Printing racist posters is Superman's was of helping during WWII.
The last couple of days before Comic Con, I came to realize that attempts to
cash in on the Superhero craze haven't just been done by the movie industry, but
by a more insidious force: Causes.
That's right: Causes. People have beliefs and ideals, and need to spread them,
so why not make a comic book Superhero about it. After all, Comics are what all
the cool hepcats are bodyraggin' about, right Daddy-oh?
This, sadly, is not as good an idea as you might be lead to believe by the
millions of examples of cause-based Superheroes you are about to post here.
Sometimes a cause is better served not by trying to be cool about it and being
upfront and candid. Or snarky and sarcastic, like Truth.com
Case in point is this 2 Superheroes having their debut I read about. There is
potential in there, but more limitation than anything.
The first superheroe is called Marijuana Man.
A million High School Student's thoughts just entered print.
If your first guess is that the Marley familly would be somehow involved, you
would be correct. Ziggy Marley is spearheading this comic book about an alien
hero form a planet that desperately needs the titular plant, so they send
Marijuana man to earth to save the fields of green from an evil pharmaceutical
company out to destroy them and some junk.
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Doom...
The look so far is acceptably trippy. I guess this is going for some of the broader strokes of the pro legalization movement. I'm against ,but hey, I ain't
into the stuff. There's a problem, though.
Marijuana Man is preaching to the choir. If you already like getting high, I'm
fairly sure you don't need Marijuana Man to give you reasons to want it to be
legal. Though I can't comment on specific details, I feel fairly confident in my
assesment that people who don't like Marijuana or wouldn't have it legalized
aren't prone to picking up publications with "Marijuana" on the title without
"Ban" being there too..
And further... what the hell is up with the synopsis? It's an alien planet that
can't grow one of earth's easier to grow plants, yet desperately need it? Why
not grow it on their own planet? What, does tokin' give them powers like the sun
gives Superman powers? Why would they make such a plot?
The next dubious idea dressed in Spandex is Foreskin Man. I joke you not.
Foreskin man is a superhero that defends all babies, well, mostly their
foreskins, from any villains who would try to separate that particular part of
their body.
For the Record, it's not the guy who looks like a penis monster.
is warned of any villain...that plans to cut baby foreskins, he leaps into
action with his flight enabling boots.
No, It's not Marvel's newest attempt at edginess. See, somewhere in there there
is a little subtext about ciscumcision. I know, right?
The folks behind this comic got it into their head that, hey, kids like
Superman, but they might be lukewarm to the idea of babies having their
foreskins surgically removed. Why not use one to educate about the other?
But there might be some problems. See, circumcision is a pretty serious issue.
Like anything involving penises and religious beliefs, it's hard to pin it down
to "YEAH IT'S GREAT" or "BOO, FUCK IT" without stepping on some toes. But I'm
sure this comic will deal with this issues without resorting to childishness or
trying to make the opposing side look like heartless monsters.
If any cards on the field are uncircumcized babies, you lose 20 life points.
Oh...Okay.See, my main beef with Retractable Penis Cover man is that, well, they set him
out to be pretty limited. A limited Flying Brick power, limited
characterization, and a decidedly limited mission. Even Captain Planet had
different enviromental issue to preach on about, and ran out of stuff until he
had to touch about drugs and...Hitler.
It's Hitler, guys. You didn't have to make his mustache goofy.
How many issues can you go on about circumcission being bad until you either
have to break into a sinagogue and start punching the shit out of Jews(which is,
I'm sure, the moment no one can defend this as not being antisemitic anymore),
or have to find some other thing (probably genital related) to deal with. But
then, he is still called Foreskin Man. He can't fight drugs or punch Hitler with
a dick pointed at his face in his own costume and go "FOR THE
FORESKINS!(punch)".
Themes are hard and so are names, but come on. Spider-Man isn't called "Remorse
Man" for a reason: Spider-Man does other things than have remorse. Further,
Foreskin Man doesn't even attempt to weave in the theme of foreskin into his
repertoire. Sure, that might be a little...icky. But played straight like in
here, it's boring and slightly unsettling, and, again, severely limiting.
This limitations extend to the villains as well. The first issue had what was
aparently a legitimate Doctor who can't see baby naked without becoming a
deformed monster that wants to chop of the excess skin on it's wang, whether the
mom likes it or not. This is...not the way circumcisions ussually work as far as
I know, but okay. What next? How many ways can 4SM stop a circumcission without
it being tied to normal people, doing an operation on a baby as their familly
intend?
Superdickery, without all the Malware
If It where up to me, and I was working the story behind this comic, instead of just random people who do it, and the Golden Glande has to stop them, I'd make
it that a secret evil group that wants to bring an evil demon to earth. Standard
stuff. But to open the portal, they need 200 baby Foreskins from select
individuals. This not only sets up for a multicomic arc and development of
characters but actually can give quite a few Foreskin related adventures to our
heroe. Also, needs a sidekick. I say we make it a girl and call her Foreskin Girl.
Is it stupid? Maybe. But not more than anything else here, really.
