Female, LGBT, and Minority Representation in Superhero Comics

This week, the most interesting current book in superhero comics is seeing the release of its fourth issue.  Who does it feature?  Not Batman or Superman.  Not Iron Man or Thor.  Not Spiderman or Wolverine.  No, the most interesting comic right now is the new Ms. Marvel series, featuring the new Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan.

Kamala is a special character in comics right now. Not only because she's a teenage girl, but because she's Pakistani-American from a Muslim home.  All forms of popular media, but superhero comics more than any other it seems, have been primarily dominated by white male writers, and by extension white male characters, for basically ever, and the sudden popularity of Kamala has gotten me thinking about instances in the history of my beloved funny-books where that white, hetero, male normativity has been challenged.

Quick disclaimer, as I'm sure someone will find it necessary.  As a white, hetero male myself, I know that I can't fully understand the struggles of women, minorities, or the LGBT community, and I wouldn't pretend to talk down to anybody saying I GET IT and I UNDERSTAND THE ANSWERS TO THE PROBLEMS.  I do know, however, that representation matters.  When nobody in the media seems to represent you, it not only can leave you feeling left out, it can leave the people WITH ample representation with a feeling of "otherness" about you, and that is damaging to us as a society.

So, here we go.

Looking back at the start of female representation in comics, things looked far brighter then they ended up.  One of the earliest super-heroines is also one of the most enduring symbols of the whole genre: Wonder Woman.  And make no mistake, Wonder Woman started off as, and should still be viewed as, an icon of progressive feminism in the media.

You see, Wonder Woman's creator was a man named William Moulton Marston.  That name sound familiar?  If you're a psychology major, it might.  Marston helped to develop the lie detector, a concept that he would apply to fiction in the form of Wonder Woman's magic lasso, which forced people to tell the truth.  Marston was himself far ahead of his time when it came to womens' rights, in fact he himself believed that women were superior to men.

 Under Marston's pen, Wonder Woman was every bit the equal to her fellow super heroes of the time, like Superman, and other writers realized this.  Wonder Woman was written into the Justice Society of America comics where she worked along side pretty much all the other popular super heroes of the day.

Realistically, comics were never exactly short on women, but they were often displayed in unfortunate contexts.  For one, there were often distaff counterparts, made into love interests for otherwise confirmed bachelor characters like Batman (more on that later).  Some characters came with their own distaff counterparts built into their stories, Hawkman for instance has nearly always had a "Hawkgirl" present in his life, who in his own series was relatively his equal (though I find it shameful that she was still referred to as HawkGIRL, when the first holder of the name was a grown woman at least in her mid-30's).  When they appeared in other books alongside each other, she was treated as a sidekick at best, and a burden at worst.  For example, while Hawkman was made a member of the Justice League of America shortly after its inception in 1960, Hawkgirl was initially denied membership, and didn't get inducted herself until the 70's.

I love how in this panel, the Atom seems to know this is bullshit.

Aside from being distaff counterparts, female superheroes (and villains) for a long time seemed to only fill one other role, and if you picked up a comic at any time in your life, you know what it is.

Yeah, that's the really sad thing here.  Not that a little T&A is a bad thing necessarily, but most of the time it has just amounted to any attempts at character development being shoved aside in favor of eye candy.  What's worse is that comic writers often don't know how to write female characters.  Not that it should be hard, you write a character, just make her a woman, but somehow that woman part must be confusing.  This has led to such unsavory events as the original Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, falling in love with her rapist (who was also her son, it's complicated) in Avengers #200.

That's an extreme example though, and while they were almost always eye candy at the same time, there were quite a few very dynamic female characters too.  Take the She-Hulk for instance.  As pointed out to me in Bob Chipman's latest Big Picture video, she is a remarkably subversive character in a lot of ways.

