Comic review: Martian Manhunter #1- Real world hints, then back to comic book unreality

Writer: Rob Williams
Art: Eddy Barrows
Publisher: DC
Released: 15th July 2015



There are hints at real world realities in this book:

‘Multiple terrorist attacks. I want to know who you can trust these days.’

Hints.

‘This terrorist attacks around the world the television talks of, the calls for a worldwide war in response. I know who is really behind it.’

The book also criticises Dubai:

‘I’m just an orphan thief from the mess and ugly and vomit of hope that is Dubai harbour.’

The hint is that terrorism is not what it appears to be, and that the obscenely wealthy corporate elites of all countries are working together and playing us off against each other.

However, this is a comic book published by a massive corporation, so that’s as far as it can go. There will be no revolution in comic books.

Islam is not mentioned.

Intelligence agencies are not mentioned.

Terrorism is portrayed not as a religious or sociological problem, but as an alien threat from Mars.

The Dubai angle is just a reason to get a young female protagonist into the story, and to push her as a new hope, a representative of the people, just like they do with all of the other mainstream corporate comic books of today. In the middle of issue #2 this young girl leaves Dubai, and is now on a ship to the US to join all of the other heroes. Her back-story over, she’s just another DC feminist girl hero now.

What is happening within the pages of this book is a good example of a writer using real world concerns to give an air of contemporary legitimacy to his narrative. That’s not a criticism, it’s a compliment. But having used these concerns to frame the narrative, the book is now turning into just another character based, corporate friendly superhero narrative.

Mr. Biscuits, the best thing about the book.

The ‘terrorism’ word will become background now, and religion will not be a feature of this book. Linking terrorism with Islam is something that mainstream comic books will not do. They’ll link Christianity with terrorism of course, but never Islam.

The one person who criticised Islam in a comic book was Frank Miller. He did it in a book called ‘Holy Terror,’ a book that was supposed to be a Batman DC book. They refused to publish the book, so he had to self publish. That’s how much of a taboo it is at the moment. Terrorist attacks in the real world are predominantly linked to Islamic fundamentalists (with an ideology coming from the western friendly Hellhole that is Saudi Arabia) but you will not see this being represented in mainstream corporate comic books.

That’s okay. I don’t expect anything else from a DC comic book, and it was nice of writer Rob Williams to sprinkle a couple of hints at reality before he got back to paying his bills and knocking out another corporate friendly superhero narrative.

Is the book worth getting? Yeah, it features a character called Mr. Biscuits, and he’s a lot of fun. The art is pretty nice as well, and I quite enjoyed reading along whilst looking for nuggets of real world truth within the daft aliens are invading story. I didn’t hate the book. It’s better than most of the other lame comic books out there at the moment, but there’s nothing particular special or revolutionary happening here, so although it might be fun, in all honesty, it's just another corporate friendly comic book, and not something to get too excited about.


Rating: 6/10 (Hints at reality, then back to a standard alien threat narrative)

Comic review: Doctor Fate #1: PC Muslim Hero Abandons Faith to Join Egyptian Cat Cult

Writer: Paul Levitz
Artist: Sonny Liew
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 17th June 2015




Here’s an interesting book, that within its pages includes a valuable lesson about the portrayal of Islam in contemporary neoliberal western comic book narratives.

The book stars a Muslim hero, with a white Mother, a hot girlfriend, and a promising future career as a Doctor. Wait, it gets even better. If all of that wasn’t enough for you, the narrative then has him saving a baby from underneath the wheels of a subway train, sacrificing his life for a complete and utter stranger.

What a guy hey? See multiculturalism is great, no problems to be had at all. Muslims love to integrate and contribute to society, they even save babies from underneath subway trains. I say let them all in, and take over the country, take over the world actually, what could possibly go wrong?

White racists need to die anyway. Let’s bring in the dawn of this brave new era of ‘moderate’ Islam, with tolerance and diversity for all.

