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Continuing the Minority Report. Check the archive for last week’s opening salvo. I’ll wait…*mutters the words to Ice-T’s “Colors” and taps foot impatiently*…ready? Let’s get back into it then!

There have been times when Marvel managed to incorporate some ethnicity and make it work. The Wizard Magazine contest to create a new Thunderbolt character gave the team “Charcoal”. At first glance, one might be inclined to pull the racism card. “Why the Man gotta call him Charcoal?” Well, in the world of crazy superpowers, I give him the benefit of the doubt. His powers are pretty cool, the look was OK, the fact that had a messed up personal history went a long way. Characters, and I mean CHARACTERS, not just a flashy costume and a super power, with personality flaws and interesting backgrounds, make for far more interesting comic book stories on the whole. The Kyle Rayner Green Lantern character is lame as Hell because he had no back-story. When they gave him one it wasn’t anything special. The one defining moment of his life the murder of his girlfriend and all he did was whine about it. When you gotta get Guy Gardner to fight your battles, YOU ARE LAME. Charcoal was raised by and experimented upon by The Secret Empire, who manipulated him genetically to give him his powers. They had planned to use him and other experiments like him to take over the world. All he really wanted to be was normal. Now that is a decent origin.

And I think a great example is the “All-New, All-Different X-Men #1” The first appearance of the team that featured Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Banshee, Nightcrawler, and Sunfire is amazingly diverse. You’ve got characters representing Africa, Canada, the UK, Japan, Germany and the then Soviet Union. At the time that issue hit the shelves, that was an incredibly gutsy and bold move. And I think it proves that if you create good characters they will stand the test of time. I think all of them (except perhaps Banshee) has been featured in either their own miniseries or on-going series. They’ve been explored throughout Uncanny and Adjectiveless X-Men ever since they appeared. A communist with a body of steel and a heart of gold, a gypsy with a devilish exterior and an angelic inner spirit, a proud Asian who embodied the rising sun, a Kenyan who could give her people everything nature would not, a loud mouthed UK soccer hooligan and a short, hairy Canadian nature boy. If that line-up didn’t reach out to a wide range of people and prospective consumers, nothing would. Especially that all-important short hairy Canadian nature boy demographic—without them there would be no Marvel today.

Tragedy and personal drama; Charlie (Charcoal) made it work, Kyle just cried about it. And that’s not even a black thing or a white thing. Any character that’s reasonably multi-faceted in terms of background and personality traits and given opportunities to actually grow and evolve, regardless of race, is going to be successful. Tim Drake is wildly popular as Robin and Jason Todd was disliked enough that fans voted for him to die. The difference? Jason was a punk, and had virtually nothing else going for him. Tim was sharp, quick-witted, had a family (which is unusual for a prominent Bat-character), attended school, weighed being a good person as more important than being a superhero, and even quit just to make his Pop happy. Tim has had tragedies in his life, the death of his girlfriend and father recently, and he’s stood up to Batman and set his own terms for dealing with the events of his life. Tim Drake is one of the best-written, most completely relevant characters to come along in the last 10 years. I personally think he’s surpassed Dick Grayson as an interesting character. If they somehow completely cut Tim’s ties to Batman, if he moved to Metropolis and created a completely new persona for himself there, he would still be a great character. Take Dick completely out of the Batman’s world, and I don’t think he’d hold up as well. And maybe that’s because I’ve got decades of Dick Grayson in Gotham stories to try and ignore, and that’s much harder for me to do than it is to push away Tim’s ties to Gotham. But I find myself far more intrigued by Tim’s presence in books like Teen Titans and events like Infinite Crisis than I do Dick’s appearances with the Outsiders or any of the annual mega-crossovers. Black Panther has a well-developed character underneath the heroic garb. Well, better than most black characters. Priest’s run on his book did wonders for him. Reginald Hudlin has also put in a good turn. But is he intriguing enough for all audiences, or is the Panther drawing a mostly black audience? If you take him away from his defining characteristics as I suggest with Tim Drake, take him out of the jungle and out of the fringe of the Marvel Universe and give him his own “Bludhaven” to play in—say, Hell’s Kitchen in Daredevil’s absence—does T’Challa hold up? Would the mostly white audience who read a mostly white Daredevil book read a Black Panther book set in almost exactly the same place with stories told in a similar fashion to what they’ve come to expect?

That’s hard to say because there are so many ways to spin things on the topic of marketplace. You could say there’s not enough black comic book readers. Fine, that’s probably true, but why is that? I really hate to think that it could be economics. I’m probably not the most objective observer of Afro-centric economic matters. I have spent my whole life in Middle Class America and have known many black families as well off as mine if not better. Let’s skirt the issue of income alone, because I think there’s an even bigger shortcoming in this industry that not hurts black readership but ALL readership, and that’s the Comic Shop itself. Specialty stores. If you’re lucky enough to live near one, it’s heaven. If not, what are your options? I know of a 7-Eleven gas station near The Dark Overlord’s place that has comics on their magazine rack, bagged in plastic, 5 comics or so for like $4.95. I was mildly surprised to even see comics somewhere outside of a specialty store, so I checked them out. Now keep in mind that this discovery was made within the 2006 calendar year…ready?…the issues I saw included X-Men 2099, Nomad, Busiek’s Thunderbolts—these things were about 10 years old!! I can’t imagine they’ll be receiving any new comics before 2010, so I ask you, if you live or lived somewhere without a comics shop within an hour’s drive in any direction, would you be geeked up to buy 10 year old comics at a gas station? Me neither. Money is obviously necessary for any commercial transaction, so let’s assume there’s an audience out there who’s not represented (or represented well) by the current product who has money to spend on comics. What else is keeping them from doing so?

