Can Modern Superhero Comics be Redeemed, Given Their Less Than Ideal Origins and Underlying Stereotypes?
Is this a good time, during the latest boom era of the superhero, to question what lies beneath?
March 2015: The writer Son of Baldwin wrote an article in the Middle Spaces called “Humanity not Included” about the DC character Cyborg and his continued existence, both as a character in the DC Universe, and as a sign of racial stereotypes.
If you haven’t had a chance to read the article, do so. It is both brilliant, insightful and daunting, especially if you want to be a writer of comics today. But where I normally say avoid the comments, I would ask you to take in the comments as well, since they were moderated and answered with such passion and thoughtful responses.
One response made by Son of Baldwin resonated strongly and I had to think about whether this was true and whether I could write knowing what he said was essentially accurate if damning:
“Personally, I believe the “modern” superhero concept is borne out of an imperialistic, imperialist, puerile, hyper-masculine, white supremacist, anti-woman, anti-PoC, anti-queer, anti-disability ideology.
I’m not sure that it can be “reclaimed” and re-presented as something useful and liberating, or as something meant to truly inspire us to be our best selves in a way that isn’t synonymous with colonialist interests/worldview.
But just because I’m not sure doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
The statement floored me. It made me think. I hate when that happens. I went there for bubble gum and came back with a steak and a side salad…
The article was particularly daunting because I recognize there was a period in the Cyborg’s life where he had completed what would have been called the “Heroic character arc” and had gone from Human, to half-machine, to mostly machine, to recovering a cloned body and even keeping his powers through the use of technology. See: Omegadrome/Victor Stone.
Was there an underlying cultural issue which forced his return to the crippled mechanical body despite the fact he had regained his humanity AND had access to invisible technology which allowed him to remain “Cyborg” in name and still appear Human?
Superheroic myths are not pro-white any more than any other legendary or mythological tales are. There is nothing inherently White about their construction, seeing how so many of these heroes come from archetypes pass down through history. Samson, Gilgamesh, Tiamat, Hercules, Jason, Anansi, Isis, Shango are all legendary beings who could easily pass for superheroes today. When I look at comic heroes (and having read and studied comics for over thirty years), the failing is not in the heroes themselves, but of the limitations placed on said heroes who tell their stories.
Any time I look at a character like Cyborg or Luke Cage, born of stereotypes, chained by stereotypes and unable to be liberated from them, those characters rarely change, rarely achieve true character arcs, or development because they were being written by people who did not believe it should be so (whether it be a conscious or unconscious bias, isn’t known to me).
They are held in thrall by legends such as John Henry which promoted the idea that the Black man could be superhuman, he could challenge the limitations of his station, he could indeed challenge everything we know about what humanity could be about, but it would be better if he were dead. And indeed in the legend, John Henry defeats technology, dies at the end, removing both the slave (and the appearance of social impropriety) and being replaced by his more inhuman counterpart, the much more socially desirable machine.
In a world where the super-science of cloning and aging of entire bodies, complete mind-transfer, magical powers of spiritual manipulation and exoskeletal enhancement, there is no reason Cyborg couldn’t have acquired an entirely new body during his 30+year tenure as a superhero.
Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl has her crippling injury reversed, removing her from her wheelchair and returning her to active duty as Batgirl; as well as pissing off all the readers and lovers of her identity as Oracle…but I digress.
Indeed, in Cyborg’s case, all of these things were done, and he DID get a new body. So why is he back in this half-man, half-machine travesty?
Because Black heroes cannot transcend the limitations placed on them by White writers.
White comic heroes never have to worry about limits. I can name a half a dozen White heroes who never have to worry about limitations to their abilities: The Hulk, The Sentry, The Phoenix, Franklin Richards, Valeria Richards, Doctor Doom, Magneto, The Molecule Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc. The list goes one. Most of these characters will have whatever powers they need to solve whatever problems are presented to them. They will grow, evolve, change and become something better by the end of said apotheosis.
Poster Child for this idea is Kyle Rayner (to keep it DC Comics). He started as an artist who was suddenly gifted by an alien being what is arguably one of the most powerful tool/weapons in the Universe, the ring of Green Lantern. Okay, no big deal you say. There are after all 7200+ Lanterns of one sort or another these days.
But Kyle would go during his tenure as Green Lantern from being the only Green Lantern to reviving the Green Lantern Corps, to becoming a host for the Green Entity, Ion, to becoming the most powerful Green Lantern in existence to becoming one of the only Green Lanterns to ever wear every ring from every color Corps in existence, to merging the energies of all of those colors into a new superlative White Lantern, the most powerful Color Corps member in existence. Not bad for a White guy who started as an unknown artist.
White characters can transcend their state. They can transcend their limitations. White characters can grow and evolve and become more than they ever dreamed of. But this does not have anything to do with the genre. It has everything to do with the genre creators. Kyle Rayner has become what he has because White writers decided he should be able to.
John Stewart, another long-term Green Lantern, who is Black has had exactly the opposite career. He was a decorated military man who served his time and became an architect. He became Green Lantern AFTER two other people were deemed worthier. But okay, he still got the ring. He would serve in an auxiliary capacity for decades before getting a shot as a mainstream character on television for the JLA/JLU Animated Series.
But who gave him that shot? A Black producer named Dwayne McDuffie, a writer/producer who knew the difficulties of working in an industry rife with prejudice and mischaracterization. For a decade, John Stewart would go on to be, for some people, the only Green Lantern they knew. Televised John Stewart was bold, heroic, action-oriented, respected (though he did have the traditionally stereotypical relationship with women, loving White Women/having to choose between Black and White women) but overall the character was highly successfully depicted.
