Identity Politics and Representation in Comics

[DSMatticus]

And I don't care about war propaganda from World War II, and if we're being really honest....you probably don't either. My father fought in World War II, not me. That was decades ago, during a completely different era in human history......and not particularly relevant to the radically "progressive" bizarro identity politics bullshit occurring TODAY in MODERN comic books. What you snarkily bring up is not relevant to the current discussion, but then you know that....which is why you brought it up.

You are a naive fucking idiot. Every form of entertainment on the planet is full of political messages, because entertainment is created by people, and people believe things. Comics are not an exception. That you don't personally care about old WW2 propaganda is not the least bit relevant. What is relevant is that if there was ever a time you cared about comics, those comics had political messages, because comics have an unbroken history of being a fairly highly political medium. If it's bothering you now, specifically, then it has nothing to do with politicization and everything to do with the specific political message. So when you whine about politicization "broadly," we know you are full of shit. Politicization does not bother you, because if so you never in your life would you have gotten into comics. You have a specific problem with the specific idea of equal representation.

If you're capable of being intellectually honest, you would acknowledge that straight white male comic book legacy characters are absolutely being co-opted in comic books, movies, and TV shows (in larger numbers than ever recently) by minority characters.

Again, you have never in your life bitched about how white Flash #17 is "co-opting" the success of white Flash #16 (even though they are both clearly different characters who happen to be straight white men). You did not start bitching about the sanctity of legacy characters until their new incarnations were a different skin color or whatever the fuck, because the thing that bothers you is not that new characters might "inherit" the success of their predecessors, but that some of the new characters who get to inherit those successes might be - gasp - women! Or black! Or gay!

Do you have any idea how many times the Spider-Man story has been retold? How many different continuities and reboots and distinct lines there have been? Do you realize that each and every single one of those distinct stories has shamelessly leeched off the success - and fame - of its predecessors? Here's my challenge to you: what is offensive to you about a new incarnation (that happens to be black) of an old character (who happens to be white) that isn't also offensive about a new incarnation (that happens to be white) of an old character (who happens to be white)?

Your actual fucking premise is "separate drinking fountains for everyone!" That white people and black people aren't interchangeable members of the same society. That straight men and gay men are fundamentally different. That men and women have no place sharing common legacies. It's absurd and offensive.

The fact is it doesn't actually matter (to the integrity of the Spider-Man legacy) if the newest Spider-Man line features a white protagonist or a black protagonist, and if you find yourself thinking somehow a black Spider-Man damages that integrity you are probably the worst kind of shitbag imaginable.

[Chamomile]

I seriously doubt FemThor or black Captain America or any of these other characters are going to really endure. So while I don't particularly care if Thor is a woman or Captain America is black or whatever, I still think that the only way people are going to get lasting representation in comics is to have characters who are entrenched as being black, female, gay, etc. etc. If people want to make Thor a woman in the meantime as a stopgap measure while new characters build up 20-50 years of legacy, then sure, why not, but I very seriously doubt that FemThor stories will still be getting told ten or even five years from now. Building up new characters is hard and takes actual generations, but I think it's the only way to actually solve the problem longterm.

Also, I made a thread for all this Islam nonsense, so now Sacrificial Lamb can stop derailing the thread with all his bitching about how he doesn't want to derail the thread.

[Kaelik]

I do recognize that comics have always been a partial reflection of real world events and social events, but doesn't mean I have to buy into modern "progressive" politics and aggressive PROPAGANDA.....especially if I neither like it, nor agree with their message.

My point is that comics have always been an aggressively political medium, and that your problem has nothing to do with "Propaganda" (for what? How is a woman thor or black spiderman propaganda? What is the message being pushed? That black people are also people? Didn't even the racist shitbags at least start pretending to agree with that back in the 90s?) and everything to do with that second part, you don't agree with the "message."

