on comic book superheroes

yay, my first post of 2011! happy new years day everyone, hope it's a great one for you and a great year as well.

via hoydens, i found this post about the right wing reaction to a new french comic book hero appearing as part of the whole batman thing by DC comics. sorry, i'm not into comics so can't sound technical about it all. but the problem right-wing bloggers have to this new superhero is that he "is French, an Algerian immigrant, and – cue the melodrama – a Muslim".

which means that somehow bilal is somehow not a "real" french person, and of course can't possibly be on the side of good since muslims are those people who all just go about killing other people. a "fact" which an anon commentor felt the need to point out on my post about the death of the 30 refugees. no, i didn't post the comment, and i can't believe that anyone would have this reaction to the deaths of people fleeing from war zones, but such persons apparently exist & need to share their miserable heartlessness with others.

but the post at racialicious is well worth a read, especially in regards to conditions in the slums of paris. and i love the way the post ends, with that well documented "undocumented immigrant superhero", superman.

while on the theme of comics, i also wanted to share news of two comics in development. there's this one featuring:

... a Muslim boy in a wheelchair with superpowers.

The new superhero is the brainchild of a group of disabled young Americans and Syrians who were brought together last month in Damascus by the Open Hands Intiative, a non-profit organization founded by U.S. philanthropist and businessman Jay T. Snyder.

The superhero's appearance hasn't been finalized, but an early sketch shows a Muslim boy who lost his legs in a landmine accident and later becomes the Silver Scorpion after discovering he has the power to control metal with his mind.

and i also liked this one:

Even if you deliberately set out to try to dream up the least probable superhero ever, it's unlikely that you'd manage to come up with a character as far-fetched as Batina the Hidden. Forget Wonder Worm, or a man born with the powers of a newt, Batina is a superhero of a kind the world hasn't until now seen. It's not just that she's a Muslim woman, from a country best known for harbouring al-Qaida operatives – Yemen – but that she wears an altogether new kind of super-person costume: a burqa.

yup, that i'd like to see.