The Four Color Media Monitor

The Algemeiner wrote about a fishy-looking graphic novel coming from DC titled Whistle: A New Gothan City Hero, using villains from Batman as adversaries:

A young adult graphic novel from DC Comics starring a new Jewish superhero for Gotham City will go on sale next week.

Willow Zimmerman is a 16-year-old activist, volunteer at a local pet shelter and an adjunct professor of Jewish studies. The character, who is followed around by a stray dog she named Lebowitz, strives to help those in need but struggles to care for her mother, recently diagnosed with cancer.

Desperate for help, she reconnects with estranged family friend Edward (aka E. Nigma) — a party promoter and real estate tycoon who is also, unbeknownst to her, the super-villain Riddler. Paid to host his private poker nights with Gotham City’s elites, Zimmerman earns money to provide for her family and her mother’s medical treatments.

But her world changes when she and Lebowitz are attacked by Gotham City’s familiar antihero, Killer Croc.

That this is a young adult novel is reason to give pause, and use of Bat-villains is cheap enough as it is. But, there's more:

“Whistle is a hero like me. Like you, maybe. She’s an ordinary person who sees what’s wrong in her city and feels powerless to right it — until she isn’t,” said Lockhart. “Whistle is a social activist, a secular Jewish person, and a teenage girl working to support her mother through sickness — all elements I haven’t seen so much in superhero comics. The story explores the dark, ethically compromised side of a superhero’s life as well as the empowerment. There’s the thrill of corruption and the lure of riches on the one hand, versus an activist’s belief in the rights of her community members on the other.”

It sounds an awful lot like this is deliberately making its protagonist out to look great simply because she's "secular". All in a story involving a synagogue, oddly enough. The part about "social activism" is additionally suspect, because of how it reeks of the leftist SJW themes. And notice that the link to another site is to the unbearable Comics Beat? That too is reason enough for worry. If they, a site whose head honcho upheld anti-Israeli sentiment, think this GN is a big deal, that's all you need to know why this could be worse than described, with more to the story than meets the eye. I guess the YA author never even read the early Spider-Man tales, where Peter Parker had to worry at times about Aunt May coping with illnesses. While the argument may have validity from a modern perspective, the potential leftist themes this GN is likely to build on ruins everything, and besides, if he/she really thinks the theme is lacking in superhero comics, why not apply it there directly? Putting it all in an out-of-continuity GN coming from the same publisher is laughably cheap.

And the theme of darkness is decidedly another reason for discouragement, because they make it sound like this should or does apply to all. Very unappealing.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, msm propaganda, politics