“Marvel is very unhappy”

 EXTERIOR. Day. A Jurassic jungle. 

Dinosaurs amble about doing nothing in particular. A light flashes across the sky. A few dinosaurs look up at the light, but most don’t even notice. In the distance, somewhere far beyond the horizon, there is a faint booming sound.

MARVELSAURUS REX: What was that?

DEECEEATOPS: What was what?

DARKEQUESAURUS: Wha? I didn’t see nothin’!

MARVELSAURUS REX: I just… I just have a very bad feeling about this.

And…scene!

A writer who is almost entirely unfamiliar with comics sent me the following email two days ago, which demonstrates that unlike the independent comic scene and its mainstream peers, Marvel is already beginning to grasp that Arkhaven’s new digital comics site, Arktoons, poses a serious existential threat to the mainstream comics industry:

I was in [top ten US city by population] recently, and dropped into a comic book store to see what they looked like. I’ve never been into comics at all, so this is a new field to me.

The manager was having a discussion behind the cash register with two of his staff, and I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation as I looked around.  Paraphrased, the manager was telling them that Marvel was “very unhappy” about the new Arktoons initiative, coming as it does on top of the Arkhaven Comics venture.  The money quote was something like, “They say the industry’s overcrowded and underfunded enough as it is – we don’t need more competition trying to muscle in and make everybody unprofitable”.

Arktoons is already making an impact, along with Arkhaven.  Congratulations!

I’m genuinely impressed that someone at Marvel managed to figure out the situation so quickly. They realize that none of the market leaders will be able to even begin to compete with high-quality independent comics offering a 30x value proposition to their readers. It could take a year, it could take five years, but it’s just a matter of the inevitable playing out over time now.

Meanwhile, DC is too busy slitting its own metaphorical wrists to even notice that its extinction event just took place.

New intel suggests DC Films President Walter Hamada has one job WarnerMedia expects him to accomplish: produce projects on the cheap to keep costs down. Sadly, this could mean the end of the Snyderverse.

A source close to Small Screen gave the site a full scoop that details Warner’s goals, Hamada’s task, and how JJ Abrams’ and his firm Bad Robot fits in to their plan. Long story short, Hamada is allegedly counting on Bad Robot to do most of the heavy lifting and take over operations of DC behind and in front of the camera.

“What I can tell you is that the last I heard, Walter wanted to hand over almost all the DC stuff over to BR [Bad Robot],” said the source. 

JJ Abrams is a serial killer of popular franchises. It’s at the point where I’m beginning to wonder if he is a secret agent in the employ of the Chinese movie industry on a mission to destroy the Hellmouth. 

Impact Day was entirely successful, as Episode 1 of THE HAMMER OF FREEDOM eked out a surprise victory on the popularity front, beating out Episode 1 of MIDNIGHT’S WAR by just 2 likes. This was a bit of a surprise, to be honest, as prior to launch, most of the team felt that MW and AH would be the most popular, with GO MONSTER GO! having an outside shot at the Day One title simply by virtue of being created and written by The Legend.  And DEUS VULT more than held its own.

This just testifies to what a strong lineup is being featured on Wednesdays. But as you’ll see later today, the Thursday lineup is very nearly as formidable. And if this inspires those of you with soft hearts to help those poor converged dinosaurs go extinct sooner rather than later, don’t hesitate to subscribe to Arktoons.

So congratulations to Luciano and the Super Prumo team for winning Day One. As a consolation prize, however, MIDNIGHT’S WAR does already boast its own fan-created Heroforge version of Andre St. Jean, the iconic Knight of St. Michael and the Catacombs of Rome.

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: You have absolutely no need to log in to the Arktoons site. The login there is for the creators and publishers. To read the comics, just click on them. When subscription-dependent features are added, such as comments and ratings, you will be informed.

Excising social justice at Basecamp

 A few smart corporations are finally beginning to grasp that convergence is corporate cancer that will destroy their businesses and are actively attempting to surgically remove the SJWs that infest them. Basecamp has taken a strong anti-social justice stance that might just turn things around there:

1. No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account. Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit, or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It’s not healthy, it hasn’t served us well. And we’re done with it on our company Basecamp account where the work happens. People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can’t happen where the work happens anymore. Update: David has shared some more details and more of the internal announcement on his HEY World blog.

2. No more paternalistic benefits. For years we’ve offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmer’s market share, and continuing education allowances. They felt good at the time, but we’ve had a change of heart. It’s none of our business what you do outside of work, and it’s not Basecamp’s place to encourage certain behaviors — regardless of good intention. By providing funds for certain things, we’re getting too deep into nudging people’s personal, individual choices. So we’ve ended these benefits, and, as compensation, paid every employee the full cash value of the benefits for this year. In addition, we recently introduced a 10{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} profit sharing plan to provide direct compensation that people can spend on whatever they’d like, privately, without company involvement or judgement.

