Doctor Doom - should he be retconned like Ultimate Nick Fury?
badbad
(SP?).
What if the Marvel writers retconned Dr Doom (in the Ultimate Universe)
as a black man, say African-American or African? What if he were a Muslim?
I merely ask this question because the original Dr. Doom had roots in
the classic mad-doctor mythos which conveniently tied into the Cold War
and Eastern Europe geopolitical conflicts of the time.
In our modern world the current geopolitical obsessions are more related
to other regions of the world. So I ask quite seriously, shouldn't the
Ultimate Universe take the re-imagining of our cultural obessions to its
logical conclusion?
\
badbad
Brad Haga
badbad <no_...@liveshere.net> wrote:
Personally I am never in favor of mere retcons as they do nothing but
muddy continuity and eventually get changed to something else. Nick
Fury in the Ultimates universe was -not- a retcon as (to my knowledge)
he was always presented there as a black/African-American man with an
uncanny resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson while the mainstream Marvel
universe's Nick Fury remains a grizzled caucasian.
So, no, I don't think that the Ultimates version of Dr. Doom should be
retroactively changed to some sort of terrorist mastermind, Muslim or
otherwise. If a new Dr. Doom were being created for another comics line
that sort of thing could be interesting or it could be used for an
entirely new character just as easily. To change a character's modus
operandi, ethnic and even religious background mid-stream just smacks of
bad writing and even worse editorial control.
H. Brad Haga
plausible prose man
> This is a serious question which occurred to me when I read BlackMystech
> (SP?).
>
> What if the Marvel writers retconned Dr Doom (in the Ultimate Universe)
> as a black man, say African-American or African? What if he were a Muslim?
That idea has a lot going for it, except he's already been
established, in the Ultimate Universe, as pretty much the same
character we know now.
> I merely ask this question because the original Dr. Doom had roots in
> the classic mad-doctor mythos which conveniently tied into the Cold War
> and Eastern Europe geopolitical conflicts of the time.
Isn't that Kurt "I've never had an original idea in my life" Busiek's
go on Lex Luthor? You know, in his different little Astro City books?
FSogol
> To change a character's modus
> operandi, ethnic and even religious background mid-stream just smacks of
> bad writing and even worse editorial control.
>
I agree. You want a evil mastermind Muslim character, then write one.
Doom is already an established character used in comics for 45 years.
--
FSogol
Duggy
Doctor Doom doesn't exist.
===
= DUG.
===
Rob D.
I dunno.
Look at how Lex Luthor was written (before the current screwup of the
character).
First he was the mad-scientist. This was back during the early days of
the Bomb and the Cold War, when there was so much worry about where
science might lead up. A mad scientist made th eperfect villian.
Then he was a millionaire businessman/corporate sleazeball. This fit
in well with the "Greed is Good" ethic portrayed in "Wall Street,"
alond with the corporate raiders and such from the mid-80's.
Then in the 90's, he became a politician, and eventually, POTUS. Once
more, it fit well with the concerns of the time, with the corruption
in the oval office reaching the point where the real POTUS had to go
under oath and then lie about what he had said or done in his function
as governor (and no, I'm not trying to get a political flame-war
going. I didn't like Nixon or Bush II, either. But they're not really
the era where Luthor was made a politician, are they.)
They point I was to make is that the main villain needs to stay
relevant, and if he has to be rewritten, so be it.
This is hard to do with Batman, since the Joker is kind of limeted;
he has to be an insane clown. But over in Spider-Man (bad as Brand
New Day is), the main villian Norman Osborn/Green Goblin has been
rewritten as a high-level government shadow-ops leader . . . again,
something close to the concerns of the day.
So if the writers of FF want to make their Nemesis character relevant
to the times, and if it takes a retcon to do it, then so be it. For
storytelling purposes, it makes some sense.
Rob
William George Ferguson
wrote:
The Lex Luthor who ran for President was, and is, the same Lex Luthor that
was an evil (but not to himself) industrialist. LexCorp is still the the
big evil industrial corporation in the DC universe. None of his backstory
changed when he ran for President.
