Comic writers and Other Cultures Question

[Reptisaurus!]

Are there any Mainstream American comic writers who have done a decent job portraying cultures that they themselves haven't descended from? Let's make a list!

[stelok]

Most American writers lack both knowledge of and respect for other cultures. Look what the Archie Comics had done to other cultures in Veronica's travel adventures around the world.

But I believe that the writer has done a decent job explaining the Latin American cultures of Mexico and Brazil in the Disney comic book adaptation of The Three Caballeros

[stealthwise]

Gaiman did a great job with many cultures in Sandman, especially in terms of storytelling tradition, although the book did keep a fairly Euro-centric viewpoint throughout.

[ultramandingo]

.........chester browns "yummy fur" is how i picture canada

[Reptisaurus!]

But I believe that the writer has done a decent job explaining the Latin American cultures of Mexico and Brazil in the Disney comic book adaptation of The Three Caballeros

Huh. Haven't read that. Disney seems to rank pretty well here, though. Or at Barks and Rosa do, except, y'know, turning everyone into ducks.



Gaiman did a great job with many cultures in Sandman, especially in terms of storytelling tradition, although the book did keep a fairly Euro-centric viewpoint throughout.


Yeah, agreed. It kind of sucks we can't come up with examples for this that aren't NEIL GAIMAN!!!! though. There's gotta be some not-so-great writers with a talent for this.

[joe bloke]

I seem to remember that Don McGregor did a pretty fair job of representing both the Gay and Black cultures back in the 'seventies. Or maybe I'm just remembering this as a " you had to be there " thing. Certainly, he seems ( to me, at least ) to be the first comics writer who treated Gays and Blacks as anything other than tokens.

[sgt pepper]

.........chester browns "yummy fur" is how i picture canada

But isn't Chester Canadian? Now Joe Matt, who I believe is American, has done an excellent job of portraying Canada and Canadians. Apparently they are all disgusting, fat landlords and young, fetishized, usually Asian women. And apparently if you go to a diner in Canada, every other customer is a comics creator.

Edit: Oops, I guess that should be "fetishised" for Canadians.

[sgt pepper]

Most American writers lack both knowledge of and respect for other cultures. Look what the Archie Comics had done to other cultures in Veronica's travel adventures around the world.
[/I]

From the same era when those enlightened European writers, such as Herge, were creating such respectful portrayals of other cultures? Come on. It's not difficult to slam America and really, there are plenty of good reasons to, but you've gotta try harder than that.

[ultramandingo]

But isn't Chester Canadian? Now Joe Matt, who I believe is American, has done an excellent job of portraying Canada and Canadians. Apparently they are all disgusting, fat landlords and young, fetishized, usually Asian women. And apparently if you go to a diner in Canada, every other customer is a comics creator.

Edit: Oops, I guess that should be "fetishised" for Canadians.

.............now that i think of it , canadian chester brown portrayed the us president as a evil talking weiner on the end of a clown !!! too bad we dont have any spare troops left to do some invading ...err, liberating

[Reptisaurus!]

.............now that i think of it , canadian chester brown portrayed the us president as a evil talking weiner on the end of a clown !!

Yeah. Chester's a Canadian but he understands American culture pretty well.

[EmeraldCity]

Most American writers lack both knowledge of and respect for other cultures. Look what the Archie Comics had done to other cultures in Veronica's travel adventures around the world.

But I believe that the writer has done a decent job explaining the Latin American cultures of Mexico and Brazil in the Disney comic book adaptation of The Three Caballeros


well... again to be fair, what manga has done another culture outside of Japan correctly? This doesn't just fall onto American comics..

but this is the perfect excuse for me to post this pic...

http://robliefeld.net/images/xforce/xf8.jpg

Chinese characters!! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[stelok]

well... again to be fair, what manga has done another culture outside of Japan correctly? This doesn't just fall onto American comics..


Gunslinger Girl manga is set in Italy. The author Yu Aida seems to understand a lot about the culture, including politics, architecture and arts of Italy.

The first chapters of a manga called Home began in 17th century Spain and the story is about a Spanish girl who accompanies a samurai back to Japan. The artist has not delved much into the Spanish culture, but the author has depicted the 17th century Spaniards' reactions to the strange customs of the Japanese delegation well.

