#weekly essay

[spottheantisemitism]

Christofasctism in Max Bemis’ Moon Knight run

Christofascism is using christianity to justify fascist ideas that the strong should kill or rule over the weak. While the ideology is relatively new as it's formed from combining modern nationalist movements with hardline bigoted flavors christianity, the "convert or die" subtext of the ideology is actually ancient and has been used to oppress religious minorities like Jews for centuries.

about the author

Max Bemis is a messianic 'Jew' born to Jewish parents and the grandson of holocaust survivors, had he not converted to a virulent antisemitic cult because he hated being Jewish so much and if he had any experience writing comics, perhaps he'd be a good choice to write a moon knight run. Marvel just saw a guy who called himself a Jew and who could handle messed up material and decided he was the one.

The Sun King

A charismatic leader of the cult of Ra that was groomed to be the only man who can stop Marc. This man has the power of fire and honestly people should have just made him Mutant instead of claiming his fire came to him mid hazing ritual because he believed enough. This man who already has magical god powers because he believes hard enough and takes in the sick and unwanted look exactly like Jesus does on Da Vinci's last supper

See what I mean?

constantly the sun king asks Marc to submit to him and accept him as his master and all the time Marc rejects him. This man also forces Marc's girlfriend into a relationship with him solely to spite Marc and kidnaps her to his island. An Island he explicitly colonized and displaced the natives from. He even makes vaguely sexual comments towards marc and drugs him before fighting him while they're both half naked in the main square.

Clearly you're supposed to hate this monster, right? Well no because then he is shown to team up with Marc to fight the real villian, the nazi. Which fair enough, the nazi is always the greater threat and the part ways right after in a weird scene where the sun kings "redeems Marc" while in the rain. Does he finally convert him in that panel? I'm not sure.

What's much worse is that Khonshu admit's that Ra's fascism and total control of everyone would create a utopia and Khonshu abandons Marc to fight the Sun King alone. Marc still wins with.... the power of crazy. Words cannot describe how much I hate this comic

By the way this is the character that inspired the MCU Arthur Harrow. For once the MCU did something better than the comics.

Ernst

To those who don’t know who Ernst is, good for you. He is essentially a blood libel caricature of a Rabbi, because surprise! He’s actually a Nazi.

However in Bemis run Ernst is Elias’ friend and Elias is a man who escaped Nazis and who is a trained Rabbi from Prague. Yet he does not catch on for twenty years of friendship and lets this man near his son. This is of course DEEPLY antisemitic because it implies Elias, a child prodigy, is too dumb to realize this man is a Nazi, or worse, knows but turns a blind eye to his friend’s murderous eugenicist ways.

The Spectors are from Czechoslovakia and Marc’s grandfather was canonically murdered by Nazis. In Bemis' run it was literally Ernst who killed Marc’s grandfather. Which actually tracks considering what happened to most Czech Jews during the Holocaust. Instead of exploring Marc’s status as a third generation survivor or at least giving us some halfway decent nazploitation, Bemis gave us the mess that is Bemis run.

So our villain is a Nazi who converted to Judaism, somehow. And our protagonist is a pagan who converted out of Judaism. I see the foils and I DO NOT LIKE the implication. The implication is the Judiasm is what makes you evil I am absolutely arguing Bemis is projecting his conversion to christianity on Marc’s conversion to paganism.

Adding to that all the Jews who stay Jewish are portrayed negatively. Marc is good in Bemis run BECAUSE he cut ties with his Judaism and that's just one aspect of the antisemitism in Bemis run. Considering Jake is typically portrayed as the most connecting to his culture could it be (and I'm reaching) that it's not just the evil alter trope and classism but also antisemitism in Bemis' choice to villainize Jake because he’s Jewish.

Lastly there's the Holocaust inversion at the end with equating Nazis and Jews with Ernst's ENTIRE CHARACTER and with Marc wondering if he's just as bad as the man who tricked his father and murdered his grandfather.

I think that's the only compelling bit, the third generation survivor killing the man who literally embodies his family's unresolved intergenerational trauma and getting little closure from it. But I'm not even giving Bemis that one. He deserves NOTHING good

Jake

Jake is potrayed as the most savage and evil. Jake is the working class identity whose personality is a mix of good Jewish boy who will punch you to protect those cares about. He's the one with the most genuine attachments and the in the runs where he's not an alter he's the role moon knight enjoys the most or second most.

It's therefore Jarring when Bemis makes him the unhinged savage monster and while most people rightfully point out the classism, it's no coincidence that he's the one that's most Jewish and Bemis as I've demonstrates sees cultural connection with Jewishness as show of chauvinism and Jewish supremacy. Jake HAS to be humiliated to and put in his place by Ernst and the Sun King and by Bemis as capricious beast that lusts after gentile women because he dares still hold connections to culture and faith.

Khonshu

Adding on to that this is the one run where Khonshu ISN'T abusive. Because from the perspective of a Jew serving a god of the Pharaoh just so you'll live is a bit of a horror story - a bit like the Faustian bargain stories Christian love so much. But to the Christian Bemis, Khonshu is just Crystal Dragon Jesus but edgier than your typical Aslan.

When Fighting the sun king he’s explicitly compared to the god that actually freed the Hebrews from slavery and the G-d of the bible is compared to Ra and portrayed as the evil one who led them into slavery. And also position Khoshu as the New Testament god when you know he’s shown as Moon Knight’s abuser who groomed him from childhood to be his soldier snd now he’s Marc’s only salvation away from the damnation of Judaism?!

Also again both times Khonsu agrees with the Villians and Marc screams at him to shut up and defeats them anyway. That’s right God wants to spare the fascists because they’re right and might makes right. Marc has to fight his god to do what’s right. Usually in most Moon Knight runs written by people that aren't raving bigots. it's the other way around as Khonsu struggles to keep the capricious and selfish Marc on the straight and narrow and also wants vengeance and death. Marc isn’t one to turn the other cheek but neither is Khonsu.

Conclusion:

It’s odd because Bemis is messianic. He converted to antisemitic cult whose sole purpose is to trick jews into converting to Christianity. It’s not Nazis or Pagan cultists that infiltrate Jewish communities and prey on vulnerable. It’s messianics. And Bemis can claim with the voice of a god he claims is a Jesus figure that they have a point in stripping our protagonist of his faith and culture, that they’re doing it to save him from himself. But the narrative works against him and Marc Spector triumphs unchanged and victorious. No man’s slave. This victory snatched from the jaws of defeat seems almost contradictory and accidental considering the entire comic seems to think must Jews convert or die and Marc somehow does neither, but I'll take it.

@drifting-pieces-blog-blog did a fourpart series to this comic if you want more on it.

