#comic analysis

What… is Talia even wearing here?? 😭

This is supposed to be Talia al Ghul in disguise btw.

But look at it face veil, head covering, exposed midriff, tight dancer outfit. This is not a real outfit 😭

It’s basically veil + belly dancer costume + “desert princess” aesthetic.

A Western fantasy of Arab womanhood.

And this comes from something called Orientalism.

Orientalism turns “the East” into exotic, sensual, mysterious instead of specific, real, lived cultures.

So instead of representation, you get “vibes.” And those vibes are almost always sexy, dangerous and other.

And it matters because Talia is supposed to be a politically aware strategist, controlled and powerful but visually she’s framed as seductive, exotic, not a person but a fantasy.

They want her to be intelligent and dangerous, but they present her through a stereotype.

That contradiction happens constantly with Arab characters.

Also I’m crying because Batman recognizes her through lines like:

“her movements… unmistakably graceful…”

Sir. She is dressed like a walking stereotype 😭

And this isn’t just about Talia either.

Arab characters in media repeatedly get reduced to assassin, terrorist, or exotic figures. This is done over and over again.

Media scholar Jack Shaheen talked about how Arabs in Western media are often reduced to variations of the “bomber, belly dancer, or billionaire” stereotype.

And the wild part is… the Al Ghuls basically hit all three.

billionaire -> global elite, controlling resources

bomber → League of Assassins / terrorism-coded violence

belly dancer → Talia dressed like… this

So even when you think you’re getting a “complex” Arab character, they’re often still built from the same stereotypes.

Arab identity is not a costume. It’s cultural, historical, regional, linguistic, and deeply diverse. And it absolutely does not look like a belly dancer outfit from a 70s comic.

You can write Talia as powerful without turning her into an Orientalist fantasy. We deserve Arab characters who feel like actual people.

And even the dialogue reinforces the framing:

“serving girl” “fluid as quicksilver… unmistakably graceful”

Even the narration objectifies her.

"This panel provides us with Northstar as a sort of paradigm of a superhero who is “correct,” “neat,” “sane,” etc. His presence lays plain Aurora’s “deviance.” By aligning the siblings with “correctness” and “wrongness,” “sanity,” and “insanity,” in this way, the story presents a powerful gendering of the superpowered mind. Furthermore, because both siblings have endured the same traumatic loss, they form a kind of “twin study” of trauma in the comic book genre, demonstrating that, while male heroes can remain “sane” after trauma, superwomen do not. The differences between Aurora and Northstar in this issue illustrate that the mechanism through which trauma on the comic book page operates is a clearly gendered one.”

Chapter 1 is mostly about Yuu’s experience with love and how it isolates her from her peers, then how Touko pushes past this isolation.

In the beginning of the chapter Nio introduces Akari and Koyomi and the art shows Akari wrapping an arm over Yuu’s shoulder.

One scene later the three talk about romance and the visuals show separation this time.

It starts with this panel where Yuu’s speech bubble stands between her and the other girls, Koyomi reciprocates the barrier by doing the same, Akari leans away from Yuu instead of towards her like she was doing in the first panel.

I am especially fond of this panel because it’s the sort of thing that can only be done in comics, speech bubbles are a part of the artwork and can be used for storytelling as much as the text inside. In animation when a new frame is presented the former is gone but in comics all images within a page can be seen at the same time, this invites comparison in a way that more linear mediums don’t.

The separation is reinforced through framing and perspective for the next pages.

Before it reaches a climax and the scene ends.

The chapter shows Yuu’s isolation a few more times, always paired with the topic of romance and love. Then when she talks with Touko about it, she does this:

The ending shows Touko repeatedly reaching for Yuu, first with this head pat, then by holding her hand and finally by pulling her closer,

Yuu never initiates this but she doesn’t push back either, this will become their normal dynamic going forward.

I won’t talk much about chapter two but the conclusion for this scene is in there. In short, Touko takes her hand away and reestablishes the separation, turning away from Yuu.

Finally at the end of the last chapter a pilot dies and the newest chapter is titled "Dead Pilot Party" 👀 On the cover all the handlers are sadly drinking at a bar but we see the pilots are in their barracks putting all of the dead pilots belongings away for something called a "Boxburn"

but then the most senior pilot does this...

These characters are living on a ecologically ruined earth that sustains itself on the commodification of constant war. These characters are generations away from having any attachment to nature and we know their society is post-organized religion. Their spiritually with the "ghosts" comes from the fact that their memories can be literally trapped in the war machines they pilot (one of the main plot points in Kaxen's second comic Blind Courser). So any "spiritual" rituals they maintain are fragments of culture that have been telephoned to them from a distant past where that type of practice was preserved.