No Kazakh mutants

When it comes to underrepresentation, it seems to me that although other former Soviet republics and satellites do show up in the Marvel canon of comics, animation and the like, they generally appear as backdrops for American heroes to do their business there. But there are really no recurring characters (villains, supporting characters and heroes) coming from countries like Moldova, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Armenia and Tajikistan, let alone without resorting to stereotypes that they’re practically underrepresented this way. It’s even weirder to think that given a number of Marvel writers are no strangers to rewriting the characters’ backstories, that it might be feasible to out both Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver as Slovenian Romanichals this time.

It’s just as feasible to out Doctor Doom as Croatian or T’challa and Shuri as Cameroonian Bamilekes, there are even Cameroonians who do fanart of things like Looney Tunes and Hunter x Hunter. But I’m afraid there are likely two schools of thought Marvel fans fall into: the one obsessed with the franchise’s canon (or commonly called lore) and the one that dismisses the existence of these countries and cultures, regardless if there are possibly some people in those countries who’d like to see themselves represented in the Marvel world themselves. There are prominent recurring Russians throughout the Marvel canon like Red Guardian, Black Widow, Colossus, Illyana Rasputina and Darkstar, but their Estonian and Armenian counterparts are practically nonexistent. One would hope that given America’s declining stature, that it might be feasible to do a fiction story featuring prominent recurring Estonian characters outside of both Europe and Estonia itself this time.

The only place where you can find recurring Yugoslav representation in any way in the US comics canon is Joe Sacco’s body of work like Sarajevo and Safe Area Gorazde, even if these are nonfiction than the purely fictious tales that predominate the Marvel canon. But it does insinuate a certain message that since Marvel isn’t real, why bother retconning Doctor Doom to be Yugoslav himself? To them, Marvel is escapist. To do is to consciously pretend or ignore one’s desire for any real Yugoslav representation in the Marvel world, there are practically no mutants coming from Uzbekistan so far. There are no mutants who hail from either Baku or Tashkent, just as there are no mutants coming from either Baturi, Georgia or Tbilisi, Georgia. And when I mean by Georgia, it’s a European country next to Russia and Armenia I think.

There are really no mutants from Yerevan whatsoever, there are no mutants from somewhere in either Bucharest, Romania or Chisinau, Moldova without being vampires themselves. There are no mutants from Almaty, Kazakhstan; nor are there any mutants from even Belgrade, Serbia for this matter. As for Romanian speaking countries like Romania itself, there’s a tendency to tie it with vampiric stereotypes if it weren’t for Dracula. But if you peruse Romanian media from this country rather frequently, a different story emerges and one that’s in some regards more ordinary. Like if you use Romanian language websites to read up on things like lectionaries, foxes and more, then Romania is actually rather ordinary or at least much more (normal) than the popular imagination presumes it to be.

This is compounded by that America’s such a superpower, such a hegemon, that it’s going to popularise such misconceptions on a much wider scale than any other country comes close to doing. To get a Romanian or Moldovan character who’s not a vampire themself, despite the writer not being Romanian/Moldovan themself (or yourself), you’d have to regularly consume Romanophone media in any capacity and way to get a vision of either one of them not falling under popular stereotypes, or perhaps both. Even then it’s kind of hard getting a Romanophone character right without falling into popular memes, especially if you’re not Romanophone yourself. Not that Romanian characters are nonexistent in Marvel at all, but a non-stereotypical character is rare at best, nonexistent at worst.

Similar things can be said about the paucity of recurring Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian characters in either DC or Marvel, they might as well be glorified NPCs and mere afterthoughts in the wider scheme of things. A nonstereotypical Kazakh mutant would be nice, a mutant who comes from the European country of Georgia would be nice, an Armenian mutant would be nice, so on and so forth but they never really came to pass as actual, recurring characters in the X-Men canon. But when coupled with America’s declining stature that it’s feasible to create well-known Armenian superheroes outside of Armenia and possibly the rest of the former Soviet sphere itself, or their Estonian and Lithuanian counterparts for that matter. Maybe not immediately but it’s clear where it’s going now that America’s declining.

Underrepresented

I said before that Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and the like as well as actual African nationalities are painfully underrepresented in American ACG media until recently, but even then it’s kind of hard naming an Estonian character in either DC or Marvel who’s not a background extra. If because there’s really none at all, and there still isn’t one to this day. Senegalese characters are in short supply in DC and Marvel, but they might as well be similarly nonexistent. The same can be said of Latvians, Georgians (as in those coming from Georgia the country), Lithuanians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Tajiks, Krygyz, Ghanaians, Zimbabweans, Ugandans, Liberians, Angolans, Gabonese, Congolese (and Kinois), Mozambicans, Ivorians, Rwandans and so on.

It’s kind of hard naming any prominent Czech, Hungarian or Slovak DC or Marvel character because there’s really none at all, none to begin with and still none today, like if you want real Czech, Hungarian or Slovak representation you might as well persue and peruse Czech, Hungarian and Slovak media instead. Romanians might as well be vampires and not ordinary people like everybody else, Estonians could easily be mistaken for Russians, and many Americans would think of Georgia as a US state, not a separate country somewhere in the Caucasus. So whatever Georgian mutant that shows up in the X-Men canon will mostly probably come from Atlanta, not somewhere like Tbilisi for instance. Who cares about Moldovans, they might as well be Romanians all along.

