Bane Creator Graham Nolan Reacts To ‘Blue Beetle’ Director Claiming The Character Represents American Interventionism In Latin America

John F. Trent |

Aug 8, 2023

Bane on the prowl in Bane Conquest #3 (2017), DC

Bane creator Graham Nolan recently shared his thoughts in regards to Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto claiming that the DC villain represents American interventionism in Latin America.

In a recent interview with The Playlist, Soto shared his thoughts on Bane while promoting the upcoming Blue Beetle film and detailing that DC pitched him on Blue Beetle after he came to them with a Bane movie.

Soto shared, “As far as Bane goes, the comics that are about Bane’s story, it felt like he’s very misunderstood much like Carapax in the movie. He is a product of his environment and that history has been buried. The history of the Caribbean, the Antilles. It’s a history that’s brushed off in history books.”

“So for me, it was very important to be seen,” he continued. “And with the character of Bane, the formation of this villain, I think in his own right, he’s also a hero in his story. So whether whatever happens at the end that might have gotten distorted because of what was done to him, I think that what he represents is a lot of the unknown, or forgotten, or brushed under the rug history of interventionism in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Later, Soto went on to reveal he took his view of Bane’s backstory and applied it to Carapax. He then explained why he believes having this part of a villain backstory is so important, “Because we need it. When we’re introduced to the world in movies, right, where we are seen as villains, it’s just given that we are born that way.”

“And when we talk about the history of Latin America, nobody dares to question, well, what happened before. Okay, well what happened before? More times than none when you go back even before 1954, but if we want to go to 1954 in Guatemala it was U.S. interventionism that drove these places to the miseries that they’re in,” he said.

“So I’m not embarrassed to talk about it,” Soto asserted. “History is there. Nobody’s trying to blame something.

“Nobody’s trying to say– it’s just like hear us out. This is our story and, you know what? We can heal together. At the end of the day we can all heal together if we recognize the stuff that has happened in the past and lift each other up in a way that I feel the Reyes family lifts each other up. It’s like welcome to our stories and the same way that we’re welcome to other stories. Welcome to our stories and let’s have a dialogue, it’s beautiful,” he concluded.

Nolan shared his brief thoughts to Soto’s comments on Twitter. First, Nolan reacted to comic book writer and editor Aaron Sparrow’s comments simply writing, “Well, that’s a lot of horseshit.”

He provided more details when asked for his thoughts by Twitter user hdt885. Nolan stated, “Too much personal projection. He’s correct in that Bane is a product of his environment but the socio-political extrapolations he’s making we’re never considered during Bane’s creation.”

Nolan last worked on Bane alongside the character’s fellow co-creator Chuck Dixon in Bane Conquest, which was published back in 2018. However, since that book Nolan launched his own comib book universe dubbed the Nolanverse through his company Compass Comics.

The Nolanverse currently consists of the horror titles The Chenoo and Alien Alamo. It also includes The Ghosts of Matecumbe Key, an upcoming supernatural horror story that is currently funding on IndieGoGo.

Alongside these Nolanverse titles, Nolan also relaunched his Joe Frankenstein series with Chuck Dixon. The duo first republished the 4-issue 2015 IDW series into two collected editions with the second volume expected to ship to IndieGoGo backers in September 2023.

Nolan teased on the original crowdfund campaign that the series would be joining his Nolanverse and that readers would want to get caught up with these books before diving into The Ghosts of Matecumbe Key.

Outside of the Nolanverse, but still published through Compass Comics, Nolan brought together a team of top comic book talent including Chuck Dixon, Mike Baron, Beau Smith, Tim Rozon, Kevin Greviouix, Michael Golden, Butch Guice, David Williams, Andrew Paquette, Larry Stroman, Roberto Casto, Dan Lawlis, Kelsey Shannon, and Andy Kuhn for the action-packed anthology series Giant-Size Two-Fisted Manly Tales.