also writes Star Wars and Thor). The art from Chris Bachalo may strike some new readers as slightly cartoonish or hard to follow – it’s definitely not a super-glossy comic attempting to be a film.

Those are just a handful of dozens of Doctor Strange collections Marvel has released over the years – and the Doctor Strange guide lists every one along with the issues they contain.

Just how much of Doctor Strange has been collected as of this post? Here are the stats, not including his current ongoing series (which will be 100% collected, as is the case with all new Marvel comics):

Year Series Total Collected In Color Oversized     302 214 (70.86%) 197 (65.23%) 48 (15.89%) 1963 Strange Tales, Vol. 1 57 57 57 35 1968 Doctor Strange, Vol. 1 15 15 15 0 1972 Marvel Premiere 12 12 12 0 1974 Doctor Strange, Vol. 2 82 77 60 3 1987 Strange Tales, Vol. 2 19 19 19 0 1988 Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme 93 12 12 10 1989 Doctor Strange OGNs (1989-1997) 3 3 3 0 1999 Dr. Strange: The Flight of Bones 4 4 4 0 2004 Strange 6 6 6 0 2006 Dr. Strange: The Oath 5 5 5 0 2010 Mystic Hands Of Dr. Strange (one-shot) 1 0 0 0 2010 Strange, Vol. 2 4 4 4 0 2010 Doctor Strange: Season 1 OGN 1 1 1 0

Considering the piecemeal assemble of series we have to work with, nearly 71% coverage isn’t terrible – but almost all of the missing 29% comes from the massive gap of his 1990s series – which has never had a single collected edition to its name. The start of a Doctor Strange Epic Collection series this November will eventually help to change that.

Want to know how to own the nearly 71% of Doctor Strange that has been recollected from the form of its original release? Head to the Doctor Strange guide for all the details!

New Collecting Guide: Doctor Strange (plus, 5 suggestions for new fans) was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Pokémon Go through the eyes of a newbie trainer

I am lying in the middle of my living room floor, likely creating a puddle of sweat beneath my back, and it’s all because of Pokémon Go.

Let’s back up a few days.

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality mobile game that was released last Wednesday across the United States by Niantic Labs (formerly of Google; now an independent company). In it, you run around in the real world while throwing virtual digital balls imaginary fantastical creatures. Oh, and apparently you go to church. A lot.

Okay, okay, I know a little more about Pokémon Go than that, but only through the past few hours of firsthand experience. Honestly, I only understand what Pokémon even are in the vaguest of terms. I was just aging out of spending my money and time on stuff like games, cards, and comics by the middle of the 90s, so I wasn’t even aware of the existence of Pokemon until I met E’s little brother in 2002.

Even then, I only understand it as an execution of several geeky archetypes – characters who collect things, summoning of creatures, opposing elements in a fighting game, and evolving creatures. I have no concept of how any of the games play or the story behind them.

As reports from seemingly every single person I have ever met about their Pokémon Go play experiences began to crop up over the weekend, a familiar urge began to bubble up inside my gut. Yes, it was the special brand of agita created by OCD Godzilla. There were people out there playing a game about collecting things, and if I didn’t start playing it right now I might miss content and experiences that would never be available again.

On the other hand, there is no part of Pokémon Go that particularly interests me – not the IP, nor the augmented reality. Plus, I’m never aimlessly walking around other than with EV, who I categorically prevent from fussing with screens, digital games, and IP other than Marvel’s. (Sorry, I’m weak.)

After idly Googling some playing guides after rehearsal, I learned the sort of exclusivity detail that is frequently the death of my free time and disposable income: you can avoid the typically prescribed trio of starter creatures to grab Pikachu instead. I’m not sure what Pikachu is (apparently a sort of electric mouse?), but I know he’s was the first and most-enduring mascot of the franchise due to E’s brother’s many stuffed iterations of him.

I decided I would install the game and walk around with it just long enough to grab that little yellow bugger so at least I could be informed while everyone talked to me about it. And, if starter Pikachu was ever later removed, I could remain satisfied I hadn’t missed out on anything.

