Middle Eastern Superhero Setting

Honestly I would love to see a superhero setting set in and focusing on the middle east.

It would be a fucking shitshow. Would it be an Assad, Saudi, Israeli or Iranian Superthug that toed the party line and beat up their enemies? Would it be a Turkish Invader warlord that beat up ethnic minorities? Would it be some kind of Kurdish Freedom Fighting Superwoman (This one is easily my favorite)? Would it be some kind of Alqy, Nusra, or ISIL Murderman, hellbent on perpetrating mass-murder with his Superman-tier murder powers?

The possibilities are endless.

Holy shit.

The fucking SuperMossad would just murderize niggas with their super murder powers. Shit would be grotesque.

And then the superpowered crusade show up to retake the Holy Land.

That could be a cool Big Villain Arc, a Super Crusader Coalition attempting to seize control of the Levant. Force all these disparate forces we've discussed to band together to save their homeland. Could be one of those awful crossover arc that requires you to have kept up with Mighty Mehmet even though that shit's fucking awful and phoned in every month.

...We both know it'd be Captain Islam.

I'm getting a very German vibe from this thread.

Just as long as there is at least one villain that's a crazy fucking Djinn motherfucker that's old as shit, I'm set.

>the foreign worshipers of a resurrected egyptian god attack

So the aliens really built the pyramids? And Osiris itself is part of the Eastern League of Paragons?

Also, one could have the likes of the more epic Alexander of the alexadrinian romances as a sort of Doctor Doom: an evil (more like ancient morals and drunk decisions), megalomaniac, honorable king which acumulated the knowledge, both scientific and esoteric, stored at the extinct Library of Alexandria. He has his own small country in the Athos Peninsula, intent on conquering all the Middle East once again. He has plenty of automaton clockworks which perfom with perfect sync but has dificulties adapting to the modern world, specially when it comes to tactics. Oh, and he finally had a mountain sculpted on his likeness, just like Dinocrates proposed.

Mossad could have the Gholem taskforce, a squadron of agents on mecha suits.

At the same time, they could have a good, powerful do-gooder who lives by the Tikkun olam. Called Samson, he once was a turist in which the Jerusalem syndrome awakened superpowers.

A dryad-like green spirit on hijab wants to rebuild the Garden of Babylon, or even the Garden of Eden.

However, all this bunch of superpowered characters makes me think like . It could become as nasty as Uber. At least when a character dedicates himself to terrorism, it's going to happen. It could be an evil genius which creates alchemic conconctions which turn people into living bombs, for example.

> A three way battle between the united Arabic heroes and villains, the Chaotic Crusader Coalition, and Kek's servants.

Most superhero comics were originally written by Jews. Between that and Israel's own stories about special ops guys and the missed, you have fodder for a whole new mcu full of supers.

I'd add one based on real-life Giora Epstein, the Ace of Aces of the jet age (most confirmed a2a kills). Give him a transforming Mecha Varitech fighter. IRL he once annihilated a regiment of Egyptian fighters singlehandedly.

I always think of Black Adam killing millions of people when I think about Mideastern supers.

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Yeah, I'm thinking the potential for atrocity is pretty huge. Shit, even if it's not ISISman, it could still be Saudi Hospital Bombing Man.

What if only Yazidis, Kurds, and Eastern Christians gained superpowers?

Remove arab

?

All I want is for this motherfucker to show up.

>Assassin
>Stealthy Heroic Spirit
>Huge spiky black armor

Read the OP more carefully, he specifically said that wasn't the case. It's not about specifically Middle Eastern superheroes, it's about all the superheroes happening to be in the Middle East, same as they all happen to be in New York in most comics. Scientist uses powered armor to fight crime? He's Iranian. Alien raised by humans decides to become protector of the species? His parents were Jordanian Bedouins. Some kids just randomly born with superpowers? They all live in Dubai.

Crusaders are European though, isn't the premise here all the superbeings are Middle Eastern? If anything, the enemy would be some crazy supervillain named "Dr. Jihad" trying to launch his laser nukes at Paris trying to be stopped by Captain Suleiman or whatever.

A prototype fighter jet (the plane's probably intelligent, probably with a shitty personality, because that's what sells superhero movies nowadays) pilot would definitely make a good Israeli superhero.

No, just that the Mideast is the America of this comic universe. There are still Asian and African supers in American capes, so there would be rare, super racist, poorly conceived American and European capes in this universe.

At BEST there might be some figure analogous to Black Panther from like...England or Connecticut or some shit.

You're pretty fucking stealthy if no one alive knows you're there.

His name is the Bonglander, and he uses the power of dank weed in order to do James Bond-esque stunts.

>there would be rare, super racist, poorly conceived American and European capes in this universe.

FREEDOMMAN! HALF MAN, HALF EAGLE!

