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Paulo Pereira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 April 2006
Posts: 15539
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 5:58am | IP Logged | 1
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Aaron wrote:
| This quote, from the end of that USAToday article, "Maybe sooner or later a black or gay — or both — hero will be considered something absolutely normal." really irritates me. |
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It was an Italian artist who said that. Maybe Italians aren't too savvy about American comics.
Still an odd statement, though.
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Tim Farnsworth
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 July 2010
Posts: 817
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 5:59am | IP Logged | 2
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John Byrne wrote:
One Black, one Asian, one Scot, one Russian. Out of a normal compliment of a dozen or more. And by you that's "crammed" and "unrealistic"?
What did you just tell us about yourself? |
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That I can spot contrivances?
Clearly this was a presentation of an ideal, and was a rather perfectly rainbow mix for the core bridge crew. Certainly it's not the average group of officers one would expect on a battleship in the 60s.
Edited by Tim Farnsworth on 03 August 2011 at 5:59am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:00am | IP Logged | 3
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Certainly it's not the average group of officers one would expect on a battleship in the 60s.•• Unless it was the 2060s. But I think, perhaps, your own true colors have been shown. You can go away now.
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Paulo Pereira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 April 2006
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:00am | IP Logged | 4
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Just remembered something (if I'm remembering correctly): this wouldn't be the first time a black man has donned the Spider-Man costume. Hobie Brown (aka the Prowler) once did it as a favor to Spider-Man.
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Aaron Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 10461
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:04am | IP Logged | 5
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You're remembering correctly. Amazing Spider-Man #87 by Lee, Romita, and Mooney.
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Brad Krawchuk
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 5819
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:08am | IP Logged | 6
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Your recent examples of characters that became huge are a pair of characters who debuted around 1974, tie-ins to two of the most popular toy lines of the 1980s, and the flagship character from a major video game company. So yeah, it sounds like it would be perfectly simple to name this new guy Bug-Man and make him just as big a character as the Super Mario Bros.
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Blue Beetle - Jaime Reyes - has been on Smallville, on Batman: The Brave and the Bold, has been in a popular toy line (based on Brave and the Bold) twice, has had a figure made in the Mattel line of DCU heroes, has had a DC Direct figure made, and is an upcoming figure in the Eaglemoss line of lead figurines. Also, there's a few minute live-action clip of him as a possible spin-off character for his own TV series based on Smallville. All this within 5 years of his debut. They could have done that just as well if he wasn't called Blue Beetle.
Then, put him in a few video games, throw him in the new Green Lantern cartoon when it comes out, and let's see what happens in another 20 years.
The entire idea about the other characters - Optimus, Snake-Eyes, Mario, Sonic - is that they were PROMOTED into their positions. They had a cartoon, a video game series, and whatever. Wolverine and Punisher are more popular today than ever - because of movies, video games, cartoons, action-figures, etc. Iron Man went from being "who?" to being one of the most popular superheroes in the world, and he had to wait since the 1960s! Now kids are wearing him on their shoes, they have him on their school bags, they dress up like him for Halloween! He has had three toy lines - movie, cartoon, and comic related - in the past three years!
Are you saying other characters can't get the same treatment or the same push to make the public aware of them? Jaime Reyes is already starting to get it after 5 years. My point is, it would have been just as easy to do what they've done with him if he wasn't Blue Beetle.
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Paulo Pereira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 April 2006
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:08am | IP Logged | 7
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Thanks, Aaron.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:12am | IP Logged | 8
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Sadly, this points up something that started to go wrong with the Spider-Man character quite a long time ago -- and it was a loss of something very important.As a kid, growing up in Canada, I knew almost no "people of color". All my neighbors and classmates were White. The occasional Jewish kid was about as exotic as it got. As a result of this, I learned about "race relations" from American TV shows and, yep, Marvel Comics. And one of the things I came to realize early on, was that with his full face mask, people "in" Marvel's New York had no idea what race Spider-Man was. He could have been White, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American. . . there was no way to know… Until it started to become popular to rip up the costume, or in some other way expose the color of his skin. And years later, I realized this happened because the "secret race" element I'd come to think of as important to the character WASN'T. Stan and Steve didn't even think about it. And, very typically, a lot of writers, artists and editors began treating Spider-Man as if everybody in the MU knew stuff that only we, the readers, should know. I cringed when I read an issue of MARVEL TEAM-UP in which a blinded Spider-Man (he was teaming up with Daredevil, of course!) visits an eye doctor with his "secret identity" protected by no more than a splot of webbing covering his nose and mouth! Like I said, even if it was unintentional, I thought it was cool that nobody knew what color he was under that mask -- but eventually everybody did!
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Paulo Pereira
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 24 April 2006
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:17am | IP Logged | 9
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Aaron wrote:
| The Falcon, Captain Marvel, Storm, Power Man, etc. were all black, but I never thought of them as "black heroes" any more than I thought of Captain America as a "white hero" or thought of my friend Oliver as "the Asian kid." |
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There was a short-lived DC imprint called Milestone back in the 90s, of which the late Dwayne McDuffie was a contributor. The idea was to give minority characters their own identity. Evidently, nobody seemed to pay much attention. Anyway, here's a quote from McDuffie that I find interesting:
If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.
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Aaron Smith
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Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:31am | IP Logged | 10
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I remember Milestone and I remember buying a few issues when it started. Thinking back to that, I wonder how many people tried those titles because they were about minority characters, or how many bought them for the reason I did. My point of view was "Cool! New superheroes!" so I tried those titles just as I tried Valiant and Impact and Next Men and Hellboy. (I was at that age when I had my first job and could afford more comics than I could before)
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Bobby Beem
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Joined: 22 September 2009
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 6:48am | IP Logged | 11
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In Grant Morrison's new book, he mentions Kip's Spider-Man concept (black people like him because he wears a full mask, so could look like them underneath). It's a fine theory, but I highly doubt anyone conducted a poll to confirm it.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 03 August 2011 at 7:38am | IP Logged | 12
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…I highly doubt anyone conducted a poll to confirm it.•• Who are we "polling"? Black readers, or Black characters in the comic?
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Topic Closed)
