Pet Peeves: Incomplete Throwaway Panels

The typical layout of a Newspaper comic strip is tightly controlled to remain consistent.  So if another strip such decides to be more innovative in their layout, it means having to reshuffle the other strips to make room for the temporary widescreen comic that otherwise wouldn't normally fit.

For the above, readers were fortunate that Calvin was going into reruns, so anybody who were long-time fans would already know the setup to the joke on the first panel.  But new readers wouldn't be as lucky.  I've posted before how in the process of rearranging panels, some may be put out of sequence from people who aren't aware that some are being put in the wrong place.

Sometimes in the process of moving things around, there's the danger of putting panels out of order.  But another unintended consequence is the throwaway panels being affected as well.  When this happens, this can sometimes result in removing the title logo, but not the throwaway panel that accompanies it, resulting in setups with no punchlines, or punchlines with no setup.

So much of the newspaper comic page depends on the strips remaining static.  So when one strip decides to get creative or attack certain controversial issues that don't meet with the paper's fragile sensibilities, some rapid shuffling may be in order.  Such was what happened around October 1991, when Doonesbury was under danger of a hostile takeover by the more flamboyant side characters.  In the process, some panels wound up being lost.  Normally here, you'd see Michael being all jovial with April before scowling after being ordered around by his mother.

In other instances, the paper may have the option of having two throwaway panels, but only opt for one of them.  For the longest time, I only had one Doonesbury throwaway panel to deal with, and in most cases, you could pretty much figure out what was going on.  One panel or the other would just reinforce a notion that would be emphasized again.



The problem would be when both panels were needed to make the joke work, and oftentimes, I would be completely baffled as to what was happening here.  Also, sometimes the second panel would be chosen instead of the first.  it wasn't always consistent.  The red bar surrounding the panel is what I saw in the paper.  The remainder on the other side is the rest of the comic, and wouldn't find out what they were years later.


The biggest sufferer of this system is Beetle Bailey, who happens to have not one, not two, but three throwaway panels.  A small one under the title logo, and two extra ones.

While scouring newspaper archives, I came across a particularly noteworthy example.  The above strip has the typical throwaway panels for the setup that suddenly and inexplicably jumps straight to an aftermath scene with no clue to what prompted the change.  With the missing panel in place, the sequence of events begins to make much more sense.  I can only guess at the level of frustration that readers had in trying to understand what was going on here.

Strangely enough, in Sunday collections of Beetle Bailey, the title panel was removed, presumably because it was smaller than the others.  Which ties into another pet peeve of mine - collections that don't have the necessary throwaway panels.  You'd think that with the extra space, they could afford to show them, but no, they just revert back to the same old format.

Going back to Doonesbury, the latest Sunday strips have had the title panel have an additional header added to them to further emphasize the content of the comic.  For the most case, these are simply closeups of a character's face, being somewhat nothing special.  But in some instances, the extra panel adds a distinctive flavor to an otherwise regular comic.

My favorite so far is the logo for the latest Doonesbury comic which had the rare instance of making me laugh out loud from the reaction shots of even the most vocally opinionated people.

Sadly, it seems that save for a few instances, the majority of the latest Doonesbury online archives don't bother showing any Sunday logos.  Apparently, you need a newspaper subscription for that.  Which surely must be a resounding selling point among the very very specific target market.

Another minus is that despite Doonesbury being available online for new readers to play catch-up, the early Sunday comics are at a reduced size, marginalized, tiny and practically unreadable, due to the small print.

Of particular notice are the Garfield reprints.  Back when Garfield made its debut, it gained recognition by reprinting virtually every single comic and doing so in a wide strip format, rather than breaking the panels up into a typical book format.  (Which could lend itself to previously mentioned accidental panel placement or unnecessary cropping or rotation of some strips)  Since it was just starting out, the early Sunday strips had no throwaway panels, save for the ones on the sides.  If there were any, they were likely the static ones, that were a compilation of the main cast, until Lyman disappeared.

That changed around March 14th, 1982 with the introduction of a new short-term singular panel before reverting back to the widescreen panel two weeks later.  The difference was, the single panel that was just the main cast, changed to an additional throwaway panel.


So what's the problem?  Well, the online archive has every Sunday comic printed.  But the books have the exact same layout used since it was first released years ago!  They've been coloured and resized to accommodate more space, but they don't make effective use of that extra space!