I'm just imagining all those badasses famous for fighting ISIS with superpowers.

Yeah, but don't forget the ISIS supervillain characters either. That could be some wild shit.

Nearly all Yezhidis ARE Kurds.

They'd ally with Israel, as in fact they very quietly already are. Other Kurdish superheroes in Iran would support that country. The ones in turkey would be full blown hot communist chicks commiting terrorism against the Turks. There's a huge Kurdish Jewish community in Israel; they would all ally with Israel of course but go help the Kurds in Kurdistan too.

Arab Christians are a wildcard. At times they're rabidly anti-jewish and anti Israel (not just one or the other), and cook up all kinds of excuses for why radical Islamic Arabs aren't so bad. At other times, they're more anti-Islam than anybody on pol. I've known quite a few and some are chill and nonpolitical, but the political ones swing wildly around but they'll always say that whatever they're saying now has always been what they say.

So I think the Arabs get mostly removed from the map as significant player's. Israel stays Israel. Iran and the Kurds have a huge state of their own plus a friendly rivalry to control the Arabian peninsula, and turkey is overthrown and becomes a rump state.

I AM CAPTAIN DEMOCRAFREE

>The ones in turkey would be full blown hot communist chicks commiting terrorism against the Turks

Fuck, I'm getting really turned on just thinking about all the glorious revolution they'd spread.

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A Bedouin superhero would be fun. They mainly stay out of the politics and are pretty cool.

Like Patriot from the Agents of SHIELD TV series as opposed to Captain America. Though the US military characters in the MCU are already pretty shallow caricatures.

>Nearly all Yezhidis ARE Kurds.

I'm getting pretty horny myself, and I hate communism.

Remember the Baroness in GI Joe?

I think a Captain Israel character makes more sense than a Captain Arabia character. Could even keep to the ethnic outsider idea if he was a test subject in a secret Nazi super-soldier experiment that worked too well. Then he could have a sort of Moses arc of freeing the camps and leading the Jews to the Holy land again.

Of course, his staunch idealism means he's constantly torn between cooperative cohabitation with Arabs, external Arab military threats, and the occupation missions of the Israeli gov. In fact, he'd probably get booted from Israeli SHIELD for harbouring non-nationalistic views, having lived through the horrors of WW2

The Holocaust survivors were and are the most nationalist, pro-occupation group in Israel. It's the younger ones and especially expats living abroad who are pro-palestinian.

So, the first thing that happens in this setting is Palestinian genocide, right?

Awesome. Like their own supers team who're just badass mythical powers like Thor and the Asgardians, but from various Middle Eastern mythologies. Fucking Marduk swings by, prophesying his own return as a messianic king of Babylon

I had no idea. I guess is right for my proposed cap Israel idea.

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This is too much freedom for one image

Why? Do you think the Israelis couldn't if they wanted to?

I could see them assassinating all the Palestinian superheroes, or at least all the ones in terrorist groups. But if genocide was their endgame they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by doing it long ago. They hold back for historical, cultural, religious, and self-image reasons.

Driving them into Jordan, I could see, if the international pressure could be minimized and the kingdom there not destabilized.

So I think a Captain Israel would be a lot like Captain America or Superman. Because of course those superheroes were written by Jews operating from much the same cultural/ethical perspective as Israelis.

Keep in mind also that the first generation of Israelis were driven out of their homes in Europe and the Middle East, and then fought a bloody war of Independence against a more numerous, better equipped enemy that was bragging about having another Holocaust once they won. They see the whole situation very differently than the Arabs or even modern Israelis.

Google Mickey Marcus for a comic book tier Israeli war hero.

I fucking love characters whose power is just "I give things death."

There are characters who do shit like control fire, reverse cause and effect, or grow stronger the more they're hated, and then there are those bastards who can kill things with pure fucking death.

youtube.com/watch?v=3nEgjwfX6s8

CAPTAIN CAPITALISM!

I'd read up on Middle eastern politics and history and draw inspiration from the real world. A super soldier army based on the Mamluks takes over Egypt. A hydra-esque pseudo-fascist faction inspired by Ataturk runs Turkey from behind the scenes. An elite superhuman Royal Guard props up the Saudis. Uber-evil ISIS style madmen would be an obvious factor.

Then I'd highlight factional strife and the role that control over what ever unobtanium/applied-phlebotinum fuels super powers plays. Sunni and Shia supers would be slugging it out on a regular basis, and wrecking lots of cityscape in the process.

Western powers, particularly America, would be constantly meddling. They would have their own supers as a result of purchasing "element X" from middle eastern nations. Those western powers who would be better equipped and more professional than the locals, but have their hands tied by politics.

Israel has no publicly acknowledged superpowered soldiers, and would neither confirm or deny operations involving supers.