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[spottheantisemitism]

Unhinged racism and antisemitism of Marvel 1602

Marvel 1602 was written by Neil Gaiman in the wake of 9/11 and it really shows. The story ostensibly about 1600s England is in fact about 2000s America. We covered this in House of M, where Nixon and Creed are Bush and Cheney. In Marvel 1602, the Queen is dying, the Elizabethan Age is coming to an end, the world is ending and the various countries squabble and persecute minorities instead of banding together to solve it. Gaiman claims this story is less political commentary and just is summer fun but as always he’s a blatant liar. Listen Frank Miller wrote Holy Terror and Gaiman wrote 1602, we know who coped with 9/11 better but it’s clear he’s traumatized by 9/11 and pondering propaganda, nationalism, retaliation and the meaning of being American.

“my serious angry commentary on war and nationalism is summer blockbuster fun” I dunno, Neil, I dunno.

1602 is fun. It has action and it has some truly poignant musings on what a means to be loyal to your country, what it means to find your people, the meaning of faith. It has crossdressing Jean Grey in a 12th night love triangle. It has Matt Murdock as a bard and the Fantastic Four as sailors (Ben Grimm is tragically Scottish as there were no Jews in England at the time). However it has a fatal 2000s tendency to want to shock. And those shocking twists range from “Doctor Doom is normal under the mask” or “the black widow is a double agent” to just blatant racism.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

the basic plot of 1602 is that a time traveler has caused the end of the world and for 1600s versions of heroes to manifest

This is how Enrique and Rojhaz are introduced. Already a blond dude in Native American dress is pretty messed up. Enrique meanwhile seems like just another inquisitor scheming to ally with Scotland because they both hate Mutants, I mean Witchbreed (Gaiman can fucking world build unlike most of Marvel writers). Also Virginia Dare makes no fucking sense but again it’s just good summer fun ok?!

They flimsily try to imply he’s mixed but not even the queen is buying it. And you know what he actually is?! He’s a time traveling Steve from our world who dresses in buckskin and speaks like tonto all to PROTECT AMERICAN COLONISTS FROM THE NATIVES. WTF Gaiman?!

He’s reached his final boss most racist form. No seriously Steve which people are you going to make a better America for?! Because you seem to ONLY focus on white people. I too want to bash him with a rock.

I cannot even begin to think how to fix this, cultural appropriation Steve is too integral to the plot

To think we could have had this instead.

We now move on to my problematic fave. Enrique oh Enrique. I love you but you’re three different antisemitic tropes. He’s… He’s Magneto, guys.

It took me forever to realize that when Werner here the 1602 anomaly version of Angel, accidentally compares himself to Jew the Spanish Inquistion burned at the stake Gaiman is not only setting up the twist he’s telling us Enrique is more than willing to burn his own people at the stake. Both of them.

Finally at the end it’s shown Enrique was himself a witchbreed and a jew in a series of panels that are now (in)famous. Tw G-slur and CSA mention

It’s pretty clear that Petros and Wanda’s mother besides being Enrique’s lover is one of the many people he saved. Having a Magneto who survived the Spanish Inquistion is brilliant if you’re gonna change his backstory but then….

It’s also deeply odd to me that he came to serve the man who stole him from his family and presumably molested him as well. It’s darker than that because Enrique has adopted this man catchphrase and also spares those he deems pretty and passing and kills the rest. This is in short the rough equivalent of holocaust inversion.

And I personally think that if Enrique is serving his own interests and not the Inquistion if occasionally employing similar methods (to his children’s great discomfort) that would have more realistic and compelling. The twist could have instead been that he’s only posing as an inqisitor to King James to play everyone against each other. That’ll shave off the inversion and the ‘Jew who betrays his own for power’ tropes leaving only the “Jew who plays all sides against each other”. That is to me, fine.

Reblog by @spottheantisemitism · 2 images

💬 3  🔁 53  ❤️ 106 · Living for this hot take honestly

Here’s a hot take that perhaps Gaiman’s projecting his abuse by scientology (and later his ex scientology parents) on Enrique and that’s worth at least considering.

You cannot make me hate this comic. Look at those pretty colors. Look at composition! This comic wasn’t inked at all! It was penciled by hand and the colored digitally to preserve detail.

Look at the gay subtext between Jean and Werner who thinks she's a cute boy about to make a love confession and not that she's dysphoric as hell from having to pretend she's a boy 24/7.

Javier and Enrique met in seminary. We all know how that turned out if Javier is a refugee in England. It’s interesting that he’s still a true believer. I love how Kubert got each of the Original Five’s expressions different and made then exactly what five teenagers dragged to church look like. Despite being a Jew, I have been dragged to church service in my youth for various reasons, so I vouch this is accurate.

Usually the commentary hits and everyone acts like of the period and the attitudes aren’t prettied up for a modern audience. However falls into the opposite tendency to shock for shock’s sake.

1602 often reads like an older 80s comic with it’s world building and allegory. Many characters are depowered or reimagined in intersting ways. But the sudden racism is quite blatant. While I enjoyed Gaiman’s take almost as much I like a lot of 90s Claremont, at least Claremont knew how to tow the line on deeply problematic Magneto without going into straight up inversion, Gaiman who it seems has not encountered this trope, which is odd because someone this well read on culture and history should know what holocaust inversion is. However knowing Claremont gave Demon bear race changing ray, I can sadly see a Claremont comic with Cultural Appopriation Steve.

This is actually something I would reccomend to people with caveauts about racism. The rest of the comic is just as unhinged but in a good way. If you can aknowledge the racism and be ready for gritty 2000s attitudes, you might discover some hearfelt sentiment, some whimsy and some just plain delightful comic book nonsense (the entire fight against Count Doom of Latveria with it’dfreezing rain that turns people to statues and daredevil using chains as a parachute comes to mind). There is a reason this essay is shorter than usual, as there is much to like. But what there is to hate is downright unhinged

[spottheantisemitism]

The baffling antisemitism of whistle

Worried teens didn’t read DC comics, dc launched a YA line of Aus. Most were decent like the one about Dick Grayson and the circus stuck in the 20s and Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass. Some were derivative like the Mera one being a modern Little Mermaid clone that’s enemies to lovers or Nubia real one not being groundbreaking if you've ever read an X-men book (but Nubia is very much overhated by comicsgaters). Some are infamously bad drivel like I am not Starfire and Gotham High. Some were just boring like Victor and Nora or A Jessica Cruz story. A few are hauntingly good like the one about a teenage Selina Kyle and how her abusive parents and homelessness drive her to joining a gang and then becoming a thief. The Teen Titans books hit jackpot by doing the MCU thing and introducing each member by themselves in a solo book and then having a team book. Some of the choices in Raven are cheesy but the book hits its stride by Robins.

