Martha Thomases: Don’t You Know, It’s The End Of The World…

Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases brought more comics to the attention of more people than anyone else in the industry. Her work promoting The Death of Superman made an entire nation share in the tragedy of one of our most iconic American heroes. As a freelance journalist, she has been published in the Village Voice, High Times, Spy, the National Lampoon, Metropolitan Home, and more. For Marvel comics she created the series Dakota North. Martha worked as a researcher and assistant for the author Norman Mailer on several of his books, including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Executioner's Song, On Women and Their Elegance, Ancient Evenings, and Harlot's Ghost.

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3 Responses

  1. Rene says:

    Yeah, it’s easy to blame the media. But I believe movies and novels and video games reflect us far more than we reflect them. Dirty Harry wouldn’t have been such a hit if the early 1970s environment didn’t favor Dirty Harry.

    Censorship is just trying to sweep the dirt under the carpet. But it’s convenient, because it’s easier to censor video games and movies than going to the root of the problem.

    Root #1: We still associate masculinity with violence. Parents are proud when their sons stand up for themselves and fight off the bullies in the schoolyard. It’s manly. No one wants a son that is a wuss that goes running for help. And then we’re surprised when some young males take this lesson to heart. Young males used to fight in personal duels long before there was a Dirty Harry.

    Root #2: Cluless parents. It’s a fact of life that most of the people who end up as parents are the ones that are not ready for it. The parents are a much greater role model to their kids than any other person, fictional or real. It’s a huge responsibility that lots of parents want to escape of by blaming television or video games.

    In this case, it’s far deeper than just neglect. Mommy Lanza was a survivalist gun nut. Need we seek any other explanations for Adam (how fittingly named) turning against her like Frankenstein’s Monster?

  2. Jonathan (the other one) says:

    Times like this, I’m reminded of the words of Johnny C., protagonist of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, while being interviewed:

    INTERVIEWER: So, what do you think of the idea that violence on television and other media have a negative effect on kids and other impressionable minds?

    NNY: Any pile of stunted growth unaware that entertainment is just that and nothing more, deserves to doom themselves to some dank cell somewhere for having been so stupid!!! Movies, books, TV, music – they’re all just entertainment, not guidebooks for damning yourself!

    (Of course, it should perhaps be mentioned that a few panels later Nny throws the partially-dismembered corpse of the interviewer out his window, after the poor man asks about whether the local serial killer, who drains his victims of their blood, drinks it; Nny hates any contact with human waste, and only took the blood to keep the spot on his wall wet…)

  3. JosephW says:

    “People who don’t want to pay more in taxes for things like improved mental health services say the problem is that we took prayer out of public schools.”

    And just today (well, Friday–yesterday as I’m now typing this; how DOES the Doctor keep all this timey-wimey stuff straight?), it appears as though we need to start getting prayer back in CHURCH. Not too long after NRA nut-in-chief LaPierre was having his little rant conference, a gunman decided to kill a woman who was in a church decorating for a children’s Christmas party.

    But yeah, let’s just keep on believing that school killings is part of the plot to take God out of schools. (Though it is rather interesting that it only took some 3 DECADES before this violence really started showing up at the high school and below level.) I would, however, remind all these concerned religious goons that God didn’t seem to have any problem letting Herod slaughter countless children in a paranoid attempt to kill the “newborn King of the Jews.” And, I do believe God was *directly* responsible for killing all the first-born of Egypt and one might ask exactly what God was doing during that whole little “Cain kills Abel” incident.