{"id":26967,"date":"2014-07-23T00:01:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T05:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26967"},"modified":"2014-07-22T12:09:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T17:09:53","slug":"qotd-the-comic-book-business-and-being-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/23\/qotd-the-comic-book-business-and-being-relevant\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The comic book business and &#8220;being relevant&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Anyway, I should be delighted by the news that the comic\u2019s titular \u201cArchie\u201d is, at last, deceased. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.people.com\/article\/archie-dies-saving-gay-best-friend-comics\" target=\"_blank\">Shot to death<\/a>, even.<\/p>\n<p>But while I hasten to add that I was nowhere near Riverdale when that happened, my relief is tempered.<\/p>\n<p>You see, in last Wednesday\u2019s number of the <em>Life with Archie<\/em> series, the redheaded, eternally youthful hero took a bullet for a gay politician.<\/p>\n<p>Of course he did.<\/p>\n<p>This scenario represents progress of a sort, in that the homosexual character isn\u2019t the one who dies this time. The gay counterpoint to the \u201cmagical negro\u201d is what you might call the \u201ctragical homo,\u201d a pop culture trope exhaustively catalogued in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vito_Russo\" target=\"_blank\">Vito Russo<\/a>\u2019s 1981 classic <em>The Celluloid Closet<\/em>. But we\u2019re well into a new century, and gays have milked that Harvey dry, I guess. Time to switch it up, and make the straight guy the \u201clovable but doomed best friend\u201d instead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe way in which Archie dies is everything that you would expect of Archie,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/news\/archie-andrews-to-be-killed-saving-gay-best-friends-life-20140714\" target=\"_blank\">beams Archie\u2019s head honcho, Jon Goldwater<\/a>. \u201cHe dies heroically. He dies selflessly. He dies in the manner that epitomizes not only the best of Riverdale but the best of all of us. It\u2019s what Archie has come to represent over the past almost 75 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which is \u2026 what, exactly? Butt sex? Political assassination? Naked, shameless pandering?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, wait, I know: \u201cEat your spinach or else\u201d liberal propaganda! Dummy me.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe there\u2019s a comic book industry bar bet the rest of us aren\u2019t in on. <a href=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/thor_losers_jim_goad\" target=\"_blank\">This week alone<\/a>, Captain America became a black guy and Thor got a sex change.<\/p>\n<p>Kathy Shaidle, <a href=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/comic_con_job_kathy_shaidle\/print#ixzz38DZ3GXtc\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Comic Con Job&#8221;, <em>Taki&#8217;s Magazine<\/em><\/a>, 2014-07-22.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyway, I should be delighted by the news that the comic\u2019s titular \u201cArchie\u201d is, at last, deceased. Shot to death, even. But while I hasten to add that I was nowhere near Riverdale when that happened, my relief is tempered. You see, in last Wednesday\u2019s number of the Life with Archie series, the redheaded, eternally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[49,196,351],"class_list":["post-26967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","tag-guns","tag-lgbt","tag-politicalcorrectness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-70X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26969,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26967\/revisions\/26969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}