Similarly, the Norman Osborn who is the head of the government's superhero
program is the same bugfuck crazy Norman Osborm that's been around for a
decade or so (he wasn't bugfuck crazy when he started out, just an evil
industrialist, the serum he took to have powers as the Green Goblin drove
him crazy as a side-effect in the original continuity. That was retconned
a couple of decades ago to him always being crazy, around the same time
that Lex was retconned into being and industrialist instead of a mad
scientist.
In neither of those cases was the backstory of the character massively
retconned, they just came up with a different scheme to gain power.
Doom being a terrorist wouldn't be a problem (it's easy enough to come up
with reasons for him to start committing terrorist acts). Doom being a
muslim terrorist would be a massive and unnecessary retcon.
--
I have a theory, it could be bunnies
Scott Eiler
wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 18:54:33 -0800 (PST), "Rob D." <fr.robert....@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >The point I was to make is that the main villain needs to stay
> >relevant, and if he has to be rewritten, so be it.
> >he has to be an insane clown.
Well, maybe, but that leave a lot of room for relevancy, even without
a reboot. Who remembers when the Joker got declared Iran's ambassador
to the United Nations? Hint: dead Robin.
> Doom being a terrorist wouldn't be a problem (it's easy enough to come up
> with reasons for him to start committing terrorist acts). Doom being a
> muslim terrorist would be a massive and unnecessary retcon.
Not necessarily a retcon... Doom comes from gypsy blood in the
Balkans, so he's probably part Turkish or Bosnian or Albanian. That
is to say, he's already part Moslem. Doom often traffics with
demons. Why not with genies?
Unknown
"Scott Eiler" <sei...@eilertech.com> wrote in message
news:68f4b8e8-4a4f-450d...@h2g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
> On Feb 2, 12:44 am, William George Ferguson <wmgfr...@newsguy.com>
> wrote:
>> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 18:54:33 -0800 (PST), "Rob D."
>> <fr.robert....@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >The point I was to make is that the main villain needs to stay
>> >relevant, and if he has to be rewritten, so be it.
>> > This is hard to do with Batman, since the Joker is kind of limited;
>> >he has to be an insane clown.
>
> Well, maybe, but that leave a lot of room for relevancy, even without
> a reboot. Who remembers when the Joker got declared Iran's ambassador
> to the United Nations? Hint: dead Robin.
Ugh. One of the most idiotic plot twists ever in a terrible, terrible
story. ("Death in the Family", if you didn't remember.) Was it Iran or
their generic Arab country?
OM
<sei...@eilertech.com> wrote:
>Not necessarily a retcon... Doom comes from gypsy blood in the
>Balkans, so he's probably part Turkish or Bosnian or Albanian.
...Too white. Dutchy of Grand Fenwick at least.
OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[
Duggy
> > a reboot. Who remembers when the Joker got declared Iran's ambassador
> > to the United Nations? Hint: dead Robin.
>
> Ugh. One of the most idiotic plot twists ever in a terrible, terrible
> story. ("Death in the Family", if you didn't remember.) Was it Iran or
> their generic Arab country?
Qurac. And, yes, he was, according the wikipedia entry for that
country.
===
= DUG.
===
Duggy
> Not necessarily a retcon... Doom comes from gypsy blood in the
> Balkans, so he's probably part Turkish or Bosnian or Albanian. That
> is to say, he's already part Moslem.
I thought Gypsies originated in India.
===
= DUG.
===
plausible prose man
That's where genetic and linguistic evidence points, but there
definitely are large populations of muslim gypsies in those areas, and
probably even in India before the diaspora. Still, I agree with
whoever that that's an awful lot of different backstory you'd have to
drop in all at once to an established character and it doesn't really
work with what we know about the character; Doom is no one's slave,
not even Allah's.
You might, if you have a go at a new Ultimate style universe, have a
go at a Dr. Doom who comes from Muslim culture, but to make him
recognizably Doom you'd have to...well, you can't, again, understand
Doom going around saying all praise to Allah, to whom all praise is
due. Rather, he'd be trying to figure out the combination of magic and
technology he'd need to steal the power of Allah.