One last historical oddity - daily newspaper strips don't have the benefit of having a title logo, so their names are place either from the top or to the side.  But Doonesbury apparently had a throwaway title panel logo of its own.

Was there a time when daily comic strips had their own title logos?  I haven't found anything to support this, but it'd be nice to know if that was true.

Condorman is no Birdman

When I posted my entry for the Black Hole adaption, I was going to wait until I was either A. told to remove it, or failing that, B. move on to the next movie on the list, The Watcher in the Woods.  However, my plan to do so was upended by a rare commenter who requested I move ahead a little in favor of another property that was considered more interesting.

When it comes to comics and Condorman, most readers will zero in on the Whitman adaption.  Though for obvious reasons, I'll be highlighting the Sunday comic adaption instead.  In the wake of the surging popularity of Superhero movies, there was briefly floated the possibility of bringing back an old Disney movie that had gained something of a cult following among fans who enjoyed the goofy sensibility brought to the screen.  Not unlike the treatment given to Tron.  The thought was that if obscure C-listers such as Ant-Man could be updated with a tie-in to the larger Marvel-verse, then surely Condorman wouldn't be considered too out of the ordinary.

So, what exactly was it about Condorman that was different from all other brightly-garbed stuntmen out there?  Well, for starters, Condorman, alias Woodrow (Woody) Wilkins, is actually a cartoonist.  Just like Green Lantern Kyle Rayner.  Well, okay, he's not that much different then.  But he designs crazy death-trap contraptions while his brother works for the CIA...  If he were any more competent in his designs, he'd be a reliable Q.  But since this movie demands that he get out and go to exotic places and engage in wild wild things, he's chosen as an unsuspecting courier to deliver confidential documents all by his lonesome.

When it comes to reviving interest in old properties in the hope of saving having to think up new ideas, recreating old movies is a reliable standard to fall back on.  When it comes to certain properties, there are two ways that a beloved franchise can be shown.  The lesser used technique is to just showcase the hero already used to acting under undue pressure and circumstances, such as Tintin or James Bond.

 Most frequently, you're likely to be shown how the hero got their powers in the first place, which is normally an excuse to build up sympathy for the protagonist.  The constant harping on origin stories basically boils down to "We'll keep doing it over and over, until we get it RIGHT."

More Condorman after the cut.

Massive Info-Dump on Trump

Doc Brown: Tell me future boy, who's the President of the United States in 2016?
Marty McFly: Donald Trump.
Doc Brown: TRUMP?! The Millionaire? Hah! Then who's Vice President? Arnold Schwarzenegger? And I suppose Howard Hugh is in charge of the CIA? And Ivanka Trump is secretary of the Treasury? Good night, future boy.

When the Presidential Campaign started, I looked on in mild amusement over the drama playing over the Republican side.  What started out as a typical winnowing down of candidates ballooned into a Reality Show that was hijacked by the presence of a real Reality Show host, Donald Trump.  In the past, his attempts at running for president was little more than a national joke, not unlike Ross Perot running a Third Party before bottoming out.  But Trump being there changed the whole nature of typical campaigning.  While other politicians would be slightened by the merest hint of potential scandals show a sense of shame, Trump is impervious to such slights.  Rather, they just bolstered his popularity, no matter how outrageous his claims.

Their moderate candidate, John Kasich, barely registered among their voters.  Jeb Bush was practically a non-starter, Marco Rubio was suspected of being an outsider, Ben Carson failed to connect, and the one gathering the most votes, Ted Cruz, was considered even more repulsive than Trump. Basically, it boiled down to what one commenter said best: "The Republican Party is checkmated a dozen ways from zero."

I started saving some of the more noteworthy articles and commentary in a hope of recording these events for posterity.

How the Republican Party Created Trump:

THE BIRTHER FIRING SQUAD HAS GONE CIRCULAR: Cruz and Rubio are thought of being born out of the country, and thus, ineligible running for President.

Trump winning a GOP debate:
Jesus.This is how well he does with Rubio and Cruz tag-teaming his ass like the Hart Foundation, AND after he DEFENDED PLANNED PARENTHOOD. 

