Champions Icons

[archer]

38 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I'd say the Champions Universe hasn't really had much of a Nazi or white supremacist presence, not in printed materials at least. 

 

Considering there's no way to cover white supremacist and make it into a positive AND that most of the customer base of HERO white, there's no incentive for the company to delve into white supremacy.

 

It's easier to call it "Nazi" and let that be a catchall term.

 

Historically, there were pro-Nazi units of Arabs (the Free Arabian Legion) in the German army.

 

From research I did back in the 1990's Saddam Hussein was raised by an uncle who was pro-German, pro-Nazi and who bought into all the Nazi racial supremacy rhetoric. (It didn't hurt that the Germans promised to oust the British from North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. And to kill the Jews who lived in those places.)

 

The Aryans came from northern India and Iran. The people of India called those people "arya". In the Persian language, that became "eran" which is the origin of the modern term for that area: Iran.

 

Hitler was sending archaeological teams to that area and adopted the swastika from that area of the world for his political movement because that's where real historical Aryans originated. (But likely not the home of the pseudo-scientific Aryans of Nazi propaganda. The real Aryans built a great Persian civilization so "a great civilization" had became conflated in many European minds as being "Aryan".)

 

There had always been some amount of anti-Semitic sentiment in the Middle East. But in the run up to WWII and through the war years, Germans deliberately fed it as a way of weakening the British hold on the region. And because anti-Semitism dovetailed in nicely with Nazi party doctrine, that doctrine was an easy sell to the target audience throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa.

 

 

There's not many people in the modern white supremacist movement in the USA who would consider the people of Iran to be Aryans or who would consider any of the people from the Middle East to be "white" for any purposes.

[Opal]

3 hours ago, archer said:

From research I did back in the 1990's Saddam Hussein was raised by an uncle who was pro-German, pro-Nazi and who bought into all the Nazi racial supremacy rhetoric. (It didn't hurt that the Germans promised to oust the British from North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. And to kill the Jews who lived in those places.)

Arab Nationalism was the last bastion of fascism for decades, yes.

 

Of course, there's a huge difference between being fascist - which the Baathists of Iraq and Syria unabashedly were - and being called fascist, which anyone to the right of Lenin's preserved corpse probably has been at one time or another.  

 

And, a comic-book-superhero setting can always resort to re-vivified Nazis and fictional fascists, both fictional countries and fictional movements.  

And, of course, fictional prejudices, like anti-mutant human-supremacists, or anti-illegal-alien (from other planets) xenophobes.

[Ninja-Bear]

Everyone seems to be overlooking that Master Race is a Darwinian concept. You remember evolution? It was an accepted scientific concept of the day. 

[Greywind]

 

[DShomshak]

Firewing is iconic. His inner conflict between desire for honor and desire to win makes him a great character. Villainous, but not irredeemable.

 

Dean Shomshak

[starblaze]

Like mentioned before, Starburst and Crusader.  They are in the first four editions of the game the example how to make a character for Champions.  They will always be what I think of when I think of Champions.

On 4/18/2021 at 4:21 PM, death tribble said:

I always considered Ankylosaur iconic. He appeared in the first Enemies book, got revised in later versions but also appeared in one of the rulebooks in a cartoon 

 

But I agree with Jhamin in choices such as Black Paladin, Bulldozer and Firewing. The latter inspired the creation of The Protectors in the To Serve and Protect book.

I keep Eurostar with the original lineup, Fiacho, Bora, Durak, le Sone and Pantera But that is just me.

 

I do have Voice of Doom and enjoyed the twists in it.

Ankylosaur has the best origin ever, powers by way of mail order!

[Lord Liaden]

On 4/25/2021 at 2:18 PM, DShomshak said:

Firewing is iconic. His inner conflict between desire for honor and desire to win makes him a great character. Villainous, but not irredeemable.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

And appeared in the first Enemies book. Covers all the bases.