The conservative blacklist in comics

Megan Fox proves that Marvel, DC, and other comics publishers are blacklisting non-SJW artists and writers in her article at PJ Media entitled Prominent Conservative Artists Blacklisted Because of Involvement with Alt*Hero Comics Series:

Conservatives are mocked in comics circles for claiming there is a blacklist in the industry, but the evidence points to work being withheld from writers and artists deemed too right-wing. Lim feels he is now on that list of unemployable deplorables. “I understand the decision, but it IS a blacklist. And these are things other writers and artists should know before taking on work,” he said. Lim feels that an artist’s job is to do the work he is hired for. “Recently I did two covers for a Bernie supporter for his book. Considering how political SJW Marvel is, practically every drawing I did for the company merchandise is a depiction of a narrative I disagree with. But I don’t live in an echo chamber and I carve out a living by taking on work I am asked to do and I fulfill it to the best of my ability. Some people cannot separate the work from the worker. The artist acts as a de facto ‘endorser’ of the work,” Lim explained.

Asked if Lim had ever been attacked by conservatives for drawing Bernie-themed covers, he laughed. “In seven years not once has a conservative contacted me to shame me for my work or blacklist me for the clients that I had.” Lim’s major work includes Star Wars Adventures, Back to the Future, Street Fighter X G.I. Joe, TMNT and much more. He worked for seven years as a merchandising artist with properties that included Marvel, Lucasfilm, Valve, and Nickelodeon.

PJ Media reached out to Vox Day for his opinion of Lim’s blacklisting from Mount Olympus. “The fact that a comics publisher, of any political stripe, would refuse to utilize the work of an accomplished illustrator like Timothy Lim simply because he worked with someone else they don’t like is absurd, but more importantly, it is proof that they are less interested in producing quality content than they are in pursuing approval from social justice warriors.”

Day released Lim’s cover work for Alt★Hero to PJ Media saying, “We love Mr. Lim’s work. He absolutely nailed the essence of Dynamique’s character with the way he shows her sitting there so calmly despite all the devastation behind her.”

And so much for the false Narrative that Avalon writer Chuck Dixon wouldn’t speak out about the ludicrous behavior of the SJWs in comics or his involvement with the Alt★Hero campaign:

Chuck Dixon, the Batman writer most known for co-creating the popular villain Bane and the man Bleeding Cool called “the most prolific comic book writer of all time,” has also been attacked for signing on with Alt★Hero. PJ Media spoke to Dixon about it. “A couple fellow travelers called me out on Facebook when the news came out that I’d be contributing to the Alt★Hero project. They had the echo chamber on their pages with all the usual assumptions and name calling,” he said. A quick search on Twitter showed multiple sources calling Dixon a “Nazi.”

“I’ve experienced a steep drop in assignments since 2000. Primarily from the two largest comics publishers [Marvel and DC Comics]. The reason for this can only be my politics and a change in editorship at those companies,” he said…. Dixon has heard disturbing things from his former employers. “The editor-in-chief at one company proudly tells people that I will never work there again as long as he’s in charge,” he said. “A friend of people high up in both companies suggested that I apologize for my political beliefs in order to get assignments again. That’s never going to happen,” he promised. 

Definitely read the whole thing.

UPDATE: on a not-unrelated note, the reason Freestartr was temporarily down was that it was the target of a DDOS attack, presumably from SJWs attempting to interfere with the Alt★Hero campaign. If they’re this desperate to shut it down, perhaps it is worth supporting even if you’re not into comics.

A review of SJWADD

A detailed review of SJWs Always Double Down by an author who prefers to remain anonymous.

One of the most staggering pieces of hypocrisy in the colonial era was known as ‘The White Man’s Burden.’

On the face of it, the basic concept looked sound.  The colonists would civilise the natives, giving them modern technology, learning and attitudes that would allow them to leave their roots and join the enlightened colonists as equals.  There was nothing wrong with it, as far as anyone living in that era believed.  The hypocrisy, however, was not hard to find.  The majority colonists – consciously or not – never intended to allow their subjects to rise to the highest levels.  They would never be treated as equals, never considered fully civilised.

On one hand, this provided a justification – an excuse – for exploiting the natives.  It’s all for their own good (anything can be justified for a good cause).  But, far worse, it also provided an excuse for the civilisers to keep finding newer and better reasons to keep moving the goalposts.  The natives will never be declared equal – they will never be free of the colonists – because that would put the civilisers out of work!  This creates what I call a perverse incentive – an incentive to do something that is morally wrong, but works in your favour.

