Dragon Ball / heroic adventure fiction / comics

[Vishniac]

...a well-reasoned argument that Kaiser Bill was no Hitler...

It's largely a myth.
Hitler, his lieutenants, the different ideologies he melted, his supports...didn't appear from nowhere in 1933, they were there in 1918 at the end of WWI, in 1914 before the war and even before in the 19th century.
The only thing making Hitler special are extermination camps and squads killing millions on industrial scale with industrial organization. Without that, he would just be another conqueror/dictator/warlord taking quietly place besides the such of Napoleon, Caesar, Gengis Khan and some others.

But:
- the German superiority feeling and the urge to rule Europe was at the heart of the pangermanist movement pushing Germany to war. That's why they supported the most extreme Austrian claims against Serbia after Sarajevo, starting the chain of alliances that brought WWI. Thus they have a major responsibility.
- Germany, despising international laws, broke the neutrality of Belgium (calling it "a sheet of paper"), qualifying thus for an agression war. A stupid act which probably cost them the war, being the reason for GB and its dominions to enter the fight
- German occupation of Belgium and Northern France from 1914 to 1918 was extremely brutal, even moreso than in WWII. Civilians were left dying by poverty and hunger.
- Turkish armies were under the direct command of German officers, beginning with General Lyman von Sanders at the top. They couldn't have committed the Armenian genocide without them at the very least watching the other side and silencing the reports to other countries, and probably helping with logistics.
- Germany sunk neutral and civilian boats with its submarines to disrupt allied commerce. Again, a stupidity which pushed the US into the war.
- Having the best scientists and the most powerful industry in the world, Germany started chemical warfare on a massive scale on the Western front. An atrocity difficult to apprehend today.

So: no, the Kaiser was no Hitler...because he didn't kill Jews.
In every other domain, he was merely his predecessor.

[Unorthodox]

All the Burton movies you mention, save Big Fish which I haven't seen, are spider-web cute examples.  It's a metaphor.

Then I strongly disagree with you that he needs to stay in that area to be his best.  He's just as likely to make a clunker within that realm as any other.  And Big Fish and Big Eyes are examples of good, if not great, movies more anchored in reality.   

Frankly, the best thing about a Burton movie is your virtually guaranteed Danny Elfman does the music. 

And a penchant for practical effects over cgi. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Uuuh - the spiderweb (pseudo-creepy) stuff also almost invariably features the Depp, who I deem a genuinely good actor, and I'm meh on Elfman, but liked all those movies a LOT considering none of it's to do with my preferred fantasy life...

...a well-reasoned argument that Kaiser Bill was no Hitler...

It's largely a myth.
Hitler, his lieutenants, the different ideologies he melted, his supports...didn't appear from nowhere in 1933, they were there in 1918 at the end of WWI, in 1914 before the war and even before in the 19th century.
The only thing making Hitler special are extermination camps and squads killing millions on industrial scale with industrial organization. Without that, he would just be another conqueror/dictator/warlord taking quietly place besides the such of Napoleon, Caesar, Gengis Khan and some others.

But:
- the German superiority feeling and the urge to rule Europe was at the heart of the pangermanist movement pushing Germany to war. That's why they supported the most extreme Austrian claims against Serbia after Sarajevo, starting the chain of alliances that brought WWI. Thus they have a major responsibility.
- Germany, despising international laws, broke the neutrality of Belgium (calling it "a sheet of paper"), qualifying thus for an agression war. A stupid act which probably cost them the war, being the reason for GB and its dominions to enter the fight
- German occupation of Belgium and Northern France from 1914 to 1918 was extremely brutal, even moreso than in WWII. Civilians were left dying by poverty and hunger.
- Turkish armies were under the direct command of German officers, beginning with General Lyman von Sanders at the top. They couldn't have committed the Armenian genocide without them at the very least watching the other side and silencing the reports to other countries, and probably helping with logistics.
- Germany sunk neutral and civilian boats with its submarines to disrupt allied commerce. Again, a stupidity which pushed the US into the war.
- Having the best scientists and the most powerful industry in the world, Germany started chemical warfare on a massive scale on the Western front. An atrocity difficult to apprehend today.