Sadly this is not about the teen titans reboot. This about Whistle which I’d say is decently entertaining but never feels hard hitting enough to be good. Also beast boy is here but he’s just some Nigerian immigrant who is our Jewish protagonist’s love interest. The Garth in franchise crossover at least has his powers and loving parents who tried to ‘fix his shapeshifting ’ with medication without his knowledge (I’m sure many disabled and intersex people might relate to that plot). Here he is a satellite love interest. The boy for Whistle to chase and win over with no personality of his own. And all of her Jewishness in relation to pain and give her a antisemitic powerset.

It’s an Ok book. Willow Zimmerman is a student, activist with two jobs working hard to afford cancer treatments for her mother so mom can go back to work. It’s bleak actually.

Yeah…. It’s bad.

Notice how the comic explains what a mitzvah is and implies her mother essentially pidgeonholed as the ‘Jewish studies’ professor.

It’s actually a pretty decent “gotham civilians book” at first.

That has teen romance!

It has daily life with foreshadowing of future villains (note Killer Croc being literal blocks away)

Willow better be joking about the 500 synagogue because either Gotham has more Jews than New York or the local Rabbis got into a fight and the resulting sects created so many separate synagogues

Are you enjoying all the Jewish food in this comic? Good, cuz that's the Jewish culture you'll ever get.

And dealing with supervillain attacks. Here it’s poison ivy taking over buildings that bring communities together for ecoterrorism you can show in a teen book and makes sense from both an eco and terror standpoint.

Oops you befriended the civilian identity of the supervillian you’re protesting against

Her mom’s ex boyfriend was the riddler. A lot of people see Willow calling E. Nigma uncle and his birth name being 'nachtberger' and decry “omg they made Riddler Jewish” but like no? She’d mention that. It would be great foil potential if so even if you had yet another comic supervillain retconned as Jewish. What I’m getting here is he’s Willow’s dead beat bio dad. I'm joking, that's just my interpretation, not actual hard literary analysis

he certainly acts like a father figure. If any writers remember her, she’ll likely be retconned as his daughter anyway. I’m not saying I want that, by the way, just that it'll happen eventually.

When your mom’s bad friend suddenly shows up in your life with a questionable stash of cash and promises to pay for everything….

she then lies to her mother about where the money came from.

Impoverished Jewish teen turns to organized crime to make ends meet is so realistic it hurts. This book is actually good so far

If she’s that poor the money going straight to her head is actually realistic. The whole subplot that she now has to choose between the blood money and her friends is played out fairly realistically. Like many Jews before her, Willow is pushed here by desperation.

notice also she’s attempting to straighten her hair. Because of course she is. It's a way a lot of Jewish women have attempted to assimilate.

Poison Ivy and possibly Cat Woman telling Willow to stay in school and go to college because she’ll like higher education and possibly meet someone is funny. Especially since they’re really gunning for the implication that the second woman is reminiscing about the hot lesbians she met at college.

Yeah I do like that Naomi (Willow’s mom) is actually interesting when given any agency and not being the equivalent of the sick kid motivation. Garfield is also kinda just the guy a genderflipped girl for Willow to win after she saves the world. He’s not even beast boy. He doesn’t even like animals. He seems to like Willow and cool new American things he discovers. Whenever he talks about himself or Lagos, it cuts to black (that's not a joke, it literally happened twice).

Willow’s life lesson about not caring about money more than people is executed well however. So after realizing her crush thinks she’s a monster, Willow goes to a synagogue to think.

Oh this is a Christian viewpoint. A can never wander into a synagogue especially in a place like Gotham. I know this comic doesn’t want to touch antisemitic hate crimes with a ten foot pole but in comic about poverty and building vandalism, this an oversight.

the way she ponders on her sins is very Christian too. You can’t just transplant the classic “character wanders and empty church and repents” plot beat with a Jew, an atheist Jew especially.

The final one is especially egregious. Couldn’t have used something from the torah or the talmud and slap righteous onto a quote from a motivational poster. Do some actual fucking research comic. Oh right you couldn't bother to research Nigerian culture to give our Nigerian love interest some depth besides virtue signalling of course you didn't bother researching Judaism.

Willow may be explicitly secular but her mother is religious and a Jewish history professor, she'd know religion and actually recite something from proverbs or psalms and not a motivation poster that has a kitten on it.

Killer Croc calls Willow a class traitor outside a synagogue. No notes, 10/10 symbolism. Oddly relevant as this shit actually happens to real life jews now.

Sadly this symbolic culmination is where everything goes to hell. Because Willow has dog powers now. From being attacked. By a crocodile man.

WORST. ORIGIN. STORY. EVER.

Do not um actually me about some dumb silver age villian. Those were churned out to make a quick profit. This is a serious comic about poverty and gentrification.

Killer Croc being a misuderstood hero should have come up in the climax where he either tries to help her fight riddler or is disgusted that she's not doing good enough it would have intersting allegorical perspectives either way.

At least Willow is smart enough to see her friend Pammie is Poison Ivy. Good subversion of the whole "friends as civilian identities because they don’t recognise each other as supervillian and superhero". Also it’s kinda fucked up that Willow only starts taking the building greening personally when it affects her and a building used by her people. It’s falling into “Jews only care about themselves” canard.

So she can hear and smell better. Cool! Symbolic of the hypervigilance of PTSD.

She can talk to her dog friend because of COMICS BULLSHIT. But ok she’s a Disney princess who has a talking animal sidekick. This will appeal to younger readers. Kitty Pryde had Lockheed, Willow Zimmerman has Leibowitz. It’s fine, I guess.

Ok comic you can have this one. Even it’s a stereotype that Jews will survive something and then victim blame themselves, it’s also very much true that many real life Jews actually do that. I did it too.

She just survived gang violence and terrorism (the latter from someone she thought was a friend) and everyone thinks she’s an exotic oddity instead of showing compassion.

Notice her hair is curly again.

Training montage that reinforces she’ll be a street level hero who trained for strength and her powers are more used to spot crime, not fight it.

Good on the comic for portraying her plotting to double cross him as a good thing. Guys they’re asking you to cheer on Jewish girl betraying her goyische employers because he’s a corrupt mob boss. Love that.

and nope Killer Croc is ARRESTED OFF SCREEN. Boring!

We have Kitty Pryde at home. Like the costume montage is identical to the one where Kitty play around with a costume making machine during the brood saga. The fact that Willow could knock out Excalibur era Kitty, steal her outfit and convincingly look like her is not helping.

I understand that most Jewish women look exactly like, hell, I could easily cosplay both but considering they have identical personalities as well (snarky, smart, socially akward, clothes savvy), it really seems DC is scrambling for an alternate company equivalent to Kitty Pryde.

The problem is that our protagonist has the power to summon dog with whistling. Our Jewish protagonist has the power of Dogwhistle.

guys…..

could a sensitivity reader not have told you this was a BAD idea?

and no she doesn't defeat the Riddler they have a stalemate between Poison Ivy and Willow's dog army and she vows to get him next time, all while still taking his money.

between the idea that Judaism is when synagogues, inspirational quotes and Askie food, our brown characters are all vapid and in love with main lead’s intelligence, racism is obvious. This book deserved better than such careless mistakes.