Michael
with legs like the aliens from "The Arrival" to suddenly looking exactly
like his 616 counterpart.
Michael
grinningdemon
wrote:
Probably the same way Ultimate FF went from being exactly like the
regular version in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up to dropping 20 years and
starting from scratch in their own book...or who Ultimate Nick Fury
went from looking more like James Bond in early Ultimate X-Men to
being a Sam L. Jackson clone.
Michael
Michael
Robert Carnegie
I thought he got to do Lex Luthor as much as he wanted to writing
Superman. And no, strangely, Samaritan's antagonist Infidel
apparently is not a Muslim believer. He's a sceptical scientist. He
just likes Arabian Nights stuff. More at
<http://notthebeastmaster.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/infidels.html>
And Astro City isn't mainly about the superhero powers and fights, so
it doesn't matter if those look quite like some other superhero powers
and fights, which most superhero material does anyway. For instance,
"due to evil plot, dead people come back" has just been run in DC
Comics AND in X-Men.
plausible prose man
> plausible prose man wrote:
> > On Jan 31, 5:39 pm, badbad <no_...@liveshere.net> wrote:
> > > This is a serious question which occurred to me when I read BlackMystech
> > > (SP?).
>
> > > What if the Marvel writers retconned Dr Doom (in the Ultimate Universe)
> > > as a black man, say African-American or African? What if he were a Muslim?
>
> > That idea has a lot going for it, except he's already been
> > established, in the Ultimate Universe, as pretty much the same
> > character we know now.
>
> > > I merely ask this question because the original Dr. Doom had roots in
> > > the classic mad-doctor mythos which conveniently tied into the Cold War
> > > and Eastern Europe geopolitical conflicts of the time.
>
> > Isn't that Kurt "I've never had an original idea in my life" Busiek's
> > go on Lex Luthor? You know, in his different little Astro City books?
>
> I thought he got to do Lex Luthor as much as he wanted to writing
> Superman.
Perhaps not "as much as he wanted to," since, you know, corporate
takes some interest in what you do to their flagship characters.
> And no, strangely, Samaritan's antagonist Infidel
> apparently is not a Muslim believer.
He's a Muslim non-believer?
> He's a sceptical scientist.
Well...mostly, he's a supervillain in a comic book. As I mentioned
earlier, there's only so well a character like Luthor or Doom could
ever be ret-conned or "reimagined" as devoutly religious; If Luthor
can't stand Superman going around thinking he's better than everyone
else, imagine how he'd feel about Jesus or Mohammed.
> He
> just likes Arabian Nights stuff.
Right, so in other words he's muslim luthor.
> More at
> <http://notthebeastmaster.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/infidels.html>
Which supports what I'm saying. maybe you could do better with your
cites next time.
"This is the comic that introduces the archenemy of Samaritan, the
Superman-archetype for Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's Astro City.
His name is Infidel, and as you can see he draws on Muslim iconography
even more openly than Samaritan draws on the Christian variety,
transforming the hero's vaguely dove-like symbol into a crescent and
star. I don't think Busiek and co-designer Alex Ross intend any
cultural judgments with this juxtaposition; they're just following the
logic of comic book antagonisms, distorting Samaritan's imagery and
concept to come up with his opposite number.
It makes for good old-fashioned superhero comics and unsavory cultural
politics. Pairing these two symbol systems as hero and villain
implies that Christianity and Islam are locked in a combat as unending
and, needless to say, morally stark as that of Superman and Luthor,
Batman and the Joker, or Captain America and the Red Skull. I don't
think Busiek and Ross intended their character design to fulfill that
kind of propagandistic function, but at some point intention stops
mattering--propaganda is what they've got. Interestingly, though,
most of that propaganda isn't aimed at Islam."
> And Astro City isn't mainly about the superhero powers and fights,
No, it's mainly about the Captain Ersatz's and Kurt pretending to be
a real novelist. Except, you know, his main characters are all
superheroes and supervillains, so however much he apes Raymond
Chandler his resolutions usually involve someone punching someone else
in the face or smashing their hero-defeater machine.
