Actually, Wonder Woman was originally created by a feminist that felt that girls needed a Superman like role model. She's never been targeted at teenage boys.
So Gail Simone's critically acclaimed and fan loved (granted, fan reactions were pretty mixed) run isn't considered great? Except when it comes down to things, I doubt this will have much of an effect on sales. If you're trying to make more sales, do something to make the character interesting. Its lazy writing to completely retool the character in an attempt to make her interesting. And its one of my complaints about the comic book medium. Status quo is god, even when it should not be. Sure, the forced retool of Wonder Woman here isn't as bad of an idea as some of JMS's other stories (*cough*onemoreday*cough*), but I still don't like it. Also, I've heard conflicting reports on JMS's agreement/disagreement with One More Day.
I wonder if its going to be crappy nu-metal like their first two albums or crappy alt rock like their last album....
Ah, yes, the good old fashion misunderstanding of even fans of the hip hop genre to call hip hop "rap." Rap is simply a single aspect of hip hop, and even then, its not even a required aspect. How even hip hop fans (let alone the press) make this mistake is absolutely beyond me. That said, **** all the mainstream **** (Jay-Z, Lil' Wayne, 50 Cent, etc. except Eminem, he's actually pretty good), I say Dr. Steel and Busdriver.
If Coheed & Cambria and The Marz Volta are leading the modern progressive rock movement, then its in good hands.
Yes, 4Kids destroyed One Piece, but at the same time, FUNimation's uncut and redubbed DVD sales are quite strong and the FUNimation cast is (save for Zoro somehow) universally better that the 4Kids cast. On a side note, why Marc Diraison signed on as Zoro for 4Kids is beyond me, but he was the only positive part of the 4Kids dub. Because you didn't strongly imply that you think all English anime sucks and that all translated versions of Japanese songs universally suck, nope. Not at all. As for the "voice acting is more accepted in Japan" thing: Bullshit. The quality of Japanese voice acting is very dependent on the series in question's budget, much like it is here in the west. Again, there are Japanese dubs that Japanese anime fans hate because they sound forced and unnatural or the acting is just bad. Again, you don't notice this because you don't speak the language. Not to mention that anime is the only major part of Japanese culture to also be popular outside of Japan, so you're getting a pretty skewed view of Japanese culture as a whole. No, actually, the openers and closers are not good enough examples because they rarely mean anything in the context of the show.
Let's face it, the only truly straightforward Japanese band that's popular outside of Japan is Loudness and its only because they more or less copied the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. EDIT: Well, there's also Galneryus and Versailles. Galneryus fits with Loudness in that they initially copied a western style (ironically, a relatively niche style to begin with) and stuck to the formula and Versailles is, like X Japan, pretty niche.
I already acknowledged Quesada's role for One More Day, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Likewise, I'm already aware that its going to be restored later on, but I wanted to start on a more typical Wonder Woman storyline. Of course, I can't say that I'm not bitter about One More Day, so as illogical as it may be, that doesn't help matters. I'm sure the story will be fine, but I simply have little interest in it. Granted, I may force myself to grab Wonder Woman #600 when I go to grab Brightest Day #5 on Wednesday, but still. Yeah, even if it was meant to be permanent, I doubt the fan backlash would have it stay around for much longer than this particular storyline. I was more just expressing my confusion on the matter of how it fits in with the rest of the DCU. EDIT: Speaking of Superman, are we entirely sure that JMS understands Superman? A lot of writers do tend to forget that he is a lot more "human" than most heroes and try to play up his Kryptonian heritage. Not say that's the case here, but its still a possibility. EDIT2: On second thought, regardless of long this lasts, I have one thing to say about it: What is the point if you're just going to undo it in the end?
Actually, Naruto's dub improved greatly as time went on as the actors started to understand the characters more. That's a common part of long running series. FUNimation's Roronoa Zoro says hi. That's more likely because you're used to the characters' Japanese voices and has nothing to do with the quality of the dub in the first place. The lack of major music based anime makes this a very difficult argument. I would bring up Beck, but I've never seen that dub. Likewise, I've never seen the Haruhi dub, so I wouldn't know which the better version is. Most singing in anime tends to have subtitles along with it, so I get the general idea of the lyrics and understanding them would probably make things even worse. Which is a fair enough view, but it would be very disorienting if they were to switch from the dubbed acting to subbed singing. Assuming that's what you're suggesting in the first place. And here we have a great example of how weak the "Japanese actors are better" argument is. The only reason people make that argument is because they don't understand the language, so they assume that it is automatically better. The American fans of Code Geass ***** and moan about minor mistakes with the acting while praising the Japanese acting, while Japanese fans hate their dub and prefer the English dub, particularly Lelouche I might add, because it feels more natural (of course it does help that it makes more sense for many of the characters to be speaking English. In the case of Code Geass a bilingual version would be ideal with English for the English speaking characters and Japanese for the Japanese speaking characters, but such a thing would cost quite a bit of money.)
