Over at Rich Johnston’s blog, some b-team scrub named Ryan Mullenix wrote up a post in response to Chris Sims’s piece on the racial politics of DC’s current style. Sims’s piece was good, and I liked seeing frank discussion of racial issues on a big-name site. Mullenix’s piece… well.

I did it better a year and a half ago.

I’ve got a gang of problems with the piece. There’s no citations, no context, nothing that explains what was going on in the books, no creative teams, no historical context, and nothing worthy of examination. It’s a loose collection of anecdotes piggybacking on a pretty good piece in an attempt to troll for hits. It’s lowest common denominator work at best, and cynical hit-whoring at worst. If you can’t even spell somebody’s name right… well, the craft shows.

These lists do no one any favors. All they do is arm people for crappy, hysterical battles where both sides are too busy shouting to do any listening or learning. “Well CASSANDRA CAIN is ASIATIC!” You couldn’t get any more specific than that, man? What’s more, you couldn’t find something better than some outdated way to say “asian?” Is Cass Cain a member of the Nation of Gods and Earths? You couldn’t take the time to figure out which type of Latino Kyle Rayner is? You couldn’t spell Teth-Adam correctly?

Johnston says that Mullenix “seems to find a striking overall theme.” I think he found the exact sort of thing that makes talking race online such a pain in the neck. I think he found a surefire, cynical, and effective way to log some fat hits for advertisers. I think that he didn’t say anything worth reading. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m wrong.

But people who don’t know anything should speak when spoken to.

* finally, I’m not sure I understand either Sean Collins’ piece on superhero regression or the piece that inspired it, but it seems to me kind of dopey to pin racial diversification on swapping people out of costumes. The worlds that the superheroes live on have such a hopelessly retrograde and inadequate sense of anything other than their white people that I don’t hold out for them ever getting better.

-Tom Spurgeon, Random Comics News Story Round-Up 05/12/10

He’s right, of course.

Most cape books barely have a handle on decent characterization, and expecting the Big Two to catch up with reality is dumb. Sorry, Charlie, but that just ain’t gonna happen.

I’m not saying that they don’t manage to do nice things with colored folks sometimes. I quite liked Jason Rusch as Firestorm, and Jaime Reyes as Blue Beetle gave DC a nice Spider-Man character. Cassandra Cain had a fantastic hook, and John Henry Irons was a nice twist on the super-scientist character. Even boring old John Stewart is not without his charms.

But, when you get down to brass tacks–all of these are third stringers and supporting characters now. And guess who gets the axe when the time comes to up the ante? Guess who can fade into obscurity with minimal impact on the status quo? If you expect the Big Two to push a more diverse or realistic cast rather than pandering to the idea of legacy or iconic characters… well.

How’s that working out for you?

Comic fans are funny.

From the Guardian the other day, in an article about Idris Elba playing Heimdall in Marvel’s Thor movie:

His view was not shared among the more vehement of the comic books’ fans. “This PC crap has gone too far!” wailed one. “Norse deities are not of an African ethnicity! … It’s the principle of the matter. It’s about respecting the integrity of the source material, both comics and Norse mythologies.”

Fellow fans were quick to nod their horn-helmeted heads.

“At the risk of sounding like a bigot, I think this is nuts!” said another. “Asgard is home to the Norse Gods!!! Not too many un-fair complexion types roaming the frigid waste lands up there. I wouldn’t expect to see many Brad Pitt types walking around in the [first mainstream black superhero] Black Panther’s Wakanda Palace!”

I had a hunch, so I got on the googling machine and found out that they were from (wait for it) ComicBookMovie.com. The guy also hit up everyone’s favorite bastion of good taste and peaceful tolerance, Newsarama! The conversations on both sites go about how you’d expect. The usual protestations against political correctness, “what if it was a black guy being replaced by a white guy,” blah blah blah. It’s the same argument you’ve seen on every comics site ever since Elba was announced as playing the role. I’m sure you can find it on CBR, Scans Daily, and whatever forum you care to name. Sometimes people are reasonable, sometimes people fight back against affirmative action. There’s a range

But, really, Captain I’m Not A Racist BUT has a point. Heimdall is a Norse god, and specifically considered to be the whitest of the gods. Idris Elba… isn’t. It’s race-changing for no good reason, beyond having a little more color in the cast and a talented dude getting work. It’s no different than Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin in Daredevil (though he is the only actor I can think of with the physique for that role) or Alicia Masters in Fantastic Four.

