Bring Back the Man

Opine du 3D Man: "In a world where men get more feminized every year, it's important to realize what it means to be a man. The womenfolk scoff, and the intellectuals rail, but a fact is a fact: everything cool after 1945 was made for men, by men. At this point in time, a whole entertainment culture is still soaking up the profits from those iconic characters we associate with being a Man. The culture is trying hard as they can to feminize manly fiction and movies, you know. It isn't bad enough to run the maleness in the ground with Oprah as moral barometer, but men and women alike have forgotten what true masculinity means. Here's a hint: acting tough and being a man are completely different aspects. The PC culture has twisted the idea of a Man into something wrong, claiming Men are a buffoon without a clue. I for one am sick of it.

"There's a lot of assholes who are Men, by the way, in positions of authority where they abused and neglected what needed to be done to be a man. But those weren't guys like Buzz Aldrin and Matthew Henson, much less Ernest Hemingway or Oliver Reed. Nobody who got their balls blown off during Vietnam or the Gulf will deny war doesn't so much make a man as break a man. The point is, it doesn't take a man to either suffer or commit atrocity against/from his fellow man, woman, or child. We're talking about having personal integrity and decency, while still enjoying adventure, fist-fighting, and stunning femme fatales in manly entertainment. It's what's missing in this current culture. Without a place to go to be men, and live up to expectations of being a Man, the culture itself has lost the cool factor it once had. Blame the 1980s, blame a reward for tenth-place in a foot-race, blame Dr. Spock or skim milk, somewhere along the line men got lost.

"The fiction and movies of the early 1960s through the mid-1970s produced the apex of manly pursuits. Vice aside, secret agents and professional heist men and boxers and macks and ex-pro football players and karate fighters never came off better in books, film, or comics. You had to go a long way to find a woman who was sickened by the idea of James Bond's hairy chest against their lips. It's almost impossible today to imagine women feeling secure in the knowledge that a swank-tough handsome man who keeps to himself doesn't need to be changed...he just needs a reason to protect what's his.

"So, with that in mind, a visual education is always best, since real men really are visual. I refer you to AGENT X9 starring Corrigan, with help from Rip Kirby, in this series of covers from overseas, interspersed with a little Modesty Blaise. In some perfect world, the union of Blaise and Corrigan/Kirby begat an Earth where men retained their creative allure, probing the unknown with the conviction of cool only found in men's fiction. What it comes down to, us men had something to live up to back when, and I for one think we need it back."