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Hola, Bobbito!

June 17th, 2009 by | Tags: , , , , ,

I dug the first issue of New Mutants, but #2 hit one of my few nitpicky pet peeves. This bit right here:

madrede

Naw, son. In addition to being browner back in the day (what’s up with the coloring in this book? everything is set to “superbright”), Bobby is Brazilian. They don’t speak Spanish down there. It’s Portuguese. In fact, here’s a bit from a letters page I found in an X-Force comic I was reading about a month back. It’s from somewhere between issue 80 and 82, I think. The page it was on had reactions for X-Force #76, so you do the math.

semchance

Listen to Giancarlo Lima, fellas! I’d have emailed this directly to whoever’s editing the book, but New Mutants doesn’t have a lettercol email setup, near as I can tell. And leaving Zeb Wells a Youtube comment just seems… weird.

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Posted in brief bits by david brothers |

8 comments to “Hola, Bobbito!”

  1. It’s really more than annoying, it’s fricking stupid. Brazil is one the five largest countries in the world. Is really that hard to remember its main language?

         by Graq June 17th, 2009 at 18:36 --replyReply to this comment

  2. This is one of my biggest peeves whenever a non-English speaker is used in comics. Do none of these writers know how actual non-natives speak? For example: Roberto grew up wealthy, privileged, and highly educated. When he’s speaking English he would speak ALL English. It wouldn’t be English-with-Portuguese figures of speech mixed in. That’s not how people talk.
    It’s even worse when they show a foreigner who speaks perfect English except for when they have to say Yes or No. In this instance they will always revert to their native tongue. This is such lazy storytelling; like we won’t get that they’re really foreign if they know how to say Yes and No. And this is all done in spite of the fact that Yes and No are literally the first two words that anyone learns when studying a new language.
    I blame Chris Claremont and Desi Arnaz.

         by John Foley June 17th, 2009 at 19:54 --replyReply to this comment

  3. Mãe do deus.

         by Cisneros June 17th, 2009 at 20:58 --replyReply to this comment

  4. I only speak English and sometimes I say “Madre de dios” because I heard it on SNL. Maybe that’s what this is. 🙂

         by Strontosaurus June 18th, 2009 at 12:29 --replyReply to this comment

  5. I would like to veer wildly off topic and say that I, like the fan who wrote that letter, would also like to see Dr. Zero back in comics.

    But back in the realm of accents: why must nearly every Russian character speak like Boris or Natasha from Rocky & Bullwinkle?

         by Sanschel June 18th, 2009 at 21:02 --replyReply to this comment

  6. Many Marvel writers also seem to think that having Colossus and Nightcrawler continue to mangle their first languages in characteristic ways is nostalgic. It’s not. It’s just embarrassing and makes it look like the comics haven’t matured since Giant-Size X-Men #1.

         by Jbird June 18th, 2009 at 21:16 --replyReply to this comment

  7. I like the way the editor’s reply says “keen-eyed”, like only the super vigilant could see that the man’s not speaking your own language.

         by Valhallahan June 21st, 2009 at 07:32 --replyReply to this comment

  8. That’s one of the worst-drawn panels I’ve ever seen. Is all of the art this bad?

         by Jeff C June 28th, 2009 at 05:04 --replyReply to this comment