Comic Controversy
I had been quite intrigued by the news of new X-Men series that are coming out this year. Firstly there's X-Men: Gold and X-Men: Blue both of which are starting this month. I wasn't entirely bothered about them initially because there's no Wolverine but then I saw a teaser image for issues 4 and 5 of X-Men: Blue which are out in June and have the title 'The Return of ___'. The image for issue 5 has been pixelated for spoilers but those are some very obvious looking claws there! The image for issue 4 is a very obvious nod to the Death of Wolverine: Three Months To Die cover too.
Obviously, it's not going to be the original Wolverine coming back - that would require much more publicity and attention - so the main question was who else it would be. It sounds like it's going to be Jimmy Hudson, Wolverine's son in another universe. Because you can't have too many people with claws running around.
The Gold series features Old Man Logan which is an older version of Wolverine from another alternate universe, from the series cunningly titled Old Man Logan. That's the version that the recent film Logan was based on. He's all right but he's just not quite the same. I thought I might give the Gold series a try because it's supposed to be returning to the more classic storylines with the persecution of mutants, where they're feared and hated for being different, which certainly never stops being relevant.
The first issue of the Gold series came out recently. I'd had a quick look at the first couple of pages but hadn't had chance to read it properly. So I was rather stunned when I found out about the controversy over some messages hidden in the artwork. In one respect they're not exactly hidden because they're kind of blatant but it's more the meaning that's hidden. I'd seen one of them but had no clue what it was referring to, I just thought it looked rather odd. There's two main images, one of Colossus in a t-shirt with a reference to a verse from the Qur'an that says not to have Jews and Christians as your leaders/allies (from what I can gather there's two different translations, one says leaders, the other says allies). The second image is of a street with the numbers 212 and 51 in the background which refer to political protests in Indonesia - from what I can gather the protests are because the current leader of Indonesia is not Muslim. It also features Kitty Pride with a jewellery shop sign behind her head, except that her hair covers some of the sign so it just says 'Jew' instead. She's just given a very impressive speech about tolerance too.
Given what the X-Men have always stood for, it's pretty disgusting that that series has been used to share such messages. Bigotry and hatred like that shouldn't be in any comic book, but it just seems particularly bad for it to be in the X-Men. It also doesn't seem coincidental that Colossus and Kitty Pride have been used. Colossus is an atheist but his best friend is Catholic (Nightcrawler) and he was in a relationship with a Jew (Kitty Pride). Supposedly, the Indonesian artist responsible was pretty proud of what he'd done and had no regrets at all, bragging that the comic was now going to be worth something. He later posted an apology but then deleted it, and now he's saying that his career is over. No shit. I can't see any publisher wanting to touch him after this.
Oyyyy.
I actually wanted to say that the original Wolverine is actually coming back! Woohoo! It's just a one-off comic but he teams up with Laura (X-23) no less! Annoyingly I can't find where I originally read it and I can't remember the title now. All I can remember is that it was a series of team-ups with old and new versions of characters and would be running from July to September. It will be interesting to see how they're going to wangle that one, especially as Wolverine was last seen very much dead after being coated liberally in adamantium.
ETA: The team-up series is Marvel's Generations.
Obviously, it's not going to be the original Wolverine coming back - that would require much more publicity and attention - so the main question was who else it would be. It sounds like it's going to be Jimmy Hudson, Wolverine's son in another universe. Because you can't have too many people with claws running around.
The Gold series features Old Man Logan which is an older version of Wolverine from another alternate universe, from the series cunningly titled Old Man Logan. That's the version that the recent film Logan was based on. He's all right but he's just not quite the same. I thought I might give the Gold series a try because it's supposed to be returning to the more classic storylines with the persecution of mutants, where they're feared and hated for being different, which certainly never stops being relevant.
The first issue of the Gold series came out recently. I'd had a quick look at the first couple of pages but hadn't had chance to read it properly. So I was rather stunned when I found out about the controversy over some messages hidden in the artwork. In one respect they're not exactly hidden because they're kind of blatant but it's more the meaning that's hidden. I'd seen one of them but had no clue what it was referring to, I just thought it looked rather odd. There's two main images, one of Colossus in a t-shirt with a reference to a verse from the Qur'an that says not to have Jews and Christians as your leaders/allies (from what I can gather there's two different translations, one says leaders, the other says allies). The second image is of a street with the numbers 212 and 51 in the background which refer to political protests in Indonesia - from what I can gather the protests are because the current leader of Indonesia is not Muslim. It also features Kitty Pride with a jewellery shop sign behind her head, except that her hair covers some of the sign so it just says 'Jew' instead. She's just given a very impressive speech about tolerance too.
Given what the X-Men have always stood for, it's pretty disgusting that that series has been used to share such messages. Bigotry and hatred like that shouldn't be in any comic book, but it just seems particularly bad for it to be in the X-Men. It also doesn't seem coincidental that Colossus and Kitty Pride have been used. Colossus is an atheist but his best friend is Catholic (Nightcrawler) and he was in a relationship with a Jew (Kitty Pride). Supposedly, the Indonesian artist responsible was pretty proud of what he'd done and had no regrets at all, bragging that the comic was now going to be worth something. He later posted an apology but then deleted it, and now he's saying that his career is over. No shit. I can't see any publisher wanting to touch him after this.
Oyyyy.
I actually wanted to say that the original Wolverine is actually coming back! Woohoo! It's just a one-off comic but he teams up with Laura (X-23) no less! Annoyingly I can't find where I originally read it and I can't remember the title now. All I can remember is that it was a series of team-ups with old and new versions of characters and would be running from July to September. It will be interesting to see how they're going to wangle that one, especially as Wolverine was last seen very much dead after being coated liberally in adamantium.
ETA: The team-up series is Marvel's Generations.