Certain kinds of people are going to love this review. They are going to read it, and positively explode with righteous indignation and rage. So I say, come on, bring it on. Come on then. Accuse me of being an evil intolerant Islamaphobic racist. I know you want to, go on, accuse me until the cows come home, it will be fun.

Jump up on that moral high horse of progressive liberalism and tell me that 99% of Muslims are moderate and tolerant. Pretend that ISIS doesn’t exist. Pretend that Saudi Arabia doesn’t exist. Pretend that Syria doesn’t exist. Pretend that Libya doesn’t exist. Pretend that Boko Haram doesn’t exist. Pretend that Sharia law doesn’t exist. Pretend that the Rochdale sex trafficking gang didn’t exist. Pretend that the Beslan school massacre didn’t happen. Pretend that the Charlie Hebdo massacre didn’t happen. Pretend that all of the other massacres and beheadings and atrocities worldwide didn’t happen as well.

Blame US foreign policy. Hell, even blame George Bush if you like. Pretend that the UK Muslim community doesn’t shut itself away in their own little communities with their own laws. Pretend that Muslims just want to integrate into society like some kind of neo-liberal mythical paradise. Pretend that reality itself is an abstract construct and those moral high horses and neoliberal utopias are the ‘tolerant’ way of looking at reality.

It doesn’t matter what evidence you see or hear, it doesn’t matter, because you will always be right. Even in the middle of a massacre when you yourself are being chopped up because you are not the right kind of wahabbi Muslim. They are not extreme, it’s intolerant to say that, they are just expressing their dissatisfaction with US foreign policy as they chop you and your kids into little pieces whilst screaming for their god like a nightmarish cult of devil worshippers. No, you will always be right, because you are a liberal, a dead, chopped up liberal, but always right, and always tolerant and always passive and pathetic and indoctrinated and self-hating and feeble and weak, and useless until the very end.

Here’s a question. Have you ever read a comic book where Muslims were portrayed as the villains? I have. It happened ONCE, in a book called ‘Holy Terror,’ by Frank Miller. The following quotation pretty much sums up how it was received by the mainstream press:

"Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he’s created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time ... Miller's Holy Terror is a screed against Islam, completely uninterested in any nuance or empathy toward 1.2 billion people he conflates with a few murderous conspiracy theorists." (Spencer Ackerman of Wired Magazine)

You don’t criticise Islam in comic books, even in a very small way, and if you do, then prepare for a whole heap of trouble coming your way. No, if you write Muslim characters in a 2015 era comic book then they must ALWAYS be positive, heroic, tolerant, liberal drips, just like the writers themselves actually.

Doctor Fate #1 then is a specimen of it’s time, an example of how you write Muslim characters in contemporary comic books. For that reason alone the book is worthy of study. I don’t expect contemporary comic books to demonise the Muslim community, because that would be horrible, and completely unfair to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims around the world. So what do I want? What is the point that I’m making here?

My point is that comic books have to stop being so bloody cowardly. I know that the writers watch the news. I know that they see the same things that I do. I know that they have opinions on it, so why am I not seeing a DIVERSE range of opinions in my comic books when it comes to the portrayal of Muslim characters? They can’t always be heroes can they?

What is being created here is a parallel universe, with mainstream comic book creators going out of their way not to offend. This snake-bellied cowardice is creating a mythical almost idolatrous image of Muslim people that is completely at odds with what is happening in the real world and DAILY on our television sets. What I am complaining about here is a LACK of diversity when it comes to the portrayal of Muslims in mainstream comic books, as described by the dictionary definition of the word.

Diversity
/daɪˈvɜːsɪtɪ/
noun 
1.
the state or quality of being different or varied
2.
a point of difference
3.
(logic) the relation that holds between two entities when and only when they are not identical; the property of being numerically distinct

All I am calling for here is for diversity, a point of difference, and when it comes to the portrayal of Muslims in comic books in 2015 I am not seeing this at all. What I am seeing is a very PC image, an image of the tolerant Muslim, of the not very religious Muslim, the neo-liberal fantasy Muslim. It’s a fantasy as real as the moderate rebels in Syria and the integrated Muslim television characters I see in Eastenders, that fantasy neoliberal London paradise of integrated communities that bears zero resemblance to the real London of today.

