“It’s a ‘Black Thing,’ you wouldn’t understand.”
I don’t know who said that first–Spike Lee maybe?–but it’s true on many levels. If you’re not in the Black Culture, there are a number of things that you won’t understand. You might not understand why black people sometimes congregate in barbershops, even if they don’t need a haircut. You probably won’t understand why a black guy in a purple suit looks very sharp but a white guy in a purple suit looks like the Joker. Oooh a comic book reference. That’s a white thing, ya’ll wouldn’t understand.
And I’m not surprised, because by simple math there’s just not that many characters in Marvel and DC that aren’t white. There are times where it would seem very natural, very organic, to comprise a super team with a multi-ethnic background. It’s a multi-ethnic world. Most people I know work with blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics in their everyday jobs. I’ve had three out of those four in the same department within the last year. So how is it the metagene, the mutant gene, cosmic rays, gamma radiation and energy discharges from giant planet-eating monstrosities seldom hit anyone who’s not white?
I’d hate to think that here and now, seven years into the new millennium (you count the zero, if you’re wondering where I came up with that), “We The People” still haven’t come to grips with the ethnic makeup of Earthly society. American comics before integration and desegregation, well, OK, it was a different time. But now? It’s a damn shame. There’s no excuse for these lists, culled from Wikipedia and the excellent Blacksuperhero.com:
DC (29)
Amazing Man
Black Lightning
Bloodwynd
Bumblebee (Teen Titans)
Cascade (Sovereign 7)
Cyborg
Crimson Avenger
Doctor Midnight II (Beth Chapel-Infinity Inc.)
Firestorm II
Freedom Beast
Green Lantern (John Stewart)
Jakeem Thunder
Josiah Power
Kid Quantum
Mr. Terrific II
Onyx
Orpheus
Sky Rocket
Spectre (Crispus Allen)
Soul Power
Star Boy (Legion of Superheroes)
Steel
Tempest I (the one from Doom Patrol)
Thunder
Mister Bones
Tyroc
Xero
XS (Flash of 31st Century)
Vixen
Marvel (41)
Ageis (New Warriors)
Alex Wilder (Runaways)
Bishop
Black Goliath
Black Panther
Blade
Blur (Supreme Power)
Brother Voodoo
Luke Cage
Captain America (Josiah Bradley)
Captain Marvel-Photon-Pulsar (Monica Rambeau)
Cardiac
Charcoal
Cloak
Deathlok (Michael Collins)
Falcon
G.W. Bridge
Hybrid (New Warriors)
M
Maggot
Mary Zero
Misty Night
Nick Fury (Ultimates)
Nighthawk (Supreme Power)
Night Thrasher
Night Watch
Prodigy (New X-Men: Academy X)
Prowler
Rage
Rocket Racer
Sasquatch (the Exiles version)
Shard
Silhouette
Storm
Synch
Thunderbolt (HEY FABIAN! This guy’s just BEGGING to be added to the team! Hint-hint! Ooops, never mind, he’s dead.)
Triathalon
War Machine
Wildstreak
So that’s enough for now. I’m not going to take the time to research the black villains. And heck, for now let’s not even consider the Asian or Hispanic heroes because I can guarantee you it won’t increase the rolls by very much. The above isn’t even seventy characters. Less than seventy heroes between the two companies that control the vast majority of superhero comics in America if not the world, compared to so many white heroes. Less than 70 because Orpheus and Thunderbolt are dead, Xero might be, Shard, Bishop and Sasquatch are from alternate realities (because the Man doesn’t want the homies in his own reality, they gotta get “bussed in”–you know, like the Triangle Trade from back in the day), Mary Zero is possibly a figment of Agent X’s imagination and the Ultimate Nick Fury doesn’t count because the whole damn Ultimate line doesn’t count. I’ll get to THAT one eventually. And then there’s Mr. Bones, the head of the DC superhero watchdog group DEO, who is black and has the “superpower” of having transparent skin. So what’s the point of being black if nobody can tell? Kinda like casting Jessica Alba as Invisible Woman–she’s one of the hottest women in the world and they deliberately make her invisible? What the Hell was Gweneth Paltrow’s scrawny ass doing? She only has to turn her 2-D body sideways to be invisible, would have saved them a lot of money on effects and they could have spent that on making Dr. Doom cooler. Now where was I? Ah yes, the sad fact the between two giant American publishers there’s not enough black characters for even a “100-Man March.”
Are there others? Sure, there’s a new character or three almost every month and some of them might even be black. And some are certainly minorities (the new Blue Beetle is Hispanic, I believe, Arana is fairly new still and Hispanic, Living Lightning is both Hispanic and gay (and therefore used as background filler once a year) and there are folks like the Silver Samurai, Shiva, and Katana representing the Asians and even a couple of Native Americans like the endless parade of usually dead Thunderbirds, Alpha Flight’s Shaman, Puma, and the New Mutant’s Dani Moonstar. There was also the Milestone imprint that featured an all-Afrocentric comic line, which is now under the DC umbrella though only Static Shock ever sees the light of day. We’ll come back to Milestone later. The Wildstorm Universe began as an independent entity, so I’m not going to include their characters in this discussion even though they too are now part of DC and will likely be fully integrated into the DCU in the near future.
