Recently, in The Fury of Firestorm #19, everyone's favorite Quebecker terrorist, and arguably both Firestorm's most visible villain and DC's most prominent Canadian character (I don't buy Booster Gold as a Canadian for one second), Plastique made her New52 premiere. Now granted, she may no longer be a Quebec separatist with ties to the FLQ, and she may not even be from Quebec at all. Reboot and all that. In the issue, she only gets few lines and is basically a cipher, along with other hastily introduced Firestorm villains. But there's also no reason to believe she ISN'T from Quebec. Except that accent... it's all wrong. Let's listen in:
First, I don't think I remember reading Plastique with an accent before. She throws French words around, sure, but as far as I can recall, her accent was never written phonetically. Mr. Jurgens should have left it that way. My beef is with the replacement of the "th" sounds (in "this", "the" and "things") by a "z". Not only are there two distinct "th" sounds there, which wouldn't be mispronounced the same way, but Plastique sounds like she's from France, not French Canada.
Were she actually French, she would pronounce the hard "th" of "this" as a "z", yes. But the softer "th" of "things" would probably sound like an "s". But she's NOT French, she's French Canadian (which I realize is an insult to a separatist). The way WE mispronounce a hard "th" is as a "d", and a soft "th" as a "t". A Quebecker would, in fact, produce a purer "d" and "t" for English words, than their own unfocused "d"s and "t"s which sound like "ts" and "dz" (depending on region, of course). So Plastique's dialog should sound like: "We must bring dis to an end." "As de name suggests -- When I am around, tings tend to explode."
Sorry to draw this out, but you know how it bugs me when comics get my language wrong. At least there's no Babel Fishing this time!
Were she actually French, she would pronounce the hard "th" of "this" as a "z", yes. But the softer "th" of "things" would probably sound like an "s". But she's NOT French, she's French Canadian (which I realize is an insult to a separatist). The way WE mispronounce a hard "th" is as a "d", and a soft "th" as a "t". A Quebecker would, in fact, produce a purer "d" and "t" for English words, than their own unfocused "d"s and "t"s which sound like "ts" and "dz" (depending on region, of course). So Plastique's dialog should sound like: "We must bring dis to an end." "As de name suggests -- When I am around, tings tend to explode."
Sorry to draw this out, but you know how it bugs me when comics get my language wrong. At least there's no Babel Fishing this time!
Comments
Un gros bonjour du Nouveau-Brunswick, Valero! Né là aussi, mais de parents Néo-Brunswickois et puis, assez rapidement redéménagé en Acadie. Un supervillain devrait militer pour l'indépendence acadienne, comme le vieux Parti Acadien. Serait à peu prêt aussi pertinent que le FLQ.
See my brain wants to read this with a Jamaican accent.
But this was the era when DC was trying to Marvelize itself, so this was Gerry Conway trying to get topical and current. As sad as that sounds, this was also an era where most DC Comics wouldn't even show the US President's face: he'd always be standing in shadows, as if just acknowledging who was in the Oval Office was itself controversial.
Sooooo ... could it be that DC wanted to do a story about terrorism, but they were afraid of being too controversial with the IRA or Basque separatists, so they went with Quebec separatists?
But yeah, Firestorm was designed to be a Marvel hero, so your analysis is probably accurate. As to why the FLQ rather than the IRA, who knows. Might have read something about the FLQ and been inspired to do something a little different. It's weird to think you have to stretch to find a way to tell a terrorism story back then.
Still missing Tokamak, Enforcer, Goldenrod, Bug & Byte, and Slipknot (to name a few).