3. No more committees. For nearly all of our 21 year existence, we were proudly committee-free. No big working groups making big decisions, or putting forward formalized, groupthink recommendations. No bureaucracy. But recently, a few sprung up. No longer. We’re turning things back over to the person (or people) who were distinctly hired to make those decisions. The responsibility for DEI work returns to Andrea, our head of People Ops. The responsibility for negotiating use restrictions and moral quandaries returns to me and David. A long-standing group of managers called “Small Council” will disband — when we need advice or counsel we’ll ask individuals with direct relevant experience rather than a pre-defined group at large. Back to basics, back to individual responsibility, back to work.

4. No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions. We’ve become a bit too precious with decision making over the last few years. Either by wallowing in indecisiveness, worrying ourselves into overthinking things, taking on a defensive posture and assuming the worst outcome is the likely outcome, putting too much energy into something that only needed a quick fix, inadvertently derailing projects when casual suggestions are taken as essential imperatives, or rehashing decisions in different forums or mediums. It’s time to get back to making calls, explaining why once, and moving on.

5. No more 360 reviews. Employee performance reviews used to be straightforward. A meeting with your manager or team lead, direct feedback, and recommendations for improvement. Then a few years ago we made it hard. Worse, really. We introduced 360s, which required peers to provide feedback on peers. The problem is, peer feedback is often positive and reassuring, which is fun to read but not very useful. Assigning peer surveys started to feel like assigning busy work. Manager/employee feedback should be flowing pretty freely back and forth throughout the year. No need to add performative paperwork on top of that natural interaction. So we’re done with 360s, too.

6. No forgetting what we do here. We make project management, team communication, and email software. We are not a social impact company. Our impact is contained to what we do and how we do it. We write business books, blog a ton, speak regularly, we open source software, we give back an inordinate amount to our industry given our size. And we’re damn proud of it. Our work, plus that kind of giving, should occupy our full attention. We don’t have to solve deep social problems, chime in publicly whenever the world requests our opinion on the major issues of the day, or get behind one movement or another with time or treasure. These are all important topics, but they’re not our topics at work — they’re not what we collectively do here. Employees are free to take up whatever cause they want, support whatever movements they’d like, and speak out on whatever horrible injustices are being perpetrated on this group or that (and, unfortunately, there are far too many to choose from). But that’s their business, not ours. We’re in the business of making software, and a few tangential things that touch that edge. We’re responsible for ourselves. That’s more than enough for us.

Of course, the SJWs are trying to hold their ground, utilizing the popular “you are the problem” defense, complete with a nuclear MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. quote. Damn, they really aren’t pulling any punches, are they? What’s crazy is that this tactic actually works in some corporate circles instead of simply getting the lunatic fired for insubordination.

Jason and David, I believe that your recent company policy changes are both terrible and redeemable. But to be redeemable, you first must recognize that you are a BIG part of the problem. That you too perpetrate the myth that some people deserve to oppress and repress others. Once you hold yourselves publicly self-accountable, then the next step is transparency. Show us all the warts along with the unblemished skin. And from there, we can go about healing Basecamp.

Ideas don’t have consequences

The American Conservatives points out that if they did, all the neoclowns in the media would be unemployed:

When the University of Chicago Press brought out Richard Weaver’s book Ideas Have Consequences in 1948, it was instantly hailed as a landmark text on American conservatism. The title itself has become a sort of rallying cry for the conservative intelligentsia. I’d wager that 98 percent of those who utter the phrase “Ideas have consequences!” have never read the book, nor even heard of Richard Weaver.

What’s ironic is that Weaver himself hated the title. He hated it so much, in fact, that he nearly pulled the book. Looking back, his objection was prophetic. When it comes to the American right, ideas—good or bad—have no consequences whatsoever.

Take the war in Iraq, the greatest policy snafu in American history. Our crusade to depose Saddam Hussein was built on lies: that he was in possession of nuclear weapons, that he was sheltering Al Qaeda, etc. Granted, many of those lies came straight from the “intelligence community.” But, from day one, there were voices on the right who called B.S. Many of them gathered together in a magazine called The American Conservative; maybe you’ve heard of it.

Even if one can be forgiven for trusting the U.S. government back in those halcyon days, pro-war pundits also promised that Iraq would be over in five months, tops. That wasn’t just wrong; it was insane. The idea that we could purge the Iraqi government of Ba’athists right down to the last postman, install a stable transitional government, and leave Afghanistan a functional modern democracy—all in five months—was insane. Anyone who repeated that line was either stupid, evil, or both.