Ditto Croatians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Bosnians and Slovenes unless if they appear in Joe Sacco’s comics, and unfortunately Joe Sacco seems to be one of the few US cartoonists who do bother putting Yugoslavs in his comics. It’s even odder still to think that despite DC rebooting its canon every now and then, Slovaks and Latvians have yet to show up there even when it’s now possible to do so, or for another matter making existing characters like Terra and Vixen belong to actual nationalities this time. Terra being a Slovak woman and Vixen a Zimbabwean woman, DC writers could be free to grandfather a Congolese nationality onto Bwana Beast. Marvel’s no different to some extent, yet not a single Marvel writer bothered to retcon both Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver into being Romani Slovenes.

Making Victor von Doom Croatian would be nice but it destroys the illusion of plausible deniability if he actually came from somewhere in Croatia himself, who knows what would happen if somebody like Shuri were to be retconned into being a Bamileke Cameroonian herself. It’s even wilder to think there are practically no Namibians, Botswanans and Nigeriens in Marvel, there is some Botswanan representation in DC but he’s just a bitplayer. Just a character to be saved by Superman and nothing more, Superman being the resident All-American hero at DC Comics. There are really no Botswanan superheroes in either the DC or Marvel canon, not even a recurring Botswanan supporting character like what Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are to the Superman canon.

Botswanans are cannon fodder to DC and Marvel writers alike if they ever show up at all, Storm is pretty much alone in the entire US comics canon as the best known African character there. One would be hard-pressed to find any Kazakh characters in DC and Marvel, because they’re practically nonexistent there. You’d have to find Armenians in DC and Marvel in vain, even when Armenia’s no longer part of the Soviet Union at this point. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all part of the European Union now, but there’s not a single Baltic superhero to this day at either DC or Marvel. Not even a Baltic supervillain at that. Supposing if someone made a story involving an Estonian man named Ilmar Tuglas. He doesn’t just generate and manipulate strings, but also emeralds.

He also works as a financial adviser, despite having harbouring pro-socialist sentiments every now and then, come from a family of communists and fur farmers and lives somewhere in Ahja, Estonia, with family somewhere in Saaremaa (an Estonian island). He’s based on Kakyoin Noriaki from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure right down to his fashion sense and personality to a large extent, JJBA being a Japanese comic involving superpowers by the way. Let’s say that his author isn’t from Estonia themselves, and this character shows up in a North American comic or video game, he may not be a Marvel or DC character. But it does speak volumes about how strangely underrepresented Estonians are, despite Estonia being an EU member at this point in time, but I guess US writers could rather pay more mind to America’s longer-standing allies instead.

Estonia might not be that poor either, compared to say Georgia for instance, but it’ll often be overlooked by DC and Marvel. Especially when it comes to having a particularly prominent superhero of its own or more, compared to long-standing US allies like South Korea, to the point where Estonia might essentially serve as cannon fodder to US superheroes instead. Estonia had been thoroughly influenced by Russia before, around the time South Korea was created to contain the spread of socialism throughout the Korean peninsula, Russian influence was already years deep in Estonian culture. South Korea kind of inherited the showbiz culture from America, both K-Pop and K-Rap are evidently derivative of American popular music. It’s not that a showbiz culture is nonexistent in Estonia, but that it would’ve resembled Russia’s own instead.

It’s kind of astonishing to think that Russia was at some point the only other major superpower in the Cold War, but it never got its own Hollywood even when it had all the other communist allies around, or at least nowhere near the scale Hollywood does for America. As South Korea is a longer-standing US ally than Estonia is, it would’ve inevitably inherited the American showbiz culture. To the extent that US publishers are more willing to represent South Koreans than Estonians, because of the residual feeling that South Korea is really on its side, despite Estonia being a western country itself and it was a US ally for quite a while in recent memory. You could also say that South Korea has K-Pop, but then again K-Pop is derivative of American popular music in many ways, so it’s going to be more palatable to US and US ally tastes.

That’s why Marvel has Luna Snow, a K-Pop musician who moonlights as a superheroine, even if Estonia’s currently capitalistic at this point but it’s still going to have the suspicion of being a Russian ally despite appearances to the contrary at this point. That’s why Netflix, a US streaming service, has KPop Demon Hunters. Even if Estonia was for a long time a Swedish colony, then a Russia colony and now a ceritified member of the European Union, South Korea is a US ally from the get-go and its exports are going to be more compatible with American and US ally tastes, than with their Estonian counterparts (if they exist at all). So Estonians as well as Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Armenians and Moldovans are going to be this underrepresented in DC and Marvel, or for another matter Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians.

A common thread with many of these countries is that they’re all former socialist countries, as to be conflated with Russia especially if they’re European countries at that. I suppose if somebody were to substitute Latveria, Transia/Trasnia and Sokovia for Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary, it could still run into problems but if they got represented in Cold War era stories, their characters would either serve as antagonistic foils to US heroes or join US teams if they’re heroic, which Natalia Romanova is both of these things and she’s Russian. From my personal experience reading US comic books and the like, the only times actual Yugoslavs get any representation at all in is Joe Sacco’s nonfiction works. But these highlight a strong disparity between Yugoslavs and their fictionalised proxies, because Joe Sacco’s a journalist who uses cartooning to talk about social issues in other countries.

