One thing Marvel has always pushed, which DC hasn’t, is the idea of social injustice. The X-Men and other mutants are hated and feared. Many of their heroes are outlaws. I think this is a large part of why most black people I’ve talked to preferred Marvel to DC as a kid.

It’s a strictly unscientific survey, but every once and a while I’ll ask my black friends, who I know read comics, what they read as a kid. So far, I think it’s been all Marvel, with a focus on X-Men and Spider-Man. The ’70s pulpy books (Cage, Shang-chi, Moon Knight, Ghost Rider) get a lot of love, too. I’ve always been surprised at the answers I get, though they tend to be the same answer each time. I don’t know if the results are due to some sort of selection bias, but they’ve been pretty true on two different coasts now.

If I had to put my finger on it, a lot of us dug Marvel because we could relate to the fact that the heroes weren’t always on top and that the books took place in more of a real world than DC’s. Superman lived in Metropolis and Batman lived in Gotham, but Spider-Man lived in Queens and Luke Cage in Harlem. They had to struggle for cash, navigate complicated family relationships, and weren’t super jet pilots or scientists. Spidey was extremely smart, and Cage had a heart of gold, but both suffered under the knowledge that no one was going to respect them for that.

Part of the relative lack of black characters in comics meant that we had to learn how to relate growing up. You’d find aspects of characters to latch on to, and these would give you an in. I didn’t get bullied at school, nor did I live in Queens, but I could relate with being smart and having a single parent. I thought the X-Men were cool because they were from all over the place. While Claremont’s pidgin English is quaint these days, as a kid, it just hammered home that they were different, but still accepted one another.

It’s been nice to see comics growing up as I grow up. They’ve gone from vague metaphors to just letting it all hang out, so to speak. Brian Bendis put some fairly well-thought out commentary on racism and unjust laws in New Avengers: Civil War, Marvel’s big event at the time. It was light, and served as the impetus for a fight scene, but he managed to do it without being overly preachy or having someone stand up and pontificate for twenty-two pages.

Milestone may have been ten years ahead of its time. It launched during a glut and told some great stories, but it was during a time when people were more concerned about flipping comics for cash than reading comics for a story. So what if you were trailblazing for an entire industry, this issue of Spider-Man is worth thirty-five dollars. Let me tell you, this is gonna pay for my kid’s college fund!

It’s nice to see Milestone making a come back, and I hope that DC does right by them. An aggressive trade program, one that’s much more aggressive than DC’s current “It’ll be out when it’s out, we just work here, man” program, is necessary. Pound the books out like there’s no tomorrow. Get them in print, in libraries, in bookstores, and into the hands of the people who want to read it.

Push those Milestone books like they were crack. Every four to six weeks, a new book. The market for those books overlaps somewhat with the current comics readership, but there are kids out there who made Static Shock more popular than Pokemon who are hitting their twenties now. Put these books, which are simple enough for kids and layered enough for adults, into their hands.

We’re past the point where we just have to settle for relating. Now, we can see people who look like us in action.

The last issue of Nightwing has been published.  No one is taking much notice of it, and it is with a heavy heart that I admit that I can see why.

A number of books are ending this month – Nightwing, Robin, Birds of Prey, and The Blue Beetle – leaving me with a severely reduced pull-list.  But while Robin has ended with developments that, in my opinion, suck so hard that they could depressurize a space shuttle, the final few stories leave us with some sense of completion for the series.  Tim Drake has become someone new.  Sucky, but new.

Nightwing, on the other hand, is a sad example of one of those books whose characters are never quite heavyweights in their own right, but are close enough to the larger fictional universe that they get sucked into all plot lines.  Bludhaven was flattened in Final Crisis.  The main character undertook a pointless trip to New York because everything needed to be different One Year Later.  He had a girlfriend.  She moved away.  He found another.  She moved away.  Given another year or so he would have found another and she would have disappeared just as abruptly, because he’s practically betrothed to a character in another book.  Vigilante hijacked the plot for about three months in order to publicize that character’s upcoming book.