Some, like Bill Kristol, went even further. In November of 2002, he said: “We can remove Saddam because that could start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy.” That’s nuts. It’s just nuts.

Now, tell me this. Once every single argument in favor of the Iraq war was proved categorically false, did anyone lose their jobs? Did any politicians or pundits suddenly disappear from the airwaves? Did their bad, stupid, evil ideas have any consequences? (For their careers, I mean. Their ideas certainly had consequences for the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and civilians.) Of course not.

What about those hawks who referred to the war’s critics as “unpatriotic conservatives”? Most of them are making six figures in the legacy media. Others are “senior fellows” at any of the millions of think-tanks across the Beltway. Because ideas don’t have consequences.

It is astonishing how many conservatives still listen to morons like Ben Shapiro or definitely-not-methheads like Jordan Peterson despite the fact that their ideas have repeatedly been proven to be false, harmful, or false and harmful.

Yes, people are wrong from time to time. Even smart, handsome individuals who correctly call economic crisis in advance are occasionally wrong. But there is a difference between not being perfectly omniscient and repeatedly pushing bad, stupid, and evil ideas on the public.

Also, America First is the new Tea Party. The once-nationalist rhetoric has already been subsumed and subverted by the Buckley wing of the Republican faction of the bifactional ruling party.

The Asteroid has landed!

 

The Asteroid has landed! Bounding Into Comics has the story:

The site, found at Arkhaven.com, launched with five series including Alt-Hero, Midnight’s War, Deus Vult, The Hammer of Freedom, and Go, Monster Go. Each of these titles will release new episodes every Wednesday.

In a press release, Arkhaven Comics detailed that “in addition to the 17 series that have been announced, an additional 17 comics from Arkhaven Comics, SuperPrumo, and other publishers are already scheduled for release and will be announced over the next week on the date of their first appearance on the new digital comics site.”

Go check it out! We’ll have more details later today. 

Asymetrical, tough, and swift

Vladimir Putin issues a warning in the aftermath of Ukraine and the neoclowns that are pulling their puppet state’s strings backing down in response to Russia’s mobilization on its borders:

The meaning and purpose of Russia’s policy in the international arena – I will just say a few words about this to conclude my address – is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens, for the stable development of our country. Russia certainly has its own interests we defend and will continue to defend within the framework of international law, as all other states do. And if someone refuses to understand this obvious thing or does not want to conduct a dialogue and chooses a selfish and arrogant tone with us, Russia will always find a way to defend its stance.

At the same time, unfortunately, everyone in the world seems to be used to the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions and to certain actors’ brutal attempts to impose their will on others by force. But today, this practice is degenerating into something even more dangerous – I am referring to the recently exposed direct interference in Belarus in an attempt to orchestrate a coup d’état and assassinate the President of that country. At the same time, it is typical that even such flagrant actions have not been condemned by the so-called collective West. Nobody seemed to notice. Everyone pretends nothing is happening.

But listen, you can think whatever you like of, say, Ukrainian President Yanukovych or Maduro in Venezuela. I repeat, you can like or dislike them, including Yanukovych who almost got killed, too, and removed from power via an armed coup. You can have your own opinion of President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko’s policy. But the practice of staging coups d’état and planning political assassinations, including those of high-ranking officials – well, this goes too far. This is beyond any limits.

Suffice it to mention the admission made by the detained participants in the conspiracy about a planned siege of Minsk, including plans to block the city infrastructure and communications, and a complete shutdown of the entire power system in the capital of Belarus! This actually means they were preparing a massive cyberattack. What else could it be? You know, you cannot just do it all with one switch.

Clearly, there is a reason why our Western colleagues have been stubbornly rejecting Russia’s numerous proposals to establish an international dialogue on information and cyber security. We have come up with these proposals many times. They avoid even discussing this matter.

What if there had been a real attempt at a coup d’état in Belarus? After all, this was the ultimate goal. How many people would have been hurt? What would have become of Belarus? Nobody is thinking about this.

Just as no one was thinking about the future of Ukraine during the coup in that country.

All the while, unfriendly moves towards Russia have also continued unabated. Some countries have taken up an unseemly routine where they pick on Russia for any reason, most often, for no reason at all. It is some kind of new sport of who shouts the loudest.

In this regard, we behave in an extremely restrained manner, I would even say, modestly, and I am saying this without irony. Often, we prefer not to respond at all, not just to unfriendly moves, but even to outright rudeness. We want to maintain good relations with everyone who participates in the international dialogue. But we see what is happening in real life. As I said, every now and then they are picking on Russia, for no reason. And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis are running around them like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan – everything is like in Kipling’s book – howling along in order to make their sovereign happy. Kipling was a great writer.