Trump on a Tweet he sent, supporting Mussolini:
Obama: I want to give Americans more affordable healthcare.
America: TYRANT!!!
Trump: I AM AN ACTUAL FASCIST.
America: I like the cut of this man's jib. 

Farrakhan Praises Trump For Not Taking Money From 'Jewish Community':
CATS AND DOGS, LYING TOGETHER.
Aaaand this is why, for all the positive things I acknowledge they've done, I can't support the Nation of Islam.
Trump brought the Nation of Islam and KKK together. That's either beautiful or he' the anti-Christ.
[Walks in, read headline, turns around and walks out]
That awkward moment when a "pro black" spokesperson hates Jews so much he'll throw Black folks under the bus too. 

Ben Stein Flips Support to Hillary and Bernie Because of Trump:
HOLY SH*T.
This is the man who STILL carries a torch for Richard Nixon.
These people are SCARED SH*TLESS.

Obama: Trump No Worse Than The Rest Of The GOP Field:
See, so many people don't give Obama nearly the amount of credit he deserves for being a passive-aggressive troll par excellence.  If you're one of the non-Trump candidates, how do you respond to this?  If you dispute it, you're basically telling the Trump supporters to go bugger off, and automatically losing their potential support.  If you don't dispute it, you're not only telling mainstream voters that you're just as extremist as Trump, but you're also implicitly agreeing with Obama.
Now that even Nate Silver is starting to get edgy about Trump's chances, I'm getting SERIOUSLY worried about this guy.
Bizarrely, we might see the most insane Democratic/Republican teamup in the Congress EVER just to keep Trump from blowing up the country. And even then it'll be contentious, because half of what Trump wants is stuff they secretly want themselves but are afraid to admit, and the other half is stuff they couldn't possibly ever support. They'll happily go along with the border wall and banning all Muslims as long as someone else has to sign the final bill, but the insurance companies? The big money? There's a REASON those guys control politics, and it's precisely to keep someone like Trump from screwing up the gravy train.

Even the last Republican candidate, Mitt "Binders Full of Women" Romney was considered.
"The announcement immediately kicked off speculation that Romney plans to jump into the Republican 2016 race, as Trump's path to the party nomination becomes more and more clear."
OHHHH SH****T
Oh god, please do it, Willard. Announce you stole a nomination.
He's about to tacitly announce he's worked out a deal ahead of time with the pit bosses and he's going to get the nomination, delegates be damned. I guarantee it. And we will see CHAOS. Because if they make a play this naked and transparent, TRUMP WILL FINALLY SUE FOR REALSIES. And probably Rubio and Cruz too. And this is not shit you want taken before the courts.
Remember when Mitt did his thing unscrewing each of the three legs of a bar stool and said those three legs are the three branches of the GOP?
Remember when we thought the end result of the civil war would JUST be three distinct conservative parties?

Mitt Romney slams ‘phony’ Trump: He’s playing ‘the American public for suckers’:
Sh*t which had previously not been real continues to get so much realer that if it were any more real, it would be a sh*t-shaped Pinocchio.
The Mitt Romney speech is the whole mess in a nutshell–Romney can’t get enough distance to attack Trump, because he IS Trump. He just has more tact and less charisma. He’s standing up there saying, “Well, yes, heartless capitalism is good, yes, letting the brown people into the country is bad, yes, Obamacare will doom America, yes to all of Trump’s actual positions…but saying it the way he does is uncouth!” It doesn’t sell, especially not to people who think “couth” is a kind of malt liquor.

Trump In 2005: Outsourcing Jobs ‘Not Always A Terrible Thing’:
If THIS doesn't damage him (and it probably won't), then NOTHING will.
Making a pro-outsourcing argument to working-class whites is actually MORE likely to offend them than telling them you plan to sell their blonde daughters into white slavery in Africa.
Ha, this will have zero effect. Firing people is LITERALLY HIS CATCHPHRASE.

Donald Trump’s distinctly American authoritarianism draws equally from the wacko right and wacko left:
Trump’s authoritarianism is an amalgam not of left and right but of wacko left and wacko right: He thinks that George Bush was to blame for 9/11 and that Muslims should be barred from the U.S. Believing both of those things does not make Mr. Trump a centrist—it makes him an eclectic extremist. When it comes to policies, he actually has none in the conventional sense.  

