Ardian Syaf Fired By Marvel Comics UPDATED

Stop Me If You  Know This But… Department (Update)

Update

So having ended the original story on “So, what do we learn from this? Well, people are crazy, basically,” Syaf then goes on to prove me right by telling a local newspaper by telling a local newspaper “But Marvel is owned by Disney. When Jews are offended, there is no mercy,” reiterating that he is not prejudiced or anti-Semitic, because of course, he worked for a foreign publisher owned by Jews. You get the sense that he has no idea what “prejudiced” means. Again, this just seems like tragic stupidity of a kind that is all too common in the world. I’d always kind of assumed that comic fans, having got used to blue aliens, people made of rock, sentiment planets et cetera had more sense than to get bent out of shape about other people’s colour or religion, but apparently not.

♦ So, lots of hysteria over the last few days about Ardian Syaf, an Indonesian comic creator, and the artist on X-Men Gold, which has lasted an entire issue before becoming mired in this controversy. Basically, Ardian hid easter eggs in the form of slogans relating to the more extreme end of Islam in this comic, mostly related to a local Indonesian controversy over Jakarta’s Christian Governor Ahok, who is facing a possible blasphemy trial for mistranslated subtitles on a video of him speaking(!!), although there’s a bit of anti-Semitism in there just to add spice.
The idiocy of this doesn’t really bear any kind of examination at all, although it should be remarked that Syaf went down still defending his actions and proclaiming love for all (!) In a style familiar to any who have watched the head of United Airlines defend using airport police to drag a 69-year-old man off a plane recently.
We’re reporting on this for 2 reasons:

Reason 1: it is possible that some of you have been on vacation, in a coma, or have recently recovered from amnesia. In any of these cases, you will be wondering why as of issue 4 X-Men Gold doesn’t have him on art anymore. Apparently, they had 3 issues in the can (a welcome sign for those of us who suffered through Secret Wars and Civil War II) but after that he’s toast.

Reason 2: the issue itself is now at about $30 on eBay as of today. If you haven’t got it you may have to pay over the odds for it. We here at Tripwire earnestly suggest that you do not do this, as we have the feeling it will be joining a lot of recent books in a discount bin fairly soon. If not, there’s always the trade paperback, which will currently be cheaper than buying the comic even at Marvel’s inflated trade paperback prices.

If you want the full tedious story, head over to Bleeding Cool who have done it, if not to death, certainly to a level of detail that has inflicted life-changing injuries.

The two protagonists announced the split thusly (we’ve corrected some misspellings):

“Hello, Worlds…
My career is over now.
It’s the consequence what I did, and I take it.
Please no more mockery, debate, no more hate. I hope all in peace.
In this last chance, I want to tell you the true meaning of the numbers, 212 and QS 5:51.
It is number of JUSTICE. It is number of LOVE. My love to Holy Qur’an…my love to the last prophet, the Messenger…my love to ALLAH, The One God.
My apologies for all the noise. Goodbye, May God bless you all. I love all of you.”

-Ardian Syaf-

“Marvel has terminated Ardian Syaf’s contract effective immediately. ‘X-Men Gold’ #2 and #3 featuring his work have already been sent to the printer and will continue to ship bi-weekly. Issues #4, #5, and #6 will be drawn by R. B. Silva and issues #7, #8, and #9 will be drawn by Ken Lashley. A permanent replacement artist will be assigned to ‘X-Men Gold’ in the coming weeks.”

– Marvel from Marvel’s media partner ComicBook.com

So, what do we learn from this? Well, people are crazy, basically.