Sure, if I try to set off explosives today, they arrest me. Life is so unfair.

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□ [The FliteCast | "If Supergirl Makes YouThis Angry, Then Seek Help"]

To all the trolls and woman haters that claim they legitimately hate #Supergirl, despite never watching the movie, and posting disgusting nonsense: You are a danger to society, and we are lucky you’re the minority. There’s nothing you can do but cry. The #DCU lives on. #ItsAllSubjective

Yikes!  This is definitely a clue to why the movie is such a big deal even though it's failed so badly, only reaching $100 million worldwide today on its 10th day of release.  Social media is still full of ads for this movie although most of them are accepting that it bombed although some are still posting irrelevancies like the haircut the lead actress has.  Who is that supposed to convince to buy a ticket at this point?

Anyway, this lunatic's clearly the target audience for this, spouting off about what horrible people anyone who doesn't like this move is.  He keeps moving his eyes off-camera, probably to follow the script, and it's not clear if he's specifically targetting those who actively dislike this movie or all 8 billion people on earth who didn't want to see it.  But look at the post he made to promote this video, "you're a danger to society"?  What sort of person says that about a fricking movie?  He's definitely projecting his anger onto the rest of us as an excuse to punish us.

That's why I think there's a cult mentality behind this industry, this company and possibly this specific franchise and genre.  I think James Gunn is definitely at the center of this, these are his people trying to push it on the rest of us.  Maybe he's just a figurehead.  Or maybe there's always a rival, the previous reboot under Zach Snyder seems to have had a similar effect and Gunn's fanboys are always going after him.  This is worth investigating but there's also a point where sane people really don't want to know any more and I think that's where they're at now.

I think there's a split going on between the larger media as a result of this failure.  Many social media posts are specifically from some Warner Bros. 'bot which just comes across as unprofessional for that huge corporation to openly go out for this.  As the movie was ready for release, the long-established Variety reported on problems with the movie.  This is part of a conflict going on behind closed doors and it was all centered around this movie.  And I thought I was just fascinated by this because I had some small affection for Supergirl herself.

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□ [“Eight Injured in July 4 Shooting in Coney Island, New York"]
□ [“SoCal:  Non-Residents Brawl, Riot, Loot on July 4th – Grocery Store Destroyed, Bars+Beaches Closed"]
□ [“Mob of Teens Beats Up Female Police Officer at South Carolina July 4 Block Party"]

Anecdotal, it's a holiday weekend and tempers are high.  It's one of those times where people might be looking for an excuse to fight.  The left wants violence this summer and at least one of these events was black people, jus' saying is all.  And "Non-residents"?  What kind of term is that?  This was at Newport Beach where fireworks are illegal so they deserve what they get who in their right minds would go there for the Fourth of July?

Bouncing back and forth on whether this is a deliberate increase in violence by the left or if it's just the building tension we all see.  If it's the latter, well, that's how it is.  If it's the former, are they trying to find out who they can use as disposable troops?  Are these already troops and this is the sort of shinanigans that's normal for that type?  Or is the intent to create fear and chaos and blame Trump for everything?  It might be one or more of these possibilities.

I guess I'd be most likely to say that it's the general mood.  Even if these are leftist soldiers, it's July 4th so they've got a reason to be angry and cause a mess.  It does give people more of a reason to carry firearms and look at who they could call on for help in times of danger.  I'm too lazy to check but I'd assume these are all locations that are mostly run by Democrats, that's just how these things usually work out.

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□ [“Mamdani’s Wife Rama Duwaji Skips July 4th for Islamic ‘Spiritual Wellness’ Retreat in Spain"]
□ [“Former Elizabeth Warren Volunteer Attends Ayatollah Khamenei’s Funeral"]

Still working on my theory that Muslims figured out how to get leftists to obey them without even knowing that was happening.  Iran has a lot of experience with that, which would explain the Warren aid.  Whether or not it's connected to Iran, Spain has a lot of experience too so that explains Mrs. Mamdani.  And her husband for that matter.

The Warren chick is so mindless that she may not even be a Muslim, telling Iran state media the Ayatollah “was a leader to all people of the world who struggle against imperialism, against arrogance, against Zionism, against genocide.  To me, he was the greatest anti-imperialist leader to have lived during my lifetime.”  How stupid do you have to be to fly over to Iran and promote the government that way?  Did she have to sneak in because Trump is so tyrannical?  She's not going to be allowed to meet any actual Iranian citizens.

I'm guessing this was deliberately intended to happen after July 4, a way for Iran and their allies to work out how to handle things.  That may even be why they waited so long for the Ayatollah's funeral.  I asked the question on A.I. so I can't justify the answer but it says that although Islam requires a burial within 24 hours, Shi'ites are allowed to delay it in wartime.  That also seems a bit iffy given how much time Iran has had for a ceasefire but there's probably some leeway on that, given how they keep breaking the ceasefire.  He's was a big name, it takes time to set things up and invite famous people.

Anyway, I'm sure that the Warren chick and Mrs. Mamdani are operating in the same circles here, even if they're 3000 miles apart.  She's in a luxury resort which costs thousands of dollars a day so she'll have people to put her in touch with other Muslim elites.  I doubt they're planning to surrender but they clearly need some new tactics.  The allies they have aren't very helpful either.  I wonder if the new Ayatollah bothered to show up to the funeral, we still haven't gotten to see him.