Why, Exactly, Is Trump Driving Conservatives So Crazy?:
"Trump has also exposed another, equally deep insecurity among right-wing intellectuals: the fear that their movement appeals to rubes. The conservative movement’s tightening grip over the Republican Party has coincided with its elevation of leaders incapable of explaining their policies cogently. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin all drew the disdain of liberal elites for their reliance on simplistic aphorisms and poor grasp of detail, humiliating conservative intellectuals, who defended the keen minds of their heroes. Whether or not Donald Trump the human being is intelligent, there’s no question that 'Donald Trump,' presidential candidate, is not. His entire campaign operates well below the level of rational thought — it’s all boasting, absurd promises, repetitive sloganeering, and abuse. Just as email scammers intentionally salt their messages with typos in order to weed out anyone educated enough to see through their swindle, allowing them to focus on the most gullible, Trump seems to consciously repel anyone possessed of a brain. When he says he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, or that he appeals to 'the poorly educated,' he is broadcasting his contempt for his supporters."

Surprisingly enough, despite remaining rather divisive in his views, Trump's fan base is surprisingly diverse, ranging from a wide swath of varying opinions.

Questions About Trump's Ties To N.J. Mob-Linked Figure:
Not only did voters already know about all of the Clintons' scandals, but they KEPT ON ELECTING THEM after learning about them.
By contrast, Trump has about a MILLION skeletons in his closet like this, and while his supporters don't care that he's the Antichrist, everyone else in America does.
Trump has more skeletons in his closets than a necromancer. 

Donald Trump’s political triumph makes it official — we’re a nation of idiots:
"The people are getting what they want, and what they want is to have their idiocies and their discontent beamed back at them. Trump is clearly more than a media construction. He’s everything dumb and regressive about our political culture distilled into a single candidate. And he exists only because a sufficient number of Americans want him to – that’s the problem."
As much I get into arguments with fellow liberals online about whether Clinton or Sanders should be the nominee, I would vote for Nixon if he was running as a Democrat, because even he would be demonstrably more liberal than the modern Republican Party of Trump.
The truly scary thing is, I worry that neither Bernie nor Hillary might be venal or corrupt or unprincipled enough to defeat Trump, who is beloved precisely because he is evil to a degree that makes him a literal Antichrist, and his supporters love him because they're all irredeemably evil too. 

A talking point between Trump & Cruz:
"On Obamacare, Cruz said, sure Trump would get rid of Obamacare but he also wouldn't let people 'die in the streets,' whatever that means. Cruz would get rid of Obamacare and also let people 'die in the streets.'" 

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable:
Found a link to this on the blog of Mark Evanier. It explains a lot about Trump and his seemingly unstoppable campaign juggernaut, tapping into fear, anxiety and anger. A billionaire who sells himself as champion of the common man? No wonder Taibbi speaks of him as a con-man. 

If You Think America’s Enemies Will Be Afraid of Donald Trump, You’ve Lost Your Mind:
This was printed in the National Review, but you could reprint it in Mother Jones with zero revisions:
Drumpf is and will continue to be seen as a joke by any world leader out there. Some may meet with him, but they'll lose respect for the US for selecting him as our President, and he'll be laughed at privately while he's visiting and mocked publicly once he's out of the country.
They will fear him like we all fear Kim Jong Un.
I'm pretty sure that's the best oxymoron of all time. (re: glorious leader) 

Inside the GOP Implosion and the War to Stop Trump:
"Here is a New York Times article you may have seen. It describes the GOP's panicked, hyperbolic and yet utterly ineffectual rush to stop the Donald Trump juggernaut. As I've said before, the GOP's Trump problem reminds me of the regional and global powers' efforts to destroy ISIS. Every party sees the problem, is terrified by the problem. And yet every player has some other angle or priority that's just a bit more pressing or important. The Saudis, Iran. The Turks, the Kurds. The US, Assad. And on and on. Yet it goes without saying that Trump isn't the real problem."
"Trump is very little different from the average candidate Republicans elected in 2010 and 2014, in terms of radical views and extreme rhetoric. All he's done is take the actual GOP issue package, turn it up to eleven and put it on a high speed collision course with RNC headquarters smack in the middle of presidential election year." 