Similar things can be said of the differences between the way actual African countries are portrayed in nonfiction as opposed to say the DC and Marvel canon, where in the former they actually show up and sometimes realistically so. But in the DC and Marvel stories, most actual African countries are nonexistent. There are practically no Angolans, Cameroonians, Ugandans, Namibians and Rwandans in either the DC or Marvel canon, which gets really weird because these two are no strangers to retcons and reboots that at any point where a writer could’ve grandfathered a Cameroonian nationality onto Black Panther and Shuri, this never came to pass. DC’s no stranger to reboots and the opportunity to make Vixen Zimbabwean never came to pass either, you might as well tell me to make my own characters so I did.

Fabrice Tientcheu is a Cameroonian forensic scientist who has the ability to soften things, is very high-culture himself (he likes reading books on sciences like astronomy and chemistry, as well as books by Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus), owns cats because his father’s afraid of dogs (Cameroonian rapper Mink’s is afraid of dogs himself as well) and is actually based on another Jojo character, Trish Una who also has the same ability herself. He lives somewhere in Cameroon, whether if it’s Bamendjou or Bafang. But these are real places in Cameroon and also Africa, you could go there if you want to. He has a twin sister named Yvette, a seamstress who’s in love with his colleague and the resident detective Jean-Louis Lumiere.

Nigerians do get some representation in Marvel, via the character of Temper. But she’s not as well-known as Storm is, so Storm’s practically alone in the entire US comics canon as the best known fictional African to come from a real African country. If the adage the more, the merrier works; then it serves to have another Nigerian character around in the form of Tifeoluwa Babatunde Olatunji. He works as a lawyer and lives somewhere in Lagos, he sometimes gets into joking banter with Fabrice over rice and other foodstuffs. Even odder still over at DC is how and why there’ll never be an Elseworlds or Imaginary Story featuring an Icelandic Fire and a Chilean Ice, but I feel it kind of ties into stereotypes about Latin Americans and Scandinavians. Not just in terms of ability, but also personality.

From what I’ve read, Beatriz da Costa (Fire) is shown to be brash and flamboyant but Tora Olafsdotter (Ice) is more mild-mannered. That’s not to say there aren’t any Brazilians who act like Beatriz nor are there any Norwegians who act like Tora, but it still wouldn’t fit into the way they actually see themselves as. Supposing if there are characters with abilities similar to these two, but Fire is Scandinavian and Ice is Latin American this time. Sometime as early as 2010, I came up with an Icelandic male character who is Fire and manipulates volcanism himself, and Ice is a Japanese woman. This time both characters are female, thus further paralleling their DC counterparts. Linhildur Solveig Arnleifsdottir is analogised to Beatriz da Costa, though she has red hair and often at the receiving end of her husband’s affairs.

(She’s also a natural redhead to boot.) She comes from somewhere in Iceland, more specifically Reykjavik and she works as a government official. That’s not to say there aren’t any Scandinavian redheads out there in American ACG media, but it seems Age Of Mythology’s the rare instance of this unless if Jimmy Olsen counts (he’s obviously of Scandinavian descent himself). Dark-haired Scandinavians in DC do exist, but particularly in the form of Pieter Cross. Marvel’s Loki could also count in a way, because he’s based on Norse mythology. That’s not to say all Scandinavians are dark-haired (or red-haired or blond-haired either), but it still wouldn’t reflect the way they see themselves. Linhildur being a redhead reflects on the fact that Iceland does have a good number of redheads itself, then come Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

It seems within the Marvel canon, if foreign redheads do exist they’re usually more likely to come from either Scotland or Ireland. Not that redheads are nonexistent in both places, but it still wouldn’t be how they see themselves as. Quite frankly, I’m unable to name a famous Scottish or Irish redhead in music. People like Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, Ronan Keating and Nicola Cloaghan are all Irish blonds, though with the last one you wouldn’t guess this until she stops dyeing her hair red for Bridgerton. The rest of Boyzone and Altan all have dark hair themselves, everybody in Clannad has natural dark hair (until lately as they’re getting older) and the same can be said of everybody in the band Capercaillie. Sinead O’Connor had natural dark hair. Nightcrawlers’ John Reid had natural blond hair when he was younger, Kevin McKidd’s also blond.

Karen Gillen are Moira Shearer are both the only natural Scottish redheads that I can think of, but since natural red hair’s rare so it’s to be expected that it would be easier naming blond and dark-haired Irish and Scottish celebrities instead, especially in my case. Moving over to England, I could name some natural redheads there. You have Mick Hucknall, Patricia Hodge when she was younger, Newton Faulkner, Ed Sheeran, arguably David J from Bauhaus when he was younger and Jess Glynne, even if red hair’s not stereotypically considered to be an English trait. Marvel’s Elsa Bloodstone could count, but in her earlier appearances she had blonde hair. Betsy Braddock’s also a natural blonde and so is her brother, though you could say that I’m very much wrong in here.

