Holy international incident, Batman!
DC Comics pulled a new Batman poster from a social media ad campaign after Chinese supporters said it was a veiled reference to anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, according to a report.
The ad in question featured an image of the iconic masked character throwing a Molotov cocktail, a homemade grenade made from gasoline-filled bottles and frequently used by Hong Kong protesters in clashes with police.
Pink letters in the foreground say “the future is young.”
Many of the protesters in Hong Kong — who are fighting an extradition-to-China proposal — are college-age or younger and wore masks during the demonstrations.
The similarities were not lost on Chinese citizens.
“No matter what the reason, to put an image like this up at a sensitive time like this means you have a death wish,” a user on the social media site Weibo wrote, according to the Daily Beast.
The ad, part of a promotion for DC Comics’ “Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child,” was yanked from the company’s Twitter and Instagram accounts following the backlash.
The removal then prompted criticism from backers of the Hong Kong protesters.