News Panicking Mitch McConnell Says GOP Will Help Hillary Beat Trump If He Wins The Nomination:
This needs to be reiterated, because if Trump wins the nomination, he won't just be running against the Democratic Party, but against the Republican Party as well.
I just --
... you know, I still cannot BELIEVE this is happening. This is a best-case scenario that I would have MOCKED anyone for saying even six weeks ago. Yes, we all knew the Republican party was going to put as much distance between themselves and Trump as possible, but we all assumed it was going to be sort of a de facto thing, kind of like how everyone running in 2006 just tried to pretend Bush didn't exist even as they technically supported him. But this kind of outright intraparty treason -- I swear, I have never seen anything that even comes close.
Think back for a moment to how intense we THOUGHT the Clinton/Obama thing got in 2008. Even as wild as it got, and as much as people were wondering if Hillary would come around to support him, imagine if Nancy Pelosi had come right out and said "If Obama gets the nomination, we'll do everything we can to stop him." THAT is how screwed up this is, on a literally unparalleled basis on this scale of national politics.
The Republican Party bosses realize they cannot win a national election with their current base of voters, so since they ALSO cannot win an election WITHOUT those voters, the only choice they have left is to try and BULLY them into submission.
Of course, the scary long-shot possibility is that Trump STILL wins, because that really WOULD prove that he has a popular mandate of support, for all of his WORST positions, because he would have defeated BOTH political parties.
If Trump can win over the juggernaut of his intense unpopularity, Hillary's overall strength, AND his own party trying to torpedo him? We would DESERVE what comes to us as a result.
That's all well and good to say, but you and I both remember the last time that Democrats said that about a possible Republican victory, and we are STILL recovering from the Bush years.
All this said? I STILL have not completely dismissed the prospect of this being the greatest Clinton false flag operation of all time, or a massive practical joke Trump is carrying out for his own amusement.
I love how the Republicans have turned Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, two people who together embody everything that the Republicans have fought against for decades, into infinitely preferable alternatives to anyone they're offering to the public. I thought that the 2012 lineup was bad because they didn't have their starting bench in it, but this is inarguably far, far worse.
If a week before election day as RNC nominee, Donald Trump calls an emergency press conference and does this, calls Republicans all a bunch of lunatics, says that he's paid off all of the debt on either Bernie or Hillary's campaign, admits it was all a farce, and walks off laughing and shouting "Obama was the best ever!", Donald will go down in history as the greatest showman and ADD anti-hero in American politics of all time.

Eventually, I had to stop out of sheer exhaustion, because the amount of news and commentary was overwhelming my capacity to keep up.

If you haven't reached Trump saturation point yet (and there's little reason to), there's more cartoons after the cut.

Blondie's Money Woes

While legacy strips can reuse certain themes into the ground, some of them can fade out over the ravages of time, depending on the relevancy or obsolescence of said jokes.  The Better Half had reoccurring characters such as Stanley's Boss and Harriet's Mother, until Vinnie Vinson was replaced; at which point they disappeared.

And then there were the various times Blondie was responsible for causing a major dent in Dagwood's bank account.  Though to be fair, Dagwood's children were also major sponges as well.

Back when Blondie first started out, it was a comedic look at the foibles of upper class society.  Then the Great Depression happened, and suddenly, reading about rich snobby people wasn't seen as a lucrative market anymore.  So in order to gain the sympathy of the readers, Dagwood gave up his wealthy inheritance in order to spend time with the love of his life, Blondie Boopadoop.  (Yes, apparently, her Maiden name was Betty Boop's catchphrase)

At times, Dagwood would try to foil his wife's attempts at draining his money by hiding stashes of it around the house... where it would be found anyways.

This was such a popular tactic that it was used multiple varying times with the same result.

Eventually, Dagwood would just succumb himself to the inevitable.

Blondie's love of the flush greenery was such that it would overwhelm all other sense of need, such as food or sleep.

Then in the 90's certain household traits were considered to be too old-fashioned, and were phased out to be more relevant for latter-day readers.  Running after the bus was replaced by carpooling.  (The Mailman, Mr. Beasley, is still delivering mail, though)  By the same token, when Blondie started her catering job, all jokes about her being a wasteful moneyburner promptly disappeared.

This comic marks the last visible time she went on a compulsive buying spree.  She probably learned the value of a buck there and then.

