After their appearance in 52, the Great Ten have been scarce, showing up occasionally in Checkmate, but otherwise keeping their hero antics in their home country. In November DC Comics will release a 10-issue mini-series putting the Great Ten in the spotlight.
Take the jump for the full, spectacular cover by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau and more info on the series.
At the dawn of the Chinese Century, the 10 official “super-functionaries†of the People’s Republic face their greatest challenge as the gods of Ancient China return to destroy communist rule. Will the most populous nation on Earth drag the rest of the world down with it? Do its heroes even want to save a government that treats them like pawns?
The series will be written by Tony Bedard with art by Scott McDaniel and covers by Stanley Lau. The first issue arrives November 4, 2009.
12 Comments
I was very unimpressed with the Great 10 and personally found the female character rather offensive.
My suggestion: make SunWuKong(aka SonGoku) a Chinese superhero. It’s not hard. Use a WW2 origin. Say the KMT blows up a cave behind a waterfall to prevent the Japanese national army from discovering the stone egg that the monkey king is resting in. Years later, the PRC happens to discover it and figures out a way to make it hatch. Out comes the monkey king who takes on a more human form.
I’d love to see some interior work by Stanley Lau. I’ve really enjoyed his covers for DC.
I enjoyed the Great 10, and personally found “Thundermind” to be an interesting take on the notion of psychic abilities. So this is welcome on my virtual pull-list. :)
By the way Brian, there were TWO female characters. Specify, if you don’t mind? And perhaps explain what you found so offensive about one or both of them?
If I had to bet I’de put my money on “Mother of Champions”, she’s literaly just a baby making machine, sure they’re super babies but still.
So if ChampMom were able to produce “humanoid-shaped telekinetic constructs by the dozen” instead of “a litter of babies”, she’d be way cooler and much less offensive?
Alex, it’s a lovely idea, but modern media have proved themselves completely unable to handle the saga of Monkey without completely f-ing it up – see also Dragonball.
Better to see the Opera. Or at least buy the album of the Opera.
Also, wyntermute – wasn’t that also exactly the point of that terrible Wonder-Woman analogue in that crappy Matt Fraction civil war series that was going to be called the Champions? I think she made little golems at will and then bonded with them emotionally.
Yeah … Mother of Champions is the girl i mean. I mean come on … her job is to sit at home and make babies. Talk about an insulting sterio type of how Asian culture predominatly views their women.
Yeah … Mother of Champions is the girl i mean. I mean come on … her job is to sit at home and make babies. Talk about an insulting sterio type of how Asian culture predominatly views their women.
I suppose you could make a case to look at it that way, but… why would you? Honestly, any concept can be broken down into unsavory connatations (i.e., “young boy traumatized by murder of parents compulsively relives the transfiguring violence of his childhood, making it the sole focus of what could have been a normal life”; or “a society unbalanced in gender creates a child whose sole purpose is to lord their superiority over the other gender, but who loses her superiority if she is engaged in a particular act of sexual deviancy”; or even the original superhero, “tiny alien child is the last survivor of an enlightened super-race, but ends up being raised in squalor in a rural setting, causing him to spend his entire life essentially enslaved in the act of protecting those who refuse to protect themselves and in stopping the tyranny of evil men, when his powers could be better utilized to save the entire world”) if you give it enough thought.
I think we should wait to see the book before we excoriate a single character thereof.
No sign of Grant Morrison, hmm? What’s the over/under line on where this book drops below 10K units sold per issue, then? Three? Four?
The only way this book could crash any harder would be to have it written by Bruce Jones….