Britain burns - Chavs ruin civilization

[mongers]

There could be some ethnic violence in Birmingham tonight; basically a peaceful crowd of 200-300 young British Asians have gathered in a vigil to the three young men killed by the hit and run attack last night.

There's some suggestion they're going to march down the road to an area with a large afro-Caribbean population, so something might well kick off.

[Razgovory]

I'm neither in the UK or the US. In Poland, Polack draws a strong reaction.

I thought Polack came from the Polish word for a male Pole.

[Ideologue]

Touche, but on the other hand, the Braddock siblings are almost as bad as Jean Grey and Madeline Pryor as far as dysfunctional families are concerned.  Not to mention Rachel Summers.

But Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers were hot.

Kitty Pryde?

Who do I look like, Siegebreaker?

Didn't you read comics when you were a kid?

I think when I was a kid I had a crush on Jean Grey.

You know, there were an awful lot of redheads in comic books of that period.  I think that someone at Marvel had a thing for redheads.

I found it easy to empathize with Kitty because she was young like me.

Redheads have always been way overrepresented in fiction in general, and comics in particular.

I mean, look at the Superman family.  Out of like eight major characters, three--all unrelated to one another--have red hair (well, three if you count Lex Luthor).

Lana Lang is the only one that's a woman.  Compare that to Jean Grey and all her clones/extradimensional children, Natasha Romanoff, Colleen Wing, Theresa Cassidy, Angelica Jones, Mary Jane Watson-Parker, Medusa and Crystal from the Inhumans were all redheads.  The Scarlett Witch was auburn.  Marvel was a lot heavier on the redheads back in the day.

Also, Firestar.

I was gonna argue Crystal, but I just checked my copy of FF 45, and yeah, I guess for a while she was a redhead.  I'm not sure if she should count, but if she does, Vicki Vale does.

But I was only using the Superman family.  If we want to go full universe, with a cut-off of say 1990, there's Lana Lang and Vicki Vale, as noted, Carrie Kelly, Lightning Lass, Saturn Queen, Barbara Gordon, Poison Ivy, Giganta, the period in the 1980s where Dan Jurgens or somebody decided that Lois Lane's hair color was not jet black but instead some kind of dark red, and all those times Jimmy Olsen put on a wig and hung out in the men's room.  I'd like to include Artemis and Knockout, but they didn't appear till 1994.

I suppose Marvel has an edge, though.

I think DC has a lot more guys with red hair than Marvel.  The only Marvel redheaded male I can even think of offhand is Matt Murdock, whereas DC has Luthor, Olsen, Lightning Lad, Sun Boy, Ralph Dibny, Jason Todd, Roy Harper, and so on.

I think by the time I'd started reading comics, Kitty wasn't around in the X-Men.  I only know her through back issues.

I wasn't reading comics when she first appeared in 1980, but I definitely was by the time she moved in Excalibur in 88.

I started reading X-Men with X-Men #1, when I was 9.

Weird place to pick up.  What was even worse is that I missed #3 (the swan song of the Claremont run and the death of Magneto) and didn't get to read it till I was, I dunno, twenty or something.

[Viking]

No. But really.

Polack (Norwegian, Swedish): "A person of polish heritage"

When I went to do my masters project in germany I went to a university in eastern germany with many polish students. In icelandic Pólverji, in norwegian Polakk. Knowing that the icelandic word doesn't transliterate (þjóðverji is icelandic for german), while the norwegian probably did. So, at one breakfast meeting I said something like "Er ist Polakk, wie....", my german was (and is) sufficiently good that everybody thought I had just launched a racial slur in a room where the poles and russians outnumbered germans and icelanders. I found myself corrected when I asked what was wrong when everybody stared at me like I just called a black man a nigger at a black panthers meeting. I didn't do it again, playing stupid usually solves most social faux pas when abroad. 

[Ed Anger]

<snipped comics wank>

You nerds disappoint me sometimes.

[Ideologue]

<snipped comics wank>

You nerds disappoint me sometimes.

I thought you might approve of our marginalization of Britain's apparent inability to deal with unarmed, disorganized hooligans.

[Ed Anger]

<snipped comics wank>

You nerds disappoint me sometimes.

I thought you might approve of our marginalization of Britain's apparent inability to deal with unarmed, disorganized hooligans.

I blacked out when Jean Grey got mentioned.

[Slargos]

No. But really.

Polack (Norwegian, Swedish): "A person of polish heritage"

When I went to do my masters project in germany I went to a university in eastern germany with many polish students. In icelandic Pólverji, in norwegian Polakk. Knowing that the icelandic word doesn't transliterate (þjóðverji is icelandic for german), while the norwegian probably did. So, at one breakfast meeting I said something like "Er ist Polakk, wie....", my german was (and is) sufficiently good that everybody thought I had just launched a racial slur in a room where the poles and russians outnumbered germans and icelanders. I found myself corrected when I asked what was wrong when everybody stared at me like I just called a black man a nigger at a black panthers meeting. I didn't do it again, playing stupid usually solves most social faux pas when abroad.