But until you can articulate a "message" being sent by new character number 12 being black that isn't blatantly racist to disagree with, you can't also complain about being called a racist. If you can't articulate the message you are disagreeing with, don't be surprised when no one believes you when you say it isn't the obvious thing that you are disagreeing with.

[erik]

I seriously doubt FemThor or black Captain America or any of these other characters are going to really endure.

Maybe, maybe not. If they keep trying, then I reckon some will stick around and become the new normal. I think more people know Nick Fury as Samuel Jackson than his old version. If someone mentions Nick Fury to me then the modern version is what pops in my head. Likewise for Dresden Files' Morgan from the TV show totally over-wrote how I pictured Morgan in the books, even as I would read a description of him as a brawny white guy with a beard, I would be unable to keep from just automatically replacing him mentally with Conrad Coates.

I don't think you need to build up a 20-50 year legacy from scratch. I would be much more interested in Spiderman if he were played by anyone other than a white male. I'm tired of same old same old, and would enjoy new takes on old heroes.

The only reason I'd be reluctant to have Falcon be the new Captain America (admittedly having read none of those comics) is that at least in the movies Chris Evans does such a great job as Capn, and Anthony Mackie does such a great job as Falcon. But if they had been cast the other way around though, I could see Mackie as a kickass Capn from the get go.

[PhoneLobster]

who were much more radically liberal than the previous generation of liberals

I know I keep bringing this stuff back to Wonder Woman, but I am pretty sure nothing in the modern examples of girl germs and equivalent assaults on your delicate bring the smelling salts and feinting couches sensibilities comes even remotely as close to radical as Wonder Woman.

I know I know, it's a crazy idea, but just maybe your views are entirely without realistic context or internally consistent logic. Like maybe there is this thing that has always been there and has only actually helped comics over the last nearly a century and you just suddenly got your knickers in a twist after you joined the Manosphere.

[MGuy]

I'm not sure what the hell Saclamb thinks he's on about. He's certainly coming off as one of those people who are ok that gay people exist in the abstract but gets uncomfy when it is in front of him. This is the line of thinking that was brought out in that other thread over a PF AP. His fear of the current political climate aside since I just so happen to be one of dem marginalized dorks what were into comics and shit for a while I'll say this: I'm attracted to a character by the stories told about them. I 'DO' like to see diversity but a character being black/gay/female alone doesn't really move me one way or the other. I am 'less' likely to find a minority or female character interesting because their aren't that many. So yeah, I can see why people might wanna push for more different representatives.

Female characters I actually am interested in are on a real short list. Off the top of my head I can probably name 3 that I've ever cared about at all and that's: Queen of Blades/Kerrigan, Storm/Ororo, Hinata. If I were to be asked at random what main characters with lady bits I have ever had any interest in (as a character) those would be the first ones I could rattle off on short notice. If I were to be asked what black mainzies I am equally interested in, the list would be a bit longer. Sitting here I can think of Blade, Spawn, Samuel L Fury, Mace Jackson, Static Shock, Black Green Lantern (John Stewart), Storm and that's about it off hand. I can't think of a single openly (I mean confirmed in the show/medium not just off screen) homosexual (not bi) character that I've ever had any 'real' interest in that I at least can think of offhand.

If given time I could probably drum up more and at least one example of the last one but right now I can't and if asked for a white male I could easily give a list twice as long as all the ones I just gave combined. I really do think that the reason that this is, is lack of options. There are just 'so many' white het male characters and that's because for a good amount of time that's practically all that were made. While I 'can' understand the idea that new characters should be made to fill out the ill representative landscape it should be noted that many possible different characters were NEVER given the chance to take off BECAUSE they were not the acceptable amount of white, male, christian, etc.

[CaptainComics]

I'm inclined to think that Chamomile has the right of it - these substitute characters are very unlikely to endure. After all, both Kyle Rayner and Wally West ended up having decades of well-loved stories under their belts, and yet now Hal Jordan and Barry Allen have returned to their respective identities.