Speaking of Japan, I read only one issue of Akira Yoshida's work on Thor. I haven't read the whole series but I think Akira Yoshida has done a good job on portraying the Asgard based on norse mythology from the Scandinavia

[suedenim]

Don't feel too bad - many modern mainstream American comics writers are pretty awful at depicting their own culture, too.

The Big Two have always been pretty New York-centric, and there's an implicit worldview not unlike this famous cover:
http://www.thenewyorkerstore.com/assets/2/50326_l.jpg

[Sanagi]

Gaiman did a great job with many cultures in Sandman, especially in terms of storytelling tradition, although the book did keep a fairly Euro-centric viewpoint throughout.
I love Sandman and Gaiman's work in general, but he totally botched Susano-o (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susano-o), so I guess nobody's perfect.

[EmeraldCity]

Gunslinger Girl manga is set in Italy. The author Yu Aida seems to understand a lot about the culture, including politics, architecture and arts of Italy.

The first chapters of a manga called Home began in 17th century Spain and the story is about a Spanish girl who accompanies a samurai back to Japan. The artist has not delved much into the Spanish culture, but the author has depicted the 17th century Spaniards' reactions to the strange customs of the Japanese delegation well.

Speaking of Japan, I read only one issue of Akira Yoshida's work on Thor. I haven't read the whole series but I think Akira Yoshida has done a good job on portraying the Asgard based on norse mythology from the Scandinavia


Hmm... Can't say I have read Gunslinger yet. But it still never amazes me to see how some mangas protray people of other race... almost 1950s. But hey you take the good with the bad here..

[Sean Whitmore]

Gunslinger Girl manga is set in Italy. The author Yu Aida seems to understand a lot about the culture, including politics, architecture and arts of Italy.

They couldn't have done a worse job than the anime Noir did with the Italian Mafia.


SEAN

[K'Nort]

Gaiman did a great job with many cultures in Sandman, especially in terms of storytelling tradition, although the book did keep a fairly Euro-centric viewpoint throughout.

He's British rather than American, though. Lives in Minnesota now, but very British.

[stealthwise]

I love Sandman and Gaiman's work in general, but he totally botched Susano-o (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susano-o), so I guess nobody's perfect.

Did he? Most of the "screen time" that was given to the character seemed to be Loki impersonating him.

[Sanagi]

Did he? Most of the "screen time" that was given to the character seemed to be Loki impersonating him.
From the moment the character is introduced, he's a caricature of a Japanese businessman, overly polite and indirect. Which is the opposite of Susano-o's personality. It's a minor aspect of the plot, so it doesn't grate too badly, but it's still wrong.

[stelok]

Hmm... Can't say I have read Gunslinger yet. But it still never amazes me to see how some mangas protray people of other race... almost 1950s. But hey you take the good with the bad here..

To tell the truth I've never been to Italy.


I also forgot to mention that the Japanese artists called CLAMP (creators of Chobits and Cardcaptor Sakura) has written a manga that takes place in an ancient Korea. The manga is called The Legend of Chun Hyang. For Japanese They have put some interesting details like Korean honorifics, Ancient Korean style of government and Korean food into their manga. I don't know whether that may be true or not, but the CLAMP's' depictions of Korean characters is very positive and don't look like stereotypical to me. Especially during the time when Japanese-Korean relations were under strain.

[stealthwise]

From the moment the character is introduced, he's a caricature of a Japanese businessman, overly polite and indirect. Which is the opposite of Susano-o's personality. It's a minor aspect of the plot, so it doesn't grate too badly, but it's still wrong.

Well, that's how he's interacting with Morpheus, but that's how ALL of the gods were with the Sandman. Morpheus has something that they want, so they all treat him graciously. I get your point though.

[Reptisaurus!]

Didn't he show up in Lucifer, later, too? How was Carey's portrayal?

[ultramandingo]

.....whatabout bvk's portrayal of middle eastern zoo animals in "pride of bagdad"?

[stealthwise]

.....whatabout bvk's portrayal of middle eastern zoo animals in "pride of bagdad"?