So: no, the Kaiser was no Hitler...because he didn't kill Jews.
In every other domain, he was merely his predecessor.

Sir, I read an excellent biography of Hitler in college -for fun; he's interesting- covering his life from about a month after Armistice while he was still a corporal in the army of Bavaria, (and his CO sent him to monitor a small political party mostly to keep him busy) and follows him up to about the Munich Beerhall Putsch and contextualized the place and time in depth.

Reading about early Weimar Germany made ME want to conquer France and kill a lot of them.

I know what Hitler was -a strange quiet guy, nerdy and more than a little bright but no genius, angry about politics with an infectious passion, wrapped a little too tight for his own or anyone else's good, but by no means crazy, at least early on.  And I know what Germany was at the time -and the actual communist revolutions with actual Jewish leaders, that unfortunately set much bullcrap hate off/fed mainstream- and that Hitler was a symptom and eventually a focus, but not originally the disease.

WWI, again, was a moral Chinatown - all sides stupid, crazy-aggressive, guilty of greed and hate in statecraft - and Germany was merely the party that went first; it had to, with France and Russia in anti-German alliance and already mobilized.  So Germany was arguably the wrongest (Bill absolutely had motives and agenda beyond self-defense -blank check to Austria-Hungary, after all- which was a mere timing issue) but hardly the hands-down badguy of Nazi Germany a generation later.

No.  I fight on the hill that Bill was no Adolf.   -Good points about Belgium and the Armenian genocide, though.


-This is thread-worthy if anyone thinks they have sufficient command of the facts and wants to discuss/debate...

[Unorthodox]

WWI, again, was a moral Chinatown - all sides stupid, crazy-aggressive, guilty of greed and hate in statecraft -

And the WW movie USES THAT. 

[Buster's Uncle]

GOOD.

[Buster's Uncle]

WELL.  That's  new.

Woman in a blue wig and a bunny suit -re: Bulma in the first season of Dragon Ball a couple episodes, so somebody actually knew the stuff, at least to correctly bill it as Dragon Ball- on a pr0n site.  All that's new about that, mind, is live action.  Not going to actually watch; actress is a tad heavy.

[Buster's Uncle]

... the Woman (ultra-violence-is-for-men-I've-got-a-better-way) Paradigm thing ...

Isn't it a very modern and political view of Wonder Woman?

Of the 4 main heroes created before or around WWII that I know: Captain America, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the woman doesn't stand out as more loving or pacific. All four are especially characterized by their trait of not killing enemies. There was an uproar when fans saw Superman killing Zod in Man of Steel; a contrario some people were cheering for Batman  killing gangsters in Batman vs Superman but it shows how out of character that was too.

To be fair, there aren't many super-heroes who really kill their enemies: Spiderman, Fnatastic Four, even Iron Man the most anticommunist hero or Daredevil the vigilante don't indulge into cold-blood killing or even hot. Enemies die by accident or disintegrated by their own devices...
Until recently of course with the famous turn around with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns by 1985-87. Then suddenly semi-outlaws like Wolverine and the Punisher who were making some cameos got their own series where they could leave a trail of blood behind them...

But usually super-heroes don't kill also because 1-comics were at first for kids and 2-authors didn't want to re-invent super-villains all the time so the bad guys were put in jail and escaped and put in jail and escaped and... (Seriously, in real life, how much times can the Joker escape and kill civilians by terror before someone decide it's just good policy to terminate him while he's sleeping in jail?)
So no: in comics, ultra-violence is unisexual.

I added emphasis to that first line.

No, actually. 

-Also yes, because of course. -But it's actual original intent.  So, see -and I don't know all this 100% cetain, so feel free to google it and correct me- DC/National had a big hit with Superman, a big hit with Batman, getting literally millions of boy's money monthly - I surmise that they wondered how they could skin more little girls, too.  So they recruited Dr. William Marston (Moulton was a pen name), a shrink famous for work on lie detector stuff, and, I believe, had written a lot of popular science articles on child psychology stuff or something like that.  Looked like a natural for prestigious creative contributions they could point at and claim Teh Expert Said Good For Kids, if only they could get him...