You see, She-Hulk's thing is that she needed a blood transfusion once, but the only viable donor was her cousin, Bruce Banner, secretly the Incredible Hulk.  Luckily for her though, instead of being stuck with Bruce's problem of turning into a monster whenever he gets angry (which in the hands of an awful writer, could have turned into a thinly veiled PMS metaphor), she can change into a super strong, if green, Amazonian beauty at will.  Even better, she has no apparent negative repercussions for choosing to embrace this change(also dodging the Eve/Pandora metaphors).  Instead, in her daily life, we see her getting more and more self confident in her normal form.  A confidence she retains when she goes time without being the She-Hulk.

So, we have our ups and we have our downs, and so it goes right up to today, back and forth.  An obvious T&A character for every interesting and dynamic one.  While this problem might never go away, because unfortunately comic books will probably always be viewed as a medium exclusively for young boys and weirdo aging male fans like me, even though that was never really strictly true, I think recent characters like Kamala are a good indication that progress has been made.  Also, there's Gail Simone's eternally awesome Birds of Prey series.  Go find every issue of that you can.

One more I think worth mentioning is a character named Maxine Hunkel, aka Cyclone, who was introduced in the pages of Justice Society of America in the 00's.  Maxine is interesting to me because she is one of the few instances in comics of a character being portrayed with realistic depression.  Instead of brooding, like heroes were wont to do after the mid-80's, Maxine was a cheerful and friendly person to nearly everybody, but spent most of her time alone.  She didn't take her troubles out on anybody, and she had her meltdowns in private.  Her struggle was made more real to us as readers based on how she hid it.  For me personally, this meant a lot, because she was a character I could really relate to based on this one thing we had in common.  It's the little things that make a character, and I think more writers could stand to add small touches like that.

While there have been women in superhero comics for as long as there have been superhero comics, it took a lot longer for us to get any explicitly non-hetero characters.  That doesn't mean, though, that the subtext wasn't there.  It just means it wasn't text yet, and for that, we're going back to Wonder Woman.

Remember how I said that William Moulton Marsten had some very progressive views on gender for the 40's?  Well, his ideas on sexuality were also ahead of his time.  He spent most of his adult life in a polyamorous relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, and another woman named Olive Byrne.  Several people pointed out that part of this may have subtextually found its way into his writing, as Wonder Woman, after all, comes from an island of effectively immortal women who went hundreds of years without having any contact with men.  Paradise Island would have been homo-normative just out of necessity if nothing else.  This isn't the only way that Marsten inserted his thoughts on sexuality into his comics either.  He had some interesting ideas about the place of dominance in relationships, and drew a lot of subtextual bondage scenes into his comics.

But we were still a long way off from an explicit gay or lesbian character in comics, and indeed the time came where even subtext would be challenged.  Remember when I said that comics would some times add distaff counterparts to established heroes?  Well, you see in 1954, a German psychiatrist and all around fear mongering jerk named Fredric Wertham published a book called Seduction of the Innocent in which he accused comic books of all sorts of things, among them that Batman and Robin were covertly corrupting little boys into a "depraved" homosexual lifestyle.  Where he got that idea is anybody's guess.

Today, we see allegations like this as absurd and generally dumb for even mentioning, but DC Comics had a great big freak out over it and introduced a character named Kathy Kane to act as a love interest for Bruce Wayne, and to be Batwoman as Batman's counterpart.  She used a utility purse filled with things like weaponized mirrors and lipstick.  I'm being dead fucking serious right now.


The fear of homosexuality in comic books, which I like to refer to as "The Rainbow Scare," was kicked off in a lot of ways by Wertham's book.  Also, in 1954, the Comics Code Authority was founded, and they, until basically 2011, were the final word on what could and could not be in a comic book.  This meant restrictions on violence, dark themes, and any mention of homosexuality at all until (are you ready) 1989.

The first openly gay character that I know of in superhero comics came two years after the ban was lifted.  His name is Hartley Rathaway, aka The Pied Piper.  He was once a Flash villain, but by the time of his coming out, had given up a life of crime to become an activist and part time ally of Wally West, the third Flash.  At one time, during a roof top conversation, specifically about the sexuality of super villains for some reason, the Piper mentions that he's gay to Wally.  As far as I can tell, while Wally seems freaked out, this was meant to be treated as not a big deal really and the Piper seemed to go on with his supporting role quite normally after this, until a whole bunch of weird shit happened to him in Countdown to Final Crisis over a decade later.  I'll call that a late, but decent enough start.

