Posted in: Comics | Tagged: angela, Comics, entertainment, unsolicited opinions on israel

"Unsolicited Opinions On Israel" – The Comic Meme Of 2016?

I picked up on it the morning it was published. A gag in the most recent Angela, Queen Of Hel, in which Angela and Sera faced down the father of Odin, Bor. A deeply unpleasant individual.

And the comic used the technique of censoring out some of Bor's more offensive statements, but used the narrative commentary to make a joke of his words. But, those blocking comments also went too far, to ludicrous analogies. It was mocking the narrator's attitude as much as it was Bor's.

It was rather  funny, and a very clever use of comic book storytelling, with an unreliable narrator inserting themselves into the dialogue presented to the reader. It's the kind of trick that can only be used in comics, but is used far too rarely. It reminded me of Cerebus, in a good way. So I highlighted it.

It seems that this highlighting however brought out the hounds, who didn't read the whole comic as I hoped, but took those panels at face value, put the back of their hand to their forehead repeating "the vapours! the vapours!" and muttering about what a terrible thing this person was doing, putting slurs that could not possibly be there in Odin's father's mouths and, well mocking the kind of things #gamergaters might say and what the hell was her problem anyway. And tried to meme it.

YouTuber MundaneMatt began the tirade with a video, "Marvel goes fullSJW with ANGELA."

"Once again Marvel Comics kowtows to Cultural Authoritarians who have zero concept of how their narrative completely destroys the immersion factor in comics. Marguerite Bennett's ANGEL: QUEEN OF HEL #4's use of the 4th wall breaking elements proves once and for all that Marvel is as cucked as the rest of comics."

Yes, he didn't get the name of the comment right in the description. Like I can criticise anyone when it comes to typos. And if it's purely fourth wall breaking that gets his goat, he must hate Deadpool…

But over on 8chan, the /co board took this and ran with it, taking those phrases and adding them to other comics and images. A whole bunch are collected here. And here's the thing, while this began as a ham-fisted critique of Angela, it has blossomed into an exercise in surrealism, closer in tone to what the writer Marguerite Bennett seems to have originally intended.

Here are a few of my favourite.

https://twitter.com/MageRheon/status/695785351152009216

https://twitter.com/AEComposition/status/694994773124476928

https://twitter.com/acesrhigh/status/698979066725199873  https://twitter.com/AEComposition/status/694994773124476928

 https://twitter.com/Eggkin/status/696147796693364738
 https://twitter.com/RitzOrGTFO/status/696001221526552576

Man, if Marguerite can break the internet like this with a side-joke in a comic book few people are aware of, I can't wait to see what she'll do with Wonder Woman.

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