Comic Book Resources

I think Gambit’s a really fast runner to have run from Circular Quay to China Town in the space of a couple of Panels, when the X-men were in Sydney.

Even more so as the Circular Quay he was at was Circualr Quay circa 1990, and the China Town he was at was some sort of futuristic one that doesn’t look like any China Town that’s ever been in Sydney.

(I also think the X-men must be really sheltered not to be able to tell that Bishop wasn’t African American but an Indigenous Australian, as the only similarities between the two races are that they don’t have white skin – different characteristics all together.
I also think it’s odd that I was the one to tell the Australian Artist of the book where Bishop was a cop in Mutant Town that he was an Aboriginal, at a comic covention. No one at Marvel had mentioned it – he thought it was hilarious).

But all non-white characters are related by either blood or marriage, so he’s surely got some African blood in him.

Well there were hints at one stage that the rich girl in Generation X, Monet, was his mother.
She of course had dark skin, but wasn’t Aboriginal.

Ooh, there’s another bizarre Claremont australia mistake – I’ve never heard of an Aboriginal fed at all.

Foreign nationals in the Marvel and DC Universes seem to be afflicted with the dread disease known as Colossus Syndrome: a debilitating neurological disorder which renders them nearly-fluent in English yet unable to translate the most commonly-understood words and phrases in English (“yes,” “no,” “friend,” “my god,” etc.). Crack teams of pipe-smoking comic book scientists have searched for a cure for decades to no avail.

Crack teams of pipe-smoking comic book scientists have searched for a cure for decades to no avail.

As have pipe teams of crack-smoking fanboys!

Roger Ebert’s movie glossary features a write-up on the film version of Colossus Syndrome, which mostly affects the ability to say “yes.”

I wouldn’t say it affects Marvel and DC as a whole that much anymore, just CLaremont in particular. I loved when Cecilia Reyes was introduced as someone with a hispanic surname but was a totally assimilated American with no tendencies to speak in broken Spanish. Once Claremont got a hold of her, she immediately began using the broken Spanish liberally. So cheesy.

I was a little sad that Psylocke never said “Me so solly.”

Of course, the ultimate Claremont “weird foreign person moment” came in X-Men #100, his triumphant return to the title. He introduced a new Thunderbird (remember him?) and had him think to himself, “Things seem to be going well. Being Indian, that’s when I usually expect them to go wrong.”

I can’t even begin to explain all the things wrong with that.

But it did make us wonder if he was going to drop that in with other X-Men. Nightcrawler: “Being German, I’m going to go kill Kitty Pryde and invade Poland!”