The Great Ten #2

[arbre_rieur]

This issue, the spotlight is on the Celestial Archer.



He's sort of the Don Blake/Wonder Woman of the Great Ten.

Tai'an, four years ago:

Xu Tao and his family make a living selling trinkets and snacks to tourists visiting historical Mt. Taishan. He's uncomfortable "watching them trample the places where emperors once prayed."

Also, crime's been rising in the area recently, a by-product of an increase in tourist dollars. One day, while trying to hide from a gang, he gets magically swallowed up by the tree he's crouching behind and deposited underground.



He becomes the Celestial Archer, capable of shooting an arrow into the sun to turn it from day to night, or hitting a target on the other side of the glob.









The main plot of the series is about how the gods of China have returned to the mortal plane to destroy the Chinese government and liberate the people, so that causes some divided loyalties in the Celestial Archer, as he is an agent of the gods but also a member of the People's Rupublic's Great Ten.

Comments

[northstarfan]

Well, dammit. Between last month's issue and this one, DC just sold me a trade.

[thatnickguy]

Goddamn, I don't think McDaniel's art has been this beautiful since his Nightwing run. This stuff is gorgeous.

Like Suzene, I think I'm sold.

[northstarfan]

I just hope I still remember that I liked this by the time the trade comes out. That's going to be...what? Ten months plus DC's slow-ass trade program? Ugh.

I should probably start a list.

[baihu]

Xiang-o? Who's that? Chang'e is the wife of Houyi the Celestial archer and the moon maiden. Who the heck is Xiang-o?

On the plus side, rabbit soldiers. Even though there is only one rabbit on the moon and he's a doctor. But rabbit soldiers are win.

On one hand, I like more representatives of Chinese heroes. On the other hand, the fact I'm Chinese is going to make me nit-pick a lot of things...

I like how the Chinese people look Chinese though. The clothing looks all right, not some amalgam with Japanese or other asian cultures.

[darkblade]

While I can't blame you for nitpicking (I personally tore apart JMS's Spider-Man run over mistakes with Anasai) I'd advise you not to get too upset over it. Messing around with mythologies is what superhero comics do. Case in point Thor.

[baihu]

The point here being it's the equivalent of calling Thor, Bob instead of his real name. Which anyone with Wikipedia and Google can get in under 5 seconds.

If there's some reason they changed the name, fine. But if it's because the writer couldn't be bothered to just Google up 'moon maiden Chinese' for a couple of seconds, I don't know if I should bother with a writer who doesn't give a damn about the culture he's writing about, which is mine.

[baihu]

FYI, I have absolutely no problems with the mythology being used. Half of manga everywhere is like that, and I grew up on Chinese serials that was yet another interpretation of the Sun Wukong story.

Truth be told, this depiction here is waaaaaay more traditional than some of the stuff Chinese serials come up with.

[darkblade]

That makes sense. While I know next to nothing myself about Chinese mythology I do know that usually mythologies are often not entierly internally consistent with themselves and once you pull that into an already established universe some details end up changed. I do agree with you on the name change though. That seems arbitrary.

[baihu]

Talk abt inconsistence, China has at least 3 creation myths, of which there are several variations, not counting the creation myths of the minority ethnic groups. If they are going to touch on that, it will get messy,

[majingojira]

Or we could mention how the Japanese treat Christian symbolism and mythology.

Which is pretty much how Hollywood treats Vodun/Voodoo/Vodou.

[da_reap]

'Oh, I'm just a nun on afternoons/until I get married!'

Just the TIP of the iceberg.

[baihu]

I swear they just use it as a motif for angels. And I thought Evangelion was at least, dealing with the source materisl crearively. With mechas.

At least you don't have the 'adaptation' of a literaary classic that is Dragonball.

[galateus]

Yeah, Dragonball just sort of.. snowballed into its own thing, didn't it?

[darkblade]

That is a reasonable point. If they were going to have more than one issue for each member I'd suggest giving the writer the benefit of the doubt and hope that they might explain the change and surprise you but since Celestial Archer only gets the one issue I don't know what to say.

[majingojira]

Makes me wonder if any mass media outlet has used Anansi right...

[darkblade]

The Neil Gaimen novels American Gods and Anansi Boys are about as good as I've seen the Spider God portrayed.

[intertobamf]

The writer could be confused by Romanization systems. "Ch'ang-O" is one English form of the name, and he seems to have misheard the "ch" as "xi" or something.