Black Adam did nothing wrong

Oh, he was fucking pissed, I don't even blame him. But that's what I think of, just a superdude massacring an entire country in retaliation for shit. I feel like that's how it would go down.

I like how they explicitly said nothing above the scale of a germ was left alive. From border to border he exterminatus'd that place.

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Captain Satan user

Behold the Superman of the middle East

You're a funny guy, friend.

>Not a photograph of Assad

Years ago a friend of mine and I had an idea for a Jewish superhero who became immortal due to Nazi experimentation and has been traveling the world ever since ("The Wandering Jew"). Happy to know we weren't the only crazies.

But it's actually got all you wanted. I definitely think the Middle East is one of the better chapters. Everything from a prince of the house of Saud fighting crime with a flock of robotic falcons through mysterious magicians, mutants, Israeli qabbalists, angels and dragons. Also, a villain called the "Star Sheikh" who's fooled the emirates into thinking he's looking for oil, but who in fact is looking for Precursor artifacts buried in the desert and who is paying them with the alien hypertech equivalents of glass beads.

>no pics of Dust

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The starship of an ancient supervillain, obviously.

What would be the Mideastern equivalents of:

Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
The X-Men
Iron Man
Thor
Spiderman
Captain America
?

>Captain America
Supreme Emir

He'd likely be Israeli. If there's one country in the region with the technological capability, the military mindset and the national attitude, it's Israel.

>emir
>not caliph

The problem is that the core message of all these comics was, "with great power comes great responsibility". Outside Israel and a few Persians and Iraqi Kurds, who in the Middle East thinks that way? Each of these comics are about extraordinary people who use all their superpowers to essentially keep things the way they are, maybe improve them a bit. It's a function of America having no real territorial ambitions or big grievances, and being comparatively prosperous, peaceful, and happy. And many of them do so anonymously so they can live normal lives as normal people.

So Spiderman doesn't stage a coup, declare himself Emir of Beirut, put his own tribe in charge, marry four supermodels, and live in a palace. He fights street crime and lives a normal life anonymously in high school.

Even guys like Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark live within the system. That's true even when they come into conflict with it.

This is all a counterpoint to Nietzsche. In that world, with great power comes the special privilege of transgressing the normal legal and moral rules so as to fully actualize their potential. Communism doesn't credit Nietzsche, but it's concepts of Revolutionary Values and the New Soviet Man are essentially the same. In practice, radical Sunni Islam adopts the same view. To them, a Captain America is a fool and a "cuck", wasting his potential to make other men rich and powerful. He should be doing great things, settling old historical scores, building a great empire, or enforcing the supremacy of his ideology, race, or religion.

These views are formulas for super-VILLAINS, even if they're protagonists in the story. To people raised on Spiderman, Tolkien, and Star Wars, such supers just don't compute as heroes. It's a totally different kind of story.

How would the rest of the world react at the middle east getting all the cool stuff?

There'd likely be a rise of animosity against middle eastern people as people of the west are afraid of their countries new found power, politicians make hard pushes for stronger immigration laws all around Europe and America.

The middle east becomes a major talking point as everyone is bracing for the domino effect of all the changes that happen that fast in that region.

Probably a rise in white supremacy/anti-semitism in general as all the people that are "just kind of" against the jews right now get new reasons to be afraid of them now that they've got supers, people becoming more extreme in their believes.

Tourism into the middle east will reach an all time high as everyone wants to see some superhumans in action, regular people just kind of get a ticket to Dubai or Israel or whatever and hope they just randomly cross paths with superhuman on superhuman action while rich people pay for tours through hot warzones in the hopes of seeing some capes duke it out (or just book meetings with them directly though that's not as exciting).

Those are two entirely different things.

I always wonder why the Arabian/Assyrian mafia never gets attention in stories, or bedouin dope smugglers

I mean there's more middle-eastern villains than just terrorists

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>hypothalamus

My man.

Which is precisely why this would make a terrific setting for Wild Talents. Like, "call Greg Stolze right now, he needs this idea" terrific.

Valid point

Western culture is (at it's origin) based on guilt and innocence in the eyes of Christ. Doesn't matter if "nobody" will know you did a bad thing, YOU will know. It's about doing the right thing no matter the cost, like Christ. Law and Order are the foundation of society, derived from Roman culture.

Middle-Eastern culture is based on honor & shame. Do whatever you want as long as society doesn't know. Having your honor ruined is a fate worse than death.

Persian superheroes would have the tackiest, gaudiest, most embarrassing costumes of all

Lol. I see what you did there.