So what about this actual comic book? This is supposed to be a review, right? Yeah it is, so here we go.

The art is messy, the tone is soft and fluffy, and the story is about Ancient Egyptian Gods preparing a new flood to wipe out humanity. The Muslim protagonist takes to the Egyptian religion very easily, a cat speaks to him, tells him to put on a silly hat, and after some initial fears that have nothing whatsoever to do with his own faith, on it goes. This means that the protagonist is about as serious and dedicated to his religion as neo-liberals are to their own. He doesn’t even identify himself as a Muslim. Instead he very noticeable describes himself as ‘an American.’ Ah, it’s the liberal dream of diversity, alive and well within the pages of comic books at least.

In reality, this guy is a terrible Muslim. He completely disregards his own faith and jumps on board a new religion like it’s no big deal at all. He is a Muslim, but his faith plays no part in this comic book narrative whatsoever. His Muslim identity then is exposed as hollow, and meaningless. It’s a token gesture, a bone of political correctness thrown out so DC can stamp a label of ‘diversity’ onto one of it’s comic books.

This book is not going to impress any strong believer of the Islamic religion, as the religious aspect is mere background, and when faced with miraculous, amazing things that are happening around him, the protagonist doesn’t even refer to his faith one single time. So if it’s not trying to impress actual Muslims, who is the book trying to impress, and what is it trying to do?

You already know my answer to that question, right? The book is simply ticking PC boxes, and going out of its way to not offend anybody. The ironic thing about this situation is that offending Muslims is an extremely easy thing to do, and as hard as you try not to offend, the more likely it is that you will end up offending somebody. I’ll explain.

The very fact that the writer has put the old Egyptian religion into the lap of a young Muslim is probably something that he didn’t even think about. It’s just a story, something cool to do, right? What he has actually done, if he thought about it for a bit, is to make a young Muslim a Kuffar (an unbeliever) by willingly accepting the authority of another religion that is not Islam. As soon as he buys into the powers of the magic helmet, he has in essence rejected his own Muslim faith.

‘He that chooses a religion over Islam, it will not be accepted from him and in the world to come he will be one of the lost.’
Quran 3:85, "The Imrans,"

So by going out of his way not to offend liberal sensibilities, what writer Paul Levitz has actually done here is to create a narrative that demeans Islam and would likely cause huge offence to many Muslims all around the world.

What a twit.

That’s how it goes when you pussy foot around a topic that needs to be tackled with true courage and integrity. The more you try not to offend, the more you do offend, and that’s the problem with Islam, the problem that mainstream comic books do not want to discuss.

Writer Paul Levitz probably really is a very decent and tolerant person, but that counts for nothing, and by trying to write another PC Muslim hero he’s just gone and dug his own pit of trouble. I feel sorry for the guy, really. His intentions were good, they always are with liberal types, but this whole fake ‘diversity’ thing is a difficult construct to escape from, especially with people shouting ‘racist’ at you whenever you even question it.

I didn’t hate the book. I see it as misguided, and it teaches a valuable lesson about the portrayal of Islamic heroes in contemporary comic books, so it’s worthy of a purchase. American popular culture is at a bit of a crossroads at the moment, it’s lost, confused, and trying to find it’s way through these dark times of neo-liberalism where truth is dying at the alter of political correctness. This time period in world history will make for a fascinating area of study at some future date, but at the moment it’s not easy. I can write my reviews and say whatever I like, but the poor comic book writers are trying to make a living, they are trying to be PC, trying to be good people, but ultimately they are just ending up getting lost in a maze littered with corporate ‘diversity’ landmines.


Rating: 4/10 (PC Muslim hero ends up quickly abandoning his faith at the first opportunity, oops)

Defender (CBLDF)- Spring 2015: You don’t need a censor when writers are already censoring themselves.