This is why the billions expended on international charity have produced very limited results.  On one hand, the cause is good; on the other, charities are too concerned with idealism rather than practicalities, the people the charities are trying to help are not allowed much of a say in decision-making, thus depriving the planners of people with local knowledge, and the charity bosses have too great an incentive to keep the money flowing.  The outcome shouldn’t really be surprising.

The thing you have to bear in mind about modern-day Social Justice Warriors is that they have their own version of ‘The White Man’s Burden.’  And the unintended consequences are pretty much the same.

One thing I have always considered to be a point in Vox Day’s favour is that he makes you think, even though you – and I – may disagree with him on many points.  Indeed, I have come to prefer his non-fiction to his fiction, if only because it is strikingly thought-provoking and often provocative.  In writing SJWs Always Double Down – the title comes from the three laws of SJWs – Vox has expanded upon his earlier work, SJWs Always Lie and carried us forward into 2017.

The essential difference between a person who is genuinely concerned and a full-fledged SJW is that the former has essentially limited goals, while the latter’s objectives are nebulous, wide-ranging … and permanent.  The former will identify a problem – and it is often a very real problem – and propose practical solutions, then retire gracefully when victory has been achieved.  The latter will not retire, even when he gets what he says he wants.  He’ll just come up with newer demands, which will be harder to resist because one has already conceded the earlier set of demands.  It is, in short, about power and appearances rather than practicalities.  Somewhere along the way, the idea that one is trying to solve a single very specific problem is lost.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there is a public building – a library, perhaps – which is only accessible through a short flight of stairs.  Hardly a problem for an able-bodied person, but an impassable barrier to someone trapped in a wheelchair.  This is obviously a problem that needs to be fixed, right?  It’s a public building.  The disabled have a right to use it too.  Who could possibly say otherwise?

The genuinely concerned will suggest replacing the stairs with a ramp.  A simple, very practical solution.  And one that, in most cases, will not be too difficult.  The SJW, on the other hand, will insist on writing a set of very vague laws to cover ‘disability discrimination’ and then expand them as much as possible, all under the cover of doing good.  They will never declare victory for the simple reason that declaring victory means giving up their power.  And while it may look good, on the surface, a cynic might note that the side-effects – able-bodied people growing to resent disabled people – will bring forth a poisonous fruit in time.

A further, more fundamental, difference between the genuinely concerned and the SJW is that the latter believes so deeply in his cause that he finds it impossible to comprehend that someone might have a reasonable reason to disagree.  No, anyone who disagrees must be evil.  This has a great deal in common with a number of religious groups, which assume that anyone who doesn’t think like them is either ignorant or wilfully evil. Instead of questioning his own assumptions, as Vox Day demonstrates, the SJW always doubles down and attacks anyone who dares to question him.  Thus, for example, anyone who points out Hillary Clinton’s massive failings as a candidate for President is a sexist, as far as the SJWs are concerned.  This allows them to comfortably dismiss anything that runs contrary to their narrative.

In essence, Vox Day argues that a counterattack is now underway.  GamerGate, BREXIT, President Trump, the NFA boycott … they’re all spurred on by opposition to SJWs, however defined.  There is a great deal of truth in this – Trump managed to define himself by his opposition to ‘political correctness’ (a key part of maintaining the SJW narrative) – although I don’t think it goes as far as Vox suggests.  The people who were the losers in the new world order were the ones who voted against it.  That said, the Left can reasonably be said to have overplayed its hand.  The gulf between the real world and the reality presented by the media, for example, cannot be overstated.  This has the ironic effect that any genuine problems with President Trump will not be taken seriously, as the media has cried ‘racist’ one too many times.

Such a problem is understandable.  A person has only a limited amount of credibility – and, when they babble about something they don’t understand (guns, for example) they only lose that credibility faster.  The NFA protests have little credibility because the worst that can happen is the players getting fired … which, given that most of them are multimillionaires, is unlikely to worry them.  Colin Kaepernick is supposed to be worth around $25 million dollars, more money than the average American (white, black, whatever) is likely to see in a dozen lifetimes. Indeed, they really do nothing more than distract Americans – and everyone else – from more important matters.

