Blogotional

This week in Comic Art I thought, for reasons I don't quite understand that we'd take a look at black superheroes. Frankly, it's been a controversy for years, why isn't there a "great" black hero. It's got nothing to do with racism, getting a good character together is just difficult.

For DC, success with black heroes hs come only lately. Black Lightning dates back to the '70's and never really caught on. He has seen success in recent days as a part of "The Outsiders," and on TV as "Static Shock" But at his inception they worked so hard to make him black, they forgot to make him good.

John Stewart has had the role of Green Lantern on and off since the '80's and may be DC's most successful black hero. At this point, he may be the most widely recognized GL since he is the GL they have chosen to use on the JLA cartoon series on TV.

Given the success that Stewart had taking a traditionally established role and filling it with a black person, DC decided to try it again, this time reviving Golden Age hero "Mr. Terrific" in a a revived Justice Society title.

Which reminds me -- the revised JSA is so good, with it's reconstituted characters from the Golden Age, that I think I'll do a whole series on it starting next week, so that's enough on Mr. Terrific for now.

Marvel had better luck with their attempts at black heroes. Luke Cage never saw huge commerical success, but he was always a great character. I think the problem was the whole mercenary nature of his character. It improved when they partnered him with Iron Fist, but since they remained mercenaries, it was always difficult to find them really, really heroic.

Luke is a part of "The New Avengers" now and as such is getting more heroic everyday. Although he now looks almost completely like a hoodlum, I'm hoping the other costumed adventurers will wear off on him and he will finally get a good look going.

As best as I know, The Black Panther is the oldest black hero in comics. He showed up with the Fantastic Four and the Avengers very early. His own title followed quickly.

I think he succeeded so well so fast becasue he was black, but he was never American. He is the king of an African country and the Black Panther mantel is a part of the traditional heritage of the country. He was regal and heroic from the very beginning. Needless to say, some blacks complained that he wasn't "really" black which always bothered me, it seemed to me that they should aspire to be just like him -- as I always aspired to be just like the heroes I followed most closely.

The Falcon has been the most consistently appearing black hero ever. Sam Wilson was "rescued" from the street and given his powers, then he teamed up with Captain America. He was as much an effort to bring the seemingly "out-of-touch" Captain America into the modern day as he was consciously black.

Falcon has been having more success lately as the character has started to stand on his own two feet and they have started to take some of the hard edges off of him. In my book he is the best looking of the black heroes, if not the most interesting -- I still give the edge to Black Panther on that one.

When you have to decide what color to paint the character, the race of a hero will always be a conscious decision. However, I hope that some day it becomes a non-issue with the readers.

Related Tags: comics, comic books, super hero, super heroes, black, African-American, Marvel Comics, DC Comics