Eastern-Europe/Balkans/Mediterranean

Why is it that these regions almost never get any good representation? It seems as if every writer's ideas about these places range from "Barons and villages and shit" to "Greece and Italy and Minotaurs and Zeus and shit". Is it so hard to actually visit google for a couple of minutes? Maybe use Google-Earth or search for some pics and news articles?

I mean, there are barely any characters from here. You have Elektra, Morbius, Hercules & a DC Chick with 1 appearance from Greece, some supporting cast members over at Hellboy from various countries, Silver Sable, and a couple of gypsies. And not even "Serbian with Roma ancestry" gypsies just "we're still in Caravans and taking trips" gypsies.

You can apply that to anywhere that's not New York, sure, but considering the region is always used in some way, it's weird that there are no actual characters from it. Marvel's Yuropoors are almost exclusively from there (unless they're Nazi Cliches), yet none of them, bar Sable, are ACTUAL citizens. Most of Hellboy's stories take place there, and deal with local folklore, but there's no main character.

Is it just a lack of familiarity and a reluctance to do some research? Why? An under-dog story for a Balkan guy is almost a no brainer. Hell, that's what Doom is, but they went ahead and added that Roma thing.

Most comic books are read by North-Western Europeans and Americans

This is like asking why manga portrays Americans as arrogant loudmouthed rude anti-heroes

I guess. But considering how much Marvel at least uses the region, they'd just make Wanda, Pietro, Doom and the others normal citizens of X Country, instead of coming up with fictional countries, and then making them gypsies. I get the reasonings behind them (gypsies = magic & fictional country = less chances of someone being offended), but it's still weird. It's like a Eurocomic being set in America, but using made up States instead of the actual ones.

>Most comic books are read by North-Western Europeans.

I assume he meant as far as Europe is concerned, not globally.

France, Italy and Spain have the biggest markets in Europe.

Marvel has a lot of stories taking place in eastern europe. Latveria, Symkaria, Transia and a bunch of lesser known places are there, as is Mount Wundagore.

>ywn read a gorgeous beautifully illustrated and historically informed complex fantasy comic inspired by the myths, folklore and people of Illyria and Thracia
Just kill me senpai.

All there is now is the not!USSR 30 years too late and autistic Russians shitposting online.

Yeah, but like I said, those are just gypsies, except from Sable. Even the High Evolutionary is British.

Huh, I didn't know that.

Not!USSR is an apt description of the EE portrayals. Ransacked villages, clothing from the 30s, add some gypsies and superstition and bam, you've got a brand new totally OC Eastern-European country!

>Yeah, but like I said, those are just gypsies, except from Sable. Even the High Evolutionary is British.

Only Doom is a gypsy. The regular people in Latveria are good old slavs.

Wanda & Pietro are also gypsies. Basically all the named EE characters, except for Sable, are all gypsies.

Any representation they give is better than the shithole it actually is

I always enjoyed the fact that Half-Life 2 partially took place in Serbia.

I read a comic by a Serbian American writer once. Even he showed Serbia as a shit show where child fighting rings happened.

>child fighting rings
Not denying it was a shitshow in the 90s/early 2000s (and in many ways, especially economically, still is) but as a serbfag I've never heard of this shit.

Because most Americans know fuck all about Eastern Europe beyond Boris accents and vampires. Just look how gypsies are portrayed in American comics for instance. Very exotic.

Lol, diaspora getting brainwashed by the western media. Yeah, the Balkans were pretty fucking terrible in the '90s, what with all the shit going down, but this is just plain retarded. If anyone does children ring fights, it's the gypsies.

Heh, if they were "exotic" I doubt anyone would hate them. Imagine if they all looked like Doom or Wanda. The locals would've married them and they would've been members of society a long time ago.

Worst thing is, the Tumblrinas are using this excuse to ask for "Romanis" to play Doom & Wanda & Pietro in the flicks. Funny thing is, "Romani" to them just means Spanish singers with "Roma" ancestry from years back. I.E. basic Meds.

Wasn't Doom originally meant to be a Slav or at the very least hail from Balkans? What issue did they actually announce he was a gypsy?

He was a gypsy from the beginning, far as I know. He's a "Latverian", but he's a gypsy. There have been retcons and whatnot of the tribe moving from place to place, so it makes little sense for him to actually like Latveria.

Best case scenario is that his dad's name is "Von Doom" which means he has some Germanic blood. Mainland gypsies are usually whiter than Easter gypsies, so it is not unrealistic for him to be played by a Med guy or someone like Mads, who has a weird bone structure. Funny thing is, he's currently being drawn as French actor Vincent Cassel!

But it is bollocks. It's the equilavent of making Black Panther a white guy who came in Wakanda and turned it from a shithole to a normal country. In my headcanon, Doom's just lying to get pity points. He's a regular Latverian with a Roma grandma or whatever, who used that to get some "DOOM has known opression" brownies.

