Comic books go more ‘P.C.’ than ever…
As if it wasn’t enough that DC Comics got politically correct and remade the comic character Green Lantern into a “Lavendar Lantern” homosexual earlier this year, now they have gone even further. DC’s chief creative officer and writer, Geoff Johns, came up with Simon Baz, an Arab-Muslim character who hails from Dearborn, Michigan, the capital of Arab America.
“I thought a lot about it – I thought back to what was familiar to me,” Johns, 39, told The Associated Press by phone last week from Los Angeles. “This is such a personal story.”
Johns said he took economic as well as ethnic cues for the character from his native Detroit area, with Baz resorting to stealing cars after being laid off from his automotive engineering job. He steals the wrong car, which inadvertently steers him into a terrorism probe and, eventually, an unexpected call to join the universe’s galactic police force.
The olive-skinned, burly Baz hails from Dearborn, the hometown of Henry Ford and the capital of Arab America. His story begins at 10 years old, when he and the rest of his Muslim family watch their television in horror as airplanes fly into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Events unfold from there as US Arabs and Muslims find themselves falling under intense suspicion and ostracism in the days, months and years following the attacks.