Man, is there anywhere you haven't lived at some point, you cosmopolitan fucktard? 

[Ed Anger]

The manager of a prosperous whorehouse in Warsaw one night found to his dismay that he was short of girls for the evening's entertainment. Thinking quickly, he dashed out and bought several blow-up dolls, figuring that, given his average clientele, no one would know the difference.

Soon he ushered a customer into a room that housed one of the new lovelies, assuring him that he was in for an especially good time. When the customer came out of the room a little while later, the manager was waiting eagerly in the hallway.

He winked at him and asked, "Well? How'd you like her?"

"I don't know what happened," said the customer, shaking his head. "I bit her on the tit, she farted, and flew out the window."

[Palisadoes]

How the hell did you guys get from rioting to Marvel comics?!

[Ideologue]

How the hell did you guys get from rioting to Marvel comics?!

Mention of Captain Britain led to a mention of Chris Claremont led to a mention of Jean Grey led to a mention of redheads in comics.

It's all very simple.

[Palisadoes]

That was as good a summary of the last few pages as any. Thank you.

[Neil]

Touche, but on the other hand, the Braddock siblings are almost as bad as Jean Grey and Madeline Pryor as far as dysfunctional families are concerned.  Not to mention Rachel Summers.

But Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers were hot.

Kitty Pryde?

Who do I look like, Siegebreaker?

Didn't you read comics when you were a kid?

I think when I was a kid I had a crush on Jean Grey.

You know, there were an awful lot of redheads in comic books of that period.  I think that someone at Marvel had a thing for redheads.

I found it easy to empathize with Kitty because she was young like me.

Redheads have always been way overrepresented in fiction in general, and comics in particular.

I mean, look at the Superman family.  Out of like eight major characters, three--all unrelated to one another--have red hair (well, three if you count Lex Luthor).

Lana Lang is the only one that's a woman.  Compare that to Jean Grey and all her clones/extradimensional children, Natasha Romanoff, Colleen Wing, Theresa Cassidy, Angelica Jones, Mary Jane Watson-Parker, Medusa and Crystal from the Inhumans were all redheads.  The Scarlett Witch was auburn.  Marvel was a lot heavier on the redheads back in the day.

Also, Firestar.

I was gonna argue Crystal, but I just checked my copy of FF 45, and yeah, I guess for a while she was a redhead.  I'm not sure if she should count, but if she does, Vicki Vale does.

But I was only using the Superman family.  If we want to go full universe, with a cut-off of say 1990, there's Lana Lang and Vicki Vale, as noted, Carrie Kelly, Lightning Lass, Saturn Queen, Barbara Gordon, Poison Ivy, Giganta, the period in the 1980s where Dan Jurgens or somebody decided that Lois Lane's hair color was not jet black but instead some kind of dark red, and all those times Jimmy Olsen put on a wig and hung out in the men's room.  I'd like to include Artemis and Knockout, but they didn't appear till 1994.

I suppose Marvel has an edge, though.

I think DC has a lot more guys with red hair than Marvel.  The only Marvel redheaded male I can even think of offhand is Matt Murdock, whereas DC has Luthor, Olsen, Lightning Lad, Sun Boy, Ralph Dibny, Jason Todd, Roy Harper, and so on.

Yeah, DC gets the edge for males without a doubt.  Sean Cassidy and Matt Murdock are pretty much it.  And Angelica Jones is Firestar.

Ralph Dibny being dead sucks ass.

I think by the time I'd started reading comics, Kitty wasn't around in the X-Men.  I only know her through back issues.

I wasn't reading comics when she first appeared in 1980, but I definitely was by the time she moved in Excalibur in 88.

I started reading X-Men with X-Men #1, when I was 9.

Weird place to pick up.  What was even worse is that I missed #3 (the swan song of the Claremont run and the death of Magneto) and didn't get to read it till I was, I dunno, twenty or something.

X-Men #1 is probably the least stand-alone issue #1 of all time.  Mind you, Magneto's back-to-back deaths (X-Men #3 and #25) are probably the best the character has ever been.

I started reading way back in 1984, when the X-Men were having all sorts of wacky adventures that were fantastic and more than a little bit sci-fi.

[Neil]

<snipped comics wank>

You nerds disappoint me sometimes.

Meh.  This is our world now.  Hurry up and die.

[Ideologue]

Yeah, I've read some of the mid-80s stuff too.  It's weird, and has little to nothing to do with the X-Men core concept, but in a way that's sort of a good thing.  You can only be told "prejudice is bad" so many times.

The Australia stuff isn't so hot.

X-Men #1 really militates against the idea that shit has to be stripped down to be accessible.  Not claiming it's the height of the art form or anything, but I, as a nine year old kid who had read a half dozen out-of-sequence Wolverine comics prior, had no real problem getting into a story that depended on something like 100 issues worth of continuity.