For a while, it seemed like the only other gay character we had in comics, and the only gay hero, was a Marvel character named Northstar.  Northstar was a mutant and a member of Alpha Flight (think the X-Men's Canadian sister team).  He was actually originally introduced in 1979, and his creator John Byrne has stated since that he originally conceived of Northstar, real name Jean-Paul Baubier, as being gay the whole time, but between the CCA and Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter insisting that homosexuality doesn't exist in the Marvel Universe, it wasn't until 1992 that he was allowed to say it.  And say it he did, in an epic pre-punchout stance that only 90's superhero comics could deliver.  After his big, epic coming out Northstar got a lot of publicity.  He got to join the X-men, got his own mini series that sold pretty well, and was just generally high profile.  He even got married to his partner in 2012.  All in all, I'd say the long term handling in universe was good enough, but on the outside it was hard to escape the feeling that this once fairly obscure character was now so prevalent so that we could point out that we had a high profile gay character.  It's like saying "I have a gay friend, and he says it's okay."  As a friend of mine once stated, "It's like that's his power now."  And indeed, I have to admit, I can't remember what his power is off the top of my head.  But that's growing pains.  As we'll see when we get to race, on the way to responsible representation, there's going to be some clunkers.

Oh, yeah, and his big coming out was a "very special issue" about AIDS.  Dammit Marvel, you had one job!

But, progress is progress, and before too long we got a character that is not only a complex and nuanced character, but is also one of my favorite characters of all time: Renee Montoya, The Question.

Renee was actually first introduced in Batman: The Animated Series as a detective on the Gotham police force.  She was quickly introduced to the comics, and in 2003 became one of the main characters of Gotham Central, a police procedural comic.  It was in the pages of Gotham Central, under the pen of Greg Rucka, that she got publicly outed by Two-Face, who had been stalking her.  After this, she faced estrangement from her Catholic family, a struggle that I know is all too real for a lot of gays and lesbians in the real world.  That, coupled with a number of other tragedies, left her an alcoholic mess when it came time for her to appear in one of my all time favorite comic book series, 52.

In 52, Renee is chosen by Vic Sage, the first Question, to take up his mantle after he dies, which turns out to be soon, as he has lung cancer.  Renee grows a lot over the course of the series.  She has an crisis after failing to stop a suicide bomber in Khandaq, she faces down a cult devoted to the worship of evil, and she becomes attached to Vic, only to watch him die horribly, but she comes out the other end as the hero Vic knew she could be.

52 also introduced Renee's on again/off again girlfriend, Kate Kane, the new Batwoman.  I like to imagine that Greg Rucka and company made Batwoman a lesbian as a huge middle finger to the entire Rainbow Scare of the 50's.  Renee and Kate went on the have major roles in the Batman books, Final Crisis, and several other stories until they were apparently snuffed from existence after the continuity reboot in 2011.  It's really unfortunate, they were great characters.

Speaking of the reboot, in the lead up to it DC started hinting that after it, one of their classic favorites would be gay.  Personally, my money was on Wonder Woman, but I was quite wrong.  No, it was none other then the Green Lantern!

...kinda.

It wasn't the most popular Green Lantern, that Ryan Reynolds portrayed in that awful movie, and it wasn't the Black Green Lantern that everybody knew from that awesome Justice League cartoon.  It was Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern from the 40's, one of the oldest superheroes period.

In the comic featuring him, Earth-2, Alan Scott, de-aged through the power of reboot, loses his long time boyfriend in the first issue, which sets off the plot of the entire comic.  In-universe, Alan's homosexuality is treated by most characters as a non-issue, but that was not the case in the real world.  A lot of small minded people were very upset at this change.  "Why can't you just make a new character to make gay?" they asked.  More on things like that later, but I thought the process was an interesting parallel to what the process of coming out in real life might be like.  In spite, or maybe because of the controversy, Earth-2 has been a major seller for DC ever since, and for good reason.  It's a very good series, and I'd highly suggest picking it up.  The first few volumes are available in hard back and totally worth it.

