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.