(DO YOU HEAR THAT, OCD GODZILLA? I WON’T BE MISSING OUT ON ANYTHING.)

Screenshots from The Verge’s preview article.

I installed the game, went on an evening walk with EV. After ignoring the normal starter monsters three times, a vibration of my phone announced the proximity of Pikachu. I tapped his sprite on the map and collected Pikachu by tossing a virtual ball at his augmented reality head.

I admit, the augmented reality shock of seeing him sitting in the middle of the street via my camera was thrilling. The gameplay of clumsily lobbing the virtual ball at his head wasn’t so exciting.  After capturing him, I left my phone on, but we apparently didn’t encounter any other beasts – nor did we locate the throngs of humanity said to be chasing and battling all across America.

I guess my part of DelCo is a Pokémon dead zone.

We finished our walk and I put EV to bed. When E got home from rehearsal, I opened up the app to show her what everyone has been talking about.

“And, there’s this sort of radar for nearby… what the fuck is that?”

In my little radar bay there were a series of tiny Pokémon silhouettes and one massive one. Like, it could have been the Pokémon of OCD Godzilla, its silhouette was so fearsome. It was purportedly only “one footprint” away (as I later learned, less than 250 feet).

I made a split second decision that I would head out for a nighttime jog that doubled as a second Pokémon demo. After all, one of my stay-at-home-parent goals was to get back to my pre-baby level of weight and fitness, and after an initial quick drop of start-up snacks weight I’ve been on a plateau for two months now. I changed into some neglected gym clothes and E outfitted me with blinkers on my speakers. I don’t have any headphones suitable for running, so I plugged in my in-ear stage monitors – they’re used to plenty of sweat and jumping around.

Out I went. I never did find that massive beast supposedly just outside our house despite nearly resorting to beating the bushes to get him to emerge (score one for augmented reality). Frustrated but still eager to see the game in action, I wound up jogging for an hour trying to locate other critters, which has never happened before in my life. (The jogging, not the locating critters.)

The actual game experience was rather awful for me, and I can’t tell if that’s the game’s fault or just my own shortcomings as a Pokémon neophyte. I had to run back into the house after the first 15 minutes to Google how to find Pokemon. I was too low-level to use our local gym (a church, but not one someone was living in), but when I jogged to several PokeStops and toggled their icons nothing seemed to happen. I Googled extensively with my phone’s precious battery, but discovered nothing. (You have to spin them like coins to access them, which is not at all suggested by their UI.)

I ran through several serpentine miles through a residential neighborhood before I even encountered a Pokémon, although after that I discovered a steady trickle of them over the course of the next hour. I learned that Pokémon Go is like gamified interval training – you run until a Pokémon is only two footprints away, and then you meander aimlessly trying to find it, seeming as though you are on drugs or casing people’s house for a robbery or both until you seem to be getting closer.

(I felt awkward while trying to zero in on my prey, which wasn’t entirely the fault of the buggy radar or the darkness. Even while being careful not to cross any property lines, I could easily see how sketchy my behavior would have looked to the eye of an observer. I can entirely understand why Omari Akil called the game “a death sentence if you are a black man.”)

Each creature come with a bevy of stats and bonuses for which the game offers no explanation aside from CP being their power level. I’ve read that there’s a method for trading in duplicated monsters for candy, but the game never mentioned that when I got my first duplicate. Also, the radar proved close to useless, throwing up many false positives that never got closer despite careful triangulation.

(If they just reskinned the darn thing with Marvel superheroes I could probably qualify for the next Olympics with the amount of running I’d do to snag a rare Kitty Pryde.)

On the whole, I’m not quite sure what the point is, other than collecting them all – I get that there is training and fighting, but I’m not sure why I should care or what kind of time or effort that will require.

However, note that I jogged for several miles just to find one of these damn things. That’s more miles than I’ve jogged this entire year so far. I am completed covered in sweat and I feel tired, sore, and awesome. I don’t care a damned bit about which creatures I caught, but I’m looking forward to doing it again tomorrow night if it means another cool, nighttime jog and getting back to my pre-baby, pre-start-up shape.