But on the other hand… Marvel’s Thor is a sci-fi infused mythological remix, where gods dress like people from outer space and live in golden, gleaming spires. Asgard’s most popular non-Thor deities are a space horse, Errol Flynn, Charles Bronson cosplaying Genghis Khan, and Falstaff. Liberties have already been taken, what’s one more?

I guess what I’m really trying to say is…

sucks to be you, homey. There’s no pity in the city.

(Schadenfreude? What’s that?)

The nice thing about the internet is that even if you erase all of the stupid, hateful, idiotic things you say on your forums, someone out there has hung onto it. I wanted to post a couple of his greatest hits from a few years back, maybe 06, 07, that are now lost to time. A little not safe for work googling (“rape of wonder woman mark millar” and “black down syndrome mark millar,” for instance) and bam, just as I remembered them:

“While down at the shops, I saw a black guy with [Down syndrome]. Amazing, as this is something my friends and I had queried for years. Is DS genetically localized to Caucasians. Yes, I’m now about to waste 20 mins phoning a couple of my pals to say so, but now me appetite has been whet and I’m curious if there are any Chinese or Indian Downs Syndrome people out there. Given that Scotland is almost entirely white my chances of seeing one here are slim, but I’m certainly on the look out now.”

“I pitched this to DC for a laugh years back. The idea was that, like Death of Superman, we had Rape of Wonder Woman; a twenty-two page rape scene that opened up into a gatefold at the end just like Superman did.”

Johanna Draper Carlson recently posted another amazing idea:

(This dislike of his work runs in the family. Back in the day, Millar pitched KC a terrible Legion proposal that included all kinds of awful ideas, like Fertile Lass, whose power was to get pregnant whenever a boy looked at her. See? Another bad taste concept that doesn’t go anywhere.)

Aw, he’s just joshin’, ain’t he?

The ending of Kick-Ass? The one where all his heroism was for naught and he ends on a down note? That note is his father banging a black lady on the couch, his girlfriend dating a black guy and texting him pictures of her going down on him, and a little girl beating up a couple of prepubescent black thugs.

Marc-Oliver Frisch got it right.

Y’all like him, though.

LeSean Thomas’s blog had the link of the day for me.

Remember Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks? Heir apparent to Dave Chappelle’s The Chappelle Show and one of the most brutally funny shows on TV?

It’s back!

There’s just glimpses of things in here– Huey vs White Jesus, Stinkmeaner possessing Granddad (!), tons of anime/kung-fu/rap references, VladTV… this season is gonna be something serious.

Who linked me to this on Twitter? I love you madly.

Last week, I wondered aloud about the skin tone of a character in Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s upcoming time-spanning SHIELD. In short, Imhotep, Egyptian doctor and Agent of SHIELD (Officer of SHIELD?), was modern-day white, rather than ancient Egypt brown.

I emailed Dustin Weaver with a link to the post, and he wrote back pretty quickly. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially, it was a mistake in the production process. He’s done a lot of research on the book to try and make sure things make sense, and that’s something that slipped through the cracks when doing color tests. He’s gonna try to get them fixed in the trade, if Marvel’s amenable to it. He’s a pretty cool guy.

Just an update!

edit: I asked Dustin to quote a bit of his email and he agreed. In his own words:

Oh, man, you’re right! I’m embarrassed and shocked that I didn’t catch this mistake before it was finished. I’m surprised nobody caught this mistake.
The 2 page spread of the Egyptians fighting the Brood was the very first thing that got colored for this book and it was the testing page for the style of this whole series. I think it went through 4 different versions before we got something we liked. I think with all this back and forth with the style of the thing we missed the fact that they were white. I feel pretty stupid. I seriously did a lot of research to get a lot of the details right. To miss something so blatant is embarrassing.

Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver, two very talented creators, are the creative team on Marvel’s new book SHIELD, which is easiest describe as historical fiction in the Marvel Universe. Here’s the pitch:

Leonardo Da Vinci was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. So was Issac Newton. So were Imhotep and Zhang Heng and Galileo and many other geniuses throughout time. They were the first heroes to defeat Galactus and the Brood and turn Celestials back. They saved the world long before Captain America or Iron Man were ever born, but what does this mean to our heroes of today? What does this mean to Nick Fury? Do not miss this Marvel Comics masterpiece that fans will be talking about for decades to come. All the insanity is courtesy of JONATHAN HICKMAN (FANTASTIC FOUR, SECRET WARRIORS, Nightly News) and DUSTIN WEAVER (X-MEN).

It’s a neat idea, the sort of thing What Ifs are made of, and while I’m not super excited about it, I’m a little interested. Sort of thing you skim to see if you want it, or maybe just cop the hardcover a ways down the line. CBR recently posted an exclusive unlettered preview of the first issue, with nine story pages and one cover. We get a look at (and these are educated guesses going by the text above the issue) Zhang Heng staring down a Celestial (maybe Gammenon the Gatherer?), Da Vinci strapping on a flight harness, and Galileo getting ready to face Galactus and his herald. That leaves one guy facing down the Brood. He’s dressed in Egyptian garb, which makes him Imhotep. Here’s what he looks like:

Here is the problem with that image: he looks like a generic white guy. Imhotep, to my understanding, was worshiped in Greece in the form of a brown-skinned man. Much of the art I’ve seen, or books I’ve read (granted, this was years ago), supports that idea. I don’t know whether he was black or not, but I think it’s fair to say that he wasn’t white, either.

The subject of the race of ancient Egyptians is an intensely frustrating one, and one likely to not see any closure ever. I’m reasonably sure that everything I have read says that the Egyptians were not white, but they weren’t black (as we know the term), either. They were somewhere in-between, some flavor of brown.

The thing about the race of the ancient Egyptians is that the water is severely muddied by past racism. Egypt was essentially claimed by white scholars and separated from the rest of Africa, which served to further the idea that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.

(Another similar instance of this is the story of Ham, Shem, and Japheth, the three sons of Noah. The three sons theoretically represent three races: African, Semitic, and European. As Ham was cursed in the story, and blacks were descended from him, they were also cursed. This is taught in black churches and is the worst kind of self-loathing there is. If you believe this, please, wake up. Don’t be ignorant of your own history.)

Later, Imhotep as a black man was fully embraced by afrocentrists, people desperate to rebuild a culture that had been stolen from them. Having the father of medicine and architecture be a black man is a huge boon to the self-esteem of an oppressed people.

You can see how this can get very complicated, and very touchy, very quickly.

I’m not here to say that Imhotep was blacker than the nighttime sky of Bed-Stuy in July. I don’t know, I can’t say, I’m not qualified for that. I do feel confident in saying that he was probably brown. He was definitely African. He was an amazingly smart man.

But, he wasn’t white. And the rest of the Egyptians on that page– they wouldn’t have been white, either.

I’d like to enjoy SHIELD. But honestly, stuff like this makes me a lot less likely to pick it up. Maybe that’s just me.

edit: I emailed Dustin Weaver to ask, and he said that the coloring is a mistake, something that just slipped through the cracks. Hopefully it’ll be fixed in the trade. Either way, Weaver is a cool dude, so I’m trying the first issue at the very least.

Mark Millar’s much-ballyhooed Ultimate Avengers is introducing two new characters to the Ultimate universe: “Nerd Hulk,” which is pretty self-explanatory, and something he’s been calling “African-American Hulk.”