Then it was time for the unfortunate Pre-Event-Release-Date, Post-Event-Continuity to kick in.  This happens during every Big Event.  All the characters in a minor book hint incessantly at all the wild and crazy things that have happened in Event books that have yet to be released, leaving the reader confused and missing the emotional impact of the story.

I like the character of Dick Grayson, who is, of all the Bats, the cheeriest.  But after Devin Grayson left the series was helmed by too many different authors going too many different directions.  It was lurching and staggering like a punch-drunk boxer, and it was merciful to throw in the towel now.  I just wish that there were more of a sense of completion, rather than the books just being cut off. 

But who knows?  Maybe it will come back after the next Big Event.  At least that way it will have a fresh start.

You want to know the problem with doing A Very Special Issue of a comic book? Nine times out of ten, it ends up being stupid.

JMS’s Nighthawk is my usual punching bag for this sort of thing. He’s basically a black nationalist. A better way to describe him would be as a “high school rebel.” You know the kid that read a bit of Marcus Garvey, maybe a little Ellison, and now he’s all “whitey” this and “cracker” that? That’s what Nighthawk is. He’s ostensibly there so that JMS can make a point about race, but it’s been a few years and I have no idea what that point could be, other than something completely surface level. Racism is bad? Black people can be racist, too? One time a black guy called JMS a cracker, and JMS felt really guilty about possibly having a racist thought in response, so Nighthawk is his penance, always there to chastise him and keep him on the straight and narrow? I do not know.

I read Superman 179 recently, which was co-plotted by Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb, with scripting by Loeb. It’s A Very Special Issue of Superman. It’s the one where he comes face to face with Race and conquers the fell beast. I’m going to let this excerpt tell it.

So, what have we learned? That being an alien is just like being black? That sometimes black people get angry? That whitey is wrong AGAIN? That Superman is the smuggest jerk alive?

Now raise your hand if you didn’t know any of that before you read this issue. In fact, raise your hand if this portrayal of the subtleties of black/white interactions and inner city social politics is deeper than, say, what you learned about that back in kindergarten. No hands?

What, exactly, are we supposed to take from this?

This kind of story goes nowhere, says nothing, and is just one of those books that get done just so someone somewhere can check off a box and pat themselves on the back, for lo, they have written about racism and found it good. Look, there are even references to things black people like! Muhammad Ali! Malcolm X! We put “Fight the Power!” on the cover, that’s some straight up Public Enemy right there, boyeee! Plus! Hold on, get this, man!

Muhammad X is from Harlem!

Black cred? Skyrocketing, baby! Another issue like this and I bet we can totally dap up our homies, smoke Newports, drink foties, say nigga, and dance with black chicks without getting funny looks!

There’s a few bars from an OutKast song that I’m overly fond of. It’s about authenticity and appearances. “Now, question. Is every nigga with dreads for the cause? Is every nigga with golds for the fall? Naw, so don’t get caught up in appearance.”

In short, Superman 179 is dressed up like it’s down for the cause. It’s a story that’s ostensibly about how Superman is beyond race. He’s a human being, and human beings aren’t racist to other human beings. Even then, Superman will look out for Harlem and spend some time thinking over race. He’s Superman, of course he’s just that awesome.

Don’t be fooled. This grade school, Mickey Mouse, chirping bird approach to race is foolish. No one learns anything, it gives the hero a chance to be either pompous or admonished, and in the next issue, whoops, Harlem’s gone again! Superman’s back saving a mostly white cast! Ron Troupe, Superman’s brother-in-law is now divorced and MIA!

Superman 179, and books like it, are lip service in the worst way. They are an acknowledgment that race is a Thing, with a capital T, that must be dealt with in some way that usually does not involve punching. However, it will involve speeches, navel gazing, and a healthy lack of perspective, not to mention the general low level of quality. It’s false representing.

“We’re down with you!” books like this seem to say, but its eyes are hiding a corporate cunning. “We’re going to hook you, and you will like it, because we understand what you, a black person, go through daily! We did our part, now read Superman monthly, $2.99!”

Please. It’s a strikingly cynical approach to the whole subject, and one that isn’t at all thought out, at that. We know racism is bad. I’ve known that on a very real level since kindergarten. And yet, the comic books that keep talking about it keep doing it on the level of a four year old, with a hard black and white philosophy applied to situations that are anything but.

