There's nothing like writing
about something you don't know well. Somehow you
have to fill in the gaps. Ideally you do so by researching your
subject. But when it's Marvel artists and Japan,
the dominant attitude seems to be "I'll draw from these
pictures I found and hope no one notices any mistakes."
On
top of that, Marvel's writers are still enamored
with the old "mysterious Orient" motif, regardless of how little it has to do
with the real world. The Marvel Universe's Japan is filled with mobsters who
dress as samurai and talk about "honor", castles and temples everywhere,
and cherry trees in bloom year-round. If we do see downtown Tokyo, it's inevitibly
filled with neon signs of a type that were probably much more common twenty or thirty years ago.
OK, The Mysterious Orient makes the story more
interesting than the real Japan, and Americans in Marvel wear
costumes just as outrageous as Marvel Japanese.
But the effect is to perpetuate stereotypes and misconceptions
about Japan.
The following are some panels I've assembled from
Marvel forays into the unknown -- which, for them, obviously
includes Japan -- from the past several years. To anyone
who's spent more than a week in Japan, many of them
are simply laughable.
There's nothing like writing
about something you don't know well. Somehow you
have to fill in the gaps. Ideally you do so by researching your
subject. But when it's Marvel artists and Japan,
the dominant attitude seems to be "I'll draw from these
pictures I found and hope no one notices any mistakes."