Fenris: Re: Stupid Fan Theory #1. In the late 1970’s I was friends with a guy who owned a comics shop, attended all the conventions, and was probably a bigger comics geek than the people on this thread. He told me that this theory was an in-joke among DC’s writers. Supposedly, Element Lad’s partner was Matter-Eater Lad. If Charles was correct – and he wasn’t stupid, nor, to my knowledge, did he ever lie to me – then this should be the Stupid Writer Theory.
As for the Disco Dazzler, I never said the character was well-handled; I said I thought she had much potential. A good writer could get a lot of mileage out of the concept of a mutant who wants to be a pop singer in defiance of her father’s wishes to be an attorney. Not only would you have the standard theme of tolerance, but you could write stories touching on snobbery and class differences (imagine the horrors of Allison falling in love with a lead guitarist who smokes dope and comes from a working-class background). I think someone like Alan Moore, or even a writer with the talent of Paul Levit,z could have made the Dazzler into a major hit.
IMO, Chris Claremont was vastly overrated as a writer. I think Martin Pasko did a pretty good job in E-Man 2 and 3 (the First issues) of skewering Claremont’s weaknesses. Now, I’m going to duck and run before the legions of X-Man fans start calling for sauteed coyote.
The heck it wasn’t mentioned again. And yes, I misread Colossal Boy. Goodness, it showed up while he was dating Yera, and while his mother was president of Earth. Nothing major, but little cultural asides.
Oh God. I’d COMPLETELY forgotten the “Now I’m Jewish! Now I’m a Gypsy” thing with Magneto.
(I vote for Jewish…somehow it seemed…anti-semitic to say “Nope! Jews can’t be villians.”)
Someone did a really exhaustive bit of research “proving” that Magneto was, despite the stories to the contrary, Jewish, not gypsy. Just found it: it was here
Peyote: Fans and writers in the mid-late '70s wrote for and read a APA (a fan driven fanzine) called Interlac. As far as I know, most of the stoopid fan theories (even ones generated by writers) were expounded upon there. So it’s likely that any writer would have seen it (and could have even proposed it there)! I’m using the term “Supid Fan Theories” to describe stuff that came out of the fannish community: and espeically with Legion (probably more than any other comic) the writers also tended to be fans.
… Bloody heck, did I just out-points Fenris? Aw, it’s nothing. Really. Chaim knows more about the Legion than anyone else, so you’re just lucky I showed up before he did.
(Worked in a comic store for four-five years… and been collecting since I was six or so.)
I think he’s got you, Fenris (no doubt, another sign of the Apocalypse). I checked out the link he mentioned, and I remember Gim’s mother making that remark about them bringing up the children as Jewish. I also think Levitz showed the Allons celebrating Yom Kipper or another Jewis holiday.
A few years back they put out a little info-mini-series that ran through a quick synopsis of UXM 1-300 or so in about 4 books. Don’t remember what it was called or anything more about it, though. And it wasn’t much for big-picture stuff. And wasn’t recent at all. In other words, useless for answering your question.
He could be both. Not only do some Roma follow the Jewish faith, but mixed Jewish-Romani marriages are not uncommon in some Eastern European countries.
I still have (somewhere around here) a few articles from when that isssue came out. Kirby had always intended Ben to be Jewish. 40 or so years ago, he did a portrait of the Thing in yarmulke, tallis, and tefillin, holding the Torah. Heck, how long was it before Lee and Kirby publicly admitted to being Jewish?
Very true. but if you read that link, it’s pretty clear that for Claremont’s 15 year (or so) run, he was supposed to be a Polish Jew and Nicezia (sp) made it clear that he was a Gypsy as opposed to a Jew. It’s weird, it contradicts WAY too much other stuff and I have no idea why he did it. I have a sneeking suspicion that Fabian Nicezia(sp) felt somehow that having a Jewish Holocaust survivor was somehow disrespectful (although why he felt that a Roma survivor of the Holocaust would be ok, I dunno) : anyway, I’m willing to believe his heart was in the right place. His head, however…
Besides, Marvel’s number one villain…hell, the single best bad-guy created in the entire Silver AGE is a Romani: Dr. Doom.