For the record, to my knowledge there is yet to be a transgender superhero.  Maybe some day soon.

If female characters in comics had their up and downs and gay ones were a long time coming, the treatment of ethnic minorities in comics was an uphill battle the whole way, and in a number of places, nothing short of embarrassing.

You see, we get back to that whole problem of most comic book authors being white men, and when they started to realize, "Crap, we have no ethnic diversity in our comics!" a lot of what we got were hastily thrown together ethnic stereotypes.  Want a good example?  Remember the old Super Friends cartoon?  In their attempt to have more diversity they added a Black, an Asian, a Native American, and a Latino superhero to their roster.  Cool, right?  What were their names?

...Oh.

Dammit, guys, really!? ONE. JOB.

But, as much as I want to rant about this, I'm not here to talk about old cartoons, I'm here to talk about comics.

The earliest Black hero I can think of is named...sigh...Black Panther, and he's the prince of the African Wakanda tribe.  He was first published in 1966 (for the record, predating the founding of the Black Panther Party).  As iffy as that all sounds, he did have a lot of interesting stories.  Too many to list, actually, but he was fairly high profile and was a major member of The Avengers for a while (don't be shocked if he gets a movie eventually).

Over time, we got more and more Black heroes.  If you saw the new Captain America movie, you met Falcon, who was just as awesome in the comics.  He was introduced in 1969.  Also, if you watched that previously mentioned awesome Justice League cartoon, you met John Stewart, The Green Lantern.  In the comics he starts off as more of a...deputy I guess to Hal Jordan, but he's had some really good series since.  He was introduced in 1971.  Then there's Black Lightning (also better then he sounds), and he was introduced in 1977, with his own ongoing series.

But, the most enduring Black superhero seems to be Victor Stone, aka Cyborg.  He was first introduced in 1980, and is most famous for being a member of the Teen Titans, one of the most popular comic book series ever.  Cyborg was a very interesting character.  He was divided between going into science like his father or going to college on a football scholarship.  He and his father had just had a big fight about it, when a lab accident happened, that left Victor seriously injured.  But, applying those old science skills, Victor's father managed to fashion some sweet sci-fi prosthetics that cover about 60% of his body.  Victor isn't as thrilled about this change as I would be, and a lot of his conflict is based on his thinking he needs to struggle to maintain his humanity.  Cyborg has remained a popular character since then, and after the 2011 reboot, was canonically a founding member of the Justice League.  He'll even be in the upcoming movie Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice, or as one of my favorite vloggers calls it "Man of Steel 2: Sorry About Man of Steel 1."

There have been a lot of high profile Black superheroes since then.  Most of them awesome, some of them not so much.  On the awesome side, I'd love to mention Michael Holt, the second Mister Terrific from the pages of JSA, and John Henry Irons, another tech based hero that's so awesome that he got to be Superman's replacement for a while.

So, while still grossly underepresented, there are still plenty of Black superheroes to choose from.  What about other ethnic groups?  Not as much, usually.

There are next to no Asian heroes I can think of.  A few Asian villains, most of whom were unfortunate stereotypes like Lady Shiva or The Mandarin.  Jubilee from the X-Men is supposed to be Chinese, but as happens WAY too often, a lot of artists forget that and straight up depict her as white.  Ryan Choi, the third Atom is also Chinese, and he got one or two good stories, but is almost always overshadowed by his mentor, Ray Palmer.  There's also Katana of The Outsiders, who had some decent character development in spite of initially seeming to be little more than a Japanese stereotype.