It’s that quality that makes it such a killer app: so far, it’s not prescriptive. Sure, there are people competing for control of our local church (which is weird to type), but I can simply keep going on nightly jogs to catch Pokémon while other people choose to c0-play with their kids while avoiding the fighting parts. Pokémon Go already exceeding Tinder’s install base and rivaling Twitters daily active users. Those numbers are only going to go up, as right now we’re still in the group of earliest adopters and those who have heard firsthand word of mouth.

If both the massive week-one success and my willingness to give the game a try signal anything, it’s that there is a huge market for augmented reality gamification. Foursquare had the right idea several years ago, but it was too exclusive to a set of Twitterati who were constantly broadcasting their social actions; Pokémon go makes no such demands. Not every successive augmented reality game will enjoy this level of total media dominance, but I’m certain we’re due for a lot more of them in 2017.

Pokémon Go through the eyes of a newbie trainer was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[crushingkrisis]

Design vs Experience (or: when digital maps rule our physical world)

EV refers to the voice of Google Maps as, “The Map Lady,” and sometimes The Map Lady and I have a disagreement.

Case and point: to get to the zoo from my house, The Map Lady has me turn off of what is effectively the suburban version of Market Street to get onto Chestnut Street – which makes total sense – but then has me turn off of three-laned Chestnut almost a mile before a crucial left turn to return to sluggish one-laned Market.

On those occasions, I turn to EV during a stop at a red light and say, “The map lady is very confused, today.”

User Design versus User Experience, one of my favorite visual analogies from my time in start-up land. (Walkers have elected to cut through the grass rather than round the corner and walk on the pavers.) Photo by felixphs

Is she really? Computerized directions aren’t about a route that’s seemingly more direct or that has a higher speed limit. They’re taking into account a quantity and quality of factors that never occur to we humans as navigators … or even to the city planners who designed the streets in the first place!

Even though I call her confused, The Map Lady has found ingenious short-cuts to get me around Delaware County, like skipping a long chain of turn-only lights by cutting a three-quarter circle through a neighborhood with stop signs.

This amplifies the typical tension between User Design vs User Experience not only because of the sheer magnitude users, but also because the reality of their actions can transform the landscape itself.

This was exemplified for me by an article last month in Washington Post, “Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning?” A residential suburban neighborhood suddenly became a busy thoroughfare due to its status as a slightly more-efficient detour to construction than the route that was officially marked. Understandably, home owners who wanted to live in a quiet area aren’t too pleased with the increased traffic and noise.

While commenters castigated the home owners’ sense of entitlement (streets are public, after all), I couldn’t help but sympathize with them. I’ve only once lived on a block I’d consider a “thru-street” that delivered regular traffic from one destination to another. I find the noise distracting to everything I do, from recording to sleeping. When we bought this house, part of the search criteria was to find a street that more or less lead nowhere in an enclosed neighborhood. (Not a development; just a neighborhood that has no single street that starts on one side and continues out the other.)

Yet, during recent construction, SEPTA busses were detoured through the street perpendicular to ours; it was the only north-to-south way to avoid the construction for a mile in either direction. I was aghast – I had never in a million years assumed we’d be living adjacent to a bus route. Luckily, the change lasted on a few days. Had it been longer, I would have been legitimately agitating to move.

I ponder these things as The Map Lady steers me through previously unexplored territory to get to familiar places. She’s doing more than getting me there faster, or annoying another solitude-loving homeowner: she’s changing my use of physical infrastructure.

Is a tiny residential street built to handle occasional traffic able to endure the volume of “a vehicle every two seconds,” as was the case in that WaPo article? Are the driveways designed so that residents may safely exit into “a backup dozens of cars deep”? Should parking rules be changed, permits issued, stop signs turned to lights, or dotted or solid lines added to the road faces? The innards of historical cities like Philadelphia and Boston have long since wrestled with these dilemmas, but computerized mapping has made them relevant to every street in the country.