Fullmetal Alchemist and Hellsing say hi. I could also get into the usual arguments and why they really don't stand, but that's irrelevant. First season, yes. Second season, so far, not really. Because English singing is always bad and vastly inferior to a language you probably don't even understand.... The only real problem is that the singing is painfully lighthearted, which more or less ruins otherwise decent songs (and also the reason I can't stand most Japanese pop.) I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I could actually understand the lyrics.
Considering that Bandai was previously disappointed with Lucky Star sales and are expecting even less sales with this. If they don't dub it, its because they want to keep costs low since they know it won't sell well anyway and its a waste of money to hire a dub cast.
The X-Men were originally created as an anti-racism allegory. As for the others, many of DC's heroes were created during the golden age of the late 30s and 40s, including Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. That said, Wonder Woman is one of the most progressive characters to ever be created. She was a feminist character created during the 1940s and has stayed relatively relevant to this day. While on the subject of the golden age heroes, Superman originally stood for just truth and justice, the addition of "The American Way" wasn't until the 50s. Even then, today, Superman is mostly seen as the spirit of Justice while Wonder Woman is seen as the spirit of Truth. Can't remember what Batman is the spirit of, though. Still, if we're comparing DC characters and Marvel characters, its not secret that Marvel stories tend to be more focused on realistic character interaction while DC's tend to be more about the conflicts of good and evil. Also, Aquaman wouldn't be seen as lame if people were to pay attention to him from the modern age and not the silver age. And I think you have The Atom mixed up with Captain Atom. Captain Atom is a much less high profile character while The Atom's ability is shrinking. Its hard not to be seen as lame until you realize that Ray Palmer is supposed to be a detective and support for the other heroes. You know who else is supposed to be a detective hero? Batman. EDIT: Actually, I'm not done here: Marvel has a kid with spider powers, DC has a young artist with the last power ring of a group dedicated to protecting the universe (Green Lantern Kyle Rayner,) it has a child who transforms into a hero using a genie's magic (Captain Marvel,) a super powered young woman who is unable to find her place in the world (Power Girl) and a teenager with a scarab shaped artifact that encases him in alien power armor that allows him to join the heroes he's always looked up to in their battle against evil (Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes.) One More Day and Civil War sealed the deal for me. For Civil War, the story was basically a giant soapbox that used Iron Man (a neutral good character, I might add) as an allegory for conservative leaders and basically treated him as lawful evil, while using Captain America (a lawful good character) as an allegory for liberal leaders who the writers apparently feel are always right. While I know most comic writers tend to be liberals, as a liberal leaning moderate who agrees with some of the ideas, I DON'T WANT MY COMICS PREACHING TO ME. One More Day, on the other hand, is a perfect example as to why editors are not writers. The entire reasoning for One More Day is that Joe Quesada HATED the fact that Spider-Man was happily married. Why? Don't care. No one else had any problem with Spider-Man being married. Humorously, there was a DC series that had a similar editorially driven set up because the editor hated what came before it (in this case, 52). That series was Countdown to Final Crisis, a series so bad that Grant Morrison wanted absolutely nothing to do with it when he wrote Final Crisis and effectively rendered Countdown and all of Countdown's tie ins discontinuity. The lesson: If you **** up a story by making it too editorially driven, render it non canon if you value your readers. Besides, DC stories tend to be a lot more fun.
I understand the fact that 60 years of continuity can be pretty off putting, but with today's technology, its a google search away from getting the essential information. Changing a character's history is absolutely pointless.
Yup, starts with Wonder Woman #600. Or #601, I can't remember which. Either way, while I like the costume, I think it fits more for a younger new character than an established mature character like Wonder Woman. However, that's not my main gripe. They are more or less completely rebooting her because they want new readers. Well, as someone who was actually considering picking up Wonder Woman at the beginning of her next story, this news made me change my mind. The fact that this writer also wrote One More Day doesn't help matters much, but I seriously cannot figure out the logic of throwing out Wonder Woman's rich history for the sake of what will probably be a futile attempt at bringing in new readers. Not to mention that potential readers that are familiar with the DCAU will already know Wonder Woman from the Justice League series, so they'll see this new design and likely not recognize her as Wonder Woman. From what I can tell, its very rare for a writer to fully understand Wonder Woman and will constantly flip flop her between the man hating straw feminist, completely ignoring her character development and an elitist, but heroic woman who knows she is loved by the people, completely ignoring that she considered WORKING AT TACO BELL to be as noble a pursuit as any. Wonder Woman is supposed to be a strong, but humble woman and she is, frankly, the ultimate feminist icon. From the looks of things, we may have a NEW type of misunderstanding. EDIT: Also, come to think of it, with her new "gauntlets", she leaves a "W" mark when she punches someone. Two questions: First, how? There are no W's on the her fists, only on her wrists. Second, why? Again, that seems like something a new, younger hero would have, not one of DC's most mature heroes. EDIT2: Come to think of it again, how is this going to fit in with the rest of the DCU? I mean, I know that its not going to be part of Brightest Day, but what about the rest of the Justice League?
