A lot of people who don't know the character are probably going to think he's a Mexican-American. Particularly the way they have him say "You want me to be a ...border cop?!" They should have made it clear that he's Puerto Rican (a very different culture).
I can believe man can fly. I can believe a boy can get caught in a boomtube and acquire transdimensional vibration powers. I cannot believe, however, that in the last five years, no one -- including Cisco -- has tried to take Cisco Ramon's photograph.
Dramatic visual or not, "The Circus" is wrong on about 50 levels, not the least of which is humanitarian.
Does it seem a little odd that Armando is such a big guy in high school, while his brothers at that age are obviously much smaller? It happens, yes; but brothers usually have much similar builds.
I realize that this time around you had to make Vibe much less colorful than his original incarnation. But making Dale Gunn bland? DALE GUNN, THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND?!?!?!?!
Gypsy's wearing shoes. I mean, character revamp is one thing, but what's the point of rebooting a character if you eliminate their defining characteristic? Re-booting; heh.
Krakkl? O RLY? You have a universal reboot and can allow/deny the readmission of ANY pre-52 character and you choose...Krakkl? With all the baggage it brings? There are about 17,000 other characters who could have been in that particularly shot without causing hypertime paroxyms; why not choose one of them?
Pariah? Repeat above paragraph.
DC really wants all their youth characters to have as little parental interference in their lives as possible, don't they? I guess in the DCU you don't need a permission slip when you sign up to be a freaking super-agent for the government.
Cisco doesn't ask, "How do you know that?", when told a specific parademon is the one who killed his brother? Come, now. Paco was smarter than that.
Can't we have shadowy government manipulators who are just that? Do they always have to be complete a-holes, too?
15 comments:
"Gypsy's wearing shoes. I mean, character revamp is one thing, but what's the point of rebooting a character if you eliminate their defining characteristic?"
Please tell me they're not still calling her "Gypsy". If they are, then they should go whole hog and team her up with "Hebe" (power: greed), "Redskin" (power: alcoholism), and "Spic" (power: vibrations and breakdancing).
Yes, they are calling her Gypsy, but she's trapped in a glass cell, so she's not exactly wandering or dancing for the money they throw.
Not many people would understand the significance of a character named "Romani"
I'm pretty sure that Amanda Waller has been all OVER Dale Gunn...but since Vibe is only 18 or so, they didn't want to frighten the teenager.
Oh, WHO am I kidding?
"Not many people would understand the significance of a character named 'Romani'"
That's exactly the problem right there -- the significance of "Gypsy" in peoples' minds is that they are thieves and dancers. DC is perpetuating a stereotype even worse than anything done with Vibe back in the day. In the not too distant future, kids are going to ask their parents why "Gypsy" was such a malicious stereotype and we're going to tell them, "you have to understand it was a different time".
"Gypsy" isn't a gypsy. She's a suburban runaway named Cynthia Reynolds.
Actually, Anon, having been to Romania and seeing how the Romani are still segregated and discriminated against by gadjes and governments, I don't see that conversation happening in the NEAR future.
Also, due to a story in Romani mythology, theft from any but their own kind is acceptable (look up their story of Jesus and the crucifixion nails to see what I'm talking about). They're doing as little to combat their thief stereotype as the Irish are their drunk stereotype.
Okay, there's a legend about stealing. There are also plenty of stories in Abrahamic faiths about slaughtering non-believers or, at the very least, people who get in the way of JHVH's land deals. Yet it would be crazy to think that all Jews live by a code of mass murder just because they can find Biblical justification for it. And DC would likewise be wrong to have a character named Hrothgar Thorssen calling himself "Hebe", strapping on a fake nose, and saying "Oy vey, the Torah commands I kill non-Jews so I can take their land".
Anon:
1. There's more than one legend about stealing. If you research the Romani culture, you'd see that theft and graft is a big part of it, down to the social codes about what is acceptable and what is marimay (forbidden). But I don't mean this as an indictment of their character: If the mainstream culture won't give a small group of people jobs or equal opportunities, are they really the bad guys when they stop following the mainstream culture's rules?
2. "There are also plenty of stories in Abrahamic faiths about slaughtering non-believers or, at the very least, people who get in the way of JHVH's land deals. Yet it would be crazy to think that all Jews live by a code of mass murder just because they can find Biblical justification for it."
Then I guess Palestine has thousands of crazy people in it. I mean, they probably don't think that of ALL Jews, and such an absolutism is getting close to strawman territory, but it's not far off. Personally, though, if I were born and raised Palestinian, I really don't think I'd have the same views about Jews as most Americans.
3. OK, that Hebe one - I don't get that.
The "Hebe" thing was about a clearly non-Jewish character (hence the Viking name) donning a stereotypical Jewish big nose. "Hebe" of course is a name for Jews that is rarely used kindly, though it's not an out-and-out slur (so to me it was about as close to a parallel to "Gypsy" as was available). That's about the fifth analogy I've made where a white person dresses up as a stereotypical minority and behaves in stereotypical fashion, so I'm probably done making that point.
Not going to get into the Israel / Palestine thing, except that if Israel actually went Old Testament on the Palestinians, you'd know it.
But we have actresses, restaurants, and other places called "Gypsy Rose," a gypsy style for violin playing, a gypsy run in theater, gypsy moths (which, unlike Killer Moths, are recognized by lepidopterist), and many more. Is there a negative connotation to "gyp" someone? Yes, but there is also a mysterious, exotic cachet to the "gypsy" name that implies being a wild, free spirit. That is what this character is going for.
Hebe has no such quality. No one would sing, "It's Just the Hebe in My Soul" or "Hebe Song Man." There's no Broadway cast album for "Hebe: A Musical Fable."
The word itself transcends its misappropriated form as short for "Egyptians," where the Romani were once thought to have come from. Now many people who move around are called "Gypsy" regardless of their own origin. I would argue as more non-Romani take it as theirs, it will lose its pejorative connotation and instead refer to a way of life, not an ethnicity. As such, over time Gypsy will cease to be a slur while the Romani will still be mistreated.
Similar shifts has happened before. One hundred and fifty years ago, Native American meant someone who was born in the United States to contrast them to the other European immigrants. It didn't refer to those guys who were already here.
If anything, a non-Romani adopting the name could help this shift. Gypsy's cachet will become its connotation and then its denotation. Don't feel too bad for the Romani; the gadje will find new insulting words for them.
Re; photos of Vibe, doesn't Amanda Waller mention, in Justice League of America #1, that all photos of Vibe are out of focus, due to his powers?
I think that's Scipio's point, Dean. It stretches probability to think that no one has figured out Vibe is different in the last five years, when every single one of us has a camera on our cell phones. Somebody should have said, Dude, what's up with your pictures?
Another thought: how did Amanda Waller go, in just 5 years, from being one of many agents on Team 7 to controlling her own team of supervillains (Suicide Squad) AND superheroes (Justice League of America), as well as keeping even more superhumans imprisoned in the Circus? Would the shadowy government manipulators really let one person control that much in the way of superhuman resources, as opposed to farming each group out to a different leader and faction? Great Scott, I just realized: Amanda Waller is the New 52 version of Nick Fury!
Did I miss the time you talked about the Vibe cartoon where he gets in a breakdancing contest with Professor Ivo's android Extremo? Because that was just the best use of Vibe, ever!
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