The rule of digital cartography can have impacts beyond rerouting traffic. Fusion details how a digital mapping company called MaxMind’s act of assigning unplaced IP addresses to the geographic center of the United States made life a nightmare for renters at an isolated Kansas farm. These people made absolute certain their street wouldn’t be mistakenly re-purposed as a thoroughfare when they rented their house, but didn’t plan for the ire of scores of scammed internet users landing on their front lawn – or for their personal information to be shared across the internet in misplaced retaliation.

Alternately, perhaps you live in a converted church and have suddenly discovered you are a Pokemon Gym courtesy of augmented reality game designer Niantic:

Living in an old church means many things. Today it means my house is a Pokémon Go gym. This should be fascinating.

— Boon Sheridan (@boonerang) July 9, 2016

This is what I’m a little leery of. People pulled up, blocking my drive way as they sit on their phones. pic.twitter.com/WpRbilk6g6

— Boon Sheridan (@boonerang) July 10, 2016

In all three of these examples – Waze, MaxMind, and Niantic – the affected residents were none the wiser of their property’s sudden change in status until they began to suffer the deleterious effects of the situation via the behavior of others. Worse, none of the three have an obvious avenue to protest their designation – Waze, by its nature, is crowdsourced and behaving as expected; it took inquiries from Fusion’s writer Kashmir Hill for MaxMind to make a change after a decade of ignorance to the problems they were causing; so far, Niantic offers no publicized process for property owners to opt out of their Pokémon Go mapping.

That is terrifying. The nature of our connected world is allowing private companies to effectively create their own geolocated “watch lists” that may soon begin to affect property values or put lives at risk without even the basic requirement of an appeals process.

Also, note the aspect of privilege associated with these three cases. The Waze neighborhood waged war through the app and were covered by the Washington Post. The Pokémon Church Guy immediately caught on and his good-natured response turned his plight into massive Twitter exposure.

What about the residents of the Kansas farm? They arguably experienced the worst harm, “visited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children,” and having their personal details spewed across the internet in a series of doxxings. Until Ms. Hill found them all they got was a sign posted in their yard by the sheriff that said to leave them alone and call him with questions.

I won’t re-invade that shared personal information to find out their personal demographics, but even if they’re a third white male in this example the demographics of their location (and of the property’s owner, and 82 year old woman) combined with the length of their suffering speaks volumes.

Digital cartography is no longer simply describing or annotating our physical world – it’s having a reciprocal impact that is invisible until it’s unavoidable – and, even when it is unavoidable, its true nature is frequently gated by the technological access and savvy of the afflicted.

For me, that begs the question of which geography represents the truth – the one we can experience solely through the physical, tangible world, or the one that is exclusively digitally accessible? As with history, I think the truth will be determined by the victors, and in many cases that won’t be the unsuspecting residents like the people living in one of the houses in this story.

Design vs Experience (or: when digital maps rule our physical world) was originally published on Crushing Krisis

[odinsblog]

28 COMMON RACIST ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS

[odinsblog]

(By Jona Olsson)

Below is a list of 28 common racist attitudes and behaviors that indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial or defensiveness. Each is followed by a statement that is a reality check and consequence for harboring such attitudes.

1. I’m Colorblind.

“People are just people; I don’t see color; we’re all just human.” Or “I don’t think of you as Chinese.” Or “We all bleed red when we’re cut.” Or “Character, not color, is what counts with me.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Statements like these assume that people of color are just like you, white; that they have the same dreams, standards, problems, and peeves that you do. “Colorblindness” negates the cultural values, norms, expectations and life experiences of people of color. Even if an individual white person could ignore a person’s color, society does not. By saying we are not different, that you don’t see the color, you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors’ experience of racism and your experience of privilege.

“I’m colorblind” can also be a defense when afraid to discuss racism, especially if one assumes all conversation about race or color is racist. Speaking of another person’s color or culture is not necessarily racist or offensive. As my friend Rudy says, I don’t mind that you notice that I’m black.” Color consciousness does not equal racism.

2. The Rugged Individual, the Level Playing Field and the Bootstrap Theory.

“America is the land of opportunity, built by rugged individuals, where anyone with grit can succeed if they just pull up hard enough on their bootstraps.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

These are three of the crown jewels of U.S. social propaganda. They have allowed generation after generation to say, “If you succeed, you did it, but if you fail, or if you’re poor, that’s your fault.” Belief in this propaganda is founded on a total denial of the impact of either oppression or privilege on any person’s chance for success.