So essentially between the racism towards the love interest, her baffling antisemitic powerset, the uwu shake a lemon at G-D in the denny’s parking lot take on judiasm and trying to make Willow look smart by having everyone act like idiots in comparison this book really misses the mark.

Which is a shame because I found myself relating to Willow in ways I didn’t see myself in firmly middle class model minority Kitty Pryde. Maybe if in the sequel where she is revealed to Riddler’s daughter only to have that be him messing with her and she's not actually his daughter, they’d hire a Jewish sensitivity reader and it would actually be good.

[spottheantisemitism]

House of M is a Rothschild cospiracy

There has long been hysteria that a small cabal of Jews control the world. The very world 'cabal' is dripping with antisemitic hate towards the kabbalah because gentiles are forbidden to study it and fear what they don’t understand. So when a powerful Jewish banking clan who rose to prominence and even royalty, had involvement with politics, the conspiracies spread about the family like wildfire conspiracies that he was promoting degeneracy and race mixing permeated or funding world wars and even conspiracies that the family single handedly caused the holocaust to create the state of Israel. The fact that this family is still a noble house that still operates and whose recent memory inherited the Barony in 2024 drives people up the wall. The very idea of Zionist or Jewish Occupied Government is derived from the older Rothschild Conspiracy.

When Chris Claremont inverted the morality of Magneto from eugenicist who wants to rule world with Mutants on top and him ruling humans and mutants alike with an iron fist to a traumatized holocaust survivor who believes that him ruling the world is the only way to prevent another holocaust, there was some uncomfortable growing pains as the two backstories created some rather unsavory implication, often by design.

In "God Loves, Man Kills", Scott Summers asks Magneto what will happen to Magneto’s dictator after Magneto dies. Magneto says he hopes someone like Scott would take up the mantle.

"House of M" answers this question differently. It implies that the Magnus dictatorship should be a monarchy. A Jewish-Romani family of extremely long lived individuals that rule the entire world. Which sounds uncomfortably like a Rothschilds family conspiracy.

Considering Claremont himself wrote House of M!Magneto's backstory, where did it all go wrong? Was it the execution or the premise itself?

Here’s Magnus’ mother who hid in a pile of corpses (I carefully edited them out but they’re there in the original) to avoid the death march handing off her child to some Russians came to liberate the camp

Hello unsubtle Moses allegory! Claremont wrote this bit in the crossover bible (basically the world's lore) so it’s likely intentional. Claremont specified Magnus was born in Auswitz and his mother hid him from everyone. From the fact that Dr. Doom calls Magneto a fellow Rom (using the g-slur of course), we can assume Magnus’ father is Roma (perhaps even Sinti) which adds a new layer of horror to “my husband is already dead”.

skipping over the Pogrom in Vinnitsya that radicalizes Magnus to the actual canon divergence (Magda is just some random Romani woman he marries rather than a fellow holocaust survivor here but everything else is the same)

Suzanna Dane is now a hot blonde resistance fighter whom Magnus forcibly sends away to safety so she can be a single mom and give their kid a normal childhood. No indefinitely on either part here, yay!

When Magneto does start to take on a more revolutionary bent, Charles finds him reasonable and so do his three children who don’t know they’re his kids. Lorna is likely dying her hair as her powers and her green hair showed up the same time canonically. Wanda and Pietro are rightfully shown as not living in the kind of household that has a television. Good so far!

When they take over Genosha it’s already portrayed in a negative or mixed light. As not only is exiling each human on the island portrayed as a bad thing, Pietro shows contempt for other Mutants repeatedly. Like in the sceenshot in the top right. Charles Xavier setting a man’s mind free, essentially speed running recovery from learned helplessness, is kinda darkly amusing to me even if he does it all the time in canon

Magneto’s real descent into villiany, at least according to the comic, is when he assassinates Greydon Creed a person people see as equivalent to Hitler or at least a modern Neo-Nazi. The comic cleverly never has us feel sympathy for Creed but instead make understand the repercussions of killing him would be that it would start a war between Genosha and America. And since that would after all their respective allies, this act would essentially start World War three. It also cleverly subverts the whole “magneto became no better the nazis he fought” canard with “twisting semantics will not magically stop genocide” a line that goes so hard that I am ashamed to admit my trump card in arguments about holocaust inversion came from X-men Au comic rife with antisemitic tropes. So what’s the problem? This seems like nuance and good writing so far, doesn't it? Patience, friend!

On the surface this is a good moral “violence may get you what you want, but the cost is too high for you to pay”. That's President Nixon Magneto is humiliating in that panel, by the way. Good stuff. However, it’s an ending is “we aren’t going full circle as we as the superior race are better than that, here look at my favorite token humans” is a bit yikes. This fully implies that Magneto does not expect that kind of decency from humanity and explain the rather brutal methods he employs in quelling dissent further down the line. Magneto is no longer concerned with being with being a good ruler but to appear as one. He’s so consumed by grief over the loss of all his various lovers (Charles dies on page and Suzanna dies of cancer off page) and allies that he’s essentially letting his children and the various puppet governments run things. So while he’s more Napoleon than the absolute dictator his enemies paint him as.

Magneto lets Apocalypse run Egypt. Apocalypse is tyrant who enslaves humans and kills mutants for being too weak. This man has been attempting to take over Africa. By the way Apocalypse is the reason Marc Spector is radicalized into terrorism and becomes a much darker, edgier, and later much more repentant Moon Knight. This series is about the cycle of violence.

Yet when Ororo and T’Challa kill Apocalypse, something that’s politically advantageous to Magneto as he can now scapegoat humans on the death of Apocalypse to Apocalypse's fanatical supporters while also getting rid of his least favorite ally. This frankly makes no sense. Him calling Ororo ungrateful for not thinking his decolonization of Africa is enough is actually a clever showcase of one character weakness's, but him being angry that an easily scapegoat-able human killed a man he was already planning to assassinate means these writers don’t understand geopolitics.

Humans in America all live in what are basically ghettos and Luke Cages “this is fine” reaction spells out that this is very much NOT fine. The entire plot of House of M: Avengers is how it’s getting worse and worse for humans between 1970 when the revolution happened and present day which seems to be the late 1990s by the presence of bulky computer monitors and the absence of cell phones (this comic came out in the 2000s by the way). Do you think that cop was told he had to be a cop because he had an eye in the back of his head? Personally since the theme of this particular comic is “society made us what we are but we can still choose to be better”, I think so.

humans in Genosha live as second class citizens as we see when Ben Grimm escapes from literal slavery to Dr. Doom, as Doom and Magneto fight, and joins the slums of Hammer Bay with the other human resistance. Alicia Masters, their blind leader, is the first person to treat Ben as a human being since his transformation.