The SJWs do not help their case by demanding complete submission from friends and enemies alike.  They do not leave any room for reasonable disagreement.  This makes it impossible to debate them, let alone question their positions without unleashing a tidal wave of accusations … even if the questioner is a former friend.  The effects of this have been devastating, in everything from comic books to corporate life.  It does not matter, in the end, if the SJWs had a point or not.  Once credibility is lost, it will never be regained.  The tactics they use poison the well.  This is why, in far too many places, we now live in a low-trust society.  Why should anyone trust the media?  Or celebrities?  Or corporations like Facebook and Twitter?  Or random strangers on the internet?

This is not an academic question.  The last couple of years have seen all sorts of questions raised about the power wielded by Google, Facebook and Twitter – even Wikipedia.  It doesn’t matter, really, what you think of Vox Day.  Anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, should be concerned about how that power can be misused, particularly if there’s a ‘good’ reason for it.  Once you set a precedent – legal harassment of pro-life groups, for example – someone else can use that precedent to justify their own actions.  As a number of wags have observed, the Left spent eight years turning the US federal government into a weapon – and that weapon fell into the hands of Donald Trump!

Vox Day goes on to describe the effects of ‘SJW Convergence’ in governments, churches and corporations.  In some ways, this is not entirely a new problem.  The larger the organisation, the harder it is to keep focused on what actually matters.  On one hand, the guys at the top lose touch with the ground floor; on the other, it’s hard to believe that the organisation can actually collapse.  I don’t know if Marvel Comics – to use one example – is really on the verge of collapse, but sales have slumped alarmingly over the last few years.  And while the push for ‘diverse’ characters may not be the sole cause of the problem, it has – I think – played a role in the corporation’s decline.

It’s hard to say how seriously one should take these assertions.  On one hand, the problems are rarely as cut and dried.  Marvel’s constant revamping of the status quo probably paid a role too.  On the other hand, traditional publishing is in decline because the old-fashioned gatekeepers have been unable to adapt to the changes over the last ten years.  There comes a point where an organisation – Borders, for example – simply cannot survive.  But what cannot be denied is that power can easily be abused and perhaps it would be better to prevent any abuse.

Vox then discusses the ‘typical’ SJW, with extensive reference to his expanded social-sexual hierarchy.  This is, in many ways, the weakest part of the book; on one hand, his portrait of many intensive SJWs is quite accurate, but it doesn’t account for people who are swept into the process because they believe the cause is good or people who want to take advantage of SJW activism for their own ends.  I have, frankly, never placed much credence in the social-sexual hierarchy – people can and do move up and down, either through self-development or a sudden shattering change in their circumstances.

One point that bears mentioning is the assertion that SJWs simply cannot accept that they might be wrong.  There’s some truth in that.  But, on the other hand, I’ve noticed that being wrong, or admitting to being wrong, comes with a penalty these days.  There is no such thing as a limited surrender.  A person who loses one argument will often find himself accused of being wrong again and again.  This is a serious problem, for obvious reasons.  Why should anyone concede a point when they will be expected to concede everything?  Being able to accept being wrong requires being able to survive being wrong.

Next, the book assesses the current state of anti-SJW pushback, from the evolution of GamerGate to the decline and fall of the Hugo Awards.  This section is something of a mixed bag.  On one hand, internet sleuths have done a great deal of good by making it impossible to stick to a single narrative and/or for criminals and rioters to hide from justice.  On the other hand, the section on the Hugo Awards is difficult to follow.  While the whole affair does outline just how far the Hugo Awards have fallen – the concentration on pointless diversity as opposed to good writing, the willingness to rewrite or break the rules to drive out the Sad/Rabid Puppies – it also highlights some other absurdities.  Picking a book called – I kid you not – Space Raptor Butt Invasion – looks silly.  It is very easy to argue that Peter F. Hamilton deserves a Hugo, but not Chuck Tingle.  This was something of an own goal.  But, at the same time, the whole affair did illustrate the blatant hypocrisy of the awards.  And, more importantly, just how small the voting population, all sides put together, is, compared to the entirety of fandom.

At the end, the book discusses ways to build SJW-free organisations.  This is not an easy task, as one must be prepared for a barrage of negative publicity – or worse – whenever you do something or are seen to do something to upset the SJWs.  In some ways, this is the most important part of the book – and not just for the declared reason.  Competition helps keep organisations honest, rather than allowing themselves to forget their core goal.  The NFL can reasonably be said to have forgotten that its purpose is to entertain people, rather than play politics.  Some of the advice is good, some is bad … although it strikes me that insisting that directors have actual experience before they become directors might be the most practical step anyone could take.  There are certainly ways to allow dissent without letting it turn into emotional blackmail and suchlike.

