The Diversity Trap - Part 3

Topical comic books are popular but often run into problems because the writer has strong views on a subject and slants the stories to match his own view.

Note that including a topical theme based on what the writer and artist wants goes all the way back. In his first issue, Superman took on corrupt politicians. The image of Superman smashing a car on the cover of Action Comics #1 occurred when he chased down a crooked politician. Captain America punched Hitler on the cover of his first two comics even though the US was still officially neutral.

After that, though, things died down for decades. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started introducing messages in the mid-60s with the introduction of the Sentinels in the X-Men. This was the first "they hate us because we're different" story arc in comics. Mutants been successful for decades as a stand-ins for blacks and gays in society.

Stan also included some more overt stories such as ones revolving around the KKK-inspired Sons of the Serpents.

But sometimes a really committed creative team goes overboard and writes a heavy-handed story. Writer Bill Mantlo hated the nuclear power industry (he referred to it as the moral equivalent of the Holocaust) so he wrote a story where Howard the Duck was threatened by the personification of the nuclear power industry, Greedy Killerwatt.

 Howard had to stop Greedy in order to save Santa Claus.

Over at DC, Green Lantern landed in a ghetto where he discovered he was unpopular.

(Personally, my answer would have been "I saved the planet three times this week. Isn't that enough for you?) Green Lantern and Green Arrow teamed up and traveled the country in search of the "real America". This led to several heavy-handed stories including this one where an Eco-sabateur is crucified by angry workers at an aircraft plant.

And, back at Marvel, the head of the Secret Empire turned out to be President Nixon.

So, heavy-handed plots about topical subjects are nothing new.

Never the less, I'm still bothered by the current story arc in Sam Wilson, Captain America. Sam, aka the Falcon, is now Captain America. The story arc is meant to reflect Black Lives Matter. In it, a private security group called the Americops has become the country's predominant police force. In reality, they are more concerned with driving minorities out of depressed neighborhoods to make it easier to gentrify them. Falcon/Captain America and a black hero named Rage discover this. Rage is framed for robbery and sent to a private prison for super-villains where he is beaten and left hospitalized with brain injuries. In the meantime there is mass protests with some rioting and looting.

For those who have forgotten, the events that lead to the creation of Black Lives Matter - the deaths of Trevon Martin and Micheal Brown were both found to be justified because, in both cases, they engaged in an unprovoked assault on a smaller man putting him fear of his life. In both cases, the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department reviewed the cases and said that there was no attempt by the shooter to deprive the deceased of his civil rights. In other words, they agreed that the shootings were justified. Also the "Hands up don't shoot" meme never happened. I'd also like to point out that real live cops have been killed by people inspired by BLM protests.

So the story arc in Captain America was contrived to remove any ambiguity and to be sure that there could be no possible sympathies except for blacks. Police have been replaced by silent, faceless corporate employees. There is no question that Rage is innocent. The only ambiguity here is if it is appropriate to burn everything down in the hope that something better would replace it. The whole story arc is contrived to make BLM seem justified in their protests.

And back over at DC, Superman saves some illegal immigrants from a racist who wants to kill them for taking his job.

Again, this is a contrived situation. Many people have reacted the wrong way to this. No one can seriously argue with Superman saving people from a gunman. The story is designed to make anyone objecting look bad. The real objection is that this doesn't happen. No one is shooting illegal aliens for taking jobs. The story is written specifically to make you cheer for the illegals. That's what makes it heavy-handed.

 

The Diversity Trap - Part 2

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.

The Diversity Trap

It is an understatement to say that Marvel has revamped their characters. Most of the mainstays have been replaced with a more "diverse" version. Thor is now a woman, Captain America is black, Iron Man is a teenage black girl, the Hulk is an Asian teenager, but there's also a female version, Captain Marvel is a woman and Ms Marvel is a Muslim. There's a black, Hispanic version of Spider-Man. I'm probably forgetting a few in this list, also.

On one hand, this is nothing new. There was a fad in the late-80s and early-90s to replace heroes. Most of these were ones who could logically have a substitute like Iron Man and Green Lantern. All of these had similar story arcs. Something happened to the hero and he was replaced. The replacement was someone logical. The arc then followed the replacement through the growing pains of becoming a hero. The original hero never went far and the story also followed his recovery. Eventually the arc came to a climax where the hero regained his identity and the replacement took on a new identity (and got a his own comic book).

The classic example was when Tony Stark's drinking got the better of him and he spent months living in a cardboard box. His best friend, Jim Rhodes, took over the suit with the help of some ex-Stark employees. Eventually Stark recovered from his alcoholism and started building armor again. The two eventually came into conflict. This was resolved and Rhodes became War Machine.

Captain America gave up his identity after someone in the White House discovered that they government owned the trademark to his name. He called himself The Captain and started wearing a black and white uniform and carried a silver shield. A new patriotic hero was recruited and trained to be Captain America.

Similar things happened with Thor and, over at DC, Green Lantern. Eventually it worked its way up to Spider-Man, Batman and Superman.

This was a transparent ploy to get attention and improve sales. It always worked, at least for a while. And it gave insights into what it takes to be a hero.

This wasn't the only time heroes have had substitutes. Bucky took over as Captain America for several years.

But this time is different.

First of all, it's a lot more replacements and they've all happened at once. And it's not for a sales boost. According to several accounts, sales have dropped since Marvel started this. The point is not to sell more comic books, it's to promote diversity. And therein lies the trap.

Here's what I mean by a trap: previously the story arc was about the difficulty of becoming the hero. It made the character seem fresh by having a new person have to define what that character stood for.

But that can't be done with the new diverse characters because it implies that the original white men were better than the new versions. So, without training, the new versions start out better than the originals. For example, Thor has possessed his hammer for centuries. But as soon as Jane Foster became Thor, she could make it fly around in ways the real Thor never imagined. Bruce Banner was always one of the smartest people on Earth but the new one is even smarter and doesn't have his intellect clouded by being the Hulk.

This makes for uninteresting stories. There's no room for growth in the new hero.

Another twist is that, often the old hero is still lurking around but his stories only server to reinforce his unworthiness. The real Thor is still around as "Thor the Unworthy". He calls himself "Odinson" and is obsessed with regaining his hammer or getting a new one. Steve Rogers is still around but it turns out that he's been a sleeper agent in Hydra (meaning that he was a also a Nazi). There's also a creepy version of Doctor Doom as an alternate Iron Man.

Marvel is doubling down on this. They have a "Generations" series coming out where the new version meets the original. It's obvious that this will be used to prove that the new version is the superior one. Again, the diversity goal mandates that a woman and/or person of color cannot be shown to be inferior to a CIS-gender, white male.

Understand that I have no problem with diverse characters. I was a huge fan of Luke Cage, The Black Panther and others when they first came out. But replacing established characters with new diverse ones who are mandated to be better at the moment of their creation insults the reader.