Attacks on programs like affirmative action find rationalization in the belief that the playing field is now level, i.e., that every individual, regardless of color or gender, or disability, etc., has the same access to the rights, benefits and responsibilities of the society. 

The rationalization continues: since slavery is ended and people of color have civil rights, the playing field has now been leveled. It follows, then, that there is no reason for a person of color to “fail” (whether manifested in low SAT scores or small numbers in management positions) EXCEPT individual character flaws or cultural inadequacies. These “failures” could have no roots in racism and internalized racism.

3. Reverse Racism.

A. “People of color are just as racist as white people.” B. “Affirmative action had a role years ago, but today it’s just reverse racism; now it’s discriminating against white men.” C. “The civil rights movement, when it began, was appropriate, valuable, needed. But it’s gone to the extreme. The playing field is now level. Now the civil rights movement is no longer working for equality but for revenge.” Or D. “Black pride, black power is dangerous. They just want power over white people.” (Include here any reference to pride and empowerment of any people of color.)

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

A. Let’s first define racism with this formula: 

Racism = racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power. 

To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism. Certainly, people of color can be and are prejudiced against white people. That was a part of their societal conditioning. A person of color can act on prejudices to insult or hurt a white person. But there is a difference between being hurt and being oppressed. People of color, as a social group, do not have the societal, institutional power to oppress white people as a group. An individual person of color abusing a white person – while clearly wrong, (no person should be insulted, hurt, etc.) is acting out a personal racial prejudice, not racism.

B. This form of denial is based on the false notion that the playing field is now level. When the people with privilege, historical access and advantage are expected to suddenly (in societal evolution time) share some of that power, it is often perceived as discrimination.

C+D. C is a statement by Rush Limbaugh. Though, clearly he is no anti-racist, both c+d follow closely on the heels of “reverse racism” and are loaded with white people’s fear of people of color and what would happen if they gained “control.” Embedded here is also the assumption that to be “pro-black” (or any other color) is to be anti-white. (A similar illogical accusation is directed at women who work for an end to violence against women and girls. Women who work to better the lives of women are regularly accused of being “anti-male.”)

4. Blame the Victim.

“It’s their fault they can’t get a job, or be manager.” Or “We have advertised everywhere, there just aren’t any qualified people of color for this job.” Or “If he only worked harder, applied himself more, or had a stronger work ethic.” Or “If she just felt better about herself – internalized racism is the real problem here.” OR “She uses racism as an excuse, to divert us from her incompetence.” Or “If he didn’t go looking for racism everywhere…” (As if racism is so hidden or difficult to uncover that people of color would have to search for it.)

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

All “blame the victim” behaviors have two things in common. First, they avoid the real problem: racism. Second, they take away from the picture the agents of racism, white people and institutions, who either intentionally perpetuate or unintentionally collude with racism.

This is similar to agent deletion in discussions of rape. Statements referring to a woman being raped, many by focusing on her clothing or behavior at the time of the rape and delete the male rapist from the picture.)

As long as the focus remains on people of color, white people can minimize or dismiss their reactions, and never have to look directly at racism and the whites’ own responsibility or collusion.

5. The White Knight or White Missionary.

“We (white people) know just where to build your new community center.” Or “Your young people (read youth of color) would be better served by traveling to our suburban training center.” Or “We (white people) organized a used clothing drive for you; where do you want us to put the clothes?”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

It is a racist, paternalistic assumption that well meaning white people know what’s best for people of color. Decisions by white people, are made on behalf of people of color, as though they were incapable of making their own. This is another version of “blame the victim” and white is right. It places the problems at the feet of people of color and the only “appropriate” solutions with white people. Once more the power of self-determination is taken away from people of color. Regardless of motive, it is still about white control.