But it still reinforces a message that rufosity’s the domain of Irish and Scottish people, especially in the Marvel canon. Even if not all redheads are Scottish or Irish themselves within Marvel itself, it still reinforces a particular view about these people. A view that some Irish and Scottish people internalise themselves, not that they’re any less red-haired either. It’s likely why outside of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic media, redheads are rarely ever Scandinavian in American media. I’m thinking in the lines of things like Age Of Mythology being the rare instances where you can find Scandinavian redheads in any way, the other one being God Of War when it comes to its own version of Thor. Ditto Latin American blonds, even when Cameron Diaz is a thing in real life.

Despite Cameron Diaz’s prominence and moreso when she was younger, given her father was Cuban himself, whenever Latin Americans show up in American media they usually tend to have dark hair. Beatriz da Costa might be the only instance that I can think of in American fiction who’s not dark-haired herself, one would wonder why there are so little to no natural Latin American blonds and redheads within DC and Marvel. They do show up in Latin American media, both nonfiction and fiction, but they’re very rare in DC and Marvel, if they show up at all. I do know that white Latinos exist and characters like Julio from X-Factor reflect on this in a way, even if natural blond and red hair aren’t necessarily common in Latin America either, but the fact that these two traits show up in Latin American comics among fictional characters acknowledges their existence.

The character I came up with is Piedad Franulic Kristof, a Chilean woman of Croatian and Hungarian descent. She’s analogised to Tora Olafsdotter in that both of them are light-haired women who manipulate the cold, but she’s also based on Nijimura Kei in that they’re resentful towards the people they serve (the Orvilles in Piedad’s case) and Kei also manipulates the cold herself. Piedad more specifically has mousy blonde hair which can also be regarded as light brown hair just the same, though it’s lighter than that of Colin Sallow. I feel it’s easier to think of Latin Americans as not only commonly dark-haired, but also somewhat darker than that of white Americans is the way the latter views the former and vice versa at times, when it comes to othering one another. Like if the prototypical American’s of either Western or Northern European descent, then the prototypical Latino’s of indigenous descent.

Blond hair’s more commonly found among countries like Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, even if not all Britons, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes are necessarily natural blonds, let alone for life. Like I said John Reid had blond hair when he was younger, Liam Howlett had blond hair when he was a young boy. But this is also where most white Americans come from, so to the prototypical white American resembles the prototypical Northern European. The prototypical Latin American is someone who’s either of indigenous or Spanish descent, and the Spanish are often assumed to be dark-haired themselves. Not that the Spanish are any less dark-haired in reality, but the way Americans conceptualise both Latinidad and Spanishness is different from how these people view it in themselves.

It should be noted that there are Latin Americans of Polish, German, Dutch, Croatian, Hungarian and Ukrainian descent, Piedad is a Chilean woman of both Croatian and Hungarian descent. So it reflects on this in a way but perhaps outside of Latin American fictions, this is very nearly nonexistent in US media. There’s a version of the Babysitters Club where one of the blonde characters got made into a dark-haired Latina, but I feel this is one of the few instances that kind of reflects on it in their own respective ways. But I feel when Latin Americans are in the US themselves, whether in real life or in fiction, they will be othered in a way they aren’t back in Latin America. Even if not all Latinos are practising Catholics or even Catholics in general, if being American means being Protestant, then the othering’s bound to happen anyways.

It wouldn’t be the case in countries like Ireland, Poland, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and France, where Catholicism’s part of the cultural mainstream there. Not so much in countries like America, Britain, Canada and Finland where Protestantism’s part of the cultural mainstream there instead, so even white Latin Americans would be really othered in those places. It may not always be the case within DC and Marvel, but being American institutions, it’s going to play a role in some way. It’s not hard to see how and why Latin Americans, real or not, are going to be othered in American culture. It’s not that the Baptist church, Methodism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are nonexistent in Britain, Finland, Latvia, Canada, Sweden and Norway, but America has been the hotbed of world Protestantism until recently.

If because due to Christianisation, the African countries are catching up real quickly here. Especially places like Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, though they’re not without considerable Catholic populations to boot. But even if denominations don’t always get factored into the equation, Latin Americans are still going to be othered in America in other ways. So that’s why Latin American superheroes like Beatriz and others are portrayed the way they are in American ACG media, the portrayal’s not always racist but there’s a kind of implicit othering in some cases. Central Asians are weirdly very underrepresented in US fictional media in any capacity, given they don’t neatly fit into American boxes regarding not only both East Asia and West Asia, but also Eastern Europe.

This becomes particularly the case with both Kazakhs and Krygyz, because although many of them look East Asian, they also aren’t from somewhere further east like in both Indonesia and Malaysia, speak Turkic languages and actually have a degree of Western Eurasian DNA themselves, so they don’t neatly fit American prototypes for what Muslims ought to be. Both Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens may fit American conceptions of Islam in many regards, but sadly they remain underrepresented in the American imaginary. Instead of actually representing Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens this time around in both DC and Marvel, DC creatives like James Gunn and Greg Weisman would rather use proxies like Jarhunpurians and those from Qurac instead. Ditto Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians and even Palestinians to my knowledge.

There are Marvel writers who do kind of represent those coming from Lebanon in a way as it is with Sina Grace, but then again a good number of Marvel writers like Chris Claremont are Zionist, to the point of portraying even the worst Jewish character like Magneto more sympathetically than he would with an Arab like the Shadow King. David Haller, when he initially appeared, was the illegitimate teenage son of Charles Xavier and an Israeli national, who got possessed by the Shadow King. So with the combined efforts of Xavier and somebody else, David Haller finally got exorcised. But I don’t read comics that often, much less the DC and Marvel variety at this point, so I’m going by what I recall reading. But it kind of insinuates a message that Arabs are ought to corrupt minors like David Haller, well at the time so.