The Sins of the Husband Have Been Visited Upon the Wife

After much upheaval and resistance, Hillary Rodney Clinton has been vetted as the Presidential Candidate for being the first Female President.  There was some general disappointment eight years ago when she gave up her closest margin of victory in the last Presidential nomination to Obama, but now she's more than made up for that in spades with her behind-the-scenes tough-as-nails negotiations with politicians on both sides.  In reality, among the bridge-building, outright listening and relentless promotion of values, she's the most capable candidate compared to the competition.

And yet, there are still people who are heavily resistant to giving any support her direction, out of base loathing rather than reasonable decisions.  It's an emotional choice, not a logical one.  Her only sin, other than not appearing friendly enough to have a beer with (as if that was the only qualification a President needed) was being too competent in doing her job.  If she got so many people to agree with her, then she must have gotten ahead by doing... unsavory acts with multiple members of Parliament.  Failing that, she must've undergone some underhanded deals in order to get ahead.  This has put her in the impossible position of being multiple things at once.  If Hillary pushes too hard on an issue, she's criticized for being too hawkish.  If Hillary softens her image, she's criticized for appearing inauthentic.

This isn't helped by a Media that's more interested in paying attention on whether she's wearing a pink dress, or bakes cookies, rather than her political ability.  And that's not even getting into the matter of her wardrobe costs, which no male politician has to deal with, whose costs range in the $12,000 range for a suit that's interchangeable with every other tie combo.

Even playing the woman card doesn't wind up being a benefit, since as it turned out, even women are against Clinton.   These Faux Feminists weren't advocating for the equality of all women - they were railing against the injustice of a woman in power who wasn't conforming to the equality of all women.  These women were only content if other women were in the same power bracket as them.  That is, rather than helping push them against a resistant glass ceiling, they were aspiring to drag them down to join them in the muck with the others.

Feminist reaction basically boiled down to "Women's finally gotten recognition and rights.  What's more is there?"  How naive they were, thinking that respect only ended after being included as a token thought.  You have to constantly fight for your rights, otherwise events just revert back to a regular status quo.  And there are many violent offenders who would be more than content in having things go back to normal than do outright change.

The supposed reason for this extended suffering lies upon the fallacy that the wife should bear the sins of the husband.  It seems hard to believe, but when Bill started out, he was considered unlikable and unpopular to the Democrats who felt his cavalier attitude was detrimental to the Democratic party.  It was only until his stint with Monica Lewinski that he gained popularity for outright lying, which rankled both sides so much that he was considered being up for impeachment.  Even more damning - the majority of the committee that wanted Bill Clinton impeached have wound up being called out for infidelities of their own.

The fact that Hillary was on equal footing with Bill Clinton (a known adulterer) rankled many, because they were never entirely certain whether any words of recommendation came from his mouth or hers.

That association came to light when some Benghazi emails were improperly sent under improper procedure using her private email instead of the State Department email (that she herself asked for extra security) that turned into a literal witch-hunt lasting years, going nowhere.  Despite the fact that the contents of the emails were improperly classified, they could find no concrete evidence that she'd done anything wrong.  Mistakenly doing something wrong isn't a crime in itself, even if the results don't hurt anyone.  Owning up to the mistake is a worthy character trait.  But admitting these faults was all the justification needed to jump down her throat and go over her procedure in painstaking detail.  And after all the hullaboo, the intensive investigation intent in breaking Hillary down revealed... absolutely nothing they could tie to her.

Even the very fact that James Comey, the FBI director who personally investigated the Clinton emails (and served under George Bush Jr.), was unable to find any concrete evidence that Clinton did anything illegal along the likes of other data security leaks along the likes of David Petraeus and John M. Deutch.  The Republican's constant returning to this "scandal" has been a costly non-issue that's gone literally nowhere, and their constant harping caused the FBI director to move away from the political party he most identified with.  And yet, the Republicans keep going back to this well in the flimsy hope that maybe, just maybe they'll be able to go GOTCHA! this time around.  Despite the fact that the Clintons thrive under adversary from their opponents.

Comey: "She did not have public relations with her phone."
Republicans: "That just proves he's moved over to Clinton's side! TRAITAR!!!"