One question the book does not answer, not directly, is simple.  What’s wrong with social justice?  Why should well-meaning SJWs be opposed at all costs?

There are essentially three answers to that question.  First, SJWs have no concept of individuality.  A person is defined by their identity (female politician, for example, instead of a politician who happens to be female).  This is made all the more confusing by intersectionality, which suggests that a person who has two separate identities may be oppressed by the interplay of both identities.  Confused, yet?  What this does, in practical terms, is draw lines between people, thus triggering off the ‘Us v. Them’ mentality and, worse, separate people from each other.  By this reasoning, Condoleezza Rice, Will Smith, Barack Obama and Trayvon Martin would all be classed as ‘black,’ rather than as individuals with their own identities.

What makes this worse is that the people who are taken to represent each identity are often the worst of the bunch.

Second, SJWs have made us less empathic – not more.

The concept of social justice is powered by emotional blackmail – sometimes called ‘weaponised empathy.’  You feel sorry for someone and thus give them an inch, which they use to take a mile. No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. However, people resent having their emotions manipulated, even if it is for the greater good.  The natural response to emotional blackmail is to tune it out and, eventually, learn to ignore it.  As Dave Freer put it:

“The idea that the cup of sympathy is a finite one, even smaller in hard economic times, is simply beyond [SJW’s] grasp, despite the fact that we see this in practice all the time. Joe calls in to work to say his kid is sick, and he has to take the child to the ER, gets sympathy. People pick up his slack, and the boss cuts him some extra. But even if the kid IS really very sickly, and it’s not just Joe’s excuse for a hangover, it gets used up after a few repetitions. People think Joe is taking unfair advantage, even if he isn’t. They also just get tired of giving. If you’re on the receiving end and all you give back is more demands, more ‘guilting’ your audience into more giving, the faster that’ll happen.”

People can become tired of constantly being told that they’re the bad guys, that they have to do everything from watch their speech, thus limiting rational debate, to take someone’s side automatically because they’re a designated victim.  However, there is a more serious point.

The two reasons I mentioned above intersect in several different ways.  One of the most important is that people can lose sympathy for groups, because they’ve been taught to think of people as belonging to their group first and foremost.  The rising tide of anti-immigration sentiment in both America and Europe owes its existence to a combination of bad behaviour and identity politics.  Ironically, the rise of ‘white nationalism’ in the US is a direct result of identity politics.  If every hyphenated-American can have an identity, why can’t white Americans?

This poisons the well in quite a few ways.  By pushing for diversity quotas and hires in businesses, SJWs both fuel resentment against the people who benefit from measures like Affirmative Action and directly harms them, because everyone who doesn’t benefit believes that the people who do have an unfair advantage.  This does not do wonders for social harmony.  Indeed, it does the exact opposite.

We, as a society, have started to slip into ‘Nag Rage.’  We are sick of being lectured by people who consider themselves our betters.  We are sick of being told what to do by people who don’t really know what they’re talking about.  And we are sick of being told that we have to be nice to people who want to hurt us.  This is fuelling a pushback that – perhaps worst of all – will hurt the people the SJWs claim to be trying to help.  Social Justice has a bad reputation because, above all, it simply doesn’t know when to stop.  And people are sick of falsifying their preferences and pretending to like it.

I could go on about this for quite some time.  But I’m not going to bother.

There are people who will dismiss this book because it is written by Vox Day.  That is unwise.  A person may be widely disliked – and very few people seem to be neutral about Vox Day – but that doesn’t stop them from having a point.  And while you may disagree with his, this book is still worth a read.

And, if you’re interested in how society has started to come to the boil, you could do worse than read this book.

Democrats double down on immigration

Andrew Sullivan foresees the coming Trumpslide in 2020. But one correction: it is not a question of “could”, but rather, “will”.