And more recently in Absolute Superman, West Asians Ra’s Al-Ghul and his daughter Talia have invaded the US. Even as a Christian it’s kind of telling that it plays into a kind of xenophobic sentiment, but aimed specifically at West Asians regarding their supposed ability to ruin and undermine western civilisation (as represented by DC’s quintessentially Midwestern town Smallville). Palestinians are very underrepresented in US fictional media, especially when the US itself has a strong Zionist streak, that it’s this easy to demonise them. Even weirder still is that Palestine actually houses the world’s oldest Christian community, coupled with that there are some Israelis like Paul Wexler suspecting them to be the actual direct descendants of the ancient Israelities in a way Ashkenazi Jews aren’t.

Arthur Koestler, a Jew, was one of the earliest to point out that Ashkenazis aren’t related to the ancient Israelites as much as they are to the Khazars, a long-lost Turkic people. Even studies pointing out that Ashkenazis are the descendants of Judaised Caucasians, Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Iranians and East Asians (who may be Mongols, the folks who were close to the Turkic tribes) would still bring up the Khazar ghost in some way, given the Zionist insistence on the idea that Ashkenazis are the direct descendants of the Israelites. Actually Ashkenazis being more closely related to Slavs seems more plausible, not only because their folkways are more Slavic than West Asian, but also because they lived in Slavic lands far longer than they do in West Asia, as to be Slavicised over time. Mr Wexler even said that Yiddish really is a Slavic language with a heavy Germanic influence.

Not helped by that Ashkenazi Jews lived in Slavic countries like Slovakia, Poland, Belarus and Russia for so long, that they’d inevitably be fluent in Russian, Polish, Slovak and Belarusian which would’ve further Slavicised Yiddish despite having Germanic influence too. And Yiddish sounds like a Polish speaker trying to speak German themselves, or sing in my case since I listened to a duo singing the song ‘Tumbalalaika’ which seems like a German song with a Polish accent. (This is what you get for finally listening to something in Polish.) The profound Zionist streak that a number of DC and Marvel writers exhibit is likely why there are practically no Palestinian superheroes in both the DC and Marvel canons, why somebody like Kitty Pryde gets away with the very thing that got a Native American like John Proudstar into trouble and so on.

It’s as if being Jewish is enough to automatically absolve somebody of their wrongdoings, which reflects in the way the western world continues to support Zionist Israel at any time. It’s kind of also like this in something like Power Mark, where a number of characters who aren’t Biblical characters who get to be flawed are a Russian boy, a Chinese woman (Power Mark’s sister) and a Latin American girl, but the Jewish boy’s portrayed as rather flawless. I feel as if western countries readily support Zionism is partly because Jews are a kind of model minority’s model minority, if you know what I mean, as opposed to the way the Chinese, Indians and others are regarded as such, especially if they’re not only Gentile but also significantly more numerous and oppose western values themselves in some manner.

This might explain the orientalist othering these people often get in western fictions, where a westernised East Asian like Jubilee is considered a good guy but not the Mandarin. Or for another matter, characters coming from former European colonies like Vietnam (Karma) and the Philippines (Galura, Wave), which kind of insinuates the message that western countries are the gold standard for what’s good and progressive. Even when both China and India were far ahead of the west when it comes to women wearing trousers, West Asian countries and Russia having more women in STEM, China having had women play ball games in ancient history, Japan continuing to have a solid tradition of and industry for female readers of comics and so on.

Or even the odd fact that Japan’s ahead of the west when it comes to publishing professional M/M fiction out in the open, Patalliro being an old anime that features a sympathetic gay couple at the front. I’m getting off-topic but when it comes to media like DC and Marvel as well as their writers, being westerners they often promote western worldviews, sympathies and preferences, sometimes deliberately but more often than not unconsciously because of what they’re socialised and exposed to for years. The underrepresentation of other former communist western nationalities like Estonians and Latvians has to do with conflating them with Russians proper, even when at this point Estonia and Latvia are currently capitalist, that it shouldn’t be a stretch to actually introduce Estonian and Latvian superheroes right now.

Maybe not as America ended up alienating these two, them being staunch European Union members at this point, but I feel it’s possible to create an international media franchise that features actually Estonian and Latvian characters at the front and centre this time. It’s kind of obvious that as a lot of DC and Marvel writers are Americans, they’ll inevitably and usually have pro-US sympathies, sentiments, mindsets and sensibilities that get reflected in the stories they write about. Whether if it’s the othering of nonwesterners like Africans, West Asians and East Asians, the continued underrepresentation of certain nationalities and ethnicities (Latvians, Estonians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Slovaks, etc), or the propagation of western values and sensibilities, it’s there with many DC and Marvel writers for years.