Racist against lions.

I preferred The Lion King.

[ultramandingo]

..........kimba for me . plus speedracers portrayal of nascar is way cool

[Reptisaurus!]

Racist against lions.


Racist against BEARS. So all Arabic bears are psycho killer terrorists now?

[stealthwise]

Racist against BEARS. So all Arabic bears are psycho killer terrorists now?

No, just the Russian ones.







...
Filthy commie.

[EmeraldCity]

To tell the truth I've never been to Italy.


I also forgot to mention that the Japanese artists called CLAMP (creators of Chobits and Cardcaptor Sakura) has written a manga that takes place in an ancient Korea. The manga is called The Legend of Chun Hyang. For Japanese They have put some interesting details like Korean honorifics, Ancient Korean style of government and Korean food into their manga. I don't know whether that may be true or not, but the CLAMP's' depictions of Korean characters is very positive and don't look like stereotypical to me. Especially during the time when Japanese-Korean relations were under strain.

which would be since about 1903 or so...

[Crowforge]

Nobody gets another culture 100% right and most don't even come close.

[Karl H]

Although maybe not a cultural thing, I thought Morrison did a reasonable job with his introduction of Dust to the X-men and his 'Xorn' solo issue. Christos Gage did a reasonable job of British culture in the last Union Jack mini too.

[Lorendiac]

Are there any Mainstream American comic writers who have done a decent job portraying cultures that they themselves haven't descended from? Let's make a list!

Offhand, I don't know of a single DC writer who has family roots in any of the cultures of Krypton, Tamaran, Thanagar, Oa, New Genesis, Apokolips, Skartaris, Atlantis, Markovia, Kahndaq, Themyscira . . . come to think of it, I don't think any of the great Batman writers have ever spent a day of their lives in the peculiar place known as Gotham City, where voters tolerate things they'd never tolerate in real American metropolises!

And yet some writers do compelling jobs of storytelling, with plots set in those cultures!

Sorry, I just couldn't resist . . . You may have meant "real-world cultures," but you didn't say so! You wouldn't want me to pass up an opportunity like that, would you? ;)

[Nitz the Bloody]

Clever joke, Lorendiac. :) But while on principle a writer can write on stuff outside their experience ( see: shut-in Emily Dickinson's poetry about human experience and sensuality ), it's much easier to write about a made-up culture with a few hundred magazines of history shaped by some dozen writers than a real one with a few hundred or thousand years shaped by some millions of people.

That said, that's no excuse for not doing proper research...

[Lorendiac]

Come to think of it: I'm not absolutely sure about this, but I think I once read, ages ago, that it's believed that Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan of the Apes, never actually set foot on any portion of the African continent in his entire life, before or after he started writing those bestselling stories.

(Of course, half the time he had Tarzan stumbling across long-lost cities whose cultures ERB felt free to invent from scratch on the grounds that they had been virtually isolated from the rest of the world for centuries or even millennia . . . so I guess he wasn't too worried about having anthropologists screaming bloody murder at the way he was mutilating authentic cultural characteristics . . .)

[EmeraldCity]

I think Tarzan is a bad example, because most of the story is focused on a man and his animals and a woman he loves from a city. It has nothing to do with protraying another culture. I think just writing/drawing about another country doesn't mean you are showing the culture of that country.

[Sijo]

I think the problem here is: research.

If you are going to write a story set in a foreign country, you need to do some research on it first (assuming you aren't already familiar with it.) But how many comics writers bother to do so? Especially in superhero comics. In those, usually they'll look up local landmarks and legends, if that, and then focus on fights, which is mostly what such stories are about.

To be fair, we're all biased in some way, unintentionally, against other cultures, mostly because of of the stereotypes we keep being exposed to in the media.

This isn't really a big deal, as long as the local culture isn't the focus of the story. Most Marvel characters who go to Japan, for example, just go there to fight Ninjas or somesuch, and don't dwell much on what the country is like, except perhaps for some easy jokes.

Now, if the story involves something more serious- a culture's religion, for example- there NEEDS to be well-done research. If the writer isn't able (and these days, with the internet, most research can be done easily) or willing, he shouldn't try to write about that.