Shaolin Robots Attack!

Look! Chinese superheroes! They're called The Great Ten, but considering that one of them is "Mother of Champions, who can give birth to a litter of 25 super-soldiers about every three days" and another is called "The Seven Deadly Brothers" and is "a martial arts expert who can divide into many," it seems to me that there are a whole lot more than just ten of them. You would think that since Marvel already has a crappy Chinese superhero called The Collective Man -- who "can call on the collective strength of all of the people of China," which should make him one of the most powerful comics characters of all time, but instead just makes him utterly sucktastic -- DC would steer well away from these similarly 'collective' concepts.

I don't know. These character designs and names remind me strongly of those idiotic multicultural Superfriends that no one liked. Remember Apache Chief, El Dorado and Samurai? (Click on the links, lots of funny stuff there.) I mean -- "Accomplished Perfect Physician"? "Socialist Red Guardsman"?! Jesus. But apparently mad genius Grant Morrison is behind all this, so... benefit of the doubt.

Luckily, we'll probably be spared the ordeal of outsiders imagining Filipino superheroes based on mistaken assumptions and cliches -- not just because outsiders don't freaking care, but because even if they did want to, they'd be too ashamed, considering Arnold Arre has already successfully created contemporary Pinoy superheroes that are fresh, exciting, and draw on Pinoy mythology and pop culture -- in other words, totally kick ass. Yes, that was a plug for Andong Agimat, which I finally read last weekend, and which I liked a lot.

Just had a thought: I post about comics so much that I'm thinking about starting another blog altogether and just posting about music here. Because, of course, the world really needs another comics blog.