I don’t believe it’s disputable at this point that the most potent issue behind the rise of the far right in America and Europe is mass immigration. It’s a core reason that Trump is now president; it’s why the AfD is now the third-biggest party in the German, yes, German, parliament; it’s why Austria’s new chancellor won by co-opting much of the far right’s agenda on immigration; it’s why Britain is attempting (and currently failing) to leave the EU; it’s why Marine Le Pen won a record number of votes for her party in France this spring. A critical moment, in retrospect, came with Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to import over a million Syrian refugees into the heart of Europe. I’ve no doubt her heart was in the right place, but the political naïveté was stunning. How distant from the lives and views of most people does an elite have to be to see nothing to worry about from such drastic social and cultural change? Michael Brendan Dougherty elegantly explains here the dynamic that followed. There are now new borders and fences going up all over Europe, as a response to Merkel’s blithe misjudgment.

You would think that parties of the center-left would grapple with this existential threat to their political viability. And some have. One reason Britain’s Labour Party has done well in the last couple of years is that it has recognized the legitimacy of the issue. During the Brexit referendum, their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed ambivalence toward remaining in the EU, careful not to lose his working-class base to the Europhobic right, recognizing the fears so many of his own supporters had about the impact of mass immigration on their lives, jobs, and culture. Even someone as leftist as Corbyn chose to be a pragmatist, trying to gain power, rather than a purist who might otherwise condemn his own voters as deplorable. And this is one reason why I have dwindling hopes that the Democratic Party will be able to defeat Trump in 2020. Instead of adjusting to this new reality, and listening to the electorate, the Dems have moved ever farther to the left, and are controlled by ever-radicalizing activists.

You saw it here first. You even saw us wear it here first. None of this should be surprising, because it’s all playing out as it has been described here concerning the inevitable division into American and Not-American parties, or if you prefer, White and Not-White parties.

And before anyone is tempted to sperg, the names refer to prioritized interests, not absolute demographics. There will be Indians and Asians and Blacks who will side with the White party out of enlightened self-interest, as I do (I am fundamentally pro-interior plumbing), and there will be whites who will side with the Not-White party out of stupidity and a suicidal desire to virtue-signal.

Kirkus, converged

Kirkus is supposed to be a serious professional book review site. But, as has been written, SJW convergence always prevents an organization from being able to fulfill its primary purpose:

Around the time when diversity became the cause célèbre for young adult fiction’s most passionate activists, trade reviewer Kirkus implemented some unique rules to establish its bona fides at the forefront of the movement: characters were to be explicitly identified by race, religion, and sexual orientation in every YA book review moving forward; furthermore, the writers of those reviews would be selected according to their race, religion, and sexual orientation as well, critiquing texts for sensitivity in addition to entertainment value. A statement on the Kirkus website reads:

“[Because] there is no substitute for lived experience, as much as possible books with diverse subject matter and protagonists are assigned to ‘own voices’ reviewers, to identify both those books that resonate most with cultural insiders and those books that fall short.”

The implementation of these policies hasn’t been without hiccups, but overall, Kirkus had more or less successfully positioned itself as a reviewer striving to be sensitive to pressing contemporary concerns about diversity and representation in YA — right down to the use of the word problematic to describe books that aren’t adequately woke.

It was with these policies in place that Kirkus published its review last week for American Heart, a YA novel by author Laura Moriarty. American Heart takes place in a dystopian future where the U.S. has rounded up and relocated its Muslim population to internment camps in Nevada. Its protagonist, Sarah Mary, is a 15-year-old from Missouri who doesn’t question the validity of the ban until she meets a Muslim woman on the run, an Iranian immigrant and professor named Sadaf. In a story loosely modeled on Huckleberry Finn, Sarah Mary ends up traveling north with Sadaf in the hopes of helping her escape to Canada.

For some members of the YA community, the premise was objectionable from the get-go (the first Goodreads review, left on September 7, begins with “fuck your white savior narratives”). But after a research and review process including multiple sensitivity reads, Moriarty was prepared to stand by her work, and the notoriously prickly Kirkus gave the book a starred review. Published on October 10, it described American Heart as “terrifying, suspenseful, thought-provoking, and touching” and “a moving portrait of an American girl discovering her society in crisis.”

Only a few days later, the review was pulled amid continued criticism of the book from community members. The review was replaced by a statement from Kirkus’s editor-in-chief Claiborne Smith explaining that the editorial board and the reviewer — described as “an observant Muslim [woman] of color” and “expert in children’s & YA literature [who is] well-versed in the dangers of white savior narratives” — were “evaluating” the review. Shortly thereafter, Kirkus published an amended review that retracted the book’s star and condemned Moriarty’s choice to write the story from the first-person perspective of a white teenage girl.