Certainly the most dynamic example I can think of is Cassandra Cain, the third Batgirl, whose mother was Lady Shiva, making her half Chinese.  Cassandra is often stated to be one of if not the best martial artist in the DCU because she was brought up to read body language as a first language.  She gets a lot of great arcs about struggling to relate to a world she seems distant and cold in and coming to grips with being raised to be an assassin.  She also got a really dumb arc where she turned into a stereotypical evil Asian dragon-lady for a while.  You win some, you lose some.

Until recently, Latinos didn't fair much or any better.  The earliest example I can think of doesn't even come until 1996 with a Mexican-American character named Aztek.  I know it doesn't sound great, but I get the sense that his writer, the legendary Grant Morrison had big ideas for the character.  Sadly, the book got canceled before he could see it through.  There's also Kendra Saunders, the second Hawkgirl (a teenager when first introduced, so I'll let the "girl" part slide), who was introduced in 1999.  She's stated as being half Latina, though what nationality is never made clear.  Things got better in the 2000s, though, with Renee Montoya, who I already talked about, who is Dominican, and another favorite of mine, Jaime Reyes, the third Blue Beetle.

Jaime is a Mexican-American teenager living in El Paso, Texas, and he was first introduced for Infinite Crisis in 2006.  He makes use of a strange scarab-shaped machine that melded itself to his back to fly, be super strong, and produce a fantastic array of weapons and armor.  His first on going is a great series, full of all kinds of fun stuff like magic, space travel, and beating up aliens with sticks.  It was also bilingual.  Jaime would speak Spanish at home with his parents, and English with his friends and other superheroes.  I always thought that was a lovely touch that added a lot, as that's how a lot of immigrant families really do live.  Jaime proved to be a really popular character, appearing on TV several time in Batman the Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, and Smallville.  He even was reportedly going to get his own TV show, but I haven't heard anything about it in years.  I think they decided to do Arrow instead.  Meh.

 Shamefully, literally the only Native American heroes I can think of are Super Chief, who appeared and died in the span of one issue of 52 and Manitou Raven, an Apache Chief expy (even though Manitou in an Algonquain word) who had a minor role in JLA: Obsidian Age and Justice League Elite.  Boooooo!!  Boooooo!!

If you're noticing that a lot of these characters are legacies, like the THIRD Blue Beetle, the SECOND Question, the THIRD Batgirl, don't be too alarmed.  As far as I can tell, comic writers don't actually think that minority characters can't stand up on their own without the help of a white predecessor.  It's a copyright thing.  Companies don't want to make new aliases, just put new characters on the ones they already have the guaranteed rights to.  Pretty much ALL new characters since the 80's have been legacy characters.

Which brings us back to our new friend Kamala Khan.

Kamala got her moniker from a woman named Carol Danvers, the last Ms. Marvel, seen here.

Now, if you've noticed that Carol is a busty, blonde woman who couldn't be farther from Kamala's shy, demure Pakistani-American teenager, then you've started to realize what can make this story so great.

One of Kamala's earliest struggles is thinking that superheroines are supposed to look like Carol.  She wished so much to look like her, that her yet unstable powers made it happen.  Kamala ends up going through a crisis of identity, and deciding that being a hero just like Carol doesn't mean that she has to look just like her.

 
And so the story of Kamala has been going.  A girl torn between her strict Muslim upbringing at home, and her fangirlish love of superheroes.  Facing a struggle of both personal and cultural identity, a struggle that for a lot of people is very real.  And that I think is a good word for Kamala: real.  She's no stereotype or token, but a fascinating and dynamic character.  An honest representation of a lot of people in the real world, just with stretchy powers.

So, in the march towards representation in superhero comics, how are we doing?  I'd say we're getting there WAY TOO DAMN SLOW...but we're getting there.  Like I said, representation is important, because it removes a feeling of "otherness," and I think we've all felt "other" at some point in our lives.  As time marches on, I hope more and more artists realize that there really is no "other."  That we are all human beings with real struggles and stories just waiting to be told.  We don't need a quota and we don't need an excuse.

At least that's my take on it.  Feel free to tell me yours.  Thanks for reading all that, folks.

-Jimmy