Although the character of Linhildur might play into the redhead with fire powers stereotype in a way, she also represents a kind of Scandinavian character not commonly represented in US fiction stories. So far the only Scandinavian character with a fire ability is Karl Hansen from the Wildcats stories, whereas Norwegians like Sigrid Nansen and Tora Olafsdotter both have ice-based abilities. And even if Norway has glaciers, so does Chile and Chile’s close to Antarctica. It’s not a coincidence that both DC and Marvel writers habitually give fire-based abilities to Latin Americans, as if they’re so hot-tempered they’ll burst into flames anyways, when it comes to characters like Dante Pertuz, Firebird, that tattooed guy and Beatriz da Costa, even if it’s not true for all of them. Magma could also count in a way, as she has power over volcanism herself.

And she’s also a Brazilian citizen by the way, though similar things can be said of Iceland too. But it still plays into a kind of American conceptualisation of Latin American nationalities and countries, regardless if countries like Argentina and Chile both beg to differ as they’re closer to the South Pole as to get cold and dark around June and July, that Chile has glaciers says a lot about the missed opportunity to have a Chilean version of Ice this time. Sunspot being able to manipulate solar energy himself plays into the American belief of countries like Brazil having nearly constant unlimited daylight hours, but even if it were true and the same can be said of a certain Peruvian Overwatch character (I think), one would wonder why there’s no Argentinian character at either DC or Marvel who manipulates darkness themselves because it gets dark in Argentina every June and July.

It’s kind of depressing to think that in 2025 there are still no Namibian, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, Armenian and Georgian superheroes and even supervillains at either DC or Marvel, when it comes to Georgians these characters come from somewhere in Batumi, Tbilisi or Gori. Not somewhere in Savannah, Atlanta or Douglasville, Georgia here is a country in the Caucasus. Latveria is real but not Slovakia, Transia is real but not Slovenia. So logically Wakanda is real, but not Cameroon. Qurac is real, but not Syria. What I’m saying is that Latveria, Transia, Qurac and Wakanda are treated as if they’re real countries in Marvel and DC, but for some reason their real-life doppelgangers are nonexistent in their place. You could actually travel to Ljubljana and even stay there for long after acquiring EU citizenship, but Transia will take its place in Marvel stories instead.

Singapore is so nonexistent in the Marvel canon that Madripoor takes its place instead, even when you could actually go there to Singapore yourself. Some of my relatives have done this more than a decade ago, you can even access to Singaporean websites too. Singaporeans speak English like Americans, but Madripoor is used in its place in Marvel. You should get an idea of how underrepresented Singaporeans are in Marvel, or for another matter Malaysians and Burmese since I can’t name a single character from either Malaysia or Myanmar in both DC and Marvel. Ditto Laotians, Cambodians get some representation in the forms of Rose Wilson and Sweet Lili. But I suppose no such equivalent exists for those from Kazakhstan, even to this day that Kazakhstan might as well belong in the world of Elseworlds and What If.

But countries like Qurac are serious business, despite being technically nonexistent in the real world.

American Imperialism, Disney Style

There’s a book called ‘How to Read Donald Duck’ and it does examine how the Carl Barks stories espouse a form of colonialism, especially whenever ‘exotic’ locales are concerned where they are often exoticised and othered in ways they wouldn’t be when left to their own. It’s like how the Africans in the Carl Barks stories are portrayed in a demeaning, primitive manner and a cursory glance at African countries in those days show that there is room for modern technology. There are newspapers, radio stations, television channels and book publishers in African countries after all, then comes the Internet and it’s no different really.

I myself have perused African newspapers and radio stations, I still do to this day but for the purpose of worshipping God. Disney, as an American multinational corporation, has multiple branches almost anywhere in the world. It has many divisions dedicated to different media in whatever permutation they appear in, it even has a series of radio stations called Radio Disney and they’re still a thing in Latin America, including Ariel Dorfman’s native Chile (just type emisoras.cl/disney). Disney comics used to be a big thing in both the Americas and are still a thing in places like Brazil and Europe.

The Disney comics are a major focus of Dorfman’s thesis, though if he wrote this book this time he would’ve certainly included Radio Disney and critiqued it the same way. It’s not hard to say that even when Disney has improved itself when it comes to portraying foreign countries and culture, there’s still the potential for othering in ways it never intended to. Looking at one of its purchases like Marvel, it’s not hard to think some of Dorfman’s arguments could also be applied to characters like Black Panther and Storm to a frightening extent.

Because a chunk of Dorfman’s thesis is dedicated to the global north’s impression of global south countries, it’s not hard for one to come to the same conclusion considering Marvel has done the same thing. It’s like how someone has pointed out the problems with the way Marvel named its Vietnamese characters, it’s not that China didn’t influence Southeast Asia at all (it did to varying degrees depending on the country). But that their names are kind of strange and strangely spelt to anybody familiar with Vietnamese, sort of like how one came to this conclusion concerning Karma.

She has the ability to influence and possess people’s minds but what’s not brought up is that Marvel missed an opportunity to celebrate the Year of the Cat, it’s a thing in the Vietnamese zodiac and one that replaces the Year of the Rabbit for some reason, just so it could have a variant cover of Karma hanging out with cats. But this makes you wonder if most Marvel writers actually knew about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture in specific to do this, the best this writer did is to change her name into something realistically Vietnamese (it turned out in-story it’s a big mispronunciation of her real name).

