Meet Simon Baz
From the Times of Israel
When DC Comics decided to blow up its fabled universe and create a brave, diverse future, Geoff Johns drew from the past for a new character: his own background as an Arab-American.
The company’s chief creative officer and writer of the relaunched “Green Lantern” series dreamed up Simon Baz, DC’s most prominent Arab-American superhero and the first to wear a Green Lantern ring. The character and creator share Lebanese ancestry and hail from the Detroit area, which boasts one of the largest and oldest Arab communities in the United States.
“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, where he now lives. “This is such a personal story.”
The Green Lantern mantle in DC Comics is no stranger to diversity with its ranks made up of men, women, aliens — animal, vegetable and mineral — from across the universe.
Earlier this year an alternate universe Green Lantern was reintroduced as openly gay.
Baz’s story begins in a standalone “zero issue” available Wednesday that’s part of a companywide effort to fill in the gaps or tell the origins of a character or team. Johns has no plans for Baz to fade into the background — the character in February is bound for the Justice League of America, one of DC’s premier super team books, to fight alongside Green Arrow, Catwoman and Hawkman.
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.
“Obviously, it’s affecting everybody,” said Johns, who grew up in nearby suburbs in a Lebanese Christian household and got into comics when he discovered his uncle’s old collection in his Arab grandmother’s attic. “One of the things I really wanted to show was its effect on Simon and his family in a very negative way.”
“It doesn’t completely define the character but it shapes the character,” he said. “My biggest hope is that people embrace it and understand what we’re trying to do.”
So you have a Christian-Arab-American creating a Muslim-Arab-American superhero with what looks like an African-American complexion, bearing a Judeo-Christian, Hebrew name (Baz is the Hebrew word for the bird falcon).
Isn’t it telling that Baz’s hieros logos is of him being a petty car burglar? Yes, it takes a lot of courage – which is also the meaning of the Arabic tattoo on his arm – to do that. By the way, tattoos are “Haram” in Islam.
Talk about irony.
About the Author
Dan Smith has been exposing anti-Israel fallacies since the first time he opened the world wide web on Netscape Navigator, sometime in the late 90's. His lack of formal journalistic, political and sociological education means he is still capable of objective, unbiased views and opinions. A judge of media, pundits and media pundits.Filed Under: Judge Dan
the comic book industry is in trouble. sales have been flat for years, and they are not drawing in new readers, for a variety of reasons…
dc was once the house of ideas…it is now the house of revamps, reboots, retools and lets blow the whole thing to hell and start again, but this time with lots of controversy so we can get press.
pretty much what johns is doing here
Some of the new DC 52 have been amazing and if you like comics I suggest you pick up swamp thing and animal man. BTW Green Lantern 0 was actually a pretty good book. Also comic sales went up from 2010-2011 and 2012 is on pace to be better than 2011.
and johns says “this is such a personal story…” but what does a christain arab american know from the muslim arab american experience
this is so much like helen thomas and leads me to believe that genetically, all non muslim arabs want to be dhimmi…no matter what their experience
Lantern shmantern, we still have The Thing.
http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/Thing.html
lee had very little to do with the thing…the thing is all kirby…he is kirby…his bio background is kirby
and lets not forget, we also have the greatest superhero ever…kal el
I just don’t get why he uses a gun.
Detroit has historically provided the three worst members of the Justice League of America: Steel, a WASP-y cyborg; Gypsy, a well, woman of Romani descent; and Vibe a walking, talking ’80′s stereotype. What was Vibe’s superpower? Super Breakdancing. He could breakdance so fast that he generated powerful shockwaves. We can now add one of the more idiotic members of the (once proud) Green Lantern Corps to the list of D-list members of the JLA from Detroit.
In his defense, Mr. Baz is not the first Green Lantern to have a criminal background (unusual enough in an inter-galactic law enforcement agency), nor is he the first to use a sidearm rather than the all powerful Green Lantern Ring he was issued by the Corps. The last one at least had an excuse: 1) it was the ’90′s and he wanted to be just like Lobo; 2) his sidearm was an energy blaster not a handgun. This character is not doing the Arab-American cause any favors when he makes Guy Gardner look like a member of Mensa. (For those of you who do not know who Guy Gardner is, go order this.) Just shameful what the JLA and the Corps have come to. By contrast, the Muslim members of the X-men are not complete idiots.
I just looked up Jack T. Chance’s bio on Wikipedia. Turns out he’s much smarter than our friend Mr. Baz. Chance used a firearm to either a) get around the Ring’s prohibition on killing sentient beings (a restriction that our good friend Mr. Johns is actually responsible for rescinding so it clearly no longer applies) and b) because his Ring did not work on the yellow color spectrum (another aspect that does not apply to Mr. Baz or any other Green Lantern these days, again courtesy of Mr. Johns). So basically Jack Chance only used his gun to murder people or when his Ring’s weakness was present; otherwise he used the Ring. So once again, why is Baz using a .45 caliber handgun rather than the most powerful weapon in the universe? The answer is simple: he is a weak-willed fool who can’t control his Ring. Johns is doing Arab-Americans no favors at all.
It’s only the first issue man Chill out with this bashing take it for what it is a comic the world is a very BIG place please try to get out more.
Too bad the Green Lantern history/story goes completely the other way than Islam… He would be beheaded by his own kind lol
this comic is really bad but it is still not as bad as these comments or the article writer. good job.
Boo hoo…why the bitterness?
So the new GL is a Muslim, why do you all feel so bad about it?
[...] a week ago, Dan posted about the new Green Lantern being an Arab [...]