Friday, April 22, 2005

King of Spain is Crazy Mutant



On the right we have King Juan Carlos I of Spain. On the left is X-Men villain Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. Don't they look kinda similar?

It seems like Marvel Comics, publisher of Spider-Man and stuff, are doing some sort of crossover thingie called The House of M, and one of the books involved features X-Men villain Magneto on the cover.

And the cover artist, Mike Mayhew, didn't feel like drawing anything more than the head so he ripped off an official photo of "the King in Field Marshal uniform". Which was a pretty stupid thing to do. And now the Spaniards are going bugfuck. (The Beat has some further information.)

This isn't the first time in recent history Marvel has unwittingly upset European royalty. A couple of years ago, Peter Milligan's and Mike Allred's X-Statix was scheduled to feature the late Princess Diana as a superhero.

Except, at the last minute, a Marvel executive in Hollywood got shit from Elton John or someone and called for all Di references to be removed from the book. The result was rather unsuccessful:

Since most of the issue appears to be the product of dialogue rewrites and art fixes (aside from a couple of new origin pages at the beginning, they've just put Diana in a wig), we have a problem. The plot was not written for a pop singer. And as published, the story doesn't work.
[...]
A lot of glitches have slipped through. The silhouette on the banner over Henrietta's family home is clearly Diana, not Henrietta. There's a reference to the British taxpayers and the Financial Times, both of which are rather out of place considering that she's meant to be from another country altogether. Some of the dialogue rewrites are unbelievably awkward. [...] And quite honestly, a lot of the jokes only work if you read the character as Diana - her mutant power of empathy, for example.

5 comments:

Matthew said...

Oh, man, that totally reeks of a looming deadline! But, c'mon, no Spaniards read X-men do they? No American does either for that matter.

Koala Mentala said...

I don't know, I just like swipes. Especially if they're blatant.

Cindy-Lou said...

Sure, he's put on a little weight and lost some hair, but I see the resemblance. Do you think he'll try to kill everyone? Good thing I'm a mutant.

Koala Mentala said...

Probably he'll try to kill all regular humans, while sparing the mutants. What are your powers?

Metallyptica said...

They just don't look the same!