Similar things can be said about Sha Shan Nguyen, who is a Spider-Man character by the way, one wonders why nobody bothered renaming her to San Sang since it sounds close enough (in my opinion as I’ve just started learning Vietnamese). Then we get to Storm or Ororo Munroe, who’s pretty much Marvel’s most famous Kenyan. But also one who’s hardly like actual Kenyans, especially if you actually know Kenya in some way. She doesn’t speak Swahili, Luo or Gikuyu to any degree, she doesn’t even celebrate Boxing Day (which happens every 26 December).

She’s a character who’s pretty much a white person’s idea of an exotic black woman, not so much an actual Kenyan woman which explains why she’s so oddly divorced from Kenyan culture. Also both Disney comics (especially when written by Carl Barks) and Marvel Comics sometimes have stories taking place in made-up Latin American countries, which further exoticises Latin America. It’s kind of shockingly recent for Disney to place its stories in actual Latin American countries, be it Mexico for Coco or Colombia for Encanto. But every now and then it falls back on exotic, made-up countries.

Recently we have Wish, which takes place in an island called Rosas. Though I think it would’ve worked just the same if it was actually set in Spain, despite having never watched the film myself. One would only wonder why does Black Panther have to come from Wakanda when he could’ve come from Cameroon and be Bamileke himself, the very people who even associate leopards with royalty and where fons/chiefs are said to become leopards themselves. Black Panther being an actual Cameroonian wouldn’t hurt really.

Cameroon even has websites which you can peruse such as Camerounweb, Actu Cameroun and more in addition to Radio Balafon (radio.co.cm/radio-balafon/). Or for another matter, Madripoor when it comes to the X-Men stories when Singapore could’ve sufficed. Using actual Latin American, Asian and African countries would have a major advantage, since you could actually look up on them and go there if you’re willing to. You could even peruse their websites, it’s not that hard really since I’ve done this before. If you could use the Internet to find X-Men fanfics, you could do the same with Senegalese websites.

I could go on saying that even when Carl Barks has been proven to be a good writer on most counts, when it comes to portrayals of nonwestern and nonwhite cultures it leaves much to be desired. The Africans in his stories tend to be stereotypical primitives, even when it was written there were actual Africans editing and publishing newspapers, writing for newspapers and using the radio themselves. There are even libraries in African countries, many of which have survived to the present day. Or how Donald and gang have a habit of going to made-up countries, when actual ones could’ve sufficed.

I feel we could’ve gotten stories where Donald and Uncle Scrooge would go to Afghanistan instead of Unsteadystan, though one would only wonder if even when the Internet wasn’t there yet in its present form Barks himself may have been more ignored than one realises and just as prone to Orientalism as his contemporaries at Marvel. So both Disney and Marvel act as agents of American media imperialism, both of them impart an American perspective of things onto non-Americans. Regardless of how suspicious their portrayals of foreigners are, they remain popular to the present day.

Because of the way Disney expanded and acquired brands like Marvel and Lucasfilm, we have an even more potential form of American imperialism as delivered by this company. We don’t just have Disney fabrics, comics, books and toys but also Radio Disney, Disney ships and Disney bridal wear. Even when Disney bothered to improve its portrayal of foreign, often non-western cultures but sometimes it still leaves much to be desired. In some properties like the Marvel stories, Wakanda takes priority over Cameroon and likewise Madripoor over Singapore.

The potential for exoticising, othering foreign regions is there and the precipice will always be there in some form, sometimes it’s so unavoidable that it’s easy to come up with Madripoor, Unsteadystan, Wakanda, Latveria, Rosas, Inca-Blinca, Aztecland and Kumandra than to actually set them in Singapore, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Slovenia, the Canary Islands, Peru, Mexico and Cambodia. It’s always the veneer of exoticism that others actual geopolitical regions, instead of the reality of such places as they actually are. A lot of it seems to come from an insincere interest.

Like trying to be interested in something foreign, but not actually committing to it in any way. I have done this before with China and it’s only now that I’ve gotten actually interested in it (with God’s help), it seems with some Marvel and Disney writers they want something foreign but can’t commit to it in any way. So Doctor Doom comes from Latveria, but not Slovenia (which actually exists by the way). A Yugoslavian Doctor Doom wouldn’t hurt, so would a Cameroonian Black Panther. Or Raya actually coming from Cambodia, but as one said these don’t have any messy real-world baggage.

I guess if Wish was actually set in Spain, one would have to deal with the messy complications of colonisation. After all it was Spain that colonised parts of Africa (Equatorial Guinea and part of Morocco), it was Spain that enslaved many Africans and have them forcibly going to its colonies to do work there. Likewise with Raya not coming from Cambodia, you’d have to deal with America having waged war there. Ethiopia could qualify but to my knowledge, it doesn’t have a tradition of associating leopards with royalty the way Cameroonian Bamilekes do.

Or for another matter, the messy reality of Singapore having seceded from Malaysia and the messy legacy of British colonialism in both countries. It seems with Disney over the years and whatever permutation it appears in, whatever company it has acquired there’s always the precipice of exoticism and othering. Geopolitical regions like Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and southern Europe find themselves exoticised by Disney, real countries could’ve sufficed but you have to deal with the ugly geopolitical reality we live in.

At best, Disney and its vassal companies promote an American way of looking at things. Rather othering and exclusive at that concerning foreign countries at all.

