Orient Men



Orient Men is a comic book character by the Polish cartoonist Tadeusz Baranowski.

In his three first apperances, in the 1976 issues of the magazine "Relax", Orient Men was a parody superhero who fought evil with his power of Flight and diplomatic skills. The comics showed Orient Men taking on a crook, a giant gorilla (which wasn't what it seemed) and a ghoul from a haunted castle.

Orient Men reappeared two years later in a series published in the "Świat Młodych" magazine. In the series, Orient Men travelled in the search for a vaguely-defined "aim", stumbling across several eccentric individuals and cities whose problems he solved via common sense, his superhero status mostly forgotten. His quest ended when he discovered that his "aim" is literally a giant dartboard, beyond which all the characters he encountered prior awaited his arrival to congratulate him.

The final comics appeared in 1998 and 2003, in the magazine "Świat Komiksu" and in the anthology Orient Men Forever. They were mostly political parodies or generic Rapid Fire Comedy, Orient Men's superhero shtick all but dropped.

This comic provides examples of:

 * Actual Pacifist: Orient Men only attacked someone openly once (the gorilla); in all other cases, he tries to end the problems via negotiations.
 * The Artifact: Orient Men's superhero status held up for only three comics. His superhero costume remained afterward though.
 * A Worldwide Punomenon: Most of the later jokes are wordplay.
 * Flight: Orient Men's apparent sole superpower.
 * Rapid Fire Comedy
 * Running Gag: An Eskimo follows Orient Men in his steps relentlessly while asking every person encountered how to fix his broken radiator.
 * Radiators in general become a Running Gag in the final comics.
 * Secret Identity: Orient Men is stated to be a secret identity of some generic white collar in the first comic. This never comes up again though.
 * Superheroes Wear Capes