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jamsradio

velocicrafter

anyone know what this is from?

baroncaveyeti

“Judgement Day” by EC Comics. From wikipedia:

The story depicted a human astronaut, a representative of the Galactic Republic, visiting the planet Cybrinia inhabited by robots. He finds the robots divided into functionally identical orange and blue races, one of which has fewer rights and privileges than the other. The astronaut decides that due to the robots’ bigotry, the Galactic Republic should not admit the planet. In the final panel, he removes his helmet, revealing himself to be a black man.

Apparently the Comics Code Authority tried to prevent the author from making the main character black.

lakidaa

Boy did they! It took the writer (and the company) threatening the CCA with a lawsuit and telling the guy to fuck off (literally) to get this thing printed:

Comic Historian Digby Diehl recounted in Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives:

This really made ‘em go bananas in the Code czar’s office. ‘Judge Murphy was off his nut. He was really out to get us’, recalls [EC editor] Feldstein. ‘I went in there with this story and Murphy says, “It can’t be a Black man”. But … but that’s the whole point of the story!’ Feldstein sputtered. When Murphy continued to insist that the Black man had to go, Feldstein put it on the line. ‘Listen’, he told Murphy, ‘you’ve been riding us and making it impossible to put out anything at all because you guys just want us out of business’. [Feldstein] reported the results of his audience with the czar to Gaines, who was furious [and] immediately picked up the phone and called Murphy. ‘This is ridiculous!’ he bellowed. ‘I’m going to call a press conference on this. You have no grounds, no basis, to do this. I’ll sue you’. Murphy made what he surely thought was a gracious concession. ‘All right. Just take off the beads of sweat’. At that, Gaines and Feldstein both went ballistic. ‘Fuck you!’ they shouted into the telephone in unison. Murphy hung up on them, but the story ran in its original form.[18]

lb-lee-deactivated20180415

You know, it’s times like this that I am deeply comforted, knowing that history isn’t just everyone being nice and polite and better than the current generation. Sometimes it really is just people bellowing swear words over the phone to get shit done.

northwestpress-blog

HELL, YES!

blackfolksmakingcomics

I’ve heard this story so many times. The book has an April 1953 cover date. In perspective, this was 12 years before the first Black American character to headline his own book, Dell Comics’ Lobo, was created and 13 years before the first Black superhero in mainstream comics, Marvel’s Black Panther. So yeah, having the hero of Judgement Day being a non-stereotypical Black figure was eye-opening to comic readers.

The thing is there was nothing in the Code saying it COULDN’T be a Black man (in April 1953, no doubt, this had to be jarring to mainstream comic readers; a non-stereotypical Black figure as a lead character in a major story was very rare back then). Heck, the only thing about race in the original Code when the book came out was this:

(1) Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.

In short, Magistrate Charles F. Murphy was just being a racist dick, but it continued to cement why the Authority was created in the first place: to make EC Comics go extinct. The entire industry’s treatment of EC Comics, most notably the archaic, draconian, Comic Code Authority that spawned from this mistreatment, remains a black mark on the comic industry as a whole.

Not a fan of bullies, and the way a bunch of publishers (including Marvel and DC), under the guise of “morality,” just teamed up together to take out EC Comics was deplorable and shameful.

Among the highlights of the Code that were largely targeted towards EC Comics:

No comic magazine shall use the words “horror” or “terror” in its title (again, this was a publisher who made books like Vault of Horror and Crypt of Terror [which became Tales from the Crypt], .

All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted (books like Crime SuspenStories and the other ones had loads of books like these) .

All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated (EC had to redraw a lot of “gruesome” characters to fit the standard).

Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

So, yeah, a shameful side of the comic book industry modern generations have fought to get rid of, though its legacy still fouls up the air every now and then.