The issue becomes one that's actually been seen a lot before, mostly with female characters - too many codenames eventually results in having no codename. Kitty Pryde was Ariel, then Sprite, then Shadowcat, and is now pretty much just known as Kitty Pride. Monica Rambeau was Captain Marvel, and then Photon, and then Spectrum, but is generally now just referred to as Monica Rambeau by fans. After a while, it becomes tough to keep track of what the identity of the week is, and the fans and creators just default to using the character's real name, and at that point you lose the ability to create legacy characters based on them. There might eventually be another Shadowcat, but you're certainly never going to have a Kitty Pryde II (the Nick Fury Jr. thing seems like an exception, but is really more of a replacement than a legacy, and is the only one of the current crop that I think has a chance of sticking other than Captain Marvel). As has been noted, Hawkeye became Ronin for about a year, and by the time he tried to return to his identity it was being used by someone else. Interestingly, not only is Hawkeye now referred to more often as Clint Barton, but so is Kate Bishop, so that having two Hawkeyes has effectively ended up with no Hawkeyes.

More importantly, the Captain America in the movies is Steve Rogers. The Iron Man in the movies is Tony Stark. The Thor in the movies is Thor Odinson. Millions more people are now familiar with these versions of the the characters than Sam Wilson Cap or Jane Foster Thor, and those will be the versions that they seek when and if they ever venture into the increasingly difficult-to-navigate world of the comics.

[DSMatticus]

Complaining that the new characters won't stick rings a little hollow. Nick Fury as a Samuel L. Jackson look-alike begins in an alternate comic continuity, makes it into the movies, and is so popular it's brought into the main continuity. That will last exactly as long Marvel wants it to last. That is the new Nick Fury and it will stick until someone unsticks it. Generally speaking, some changes will stick, others won't; so it has always been, so shall it always be.

The new Thor doesn't really look like it's intended to stick to begin with, and I'm pretty sure at the end of the day Thor will be Thor again and Thor-who-is-not-the-other-Thor will get a new name, a redesign, and some of her own comics that probably won't go anywhere because new characters very rarely get any traction to begin with and then she'll end up part of some random ensemble things here and there as minor characters always do.

Miles Morales seems to be doing pretty well. Marvel has told some... very unpopular Peter Parker stories recently, if you recall, so if there's any time to have a new Spider-Man stick - whoever they maybe - this is probably it.

I never actually gave a shit about Captain America to begin with, so I'm not going to pretend to know or even care. The name is dumb, the costume is dumb, and his weapon is a bullet-proof frisby. There is entirely too much Golden Age ridiculousness in the entire concept for me to take it seriously, and I'd like to think my tolerance levels are pretty high. But I will note that adding Falcon's wings to the costume has not improved it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Marvel has told some... very unpopular Peter Parker stories recently, if you recall, so if there's any time to have a new Spider-Man stick - whoever they maybe - this is probably it.

Above and beyond One More Day where Spider-Man did the you know what with the you know who?

[Whipstitch]

/tangent

Actually, I feel like the Pretty Lobo comics are a very good example of how comics can be dull and lame precisely because they don't do enough in the way of propaganda. Lobo's a parody of masculinity by way of Wolverine, and if you want that to work as more than a throwaway gag then you're best served giving the title to people who aren't going to pull punches one way or the other. Instead, they made Lobo pretty but otherwise told the writers to take the safe route and treat him as a fairly garden variety anti-hero rather than do much in the way of satire. That's way less interesting than what the original pitch is rumored to be--apparently the writers originally wanted Pretty Lobo and OG Lobo to basically go on a buddy cop adventure. That would have interested me because I feel like Lobo is absolutely the kind of character who should instantly turn into Archie Bunker the second he's confronted with changing masculine ideals.

