Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics | Tagged: dark knight, frank miller, Fredric Wertham, google

Demonetized: In Which Google's Wertham Machine was Shocked by the Dark Knight

Welcome to Demonetized, the first installment of an all-too-regular feature here on Bleeding Cool in which we've published a post that one of Google's advertising arms really wishes we hadn't, and talk about that a little. Being clear, I think that Google can do as they wish with their business within the bounds of the law, and further, I'm very well aware that Bleeding Cool is certainly not unique in facing such challenges with the world's Information Overlord.  But I do find these issues interesting on both cultural and business levels, and remain highly confident that the marketplace always finds a way to correct such matters sooner or later.  In other words — for now at least — Google is the Devil I Know.

But speaking of Information Overlords: the main reason I wanted to start this series is that the reason given by Google in all of the cases I'm going to show you is nonsense, in my opinion.  And after sifting through these individual cases over the past couple of years I've come to the conclusion that this is what happens when machines learn.

In other words, Bill Joy was more right than anyone is quite ready to admit yet (though far fewer people are laughing about that now like they were back in 2000).  It was never going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger's kind of Machine Overlord, it was always going to be Robert Mercer's kind (It is perhaps no coincidence that Mercer owns Arnold's gun from The Terminator.  I presume it's the SPAS-12, but am not certain.). This is not to say that I'm Kyle Reece-style fighting against machines. Far from it.  I took plenty of AI and Machine Learning classes at the same place Robert Mercer went to school, along with the founders of many of your favorite… or most hated… internet companies.  All of which explains some things I suppose, but still… the future is not set, as the saying goes.

Returning to the Dark Knight, in this post from 2015, we showed you 71 variant covers from Dark Knight III: The Master Race #1.  There were two reasons provided to us in regards to this post: "sexual content" and "shocking content". Practically speaking, since we don't really want to repost the content from the original post, you can check the highlights (including what I think bothered the Wertham Machine) on Facebook and for completeness, there's an archive of the original from 2015.

So go check the content out there and come back and let us know.  Are those Dark Knight III: The Master Race #1 covers sexual and shocking content like Google's Wertham Machine thinks they are?

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