Well - no idea if he needed the money, but it happened that Marston was a radical feminist -by the standards of 1940, not so much now- (who had an interesting personal life, shacked up with his wife and their girlfriend.)  Olive Byrne (Yes Byrne - no relation) was a tall, shapely, good-looking brunette, and the three of them were seriously into bondage, and Olive just wore bracelets all the time.  I trust all that sounds familiar, a bit, because it certainly deeply informed the work.

(Not hard to find, all over the net, panels and covers from the original Marston/Peter [Yes; she was co-created and originally drawn by Harry Peter - the RL irony comedy never ends with WW] run that are HILARIOUS to modern sensibilities, knowing where all the coded-bondage imagery was coming from, and once you notice that one cover she's running at a sea monster with a telephone pole - that the monster looks like ladyparts, and sometimes a telephone pole isn't, metaphorically, a telephone sort of pole...)

Nossir, William Marston Moulton, totally believed, ahead of his time in 1940, that the feminine nature was better, more loving, and straight-up he was a true believer in Gurl-Powah-Yay.  I absolutely do not read something unintended in when I say "the Woman (ultra-violence-is-for-men-I've-got-a-better-way) Paradigm thing".

She was, always, at her very genesis and roots, Intended as Woman, Paradigm (Neither simply to play to/attract girls, but by someone who believed the message) and the "ultra-violence-is-for-men-I've-got-a-better-way" was explicit, more explicit back then, nothing I've simply interpreted from my perch in the future of 2018.

---

-Saw Mylochka this morning (especially for those who remember years back my reporting of idle conversations we had about direction if we wrote Wonder Woman) and had to tell her about the magic golem origin that was grafted on long ago - and especially the "Never to show him love, lest the ancient spell be broken" idea...

[Buster's Uncle]

Appropose of only that I just saw this post of mine for the first time in eight years...

Vish can talk a lot more crap to/around me than he does. He's good people.

[Buster's Uncle]

  Wonder Woman penetrating Von Bach to death during Kingdom Come:

 

[Vishniac]

Symetrical to:

[Buster's Uncle]

The Master of the World wasn't nearly powerful enough to give MM a real fight -he was roughly Captain America-level- and it was a huge mistake for her to ditch the second Cockrum costume.  I don't care about the sexual politics, aspect, or the current right-headed attempt to make her Paragon -thus the Captain and not-hot costume- the dark swimsuit WORKED.

Von Bach was strong enough that when WW'd fought him before w/ Superman's help, she was still out of breath for a minute afterwards - he musta been hella-fast, too, or no fight against either, let alone both.


Strong move to post panels we find on the nets, though - I'd heard about Ms. Marvel/Warbird/I-don't-think-she-was-using-Captain-yet killing the Master, but never seen it before.  Art isn't too great...

[Vishniac]

Warbird at the time. The Kang Dynasty arc was a grim one.
---------------------------------------------------------

So, this is where Vonbach took his pseudo and avatar?
I always thought it was some hommage to the singer and iconography of the Slovenian avant-gardiste band Laibach

[Buster's Uncle]

I made and put the avatar on von, 'cause I caught the name.  He is familiar with the series.

Bet it was Waid and Ross' homage to that dude.  Slovenian is too much of a coincidence - von Bach talked German, but I'm told bad German, and was actually Yugoslavian...

[Buster's Uncle]

Symetrical to:

ALSO?  Cockrum design killing a Byrne design.  Funny.

[Buster's Uncle]

GotM release has kept me busy all day -and I haven't linked a bunch of places on Facebook even yet- but I didn't get to Dragnball Super yesterday, and am watching as soon as I come back from the Kat Frend Project, Sunset Edition.  Call it 20 minutes from now, done in under an hour.  Episode right after wrapping a Major Arc ought to be comedy-heavy.

Cover me; I'm going in.