[Korwin]

Female characters I actually am interested in are on a real short list. Off the top of my head I can probably name 3 that I've ever cared about at all and that's: Queen of Blades/Kerrigan, Storm/Ororo, Hinata. If I were to be asked at random what main characters with lady bits I have ever had any interest in (as a character) those would be the first ones I could rattle off on short notice. If I were to be asked what black mainzies I am equally interested in, the list would be a bit longer. Sitting here I can think of Blade, Spawn, Samuel L Fury, Mace Jackson, Static Shock, Black Green Lantern (John Stewart), Storm and that's about it off hand. I can't think of a single openly (I mean confirmed in the show/medium not just off screen) homosexual (not bi) character that I've ever had any 'real' interest in that I at least can think of offhand.

I assume it's an oversight, that you did not list Storm on the female front?
(We are talking about X-Men Storm, right)
Or is there a reason?

Obviously, this was a huge wall of text, but I can go into just as much detail about why the Sam Wilson Captain America is a far worse superhero than he ever was as the Falcon, or why Kelly Sue DeConnick's Captain Marvel took one of my favorite B-list heroes and made her completely useless and out of control of her own life, or why Miles Morales brings nothing to the table, or why Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel is actually super great and exactly what Marvel should be doing more. There's a right way to do this (Ms. Marvel) and a wrong way (pretty much everyone else), and the reasons the wrong way is wrong is not because they're trying to make minority heroes a thing, it's because it's done very very poorly.

Would like to read your follow ups.
Maybe go against the Den culture and post why Ms. Marvel was/is good?

[fbmf]

Uh, Korwin, Storm is listed on the female front. In the part you quoted.

Game On,
fbmf

[Korwin]

Apparently I can't read

[Prak]

/tangent

Actually, I feel like the Pretty Lobo comics are a very good example of how comics can be dull and lame precisely because they don't do enough in the way of propaganda. Lobo's a parody of masculinity by way of Wolverine, and if you want that to work as more than a throwaway gag then you're best served giving the title to people who aren't going to pull punches one way or the other. Instead, they made Lobo pretty but otherwise told the writers to take the safe route and treat him as a fairly garden variety anti-hero rather than do much in the way of satire. That's way less interesting than what the original pitch is rumored to be--apparently the writers originally wanted Pretty Lobo and OG Lobo to basically go on a buddy cop adventure. That would have interested me because I feel like Lobo is absolutely the kind of character who should instantly turn into Archie Bunker the second he's confronted with changing masculine ideals.

.... Can we just get an OG Lobo and Archie Bunker crossover comic?

[Shrapnel]

I'm super surprised no one has mentioned that there are now legitimately canon gay and lesbian Transformers in the comics.

Or am I the only one who pays attention to that?

[erik]

I didn't know they had genders and am sadder for this knowledge.

[Stahlseele]

Have you never watched the 1986 Movie for example?
RC? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_Autobots
Beastwars had at least Black Arachnia as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... ansformers
There's a surprisingly long list of female Transformers.

edit:
i feel like Shrapnel all of a sudden . . i do not appreciate this!

[CaptainComics]

Complaining that the new characters won't stick rings a little hollow. Nick Fury as a Samuel L. Jackson look-alike begins in an alternate comic continuity, makes it into the movies, and is so popular it's brought into the main continuity. That will last exactly as long Marvel wants it to last. That is the new Nick Fury and it will stick until someone unsticks it. Generally speaking, some changes will stick, others won't; so it has always been, so shall it always be.

Well, that would be true, if the objective here wasn't to have a meaningful improvement in the ongoing minority representation problem in comics. There aren't many nonwhite nonmale nonstraight etc. heroes around. Taking the few there are and Fusion Dancing them with more popular characters doesn't actually solve the problem, because we WILL be returning to the old versions before very long and then you're right back at square one.