“Sarah Mary’s ignorance is an effective worldbuilding device,” read the new review, “but it is problematic that Sadaf is seen only through the white protagonist’s filter.”

Add “book review sites that don’t review books” to the long list of SJW-converged organizations unable to perform their primary function. And speaking of SJW convergence and YA novels, look at what sort of creature Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Tor Books is now attempting to push on young readers.

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author and io9 co-founder Charlie Jane Anders mashed up technology and witchcraft in her debut novel All the Birds in the Sky. Now, in her latest project, she’ll be journeying into space and delving into the teenage psyche, in a new young adult science fiction trilogy recently acquired by Tor Teen.

“Now it can be told: I’m a YA author at last!” Anders tweeted. “I’ve always loved YA and I have been toiling in secret on this for ages.”

I expect everyone in science fiction will be tremendously surprised when it gets arrested for something to do with YA readers within 18 months of publication. We may need to lower the time estimated for when Castalia’s sales pass Tor’s.

All cultures are equal

I fail to see why we shouldn’t take the good people of Malawi at their word.

Doctors in Malawi have been beaten for carrying stethoscopes by vigilante mobs who believe they are vampires using the instruments to suck blood. Medics have also been robbed and had their vehicles smashed, while ambulances have been attacked as patients were taken to hospital, a doctors’ association said.

The Society of Medical Doctors in Malawi said a case of ‘mass hysteria’ sweeping the south of the country has led thousands of people to believe there are vampires in their midst. Nine people have been beaten to death after being accused of being a vampire, while 124 have been arrested for carrying out the attacks.

Who are we to say that the doctors aren’t vampires, after all?

More Vegas anomalies

Some more anomalies about the Las Vegas shootings are beginning to surface:

On the night of October 1, Youtuber Benjamin Franks and his friend had just grabbed some tacos and were heading back to their hotel room at the MGM when they noticed a separate disturbance at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Tropicana Ave.

15-minutes later, from the leisure of his hotel room, Franks managed to capture bombshell video footage which shows a total of 17 ambulances removing human bodies from Hooters, contradicting the official story told by Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo.

“They are just pulling so many bodies out of that Hooters,” a man’s voice can be heard saying at the 24-second mark. “I don’t know if people are dead — I don’t know if people are just injured — they just keep pullin’ them out though […] something definitely happened at Hooters though.”

“It must have happened at Hooters dude because they are all showing up there,” he said. “It looks like most of them are at Hooters.”

As usual, the one thing you can be sure did not happens is whatever the current version of the Official Story is.

A home for Alt★Hero

Thanks to the enthusiasm of the Alt★Hero backers, we’ve just passed Stretch Goal #9 at 540 percent of the original objective, thereby committing us to providing a site dedicated to the series. This is a very positive sign as we enter the final stretch. There is strong interest in the role-playing game, so I’m confident that we’ll hit #10 without too much trouble. I suspect #11 is likely to prove a little ambitious, which is absolutely fine with me as we already have a considerable amount of work in front of us.

Fortunately, we have already brought two more experienced lead illustrators onto the team. As you can see, we’re now working with Timothy Lim, and although we lost Jinjerzilla as a lead illustrator, since he did not have sufficient time to take on the responsibility of illustrating full volumes, we were fortunate in being able to replace him with a longtime veteran of two major comics publishers who will be announced in the near future.

If you’re at all interested in role-playing games, I would strongly encourage you to back the RPG rulebook, as I think there is a very good chance that the system we are designing is not only going to be the best one for superheroes yet created, but will provide mechanics that translate effectively to science fiction, fantasy, and even military role-playing. What we’re doing here is more than creating a comics line, as we are building a strong foundation from which future offensives in the cultural war in comics, SF/F, and gaming can be launched.

Garibaldi’s nightmare

Lombardia and the Veneto overwhelmingly vote for autonomous rule:

Two of Italy’s wealthiest northern regions on Sunday voted overwhelmingly in favour of greater autonomy in referenda that took place against the backdrop of Catalonia’s push for independence from Spain.

Voters in the Veneto region that includes Venice and Lombardy, home to Milan, turned out at the high end of expectations to support the principle of more powers being devolved from Rome, officials said. Veneto President Luca Zaia hailed the results, which were delayed slightly by a hacker attack, as an institutional ‘big bang’ while reiterating that the region’s aspirations were not comparable to the secessionist agenda that has provoked a constitutional crisis in Spain.