It's not canon, but considering how many shit they've retconned, that's the easiest one. And Doom's definitely a guy to "not tell the entire truth" if it suits him. Besides, Cap's Brubaker it was revealed he had an ancestor from Germany.

I just pretend he's a Balkan and get done with it. I just hope Fox doesn't cast Dev Patel or some shit to play him. All the gypsy thing does is complicate things.

It's hard to write accurately about regions or cultures that you're not familiar with. And there have been cases of fans getting upset when writers don't get foreign cultures right, anyway. If you want good representation, it might be better to write some yourself, instead of waiting for someone else to do something (and fuck it up).

As an eastern european I can confirm The Slavers arc from Punisher Max is not only accurate but more tame than the shit those fuckers have been doing with their victims.

>Huh, I didn't know that.
How? Are you, like, new to comic books?

I don't follow the markets user. If by that you mean "who buys the most". An LCS opened here only a few years ago. If you mean that Italy and the others are the main European exporters of comics, then yeah, I knew that.

No, I mean "who MAKES most".

Oh, in that case I knew that already. The first comics I ever read were Astrrix, Iznogoud and Lucky Luke.

Where are you from?

Romania. I wish gypsies looked like Wanda too.

I kind of liked the angle of Cristu coming into ex-Yugoslavia territory just to kill muslims.

>I wish gypsies looked like Wanda too.
Don't we all? All cards on the table, the French/Spanish/Mainland Europe Gypsies look much better than ours. Only we are stuck with the worst ones...

The thing with these characters is that once you find a character you like, you immediately grow to dislike them, because they're part of the groups that are a danger to your everyday life. It's not like they're Balkans with a Roma grandma or something, they're full-on "wandering nomads". Shit pisses me off. And the Tumblrinas piss me off.

I'm getting prepared for seeing an Indian Doom get persecuted by the evil Balkans and then become King of a European Castle. Fucking Kirby and his old-school leftie beliefs...

I wouldn't be surprised if there were such cases. Hating muslims here is almost a tradition.

>Only we are stuck with the worst ones...

The worst part is when foreigners come into the Balkans and tell us to treat gypsies as humans.

Pic Related was really Marvel's worst case of SJW.

>inb4 gypsy
Gypsies actually latch onto the local churches and become pretty firm believers. If anything, Doom would've been Pro-"Remove Kebab".

It's funny seeing Americans destroy the Balkans, try to portray the gypsies in a good light, and even then fuck up the characterization.

Ha, now that's a joke! Go to Tumblr and look for all the "Marvel is gross for hanging a cross in Wanda's room in CW!!1111!" or "Doomshould be played by this Spanish Violinist because he's 1/4th Roma".

I get that these are American comics, but if you don't know shit, at least stick to what you know. I just pretend Doom, Wanda and the rest are normal Slavs and I'm done with it. With the MCU doing exactly that, I hope Fox follows suit and ignores gypsy Doom.

It'd be a funny prank to guide such people to a gypsy ghetto, to get a taste of that multiculturalism.

There a number of Gypsies groups in Italy(and, I guess, in Western Europe) that became basically civilised- far from perfect, but they stepped up from the lows of others gypsies.
They are mostly those running travelling funfairs: by having a relatively stable occupation and going to the same places on regular times they were forced to become more civilised.

Nothing forbids the Von Doom gypsies went under a similar evolution, especially if they were a very small, isolated group who COULD be annihilated by a sufficiently angry mob

It's the same for pretty much the rest of the world, really.

It's why a lot of comic writer's idea of "diversity" is changing gender, ethnicity, accents, costumes, patterns of speaking but still have the character come from fucking New York. They're simply not nearly dedicated or creative enough to make characters whose backgrounds and places of origin are starkly different from those they know.

You mentioned Mignola: that's a significant exception. He's one of the few who actually does his goddamn homework, and that's why Hellboy's lore and atmosphere is so damn good.

gets it. You either write it yourself or hope for a competent enough writer to approach it. I'm from Italy, but I've studied enough history to know that the Balkans, eastern Europe in general goes much beyond shitty played out stereotypes. I'd kill for a comic about actual, historical Vlad Tepes, the last years of the Byzantine empire with everyone from the Turks to the Venetians slobbering their dicks over them, the various wars over the PLC, the mess that all these countries were when stuck between Hitler and Stalin, etc etc.
That's without touching the immense folklore present in them.

Question for the thread: post actually good examples of comics that talk about places other than the same tired West. I'm really liking Yuang's New Super Man.

>the last years of the Byzantine empire with everyone from the Turks to the Venetians slobbering their dicks over them
It is a literal fucking crime that nobody has made a historical epic movie or series about the Fall of Constantinople yet. The shit that was going in there, the factionalization, the larger-than-life schemers and heroes on either side, is incredible.

Dammit, forgot the pic.