It's a sad thing that so many westerners so vehemently refuse to truly understand current Middle Eastern culture out of some misguided idea that accepting the facts about it would make them racist. To acknowledge that Middle Easterners have completely different, sometimes alien cultural values isn't freaking colonialist, it's not the same as calling them primitives or savages. And it's absolutely VITAL to understanding the situation in the Middle East. This is a culture where you would be seen as IMmoral for not murdering your own daughter for walking outside uncovered, and the current king of Saud is considered weak because he didn't bother to KILL his father when he stole the throne. Invading another country for its oil fields is a perfectly reasonable action and the fact that every ethnic group in the region is perfectly aware that every other ethnic group wants it cleansed off the face of the earth doesn't preclude polite interaction (right until one stabs the other in the back, which both sides understand perfectly well will happen).

It's not just America with camels and burkas.

I've known many persians (all emigres or 1st generation immigrants, mostly escaping the Revolution) and I can't think of even one who hasn't been incredibly stylish. All different looks and styles, mind you. Even now in Iran itself the girls often wear very hot and stylish clothes and jewelry under their legally-required clothes.

I'm sure there are tacky ones, but I haven't personally met one.

So I think their superheroes would look BETTER than the four color americans of comic book history.

Actually, now that I think of it, have you met anyone from beirut? Or Israel? Middle Eastern supers would have many many problems but fashion sense isn't one of them.

I think you're way overestimating the cultural implications of Christianity here. You're right but going overboard. Judaism pushes the "people with more power are held to a higher moral standard" line even harder, and that's where Christianity gets it. Most strains of Buddhism have a version of this as well.

As for Europe, respect for rule of law derives from many sources. The Frankish warrior honor codes are important as well. Sure the Romans respected rule of law at one point, but Christianity's embrace of this stems from their jewish roots and also from the fact that by the time Christianity was forming, Rome was deeply corrupt and had utterly rejected rule of law in favor of partisan power-grabs and might-makes-right. Christianity is an active rejection of Rome-- some of it demanding that Rome uphold standards which it had betrayed, and some of it a rejection of what Rome had always been.

The argument is that Western Civilization is based on three pillars: hellenism as filtered by Rome, Judaism as filtered by Christianity, and the Frankish "barbarian" tribal codes that conquered Rome but then reimagined their own traditional practices through the classical/monotheist lens.

Though I would totally live in America with camels and burkas. That sounds really comfy.

So captain Israel would be taken out of the picture at some point and later return?

>last survivor of an alien civilization lands in the deserts of Earth
>completely desperate that he was powerless to stop the death of his people, thinking himself worthless
>about to give up and die of thirst
>suddenly found by kindly Bedouin
>cue this: youtube.com/watch?v=oG0a9WFkgzU

>yfw instant origin story

And, btw, that's why the Middle East is a mess. Just as Rome's fall left a corrupt basket case of a region mired in poverty, tinpot dictators, competing brands of fanaticism, nostalgia for the Good Old Days, and above all a grab-what-you-can-while-you-can-by-any-means-necessary mentality, so the exact same thing happened in the ME when the ottoman empire fell.

For that matter, this has happened in quite a lot of places where you had the collapse of a formerly great but now very corrupt empire, followed by a power vacuum.

If the EU falls apart and then the region melts down (or at least its mediterranean members), you'll see the exact same drama acted out. Different religions, ideologies, and personalities, but the same stuff will start to happen.

While I like your speculations, remember OPs premise was "The Middle East is the center of the superhero universe", not of any specific event. If it's anything like the superhero settings we know, that means superheroes aren't exactly some new development in the region. Those worlds are BLOATED with characters, from ancient gods to magicians to super gadgeteers to aliens to people wielding mysterious devices to random rich guys fighting crime. It'd have had the local equivalents of, say, the Sorcerer Supreme, Shining Knight, Aquaman or any number of other historical superbeings since forever.

>Or Israel?
Military uniforms are not "fashion".

There were always superheroes (and villains) in the region, just like there were in America in the DC and Marvel verses. The Ottoman period? SOME dashing fellow with a pet genie (or a crazy inventor, or just a talented crimefighter for that early 1900's Golden Age feeling) had to contend with Vizier Venom, Al-Fil, rogue ifrits and dastardly British spies threatening the empire back in that day And the trends being what they are probably have a 2010's successor of some sort, probably young and hip.

Sometimes they are, but I'm talking civilian garb.

Nevroz Peroz, motherfuckers.

I've seen some of you mention my father's people, Kurds. I do believe I can provide you with a good superhero character.

There was this evil motherfucking snake-king, called Zuhak. He was a tyrant, killing two young men every day just for his amusement (and their brains). However, one of his servants started saving one of the boys each day. They were then trained into a freedom fighters, an army of free people to defeat the tyrant. They were led by a blacksmith named Kaveh, who himself had lost seven sons to the beast. They marched into the monsters palace, where Kaveh used his hammer to defeat King with Snakes on Shoulders.

He's also considered a god called Kurdalægon in some mythology.

He's basically Kurdish Thor that gets shit done.

That sounds way cool.