I said before

I said before that when it comes to extrapolating hair colour percentages from one country to its neighbour, it makes the most parsimonious sense when it comes to geographic and possibly genetic proximity (history of intermarriage and immigration, don’t be surprised if a Slovene community exists in Italy as it’s right next to it).

Logically, with Belgium being right between France and The Netherlands that the percentage of blonds to brunettes and in-between would be similar to its neighbours to a degree. But that also opens a can of worms where the hair colour percentage of Ukraine and Russia’s similar to Poland.

The number of blonds and mousy blonds in Austria’s similar to Slovakia and Northern Italy, so on and so forth.

Show me your true colours

If I recall correctly about studies on hair colour surveys in countries like the Netherlands and Iceland, supposing if the rate of blond vs dark hair (whether if this includes dark blond/light brown hair as a sort of middle groud) is the same or similar but with Iceland having slightly more redheads that the Netherlands do, bear in mind another study confirmed that Iceland has one of the highest numbers of red hair in Europe and the highest within Scandinavia.

Now as for other countries like Belgium and Austria, maybe Italy to some extent I suspect that the rate of blonds vs brunettes (as well as those with mousy blond hair) in Belgium would be similar to the Netherlands and France to some extent. Logically the rate of blond hair in Austria and Northern Italy would be similar to Slovenia when one considers geographical proximity (and presumably similar genetics due to migration and consequently intermarriage).

Or for another matter, the rate of blondism in Northern Germany would be similar to Poland but the rate of blondism in Southern Germany’s similar to those in Austria, Northerm Italy and Switzerland. (Actually with Iceland and Britain, bear in mind not every Icelander/Briton is redheaded but have a higher chance of carrying red hair genes than for Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, perhaps helped by that some Icelanders are of British descent.)

Maybe logically, not every Northern Italian is blond but they have a higher chance of carrying or passing down blond genes and the same can be said of their neighbouring Slovenes and Austrians.

Hair of the dogs

If I’m not mistaken, when it comes to the Netherlands in a study most of the Dutch participants had light brown/dark blond hair (often disparagingly compared to dogs but the Germans do similar). I feel as if there aren’t that many reliable contemporary hair colour surveys in Belgium, it’s best to extrapolate it from its closest neighbour (The Netherlands) as they could have similar percentages.

Then again the same logic could be applied to other countries to varying degrees. A good number of Poles have that hair colour but so do Slovenians. Heck as Austria and Italy are this adjacent to Slovenia, at least both Austria and Northern Italy should ought to have the same or similar percentage as Slovenia does. (Or between Switzerland, Austria and Italy really.)

In absence of any reliable contemporary surveys, we can extrapolate from recent studies. If at least 40% of Slovenians have dark blond hair, similar things can be said about their Austria and Northern Italian neighbours. Or between Dutch and Belgians.

Blood siblings

Should Germans, Swiss and Austrians turn out to be more genetically related to Northern Italians and French, that should be unsurprising in the sense that sometimes with cultural influence a community that might not be that genetically related to the invaders would inherit much of their sensibilities, language and mindset (as well as genetics to some extent). This goes with a degree of intermarriage as it may vary between individuals, social class, community and zeitgeist.

If Germans, French, Swiss, Austrians and Northern Italians are believed to have descended from Gauls then it should be unsurprising that through colonisation and trade, especially when it comes to a prestigious language, they would’ve readily abandoned their native languages in favour of the more prevailing and useful one. Look no further than what’s been done to Ireland if it weren’t for Britain.

Let’s not also forget that France and Italy were subjected to varying degrees of Germanic influence, with some Italian fiefdoms and kingdoms being more closely aligned to Germany and Austria. Likewise for Venice, that would’ve been the same whether if it’s Austria or contemporary Croatia and Slovenia (some parts of either of them were part of Venice before).

Let’s not forget that there are Slovene-speakers and German-speakers in Northern Italy so if Venetians were found out to have a substantial degree of Slavic DNA, that’s unsurprising given their closest neighbours and that’s likely the same with Germans, French, Austrians, Swiss and Northern Italians in general.

Ottoman Empire Colonies

Africa:

Ethiopia

Eritrea

Egypt

Algeria

Tunisia

Libya

 

Asia and Europe:

Iraq

Syria

Armenia

Lebanon

Israel

Uzbekistan

Bahrain

Qatar

United Arab Emirates

Yemen

Georgia

Kuwait

Azerbaijan

Saudi Arabia

Bulgaria

Greece

Albania

Bosnia

Cyprus

Hungary

Jordan

Kosovo

Ukraine

Montenegro

Serbia

Slovenia

Croatia

Romania

Turkmenistan

 

I could be wrong in here.

Some Studies

According to James Serpell’s study on British witchcraft, though cats were fairly well-represented in witchcraft trails (beating dogs by a margin) however they were grossly and significantly outnumbered by toads. In two other studies, namely Cunning Folk by Emma Whitby and Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland by Julian Goodare, dogs outnumbered cats as the witch familiars.

(It could also be that whilst Serpell only covered between 1530 and the early 18th century, Whitby went further into the 19th century and so did Goodare in a way.)

There’s also a study on witchcraft in Eastern Slovenia* which also mentions toads as the predominant witch animals. Sometimes studies can contradict themselves as academians are only human though they also could be coloured by their biases as well as being unable to find further sources to back things up so.

*Styrian Witches in European Perspective