#know your history

tastefullyoffensive

Babylonian era problems. (photo via tbc34)

dama3-deactivated20210619

old school hate mail

jakovu

Imagine how pissed you have to be to engrave a rock

thesparkofrevolution

Ok but there was this guy called Ea-nasir who was a total crook and would actually cheat people ought of good copper and sell them shit instead. The amount of correspondences complaining to and about this guy are HILARIOUS.

skeletonrex-deactivated20151101

Are you telling me we know about a specific guy who lived 5000 years ago, by name, because he was a huge asshole

thesparkofrevolution

More like 4000 years ago but yes. Ea-nasir and his dodgy business deals.

prokopetz

And we haven’t even touched on the true hilarity of the situation yet. Consider two additional facts:

He wasn’t just into copper trading. There are letters complaining about Ea-nasir’s business practices with respect to everything from kitchenwares to real estate speculation to second-hand clothing. The guy was everywhere.

The majority of the surviving correspondences regarding Ea-nasir were recovered from one particular room in a building that is believed to have been Ea-nasir’s own house.

Like, these are clay tablets. They’re bulky, fragile, and difficult to store. They typically weren’t kept long-term unless they contained financial records or other vital information (which is why we have huge reams of financial data about ancient Babylon in spite of how little we know about the actual culture: most of the surviving tablets are commercial inventories, bills of sale, etc.).

But this guy, this Ea-nasir, he kept all of his angry letters - hundreds of them - and meticulously filed and preserved them in a dedicated room in his house. What kind of guy does that?

[ source ]

charlesoberonn

A guy who knew exactly how he wanted to be remembered 4000 years later.

deducecanoe-deactivated20161213

I was reading the link. Dude was a total tool. I guess if you are going to be remembered for something…

iseo58

indigodreams

Toshiaki Kato

guerrillamamamedicine

(via Revolutionary Mothering: An Interview In Letters | literarykitchen.com)

in a few letters back and forth sarah maria and i talk about traveling, revolutionary mothering, poetry and uncertainty…

here is an excerpt…

‘well, theresa turned eight years old last week. and i have backpacked through tear gas and couchsurfed through revolutions. i have also cried harder and longer in fear and anger and loneliness, more than i could have ever imagined possible. i have been more scared and more fearless, loved harder and had bones broken and pride broken and god, its been weary. i did what i wanted, but im not sure if id truly knew the price this world would extract for doing so, if i still would have done it…’

you can read the whole thing and literarykitchen.com

lesstalkmoreillustration

Maria Nguyen dtnart

blackrockandrollmusic-blog

Nina Simone showed up for us, then and now. Her blackness was the earliest encouragement for so many of us to risk discomfort—or more precisely, to risk white discomfort to engage the urgency of black America’s demands and of the fight for true equity in American society.

I watched her 1965 performance of “Mississippi, Goddam” projected on a large wall in a continuous loop for 20 minutes last summer, at the Brooklyn Museum. The video was part of an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In her face and voice, the outrage and insistence of action were plain. As she improvised, differing her phrasing from the recording I’ve listened to for years, it ceased to be a song and became a rallying cry. John Coltrane also composed a piece like this after the deaths of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, who were killed in the 16th Street church bombing in 1963. His is also an aching kind of elegy, in which his horn creeps high and lands in a melodic, yet cacophonous outrage.

Jazz and blues were vanguard and fringe in that way. When we consider the continuum of jazz and blues artists who reached into our collective consciousness—into the visceral and contemporary concerns that gospel couldn’t articulate, or that pop music from the Motown hit factory deliberately ignored—Simone’s body of work looms large. Popular and gospel musicians in the 1960s hadn’t been making music that articulated the real time struggle of African-Americans—or to be more precise, the real time political struggle of black and brown people. Simone performed and communicated black, righteous anger.

“First you get depressed, and after that you get mad,” she said of “Mississippi, Goddam” in an in interview with talk-show host Steve Allen in September 1964. “It’s a very moving, violent song.”

Here again, a black woman’s voice, defiant, blustery, and raw. A black woman that penned a rallying cry, singing the collective outrage of black death, cursing God and country simultaneous, indicting the system and culture that produce the kind of violence that would murder black girls in a church on a Sunday morning. That provocation set Simone apart.