In the comics, he was not so lucky. His run as a character ended when he was involved in the destruction of a planet due to hubris. As far as I am concerned, this was the low point in his career and he has never recovered from it. After the destruction of Xanshi, Stewart wouldn’t be seen until his depiction on JLA/JLU. After television, he would return to the comics as one of Earth’s four Green Lanterns, but ultimately he would never be the same. And he would again be responsible for the death of another planet, the beloved Mogo, the heart and soul of the Green Lantern Corps.
I say all of that to say this: Why is it when something needs creating, protecting, or defending, it is summarily left to White heroes to grow and develop into characters that can resolve, handle, correct said difficulty? While when there is something that needs destroying, it is often left to Black characters to do said dirty work and often suffer the loss of their careers, their abilities or even their sanity (See aforementioned: John Stewart) and ultimately are discarded after use?
It isn’t the mythology of superherodom that fails Black characters. They could be allowed to grow and evolve just like their White compatriots. It is the nature of the medium, with its lack of perspective, lack of vision and definite lack of equal representation on their writing/editing/leadership teams which prevent those characters from getting equal treatment under the pen.
There is nothing wrong with ANY Black character that a good writer/editor team sympathetic to said character that couldn’t turn them from being just run of the mill cannon fodder to being as great as any previously depicted White hero on the page or in the theatre. The real question is why aren’t they?
Because white writers who write the “Other” bring their subconscious bias onto the page and into the story and it shows. We do not need more diverse characters written by non-diverse writers — we need more diversity in our writers.
Cyborg had become a flesh and blood human again, and I suspect the fanboys didn’t like his return to humanity. Even with all of that, ultimately the writers/editors decided the only Cyborg that would work was a broken man, dehumanized, and without any form of real masculinity, as Son of Baldwin outlined in his article.
DC had an out, they had an option to make Cyborg as human as the next man and chose NOT to exercise it. This is why as much as I loved the industry growing up and spent far too much money on comics, I eventually moved away from them as I realized they were not writing for me, about me, or even to me.
Their outcome was to create within me (whether it be a conscious effort on their part or not) a self-loathing, which would undermine my efforts toward self-realization. This is why so much of my writing is toward creating characters whose self identity as People of Color is as self-affirming as DC tries to make all of its White protagonists.
Whatever the reason, you can’t blame the medium. There are plenty of Black writers out there creating three-dimensional, non-stereotypical Black characters out there in independent comic companies who would not only tell you this but insist that companies like DC and Marvel have never wanted to create meaningful Black characters and give them equal status.
Today may be a new day, but until I see it, until someone shows me a Black character who is both the equal in his personal life, his heroic mettle and his character arc to any White hero, I will have to say my love affair with comics has ended with a broken heart and an understanding that comic companies with the creation of their products, just weren’t that into me…
And because I don’t believe people are bold enough to read comments to articles any longer (and I can’t say I blame them) I want to close with a comment Son of Baldwin made which sums up this entire idea very nicely and in which I could not paraphrase it better than he said it:
“I always find it fascinating, and revealing, how some people actually believe that being labeled a racist (or, in this case, one’s work being labeled racially problematic) is placed in the same category of offense as actually being the target of racism or racist propaganda. It’s a relatively new pathology that has entered the debate, close kin of the “calling me racist is racist!” mindset.
Also interesting is the knee-jerk assumption that creators, white or not, instead of learning from the criticism, will, instead, become “reluctant” to create minority characters–because, you know, it’s “really hard” to make minority characters that don’t rely on stereotypes? And asking these creators to dig deeper and do better, like they do when they are creating majority characters, is just, I guess, an unfair burden to place on the privileged?
I also find the false premise of the extremes–“Exclusion is racism, inclusion is tokenism and racism”–intellectually disingenuous. And I question the mentality that can only, conveniently, for the sake of winning its own argument and proving it’s own point, imagine those two possibilities.
Exclusion is racism and inclusion can be tokenism for all the reasons I describe in the essay. If you are putting ONE minority character on a team and they are outnumbered, six to one, by majority characters, that is, by definition, tokenism. That isn’t, by definition, diversity.
This reminds me of that study in which white people were shown photos of a group of white people with one or two people of color in a group. They were then asked, afterwards, to recall how many people of color they saw in the photographs. Most of the white people answered that the photographs contained 50% people of color in the group compositions, when in reality, people of color made up 1% of the compositions.
It also reminds me of the study which found that despite all of the evidence to the the contrary, most white people believe they experience more racism than people of color.
It also reminds me of the study that revealed that most white people believe black people either don’t feel pain or feel pain to a lesser degree than white people.
All of this stuff appears to factor into the annoyance white people feel whenever anyone brings up the subjects of racism and white supremacy. The gut instinct and reflex is denial or to lay blame at the feet of the people making the critique. Anything to avoid having to grapple with the hard work of undoing the racist thoughts, beliefs, and actions, whether conscious or not.
White people are “so tired of black people complaining about everything and making everything about race!”
Meanwhile, no one is more tired than black people who have no choice but to complain because of the construct of race, created by white people, relies upon black suffering.
As James Baldwin once said, the race problem is not a black people problem; it’s a white people problem. And the problem will persist for as long as white people continue to think they’re white. For racism to be undone, whiteness must be undone. But the vast majority of white people has no intention of giving up their whiteness because it affords them way too many benefits, large and small.”
— from “Humanity not Included” — comments, April, 2015, Son of Baldwin
@SonofBaldwin — writes and curates interesting materials all over the Internet. Definitely worth a read whenever you find him.
Damn, he’s good.
More articles on comics, superheroes and culture can be found on my List called: The World According to Superheroes.
Thaddeus Howze is a California-based technologist and author who has worked with computer technology since the 1980’s doing graphic design, computer science, programming, network administration and IT leadership.
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