6. Lighten up. (Lighten? Whiten?)

“Black people are just too sensitive and thin-skinned.” Or Indians should get a sense of humor. We’re just kidding around.” Or “I didn’t mean anything racist; it’s just a joke.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Here are racism and agent deletion in partnership again. The problem and perpetrators are exonerated, because the rationale declares that humor isn’t hurtful. This form of denial serves most to trivialize the pain and reality of daily racism.

7. Don’t Blame Me.

“I never owned slaves.” Or “I didn’t vote for David Duke.” Or “None of my family joined the Klan.” Or “I taught my children that racism is wrong.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Often white people hear blame whenever the issue of racism is brought up, whether or not blame has been placed on whites. As beneficiaries of racism and white privilege, you sometimes take a defensive posture even when you are not being individually blamed. You may personalize the remarks, not directed personally at you. It is the arrogance of your privilege that drags the focus back to whites.

When whites are being blamed or personally accused of racist behavior, this defensiveness and denial further alienate you and may preclude you from examining your possible racist behavior.

8. BWAME.

“But What About Me. Look how I’ve been hurt, oppressed, exploited…?

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

This diminishes the experience of people of color by telling our own story of hardship. We lose an opportunity to learn more about the experience of racism from a person of color, while we minimize their experience by trying to make it comparable or less painful than ours.

9. We Have Overcome.

“We dealt with racism in the 60s with all the marches, sit-ins and speeches by Dr. King. Laws have been changed. Segregation and lynching are ended. We have some details to work out but real racism is pretty much a thing of the past.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

The absence of legalized, enforced segregation does not equal the end of racism. This denial of contemporary racism, based on inaccurate assessment of both history and current society, romanticizes the past and diminishes today’s reality.

10. The End Run, Escapism.

“Of course, racism is terrible, but what about sexism? Or classism or heterosexism?” or “Racism is a result of classism (or any other oppression), so if we just work on that, racism will end, too.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

I agree with Audre Lorde’s statement, “There is no hierarchy of oppression.” I would not establish a rank order for oppressions. At the same time, we cannot attempt to evade recognition and responsibility for any form of oppression.

Statements like the ones above divert attention from racial injustice to focus on some other form of oppression. They are usually said by white people, (women, working class people, lesbians, gay men or others) who experience both white privilege and oppression in some form. Whites are more willing and more comfortable decrying their oppression than scrutinizing their privilege. Oppressions are so inextricably linked that if whites allow their fear, guilt and denial to constantly divert them from confronting racism, even while we work to dismantle other forms, no oppression will ever be dismantled.

11. Due Process.

“Lady Justice is color blind.” White parents who tell their children, “The police are here to protect you. If they ever stop you, just be polite and tell the truth.” Then when a black teen is beaten or killed by police, those same parents say, “He must have been doing something wrong, to provoke that kind of police response.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

White people’s belief that the police, courts, the legal system and social services work without bias; that due process, fair trials, juries, judges, police officers and case workers have everyone’s, including people of color, best interest at heart. Or at least, no less than they do for white people. This belief clouds reality. Whites tend to look at isolated incidents rather than the patterns of institutionalized oppression.

12. The Innocent by Association.

“I’m not racist, because… I have Vietnamese friends, or my lover is black or I marched with Dr. King.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

(Perhaps, if all white people who say they marched with Dr. King actually had, the current situation would look different!) This detour into denial wrongly equates personal interactions with people of color, no matter how intimate they may be, with anti- racism. There is an assumption that our personal associations free us magically from our racist conditioning.

13. The Penitent.

“I am so sorry for the way whites have treated your people.” Or “I am sorry for the terrible things that white man just said to you.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

While there is probably no harm in the “sorry,” if it is not attached to some action taken against racism, it is most often just another expression of white guilt. Being an ally to people of color is not limited to an apology for other white people’s behavior, it must include anti-racist action.

14. The Whitewash.

“He’s really a very nice guy, he’s just had some bad experiences with Koreans.” Or “That’s just the way Uncle Adolf jokes. He’s very polite to the black janitor in his building.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

We’re trapped by another version of white guilt response. Whites attempt to excuse, defend or cover up racist actions of other white people. White people are particularly prone to this if the other person is close, family or friend, and if we feel their actions reflect on us.

Keep reading