Writer and activist Dick Gregory points to this truth in the new documentary. “There’s something about a woman. If you look at all the suffering that black folks went through, not one black man would dare say, ‘Mississippi, Goddam,’ and then to have someone with her stature talking about your problems, you know how happy they had to be.” [Read More]

awesome-picz

Puppies That Can Sleep Anywhere And Anytime

superheroesincolor

Pixar‘s Sanjay’s Super Team

“For the first time, Pixar has two original films that will be released this year. The Good Dinosaur will follow Inside Out in November, and with it, a brand new short.

‘Sanjay’s Super Team’ will be the first Pixar film starring a character of color. Director Sanjay Patel drew on his childhood experiences to create the 7 minute short, which chronicles a Hindu prayer ritual with his father.

It’s also the first time religion is the subject in a Pixar film. The short concerns Sanjay daydreaming about the Hindu gods as ancient superheroes, not unlike Marvel’s The Avengers…

Patel is the third Asian American director at Pixar, joining Ronnie del Carmen, co director of Inside Out, and Pete Sohn, director of The Good Dinosaur. He was candid in describing the difficulties of embracing his Indian heritage as a boy and even into adulthood…”

Keep reading at pixarplanet

tpfnewsdesk-deactivated20181216

The Supreme Court in a near-unanimous 8-1 decision, struck down parts of a three-strikes law that it has been protecting for decades.

While progressives are justifiably celebrating the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, the Court made another decision that spells the beginning of the end of the Prison Industrial Complex. The Court decided that the Federal three-strikes law is unconstitutionally vague.

That’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it? California courts sentenced a man to life imprisonment for stealing a pair of socks worth $2.50. When bankers steal hundreds of millions of dollars and get no jail time at all, ordinary people have to believe the legal system makes no sense at all.

Republican president Richard Nixon started this off by declaring a War on Drugs in 1971. Prosecutors everywhere used this so-called War as an excuse to put black Americans in prison. As a result, while blacks in California comprise only 3% of the population, the prison population convicted of a third strike offense is 45% black. It doesn’t help the black population that most of them can’t afford a decent lawyer, but still, police concentrate on rousting and arresting young black men.

Republican front group and law-making syndicate ALEC added to the prison population by writing determinate sentencing laws and convincing state legislatures to pass them. These bills had the effect of forcing blacks to spend decades in prison for possession of what were erroneously defined as Schedule I drugs. Private prison corporations, who profit heavily when more people are sent to prison, also support ALEC.

With the Supreme Court decision in Johnson v. United States, support for imprisoning blacks comes full circle. By an 8 to 1 margin, the most conservative Supreme Court in US history decided that the Federal Law that authorized strict penalties for 3rd strike felonies is unconstitutional. This reverses decades of cases where the Court ruled that locking up people for minor crimes and throwing away the key is just fine.

The question now is, “Where do we go from here?” This decision only affects federal cases, but it does mean that thousands of federal prisoners will have their sentences reviewed. In California, which has already changed its 3rd-strike laws, the total number of prisoners dropped nearly 9.4% (15,493 people) between 2010 and 2011. But federal prisons hold twice as many prisoners serving drug-related terms, so it is possible as many as 15%, or 30,000 will be released in the first year.

Will legislatures be able to resist pressure to keep these laws on the books? Given the changed political landscape with regard to racial profiling (which is now outlawed in many jurisdictions) and Marijuana use (which is now legal in 3 states and the District of Columbia), we can hope that many legislatures will correct their racist laws. At least, we can all work to force them to do it by electing Democrats to state legislatures.

karadin

oh my god, this is big.

sourcedumal

Please let this be the beginning of something more… please….

prettyboyshyflizzy

This is huge

9secretsigns

🙀😸🎉

lati-negros

know how bill clinton was involved in incarcerating the most Black men during his presidency. and look at what he says now that his wife is running for POTUS. search for “bill clinton three strikes”

endless-unfolding

All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking. … After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I.

Robert Hass, from “Meditation at Lagunitas,” Praise (HarperCollins, 1979)

jottingprosaist

“Sylvia Rivera kicking ass on stage after some radfems & transphobes tried to refuse her the right to speak at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally. Said radfems then had their own march in part protesting trans participation in Pride. A precursor to today’s Dyke March.”