We really want to maintain good relations with all those engaged in international communication, including, by the way, those with whom we have not been getting along lately, to put it mildly. We really do not want to burn bridges. But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift and tough.

Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time.

The neoclowns will posture and prattle about the Russian leader’s idle threats even as they continue to bang their usual drums for ever more war in Syria, Iran, Ukraine, and the South China Sea. But it is increasingly obvious that it is the US empire, not the Russian republic, that is now writing checks its military cannot cash. 

I have to admit, I quite enjoyed the Kipling aside. Kipling was a great writer. I wonder what he would have made of being cited by a Russian leader standing against imperialism.

The ineptitude of imaginary politics

A black man explains the inherent incompetence of conservatives who insist on basing their political strategies on ideology rather than the intrinsic tendencies of the various identity groups:

The truth is that victimhood is intertwined with the politics of black solidarity. Unless Republicans abandon the message of self-help, blacks will never perceive them as an attractive option to Democrats, and it is a waste of time for Republicans to specifically target black voters.

The 2020 election is a perfect example of this. Donald Trump marketed himself as a friend of black people, working strenuously to improve black economic conditions and perform many other services for the black community during his administration. Yet despite these efforts, Trump won only 14 percent of the black vote. Republicans are wasting their time by targeting specifically black voters….

Expecting blacks to disavow the cult of victimhood appears to be wishful thinking, and so the chances of Republicans earning a sizeable chunk of black support will likely remain slim. Thus, going after the black vote and expecting blacks to deviate from the tribal politics of racial solidarity seems to be merely a waste of time for Republicans.  

On average and in sum, blacks will abandon victimhood politics at the same time that women abandon solipsistic politics and Jews abandon Holocaustianity. These things will never happen because they are effective and in line with both a) the collective objectives of the identity group’s leadership and b) the personal objectives of the average individual member of the identity group.

Refusing to acknowledge statistical realities and basing one’s core strategies on the basis of one’s ideals and what one imagines one would do if one were someone else is neither noble nor intelligent. It’s delusional and solipsistic.

Ideology politics are imaginary politics

It is fascinating to hear a black man echo a red man’s words that have led some to accuse the latter of being a white supremacist. It should be interesting to see if they reach the same conclusion about him.

The reality is that we all reap the benefits brought about by the rise of Western civilization. As such, the destruction of Western culture will not redound to the advantage of non-whites who abhor the West, nor to that of anyone else. Non-whites who fail to affirm this salient point are simply foolish.

He’s absolutely correct. I suspect that he, too, is a fan of electricity and interior plumbing. 

THE AWAKENER on Arktoons

THE AWAKENER, from our Brazilian partner Superprumo, is a powerful, hard-hitting series that marks the last pre-launch announcement. It will join CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON in leading the Tuesday schedule on Arktoons. We’re now less than 24 hours away from Impact Day… and everyone who subscribes pre-launch will be provided a Project Asteroid badge on the site. You can still subscribe at Arkhaven Comics. 

And the amazing thing is that Arktoons is already making an impact on the comics industry… but more about that tomorrow.

The death of the Hellmouth

The Hollywood spell is breaking:

Oscar ratings went from 43.7 million in 2014 to 23.6 million in 2020 to 9.8 million last night.

Good. Stop supporting those who hate you, your nation, and your Christian faith. Don’t give one single dime to the Hellmouth, in any of its guises.

Stop staring into the abyss and the abyss will starve.

CA Governor recall vote

It looks as if California Governor Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions have been successfully destroyed.

The effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom surpassed the necessary number of signatures to land on the ballot later this year.

California Secretary of State’s office said on Monday that 1,626,042 signatures have been submitted and verified, ABC7 reports. To qualify, 1,495,709 signatures were needed.

“This now triggers the next phase of the recall process, a 30-business-day period in which voters may submit written requests to county Registrars of Voters to remove their names from the recall petition,” California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber said in a statement, per Daily Wire. “A recall election will be held unless a sufficient number of signatures are withdrawn.”

ABC7 reports counties still have until April 29 to submit the rest of the verified signatures. Individuals will have a 30-day period to withdraw their signatures, after that.

Gov. Cuomo has been politically neutralized. Now Gov. Newsom has been taken out of the running. There aren’t many Democratic governors who remain viable to take the step to the next level. This tends to make one suspect that the way is being paved for the ascension of someone, most likely LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, to the national scene and the Presidency.

CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON on Arktoons

CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON, a superhero series set in the world of Alt-Hero written by The Legend Chuck Dixon, leads the Tuesday comics on Arktoons. #arkhaven #comics

T-Minus One and counting to Impact. There is still time to subscribe to Arktoons pre-launch at Arkhaven Comics. Note that anyone who subscribes pre-launch will be eligible for a Project Asteroid badge at Social Galactic.