It's likely Humans on Genosha were finally allowed because they're used for cheap labor.Similar to how mutant slavery on Genosha started in the first place place. Again the full circle allegations are creeping up on the reader.

Look at this "golem and the girl that likes him" imagery! Man every Jew besides Kitty has unthinkably horrific things happen to them in this crossover. Kitty, born after the revolution, has a happy fulfilling life as a grade school teacher.

As fun and accurate as a dictator giving the overzealous cop he himself assigned to terrorize the human ghetto unpaid leave and a transfer to a different district not for his literal attempted pogrom but for calling his daughter a slur, notice the “I can’t be SEEN condoning purges”. It’s not “I think pogroms are bad” but “I think pogroms are useless violence and bad for my reputation”. This comic unlike the prequel comic DOES imply he’s gone full circle. Also Thunderbird, a Native American character wanting to “wipe a neighbor off the map” and “burn it to ash” is really giving white supremacist “decolonization is when the natives kill you and pillage your city” rhetoric.

So Magneto is now a tyrannical dictator who cares more for his image than actual justice, Wanda is slowly withdrawing from the world and losing her mind from having to maintain and tweak this reality for 30 years, Pietro is planning a coup against his father, and Lorna still acting like a teenager even as a 40 something. These are the corrupt mad Jewish Romani family that rule the world. Always portrayed as both weak and strong at once. This comic veers between its social commentary and white supremacist rhetoric because of the conspiracies baked into its premise and I don’t think it walks that tightrope well.

So was the premise unusable or the execution?

I think it's the execution. Consider the prequel comic that doesn't falter until the last moment and the Avengers comic that almost holds up and you realize it's problem not of "unworkable premise" but "these writers aren't qualified to explore these things"

[spottheantisemitism]

Lizards and Goblins are not neccesarily antisemitic

Jewitches overview

Goblins, Jews, and Antisemitism

Content warning: extreme antisemitism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia Conversations on the Internet can have a frustrating undercurrent; w

Jewitches already provides examples of goblins and in Tolkien as being these villanious creatures with no Jewish coding and in Shakespeare Goblins are seen more like fairies and are shown positively so off to a good start for team “Goblins aren’t always antisemitic”

Goblins in Final Fantasy

Echoes Down The Corridor

Hello I would like to hear your thoughts on the alexander raids 👁👁 Okay well first thing is-I actually really like them. Secondly, I'm NOT

Goblins are hit or miss in Final Fantasy at least according to this summary by a mutual

they have their own culture and focus on invention and hard work which aren’t negative (if arguably positive Jew coding) but they have a faction called the Illuminati (hello new world order conspiracy) which want to take over the world and worships a machine messiah named Alexander that when awakened tries to destroy the goblins that helped wake him to create a better world. Horrified the other goblins then helps the players fight this Alexander

“The Illuminati could be seen as Christians, with Quickthinx being Jesus. Shanoa could be seen as being akin to an angel, as could possibly Alexander Prime. You could be seen as having wrestled God/a God. Or I could be completely full of shit overthinking things.

I do think there's something to be said on how data gained from Alexander and later Omega, would be combined to send G'raha to the First from the Doomed Timeline, saving you and the future”

@arandomshotinthedark remarks in last paragraphs of the above link

while that’s a fascinating analysis, I find the focus on the development of Goblin Christianity out of Goblin Judaism a bit uncomfortable and supersessionist but fascinating plot point nonetheless

Goblins in Harry Potter

Harry Potter’s goblins are greedy bankers who care only for their in-group and their goods. No matter how charitably you slice it that Griphook is just reclaiming a sacred artifact and helps the heroes he still betrays them for the artifact and his hatred of wizards and muggles is treated as his problem and not trauma or paranoia. Rowling truly believes you should shrug off oppression as her essays on house elves show

The video game Hogwarts: Legacy that was written by a literal neo nazi goes further elaborates on this by having the plot center on quelling a goblin revolt. Regardless of your actions and the revelations that the goblins were merely pawns of an evil wizard, you cannot change the way people view goblins even in the more compassionate ending and it implies the only good goblins are two who don’t fight for their rights as those movements with inevitably be corrupted by bad actors. More subtly, goblins artifacts look like judaica, notably you can recover a ceremonial ram’s horn that’s oddly like a shofar. Why a race of beings that live underground and have never kept livestock use a ram’s horn and not the silver or gold they are famed for is never explained. The only explanation is the writer wanted to mock jews

I will disagree with a common criticism of the game being blood libel as there is no child kidnapping. The ‘child’ being kidnapped is the teenage player character and you very much foil the goblins attempt to kidnap you. The fact that the goblins are willing to kidnap a child to keep you from unraveling their plot is bad enough but it’s not blood libel

Goblincore

Goblincore is not antisemitic at all. It’s basically combining being a collector of shiny trinkets and not caring about appearance. Behind the fantasy name is a straight forward aesthetic that opens up “the hoodie and jeans, messy hair don’t care, I collect pop vinyls and old nintendos” aesthetic to people who aren’t cishet men.

I judge movements by their actions and not by what they claim to be hence gamergate is a hate movement, cottagecore is tradwifery for leftist women and goblincore is a -core for queer nerds who want to a less bigoted version of nerd culture or cottagecore without the misogyny. They’re linking goblins to jews they’re enbodying and empathizing with the goblins. If you movement is using the fantasy creature to promote empathy instead of xenophobia then more power to you

Lizards for David Icke

David Icke decided to use science fiction to stoke his antisemitism. Icke believes all major institutions are run by shapeshifting Lizards (aka reptilians) from the moon here to colonize humanity and enslave us. Icke also believed the all popes , all presidents and prime minister and every Zionist was actually a reptilian shapeshifter. Since the overlap between Zionist and jew is significant, Icke all but admitted he sees most jews as subhuman shapeshiftering lizards. Even the staunchest antizionists laugh this nonsense off (Alice Walker not included) and his theories are more popular with Nazis. Considering original Nazis stole from Blavatsky’s mysticism of the aryan descendants of the hypeborean race from antarctica that’s just tradition at this point

Lizards in Dracula

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Count Dracula is compared to lizard when he crawls up a wall that a human like the narrator Jonathan Harker cannot (until Jonathan manages to do just that rendering the point moot). This a non issue since it was written before the reptilian was a concept. It is however used to dehumanize the count as other not code him as specifically Jewish. It’s xenophobia, not antisemitism. So maybe the people in making lizard jokes and the people smugly accusing them of antisemitism should both cut that shit out

Lizards in she-ra

I was told Double Trouble was an antisemitic stereotype because they only care about money and being good at infiltration and lack morals (same could be said of Marc Spector and yet no one calls him an antisemitic stereotype). Oh and they’re a Lizard creature like the Reptilians in Icke’s screed.

this is so patently ludicrous to the point where I believe this was a psyop to push Jews out of the She-Ra fandom, because oh my G-D this could not be made in good faith.

