Race, Gender and Comics… Oh My!
Let your guard down and hear me out.
I cringed and hesitated to write this post because I know how race and gender topics get people riled up. Sprinkle comics to the mix and I could already feel a raging heat emanating from my screen.
But I bit the bullet and thought it was a topic worth exploring, especially since I am a person of color, who writes comics and has a daughter (who will read comics) and wife who loves comics.
What brought this on all of a sudden?
I've been enjoying comics for over 20 something years now. Why all of a sudden care to write about race and gender? Well, I've been getting some strange comments lately. Comments that stirred up some old emotions I've bottled in for years when it came to comics.
What happened?
Recently I released my first comic Not So Super, which is getting lots of WONDERFUL reviews and I got some responses from avid comic fans that initially puzzled me. Some of them told me that they really loved the story and art, everything about it was perfect, but there was “something” they couldn't explain that threw them off. “Something” did not make the story “relatable”.
At first, I dismissed it. I thought maybe it’s because my main character was an IT specialist. Maybe people assumed it was going to be technical. But the readers I spoke of loved Spider-Man, but they had no interests in being photographers. They loved Bruce Banner who was a nuclear physicist, surely that was not a profession “relatable” to them. Then it started to burrow under my skin.
Why didn't they find my comic “relatable”?
I came to a conclusion I didn't want to arrive to. The readers where white males and my character is a black one. I know…I know… I was not happy with my brain coming up with that reasoning. Trust me I have tons of opportunities to use my little race card, but I save it for special occasions. I didn't think this was one of them.
Surprisingly, their response is something that I grappled with as I got older and was debating if comics were still worth reading. Like the individuals I mentioned above, I started to not relate to the characters.
Let’s do some time traveling.
As a kid, I loved the fantastic characters and the fun and whimsy in classic comics. But one thing I realized as I grew up is that I was getting tired of not seeing anyone like me. I felt forced to accept that I didn't exist. That it was totally normal for me to aspire to be Luke Cage rather than Reed Richards or heck, Dr. Doom. (As a weird side note, I find it interesting that as I write this I may have loved Dr. Doom so much because he was under a mask and his race didn't matter to me… but that’s a story for another day)
Comics, when I grew up, made it the norm to think that minorities and women could not be realistic characters in their books. Women had to be objects of affections and minorities, comic relief or athletic angry men. But somehow I stuck on and consumed these stories. As time grew I found myself indoctrinated and normalized the very thing that alienated me when I was younger.
Subconsciously, I defaulted everything to be white males. Because it was all I saw in the comic world. From Asterix and Obelix, to most of DC’s lineups. All of the characters worth caring about were white and male. That does something to a kid’s brain.
Back to the present
Let's fast forward to the present. I’m now a grown man, comfortable in my own skin. Yet I write a comic book and grapple with whether or not the race of my character will alienate my readers.
Just a few months ago as I was writing a story about a not so distant future. I was going to default the character to be an old white male scientist. Without even thinking!
Then it dawned on me, all of those years of indoctrination are still stuck in my brain. I quickly asked myself why not have a female scientist? A black, middle-aged one at that? Her motives made far better sense in my new story than if I stayed with my original idea.
What am I trying to say?
Comics are powerful. They shape the lens of those who read them. I champion the inclusion of all types of people in the medium. The independent comic circuit is doing a FANTASTIC job in challenging the comics norm.
I got excited about superheroes again reading Vince White’s Will Power. It has a black character that did not go on and on about his race. Instead, the comic tells an epic story.
I actually read a romance story that involved werewolves with an awesome female lead, without making me cringe. Samantha Mathis and Caytlin Vilbrandt’s Walking on Broken Glass engaged and entertained me. It got me interested in something I would have never known I’d care about.
Robin Dempsey created a whole new world complete with its own language. A world full of rich cultures, in her comic Ley Lines and fascinated me with things that didn't even exist.
To show you the power of comics, Suzy Dias and Miguel Guerra’s comic, Super Corporate Heroes, got me interested in economics and politics for goodness sake! And it still had a plethora of dynamic character types.
These are just tiny examples of people who challenged my perception of what comics are all about. And they did this without being preachy and added something to the table.
More creators need to do this. Use their perspectives to tell stories and include all kinds of people. This inspires people to see more than color or gender but rather the contents of their characters.