Turnout was projected at between 57-61 percent in Veneto, where support for autonomy is stronger, and at around 40 percent in Lombardy. The presidents of both regions said more than 90 percent of voters who had gone to the ballots had, as expected, done so to support greater autonomy.

The votes are not binding but they will give the leaders of the two regions a strong political mandate when they embark on negotiations with the central government on the transfer of powers from Rome to the regions.

Hey, the Lombardi have already got a perfectly good, if rather ugly, castle sitting at the end of the Galleria waiting for a new Duke of Milan to rule over them, although I’d prefer to rule from the Bergamo high city myself. Let’s face it, liberal democracy in Europe was pretty much a complete failure across the board even before it turned suicidally pro-immigrant. Italy certainly managed to accomplish a good deal more of lasting value in the age of city-states; post-Garibaldi Italy did little more than produce Fascism and Fiats before getting itself raped twice by Germany.

It’s NOT the protests!

Protests the NFL, unconvincingly:

Several NFL stadiums are nearly empty post kick-off as the National Anthem controversy rolls into week 7.

  • Plenty of empty seats visible at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida as the New York Jets play the Miami Dolphins.
  • The Cleveland Browns are playing at home against the Tennessee Titans. Plenty of empty seats to go around.
  • More empty seats in Chicago as the Bears play the Carolina Panthers.
  • Lucas Oil Stadium has “tons,” of empty seats during the Indiana Colts vs Jacksonville Jaguars.

It’s really rather remarkable how SJWs just keep doubling down and keep lying, literally unable to admit the obvious even when it is right in front of their eyes. Keep this in mind whenever you are dealing with an SJW yourself and thinking “he can’t POSSIBLY be lying about something that stupidly obvious, can he?”

Yes, yes, he really can.

And if you doubt that Roger Goodell is willing to crash the league over this, read about his role model and then think again.

TIME’s profile also details Goodell’s road to the commissioner’s office. His father, Charles Goodell, was a congressman from New York, appointed to the Senate after RFK was assassinated.  As a Republican who opposed the Vietnam war, Charles Goodell fell out of favor with the party, and lost his seat in the 1970 election. This principled stand guides all of Roger Goodell’s decisions, especially the ones that fans, players, or even owners don’t embrace. “He loved being a United States Senator,” Goodell says of his father. “My personal view is, he never got over that. And that’s sad to me on a lot of levels. But he did what was right. He knew the consequences. He knew it was going to end his career. You can’t buy a lesson like that.”

He knows the consequences. He knows it could end the league. But he doesn’t care, because he believes allowing the players to protest America is the right thing to do.

Hammer vs Captain Europa

Two new Alt★Hero Rewards that may prove to be of some interest to backers, especially to RPGers. But how would Hammer, who is American, ever happen to find himself in combat with Captain Europa of the EU’s Global Justice Initiative? Well, you’re going to have to read the comics to find out.

$25.00
Add-On: Site Hero

Commenting on the Alt★Hero site will be limited to campaign backers and site subscribers in order to reduce the amount of SJW vandalism. Site Heros will receive a subscription to the website, the ability to create new topics, the ability to edit the wiki (subject to moderator approval and discipline), a series of special icons available only to them, and a dedicated forum. Please note that SJWs who use this Reward to infiltrate the site for the purposes of vandalism, politics, or social justice will be identified and stripped of both their backer and Site Hero status.

$75.00
Role-Playing Game

A superhero role-playing game rulebook of an estimated 250 pages, set in the Alt★Hero universe and published in hardcover. The game will be written by an accomplished RPG designer with Chuck Dixon and Vox Day. (Note: it is estimated that the time required to create and test the game is about one year.) Backers receive the hardcover edition of the rulebook, a paperback version of Campaign #1 written by Jon Del Arroz, (this is not yet noted on Freestartr yet), a PDF version of the rulebook and PDF versions of all campaigns created for the Alt★Hero RPG published in the first year after the initial publication of the rulebook. RPG backers will also be provided exclusive access to a dedicated RPG forum on the Alt★Hero site where drafts and design ideas will be posted for discussion.

And yes, shipping is included for the RPG rulebook. Even if you live in Europe. Or Australia. And we will use Infogalactic to provide the engine for the Alt★Hero wiki. And the RPG designer is a very good one who absolutely knows what he’s doing.