The Future Is … Deference to Mainland China

A bit out of my wheelhouse, but…

Though there was no intention to offend, DC Comics has decided that the
better part of valor is submission to the vagaries of Mainland China’s whims.

From Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post:

A new Batman comic book series has landed the Caped Crusader in the middle of a social media storm after publisher DC Comics was accused of using it to support Hong Kong anti-government protesters.

DC removed a social media post on Thursday when users on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, objected to the depiction of a black-clad Batwoman throwing a petrol bomb in front of the words “the future is young” in a promotion for the first issue of Dark Knight: The Golden Child, due for release next month.

DC deleted the post within hours of Chinese online commenters drawing a connection between the poster and Hong Kong’s masked radicals who have used the incendiary weapons during their increasingly violent clashes with police.

DC Comics joins every other company in the world that wishes to be a part of a market consisting of 1.5 billion people, and defers to Chinese Government conceits.

In a no-win situation DC Comics faces backlash in free countries.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

DC Comics faced a backlash on Twitter after news reports that it had apparently deleted Batman artwork from its Instagram account in response to a wave of complaints on Chinese social media…

The removal of the image, and the reporting of its removal, led to DC facing a backlash in U.S. and elsewhere, particularly Hong Kong, as people on Twitter and Instagram accused the company of censorship and kowtowing to China, likening DC’s capitulation to recent China-related controversies faced by Hollywood studios and the NBA.

I do not mean to imply that this is not a problem in the U. S. where companies, comics and otherwise, tread lightly on the topics of race, religion, re-assignment, and other subjects, in most cases.

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