Produced by: The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Released: April 1st 2015
Facebook page: 
https://www.facebook.com/CBLDF/timeline



Free speech in a 2015 western context is not about complaining that books that feature gross acts of torture are not available at your local primary school. It’s not about the Comics Code problems of the 1950’s, and it’s not about individual (rare) examples of censorship in New Mexico either. No, in my far from humble opinion, free speech in a 2015 western context is about fighting back against the fascist, communist, Marxist, liberal drip left and their insidious mind control tactic called POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.

This debut issue of ‘Defender’ features an interview with Neil Gaiman, a man with one single example of his work being censored by government. The example is from Sweden, and happened to this great champion of free speech TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO. In the end nothing happened, nobody went to jail, nobody got fined, nobody got censored. That’s it, that’s his battle with censors, well, that and one teacher in New Mexico not liking one of his books. That issue was easily solved without any censorship or prosecutions either.

Why are they interviewing this man? I’ve read his stuff, and he’s about as safe as you can get. His work is neither edgy nor controversial in the slightest. He says nothing about the world, nothing about politics and nothing that anybody could possibly get even slightly upset about. That one teacher in New Mexico that didn’t like his Goth teenager stuff didn’t have anything valid to complain about, and that’s why her complaints were dismissed. Seriously, if I were publishing my own pamphlet about comic book censorship then the last person in the world that I would want to interview would be Neil bloody Gaiman.

So who would I interview then? How about somebody who is actually fighting against political correctness (real censorship) in comic books today, or at least somebody who is putting some real world analysis into his comic books?

Here’s the problem. It’s very difficult to think of any individual working in mainstream comic books today that actually fits that bill. The closest you would get is Sergio Aragones, and his work in ‘Groo- The Hogs of Horder’ where he talks about things that other comic books wouldn’t even dare to mention. But he’s rare, very rare.

There’s always Frank Miller and his excellent work in ‘Holy Terror’ of course. Why not interview him? You might not agree with his views, but he put his neck out and went somewhere that everybody else working in mainstream comic books today still refuses to go. What did he do that was so controversial? He criticised Islam, an act that is completely absent in mainstream comic books today, even as suicide bombs and school massacres now become a daily occurrence all over the world. Criticise Christians as much as you like in your comic books, but never, ever, ever criticise Muslims. Well, you can do, just don’t bother coming into work the next morning. That’s censorship. That’s real censorship, and that’s exactly how it works. You have certain ‘topics’ that you cannot discuss, and if you do discuss them, career over.

‘Defender #1’ does discuss the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but there’s only one short paragraph that briefly touches on the real issue that is at the heart of what happened there. The issue is not censorship, or free speech when it comes to discussing issues related to religion. No, the ONLY issue is whether or not Islam can be discussed without some nutjob threatening to murder everybody who dared to mention his satanic death cult. That’s the issue in 2015, not free speech, but ISLAM, the violent religion with legions of cult members who will threaten to chop your head off or machine gun your children if you dare even question ANYTHING about it.

Liberal comic book writers will do somersaults to make excuses for this death cult, and go out of their way to not offend them. Suicide bombings and massacres don’t appear to matter at all as they preach ‘tolerance’ and respect, protecting the very people who would gladly massacre every single last (tolerant) one of them. This is not tolerance, it’s cowardice, and the murdered cartoonists that worked for Charlie Hebdo are the inevitable price we are currently paying for our liberal tolerance/cowardice in the west.

When one person says something that needs to be said he becomes a target, but if everybody is saying it then the truth of what is being said can be properly understood and acted upon. I read so many comic books, and whenever religion comes up it always has a Christian slant. 99% of the time that slant is negative, with the Christians portrayed as a mad/dangerous cult with a crazy leader and brainwashed followers. That’s the norm in my comic books, but what isn’t the norm is the actually truth of what is happening today in the religion of Islam with violent psychopaths murdering non-believers all of the time, and with the PC liberal prat crowd too bloody cowardly to say anything about it. Well, I’m sticking my own head up here and saying it loud. If you want to portray violent extremist religious cults in my comic books then get with reality and start making them Muslim, not Christian. Be like Charlie. Stop being cowardly. Stop self-censoring.