Once again, Nick Fury Jr. is a strange case, and yes, the one that is likely to stick. However, there is a particular path that was taken with that character that is not being taken by the others. When Ultimate Nick Fury was introduced, the creators clearly had in mind the idea of spinning the Ultimate pitches off into movie pitches. This would have been terrible, but I can see why they were thinking in that direction. As a gag and a shot in the dark of getting a particular actor in the eventual film adaptation, they drew Nick Fury as played by Samuel L. Jackson. Standard Marvel Universe Nick Fury was not in any way affected by this. Then, eventually, they made the Iron Man movie and lo and behold, they actually got Sam Jackson to play the part! Now there's a ton of people who don't read comics but know that Sam Jackson is Nick Fury. After the idea had been floated and accepted by a large fan base, then they went about the painful and laborious process of removing the original Nick Fury, replacing him with a black son no one ever knew he had, and then carefully not mentioning that there was ever another Nick Fury. They went so far as to kill the original Fury and CHAIN HIS GHOST TO THE MOON so that there wouldn't be any potentially confusing appearances later. Notice that here the order of events is introduce alternate version, garner popular support, then replace. In the other cases, they replace the character immediately, and this legitimately pisses off a lot of fans, racist or otherwise.

Miles Morales may or may not stick around - he seems to have a lot of fans, but when I talk to them they don't tend to be familiar with the events of his book or the appearances he has made. People like the IDEA of a mixed-race Spider-Man, but having read the execution I can say this is not a well-done version of that. Furthermore, Marvel is making a bad move in that they are currently bringing him out of the Ultimate universe and into the mainstream, where Peter Parker is still Spider-Man and is not likely to stop being Spider-Man again any time soon. As a result, there will be a period of confusion where we need to wonder which Spider-Man is going to show up when someone mentions him, and then one or the other will move on to a new identity. Which is going to be Miles, because come on. And when he inevitably becomes the fifth Scarlet Spider or the second Steel Spider or comes up with some new identity, he will almost certainly fall completely off the radar because his character is neither well developed nor interesting, and any amount of development he did have was directed toward being the legacy of a different version of Spider-Man than the one he is being juxtaposed with now.

Miles had a point as a character when he was in the Ultimate Universe, but he was handled poorly. In the mainstream Marvel, where Spidey didn't die as a teenager, it's going to take a lot of work to find him a new place and a new status quo that is capable of maintaining a solo title, or even a B-plot in a team book. All he has is that he's kind of like another guy we've already got.

And I want to thank those who have requested I continue ranting. I think I'm likely to go a bit off the topic of this thread, so I'm probably going to start a new thread for that. But I will be following up in this thread to talk about Kamala Khan and why she's exactly what Marvel should be doing and how her approach differs from these others.

[name_here]

I expect that some will stick and some won't, and some will ultimately have a prior character reclaim the name and costume and have the new one spin off into having a fresh name and costume, while others will have the previous title holder get a new name and costume on a long-term basis. That's how it's always worked.

The important thing, though, is that having successful runs with minority characters proves that minority superheroes can sell comic books. Which means that entirely fresh characters won't be rejected out of hand for being economically nonviable. Large companies are notoriously gun-shy.

[Stahlseele]

And I want to thank those who have requested I continue ranting. I think I'm likely to go a bit off the topic of this thread, so I'm probably going to start a new thread for that. But I will be following up in this thread to talk about Kamala Khan and why she's exactly what Marvel should be doing and how her approach differs from these others.

We do enjoy a bit of good ranting here ^^

[CaptainComics]

The important thing, though, is that having successful runs with minority characters proves that minority superheroes can sell comic books. Which means that entirely fresh characters won't be rejected out of hand for being economically nonviable. Large companies are notoriously gun-shy.

It would be nice if that were true, but the more likely message, and the one the companies are already operating under, is that the content of the book doesn't matter if you can slap a recognizable name on it. No one is going to get the message that Sam Wilson sold. They are going to get the message that if you do something shocking to the Captain America title, it will get a 20% bump in sales for three months (or whatever). If someone tries to do a Falcon series in three years, it will be greenlit or not greenlit based on how much Anthony Mackie merchandise has sold, not the reception of Sam's tenure as Cap.