TL;DR

Goblins often antisemitic but not necessarily, Lizards almost never antisemitic unless Reptilian is used

[spottheantisemitism]

What’s wrong with Weird War Three?

basically it can’t decide if it’s a serious “nazis won” story or a more silly story where the lead defeats the nazis with the power of gay and deages Hitler into a zygote. Also the Jewish character who should be the protagonist is sidelined for her gentile girlfriend so it’s just all kinds of wrong.

But first, context!

Excalibur is lesser known X-men adjacent title created by Chris Claremont in part so he could keep Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler out of other writers grubby hands. Besides those two the team consisted of Dysfunctional couple Captain Britan and Meggan and Kitty’s friend and later girlfriend Rachel Summers.

In one episode team Excalibur encounters their counterpart on a nazis won earth called Lightning Squad. In this world,Rachel doesn’t exist, the other three gentile characters act like generic evil counterparts and wear iron crosses. Kitty’s counterpart is a literal ghost who trapped herself in a phased state to escape death and blackmailed on being on Lightning Squad presumably at the threat of being disintegrated. She wears rags, is bald and alternates between being a ruthless killer and this deeply anguished figure. Our Kitty is deeply horrified by her counterpart’s plight and attempts to put the people who this to her on trial. she is informed this will begin a war between the two realities and lets those monsters go free to their own world.

In the second crossover we get Kitty punching the Reichminister in the face to avenge her counterpart but we never see Ghost herself again. And that’s a problem!

To read my more detailed thoughts click the read more

the read more is because this entire comic is about alternate nazi Britain and half of it is set in a death camp. There are people being burned alive and skinned in this.

Still with us? Good!

The comic opens with people being burned alive in a death camp

This graphic novel doesn’t have comics code so they can show hakenkruez and boy do they abuse that priveledge

Rachel’s scars from when she was a hound and had to hunt and kill other mutants at gunpoint show up when she’s in great distress. Often when she encounters something that gives her flashbacks, which witnessing the last moments of those cremated alive, understandably does.

Rachel is haunted by Ghost. This the only time we see Ghost herself and she doesn’t speak. Maybe don’t Godwin’s law the counterpart of your girlfriend who is a holocaust survivor, Rachel.

It’s likely Rachel sees a lot of herself in Ghost as they were both forced to kill their own people by genocidaires.

Things go from bad to worse as their world seems to be taken over by Nazis seemingly overnight. A nazis won earth is one thing but when this comes to your home and the world is convinced you are wrong, that’s a different type of horror entirely. Also half the team of the team are undesirables under the Nuremberg codes and the other half hate nazis for both ideological and personal reasons

The Charles Xavier of the nazis world world is a nazi scientist who runs the death camp and is trying to use the deaths of his victims to turn himself into the next step in human evolution, the X-man. Usually I’d dissmiss as more evil Charles edgelord drivel but three pages later on really sell him as a villain.

Considering each person from 616 is merged with their Nazis won world counterpart, I assumed this is 616 Xavier and this Xavier having a mind battle, instead he’s fighting the Phoenix force. Sigh!

Here is where the metaphor falls apart since instead of focusing that Kitty is visibly Jewish and Meggan is Roma they focus on the fact that they’re hated for being Mutant. This makes no sense as being Mutant is seen as a positive on this Nazi earth.

We have these great moments when the team is told to prove their worth by fighting and when Kitty starts to show weakness the nazis attempt to kill her. Her entire team stands up her.

This is actually great on two fronts. one because those Nazis have already decided the one Jew on the team is the weakest link and should be killed, nothing she does will change their mind. Second she is weaker because she’s merged with her counterpart who is an undead teenager who was starved and tortured. She’s falling behind because Ghost always falls behind.

However, wouldn’t it be better if Ghost spelled this out to Kitty, idk telepathically? Wouldn’t it be compelling if the other three had to constantly have to stave of the horrific thoughts of their counterparts instead of merely manifesting in their bodies? Nightcrawler already has this when he calls Rachel a hysterical woman and slaps her and then stares in horror at his three fingered hand. Commit to a narrative comic! Because as is this is basically Devil’s Arithmetic without committing to the bit.

When fighting the versions of X-men, Kitty has to fight Storm. There is a lot I like about this scene. The compassion Kitty shows her, the fact that this Storm likely survived being burned alive and was selected like Ghost to serve the Nazis. And yet…. And yet… “if it’s her or me, it’s going to be her” Kitty thinks. Kitty merely knocks her out but as we see with how she treats the nazi counterparts of Xavier and Moira, Kitty is absolutely prepared to kill.

“You reason with the nazi, I will punch them” goes hard actually. Also Moira and Xavier are canonically geneticists that discover how Mutantion works them being won over by eugenicist more of the Nazis is very in character for them. In fact them teetering on eugenics is explored in the modern run but handled poorly. Speaking of eugenics and unethical experiments.

This is one of the three most compelling pages in the comic, the one where Xavier shows Red Skull around his research facility to show off how he’s tortured 6 plucky teenagers who deluded themselves into thinking they’re a resistance. The six in question are the Original 5 X-men and Lorna. Scott and Jean are kept in tanks, their powers used to power the facility (and presumably the crematoria above the facility), Hank and Warren have been killed and dissected and Bobby is mind controlled to do the killing of Lorna ( and possibly other teammates).

In an unintentional bit of symbolism both Bobby and Lorna would be considered Jews of the same degree by the Nazis. So Xavier isbrainwashing Bobby to kill his own in exchange for being spared. Considering we already know Kitty’s and Storm’s counterpart were spared to be exploited for their powers, this world’s Bobby is likely destined to a similar fate.

Red Skull killed Magneto and the rest of the brotherhood eventually. Considering Xavier and Red Skull are allies it’s likely both have fought Magneto. This also implies that Wanda and Pietro were still born and lived long enough to join the resistance. Now that’s a comic I’d read even if I know everyone worth rooting for would die by the end.

then this comic pulls campy shit like this. I guess it’s Hitler’s personal flag. Perhaps each colony has their own flag. I am going to win a no-prize with the amount of worldbuilding I’m giving this world.

And then Rachel and the rest of Excalibur care bear stare Evil Xavier to death with the power of gay. I’m not even joking. Rachel is able to do this because of her and Kitty’s “special soul bond” which basically means their romantic love for each other. While I do appreciate that the nazis are defeated by the love a woman has for Jewish girlfriend, it feels a bit out of left field.

Also Hitler gets de-aged into a zygote which is a whole new novel way of killing baby Hitler. It is a brand new argument in your arsenal if you happen to be trapped in one of those “would you kill baby Hitler” debates. Truly the steel chair of absurd hypotheticals. But again it’s so absurd it breaks envestmemt and made me burst out laughing.