But the bottom line is that American superhero comics are incredibly white. Seventy some-odd black characters, easily less that that many Asian, Hispanic, and “other minorities”, and hundreds upon hundreds of whites. Considering that most of the Marvel Universe takes place in New York, you’d think there’d be more black heroes, more Hispanic heroes, more Asian heroes, and even some heroic paisans. Yeah, I know, Italians look pretty white, but there was a time when Italians were just as segregated as the blacks in this country. Look up a fellow named Buttercup Dickerson–real name Lewis Pessano, the first Italian American in professional baseball. He broke the Italian Barrier as it were. How committed to something do you have to be to change your name from something your Mother gave you to something like “Buttercup Dickerson” just to play a game for a living?
More committed than Marvel and DC I’d say. Their interest in multicultural comics seems very cyclical. I cringe whenever Marvel pulls the “colorization” stunt, as I call it. Remember the Punisher in the early 90s? Remember when he and Luke Cage went undercover together? Remember that Frank Castle went through some procedure to have his physical features and pigmentation changed so he could appear to be a black man? I know, I know, I try not to remember it either. Now, a number of characters have existed as both black and white people. There was a black and a white Captain America, a black and several white Captain Marvels. Black and white Dr. Midnights too. But they seldom if ever co-existed in their universe’s chronology. But sadly enough, in the history of comics I believe Frank Castle holds the distinction of being the first character to switch colors without being a completely different character/hero. Think about it a second and let it sink in…The Punisher is the pioneer of Negroplasty!
When the DC suits decided to relaunch the Justice League of America as the JLA, they decided to do it with a line-up of DC’s historic “flagship” characters, the heaviest of heavy hitters. How many of them are minorities? Exactly ZERO. I’m glad, certainly, that they didn’t give Superman a Negroplasty. Bad enough they give him an “Electroplasty.” 
But John Stewart could have gotten the call to represent the Green Lanterns. John’s been through a lot. He’s indirectly responsible for the destruction of a whole quadrant of space, as seen in Cosmic Odyssey. He’s the reason Fatale now runs around the galaxy trying to kill Green Lanterns, so her kills are on his head. He’s a developed character with flaws that make for great drama. Kyle Rayner got on the team instead, despite not having the balls to kill Major Force after the psycho stuffed his girlfriend in Kyle’s fridge. He got his ring while loitering drunk in an alley. Good resume son, when can you start? And the Martian Manhunter is a shape shifter–why not deepen his exploration of the human experience by allowing him to spend his downtime as a black man? I for one would love to see what J-Dawg Jonze would do to the sucka who jacked his Oreos, word. When the decision was made to expand the JLA’s core roster, Steel was added to the mix. I like John Henry Irons. Not because he’s a black man, but because he’s an INTERESTING man. He’s practically the DCU’s Tony Stark, without the built-in fortune and arrogance. If anything good came out of the Rebirth of Superman–I wouldn’t have minded if he had stayed dead, might have inspired people more, according to Batman–it was John Henry Irons. And adding a character to a team is always preferable than just snapping one’s fingers and turning a white guy into a black guy. Like the Punisher. Like Mach-I.
There’s a character near and dear to my heart: The Beetle. I promise, this won’t be a Thunderbolts rant. But how weak was it that the writer–and I honestly can’t recall if it was Busiek or Nicieza–chose to pull the “image inducer” trick and make Abner “Abe” Jenkins black, despite years of white continuity? How weak was it that Abe and Songbird’s relationship was short-circuited because of his sudden bout of blackness, despite the fact that interracial relationships are commonplace these days? Hell, they were commonplace back in the day–Luke Cage has a history of dating white women and his buddy Iron Fist went black and never came back. How weak was it that the writer couldn’t find one decent black super villain to recruit into the Thunderbolts roster, like Bushmaster, Puff Adder, Chemistro or Thunderball? Take one or more of these guys, give them a new costume, a new codename, and you’ve got a hit. You’ve got a new character struggling against his criminal inclinations, you add a new power dynamic to the team, and you don’t have to resort to “colorizing” a white character. There were tons of potential conflicts for Abe and Melissa’s relationship without coming up with the contrived race card. In fact, almost anything else would have been easier to do, and much more natural.
These sorts of stories seem to point to a misguided attempt from Editorial to inject some color into an otherwise white book. I would like to think that if it was suggested to a writer, “Hey Writer Dude, we had an editorial meeting yesterday and it occurred to us that we’re not doing enough to attract the young urban readership–you know, minorities–and we think maybe if you could find a way to introduce a black character into the lineup that would at least be a good start.” I really hope that’s at worst how they approach it, because I hate to think a senior editor just woke up one day, called his writer, and said, “I had a dream! I dreamed that Frank Castle was black. Think about it–he’s a city dweller, he’s violent, he’s got tons of weapons. There’s no good reason why he isn’t black. Make it so, Writer Dude!” And then when the book gets ripped critically and sales plummet, he probably stumbles over a mountain of excuses, blames the writer, blames miscommunication, blames the editor in chief, blames the shareholders, and somehow gets promoted for at least having attempted to incorporate cultural diversity.
Welcome to my nightmare.
