ZumpComics

Comics created by Tanya Zumstein. Some random, mostly one about Queen Elizabeth I actually being a time traveler. Warning: Strong language and mild nudity.

[featuresofinterest]

it seems so strange to me that the only people it is socially acceptable to live with (once you reach a certain stage in life) are sexual partners? like why can’t i live with my best friend? why can’t i raise a child with them? why do i need to have sex with someone in order to live with them? why do we put certain relationships on a pedestal? why don’t we value non-sexual relationships enough? why do life partners always have to be sexual partners?

[greenjudy]

My grandmother and grandfather more or less adopted my grandmother’s best friend back in the 50s. After my grandfather died (before I was born, back in 1968 or so) they continued to keep house together, platonic best friends, and they hung together until they died, a few months apart, in 2007.

It’s quite recently, as far as I can tell, that living arrangements like that have stopped being regarded as normal.

[deathcomes4u]

It’s absolutely a new thing to find this stuff weird, and it has a lot to do with media pretending that the nuclear family and marriage are the only reasons to live with other people.

I’ve lived in a 3 adult household my whole life. My parents and their best friend. This was never weird to me, even though everyone my age thought it was because the media never portrayed these kinds of housing arrangements. As far as i was concerned, I just had an extra non-blood parent.

According to my parents, it was very common in the 70′s-80′s to buy houses with your friends, because it was financially smart to do so (so long as you were certain they were close friends who wouldn’t fall out with you and fuck everything up). Houses and house payments are much more manageable when you split the bills 3-4 ways instead of just two.

Millenials aren’t the first to think it’s a great idea to just shack up with friends. That’s housemating without the hastle of living with strangers. It’s still a good idea to shack up with people you’ve known a long time so you know how you’ll get on living together, but still. In the current economy, it’s pretty much now our only option for affording anything.

I think, and I’m not researched on this, but I think conservatives probably tried to suppress images of non-nuclear families because they likely thought it would encourage ideas of polygamy, polyamory, open sexual relationships with or without marriage, as well as other relationship types they thought of as un-christian or unsavoury. I could be wrong, but that shit wouldn’t surprise me.

(And i want to make a note that there’s also a disturbing amount of asexual denial around that makes people go ‘if they’re living together they HAVE to be banging because why wouldn’t they?’ and that shit both creeps me out and annoys me no end. People can be in relationships without sex. People can live together without sex. Sex is not the be-all and end-all and people being taught to think it is really need to stop).

Don’t let the media fool you into believing you can only live with a sexual partner or blood family. Someone somewhere has an agenda for making these seem abnormal, when really it’s just practical.

[curlicuecal]

A lot of people acted like it was super weird when two of my brothers decided to move states with me when I started my postdoc. I got really used to giving a little canned speech about it because it seemed to bewilder people so much. (Their leases happened to be up! We could share rent! They wanted to try somewhere new!)

The notable exception was my grandma, who was just like, “oh, yes, when we were young my sister and I decided to move cross-country together and it was lovely.”

More of this kind of thing for everyone, pls.

[magickedteacup]

The implication that close sibling relationships must also be a warning sign for incest also peeves me off; what kind of society are we living in anyway

[ineptshieldmaid]

#my mom’s a historian#does a lot of research#one of the main takeaways from the census data of literally every US census since the beginning#is that the nuclear family has never been the actual norm#nobody really ever lived like that#and a lot don’t now#and it’s clearly artificial and not ideal for most people#every household in the census had at least a grandma#usually a cousin#some rando#someone living in the house who wasn’t mom or dad or kid#always someone#usually several someones#some uncles etc.#unmarried aunties#that sort of person#but often unrelated friends#we’ve never really lived alone#that’s not how families work#that’s not how humans work  

tags by @bomberqueen17

[solarcat]

Having a multi-adult household unit also just makes a shit-ton of sense, tbh. Much easier to split not only the bills, but also the housework and child-rearing responsibilities. Communal living ftw.

[tanyazumstein]

My second step cousin lived with my family after she was kicked out at nineteen. I don't recall how long but there's a picture of her with me on my first birthday and I remember her putting me to bed at a point when I wasn't in a crib anymore. Another one of my dad's friends lived with us for a while after he got divorced and for the longest time his name was still on our phone bill. Currently my finance's brother lives with us and most likely will for the rest of our lives.

[tanyazumstein]

Halloween’s come in at work.

[wackd-archive]

Watched Batman & Bill last night, a documentary about the attempts of Marc Tyler Nobleman to find an heir of Bill Finger who can push DC Comics to finally give Bill creator credit on Batman stories.