> so
> it doesn't matter if those look quite like some other superhero powers
> and fights, which most superhero material does anyway.
I guess, if you're undemanding.
> For instance,
> "due to evil plot, dead people come back" has just been run in DC
> Comics AND in X-Men.-
Which is mainly you saying Astro City doesn't just have one CE
Superman; it has dozens.
Michael Wood
"plausible prose man" <George...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:4dbc6b09-42a9-41d3...@y33g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
On Feb 7, 9:13 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> plausible prose man wrote:
> > On Jan 31, 5:39 pm, badbad <no_...@liveshere.net> wrote:
> > > This is a serious question which occurred to me when I read
> > > BlackMystech
> > > (SP?).
>
Just read the blog. Interestingly very culturo-centric.
Number 1: Lay off Kurt. It "homage". Get over it.
Number 2: Just because someone puts it in a blog doesn't make it so.
Number 3: By definition, an "Infidel" will be someone who does NOT follow
the Muslim faith, interestingly a Samaritan according to Wikipedia:
The Samaritans (Hebrew: ????????? Shomronim, Arabic: ??????????
as-Saamariyun) are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Religiously, they
are the adherents to Samaritanism, a parallel but separate religion to
Judaism or any of its historical forms. Based on the Samaritan Torah,
Samaritans claim their worship is the true religion of the ancient
Israelites prior to the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in
the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they assert is a related
but altered and amended religion brought back by the exiled returnees.
So Samaritan is a parallel "Jew", not a Christian icon (actualy used as an
example by Jesus because of the bitterness between the groups). After all,a
good Samaritan was a shock to the Jewish audience. you will notice that
Samritan has a star. not a cross, on his chest.
Flying carpets is more a cultiral Persian icon than a Muslim icon (and the
Persians do not all like the intrusion of the Arabs into their region lo
those many centuries ago). I rather doubt any of the Muslims that frighten
Americans so really discuss Djinn and flying carpets in their theological
colleges. My initial exposure to Muslims was in the manner of rather tiny
Malaysian women studying at university, so Islam doesn't worry me as much as
say US Christian fundamentalism.
It seems to me that Busiek is playing with preconceptions rather than
re-inforcing stereotypes, just as he has always done. Like he did with the
Confessor and Steeljack. Like he did with the Dark Ages, challenging the
idea that super-powers are a good idea at all.
My 2 cents worth. So long ... and thanks for all the fish.
Michael Wood
Robert Carnegie
plausible prose man wrote:
> On Feb 7, 9:13 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> > And Astro City isn't mainly about the superhero powers and fights,
>
> No, it's mainly about the Captain Ersatz's and Kurt pretending to be
> a real novelist. Except, you know, his main characters are all
> superheroes and supervillains, so however much he apes Raymond
> Chandler his resolutions usually involve someone punching someone else
> in the face or smashing their hero-defeater machine.
The main characters are NOT all superheroes and supervillains. Jeez.
The current story is about two kids whose home got invaded by a member
of secret-conspiracy-to-take-over-the-world (y'know, HIVE, KOBRA,
HYDRA, AIM, ...) who casually murdered their parents. And how that
obviously messed up the kids' whole lives. Also, there's an epic time-
travel adventure for the Silver Agent happening just in the corner of
the page.
SOMETIMES the characters are superheroes and supervillains.
> > so
> > it doesn't matter if those look quite like some other superhero powers
> > and fights, which most superhero material does anyway.
>
> I guess, if you're undemanding.
>
> > For instance,
> > "due to evil plot, dead people come back" has just been run in DC
> > Comics AND in X-Men.-
>
> Which is mainly you saying Astro City doesn't just have one CE
> Superman; it has dozens.
I'm saying that in Astro City a lot of the actual superhero and
villain characters and fights are background scenery, like trees. You
don't complain that in a comic the trees all look the same, do you?
Ironically, Brent/Brett Anderson (I forget which one of those is a
1990s British pop star) draws a pretty fine tree in the latest issue...