Earlier I wrote about how changing comic book characters in the name of diversity is self-limiting. This time I'll talk about how pushing original characters because they are diverse is also self-limiting.
Marvel mad a push for more diverse characters back in the 1960s. It began when Stan Lee instructed the colorists to start putting black faces in crowds. The Black Panther was a milestone. He was the first black African superhero in comics, breaking the mold of Tarzan where Africans were dependent on a white man to save them (or in Tarzan's case, often to prey on them).
Luke Cage was the first black solo title. He was a working-class hero with an office in a run-down theater on Time Square. He acted as a super-powered private eye, taking cases for money.
The Panther got his own comic, also. In his case, he was fighting (communist?) revolutionaries in his country of Wakanda. While these had elements of the "blaxploitation" fad in movies, they still had a number of good stories and both characters are still popular today.
Marvel also introduced "The Cat" which was the first comic book featuring a woman superhero which was written and drawn by women. It was a total flop. A few years later they introduced the female spin-off characters Ms Marvel and She-Hulk. Both are still around although both now go under their male counter-parts names (Captain Marvel and Hulk).
So, just to the present and "America". I have to admit that I'm not familiar with the character so America #1 was my introduction to her. I'm going to do something different for me and go over the comic in detail.
It starts with 9 panels of people saying how great she is. The next page is a splash of America apparently saving some brown-skinned people from a piece of falling concrete while exclaiming "..America's got you". That's followed by a brief introduction to the character. Apparently she's been around for a while but she's gotten tired of being a hero so she's going to college. Also she's from a different dimension and she's the lesbian daughter of lesbians. I'm not quite sure how this works. And how can she be Latina when she's from a different dimension? Latina means a woman from "Latin America".
And she's super-strong and can punch star-shaped holes between dimension!
It seems that the team The Ultimates is fighting an energy creature that looks like a woman. America is busy saving a little girl while Captain Marvel #2 (Monica Rambeau aka Captain Marvel/Spectrum and Captain Marvel #5 (Carol Danvers aka Ms Marvel/Binary/Warbird/Ms Marvel/Captain Marvel) fight the energy being.
America finishes saving the girl and goes to confront the energy creature who dispatched Spectrum with a blast of "white energy". America replies that "white means the absence of color" and gives her a taste of her "little brown fist". This causes the energy being to break into stars. Fight's over. BTW, white is all colors, black is an absence of color. Was this a racial slam or what?
On the next page we find out that the planet's healing itself now. This is a different planet? How did they get there? Why them? Why are they all women dressed in pink? Why do they act so inane ("Yea, we're not dead?" "Will you stay forever and be my best friend?")
The next page finds the three superheros on a video conference with the Black Panther and Blue Marvel. There's a lot of dialog about pseudo-science while America thinks that it was too easy. We still don't know how the Ultimates got there but it might be a different dimension instead of a different world.
I'm going to pause for a moment to discus power levels. Monica and Carol have been around for decades and both are very formidable characters. But America was able to to defeat this thing with one punch. I looked up her powers and she can also fly faster than light. All of this seems kind of over-powered for a Marvel hero. Who can give her a good fight? Thanos?
Next page and she's back on earth having a romantic moment with her girlfriend. The following page is the middle of the night and they break up. I'm confused. Was this relationship important in America's previous appearances? Why bother using two pages of her first solo comic introducing then breaking up the characters?
The next page finds America working on a van and talking to Kate Bishop who they keep calling "the real Hawkeye". Obviously I missed something here. I thought the "real" Hawkeye was the guy in purple who's been around since the 1960s. There's a caption that says the two are somewhere mid-way between Cali and NYC. The background looks alot further west than "mid-way". Did Hawkeye drive half-way across the country to keep America company while she fixed her van? Or were the two going in different directions? And why does someone who's super-strong and can fly need to drive a van across the country? Couldn't she pick the van up and carry it?
Next is a splash page of the college America enrolled in - Sotomayer University. Apparently the "university" only has one department, the Department of Radical Women and Intergalactic Indigenous Peoples. There are also test ranges for super powers. This place makes Trump University seem legitimate.
Next page has some women recognize America and try to get her to pledge to their sorority. I won't repeat the details.
It seems that America is late for her first class. She must have been really late. Instead of walking in half-way through the teacher's introduction, she walks into a simulation. He powers have been neutralized and she's warned that if she does the wrong thing she will be flash-frozen and beamed to the campus medical facility. What kind of college is this?
America is totally lost but then a black guy named Prodigy shows up and solves the test. I'd like to point out that this is the first male in the comic to get more than a panel on a view-screen. Prodigy is a former mutant and major genius.
I'm guessing that America transferred in mid-term since everyone else seems to know what's going on. No orientation or anything. Is this school accredited?
Prodigy's working on a time machine. It doesn't work yet but, by an amazing coincidence, America's reality-punching ability may be just what it needs to work. So America pushes the start button and plunges into an untested time machine. She ends up in early WWII, just in time to upstage a young Captain America in punching Hitler. Then a caption at the bottom says that her whole world shifted to something new. End of the first issue. On to the letters page. Except it's the first issue so it's a note from the writer about how great this comic is and how America is going to go on a voyage of self-discovery and get a boost to her powers.
So where does this leave us? Besides totally confused?
Given that this is the writer's first comic book, I'm going to guess that this is one of Marvel's diversity hires. Also the editorial staff should never have approved this story as written. It's a poor first draft. We don't know why anything happened. It's rushed, touching on too many things without bothering to explain anything. Several pages are wasted space. The opening page of people telling us how much they like America didn't serve any function except to try to convince us that America is great instead of showing us. The time spent with her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend and the breakup could have been reduced to a line of dialog. We have no idea what goes on at this university except that it involves people with super powers.
And because of diversity, the only two white men in the entire comic book are Captain America and Hitler. Prodigy seems to be the only guy.
The dialog is terrible but, since I haven't seen any of America's other appearances I can't say if she's always sworn "by the holy menstruation" or not.
Bottom line, in the drive for a diverse character, all semblance of telling a compelling story was lost but we're supposed to overlook that because America is just so awesome because she's a lesbian Latina. I don't care what your ethnicity or sexual preferences are. I want a good story.
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