Green Lantern, Arab-American

Sometimes I think that the only people in the world who aren't crazy are in the comics business. Not all of them, mind you, but some of them.

I fondly remember Green Lantern from my youth, primarily because his backstory was seriously deep and his powers, derived from his bling, were relatively limitless (within, of course, the limits of comics always trying to find a limit to limitlessness). I was very much a DC kid, but then again, this is really before Marvel hit its Golden Age in the 60s. I shamelessly admit that Superman was my favorite, but I liked almost all of them. This may be a shocking revelation, but Batman was probably at the bottom of my list. The Batman of my youth was a pretty dull character; it wasn't until he became a virtual psychopath in recent iterations that he became interesting.

Anyhow, back to GL. If you don't know how it works, I'll try to summarize. Various people are picked as Green Lantern, and there's comparable other Lanternists in different colors from different planets, and maybe other green ones as well, across a whole spectrum of good and evil, and to be honest, the last time I tried to follow the overarching story, it ranged across so many books with so many characters that I simply failed to sort it out. In any case, the latest human to be chosen as GL is Simon Baz, an Arab-American. (Here's all the details.) If you read the whole article, you'll find out that the original GL, Alan Scott, has recently been outed as gay.

Arab-American superheroes? Gay superheroes? A total disregard for the tastes of small-minded folks in aid of populating the unreal world with relatively normal (aside from the superpowers) people from the real world? I find it nicely refreshing that even the comic book stands are sending a message, albeit one that is probably subversive, of acceptance and individual freedom in today's America. Now if we could only get politicians reading comic books, maybe the country would be a better place.