Is “Holy Terror” The New Captain America?
July 26th, 2011While all the buzz at this year’s Comic-Con was focused on the parade of movie releases and Hollywood A-Listers that came by during the weekend, there was another type of buzz forming in the comic world. This buzz was about a new graphic novel that is set to be released about a new superhero who fights to protect America from religious fundamentalists, and yes, people are already starting to hate it.
The new comic, called “Holy Terror” is being drawn by artist Frank Miller, and published by Legendary Comics, a firm that specializes in web-only comic and graphic novel publishing. The story revolves around a superhero named “The Fixer”, who lives in the fictional Empire City fighting Islamic extremists that have invaded the country. Originally intended to be another “Batman” comic, the character, according to Mr. Miller, soon began to take on its own traits, and became too different from the dark knight that everybody knows and loves to be truly him. The Fixer still resembles Batman in terms of fighting style and mantra, but its enemies are more mysterious than Batman’s.
By now, you can probably guess that a superhero who fights Islamic extremists is already earning his fair share of critics. Mr. Miller’s comic is political, and he isn’t hiding it. According to him, he is using his experiences living in New York during 9/11 as a basis for his story, and he intends the comic to be political. Mr. Miller said he wants to “piss people off” with his comic, and given the fact that its about fighting specifically Islamic terrorists, it won’t be difficult. In fact he’s already been criticized for creating a false idea of what Americans are truly afraid of by the liberal blog Think Progress.
We at Silver Circle empathize with Mr. Miller. Even though we are not pushing Islamic extremism in our movie and graphic novel, we are arguably being political as well, and that would cause heads to turn regardless of which end of the spectrum you find yourself on. Despite its decline in recent years, comic media is still a great way to get one’s message out, and we wish Mr. Miller luck with his comic….and dealing with his critics.