Let’s consider where the black audience lives. More than a few live in urban locales. Are there lots of comic shops in major cities? I don’t know, honestly, because if the St. Louis Cardinals or St. Louis Blues ownership groups are to be believed, St. Louis is a small market, and by extension St. Louis is NOT a major city. I’ve been to Chicago, by all accounts a major city, and I’m aware of at least one comic shop downtown, right near the Sears Tower. But the downtown Chicago area has a wide variety of people and income levels. Chicago’s South Side, home of the White Sox and crack houses, has a much lower general income level. Hell, last time I was there I think it would have been safe to call it a ghetto. And I can’t say I saw any neon signs shaped like Superman’s logo blinking in any storefronts. Beer and cigarettes all around but no comics that I saw. Like I said, in my corner of suburbia there’s a good number of successful, middle class black families. And there are a good number of comic shops (lucky me). But if I lived in Chicago’s South Side, or the Compton neighborhood in Los Angles, or even downtown St. Louis, do I have a lot of comic book options? Do I have ANY options?

Assuming I do, assuming I can get to at least one comic shop, do I even care to read them? Do I give a squat about poor millionaire Bruce Wayne who watched his parents die and inherited a boatload of money and a manservant? The demographics of Afro-American households indicate a fairly high percentage of single parent families. And other statistics indicate that black on black crime, especially violent crime, occurs with greater frequency than black on white. It’s possible that a child growing up in an urban environment could lose one or both parents and possibly even witness their deaths. But would they inherit a mansion and a butler? Would they even relate to that? Doubtful. What about a farm in Kansas with two loving parents? No way. How about a test pilot who finds a dying alien and his incredible green ring? Only if the guy down at King’s Pawn and Jewelry will give them cash for it. Inner city kids don’t care about flying farmers and science nerds who can stick to walls. They care about getting through the day without getting shot in the crossfire between street gangs and making home in time to watch the Kobe and LeBron and Shaq. Athletes are superheroes to a lot of these kids. Michael Jordan could fly. Mike Tyson was as strong as the Hulk. Barry Sanders could run circles around defenders on the football field. And Hank Aaron (or that cheatin’ punk Barry Bonds) could swing the stick like Thor swings his hammer. But Superman, The Hulk, The Flash and Thor are all white dudes. Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, Wally West and whichever mortal Thor is stuck in these days have problems in their lives, but they’re not the problems a little boy in Compton or a young lady in Harlem has.

It comes from the source. There are many more white creators (let’s focus on writers here) than non-whites. And as a writer myself I’ve always followed the simple idea of sticking with what I know. I know comics, baseball, pro wrestling, and several topics not fit for polite conversation. I wouldn’t try to write about how to engage in some kind of home improvement, how to reconfigure a long-distance call router or how to service a power line after a severe storm, because I don’t know a thing about any of that stuff. I could research it, but someone who does that for a living could tell you better. And I think that’s pretty much the same for fiction writers. They work with what they know. Tom Clancy writes military fiction because he doesn’t have a background in horror. Stephen King doesn’t write romance because…well, because that would just be wrong. And if we acknowledge the fact that a lot of comic writers are not black and they’re pulling elements from their own life experiences for their stories, it’s reasonable to assume that there won’t be as many strong minority characters and/or stories that minorities can relate too. Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed, even if a non-white comic reader found something he or she could relate to they might not have any means of acquiring the comic. An inner city viewer of the Static Shock cartoon on their local WB affiliate isn’t going to have the same access to a comic shop as I do. They might absolutely love Static but they might never hold an issue in their hands. In a future column, I’ll be exploring how the industry has done themselves a huge disservice with their approach to marketing and distribution.

If all of this demonstrates anything, it demonstrates how much of a “Chicken or the Egg” conundrum this industry exists in. I had a brief discussion with Marvel Assistant Editor Michael O’Connor about the quality of stories versus sales. An outstanding book like Superman: Secret Identity which told a great story with superlative art sold relatively poorly, while a number of other comics—monthlies and special format titles alike—tell recycled tales over sub-par art and make money. Would people buy better comics if the companies produced them? Or from the other point of view, why would a company spend the money to produce better comics if they’re selling truckloads of average stuff now? The same holds true for minority-driven fare. Would they buy them if they were available, or is it smarter from a business standpoint to maintain the status quo and cater to the white audience that has kept the industry afloat for decades? There’s no answer for that or at least not anything definitive. There’s so many things the industry would have to differently to broaden the scope of American comics, even if just within the superhero genre. They’d have to hire more minorities in creative roles to give the books a more authentic tone, they’d have to find a way to get it to readers who can’t get to a comic shop, they’d have to price them so people on limited incomes could afford them (because with the price of gas skyrocketing it’s going to get to point very soon where people are going to have to cut some discretionary income if they want to make it to work or a grocery store or a doctor much less a comic shop). And they’d have to KNOW that if they took all the time and expense to create, market and distribute comics for a wider, minority-inclusive audience that that audience would actually BUY them.

So would they? Sound off! I’ve already received a few emails from readers on this topic, but gimme more. I want to run a Letters Page on this topic. And I want to hear from Asians, Latinos, Aboriginals, Sioux Indians, and yes, even whites. I’d like to hope I’ve opened a few eyes, now open your mouths and be heard (or since I can’t hear you from way over there, just send me an email). Let the Man know you you care about cultural diversity in the comic marketplace! Or else I’ll go back to babbling about the Thunderbolts again, and nobody wants that (except Fabian).

Welcome to my nightmare.

To Be Continued….