My favorite thing about it is that it would’ve been fairly easy to find Bill’s granddaughter, Athena Finger, who had kept her maiden name and who had a MySpace page on which her dog Bruce Wayne was prominently displayed.

But Nobleman never thought to look for a granddaughter, because he was convinced Bill’s only son, Fred Finger, had been gay.

He wasn’t. According to Fred’s ex-wife, he was bisexual.

And so instead Nobleman ended up going through a laborious process to hunt down Bill’s ex-wife’s cousins, who told him of Athena’s existence once he finally found them.

Anyway, Athena eventually ended up successfully getting the credit changed. 

And she almost didn’t, because of bisexual erasure.

Don’t let anyone tell you queer studies doesn’t have practical applications, kids.

[tanyazumstein]

[tanyazumstein]

[tanyazumstein]

comic ready

[tanyazumstein]

This goddamn show is a rollercoaster and I’m stuck on it until it ends. 

[tanyazumstein]

@markiplier someone’s stealing your branding and putting googly eyes on it.

[redmensch-deactivated20190323]

holy shit new york is conducting an investigation of whether this jewish woman who is principal at a lower-class, black and latinx high school in the city is a communist because she’s known for the anti-racism and anti-segregation work she does

Over the years, Ms. Bloomberg has become one of the most outspoken and visible critics of New York City’s public schools, regularly castigating the Education Department’s leadership at forums and in the news media. Most of her criticism is aimed at actions that she says perpetuate a segregated and unequal educational system and that penalize black and Latino students. Through the years, she has helped organize protests and assemblies to push for integration and equal resources and treatment for her almost entirely black and Latino student body.

[…]

According to a letter sent to Ms. Bloomberg’s lawyers from the general counsel for the Education Department, Ms. Bloomberg and two unnamed teachers at the school are accused of belonging to the Progressive Labor Party, a Communist organization. They are also accused of recruiting students and inviting them to participate in the party’s activities, including marches.

Ms. Bloomberg, 53, denies those allegations.

A diminutive woman whose students often tower over her, Ms. Bloomberg did not set out to become an activist against her employer. She started her career teaching in Chicago before coming to work in New York City’s schools. When she was named principal of Park Slope Collegiate in 2004 — at the time, it was one of three small high schools in the former John Jay High School building in Park Slope — she said she found a deeply neglected school with a leaky roof, toilets that overflowed, moldy walls and doors that would not open properly. The student body was being neglected as well, she said, with few of its graduates ready for the rigors of college.

[…]

But that changed in 2010, when she learned the education department wanted to open a new high school in her building to serve white middle- and upper-class families in the neighborhood who had shunned Park Slope Collegiate. City officials proposed creating a selective secondary school to be called Millennium Brooklyn High School as a sister school to the overwhelmingly white Millennium High School in Manhattan.

Ms. Bloomberg said she did not understand why the white parents in the neighborhood could not simply send their children to one of the existing high schools. She said she thought the district had an excellent opportunity to integrate this black and Latino high school with white students from Park Slope and neighborhoods nearby.

But department officials were adamant about creating the new high school, which would screen students for test scores and behavior. As an enticement, the department promised to fix up the dilapidated John Jay building if Millennium came in.

“That really did it,” Ms. Bloomberg said.

She had been begging, for years for money to fix up her school. “You mean there is money? They’ve been sitting on money or they can find money if it’s for white students?” Ms. Bloomberg recalled thinking. “This was too much. It was right in our faces. It became clear to the students: ‘You’re not good enough.’”

[…]

But a fire had been lit. Over the years, Ms. Bloomberg supported her students in fighting the installation of metal detectors in their school, helped organize school assemblies to talk about police violence, and had spoken out passionately against segregation and what she considers racist Education Department policies.

Some teachers at Park Slope Collegiate disagreed with the assemblies and other protests that Ms. Bloomberg, who is extremely popular among her students and their parents — had supported and refused to participate.

[…]

Ms. Bloomberg denies any knowledge of organizing efforts for the Progressive Labor Party at the school. She said she could not control what groups other school workers or parents might belong to. She also said all events at Park Slope Collegiate were organized by the school and not by any outside organization.

source: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/nyregion/a-principal-is-accused-of-being-a-communist-rattling-a-brooklyn-school.html?

[thecringeandwincefactory-deacti]

This is precisely what happened in the 50s and 60s during the Red Scare to (White) people who organized with Black people for human rights equality. 

My stepdad was one of those guys. He organized with Paul Robeson in NYC in the late 50s/early 60s. FBI came to his house to try to intimidate him multiple times. He requested his file via FOIA once - thing was a couple hundred pages long, completely redacted.