CBR just released advance solicits for the June Ultimate books, which covers Ultimate Avengers 2, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Ultimate X. Check out the Ultimate Avengers 2 solicitation:

ULTIMATE COMICS AVENGERS 2 #3 & #4
Written by MARK MILLAR
Pencils & Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Nick Fury’s Avengers have assembled: Black Widow, The Punisher, a new Hulk, War Machine and Hawkeye are souped-up and ready to face Hell…literally. Evil’s emissary comes in the form of The Ghostrider, a mysterious new villain sent to collect Satan’s debts: human lives. But how do you fight the devil and his men? With big guns and even bigger cojones. Who lives, who survives? Who knows? But it’ll be one hellish ride!! Join superstars MARK MILLAR and LEINIL FRANCIS YU in another heart-pumping adventure!
32 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99

And the cover image:

Well, there’s your “African-American Hulk.”

I mean, honestly? Where is this guy from, 1987?

I don’t think anyone reported on it when it happened, but DC pulled several subtext-laden quotes from Milestone Forever #1. They said that the quotes weren’t covered under fair use and they didn’t want to get sued. However, rather than informing McDuffie of this at the time and giving him a chance to alter the quotes or create new ones, they waited until the book was at the printers. That’s shady, but okay, maybe they really would’ve gotten sued.

Milestone Forever #2 comes out later today, and whoops, it happened there, too. Click through for the quotes. Read them? Okay, now look at this one again:

“Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.”
—Neil Gaiman

Whoa! Neil Gaiman! That’s a good one, right? The thing is, it’s from The Sandman #75… a book wholly owned by (wait for it) DC Comics.

So! Let’s recap. DC Comics pull quotes from Milestone Forever #1 and #2 because they didn’t want to get sued. They wait until the book is at the printers to let the writer (and owner of the work) know, preventing any changes from being made. At least one of the quotes they pulled was from a property that they own completely, it being a legacy character and created pre-Vertigo. It’s the latest in a long line of shady, but legal, moves they’ve made regarding McDuffie and Milestone, and possibly the last, considering that McDuffie has no announced DC work coming up.

Were they gonna sue themselves? Is that it? Was Karen Berger gonna run across the hall and whack Dan Didio with a shoe if a quote from The Sandman made it into a comic that isn’t from Vertigo?

Or is someone at DC a petty, childish, scummy, shell of a human being? I don’t know who, nor do I have any ideas, so I’m not dry snitching here. I honestly want to know: who’s dicking around McDuffie? ’cause at this point, beyond of a shadow of a doubt, somebody up there is a firm believer in Industry Rule #4080: comic book people are shady.

I could go on and on and pile insult upon insult, but you know what? This situation should be clear to anyone with half a brain and half a shred of basic human decency. Someone there is prizing beef over money, and someone up there is mighty stupid. End of story.

The end of Black Future Month is a point in time where “black comics” don’t exist. Comics by, for, or about black people exist in this theoretical future, of course, but they aren’t black comics. They’re just comics. They aren’t set apart from their brethren because they happen to star a black dude or is set in the hood. But, let’s put all that pie in the sky Kumbaya business to the side and talk about the here and now.

For a while, I was trying to keep up with every black character in mainstream comics. After a few months of reading about Bishop try to murder a toddler, DC Comics screwing over Dwayne McDuffie, John Stewart not appearing ever, and Cyborg being stuck in Teen Titans Hell, I was officially burnt out.

I was suddenly faced with a dilemma, though. When it comes to mainstream books and black people, you’re generally gonna be SOL. At the same time, I’d carved out this niche as a “race blogger.” I felt like I was supposed to be paying attention to all these characters. That’s the conscious thing to do, right? No. Absolutely not.

Here is the thing. If you’re supporting black comics by purchasing books from Marvel or DC, you’re not supporting black comics at all. They do what they do, and sometimes they do it well, but they are targeted at one very specific audience. Tom Brevoort has owned up to this in a refreshingly frank blog post. If it doesn’t make dollars, Marvel and DC will not do it. If it does make dollars, Marvel and DC will definitely do it, no matter the consequences. Don’t believe me? Ask Dan Didio about Milestone sometime.
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