Which was followed immediately with a line calling scientists liars. Yeah, that song basically the breaking point from me going from dislike to flat out hate.
Yeah, horrorcore is not metal. Besides, ICP isn't all that good.
If you're talking about the list I left: Yeah, I'm quite the metalhead. Its a pretty nice variety, too. The most common sub-genres on that list are power and progressive metal. Power metal is among the easiest forms of metal to get into, but at the same time, there's also a A LOT of crappy power metal bands. Second only to metalcore, really.
Bullshit. While not understanding the lyrics by no means ruins a song, understanding the lyrics will give proper understanding of the songwriter's intent. However, at the same time, there are times where the lyrics mean literally nothing. There are times where the band just wants to use the vocalist's singer as another instrument (See Queen). Other times, the band's audience is so drugged up that they try to find hidden meanings in everything, so the band will either deliberately try to confuse them to get them to stop (See The Beatles) or take advantage of it so they don't have to bother trying to fit meaning into the lyrics (See Yes). Still, there are also times when the lyricist is too stupid to even know how to put meaning into their lyrics (See DragonForce and Fall Out Boy). My point is that an understanding or lack thereof of the lyrics can be an upside, a downside or even neither. Entirely because of English's connections to German as a Germanic language. Japanese, Spanish, French and Italian in particular are very poetic languages. That said, how poetic a language is can lend itself to different genres differently. English is a very common language in all genres for two reasons, the first being that it is the most popular language in the world, the other being that it is a middle ground between Latin-rooted Romance languages like Italian and other Germanic languages like, well, German. The language can lend itself to the feel of a song. For example, take Rammstein. Their lyrics are in German and they deliberately ignore that they are most popular in English speaking languages for the sole reason that the harsh and sometimes angry sound of the German language is a perfect fit for their brand of industrial metal. Contrast this to a band like Versailles, who has Japanese lyrics instead of the more common English lyrics that many Japanese metal bands go with because the language lends itself to the elegant and aristocratic sound of their form of power metal far better than English would. Ah, and here we have the problem. The mainstream accounts for almost nothing of what's out there. Watching mainstream music channels like BET, Fuse or MTV (assuming they're even playing music) tend to stick to top 40 pop and hip hop for the sole reason of the sheeple masses bleeting their way to Wal-Mart to buy the latest Justin Bieber or Soulja Boy album: Its what sells. The mainstream record labels aren't interested in talent, skill, originality or, most importantly, heart. They are only interested in what is marketable and what will make them the most money. Cashing in on the lowest common denominator that is the mainstream is the easiest way of doing this as most people don't really care about actual quality, they only care about what the record companies tell them to care about. Its a sad state of affairs, but hey, that's capitalism for you. All we can do is try to bring an interest in originality to the mainstream. How catchy a song is is a completely subjective element that has absolutely nothing to do with the vocalist in the first place, let alone the language of the lyrics. I happen to find quite a bit of complex progressive metal catchy, while a lot of people I know find it confusing and disorienting and instead, simpler music will stick in their heads.
Yes and no. Properly, they're sorted as neue Deutsche harte, which is "new German hardness" in German. Its usually considered a mix of eletronic, industrial and metal. See also: Eisbrecher, ASP, Oomph! and Megaherz.
WAT. Seriously, what the hell? God damn idiotic mainstream "tastes." Also, **** Attack Attack with a rusty spork. There's a reason they're among the few bands that I say legitimately suck beyond my negative opinion. Anyway: 3 Inches of Blood Alestorm Amon Amarth Anvil Apocalyptica Avantasia Between the Buried and Me Beyond Fear Black Label Society Black Sabbath/Heaven & Hell Blind Guardian Brocas Helm Charon Conception Death Demons & Wizards Derdian Dio Disturbed Dream Theater/Liquid Tension Experiment Eisbrecher Epica Freak Kitchen Galneryus Helloween Iced Earth Iron Maiden Iron Savior Judas Priest Kamelot Korpiklaani Leave's Eyes Lordi Loudness LucaTurilli/Luca Turilli's Dreamquest Machinae Supremacy Masterplan Mastodon Mirrorthrone Motorhead Nightwish Opeth Ozzy Pantera Rammstein Scar Symmetry Sonata Arctica Static X The Sword Symphony X System of a Down/Serj Tankian Tarot Tool Tyr Versailles Within Temptation X Japan Xandria Well, that should keep you busy for a while.