< Kidding >
The Roma already have a villain. We Jews demand equity!
< /Kidding >
Fenris
PS: is the term “Gypsy” considered incorrect/rude?
Note: much of this post was cribbed from an earlier post I wrote in another thread.
Lee never hid his Jewishness at all. He’s always said that he used “Lee” when writing funny-books because he wanted to the first time Stanley Leiber appeared in print to be when he wrote the great American Novel. His brother Larry Leiber was running around at Marvel around day one without a name change and his brother-in-law Martin Goodman (also Jewish) ran Marvel. (Factoid: as far as I know, Izzy Cohen from Sgt Fury was the first explicitly Jewish character in comics. Guess who created him? )
And I’ve seen several of those Kirby drawings (in The Kirby Collector, IIRC) for years, and I certainly believe Jack when he said he’d intended that the Thing should be Jewish…but that doesn’t change the fact that for 40+ years, he wasn’t.
If Waid had done a story where Ben suddenly learned his maternal grandmother was Jewish and Ben decided to explore his newfound roots, I’d have been thrilled. But Ben’s been to Confession on several occasions. Ben regularly celebrates Christmas (and not always the “Santa” kind of Christmas either), and I’m certain he’s gone to Mass. I believe there was a Marvel Two-In-One story where he was at the funeral of a relative who was buried in a standard Christian ceremony. The “J” in Benjamin J. Grimm comes from Ben’s uncle Jake who’s still very much alive (We saw him in FF #240-something and in several issues of The Thing). Jews traditionally name their children after deceased relatives, not living ones. When we’ve seen Ben married in WHAT-IF stories, or in parallel universes, or in flashbacks from the future, he’s always been married by a priest. No chuppah, no yarmulke, no glass-stomping, etc. Even my so-ultra-Reformed that they don’t even read the Torah in Synagogue cousin (and her hubby) got married under a canopy.
Ben’s been written, for 40 years, as an Irish(?) Catholic. I don’t buy Waid’s story as written. I appreciate the motives that Waid had and since Ben’s one of my favorite Marvel characters, I wish (pun alert) things had gone a different way, but as it is, it undermines too much, IMO, and it’s too late to just change things. The best anaology I can give is this: if we’d seen drawings by Kirby showing that he’d always intended that Ben was actually a small, elderly Black woman, I wouldn’t want them to suddenly say “Poof! He…no…SHE always was!” Imagine if, 2/3ds of the way through Return of the King, as he’s wrestling with Gollum on top of Mt. Doom, Frodo had “suddenly remembered” that he was really an Elf and not Bilbo’s nephew (or even a Hobbit) after all.
In addition, I believe it’ll never be mentioned again in a substantive way, unless it’s dragged out as ham-handed “Very Special Issue” (“Ben learns the TRUE MEANING of Passover!”).
We’re not gonna see Ben lighting the Shabbat candles, he’s not gonna be giving dreidles to Franklin and Valeria, we won’t see him lighting the Yortzeit candle and saying Kaddish for his parents. We won’t see him nailing a mezzuzah to the doorframe next time the Baxter Building’s destroyed and rebuilt. So why bother damaging an already shaky backstory (if he and Reed weren’t in WWII fighting alongside Nick Fury, how’d Nick know to trust them when the Hate Monger first appeared) with something that I firmly believe will be a non-issue?
Obviously YMMV on this, but I just found it jarring, distracting, and however well meant, a subtle undermining of the character.
Okay, how does Marvel’s “Rocket went up 10 years ago” square with Magneto living through the Holocaust? The other characters Fenris listed, yeah, it’s a stretch, but you can squeeze them in. Has this just not been adressed yet?
Oooh, I’ve got another question. How fast is Spidey’s web-swinging? It seems that swinging from buildings would be about the pace of a brisk jog, but I’ve got vague memories of him following a car (granted, in New York that could be a brisk jog)
)