This comic is a mess! It cannot settle on a consistent plot or theme. I know what it was going for and occasionally it hits those notes but otherwise it falls flat.

Also the first crossover that treated Ghost like a person and not a puppet for our Kitty to control was written by Claremont, a Jew, while this one was written by Higgins, a gentile. So we know one possible problem is lack of lived experience. But another is simply that there is no coherent plot and that can’t be fixed by simply hiring a Jewish writer.

[spottheantisemitism]

Days of future past and the paper thin allegory

Of all the X-stories stories to hit you with the “this is an allegory for racism”, Days of Future Past is usually not one. Instead it’s more focused on the apocalypse and oppressive dystopia than how we got here and how do we change history The prequel however focuses on racism and tyranny and focuses on Kitty/Kate Pryde as her world falls apart. Making a young Jewish woman the lead in a story about a country falling into tyranny was indeed Claremont’s vision and the intended allegory (he does the Jews-Mutants parallel with Magneto as well) but what is never explored is the implications of that allegory nor any actual Jewish culture. The prequel fixes that

If you follow me at my main @gerrysherry you’ll notice the last panel is my banner. For good reason. This comic was make during a surge of racism and antisemitism in the summer of 2023.

There is a long running joke in the fandom that Xavier and Magneto in fighting each other rather than the anti-mutant bigots is allegorical for how real life marginalized people fight each other instead their oppresors.

In the prequel Magneto makes the metaphor quite clear. He speaks not of his worries but also his experience as a Holocaust survivor. And the writers managed to in one sentence change what “days of future past” means. It’s no longer “days of future past” in the sense that Kate is reliving the past (as was the case for the 80s original story) but that society is a whole is returning to 1940s era bigotry and oppression.

notice also how when it’s a ghetto the sign is green when it’s turned into a camp the sign turns red. I thought that was clever.

I never understood this scene when I read it last year but this year I can sort of understand. If you spent years pushing me out of your activism and scapegoating me, I’m not joining your coalition to fight the president now.

and yes Stryker’s administration is clearly commentary on the 2016-2020 Trump administration down to him being a demogogue figurehead serving with no term limits and it’s his cronies that run the country. Marvel isn’t predicting the future it’s just that second verse is the same as the first. Again the future is the past.

Kitty’s wedding to Peter in Chapter 2 is officiated by her Rabbi who sneaks out to perform a ceremony in secret. Historically many Jewish weddings were performed in secret and I’m sure the parallels are intentional.

they are also marrying in the rubble of the X-mansion symbolizing them clinging to the past. But this is done not simply out of nostalgia but also because they have no where else to go.

Magneto’s dying words are great. Days of Future Past Magneto post internment is a lot more calm and pragmatic than his 616 comics counterpart but he still feels like Magneto (even moreso than recent comics which mellowed him out TOO much). And the fact that it’s Yiddish rendered in Latin script (as opposed to the Hebrew alphabet) rather German like in X-men ‘97 or Polish like in X-men Apocalypse really speaks to the thought the author put in. Yes Magneto is a German-Polish Jew but do you really expect me to believe he sees either German or Polish as his native language? “This is a Holocaust survivor who just spent the last years of his life interned, he will not see freedom but his fellow prisoners will, what language shall his last words be in? Yiddish obviously”

What I love about this comic is that this comic uses past horror not exploitatively but in a sense that past events form patterns and can recur. Those who do not learn history repeat it.

the past informs and warns the future and in the convoluted time travel set in place in the comic, the future can inform and warn the past.

[spottheantisemitism]

Racial and Ethnic coding in Shaun Tan’s Arrival

Published in 2006, Arrival is wordless graphic novel that tells the story of an immigrant who moves to a different and brilliantly surreal country and attemptimg to find a house, a job, food he is able eat and cook and ultimately earn enough money to bring his family to the new surreal country.

The novel uses no words, none of the character have names and all odd structures, machines, Creatures and animals are up to the reader to name if they so desire. I will assign each character I cover an epithet based on their role in the story such as “the refugee’s son” and “the veteran’s bowling friend”. Creature is capitalized for reasons that will become clear soon.

Before we start I highly encourage you go to your local library and check out Arrival as it’s popular staple for school and city library. Check if it isn’t shelved in the teen section as it’s often marketed to young adults. I say this as this graphic novel is so subjective that my interpretation might taint yours.

About Me

That said I enjoy sharing this one with people and am glad to show to the gaggle of regular followers my childhood favourite that I have shown all the adults in my life (including all the women in my family). This is because I emigrated with my parents from Russia to America and remember that everything in America is weird and wonderful and wrong full of strange animals and occasionally creatures.

About Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan’s father was a Malaysian immigrant who came to Australia and faced significant racism and had a hard time adjusting at first. The wonder and confusion is captured quite well. Oddly the protagonist looks European and the New country looks more like America does in hollywood movies than Australia. This is because while his father’s experience was the catalyst for telling this story most of the testimonies Tan used were of immigrants to America. It’s clear Tan was more interested capturing the feelings his father felt and universalize the immigrant experience rather than tell his father’s story in particular.

Now let’s look at some creatures and discuss visual choices!

stylized as photo album, Tan traced from real photos from eras ranging from 1870 to 1948 hence why the styles of dress seem to vary wildly. One thing is clear, the industrial revolution happened and there was recently some sort of war.

These are all based on real people from Ellis Island arrival records. Find the Chasidic Jewish man.

The Old Country uses technology typical of a 19th to 20th Century European familly. Note the watch and the suitcase especially

Our first creature are what I call the “The Dragons” but it’s not clear what they are. It really adds to the horror of it that you only ever see their tails and them infesting a tenement (possibly even some sort of ghetto). They are clearly meant to represent some opressive force that makes life in the Old Country unlivable and our protagonist impoverished.

One interesting thing is that the protagonist knows origami and communicates with his daugther via letters shaped like a bird. Plenty of Europeans know origami and likely merely a recurring motif but perhaps there is deeper meaning to it.

Our protagonist, henceforth “the Immigrant”, travels by a very titanic like boat that confused me as a child I was determined to believe this was set in an alternate 19th century, Since Ellis Island stopped operating around when the Titanic was launched. I needed to learn the borrowing here is not to code a specific era but to create a vibe. What year is it? Anywhere between 1870 and 1946 at any given time!

This statue always struck me as more American than the Statue of liberty. It’s showing two things America is famous for (but doesn’t always embody), trade and taking in immigrants. Here we have a man from the Old Country with objects like the one the immigrant owns ( familiar pottery and a suitcase) shaking hands with a man from the New Country and a cooking cone, a Creature and a Creature House. The man from the Old Country isn’t trading the animal in his hands for the apple, by the way, that’s his Creature, an equal to bird on the New Country man’s shoulder. I believe the idea is that the apple is a welcoming gift. I do like that instead of being potrayed as the wretched refuse, huddled poor yearning to be free and welcomed by a chain breaking lady of light and liberty, the New Country sees and expects its immgrants to be equals of citizens. This while laudable creates a few of problems of it’s own.

