It's not easy being brown

[thebitterguy]

This reminds me of the time the Joker went to work for the Ayatollah Khomeni and became Iran’s ambassador to the UN.

In fact, it’s really not that different, is it?

The DCU: Where you just can't trust brown people.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Unlike most people, I found his previous work with Batman to be tiresome, and this looks simply ludicrous and offensive. Comics for Shrub's America... Warren Ellis had some choice things to say about the sheer self-indulgent idiocy of such a comic.

[thebitterguy]

Actually, a lot of his Batman work is the definitive stuff (DKR, Year One), but he seems to have gone bugfuck lately (ASB & DKSB).

[mercuryeric.livejournal.com]

If one was to level charges of comic-universe racism, I think Marvel's a far richer target, frankly.

And yes, Miller is bugfuck. That sorta goes without saying.

[thebitterguy]

"Lois Lane caught in an Abscam!", "A Death in the Family", Quarac, Bialya, "Sinbad". This stuff sticks with a guy.

Admittedly, Nicieza's Gulf War story was the final nail in any perception of his talent there may ever be, but I'd need to dig long and hard to consider the DCU not fucked up.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

If one was to level charges of comic-universe racism, I think Marvel's a far richer target, frankly.

How so, I see problems with both and don't see either one being considerably worse than the other. OTOH, I only read a limited amount of either, so I could very easily be missing something.

[thebitterguy]

On the other hand, Between The New Invaders & a couple issues of Captain America released in 2002, yeah, neither of them is blameless.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I quite liked Year One, but DKR was too over the top for me. What's the lowdown on ASB and DKSB? I've seen them on the shelves, but haven't looked at either.

[thebitterguy]

DKSB was... Horrid. A lot of people try to defend it by saying it was satirical, but if that's the case Frank Miller sucks at satire.

Ditto with ASB: he presents Batman as the worst possible character, unlike Morrisson's A-SS, which is pratically reverent in its presentation of a classic era Superman.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely avoid them. OTOH, I'm loving A-SS, just as I loved most of Morrison's Seven Soldier's (I'm awed at what he did with Mr. Miracle and Kirby's Fourth World)

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

It's Dark Knight Strikes Again, AGAIN, damn your eyes and various bodily parts! :-)

It's not a satire. You seem to have deeper opinions than just "WWWWAAAAHHH!!! IT WASN'T MORE OF THE SAME!!! WWWAAAAHHHH!!!", which is pretty much the entirety of the critical opinion of the book that I read.

I will agree the art's not up to snuff, though. DC should have sent back the original pencils.


Miller is on the record (in fact, on the new Batman special edition) as saying that the dark and gritty direction comics took (largely imitating him) is "stupid." That's exactly what he says. What he was trying to do was to tell a Silver Age story...it's about a dark story becoming a light one.

I'll grant that at times it's not terribly serious, as a result. It needed fine tuning. But it's still better than most of the crap DC and Marvel put out.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Sorry, "Dark Knight Strikes Again" is absolutely brilliant, because only Miller would have the balls to try and make a Silver Age story while retaining his own sensibilities.

As for not trusting brown people in the DCU...I was going to make a joke about Cyborg and the new Blue Beetle, but come to think of it, I can't name a single superhero or supervillain that's of any form of Middle Eastern descent. From either of the big two. It's mostly a lotta white people with the occasional sprinkling of blacks snarkily remarking about how they're surrounded by stupid white people who seem inclined to accidentally "kill my black ass." Although to be fair DC has been doing a good job with John Stewart and Black Lightning lately.

I do know that the Superman comics had an ongoing subplot about "little Qurac", sometime in the early 90s, about a rather nasty slum in Metropolis that Superman winds up doing his Boy Scout stuff with some urchin. I remember it seemed kinda obvious and smug to me at the time, and I was twelve.

Ah...Davoud "Sinbad" Nassur would be the guy's name...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

...and it wasn't an ongoing subplot, more of a pet project of William Messner-Loebs' to get some decently-presented Middle-Eastern heroics into the DCU. We could do with more stories of his adventures, along with those of Turkey's Dr. Selma "Janissary" Tolon from the "Planet DC" project. One of Brian K. Vaughan's better contributions, she is, and I'd like to read more of her adventures as well. Especially in the current political climate.

Not sure how the Turkish public would take to the idea, but surely it could be done well...?

And speaking of the Janissary...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Here's a fan-run home page for her fans. (http://www.janissary.info/planetdc.html)

Someone's definitely taken her to heart in a big way. Good on them.

[thebitterguy]

Arabian Knight from Marvel. IIRC, he was one of the Token Foreigners created for Contest of Champions, and ended up working for Hussein during the Gulf War, along with a bunch of generic evil arabs invented by Nicieza for that series.

Superman, during one period, destroyed the country of Quarac, but I don't remember what happened after that, other than Chershire nuked it a little later.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

As for not trusting brown people in the DCU...I was going to make a joke about Cyborg and the new Blue Beetle, but come to think of it, I can't name a single superhero or supervillain that's of any form of Middle Eastern descent.

Teth-Adam, who will be one of the major characters in 52.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Warren Ellis had some choice things to say about the sheer self-indulgent idiocy of such a comic.

Where did Ellis talk about this? I'd like to read it.

--Kynn

[heron61.livejournal.com]

On a more general note, the more I hear about comics I don't read, the happier that the only comics I read are the new (and excellent) LSH, and books by Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, J. Michael Straczynski (Supreme Powers was amazing), Mark Millar (who is rather too much of a misanthrope for my tastes, but often tells a good story), and occasionally Neil Gaiman.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

LSH is wonderful. I'm glad they let Mark Waid reinvent it; he's not Ellis but he's a good solid writer.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

I find the current Waid-written LSH to be really boring and lame.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Remember when the Punisher make himself permanently black, with the contents of a doctor's housecall bag?

[thebitterguy]

I must have missed that issue. Unfortunately.

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

You know, I tend to think that Miller is a bit, well, one-dimensional, but is it really all that racist to note that the Shi'ite terrorism sponsored by Iran and the Salafi variety of Al Qaeda are pretty damn evil?

[thebitterguy]

That is, of course, not the point that was being made at all.

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

Well, my wife does occasionally tell me that I seem to specialize in missing the point, so apologies there.

On the larger issue, though, I do fail to see why casting Al Qaeda as Batman villains is especially controversial. In fact, Al Qaeda seems more like comic book villains than a lot of comic book villains: It's a ruthless terrorist organization led by a millionaire with a hideout deep in the remote mountains of a part of the world most Americans are unfamiliar with.

Of course, given how subtley Frank Miller dealt with the East/West issue in 300, I tend to think that there's a good chance that whatever Al Qaeda Batman fights could indeed wind up turning into some sort of racist charicature.

[thebitterguy]

The core problem is a deeper one within the superhero genre; pretty much anyone outside of the US (or possibly outside of Manhattan) is just a cheesy stereotype in spandex.