Category Archives: from the Internet

controversy, from the Internet

Funding (Another?) Super Sikh

Cover for Super Sikh featuring hero Deep Singh
Cover for Super Sikh featuring hero Deep Singh

Back in March, The Guardian newspaper reported on the successful Kickstarter campaign for Super Sikh, billed by its promoters as “a modern hero in a turban.” The comic features Deep Singh, a secret agent and Elvis-phile who encounters international intrigue during his sojourn from India to Graceland.

The four-issue series pits Singh against crazed Taliban commander Salar Al AmokTaliban, explains Siri Srinivas for The Guardian in talking with the series’ co-creators and Eileen Alden and Supreet Singh Manchanda:

Deep Singh’s battle against terrorists in Afghanistan is used as a device to address the often confused American views of Sikh people.

The pair say this misunderstanding is a particularly American phenomenon. “Remember, in the British ethos, Sikhs don’t have that same [identity]: they may be victims but there’s a lot of respect,” says Manchanda who grew up in Ethiopia and Zambia and went to college in the UK, before moving to Silicon Valley.

“But in the US there’s no positive foil. There’s no Sikh military, there’s no Sikh policemen and that is only now starting to happen,” he says.

Raj Sikh
Raj Singh

Reviews of the premiere issue have been mixed, with The Hindustan Times questioning whether Deep Singh is too much like Raj Singh, another titular Super Sikh and protagonist of an entirely separate comic. At the same time, when awareness-raising and role-modeling is the goal, do similar concepts double public recognition — or threaten to cancel each other out?

Or, best yet, could they team up?

controversy, cultural, from the Internet, online

‘Antisemitism Problem’ In Marvel Movies? No, but…

Over at ComicMix, writer Mindy Newell takes The Jewish Daily Forward to task for its piece, “Do Marvel Movies Have An Anti-Semitic Problem?” Newell minces no words, calling it “the dumbest article I’ve ever read on their site.”

magnetoThe Forward article by Susan Mohall seems to hinge on Magneto, identified in the movies and (most) comics as a Jewish Holocaust survivor, being a villain as well as the nefarious  HYDRA organization having its Nazi roots effaced. Newell quickly dismantles their Magneto argument and, in terms of HYDRA, goes on to say:

Oh, Susan. I guess you never saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier and you never have watched Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA evolved, my dear. It’s gotten smarter, its adapted, it’s gotten smoother – just as our own rat-fuckers learned from Watergate – but it is certainly is still fascist, and it’s certainly not “shy[ing] away from its Nazi roots.”

For what it’s worth, Hal Jordan’s partial Jewish heritage was never featured in the Green Lantern movie, and Ben Grimm’s Jewish background has never been noted in any Fantastic Four movie. Then again, neither has Bruce Wayne’s potential tie to the Christian Sir Gawain of Grail Legend or, say, Colossus of the X-Men’s atheistic Communist roots.

Perhaps the issue that Mohell misconstrued was less some form of antisemitism in these superhero films but, instead, a compulsion towards secularizing their characters? (Even Thor, a “god,” isn’t worshiped…)

Is television’s Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) the first of these cinematic characters we’ve seen seek spiritual help from a real-world religious institution?

DD-Church

from the Internet, reviews

COMICS WORTH READING on “The Tithe” #1

The Tithe #1 coverJohanna Draper Carlson, the long-time driving force behind Comics Worth Reading, recently issued her review of The Tithe #1 from Image Comics, and it was too fitting not to reprint here (with her permission):

The Tithe is a heist story set in a megachurch carried out by a bunch of hackers.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next, and that’s a good thing when it comes to adventure comics these days. Launching the book with a quote by Jim Bakker while pointing out his time in jail sets a certain mood as well.

Matt Hawkins writes and Rahsan Ekedal draws the tale. A heavily armed crew wearing Jesus masks breaks into the cash room of a church that’s raking in the dough. Meanwhile, the many screens surrounding the gesticulating preacher are hacked by “Samaritan” to show what the leader is really up to with all that money.

Two FBI agents, a church-going family man and a reformed hacker, are sent to find out who’s behind the theft, but along the way, they wonder why the pastor is lying about how much money was taken. This is one in a series of thefts, and all the churches hit turn out to be committing fraud, which makes the agents less than sympathetic to the case they’re investigating.

Religion is an important motivator for a lot of people, but most comics stay away from it. I’m intrigued to see a book with a distinct point of view (against greed and hypocrisy) that’s taking a more nuanced approach.

The dialogue tilts a bit too much toward the expository, with characters telling each other their histories and motivations, but the art is solid without being as exaggerated as one fears from a Top Cow title. The text pages tell Hawkins’ history as a former Christian, which helps put the material in perspective, as well as showing character sketches for the two agents. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.)

Image’s page for The Tithe calls the FBI agents’ quarry  a “modern day Robin Hood,” but the religious overtones (and imagery) seem too strong to overlook. (Or, alternatively, it may make one rethink the religious themes of the Robin Hood myth itself.)

Issue #2 debuts May 20, 2015.

contributors, controversy, from the Internet, raowantstoknow

Asher J. Klassen on the Controversial BATGIRL Cover

One of Sacred & Sequential’s founding members Asher J. Klassen has written an impressive and notable response to the controversy over Rafael Albuquerque’s  Batgirl cover currently occurring the superhero industry and fandom.

Art by John Hazard, http://www.deviantart.com/art/My-Take-on-the-Batgirl-Joker-Cover-521381594
Not the cover in question.

Asher comments, regarding the controversial cover’s relationship to the 1998 Alan Moore and Brian Bolland one-shot comic The Killing Joke:

The Killing Joke is a brilliant story. It is also absolutely, fundamentally, a problematic story. For those of you who haven’t read it, a brief synopsis: this is the tale of Oracle’s origin, in which Barbara Gordon is attacked at home by the Joker, who shoots her through the spine and strips her, leaving her naked and paralyzed on the floor while he takes pictures…pictures he later uses to psychologically torment her father, Jim. It’s a classic example within the comics canon of a woman being victimized simply to provide a point of pathos for a male hero. Barbara suffers greatly, and is left paralyzed for life, but her ordeal is inconsequential to the story; the focus is on Jim as he bears witness to his daughter’s trauma. People are upset because this story bothers them. It should. It needs to bother us; we need to to be bothered by it; it is brilliant because it bothers us.

Stories that don’t bother us are not worth writing.

In addition to featuring this post by an S&S member, we are also inclined to ask what relationship, if any, this issue may have to religious imagery and iconography. Do some religious similarly feature/exploit women in threatening situations? Should “trigger warnings” be part of religious discourse, particularly with faiths’ visuals? Or is censorship overextending itself in some way that religious liberties might oppose? To what degree are even religious audiences willing to be “bothered” — willing to tolerate some level of being disturbed — for the sake of a story and its meaning?

Read entirety of Asher’s post here.

cultural, from the Internet, interviews

David Herman Talks about “Sabraman”

Back in December, a reporter for Artuz Sheva talked with David Herman, the man behind the creation of Sabraman, “the first Hebrew-speaking superhero.” (The Jewish Press qualifies that Herman solicited Sabraman from artist Uri Fink; that article appears to be written by Mr. Herman himself, incidentally.) Click in the video link below for that interview, the future of Sabraman, and the musical ventures of Mr. Herman.