Source: thespiritwas

It is women like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson who started the Stonewall riots and queer liberation. 43 years later, trans women of color, the people who started the movement, are the people maligned and left behind by it.

In Sylvia’s words, “What the FUCK is wrong with you all?”

lilacbootlaces-blog

[[Trigger warning: suicide]]

Sylvia went home that night and attempted suicide.

Marsha Johnson came home and found her in time to save her life.

Sylvia left the movement after that day and didn’t come back for twenty years.

browcatastrophe-deactivated2013

this is incredible, she is incredible, I highly recommend watching it

but I think the addendum re: the effect of this day on sylvia is really important

so often we valorise decontextualised moments of tough, articulate resistance and rage

and the suffering of the people who embodied them is not acknowledged, it’s uncomfortable, it’s not inspiring, we want them to stay tough and cool and stylish forever

which is particularly terrible when I think about how sylvia felt like that because of women like me — women who are now watching this video and feeling inspired and impressed and maybe a bit pleased with ourselves for finally having watched a speech by the famous and really cool to name-drop sylvia rivera

girl-assassin-deactivated201305

rebloggin for the true as fuck commentary (bolding mine)

n like, on one hand this moment is decontextualized as fuck, but on the other hand a lot of ppl try to hyper-contextualize it to make it “history” and a very specific historical moment, so we (cis women) can be like “oh so sad that’s how it was in the 1970s, radfems were so awful, but it was only the whole second-wave scene that was the problem, glad that’s over.”

Like have we forgotten the fact that Sylvia only died in 2002? And she died young, if she were still alive she wouldn’t even be 65 yet. I know hella older ppl in NYC who knew her personally, and hella “leaders” of the NYC queer scene pulled horrific shit on her constantly in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, like literally until the day she died (ppl from Empire State Pride agenda literally went to St. Vincents to beef with her on her death bed) Where are the video tapes/memorializing of that shit?

N now the Manhattan LGBT center on 13th st has a room dedicated to her memory, despite the fact that very center permanently banned her in 1995 for daring to suggest they should let homeless QTPOC sleep there in sub-zero weather.

N now there’s a whole homeless trans youth shelter on 36th st named after her, Sylvia’s Place, that kicked my TWOC friend out on the streets for testing positive for marijuana; failing to recognize how fucked up that is in a shelter named after a woman who struggled with addiction all her life, and was very vocal about the relationship between drug use and the stress of living under constant threats of violence.

N from the late 90s onward rich gays and lesbians openly fought against Sylvia to try to shut down 24/7 access to the piers that she n hella other QTPOC cruised and lived on bc they were bringing down the property values of their multi-million west village apartments.

N like 90% of the individual people who perpetuated fucked up violence against Sylvia are still alive and high-profile leaders in the NYC LGBT “community” today.

So like yes, good, remember the oppressive weight of our history of transmisogyny…but also remember that this shit specifically ain’t even history, it’s the current reality of the NYC queer/trans hierarchy today—like not even figuratively, literally the same people who pulled shit like this on Sylvia are still alive n well n all over NYC cutting the ribbons to the newest Sylvia Rivera memorial n eulogizing her like they never tried to fucking kill her themselves.

unobject

Incredible commentary all over this post

flora-file

Graptoveria ‘Fred Ives’ - crested form (by flora-file)

this plant is a different color every day

erebusodora-deactivated20190104

…Childermass took a pack of cards from the breast of his coat and shewed them to Vinculus. “The cards of Marseilles. Did you ever see their like before?” “Often,” said Vinculus, “but yours are different.” “They are copies of a set belonging to a sailor I met in Whitby. He bought them in Genoa with the intention of using them to discover the hiding places of pirates’ gold, but when he came to look at them, he found that he could not understand them. He offered to sell them to me, but I was poor and could not pay the price he asked. So we struck a bargain: I would tell him his fortune and in return he would lend me the cards long enough to make copies. Unfortunately his ship set sail before I was able to complete the drawings and so half are done from memory.” “And what fortune did you tell him?” “His true one. That he would be drowned dead before the year was out.” Vinculus laughed approvingly.

Susanna Clarke, “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell”.