Currently, there's been more media coverage about the "outrage" over her supposed email scandal compared to Donald Trump's child rape charges which has been buried among all the other scandals he's built up for himself over the years.  Why is one considered acceptable, while the other is considered unacceptable?

Which brings up another question - where does all this animosity come from?  One possible culprit may be the funny pages, where wives' only purpose, other than aggravation seems to be stopping men from having as much fun as possible by nagging them at every opportunity.

One thing I've discovered upon binging months and years of Newspaper comics is that there's a certain sense of confirming conformity.  Just as various papers will focus on specific aspects of the news in order to reassure their readers that certain values are being upheld, while outside parties are threatening to overturn said long-held values.  If those comics re-enforce gender norms and 50's values, then all the better for their aging audience.

While there were token statements of support for Feminism, the majority politics of the comics page remained sexist behind the scenes.  That's also not accounting for the numerous unreported accounts of elder cartoonists demonizing the competition for not being "team players" from an openly hostile comics world
who were upset at the presence of women for "violating" what was mostly a male profession, and thus, degrading their profession.  As if the majority of their daily output wasn't subject to scrutiny.

Despite all the advantages men have gotten, they won't hesitate to put down their reputation, even if it means browbeating potentially worthy competitors.  After all, if other "weaker" people managed to succeed in ways they weren't able to achieve, that would invalidate all their claims, and make all their effort be for nothing.  To exert their fragile superiority, they will discredit women's research, no matter how much they agree with it, or openly plagiarize their groundbreaking research into previously unexplored territory.  Only made possible, from seeing the data from a previously unrecognized view that only gained credence when given a male name attached to it.  Go ahead, name the most famous women scientists who aren't Marie Curie (defaulted because of her husband's unintentional influence).  Apparently, discovering Pulsars, Bacterial Viruses, Nuclear Fission and Chromosomes, as well as Stem-cell research, Breast Cancer treatment and the discovery of AIDS isn't considered worthy of immortalization unless you're a man.

And if any complaints come up?  Women are silenced by the claim that they're making too much out of an insignificant thing, and talking too much.  A study conducted about Mansplaining showed that in cases where there were men and women talking about their fields, men were more likely to interrupt women in telling them exactly where they were getting facts wrong, even if they were experts in the subject.  The fallacious expectation is that women will just ramble on and on, constantly putting down the man, so the man should get their opinion out first, otherwise they won't be heard in the first place.

Even Disney Princess female leads such as Frozen had their dialogue dominated by males by 59%.  And gender-neutral scripts were outright turned down by Hollywood directors who were convinced that audiences (i.e., the typical target audience of 18-39-old Males) wouldn't be interested in any scenes that had women talking about seemingly insignificant details not related to the overall plot.  Even if those women had relevant scenes, they were considered less significant, simply because they were female.  Because unless the topic happens to be men, audience's interests would glaze and wander off if anything uninteresting happened for a fraction of a second not filled by explosions.

The default target audience type has always been a Male for so long, that venturing out into unexplored territory feels like taking a step onto a broken glass floor.  Nevermind that neglected people have been wandering around a broken glass ceiling for ages.  When a certain gender is marginalized to the extent of all others, diversifying can be considered risky.  Women are allowed to like guy's stuff, but guys are ostracized if they admit they like stuff aimed at... girls.  And even when girls like a guy show, they're discouraged if they outnumber the boy audience because "Girls don't buy toys", even though they will buy other merchandise related to their favorite hobbies.  But aiming at other markets is too difficult for these executives.

As a result of having been pandered to for so long, men instantaneously feel left out if there's any attempt at branching out to less developed minorities who haven't gotten as much screen time.  Chalk this down to reptilian brain mentality.  If women have something, or are part of a group that excludes men, no matter how insignificant, they instantly want to be part of it.  Unless it deals with menstrual cycles and bodily functions.

There's a certain fear that men are being emasculated by the very presence of women, that if they admitted there were certain faults that needed to be improved upon, and not just say "sorry" and move on for the sake of some nookie, they would be constantly harped upon for not being good enough in the first place.

As if women's worth was reduced to being little more than arm candy or trophy wives for the male gaze.  As far as they're concerned, they've already gotten their worth by latching onto the most successful men.  What more validation do they need?  Surely their silly little opinions wouldn't matter for much, would they?  Given the gains that women had gotten, what more could they possibly want?