How Far We’ve Come The Cupcake Rogues
In a previous article, Real Character Diversity, I shared some gripes I have about the portrayal of minorities in comic books. Though things still aren’t perfect, we’ve come a hell of a long way from where we were. Perhaps to truly appreciate where we are now, we should look at where we’ve come from.
Like in the real world, the portrayal of minorities in early comics was not a pretty one. Women were helpless victims, non-Caucasian ethnicities were disrespected and homosexuality was practically unheard of. In the Golden Age of comics in the 30s and 40s, women were mostly used as romantic interests for main, male superheroes. The first mainstream strong female character that held her own was none other than Wonder Woman, introduced in 1941. Although Wonder Woman was created to be a strong, independent character, she too was sometimes a victim of the sexist faux pas of the times. One of those questionable situations was the reoccurring theme of bondage. When Wonder Woman’s bracelets were chained together, she became as weak as any other woman, and when they were broken, she was driven mad without her restraints, stating that “power without self-control tears a girl to pieces.”
The introduction of characters of a different race didn’t go over any smoother. The first Black comic strip character was introduced in the 1930s in the form of Lothar, Mandrake the Magician’s sidekick. He was a poor, uneducated man who wore a Tarzan-style costume. However, the first mainstream African-American comic book hero didn’t show up until the late 1960s, as Marvel’s Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon. As you can see by the accompanying panel, the portrayal wasn’t exactly spot on.
Another painfully ignorant introduction by today’s standards was that of the first Asian characters. Many early Asian characters were shown as foes against White American heroes, reflecting the times’ distrust of foreign Asian powers. These characters were shown with long, thin moustaches, yellow-tinted skin, and barely open eyes. The first mainstream, self-starring Asian hero wouldn’t come until 1974 with Marvel’s Shang-Chi, Kung Fu Master.
The Rawhide Kid comic book contained no sex, nudity or even kissing, Marvel still stamped an “Explicit Content” sticker on the cover. You know, because he’s gay.
While the introduction of minorities in a White, straight, male-dominated genre had a lot of bumps in the road, I‘m led to believe that the publisher’s hearts were in the right place, even if they were completely misguided and offensive. Enter: Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #106 (no, it’s not the fact that this comic is actually titled Superman’s Girl Friend that I bring it up, but it doesn’t hurt my point). Titled “I AM CURIOUS (BLACK)!” this issue follows Lois as she tries to cover a story in Metropolis’ urban area, Little Africa (side-eye, DC). Unfortunately, none of the black people will talk to “Whitey,” and they avoid her like she’s got the plague. Luckily for Lois, Superman has a machine designed to turn white people black for 24 hours (convenience, thy name is comic books).
As a black woman, Lois is stared at like “a freak,” can’t catch a ride from Benny, the friendly, but apparently racist neighborhood taxi-driver, and is pretty successful at making all of us, black and white alike, uncomfortable. She meets a radical, white-hating black rebel Dave, who gets shot while trying to stop some drug dealers from selling their dope. Superman takes Dave and Lois to the hospital, but to their horror, the hospital is out of O-negative blood. Since Superman’s skin is thicker than rawhide, this only leaves black-versioned Lois who gives up her blood to save Dave. She reverts back to white-Lois and a shocked Dave realizes now that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and that white people are A-OK. Wait… did this somehow get turned around to a ‘Black people are the racist ones’ story? I guess we’ll just have to take that the story ends with us all being one big happy family and be satisfied with that.
While being female or non-White in pre-current times comic books was certainly a bummer, nobody got a later start than the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender group. While there were many homosexual undertones of earlier comic books (like the ever-speculated Batman and Robin relationship), outted characters came much later. DC’s first obviously gay character came in 1987 with Extraño, an offensively effeminate Peruvian man whose name actually means “Strange” in Spanish. Extraño was flamboyant, sassy, and the team he was on fought the villain Hemo-Goblin, who infected several team members with HIV (facepalm). The first reasonably accepted gay Marvel character was Northstar of Alpha Flight. Creator John Byrne claims that Northstar was planned to be gay since his introduction in 1979, but he was not revealed to be gay until 1992. His coming out story would be soon followed by writer Bill Mantlo trying to give him AIDS. Luckily that storyline route was squashed, but even so, Northstar wouldn’t be shown kissing a man until 2011. Yes, you read that correctly, 2011. Like, last year.
And Northstar is not the only scarily current gay character to receive the offensive treatment. In 2003, the Rawhide Kid, a cowboy from the 50s, was revamped into a stereotypically fabulous cowboy, more of the Village People persuasion. The Rawhide Kid offended audiences with every “toodles” or “meow!” he called out, between giving fashion advice and joking about sleeping with a houseful of men. One of the most distasteful parts of all is that, although the Rawhide Kid comic book contained no sex, nudity or even kissing, Marvel still stamped an “Explicit Content” sticker on the cover. You know, because he’s gay.
Although it’s been less than a decade since the Rawhide debacle, we’ve come a long way in comic books. We’ve got several diverse teams scattered through the X-Men genre, which has as many strong female characters as males included ethnicities of all kinds, a lesbian Jewish Batgirl, and even a multiracial Spider-Man. We’ve even seen interracial and same-sex couples without an after-school special issue accompaniment, so we’re on the right track. Perhaps by the time the real world is ready to accept all people without judgment, our comic books won’t be far behind.
