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Sources

Can A Coke-Snorting Comic Villain From Colombia Make A Comeback?


EL TIEMPO
( Colombia)

BOGOTA -Nearly 25 years after being axed by DC Comics, "Snowflame," a cocaine-snorting comic book villain (who also happens to be Colombian), is back – and still ruffling feathers.

DC Comics artists Steve Englehart and Joe Stanton created Snowflame in 1988. "Cocaine is my God – and I am the human instrument of its will," the buzzed baddie declares. Snowflame enjoyed super strength and speed thanks to the large amounts of cocaine he inhaled. According to critics, the character concept glorified drug use -- and was also super xenophobic. DC Comics soon killed the cokehead Colombian off.

Recently, however, an American artist named Julie Sydor decided to rescue the controversial drug-crazed character, giving SnowFlame his own Internet-based comic strip.

In an interview with Colombia's El Tiempo, the artist admitted that the comic plays on the stereotype of the Colombian drug boss. "But my intention isn't to offend Latinos," she said. "I'm hoping Snowflame can transcend the stereotype and become a totally developed and believable character."

Sydor, a graduate of the Minnesota College of Art and Design, has so far drawn up 15 episodes that are "in no way sponsored by DC comics," she explains on her website.

Read the original article in Spanish

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Green

Gimme Shelter! Using Tech To Rethink How We Protect Endangered Species

Human-made shelters don’t always keep creatures out of harm’s way. Can technology help design a better protect birds and possums?

Photograph of two swallows peeking outside of a blue wooden bird nest

Swallows peak outside of a bird nest

Mariko Margetson/Unsplash
Marta Zaraska

In 2016, Ox Lennon was trying to peek in the crevices inside a pile of rocks. They considered everything from injecting builders’ foam into the tiny spaces to create a mold to dumping a heap of stones into a CT scanner. Still, they couldn’t get the data they were after: how to stack rocks so that a mouse wouldn’t squeeze through, but a small lizard could hide safely inside.

Lennon, then a Ph.D. student at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, aimed to protect skinks, snake-like lizards on which non-native mice prey. When road construction near Wellington displaced a local population of the reptiles, they were moved to a different site. But the new location lacked the rock piles that skinks use as shelter.

So, Lennon and their colleagues set out to create a mice-proof pile of rocks. It proved harder than they thought.

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