Meet Sliver Scorpion, the new Muslim wheelchair-bound super hero from Liquid Comics, who was “inspired by President Barack Obama‘s effort to reach out to the Muslim world in his January 2009 inaugural address,” the AP says. (The character lost his legs in a landmine disaster.) Some 50,000 Arabic-language copies of his comic will be circulated in Syria. In the second issue, Silver Scorpion will burst into a Britney Spears number.
Mike L.
I’m gonna stick with Dust (Sooraya Qadir) from the X-Men, lol.
His design is pretty awesome though, if only he was part of the X-Men b/c that’s all I read lol.
Ryan
At least the character promotes a positive message and people can really use that. There is no need to make this into a stupid joke. Lame article (no pun intended)
Ian
Now if DC’s Barbara Gordon’s Oracle character is going to stay in a wheelchair, why can’t she get a battle-chair like that?
Ken S
Um… is the mask supposed to protect some kind of “secret identity?” Because to see the character ‘in-costume’ and out, I think it would take a bit more than that. Maybe some hair gel. 😛 Perhaps some superhero cybernetic legs to throw investigators off the scent.
Jackson
Quintessential Queerty: Take something positive and attempt to destroy it via snark.
Personally, I celebrate any attempt to normalize any minority. After all, any human that gets marginalized because they are a minority will probably end up being a LGBT ally.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Guess putting him in a wheelchair avoided that whole sticky being able to leap tall buildings scenario…………..
Wheelchair Jones
Empowering any Wheelchair user is good.
Ken S
@Jackson: Oh indeed, poking fun at the silly “dollar-bill-sized-mask-obscuring-every-other-identifiable-trait” superhero costuming trope is definitely “destroying” this step/roll forward for comic book equality.
While it’s true that some people are just malicious dicks eager to demean everything in sight, it’s also true that sometimes a good idea is improved by criticism. And the same people who would see a thing made better sometimes couch that criticism in gentle teasing, in order to sound less ‘critical.’ I think most reasonable people ‘get’ this, and that reading the worst intention into every comment says more about the reader’s cynicism and negativity than anything else.