[arbre_rieur]

Re: Xiang-O

If I had to guess, they might be using some unusual alternate spelling, possibly pulled from a non-Mandarin Chinese language/dialect.

They did that for a couple of the other gods, I think (Kuan Ti instead of Guan Yu, for ex').

[baihu]

It might be he's mix-and-matching several established names from various dialects. He's referring to Houyi as Yi though, which is his short name in Mandarin. Weird if Yi's wife is referred to in another dialect.

I'm Hokkien, and we do refer to Guan Yu as Kuan Ti often, though we actually use both, depending on certain context. When I read about him or write about him, it's usually his original Mandarin name. During a festival, we refer to him as Kuan Ti.

I've never heard Chang'e being referred to with any other name though. Though keep in mind in Singapore, we pretty much amalgam all dialects into speaking Mandarin, regardless which dialect group we actually belong to.

[icon_uk]

We're talking gods here, it might not be them getting it wrong, as humans using the wrong names for them because of their dialectual obsession.

[tsunamiwombat]

I... Dude is that Guan Yu in that panel!?! ...*rushes off to play DW*

[grazzt]

It might be that they're using Wade-Giles instead of modern Pinyin. As an example, I have an old English translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and they use Kuan instead of Guan there, too.

[arilou_skiff]

To be honest, that looks like they're using an alternate transliteration system. Possibly archaic?

[ian_karkull]

Nitpick away, I say. I adore the Great Ten as a concept, but this is the first time any of them (other than August General In Iron) are really fleshed out, so it helps to have someone on scene -so to speak- who is familiar with the material in order to judge it more objectively.

[kamino_neko]

I'm not really familiar with Chinese mythology, but a quick search gives Ch'ang-o as a different transliteration, which explains the 'e/-o discrepancy.

The Xi is a completely different mistake.

At a guess, someone tried to change the name from Wade-Giles to Pinyin and screwed up.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Wow. I was all set to complain about 'oh, another archer, how ORIGINAL, they're making it like China's equivelant of the JLA, complain complain complain', but I take it all back. This is AWESOME. A character who can literally carry out the impossible feats of legend! He can RUN TO THE MOON ON AN ARROW! Cool beans! I look forward to seeing more of this guy.

[ian_karkull]

Still a bit miffed this didn't get the creative team I had hoped for, but it does look pretty good.

Bring on Immortal Man In Darkness!

[valtyr]

This looks pretty shiny - I think I'll have to pick the trade of this up.

[katok]

and SOLD! I'm a sucker for mythologically inspired characters. I wonder how the Chinese pantheon will interact with the greater part of the DC universe - they probably wont, but it's good to hope

[lysythe]

Excuse me. I need to fall in love with my heritage for something like the fifth time in my life.

[mcbangle]

WOW, this looks really good! I didn't expect much from this series before the 1st issue, but now I'm sold on it!

[auggie18]

It's like the Green Arrow, only I care about him and it looks interesting!

[pyrotwilight]

Moon Maiden, why so Asian? Oh...wait.

I'm actually waiting to get this in trade, looks like a lot of fun but DC and it's long ass minis (10 issues!) have started to murder my soul. Yes at least it has a reason here to spotlight each character but come on.

[northstarfan]

I wonder if this is going to be collected at one big volume or two smaller ones.

[tsunamiwombat]

I'm always interested in mythology I havn't heard much about, and Chinese is a pretty blank slate to me. I'd love to see the adventures of the Chinese Pantheon in modern earth, what this comics name?

[northstarfan]

The Great Ten.

[ravenous_raven]

if I remember correctly (and ignoring the random name) of the Moon Maiden, she was a princess who was married to a drunk, abusive husband who one day decided to chop down an ancient, magical tree on the palace grounds (see above: drunk). she tried to stop him by leaping in front of the tree, and the tree lifted her up to the moon. on clear nights with a full moon, if you squint, you can see her seated beneath the tree's spreading branches...

[baihu]

Prolly different moon maiden origin. This is clearly the one married to Houyi the archer who shot down 9 of the 10 suns, and then was given an immortality pill in exchange for not killing the last one. Chang'e then ate that pill, can't remember why, and floated to the moon and became a deity there. Houyi as far as I can remember, could not follow, not like the guy here.

[blake_reitz]

I'm rather enjoying this series. Spin-offs of Grant Morrison concepts are generally hit-or-miss, often miss. But this is good!