So I was reading the October issue of comicbook Wizard magazine (#156) when I came across the Wolverine #20 comic pages. Neat, I´m not really a fan of the guy but I started reading them pages anyway. Blah, blah, blah, Logan enters a cemetary carrying two bags to meet some goons. Goon Leader turns to him and says:
" Such a curious place, don´t you think? A christian graveyard in the heart of Nagasaki. We have the SPANISH to thank for this, you know? Five hundred years ago they came with their bibles. Do you think they saved the souls of these converts? Do you think they sing in Heaven now, with the angels and the saints?"
Sweet Mother Mary, I swear to God my jaw dropped to the floor right then and there. For the love of my fluorescent green striped socks and all that is equally holy and beautifull in this world and the next, does ANYONE even bother to do research these days? I love history and art. So if someone asks me to draw a warrior on a horse, I make goddam sure to ask in which time period it takes place! Why? Because it matters! If it´s prior to the days of the european knights, then I know they won´t have supports for the feet (we call them estribos in Portugal, stirrups in English, See research!!!!!!!) Why? For the same reason you don´t put spartans with steel lances in a depiction of the Thermopylae pass. If you´re gonna put facts in your stories, at least make sure they´re correct. Kids still do read comics and some of them will take your word as written on stone. I should know, I was one of them teen morons who took ages to realise that french women DO shave their armpits after all, despite what comics taught me all my life. Spaniards NEVER set foot in Japan! Five hundred years ago, the first european sails EVER to arrive to Tanegashima were the PORTUGUESE! .You KNOW who the portuguese are, right? Here´s a clue, they were the first guys to set sails across the atlantic, meticulously charting the winds from Europe, all around the coast of Africa, to India, China and, yes, Japan! Whenever you read some books about the brave english and spanish (they always seem to SO conveniently forget who started the whole crap in the first place, don´t they?) sailors who discovered the world and first made contact with all those wonderfull african and oriental civilizations, take it with a grain of salt and ask first if they didn´t happen to get their wind charts in a Lisbon alley by any chance. I swear to God it´s so enfuriating my hair hurts. If at least they had mentioned the dutch, who WERE in fact there shortly after the japanese kicked the portuguese out because of their whole spread of christianity stuff (there were some shady backstage plotting involved as well, but I won´t get in there right now), I´d accept it, but the spanish? Geez, it´s like saying that the canadians were the first nation to land a man on the moon! For centuries, the japanese and the portuguese established relations and ties, to the point were even their languages became impregnated with ´foreign´words. Whenever you hear a japanese thank you with a "domo arigato", arigato comes from the portuguese word "Obrigado" (thank you). Even the habit of ending a phrase with "ne" to reinforce its meaning ("It´s raining cats and dogs tonight, "ne?") has been used by the portuguese for centuries in the slang form of "[i]Né?" (contraction of "Não é?"(isn´t it?) .Words like tempura, pan, there are so many I can´t even begin. When a portuguese uses words like sacana or catana, guess where THAT came from?
.A couple days ago, the Inhumans#5 issue of the Marvel Knights experiment felt on my lap as I was doing my yearly dungeon dustbunnybusting. "Blah, blah, blah, a group of portuguese mercenaries led by portuguese rogue Colonel Edson Jarzinho is attacking the inhuman city of Atillan, their tanks bombarding the city´s forcefield.....
"WHAAAAAT?
Edson, you say?"
Edson Jarzinho?"
Portuguese, you say?
That makes as much sense as writting "(...)the russian president Riyoichi Nakamura(...)".Portuguese DON´T use names like Edson Jarzinho in the same way the chinese don´t have names like John Kirkpatrick! The brazilians DO use names like that and yes, they DO speak portuguese (in the same way americans speak "english"), but that´s that! Brazilians were formed initially by portuguese adventurers, african slaves, native americans and later italians, greek, lebanese, japanese, polacs, (...) and that english dude from the Great Train Robbery, so there´s a reason why they´ve assimilated names from all the ends of the world into their imaginary. The portuguese didn´t. They´ve remained a relativelly homogenous people for 800 hundred years, with names like Pedro, Paulo, Vasco, Rui, Vasconcelos, Silva, Mota, Pereira, Carvalho.
Jarzinho makes as much sense in a portuguese name as Mike Williams in a korean fella.
And.... mercenaries?
Portuguese mercenaries?
With tanks?
Dude, Portugal has 9,9 milion people.
Mild-mannered 9,9 milion people..
Mercenaries from Portugal is like an inuit male pornstar:
EVEN if there was one (maybe even, dare I say, two?), such singularities would most likely be locked on an underground medical research compound being fed elephant doses of valium intravenously, not leading hordes of ruthless mercs against a fictitional hi-tech city filled with ancient uberfreaks. And don´t even get me started on the tanks, a portuguese merc with a tank would be like a japanese with a fully functional Voltron suit:
Ownership of this prized possession of a comic:
33 seconds.
Geez!!Talk about what you know and do some friggin´research on the things you don´t.
if you´re gonna put facts in your stories, at least do your homework! Despite the statistics that label the average fanboy as a 30+ fat guy living in his mom´s basement, there are still KIDS reading your books!
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