Marvel Comics Reveals New Wolverine Is a Transgender Samoan Atheist

[rug]

Mon., Jul. 21 2014 at 7:54 AM
By Benjamin Wachs

New York -- After recent announcements that by 2015 Thor will be a woman, Captain America will be an African American, and Iron Man will move to San Francisco and redesign his armor to look like an Apple device, Marvel Comics issued a stunning new announcement about its most popular character this week.

"Beginning next year, Wolverine will -- once he comes back to life -- be a transgender Samoan atheist whose bones are made out of 100 percent recycled metal," said Marvel's Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. "S/he will dedicate ze's awesome mutant powers to the fight against microaggression."

This, Marvel Editor Will Moss said, "isn't a gimmick. This isn't a temporary twist or a replacement 'trans-Asian-athiest' Wolverine. This is the real Wolverine, just the way fans have always loved zhim: a complex anti-hero who won't rest until all of America composts."

The move has been controversial. Outraged fans flooded Marvel's Facebook page after the announcement, declaring that it just didn't make any sense for the immortal mutant samurai/berserker with unbreakable metal bonded to his skeleton to be a Pacific Islander.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/07/marvel_comics_reveals_new_wolv.php

I think somebody's angry at all the reboots.

[TygrBright]

1. OK, I LOL'd....

Especially at this part:

According to San Francisco comic store owner Todd Baily, Marvel recently revealed that Dr. Strange received his doctorate from an unaccredited university, and therefore isn't able to perform gender re-assignment magic.

That's right, said Joe Quesada, Marvel's chief Creative Officer. "We felt there was a need to reach out to people who didn't attend accredited collages," Quesada explained. "There are millions of Americans attending shitty for-profit colleges, and they're completely unrepresented in comic books. We hope Dr. Strange can represent them as he struggles to get a job with the Fantastic Four but can't even get them to look at his resume because he went to an online school."

Somebody has an evil sense of humor indeed.

amusedly,
Bright

[AtheistCrusader]

2. I don't find this funny.

This essentially rips directly into efforts, sometimes commercialized and bottled-up in a cheap way, but efforts nonetheless to paint a more diverse landscape for fictional characters, and their backgrounds.

This is written in the same style and taste as some of the grumpy white folks railing about 'reverse discrimination' whenever someone tries to do something explicitly inclusive of a minority.

Not only is it not funny, but it's not really relevant to this forum. And if this author was such a expert on marvel characters, he'd know Wolverine has publicly been an atheist since 1983, where it was revealed he became an atheist during WWII. (Uncanny X-Men 'Brood War saga' #165)

So it's also sorta dumb.

[rug]

3. I was going to point out that "atheist" is casually thrown into this satire as another outlier,

thus demonstrating the continuing marginalization of this minority by the privileged majority, but your Wolverine geekiness, complete with issue number, has stunned me into silence.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Wolverine is not the only atheist in the Marvel universe. For instance, Magneto.

These are not new issues.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tg-qLZRm16A/UAMAxPRvL3I/AAAAAAAAAcA/XECnIRAYYks/s1600/avengers+met+gods.jpg

[rug]

5. Stop! Stop! I know where this is going, "Would you rather be Aquaman or The Flash".

[AtheistCrusader]

6. This isn't over. I have not yet begun to monologue.

[rug]

7. You should emulate T'Challa Udaku a/k/a The Black Panther.

T'Challa was the young prince of Wakanda and the youngest son of King T'Chaka. Rather than allow his older brother M'Baku, the rightful heir to the throne, to engage in the legendary panther trial, T'Challa impatiently and foolishly undertook the trial himself, to prove his worth as a ruler and as a warrior. The trial involved hunting and defeating a black panther in combat. Unfortunately, T'Challa lost the trial and was severely maimed when the large cat tore out his throat. His brother M'Baku brought him back to his father's home so he could recuperate. Though T'Challa underwent seventeen hours of surgery, T'Chaka did not possess the resources to provide T'Challa the necessary medical treatment and he was forced to break Wakandan tradition and request aid from the United States, in particular, the Weapon X Program.

Weapon X saved T'Challa's life, though they could not restore his ability to speak; the scientists of Weapon X used the same processes they once used to turn James Howlett into the Wolverine to enhance T'Challa with retractable, metal claws, and assigned him the codename "The Black Panther".

http://marvel.wikia.com/T%27Challa_Udaku_(Earth-1610)