Saturday, October 05, 2019

Miss Fury

I was going to write about music but an e-mail from Rassa was about Miss Fury and I had no idea who Miss Fury was.

MISS FURY was a comic book about the superhero Miss Fury.  June Tarpe Mills created the character and the comic book.   Who?  From TARPEMILLS.COM:


June Tarpe Mills, known professionally as Tarpe Mills, rose from obscurity to become the creator of the world's first female comic heroine with the publication of Miss Fury six months before the creation of Wonder Woman. Tarpe Mills’ tremendous artistic talent poured onto the print page with action, glamour and fashion, and sexiness that was unheard of until Miss Fury. Tarpe Mills and her work has been memorialized by her July 19, 2019, induction into the Eisner Comic Hall of Fame at ComicCon SanDiego.


From AMAZON, a look at Miss Fury:




From the visuals alone, you have to wonder why, in the '00s, someone didn't cast Annette Benning or Catharine Zeta Jones or Halle Berry or Michelle Pfeiffer as Miss Fury in a film of the same name?  Today, you could add Keira Knightly, Kerry Washington, Natalie Portman, Isabela Moner and Anne Hathaway to the list.  Some might argue that you'd have to set the film in the forties.  You wouldn't 'have to,' but even if you did, are you forgetting that both the Captain America film (2011) and the Wonder Woman film (2017) were set in that period and both were huge hits?


This is from WIKIPEDIA:


Miss Fury[edit]

The Bell Syndicate first published the Miss Fury comic strip (then titled The Black Fury) on April 6, 1941, predating the first appearance of Wonder Woman by six months.[9] The strip "ran in full color in the Sunday comics pages for 351 consecutive weeks from 1942 through 1949, and was also collected in comic book form by Timely Comics."[10] Circulation included over 100 newspapers at its most popular stage.[11] As the Miss Fury strip became more popular, it eventually became public knowledge its creator was a woman.[12]
Miss Fury, the alter ego of socialite Marla Drake, was a character based loosely on Mills' own appearance.[12]
During World War II, "Miss Fury" was painted on the nose of three American warplanes in Europe and the South Pacific. Two of the recurring villains were the Nazi agents Erica Von Kampf and General Bruno. Mills' own white Persian cat Perri-Purr was introduced in the strip, and during World War II Perri-Purr became an unofficial mascot of the American troops.[6][13]

Fashion[edit]

The artwork was created in a glamorous style with considerable attention placed on the heroine's outfits.[1][14] These outfits varied from lacy evening gowns and lingerie to bathing suits and athletic costumes.[15] Mills' attention to fashion in Miss Fury was mirrored in the work of her contemporary Dalia Messick's "Brenda Starr," and in this sense the women were ahead of their male counterparts who typically "dressed [their] heroines in plain red dresses."[16]
Cut-out paper fashion dolls were included for the first time in the comic-book reprints of Miss Fury, leading Trina Robbins to guess that these books were intended for a female audience.[15] Mills sent paper dolls to young women who had written fan mail requesting art.[9]

Censorship[edit]

Miss Fury was notoriously full of "kinkiness," including “whips, spike heels, female-on-female violence, and lingerie scenes.”[2] One character's costume in a 1947 publication "was so daring that 37 newspapers cancelled the strip” that day.[15] A bathing scene from the tenth Miss Fury Sunday page on June 8, 1941 ran in newspapers at the time but was later excluded from the 1942 Timely Comics reprint.[17]
Trina Robbins said on Miss Fury:
“The only outrage I have seen were those newspapers that censored Mills’s strip in which she dressed her nightclub entertainer character, Era, in an outfit that would not bother us in the least today. But it obviously shocked the pants – yes, verbal joke intended – off some people."[9]

Style[edit]

Mills' art in Miss Fury was modeled on the work of Milton Caniff.[18] Her portrayal of action across multiple panels, as well as the natural poses and facial expressions of her characters, has been described as "cinematic,"[19] echoing the film-noire style.[18][20] Mills' characters also possessed a "pinup quality."[19]
Dean Mullaney, editor and publisher behind Eclipse Enterprises, wrote that “[Mills’] art is drawn very traditionally—no surprises, no ah-ha moments.”[21]
Evie Nagy for The Los Angeles Review of Books remarked that “the flow of Mills’s sequential art feels completely organic."[19]

Legacy[edit]

June Mills' legacy as the first woman to create a female action hero in comics was contextualized by Victoria Ingalls for the American Psychological Association. Out of a list of hundreds of female “superheroes” surveyed in her abstract, Ingalls identified only eleven as being created by a woman not working in a team with a male writer. Mills' Marla Drake is the chronological first of these eleven heroes.
According to Mike Madrid in his book The Supergirls, Marla Drake belongs to the “Debutante” caste of early comics female heroines, who include Sandra Knight (Phantom Lady), Dianne Grayton(Spider Widow), Diana Adams (Miss Masque), and Brenda Banks (Lady Luck). These characters form a ‘sorority’ of heiresses and socialites who had been forced into lives of propriety, submission, and “tedious leisure.” “Putting on a cape and mask liberated these women” to embrace their own identities, fight crime, and trade their “entitled boredom” for thrills.[22]
Madrid wrote, “Mills’ approach to a secret identity seemed more realistic, injected with a feminine practicality.”[22]

