A comic book store owner in Massachusetts is taking heat for daring to say the obvious: that modern comic book writers have no love or reverence for comic book history and are only using the industry to put “themselves” and their own woke ideas into comics.
Glenn O’Leary, who owns a shop called “The Comic Book Palace,” in Haverhill, Massachusetts, recently spoke out to pummel modern writers for mucking up comic book history and for having no love at all for their own job.
A clip from O’Leary’s “The Comic Book Palace Reborn” podcast has set off left-wing loons who thrill at the penchant of modern comics for retconning every last character as anti-American, gay, transgender, or race and gender swapping them until they are unrecognizable as the characters that comic book fans used to know and love.
The last two decades has seen a gay Superman, a gay Green Lantern, a lesbian Batwoman, a Captain America/Steve Rogers who turned against America, a bitter, race-baiting Captain America/Sam Wilson… and on and on it goes with characters making major shifts away from their original characters and turning them into modern, woke shibboleths. And it isn’t just superhero comics, either. The Archie line of comics — which feature a character that used to be called “America’s Favorite Teen” — has added all sorts of gay and transgender characters to satisfy woke modernists. Even Disney has wokefied its comics. For instance, it has ceased publication of some of the storylines featuring “Scrooge McDuck” because rich people are all evil. And Looney Tunes has taken away the guns from Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd.
All this going on seems to have brought comic shop owner Glenn O’Leary to his wit’s end as the comics industry slowly commits suicide and comics sales continue to plummet thereby taking dollars out of O’Leary’s pocket.
As far as O’Leary is concerned, it is the fault of the writers (and by extension that of their editors and publishers) because they don’t love their own subjects.
In his podcast, O’Leary blasted the writers saying:
Most of these new writers don’t have the love of comics that these older writers had. And all they care about is, ‘How can I put myself into the book?’ But we don’t care about what you would do if you were Iron Man. We don’t care who you are, you’re writing Tony Stark, you’re not writing yourself in a book.
If that’s the case, write your own comic, with you in it. No one would read it, because nobody cares. People grew up, loving Peter Parker, loving Miles Morales, loving Captain America- we don’t need you to put your input in it, just write Steve Rogers. Don’t write, ‘What would Steve Rogers be, if I were Steve Rogers.’ That’s not how it works, but that’s how most of these new people write nowadays. That’s why most of the stuff is shit.
We don’t care about what you would do, because we don’t care about your life whatsoever. Just write a book, get paid for what you’re supposed to be doing, and make it a good story. “
WATCH:
30 year comic shop owner.@BleedingFool @Marvel @DCOfficial @JimLee @Todd_McFarlane @CBCebulski @chrisbraly @CriticalBlast pic.twitter.com/7ySjFEYGp9
— Ty (@DefNotTy) December 3, 2023
O’Leary is right. These writers don’t love comics. What they love is the praise of wokesters showering them with love for obliterating a character’s history and retconning them into some shallow paragon of left-wingery.
Further, they seem to mistake their job as “creating art.”
Listen, I am a comics fan. I started collecting comics in the 1960s and even had 5,000 of them in my collection once upon a time. Heck, even today after getting out of that hobby decades ago, I still have a few runs of books in my collection to which I have a nostalgic connection.
But comics are not art. And they never have been. They are commerce first. “Art” a distant second.
They are historic, though, and do have a place in the panoply of Americana. And as history, they should be left faithful to their internal history. If these nutcase, left-wing, loons coming up in the comic industry want über woke characters, and if you all really think you are creative “artistes,” then create NEW characters to spout your idiotic leftist nonsense. Stop destroying the characters everyone used to love just so you can prove to your insular, bubble-buddies on the far left that you are worthy of being invited to dinner parties in New York City.
But that is just the problem, isn’t it? You fools aren’t really artists. You aren’t actually creative. And you also know full well that if you created your new lines of woke characters, not a soul would buy your books. So, you are by necessity forced to destroy old characters so you can force your left-wing agenda on readers.
Your job is to sell comics. And the cratering books sales that have been hurting the comic book industry for 20 years is proof that you are miserably failing at that task.
Glenn O’Leary is right. Today’s far-left writers hate their field. They are embarrassed by their jobs. And they should get out the hell of it while there are still some bare bones left in the industry.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