>Nothing forbids the Von Doom gypsies went under a similar evolution, especially if they were a very small, isolated group who COULD be annihilated by a sufficiently angry mob
I guess. At least just say they're Native Latverians and work as a travelling theatre or something. Confirm Werner as Latverian as well. Anything to make Doom connected to the land.

I agree with pretty much here. As for Constantinopole, I'm the Black Knight: Deus Vult user from that "new origin ideas"thread, so I am tempted to do something similar.

Nobody will touch that. Kingdom of Heaven is the closest thing to it.

>Nobody will touch that
No reason not to desu, it's not like it's a one-sided affair on either side. There are a bunch of Turk guards employed by the city that stay loyal to the Byzantine Emperor, an Italian who turns up to defend Christendom and ultimately deserts his post, a Scottish-German engineer who builds the largest cannon in the world and offers to sell it to the Byzantines - then, when they don't accept it, turns around and sells it to the Ottomans. Good complex political drama on the Byzantine side (literally a byword for it) and between Mehmed the Conqueror, Zagan Pasha and his other lieutenants. Something that took shots at historical accuracy would give you figures to root for and revile on both sides.

It's a shame that everything Roman tends to focus on Caesar and never the late period Empire or the Byzantine Empire.

That said, the fact you describe yourself as:
>Black Knight: Deus Vult user
Makes me think you have a particular take on this already and care more about that than the characters.

>I guess. At least just say they're Native Latverians and work as a travelling theatre or something. Confirm Werner as Latverian as well. Anything to make Doom connected to the land.
Not really hard. Just play it as Doom's family being forced to live in Latveria for a few generations because in surrounding countries(Symkaria, Slorenia, etc) they would be killed on sight.
Because that, they would more-or-less integrate in the Latverian society, becoming basically travelling merchants\newsbringers\etc in Latveria.
Hell, Doom's father was a HEALER, no way people would ask for him if they were still acting like most out-of-Latveria gypsies

also, a pic of Moira Orfei as a young woman: she was a sinti, nothing stops Doom's mother from being... well, Latverian Moira Orfei.

Can I interest you in cyberpunk future Greece?

>>also, a pic of Moira Orfei as a young woman:
forgot pic.

>child fighting rings
Lolwut

I lived in Serbia during the worst of it and that was never remotely a thing.

Leave it to diaspora to invent bullshit. They're either annoyingly MUH HERITAGE overpatriotic or completely out of touch and ashamed of their past so they overcompensate by hating on everything

Also Serbian cyberpunk.

Considering the amount of British writers and artists in the American comic industry I don't see the UK being represented well particularly often

It's just the odd pub on a cobbled street really

>Why is it that these regions almost never get any good representation?

Not even New York gets any good representation and like 90% of all US comics are set in that one city. Mostly because research is against the monopolists' company policy.

If you're really dying to read that stuff, just pick up couple of issues of Dhampyr. It's an all-balkan crew of vampire hunters doing most of their huntin' in third- and second world countries.

The series set in GB - Zenith, Miraclemen, Hellblazer, From Hell - did a good job.

Pretty good ideas user.

>Makes me think you have a particular take on this already and care more about that than the characters.
Oh, that. Over at the "pitch an origin" thread I pitched a series about Dane going all DEUS VULT and trying to take back the city. It'd be a villain story, sorta like Breaking Bad or Darth Vader. It'd be set in current day. It wouldn't be a take on the Fall. I just like villain stories and figured that was a good enough basis.

Huh, pretty darn good solution user. Considering the Baron himself asked for Werner, and he has "Von Doom" ashis surname (they should retcon it to Von Dύm or something), he's probably a born native as well.

Sure, pitch it.

>Dhampyr
Thanks user!

>Pretty good ideas user
All stuff that literally, actually happened during the Siege of Constantinople. And that's not even getting into the Emperor's last stand.

I meant as in "ideas for a book/film". I should've worded it differently, that's true.

>"Von Doom" ashis surname (they should retcon it to Von Dύm or something),
just have it as a weird-ass evolution of the medieval Latverian that used mixed latin\greek\cyrillic letters or something.

It's not hard and it's arguably realistic: I mean, do the Irish pronunciation of their words when using Latin letter make any sense?

>>Dhampyr
> Thanks user!
I wonder if he's referring to the Italian-made Dhampyr? Pic related

No one in the US cares, readers or writers, because that entire area has never been relevant to the US except as part of a proxy war with the Russia. In fact, that entire area just isn't relevant period and damn near the entire world doesn't care.

No one will touch it because Muslims are a polarizing subject.

Please tell me someone went Punisher on their asses irl too, cause the comic version already made me sick.

Hahahaha, no. If you want to know what kind of stuff well: Some girls tried to escape from a prostitution ring, they got captured and taken to a forest. They were found with strangulation marks on their necks and their toenails ripped out.