Oh no I totally want to answer this publicly. For context: I just started to work part time at a local comic shop. My boss is a white woman but really clearly strives to create a safe space in her shop. We have a consistent “civil rights” and “gay display” (for LGBT folks) corner.
Anyways I was at work and saw a little “summary” another employee wrote for a comic. I don’t know this other employee and I don’t believe they had any idea how bad the summary looked. But my boss cares about being a safe space for people and she knows A.) I’m a Jewish convert and B.) my Rabbi has a pull box here so… Anyways.
I take my boss aside and go: “Heyyy…. I don’t think anyone did this on purpose and I believe this comic is really about this, but it says it’s a comic about “a secret occult society which secretly controls the world and the banks and commits ritual blood sacrifices” which is all….antisemitic dog whistles. Like this is stuff neo-n*zis say.“ And I broke it down for her, the occult/witchcraft stuff, the controlling the world, the idea that a specific “evil” society runs the world’s banks, and the blood libel….
And like we all hashed out that the comic was genuinely really truly about this and the summary *was* concise and well-written but super yikes!!!
Tl;dr I told my boss this summary was uncomfortable and she took it off the new comics wall and ripped the little paper summary.
And I haven’t read this comic yet, so I just went and looked up the title later at home because maybe there was a ….better way to describe “The Black Monday Murders.” By Image comics. (I like a lot of Image’s stuff so what….the heck???)
BUT NO, THIS COMIC HAS NO GOOD SUMMARY ONLINE. Here’s the official one:
“MAMMON” ALL HAIL GOD MONEY! From JONATHAN HICKMAN (EAST OF WEST, Secret Wars, Avengers) and TOMM COKER (UNDYING LOVE) comes a new crypto-noir series about the power of dirty, filthy money… and exactly what kind of people you can buy with it. THE BLACK MONDAY MURDERS is classic occultism where the various schools of magic are actually clandestine banking cartels who control all of society: a secret world where vampire Russian oligarchs, Black popes, enchanted American aristocrats, and hitmen from the International Monetary Fund work together to keep ALL OF US in our proper place. - See more at: https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/the-black-monday-murders-1#sthash.4VXu3qyD.dpuf”
And here’s a review in Paste magazine:
“ The Black Monday Murders, in which secretive rituals lie at the heart of a financial institution with bloody consequences, feels far less strange than it should. That it’s written by Jonathan Hickman comes as no surprise: he’s shown a fondness for satire since The Nightly News, and secretive groups working to reshape the our reality are a hallmark of his work. […]
In 1929, as the stock market collapses, a banker at the Caina Investment Bank begins to spontaneously bleed. “It’s not me, you damned fool…it’s the money,” he tells a concerned subordinate. Soon, a small group of the wealthy holds a secret meeting, in which bargains and ceremonies are mentioned, and an archetypal image of the beginning of the Great Depression—bankers leaping out of windows—is repurposed to horrific ends.
The narrative jumps to the very near future—Halloween 2016, which (note the title) falls on a Monday—to introduce Theodore Dumas, an NYPD detective with a penchant for the mystic, a preternatural sense of evil and an undeniable pragmaticism. After a brief period of administrative leave, he investigates a ritualistic murder that ties to the global financial institution that Caina has since become. Throughout, surreal touches unnerve: a man duplicates money in the middle of a lecture; a mysterious blonde woman lurks in the background of scenes in the past and present, speaking in a mysterious language.”
So to summarize:
> mysterious languages
> Devil worship
> controlling the world banks
> controlling the world
> secret society / “banking cartels”
> occult
> ritualistic blood sacrifice/murder
> the phrase “dirty, filthy money”
> obscure rituals
> vampires
> “black pope” illuminati nonsense
> everything is a conspiracy to keep “Good people” in their “place”
Sounds like author Jonathan Hickman of The Black Monday Murders is high on antisemitic conspiracy theories for his latest comic! Seriously this is….pretty intense.
I told my boss “Look if it was just one thing, like the ‘occult murders’, I wouldn’t register it. But it’s like…blood libel, “dirty banking”, an occult devil-worshiping oligarchy…“ And I explained why it was antisemitic and like told her about the ways in which “occult” was often twisted from Jewish practices and how the witch hunts/inquisition being about hunting Muslim and Jewish folks who were practicing their faith in secret and kinda tried to explain the antisemitic connection of the devil with Jewishness and she was like I HAD NO IDEA…I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THAT so I might lend her a copy of Joshua Trachtenburg’s “The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-semitism.”
But yeah. It’s “The Black Monday Murders” and I….think the author should’ve SERIOUSLY reconsidered this plot on every possible level. I can’t see any possible way they can avoid the inherent antisemitism of this concept.
ETA: I just saw the summary for issue #4: “Been waiting to find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes? Join us for a Rothschild funeral as the heads of the world’s secret houses of money attend.”
ANYWAYS THIS COMIC IS VERY ANTISEMITIC AND BRINGS IN THE ROTHSCHILDS…… @imagecomics should be ashamed of themselves TBH. Someone reblog this and tag them for me. Seriously, what the ever loving hell?