[emptydragonseverywhere]

It is very significant that she is Jewish tho, not just “white.” Jews are accused of being communists (and fascists… somehow) on the regular. It goes along with the whole “Jews are more loyal to other Jews than to their country” trope, which often leads to violence (and was used to perpetuate the Holocaust, just saying.) Jews were disproportionately affected by McCarthyism. Jews are always, ALWAYS accused of being the “other,” of being the rebel and rabblerouser disguised as a decent person trying to indoctrinate your children and rise up to control the world. This is very specifically anti-semitic.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Yeah, the idea behind a lot of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories is that Jews are an insidious menace hellbent on bringing about “white genocide” by facilitating race mixing through communism. 

Exhibit A: 

This is why anti-Semitism and other forms of racism (anti-Blackness, anti-Latinx sentiment, etc.) are actually far more closely linked than people realise. Because white supremacists don’t see us as individuals asking for equal rights and protections, they see us all as a cabal of degenerates trying to topple the “natural order of things” by putting them on the bottom of the social pyramid (which, of course, it was totally fine to do to us, because we’re all “obviously inferior”). 

So yeah, if you have a situation where a Jewish woman is being accused of communism for fighting on behalf of her Black and Latinx students, this right here is definitely the underpinning of that accusation.

[tanyazumstein]

I've been planning a trip to Toronto with Andy! He is a man with simple tastes.

[why-i-love-comics]

Flash Comics #13 - “The Creeps” (1941)

written by John B. Wentworth art by Stan Aschmeier

[tanyazumstein]

Practicing with painting!

[skullmoss]

if ur a chick & ur fave character growing up was shego from kim possible there is a 99.99999999999% chance that u are either a huge lesbian or bisexual now

[straightallies-deactivated20240]

I hope one day that history looks back on ronald reagan as one of the 20th century’s most vile and disgusting serial killers

[haydrion]

may i ask why

[straightallies-deactivated20240]

Remember when like 6 Americans had ebola and it was an international emergency, and Obama flew out to meet survivors? Here is a list of things the United States government did in response: -Increasing the number of Ebola testing labs throughout the U.S. that can quickly and safely screen a potential Ebola specimen -Educating more than 150,000 health care workers on how to identify, isolate, diagnose, and care for patients under investigation for Ebola -Developing countermeasures — including the first Ebola vaccine to progress to Phase 2 testing — to prevent and treat Ebola -Converting at least 10 of the Ebola Treatment Centers into long-term Regional Ebola and Pandemic Treatment Centers for long-term readiness for years to come -Helping state and local public health systems accelerate and improve their operational readiness and preparedness for Ebola or other infectious diseases Source: https://whitehouse.gov/ebola-response

When the Reagan administration was faced with tens of thousands of gay men dying, they did nothing. They made jokes. They laughed. They caused an epidemic that killed 40 million people, because they hated gay men and thought we deserved to die.

[northcoastbear-deactivated20171]

There is so much more to it.  There is a myth perpetuated by Reaganites that he was an historically significant  President, in some positive sense.  If you are old enough to have voted in 1980, you probably know differently.  If you were born after 1980 you have been raised on this myth.  He sold Americans a fable about a Hollywood movie-like exceptional past and destiny, and led ordinary people around with portrayals of that mirage while his reactionary robber-baron friends set about dismantling 50 years of progressive advancements for working men and women, on their way to returning themselves to the position of unfettered economic domination they held between the Civil War and the Great Depression.  He was a union buster.   He gave us Scalia – need I say more?  He tried to give us Robert Bork (does anyone under 30 even know who he is?).  He lied about Iran/Contra.  He avoided dealing with AIDS.  He sealed the political sham-show between right wing capitalist kings and the evangelical thought-control snake-oil salesmen.  Americans don’t want to hear that they are ordinary citizens of the world, and they don’t want to hear that the aren’t anointed by some deity to lead the world to salvation.  They lapped it up, and they continue to do so.  

[ayellowbirds]

I have to wonder how the response of a more competent presidency to the AIDS crisis might have changed even the global impact of the disease. Where might we be today? How many millions of people would be alive and not suffering? Yes, Reagan was historically significant—for fucking things up in a globally devastating way.

[iammyfather]

When you hear how he slashed Income taxes, he did on the Wealthy, but he increased the lowest tax rate from 10% to 15%.

[wikdsushi-deactivated20201108]

His campaign was funded by Christian radicals, whose entire goal was to dismantle Roe vs. Wade and see American women relegated once more to back alleys and dirty knives.  He opened the door to religion in politics in a way the postwar McCarthyists never dreamed possible.  Now, 36 years after his election, maybe a third of American medical schools offer proper access to even first-trimester abortion training (in an era where that should mean a pill or vaginal suppository), and there are currently fewer doctors trained to perform late stage abortions for the entire US than there were pre-RvW (when such operations were only performed as a heroic measure).

