Category Archives: controversy

Whose God Is Thor?

Image from IDLE HANDS, Thor's HammerIn the wake of Thor‘s #1 opening weekend, Comics Alliance is reporting that another group is unhappy of its godly portrayals. Whereas the Council of Conservative Citizens previously railed against the casting of Idris Elba, a black man in the role of a Nordic god, (mentioned in a previous entry), this objection is a tad more level-headed. Namely, some modern-day Neopagan practitioners are rumbling over the depiction of their deities in the film.

A follower of Ásatrú (or Germanic Neopaganism, as it is also known), writer Eric Scott of religious discourse magazine Killing the Buddha made the sincere and deeply personal observation whilst inspecting Thor merchandise in a Walmart.

I held that foam hammer in my hand for a long time, which I’m sure only confirmed my weirdness to the nightgaunts of the third shift. With my other hand, I rubbed the Mjolnir necklace I have worn every day since my initiation into my family’s coven. I did not know what to think of it.

The truth is, I looked at the toys in my hands and I saw the result of millions of dollars of development and thousands of hours of manpower, put into something bearing the name of a god, my god, and it had nothing to do with me.

Scott suggests that his fellow practitioners were “too few to matter” to the corporations using this material for their merchandise. Pagan Blogger for Patheos.com Star Foster feels quite the opposite: that Thor will bring attention to active Pagans in a positive manner.

The issue here is not just appropriating a mislabeled “dead religion,” but also how these deities function for real-life worshipers versus storytellers. A sideline discussion over at City-Data.com offers the thought that the word “gods” is misused in various narratives, comic books in particular. Are Thor and his fellow Asgardians distinctly gods in the movie, or are they some other classification? Would calling them, say, onses show a greater sensitivity by storytellers or would it divorce them even more harshly from real-world practitioners?

Nightrunner as per The Daily Show

Discussion of Nightrunner continues, now on the satirical The Daily Show.

Click image to be linked to full video.

The interview features Comics Alliance‘s Chris Simms and Bosch Fawstin, the latter of whom had already spoken about about the threat of Nightrunner becoming a Jihadist. Curiously, both the interviewees and interviewer Aasif Mandvi refer to Nightrunner as a “sidekick,” something that does not seem to have been established by prior stories nor the Batman comics themselves.

Continue reading Nightrunner as per The Daily Show

Are Jewish Comics AntiSemitic?

Do Jewish comics discriminate…against Jews?

Well, over at Comics Comics, Jeet Heer posed some compelling critique inspired by his attendance of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival last year and its special program on Jews in Comics. He writes,

Here is a new angle on the subject: I think writers have been too quick to assume that the Jewish immigrant community, which was very divided on ethnic and class lines, was monolithic.

[…] Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, German Jews came into cultural conflict with their East European brethren, who were seen as embarrassingly uncouth and rowdy.

[…] Is it too much to see the tension between German Jews such as Rabbi Wise and Russian Jews at the beginning of the 20th century as a precursor to Wertham’s battles against the unseemly and vulgar comic book industry in the 1940s and 1950s?

How far back do the roots of high-/low-culture go when it comes to Judaism and comics? And was there a divide that laid the foundation for the cry against comics in the 1950s?

Some commenters to Heer suggested that this is gazing too deeply into Judaism and its contribution to comics: “I’m a little sick of the sort of ethno-narcissism of Jews writing about Jews and comics lately.” Still others said the topic is very much alive, especially in light of Bill Willingham’s Fables as a metaphor for Zionism.

More on Nightrunner, the Muslim Batman of Paris

Since the previous posting, additional sites and commentators have gone on record regarding Nightrunner, Batman/Bruce Wayne’s selection for his “deputy” in Paris.

Tim Murphy at Mother Jones remains rather neutral and unalarmed on the issue, suggesting that there are two controversies overlaid here: first, that “Frenchmen (and Frenchwomen) would never embrace a Algerian Muslim as a national savior,” and, second, that, in the words of “US comic book creator Bosch Fawstin, […] ‘DC Comics has submitted to Islam.'” This doesn’t seem to be Murphy’s position, though, as he satirically footnotes the report by saying, “Presumably this comes at the expense of the traditional mom-and-pop superheroes, who, now unemployed and compelled to put food on their table by any means possible, turn to crime. It’s the perfect cycle.”

Rory Mulholland of the Agence France Presse (AFP), published online through The Daily Star: Lebanon, also quotes Fawstin. But Mulholland notes that the issues have sold briskly and raised little attention in France itself. Olivia Snaije of Publishing Perspectives says that the French are “bemused” by this controversy (though she offers no French bloggers either by name or by URL).

OnIslam.com lets many of the complaintants speak for themselves but includes author David Hine in the discussion. He explains:

“The urban unrest and problems of the ethnic minorities under (President Nicolas) Sarkozy’s government dominate the news from France […] It became inevitable that the hero should come from a French Algerian background.” […] He said that the Nightrunner is “the kind of hero I would want to see in a comic book if I were French.”

For Hine, then, Nightrunner is not a slight but, rather, a character born out of current events. Add to this the idea posited by an nonymous commenter at the Hindustan Times, suggesting that “Comic book heroes were always about politics and social engineering.” If that is correct, is Nightrunner that far afield? IkhwanWeb believes that the furor over Nightwing isn’t that he has Algerian roots or is potentially representing the French; rather, their article suggests that right-wing bloggers simply feel “a Muslim [is] not fit to play the role of a superhero and fight crime.” In short, the subtext of protests against Nightrunner seem to stress that Muslims cannot be superheroes. Though not discussing Nightrunner, the Malaysian Sun2Surf features the debut film of a new Muslim superhero, the eponymous Haq. Co-director Jumaatun Azmi is quoted as saying, “These values are also universal and they apply to all faiths. Even if you’re not a Muslim, you can still relate to the values,” a possible retort to the right-wing subtext.

At the forum for SuperheroHype.com, the conversation has inverted somewhat, questioning whether a superhero can be as overtly and outwardly Christian as Nightrunner is Muslim. Additionally, the poster lebenskuntzler at LiveLeak.com argues that only multiculturalism is permitted in popular culture, including superhero comics, going so far as to suggest a supervillain modeled on Mohammed (pbuh) be more fitting for Batman comics.