Mainstream comic books in 2015 are extremely tame, and you’d be hard pressed to find anything controversial in ANY of them. The writers are so liberal, so drippy, and so politically correct, that they are actually censoring themselves. Here’s a true statement:

MAINSTREAM WESTERN COMIC BOOKS DO NOT NEED TO BE CENSORED BECAUSE THEY ARE ALREADY CENSORING THEMSELVES.

I buy a lot of comic books, too many actually, I need to cut down. Do you know how many of them say something that I would consider genuinely controversial? Hardly any of them, and that’s why I’m well known for slagging them all off. I have to. I’m not good at keeping quiet. I have a big mouth, and when I’m confronted with wave after wave of nonsense I have to say something about it.

There are so many ‘controversial’ topics that you won’t find being discussed in contemporary, mainstream comic books. DC and Marvel are the worst, they don’t discuss anything that’s not corporate approved, but don’t expect anything revolutionary or genuinely rebellious coming from the rest of the comic book publishers either. Expect a tonne of nostalgia and a million variant covers, but truth? That’s a depressing rarity in comic books today.

Here’s just a few of the subjects that the mainstream comic book genre is terrified of discussing:

1- The problems with Israel.
2- Mainstream media manipulation.
3- The problems with Islam.
4- The men’s rights movement.
5- Third wave feminism and how it has been used to destroy families and make females more dependent upon government as a substitute ‘Daddy’ figure in the lives of their children.
6- Saudi Arabia, and the west’s ties to this murderous regime.
7- China owning US debt, and having all of it’s ‘outsourced’ jobs.
8- US wars of aggression based on acknowledged lies.
9- Late stage democracy, and how your vote no longer even matters.
10- Anarchy or freedom from centralised control systems (Government).
11- The poisons in your food and water.
12- The poisons in vaccines.
13- Big pharma, suicide pills and the pink ribbon cancer con.
14- Guns, and how an unarmed population is an enslaved population.
15- Muslim suicide bombers (they never appear in comics).
16- Sunni/Shiaa, what is the difference between the two? You’ll never know if you keep on reading comics.
17- False flag attacks like 9/11 and the London tube bombing and how they are used to justify the Police state.
18- How the ‘race’ ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ cards are manipulated by the powers that shouldn’t be (government) in a process of thought control and censorship wrapped up as ‘tolerance.’
19- Public schooling as government indoctrination camps, turning children into order following slaves to the corporate/fascist state.
20- International privately owned banking, including the concept of fractional reserve lending, designed to enslave the masses under waves of unpayable debt.


This list could go on and on, and on. Seriously, I could get to 100 without even thinking about it, and if I gave it some serious thought the list would probably get closer to 500. So when I read a book like this one (Defender) I react in the only way that I can. I go to my computer, write up some truth, and stick it on my blog. That truth is simple. I said it earlier on in this article, but it needs to be repeated ad nauseum:

MAINSTREAM WESTERN COMIC BOOKS DO NOT NEED TO BE CENSORED BECAUSE THEY ARE ALREADY CENSORING THEMSELVES.

That’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s what’s happening right now, and that’s why I continue to write my ‘controversial’ reviews here on my blog. I applaud SOME of the work being done by the 'Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’ (not the stuff where they try to get sick books put in school libraries) but they need to look a bit closer to home.

Censorship in liberal fantasyland works not by having censors, but by having the politically correct, feminist liberal ‘tolerant’writers subconsciously censoring themselves. They can talk about gay rights or women’s rights as much as they like, but genuinely controversial subject matters like Islamic terrorism are a no-go area.

Defender Issue #1 has the laudable goal of standing up for free speech, but what it is really about is protecting PC liberal free speech. The freedoms we really need to protect are the freedoms to say what is NOT politically correct, and I don’t see that debate being raised in this comic book. I’m not enjoying writing up this article where I’m criticising a comic book that has been designed to protect free speech, but the fact of the matter right now is that mainstream western comic books don’t even need to be censored, as the writers are already censoring themselves.