[heylookitsarevolution]

And no one has even touched on his legacy of racial hatred, deliberate destruction of black communities and establishing of COONTELPRO to destroy the lives of black panthers and black activists, his actual murder of black activists and more. He was actually a demon.

[gehayi]

If you want to know how many lives could have been saved if the Reagan government had just fucking BUDGETED for AIDS research instead of telling AIDS researchers that they had to beg, borrow or steal any money for AIDS from other programs–then read And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition by Randy Shilts. And be prepared to have your heart broken at the unadulterated and wildly irresponsible waste.of time and human lives. 

Other shitty things Reagan did:

1) He almost tripled the National Debt. And you need to see the difference with zeroes:

When Reagan took office in 1980: $909,100,000  owed.(909.1 billion)

When Reagan left office in 1988:  $2,601,300,000,000 owed. (2.6 trillion)

2) He raised taxes on the middle class and the poor ELEVEN TIMES while in office. 

3) Unemployment soared after Reagan passed his tax cuts for the rich, and it took decades to get back down again.

4) He turned the U.S. into an illegal weapons dealer.

5) He funded terrorists, helping create the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. From NewsOne:

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, U.S. funding of the mujahideen increased significantly and CIA Paramilitary Officers played a big role in training, arming and sometimes even leading mujahideen forces.

The CIA trained the mujahideen in many of the tactics Al Qaeda is known for today, such as car bombs, assassinations and other acts that would be considered terrorism today.

6) When his economic policies began wreaking havoc on the government, Reagan stole from Social Security–to the tune of 2.5 TRILLION–treating it for eight years as the private slush fund of himself and his rich friends. 

7) [T]he Reagan administration demonized opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress, as dangerous and pro-communist. Reagan even vetoed a bill to impose sanctions on South Africa, only to be overruled by Congress.

They called him the Teflon president for a reason. All this shit–and none of it stuck to him. He got away clean every single time.

[invisiblelad]

Reading up on Nelson Mandela I caught wind of that fact a few years back. The standing President of the US was more than a little ok with not condemning Apartheid even as a symbolic gesture. 

That coupled with all of this and it speaks to an impossibly gross legacy. Of course the Neocons of the Republican set look at him as some sort of Conservative Jesus, so none of this would get actual traction with them.But email scandals are beyond the pale…

[therealduckandpenguin-deactivat]

OH HELLS YES ANTI-REAGAN MASTERPOST Also let’s not forget about how he created and/or dramatically enhanced the homeless problem in America by closing the California state psychiatric hospitals (except for the ones for the criminally insane) and tossing all the residents out into the street.

[delightfulnessofbrevity]

My great grandma literally wrote about she wished she could have assassinated reagan as she was laying on her death bed and had a copy of that letter sent to every member of our family.

[likeawildthing]

Not to mention that because he drastically expanded the drug war, setting the stage for zero tolerance. Mass incarcerations increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 in 1997. These policies also blocked syringe programs, which actually made HIV/AIDS much, much worse.

His deregulation of the S&L industry meant they no longer had to rely on residential mortgages for funding. Commercial real estate speculation ensued (sound familiar???) which eventually led to corruption, collapse of hundreds of thrift institutions and, you guessed it, a hundreds of billions of dollars taxpayer bailout.

Under his administration, nothing was done about racial discrimination in lending. Blatant redlining continued, and even though it was at this point illegal, nothing was done to prosecute or sanction banks.

Can we talk about how he started and perpetuated the myth of the welfare queen–the indolent black woman with an entitlement problem–which still affects the program and how people view it today. He used this rhetoric to get elected and used it to justify drastic cuts to urban funding, affecting everything from urban infastructure, to salaries, to urban schools and hospitals and clinics.

His cuts to low-income housing subsidies raised homeless from 600,000 to over 1.2 million in one year. Even the idea that homelessness is a choice stems from him.

But you know, he told Gorbechev to tear down this wall, so he’s a hero, right?

[rainnecassidy]

He was also responsible for the downfall of unions in the U.S. by busting the air traffic controllers’ union.

[tanyazumstein]

Practicing painting and character design with lady dwarves!

[tanyazumstein]

Practicing painting and working on a character design.

[thebigblackwolfe]

Reblog if you’re bisexual, support bisexuals, or want to rend Nick Spencer’s heart from his chest for actually publishing his Marvel Nazi AU fanfic.