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Tim O Neill
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Posted: 08 November 2013 at 9:02am | IP Logged | 1  


Rick S:  "... funny you mention JB, because I'd just realised where we'd actually had a completely non-white team, including a gay Arab-American superhero, and there'd been no publicity-stunt announcement. Nope - just a good ol' "look at this cool new superhero comicbook, folks! Don't these guys seem really interesting?"

That's right - JB's 'TRIO'. And as I say, it wasn't marketed as "the most positively-diverse superhero team in comics", or "IDW introduces first gay Arab-American character" splashed across the news pages. Instead, the book came out, with interesting, three-dimensional characters, and used them in engrossing stories. And to top it all off, none of the characters were relying on the 'Next Men' brand or similar to sell them - the TRIO-verse was sold as a new, original project, with the interest coming purely from it's own merits. THAT's how you do it properly, and it's just so frustrating how rare said approach is actually attempted anymore."

****

I totally agree - that is how it should be done.  Good to see that JB handles his characters as people first, and their heritage and gender after that.  In addiiton to TRIO,  THE HIGH WAYS featurS an African American lead character, but the focus is on a cool sci-fi story.  And DOOMSDAY.1 represents the world by virtue of the story - the space station had a representative from every corner!

JB has always been on the forefront of representing the world as we see it, but the primary focus has been on solid storytelling.



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Monte Gruhlke
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Posted: 08 November 2013 at 10:11am | IP Logged | 2  

I enjoyed your tirade, Rick S. - you made some pretty good observations!

IMHO - if I were Marvel and I wanted to present and establish a new character (not just ball something up and throw it out there to see what happens), I would create "Morpha" or whatever, a young girl who happens to also be muslim - something that would be prevalent during her social interaction with friends, family, and especially in how she perceives the world during the series. Then I would make it a point to grant the title an automatic 12-issue series to prove my support for the project - and then advertise the character and even have her have crossovers with established core titles.

And then Bendis would swoop in with whatever flash-in-the-pan idea he has at the moment, dismiss the story arcs and change the book just enough to put off any loyal followers or forward momentum the book might have garnered. 
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Andrew W. Farago
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Posted: 08 November 2013 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | 3  

Do you honestly imagine this character will be heartily embraced by Muslims everywhere? That all Muslims have the same idea of what "properly represents" their faith? And, of course, there's absolutely NO anti-Muslim sentiment in this country...

Doubt it, but I've got several Muslim friends who read comics, and they'll most likely check this book out and if they enjoy it, they'll pass it along to family members.  This is making headlines mostly because it's Marvel's first high-profile Muslim character, but if this goes well, it won't be their last, and it eventually won't be a big deal when they launch a non-white, non-male character in a new book.  Black Panther would have been worth some press coverage if individual comic books had gotten much media attention back in the 1960s, Black Lightning wouldn't have been a news story in the 1970s. 

It's a good first step, and hopefully the new Ms. Marvel won't have to represent every single Muslim in the world for very long.  
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