In Defence of the Iron Age

The Iron Age, is not a name I would have chosen for this movement. To be quite honest, as a historian all that I think of when I think of the term is that I prefer the Classical period that bespoke of the heights of Greek & Roman Civilisation . That quibble aside it is what the Anglosphere has embraced as a counter-cultural movement in response to ‘woke’ corporatism that seeks to dominate the whole of the world and impose autocratic values and denigrating tradition in the name of ‘progress’.

Woke values are championed by the likes of Disney, WB, the rest of Hollywood, Musk, Gates and all other Anglo-Saxon aristocrats, who know only to destroy and denigrate what their forebears created. Arguably the battle against corporatism and for proper traditional values and cultural values has been alive in the Anglosphere since the 70s. The counter-cultural movement began to an extent with Don Bluth, and his attempt to rescue animation from the new generation of Disney bean-counters who had none of Walt & Ron’s passion for art.

Razorfist’s proclamation was one that stirred a great many creatives, it is true. But the first real person to call for a movement against what was happening was Ethan Van Sciver, one of the finest artists in the US. A brilliant man, who wished to offer up the same sort of competition that Don Bluth once offered Disney, he was not however to get the fire started for a great many lesser creatives, as Razorfist did. Even Eric July was to have quite a bit more influence on encouraging Anglo-Saxon writers and artists to get off their ‘duffs’ and into action.

The Iron Age of Media, could thus be summed up as a movement to retake control of the culture and to counter the negative and pervasive influence of woke.

At first glance the chief enemy that this cultural movement has are the studios, and those who champion them. But on closer scrutiny, one could argue that there for every genre there is a different sort of battle that should be fought, with different enemies to combat and counter.

Razorfist for example wishes to combat for the Western, a genre in danger of being tainted, and that has fallen by the wayside. The Western is his chief passion, followed by fantasy which he seeks to champion, so his chief enemy is primarily the studios.

To those creating superhero stories the enemies seem clear. The trouble is that the real problem in the industry isn’t two big companies and a few lesser ones strangling creativity. But instead, the chief most problem are the anti-heroes polluting the genre. The extremely gritty tone, the lack of morals, and the constant competition to become ever more gritty.

Superheroes arguably began with Superman. A bright, cheerful and patriotic character who took nigh on five decades to morph and take shape. He is a great hero, and a great icon. He has however since 2011 thereabouts fallen by the wayside, and been tarnished due to Dan Didio’s interference and his mandates that DC had to be ‘grittier’ or ‘more realistic’.

Spider-Man has also fallen, after 1997 after the last attempt to turn Spider-Man into the Superman of Marvel and to build him up as a mega-hero, Marvel fell to big event stories which grew darker with every year. They ultimately lost value and became ever more dreary and boring (and ever more political).

So that superheroes are in a state of crisis. They have lost their place, and most creative minds seek only to create ever more farcical, sullen anti-heroes who add nothing to the conversation. What’s the difference between the one millionth copy-cat of the Shadow and the Punisher? Nothing. What’s needed is a new Doc Savage, a new Clark Kent, a new Peter Parker/Ben Reilly.

This is the true problem with superhero-fiction; it is cluttered with Wolverines and Batmen, when what people need is an icon, a source of inspiration.

As to fantasy, the greatest of genres of the modern-age, a genre that needs no introduction ushered forth in the aftermath of Tolkien & Howard’s magnificent epics. It is a genre that grew slowly at first, under the pens of Lewis, Alexander, Beagle & countless others and that was to become a juggernaut in the 80s.

Thanks to works such as Dragonlance hitting the books, and Dragonslayer the movie-theatres the genre became ever more prevalent and wondrous. We had the Sword & Sorcery classics of the 80s, some bad and some good, while animation unveiled the Secret of Nimh, followed by other great stories such as those produced by Bluth & then later Disney. The trouble was that in the 90s a new era had dawned for fantasy.

Always the first in everything, whether to hit a good period or a bad one, it was fantasy that suffered more than any the ‘Dark Age’ that swept through the Anglosphere in the 2010s, except 2 decades in advance. The story that tore asunder the genre began well, with the great epic novel the Dragonbone Chair. It read like a Celtic answer to Tolkien’s wondrous Lord of the Rings… until it didn’t.

The sequels subverted the first book completely and utterly. Turning the initial love-interest into a harlot, the hero into a bungling buffoon, the mentor characters into pale shadows of Gwydion the great mentor of Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series, Memory, Sorrow & Thorn wrecked the genre.

After it, came Harry Potter, which plagiarised the classic 70s coming of age story for girls, Worst Witch and then Game of Thrones which did the same for Memory, Sorrow & Thorn, written fantasy fell apart. Propped up by the corporations, these two stories were to slowly then steadily squeeze out all competition, and they were aided by how bad the competition generally was.

Dragonheart which began with an earnest, beautiful film soon had a gamut of awful sequels, Dragonlance fell into legal battles then into poorly written nonsensical time-travel stories as of late since Weis & Hickman need cash, and DnD became little more than a joke.

But wait, what of the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre. Arguably, yeah it is making a come-back and there are those such as Erik Waag, and those at Heroic Signatures fighting to ensure that there’s a come-back. And there are of course those of us championing it over on yt but what the genre needs is more than the ‘Return of the King’ of Aquilonia.

Yes, restoring Conan to his previously held position in the cultural/popular imagination as a figure of intelligence, strength, positive masculinity and his world to its rightful place as the ‘mythology of Texas’ and the only true rival of Middle-Earth that is to be found is important. However, fantasy faces another major problem.

That problem is not that Tolkien is being torn down. It is that publishers are dreading (those parasites I spoke of last time included) the return of a properly heroic, epic, mythological and grandiose vision. What is needed is not the umpteenth Conan copy-cat, but rather a story that involves chivalry, virtue and honour.

What is needed are stories that praise and highlight the importance of traditional values such as those of pietas, honour as mentioned, love, strength and courage.

These are values that Conan has always personified sure, but we need large casts of characters, who hearken back to Aragorn and take inspiration from Arthur, and Gawain and Sir Lionel, or Sir Cay and so on. We need Frodos, Merrys, Sams, Faramirs, Eowyns, Fingolfins and so on, to counter-balance the wave of uninteresting, cry-baby anti-heroes starting to flood the genre and who are only driving it further into nonsensical subversion.

Yes, some barbarian characters are necessary, yes we need competition to Conan to ensure that Heroic Signatures keeps pumping out their best possible work, but we also need to do the same in other spheres and to not only show great barbarians but inspirational knights.

The notion of the heroic knight and king has fallen into squalor, scorn and disdain. The important battle is to revive his fortunes, to bring back characters as mentioned above but also those like Bowen, Huma & Sturm Brightblade. We need people to write of the triumph of chivalry, of the knight in shining armour, as the anti-hero is always the tool of subversion, and the weapon of choice to take down heroes.

Once fantasy is restored, arguably it’ll be an easy battle to restore the other genres in my view. Thus, the enemy isn’t simply big corpos but also those who would prefer to pump out a million easy to write, bland as dish-water anti-heroes but positive heroes and characters. We need figures such as Aragorn.

Because remember; anti-heroes are safe but heroes aren’t.