This bit used to frustrated me because it’s so clearly Ellis Island which would not be active after the titanic but considering we have a man who dresses like it’s the 19th century interacting with people from the 1930s and 1920s this should be the least of my worries.

Tan himself admits these are traced from postcards of 19th century New York to get the clothing and buildings right. Notice these are supposed to be various Immigrant quarters by the presence of not only New Country Script (which is maddening gibberish as you’ll see) but a few that look slightly like Arabic, one that looks almost like a Latin script and one that looks slightly like Kanji. The fact that these scripts are painted on walls imply it’s the most used written alphabet for that quarter.

The mixture of familiar and unfamiliar is also great (and a staple of Tan’s work). Some like the Barber, the newsboy, the gaggle of sewing women and the lady with her Creature are on the realism side of things while the man selling food from a cart which he hitched his Creature House to and the couple packing giant eggs into a crate border on the more Surreal. Note also the each panel represents a different culture and the immigrant is lost among the other immigrant quarters.

I do appreciate this man, whom I dub “the local” is potrayed in native dress. While one can cynically argue that this is to add flavor and unfamiliratily to the New Country by having people in clothes a Western Audience deems “exotic”, I think the intention is to show that all cultures are present to so extend in the new country and they are not forced to assimilate their modes of dress.

Note also the Immigrant’s “phrase book” is actually a blank notebook he is seen writing and drawing in. His grasp of the language is good enough to ask “where is ….?” Or the equivalent and he only needs to draw a room with a bed to symbolize a place to sleep.

Note finally that the symbol on the bag containing the Creature slung over the Local’s shoulder, these are typically found on most containers holding a Creature and appear to be unique to that particular Creature.

My mother and I have wildly different interpretations of this page. To me, this is a story of learning hot and cold water have been merged into one knob and that outlets are a different shape, encountering new cutlery, an electric stove and the kitchen island for the first time. To me, this is about the cultural technological gulf between the Old Country and the New Country. My mother, however, sees this as the story of buying or renting the cheapest place in a new country and discovering the utilities don’t work and the stove is miscalibrated and knowing you’re going to have to pay a rent’s worth of money to get it all fixed. She said with a sympathetic nod as if this happened to her all the time. This likely is a reflection of our lived experience as my mother is the one who did the house renovating of the house she bought with my father and I always came in a few months later to marvel at how different it all is.

Now that the Immigrant has aquired his Creature, let’s finally discuss how Creatures work and what they are.

Creatures live in Creature Homes inscribed by a unique symbol. They bond with a human and act as their assistant and also as extra pair of ears looking out for threats and opportunities. They seem more intelligent than the other animals of the New Country, mimicking the emotions of their owners.

The comparison that sprung to mind were Pokémon or Daemons from the His Dark Materials series. However, the main difference is Creatures are not bound to a specific person but to the household their Creature Home is in. We see this later that there is only one Creature per household. If immigrants acquire their Creature upon getting a house or apartment it is logical to assume that a citizen of the New Country gets their Creatures upon moving out and marrying which was synonymous in the late 19th and Early 20th century. I can see it as a popular housewarming gift.

All the Creatures and especially this one are based on Tan’s pet parrot. It warms my heart to think some of the interaction between the Immigrant and his Creature might be based on something in real life.

anyways back to canon! Our protagonist has deal with his new roommate and find something to cook and eat

The immigrant now has to deal with his new Creature roomate and spends this chapter looking for food. He also uses Public transport Airships which I will tragically not show. Get the book if you want to see some airships.

In its first bid to win him over, the Immigrant’s Creature make friends with another Creature to tell its owner to ask for help. The woman politely informs how to do it. I’m pretty certain that her outfit is also codedly Asian but again I’m no expert on this. As her and the immigrant get talking and demonstate their passports to each other she explains she was a child laborer or possibly even a child slave.

I honestly believe her being non European was intentional to not fall into the dreaded “white slavery” rhetoric. By the way when she goes over the edge and sees girls identical to her it’s unclear if it means they’re all children or all the same nationality and that’s really up for interpretation. Regardless the New Country is neighbors with a country that allows either gruesome child labor or outright slavery. Yes all of the flashback scene are this dark. This is rather dark children’s book. The two say goodbye and the Immigrant disembarks at the market which is denoted as such by a statue of a Creature holding a basket of food. Very weird food…

Do not try to read the language on this, it’s again gibberish. At no point do people pay which baffled teenage Libertarian me but I must conclude that since the Immigrant pays for rent, his airship ticket and his passage on the boat but NOT anything at the market that it’s possible groceries are free in the New Country.

The Creature has found what might be what it’s type are supposed to eat.

Here we meet the Refugee and his son. They dress like people from the early 20th century and this will become thematically important. What follows is comic exchange as the immigrant points to a pictogram of think from the Old Country and the Refugee and his son offer his objects that look nothing like bread or milk but which they assure him TASTE about the same or just as good. They then decide to invite him for dinner but when they get to the boat

The immigrant is spooked by the their family Creatures mistaking it for the dragons of his homeland. I do appreciate how the panels linger on making the Refugee family creature both unnerving and ridiculously cute at once. Notice also they have it stay in it’s Creature Home and don’t take it shopping. Perhaps because it also claws at the drawers and tries to eat the groceries. Maybe it doesn’t like crowds.

Upon trying to relate his experience, this reminds the Refugee of his own bad experiences in his Old Country. I will say this probably the most symbolically compelling portrayal of a fascist purge.

Look at this stuff. This is available as a print called “Walk of the giants” because it’s a deeply terrifying piece that stands on its own.

The Building in the background is distinctly Italian and considering the early Twentienth century dress of the Refugee this means they likely survived something similar to Fascist Italy.

The Refugee and his wife survive by hiding and emerge in a strange new system. The blocks are up to interpretation but mine is that they represent the strange and hostile corrupt bureaucracy that springs up in such regimes.

They eventually find a boat and leave and just arrive at the New Country. Stowing away on boats used to be an acceptable way to immigrate to America before Americans realized Jews could escape the holocaust that way and changed the laws.

the New Country is very clearly not just America but also New York as they’re doing the equivalent of sailing from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Family music night sounds fun and implies some creatures can sing or it could be like the dog barking along to the banjo

I want to highlight that the Immigrant is making an origami version of their Creature and that the Refugee and his family offer the Immigrant a pot as a housewarming gift. Considering how absolutely normal it looks it might be handmade by immigrant artisans to resemble pots from the Old Country. This pot will later be symbolically significant.

And that’s all folks! We have covered half the chapters and hit image limit. The next three chapters will be covered in part two.