Observe the company's behavior after the success of the Avengers movie. They introduced at least five new teams, but called them all Avengers, and they all sold. Because people came into the store looking for Avengers books, and if this week's Avengers book had the Blue Marvel and She-Hulk rather than Thor and Black Widow, it didn't really seem to matter. But a book called Fearless Defenders tanked horribly, so <s> obviously new characters will never sell, let's call the next one Fearless Avengers. </s>

There is a real phenomenon of collector completionism, which buoys long-established titles during low-quality periods. There is a real phenomenon of relaunches bumping sales for three to six months and then tapering off, provided the title is something people recognize. There is a real phenomenon of sales boosts due to news coverage. And there is a real phenomenon among the fandom that people are encouraged not to pass judgment on a book for at least six months, since it can take a while for a creative team to find its feet, and the majority of stories are now six parts long to enable simplified collection of material as trade paperbacks. As a result, many titles, even successful ones, get a new #1 with a new direction (even if it's really an old direction in disguise) and some kind of lineup change every year and a half or so. All of these real phenomena are going to get all of the credit for any positive change in sales, and I can't say they would be wrong to do so.

Possibly people might learn that black or asian or women or gay superheroes won't kill your sales, but more likely they'll learn that Captain America's sales are immortal.

[name_here]

I'm pretty sure that Marvel is well aware that sales of popular titles are not immortal. There's, uh, a reason they once went bankrupt. And historically, people have in fact frequently refused to have female leads because previous works with female leads sold poorly after releasing with low advertising budgets or just generically sucking. This set of releases has demonstrated that female leads do not inherently cause poor sales, so people won't cite that as a reason to not use a female character when taking a risk on a new property.

Well, except stupid people.

[ishy]

I don't think you need to build up a 20-50 year legacy from scratch. I would be much more interested in Spiderman if he were played by anyone other than a white male. I'm tired of same old same old, and would enjoy new takes on old heroes.

How does changing his skin colour / sex going to change anything substantially about Spiderman?

[erik]

I don't think you need to build up a 20-50 year legacy from scratch. I would be much more interested in Spiderman if he were played by anyone other than a white male. I'm tired of same old same old, and would enjoy new takes on old heroes.

How does changing his skin colour / sex going to change anything substantially about Spiderman?

It doesn't change Spiderman, it changes Peter Parker, which is why it can be done so easily. You can tell all the same stories, but while also giving the message that not all heroes are white males.

I'm tired of seeing white males as leads. I don't feel like shoveling white-male-only supers at my kids to give them the impression that that's how things must be.

[Chamomile]

Complaining that the new characters won't stick rings a little hollow. Nick Fury as a Samuel L. Jackson look-alike begins in an alternate comic continuity, makes it into the movies, and is so popular it's brought into the main continuity.

Nick Fury wasn't a very important character until he became Samuel L Jackson. Oh, sure, he was pretty central as a setting element, but while he had a lot of stories written about him, none of them were ever really popular. He was never the kind of character who couldn't be replaced anyway. No one would've cared that much if Nick Fury was abruptly replaced by an alien or something. Replacing Nick Fury permanently is a whole other kettle of fish compared to replacing a frontrunner like Thor or Spider-Man.

Miles Morales has been Spider-Man for four years now, and Marvel can go on making Miles Morales stories for as long as they want, but that isn't going to make Miles Morales Spider-Man unless they keep it up long enough to grow an entire generation of readers with him, at which point we're looking at timescales on the same level as growing a new crop of characters. And considering that they brought back Peter Parker plus Miles Morales now crosses over with the main comics Peter Parker due to dimension crossover wackiness, Miles Morales is really being introduced as his own character with Spider-Man-esque powers in the same vein as, say, Spider-Girl. He has a slightly different costume and a slightly different powerset. He's a fairly distinct successor character. His calling himself Spider-Man basically just makes it slightly harder to have conversations about him.