The problem is that we aren’t stupid, and we might have paid for it, but we ain’t buying it. Try again, kid. Maybe you’ll get a cookie when you write a good book, instead of going for a cheap pop.

Issue number 17 of Green Arrow And Black Canary has me once again wondering what to do with a story that is going in a decent direction, but not going in the direction you want it to.

In the past, when Cassandra Cain became a completely different character, for example, I simply lost interest.  This isn’t quite the same. 

I had hoped that the new Arrow book would yield a group of characters who were like the Bats, but with a sense of fun.  Mia’s life was getting good.  Connor was fairly cheerful for an ex-monk.  Ollie and Dinah seemed to be getting along.  I wanted a big, chaotic, adventure-loving family.  That is not what I got.  Mia and Connor are out of the picture for the foreseeable future.  Ollie is getting darker and ‘on edge.’   Even Dinah seems subdued.

At the same time, the world that Andrew Kreisberg is writing is shaping up very well.  We’ve got two villains who are each obsessed with half of the supercouple.  We’ve got a burgeoning professional relationship between a police lieutenant and Ollie.  Dinah and Ollie, despite occasionally arguing, are getting along well and not falling into that ‘constantly fighting over some damn stupid thing’ trap that fictional couples often settle into as soon as they get married.

It’s not the comic I was hoping for, but it’s a good comic. 

So, the question remains:  What happens when you couldn’t be with the comic you love, but you could love the one you’re with?  Are there any comics that really didn’t turn out the way you were hoping them to, but with which you could reconcile your differences and grow to love?

In the first part of Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, two disembodied voices discuss Batman’s funeral.  One of them is, apparently, Batman.  The other is an unknown guide.  Given the fact that I’d burned out on the hallucinogenic tone of much of Batman RIP I expected to dislike this story.

I have to say, I dig it.  The overall playfulness of the story makes it work. 

First there are the weird, funny little messages in the art, such as a giant typewriter billboard with the slogan, “Don’t Type It . . . Finger it!”  There’s the fact that Two-Face drives around in a half-trashed car.  There’s Batman, in the coffin, in his full uniform.  There’s the ridiculous cat mask that Selina wears when she and Batman fight during  a flashback.

I also like the different eras and obvious lack of continuity of the story.  It reminds me of the Legends of the Dark Knightseries, in which any nutty thing could happen, from Batman starring in a vampire version of Sunset Boulevard to a supervillain a fashion show.

Of course the fact that the entire tone of the story is funereal puts a damper on my spirits, but overall I enjoyed Gaiman’s take on the Batverse.  It’ll be interesting to see how he makes sense of the situation he sets up, but if he’s up to that challenge this could be a more memorable Bat-story than several of past few years’ big events.

vs

Flip it horizontally, and what do you have…?

Tatt’ed Man is so hoooooooooood!

Obviously, the winner, as previously suggested on this site, should be Ted Kord, who I am assuming is not in the picture in order to preserve the element of surprise.

But if it ends up being Alfred?  In that uniform?  It’s all been worth it.

A short while ago, I spent time brainstorming, trying any idea for a superhero or superhero team that I could think of.  I came up with octogenarians and toddlers, humans, animals, plants, outsiders and pageant winners, religious devotees and atheists, geniuses and halfwits.  I think I got a good cross-section of humanity, but there was one characteristic that all of the characters had; a smart mouth.

It occurs to me that one of the most common element in superhero comics is humor.  Whether it’s the grinding cynical humor of The Boys, the quips that seem to follow Gail Simone’s characters wherever they go, the screwball humor of the Booster Gold and Ted Kord, the flat-out parody of The Tick, or the cutesy silliness of the Tiny Titans, almost every book has it.

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Oof. Why do I always get to the store late when something huge happens?

Don’t look below the cut if you don’t want to get spoiled for Secret Six #6.

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Anyway. New King Kong. It’s not so good. You probably heard that from, y’know, the rest of the world.

They get to Skull Island where savages feed virgins to King Kong. And, while remaining faithful to every aspect of the ’33 Kong, bajillionaire director Peter Jackson populates the place with, as our fisherman in Casanova calls the citizens of Coldheart, “ooga booga bone-nose nigger savage motherfuckers.”