This is from an article at Australia's ABC:

Comics then and now tend to feature weak-kneed female characters who seem to exist for the sole purpose of being saved by a male hero — or, worse still, are "fridged", a contemporary comic book colloquialism that refers to the gruesome slaying of an undeveloped female character to deepen the hero's motivation and propel him on his journey.
But Mills believed there was room in comics for a different kind of female character, one who was able, level-headed and capable, mingling tough-minded complexity with Mills' own taste for risqué behaviour and haute couture gowns.
Where Wonder Woman's powers are "marvellous" — that is, not real or attainable — Miss Fury and her alter ego Marla Drake use their collective brains, resourcefulness and the odd stiletto heel in the face to bring the villains to justice.
And for a time they were wildly successful.
Miss Fury ran a full decade from April 1941 to December 1951, was syndicated in 100 different newspapers at the height of her wartime fame, and sold a million copies an issue in reprints released by Timely (now Marvel) comics.
Fighter pilots painted Miss Fury on the fuselage of bomber planes. Young girls played with paper doll cut outs featuring her extensive high fashion wardrobe.

From Australia's ABC -- emphasize.  Point being, Miss Fury was not known just in the US.  She had wide appeal.  So why isn't Miss Fury on the big screen?


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, October 4, 2019.  Protests continue in Iraq while, in the US, Joe Biden continues to tarnish the legacy of Barack Obama.


Last week, Sarah Chayes, "Hunter Biden’s Perfectly Legal, Socially Acceptable Corruption" was published by THE ATLANTIC.  Yesterday on MORNING EDITION (NPR), Sarah spoke with David Green:

DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is drawing attention to the questionable activities of more than one major political family. Former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter are under scrutiny for Hunter's work in the Ukrainian energy industry.
The writer Sarah Chayes is the author of the book "Thieves Of The State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security" (ph). And she argues this scrutiny is a good thing.

SARAH CHAYES: You know, when the son of a vice president gets a job in a field he knows nothing about while his father is vice president in a country that just had a revolution that, you know, typically, in that part of the world, post-revolution, all the oligarchs steal all the crown jewels, and the industry is one of the crown jewels - that is to say, gas - since when is that doing nothing wrong?

GREENE: Now, wrong does not necessarily mean illegal, Sarah Chayes told me. But she said too often these days, people with political ties or prominent political names are getting involved where they shouldn't be.

CHAYES: Almost any senior name that I start researching, I run into practices like this. It is extraordinarily widespread. And that's my question. How did we all convince ourselves that this isn't corrupt? And it seems to me that we're not going to recover, you know, even an approximation of the ideals on which we were founded as a nation unless each of us, as citizens, begins to make it less comfortable for our political and economic leaders to behave this way.

GREENE: Well, let me ask you this, then. If it is not unusual, why focus on this case of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden specifically?


CHAYES: Because it's in the news and because of the word that I kept seeing apply in this context, which is, no wrongdoing, or, they didn't do anything wrong. And I'm looking at that, saying, what? And if we can say that now, in this context, then there's something awry.


From her article at THE ATLANTIC:

When allegations of ethical lapses or wrongdoing surface against people on one side of the aisle, they can always claim that someone on the other side has done far worse. But taken together, all of these examples have contributed to a toxic norm. Joe Biden is the man who, as a senator, walked out of a dinner with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Biden was one of the most vocal champions of anticorruption efforts in the Obama administration. So when this same Biden takes his son with him to China aboard Air Force Two, and within days Hunter joins the board of an investment advisory firm with stakes in China, it does not matter what father and son discussed. Joe Biden has enabled this brand of practice, made it bipartisan orthodoxy. And the ethical standard in these cases—people’s basic understanding of right and wrong—becomes whatever federal law allows. Which is a lot.


To quote THELMA & LOUISE, "You get what you settle for."  Is that what we're willing to settle for as a society?  Corruption and lack of ethics?  Or do we have standards that we apply across the board?  Basic expectations from our public servants?

Situational ethics will never root out corruption.


Replying to 
Or is it this maybe?? Because let’s face it: Joe Biden’s son Hunter failed rehab 5 times, got kicked out of the Navy, dated his sister in law, and left a crack pipe in a rental car. The idea Hunter got a job getting paid $50,000 a month should strike everyone as suspicious.
 
 



The crack pipe?

That gets back to the Biden pass.  His niece Caroline physically attacks a police officer and is arrested.  She gets a pass, no time.  A few years later, the niece steals over $100,000 and, again, no time sentenced, no time served.  Hunter and his crack pipe?