□ [“Trump's Ex-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Jets to Beijing to Meet Top CCP Official"]

I forgot to mention this yesterday, July 4th'll do that to you, but this Chinese chick also ran off to deal with an enemy on our nation's birthday.  She leaves her husband in the hospital, Mitch McConnell.  He was just found unconscious a day or two ago, it's reported to be cardiac arrest, but this is the priority?  I guess so.  She's was in government under Reagan, Bush Sr., GWB and Trump's first term.  There's nothing suspicoius about any of this.

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Martin Goodman had started off working for a distributor.  He saw that the market for pulp books and magazines was popular and started publishing his own.  When comics started selling, he added comic books.  I cannot find out what happened to most of those businesses but the comics companies - generally called "Timely" - still exists as Marvel.

Goodman started his own distributor in 1951, known as "Atlas."  In 1952, he even tried to reboot his superhero titles, Captain America, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner.  They quickly failed and the comics line is not known for any real quality.  It's not clear what Goodman's problems were as a distributor where he had plenty of experience but his company was shut down by 1956.  He moved his comics - and presumably the rest of his publiations - to American Magazine Company, the biggest distributor in the US.  But American lost a court case where it was determined to effectively be a monopoly.  Dell Comics was ready to open its own distributor and the owners of American decided they couldn't compete so they shut down entirely.

Much of this makes no sense.  Not just the distributor problems but where all of Goodman's other companies went.  They must have been popular enough to keep the company running but there's no record of what happened to any of them.  There's also no explanation of why Goodman needed so many companies or what he was trying to do with them.  What information we do have makes no sense yet it obviously worked for many people for a long time, the rest is lost to time.

Goodman would respond by moving to use DC as its distributor which is where the Marvel Age got started.  That part we know but I had forgotten about a more recent event which was surprisingly similar.

In the early-1990s, Marvel was running high with sales from what's known as the "speculation market."  They made quite a few bad arrogant decisions, one of which broke the industry as we knew it.  They decided they could make more money if they owned their distributor, so they purchased Heroes World, the third-biggest distributor in the country.  This was similar to Goodman's decision which had caused him so many problems, although you could argue that it also led to Marvel being successful.

Another detail, which I did not know until I started looking this up, Heroes World was founded by someone who used to work for Marvel.  Ivan Snyder worked in the merchandising department and was head of selling licensed items by mail order.  In 1975, Marvel decided to close that division so Snyder purchased it and ran it as his own business.  It became big enough to handle DC licensed products and was connected through the comics industry.  So this is what Marvel took over in 1994.

The collapse in comics was big.  Heroes was the only place to get Marvel comics so every store needed to deal with them as well as those who sold product from other companies.  That was extra work just to get the usual comics.  Other distributors were hit hard now that they didn't sell Marvels comics and they started to go out of business.  The high-sales era for comic stores was over and now things were getting worse with the distributors.

In hindsight this might have been expected, Marvel had no clue how to run a distributor.  Their business practices were horrible, causing even more problems for the stores.  By 1997, Heroes was out of business and Marvel had to use the only surviving distributor, Diamond.  There was talk of punishing Diamond as a monopoly but survival isn't a crime.  I know there are more distributors but I'm not close enough to the modern-comics industry to know how they operate.

But this timeline from 1994-97 is similar to what Goodman had gone through 40 years earlier.  And it had similar results we still see today.  In 1994, Marvel wanted to get into computer coloring, to be more 'modern.'  Rather than just purchase the up-to-date technology, they purchased Malibu Comics, a company that already used computer coloring.  But they got more.

A few years earlier, Malibu had worked with Aircel Comics which had some financial problems and ended up purchasing the company.  So in 1994, Marvel now owned whatever IPs those companies possessed.  One of them was Men in Black.  I can only guess why an independent comics company would have company-owned characters like that but now they belonged to Marvel who was always trying to make money selling their characters in Hollywood.  All of a sudden they had an IP that someone wanted to make into a movie which was a hit in 1997.

Now that they had a real success, Marvel had more influence in Hollywood.  More characters were looked at and Blade was a hit movie in 1998.  The ones with black characters must have interested the movie studios, soon X-Men followed in 2000 and Spider-Man in 2002.  There were Hulk movies and a few others - I still recall scanning through tv channels and seeing a Nick Fury tv movie starring David Hasselhoff in 1998 - but the seeds were planted.  Now Marvel was growing in multiple movie studios.

I'm still trying to work out how Marvel and DC seem to be working through multiple companies and what goal they're pushing for with this.  Marvel is a bit easier to understand because they've always moved around from one place to the next.  DC has always been a big company, even before it became a small part of a giant corporation.  And now that Marvel is part of Disney, they're at the same level.  And they both have decades of experience legally negotiating the use of their IPs.

The steps that Goodman took which led to the Marvel Universe are similar to the steps that Marvel took which led to the MCU.  And what struck me to write all of this was that it all came from the distribution market.  DC was co-founded by guys in distribution who had to take over from the co-founder who was in publishing.  I'm curious why they didn't go through American Magazine but the 1930s-60s distribution market must have been very different from what we know now.  Then DC was able to use its control over Marvel as distributor to move it to great success.

Arguably the goal was to make Marvel popular enough to go out on its own, which it did in the late-60s.  But as we see here, they always needed to stay close to distributors and not just as a business.  Maybe it's the 92Y in me but logistics and distribution are something I've always been interested in.  I get that you can't run this industry without it but it always seems to be where the changes in comics come from.

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