Now, I’m about as sensitive to race issues as the next middle-class white guy. But- really, Peter? Really? That’s the best you could do? You can show us the monkey and the girl ice skating in Central Park but you can’t manage to update the D.W. Griffin-level of stereotypical Savage Nergro Monster? Were there no assistants or friends, colleages or freakin’ P.A.s that took his Grande Hobbitness aside to point out that, hey, maybe we’re spending two hundred million dollars and short of top hats and canes, we’ve just filled Skull Island like it was the Isle of Misfit Al Jolsons?

It wasn’t re-envisioning, re-mastering, reinventing, or re-presenting anything but bigotry; Jackson and co. trucked in racism and wrote it off as an act of fidelity and faithfulness to flawed and ignorant source material.

And anyway it just pissed me off. So when, a few months later, I read about North Sentinel Island for the first time, the two thoughts collided with one another.

Fuck that guy. Here are savages to save the world.
-Matt Fraction, Casanova #5 (back matter)

I can’t help but feel like Matt Fraction, though obviously well-intentioned, missed the point.

Black Panther has Wakanda. Superman’s got Vathlo Island. Tyroc has Marzal Island. Casanova has Coldheart. They all have a few things in common. Remote or isolated countries filled with technologically advanced black people, untouched by the evils of colonialism.

If I had to put my finger on it, I guess it’s born from some kind of political correctness gone wrong. In an effort to avoid creating stereotypical black or African savages, the creators overcorrected in the opposite direction. They put the black characters on a pedestal, turning them into paragons of virtue and exemplars of everything good about humanity.

The thing is, the noble savage portrayal really isn’t better than the ooga booga bone-nose nigger savage stereotype. Both are equally unrealistic. Both of them treat black people as something outside of the norm. “Look! They aren’t stereotypical! They’re super-advanced! They’re sci-fi savages!”

There’s a line from Black Star’s Thieves In the Night that applies here. Mos Def says, “I find it distressing there’s never no in-between- we either niggas or Kings, we either bitches or Queens.” It’s a sign of the gulf between blacks in comics and blacks in real life. You’ve got your unrepentant villain or mugger (more likely the latter) and then you have your heroes, who do it because it’s right.

You don’t have that in-between guy, who tries to be faithful to his girlfriend, but man, he can’t quite make it. You don’t have the girl who strips to pay for her degree in botany. You don’t have that guy who comes home from his high paying job, rolls a blunt, and zones out for a couple hours.

No, you have virtuous-to-a-fault musclemen and super scientists. You have angry black men turned BFFs and haughty queens. You have a bunch of not-stereotypes that end up being just as bad as the stereotypes.

See what I mean?

I think that Casanova is one of the best comics in recent memory, but the Coldheart stuff was pretty eye-rolly. Just another bunch of super savages, here to save us all. Super or not, they’re still savages. Savage or not, they still don’t reflect anything but a distorted view of political correctness.

When Fraction says, “Fuck that guy. Here are savages to save the world,” he basically sums up his motivation for creating Coldheart: revenge on racism. Racism is such an ugly and hated thing that it becomes way too easy to overcorrect. It becomes a battle of extremes. For every bone-nose savage, you create a hyper-advanced doctor. For every street thug, you create a king. For every neck-rolling sass-mouth chickenhead, you make a queen. And in doing so, you get further and further from anything resembling a black experience.

It’s really easy to fall prey to unconscious racism when you’re trying to avenge a racist act. “He’s very well-spoken!” and “You people are all right!” and “All black people aren’t like that!” aren’t racist in and of themselves, but they definitely fall into that realm of “Hang on, what do you mean by that?”

I like a couple of those super savage cultures. Wakanda is pretty awesome, due in large part to Kirby throwing everything at the wall and having it stick, and like I said, I love Casanova. Tyroc’s home is pretty much the only thing I really know about the Legion, because I had a comic with him when I was a kid. Even still, the two extremes are, like most extremes, not reflective of how things really are. If you really want to fight racism, you’ll answer that extreme with something in-between.