Yea, because smoking crack isint a crime. "Prescott Police Department officials were unable to reach Hunter Biden and, after an investigation, declined to prosecute"
 
 



And, again, campaign staff insists Hunter is the father of the child that he's denying is hit, the one the mother is suing him for.  These are the values of the Biden family.  These are the values we want in the White House?

Two kinds of justice -- the ones for everyone else and the ones for the Bidens?

America deserves much better than that.

Much.


And what the media and the Joe-bots don't get, the American people do.  MEDIAITE notes:

Joe Biden’s third quarter fundraising numbers are out. And they are an ominous sign for the former vice president’s 2020 candidacy.
According to Bloomberg, Biden told donors at a fundraiser in Palo Alto, CA that his campaign raised $15 million in the period from July-September. That number is down markedly from the $21.5 million he brought in during the second quarter.
Biden’s third quarter haul also, notably, lags behind that of two of his rivals. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) brought in $25 million over the past three months, while South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg raised $19.1 million. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has emerged as the main threat to Biden’s long-held frontrunner status, has not yet reported her third quarter numbers.
The vice president also came in way behind President Donald Trump — whose coffers grew by a whopping $125 million in the third quarter.


It's time for Joe to go.

It's no longer just about him.

Corrupt Joe makes it that much harder to call Donald Trump out for any corruption.

Corrupt Joe is tainting Barack Obama's legacy with every day.

What Joe allowed his family to get away with while he was Vice President?

That reflects poorly on Joe.  It also reflects on Barack.  And there's a lot more to come on that issue.  Joe is harming Barack's legacy.

It's time for Joe to go.

He offers nothing that is needed and seems to believe it's 1996.  He's out of touch, he's out of date and he's corrupt.  He needs to go.


Turning to Iraq . . .


REUTERS notes:

The death toll from days of violent demonstrations across Iraq has risen to 44 as unrest rapidly spread across the country despite a plea for calm from the prime minister.
In an overnight TV address, Adel Abdul-Mahdi said he understood the frustration of the public but there was no “magic solution” to Iraq’s problems. He pledged to make reforms, but this drew a scornful response from demonstrators.



REUTERS plays 'even handed' and head up the ass.  Why?  Maybe so they can continue to cover Iraq.  It's not like the western press isn't intimidated and bullied by the Iraqi government.

That's been going on openly since 2006.

UN urges Iraq to probe protest deaths ‘transparently’ National News
 
 




Mahdi is so inept as a prime minister that the president of Iraq has dominated the news for over six months.  The presidency is a symbolic office in Iraq.  It has no real power, pure ceremony.  But that's how weak Mahdi is and how desperate the western press has been to ignore reality in Iraq.

A non-functioning prime minister?  Well, hey, just report on the doings of the president and pretend like he's the leader of the country.


Journalist Mustafa Habib reports the following:


: In his first comment on , The senior cleric in Ali sharply criticizes the political process in & he accuse the "Sadrist" & "Fatah" blocs who formed the govt, to abandon slogans of reform that they claim it. (1)
 
 
  • A few moments ago, his spokesman Ahmed al-Safi read out Sistani's statement on the situation in :- All the three authorities in the country, Parliament, government & judiciary, responsibility for the poor conditions of Iraqis (2)
     
     
  • “The Parliament is the biggest responsible because the largest blocs that formed the government (Muqtada al-Sadar & Hadi al-Amiri) didn’t take anything seriously on its promises to achieve reforms and fighr corruption” (3)
     
     
  • "Corrupt politicians bet for years that the demonstrations can be silenced every year, but the demonstrations are getting bigger every year as we expected before, because of the insistence of the corrupt on their positions" (4)
     
     
    🔴IMPORTANT: Sistani gives proposal:- “Before its too late, I call to form committee, its members are independent & technocrats that get the demonstration trust, the committee have the right to access to all government documents to uncover proplems away from bureaucracy” (5)
     
     



    And here are some Tweets about the ongoing protests.




    The unrest in Iraq is escalating. Protests continue despite a curfew, an internet blackout & security forces using live ammunition. Reports of shooting at Baghdad airport now. The toll has risen to 31 dead in 3 days, according to AP.
     
     
    A word on one of the dynamics behind the Iraq protests, namely: youth unemployment. In Iraq, 40% of the country is under 14, and 60% is under 25. Youth unemployment is around 40%. Changing demographics should keep policymakers up at night across the region.
     
     
  • Anti-government protests shake Iraq — in pictures
     
     
     



    Iraq protests: All the latest updates
     
     
     
     
    from Berlin, Iraqis chanting to topple the regime as deadly protests across Iraq.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    If the protests of Iraq dies after Sistani says go home and wait for reform then the Iraqi people are falling for the biggest lie of the century. There will never be reform in these countries.
     
     
    75% of Iraq's internet shut down amid mass protests
     
     
    Replying to 
     
     
     
     





    The following sites updated: