The most recognizable black superhero to originate at DC Comics in the 1990s was a brother in a suit of armor named Steel. When I was 7, I loved Steel. I still do. He came to the fore during the whole Death of Superman three ring circus as one of the four replacement Supermen that was all the rage in first grade. He was a man named John Henry Irons (after the folk hero) on the run from a defense contractor that he no longer wanted to make weapons for. He was hiding under an assumed name in Metropolis, contemplating suicide and working construction when he almost fell to his death trying to save a coworker. After Superman caught him, Irons thanked him for saving his life. The Man of Steel told Irons to make it worth something. Thus, when Superman died (albeit just for a little while) in the battle with Doomsday, Irons knew what he had to do.
After playing a large role in the story arc that ushered Superman back into the land of the living, Steel was given his own title with co-creator Louise "Weezie" Simonson at the helm as writer in 1994. Simonson moved Steel back to his hometown of Washington, DC, where he initially went toe-to-toe with his former employers at the defense contractor AmerTek who were funneling guns designed by Irons back in the day on to the streets and into the hands of gang members. The early days of the comic, which can be read on the cheap (4-ish dollars) in a used trade paperback off Amazon, were particularly refreshing because they featured an African American superhero taking on a real world evil (i.e., the military-industrial complex). These early days of the comic went on to be the source material for a fun, if poorly performing and ill conceived 1997 movie starring Shaquille O'Neil.
Once the corporate facade of AmerTek was brought to justice the remainder of Simonson's 33 issues of Steel suffered from some degree of obscuritiy. The real culprits of the series were revealed to be an ever more obscure and hard to believe cabal of secret international criminals with names like Hazard and White Rabbit whose presence was often revealed during hard to follow crossovers with other titles--even with other publishers. However, what Weezie was always able to accomplish steadfastly was to provide a fun lower tier of villains that DC Comics has not been using for a shameful 10 plus years. This included:
a ridiculously silly-looking man in yellow zoot suit who could increase his to tremendous proportions,
a high tech Navajo mercenary with a heart of gold, and my personal favorite
a four-armed, extraterrestial, cyborg space cowboy.
I DEMAND TO KNOW WHY DC COMICS HAS NOT BEEN USING THESE CHARACTERS FOR THE PAST 10+ YEARS. THEY ARE INSANELY PRICELESS.
When Christopher Priest took over on issue #34 picked a gritty "Dark Age" of comics feel to it and Steel, now stripped of his secret identity, was moved to Jersey City with his 16 year old niece who was under his protection. The series took some interesting turns, but the quality of the zany villains suffered dramatically. However, he did come up with a cool dude named Skorpio.
Like the Navajo Chindi, Skorpio was also a hired gun. He became a supervillain in order to pay of his tremendous amount of student debt. In a convoluted plot twist, Skorpio and Steel were both in the employ of the director the Jersey City hospital. What was really exciting was Skorpio's obsession with Steel's love interest. He had the tendency to call her on the telephone and make statements like this:
In the final issue of the series, Skorpio was ambiguously killed or not killed in a final battle with Steel after Steel's niece had been poisoned. The series still had more ground to cover, but this reader was glad that the ambiguity had finally ceased.
This has been sitting on my hard drive for a month or two. Enjoy:
This blog post will interrogate some of the divergences between the mid-90’s comic book series Static and its early 2000’s cartoon adaption Static Shock. Dig the opening sequence from the first season.
From a general survey of fans on the Internet, Jeffrey Brown’s text Black Superheroes, and the fact that it was the only Milestone property adapted for television one can infer that Static was the fan favorite of the Milestone properties. As a narrative about a geeky black teenager struggling with coming into his own as both a teenager and a superhero, Static’s life probably mirrors that of many comic book fans more-so than the other major Milestone properties. In the first issue, we see him beat down by his foremost antagonist Hotstreak in front of his best friend Frieda on whom he has a major crush. Anyone who was ever an awkward teenage boy can sympathize with the moment. Static’s sarcastic, Spider-Man-inspired hilarious everyman Virgil Hawkins is the kind of superhero who would exist if a better member of the fandom were given superheroes.
In my opinion, the series did a good job of mixing a narrative about an awkward teenager with superpowers who likes role playing games with a serious investigation of issues that exist in the real world. Static was no less than the marriage of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s early work on Amazing Spider-Man and Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ groundbreaking run on Green Lantern co-starring Green Arrow. Though there were moments when the series veered into the territory of the kind of stuff we used to propagate back when I was a member of my high school’s Diversity Club, within its first 30 issues Static managed to deal with black anti-Semitism, homophobia, pre-marital sex, and gentrification while still delivering teenage melodrama and rambunctious superhero action.
Given Milestone Media’s acute collapse in 1997, we can view it as a blessing that Static made it on to the small screen in the early part of this decade. Here I want to talk about of the changes made to Static in adapting the property to television and how they are indicative of black tv in general. In doing so, I want to look at Herbert Eichelberger’s essay “Toward an Understanding of the Black Image in the Visual Arts as Seen through Filmic Metaphor.”
While in the comic book series, the protagonist’s family are of working class stock the tv show follows the same general trend as The Cosby Show and Family Matters. Virgil and his family definitely live in more spacious and comfortable surroundings in the animated series—witness the banister Virgil slides down in the opening music above. While as Eichelberger notes, the typical black family is headed by a single parent working two jobs, Virgil’s father has comfortable, professional aire about him and has time to do things like harass the mayor of the city about the explosion of new metahumans. (349) Meanwhile, in the comic book series, Virgil’s father is an orderly at a hospital who has worked his hands to the bone to move his family out of the inner city, so that Virgil and his sister can enjoy good schools. In one issue a combination of his overwork and the stress caused an attack of superpowered Chihuahuas on his workplace leads Virgil’s father to have a heart attack which becomes a heavy financial strain on the Hawkins family. We also see a contrast in the nature of Virgil’s afterschool job at a fast food restaurant in the shift from cartoon to comic. In the first few issues of comic book, Virgil’s mom makes it very clear that Virgil has to work there because they need the money, in the animated series his reason for holding down a job is to supplement his allowance.
While, as Dwayne McDuffie notes, it’s good to have a full line of black superheroes so that an individual black superhero like Static is not made to rep all black people all the time, we can say that the Hawkins family as presented in the animated series is not as close to the life lived by most African Americans as the Hawkins family presented in the comics.
Furthermore, Static Shock does not confront social issues in the same way as the comic book. While first episode involves Virgil almost getting roped into a gang so that he can deal with bullies, the audience is not presented with a discourse about the causes of gangs. Unlike the narrative presented by the Milestone comic book series Blood Syndicate, Static Shock does not explain that gangs flow from the crumbling infrastructure and lack of economic opportunity of the inner city. They’re presented as little more than bad kids hanging out together or forms of self-defense against bullies who are bad just because they are bad people.
While pointing to why there are these contrasts between the Static comic book and the Static Shock animated series is beyond the scope of this blog post, I will state that in the jump from Milestone comic to WB Animated series, the Static property was sanitized and made more petit bourgeois. I want to close by urging the reader to reflect on this in light of findings of Jack Greenberg about the way kids relate to tv cited by Eichelberger:
“(1) black and white youngsters identify with black television characters; (2) white youngsters who see blacks mostly on television as opposed to in their daily lives are likely to believe that television actually portrays real-life blacks; (3) behaviors and attitudes are closely linked to both social class and race differences; (4) young television fans strongly believe in the reality of television; and (5) viewers who perceive a great amount of similiarity between themselves and television characters are more affected by television than those who perceive less similiarity.” (349)
In reflecting on this, remember that the television does a lot of babysitting in the typical single parent black family headed up by a person working two jobs. Though it would seem that most cartoon producers are generally more interested in sanitized television and the bottom line than the social utility of their programming, given the impressionability of youngsters it would be a leap forward to portray a working class black teenage superhero in a cartoon for two reasons. First and foremost, it is good for youngsters to have fictional role models in situations similar to their own lives. Through the power of syndication this could mean a lot for working class black children for years to come. Secondly, as noted in the quotation above, white youngsters tend to view the portrayal of blacks on television as reality. It would be a step forward in discrediting the black underclass myth.
That being said, Static Shock still rules. You can check out the first episode in sketchy YouTube format below:
Text bibliography:
Brown, Jeffrey. Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans. Jacksons: University of Mississippi Press, 2001.
Eichelberger, Herbert. “Toward an Understanding of the Black Image in the Visual Arts as Seen through Filmic Metaphor,” in Out of Revolution: the Development of Africana Studies. Ed. By Aldrige, Delores P. and Carlene Young. New York: Lexington Books, 2000. Pp. 337-356
I've been reading A LOT of Milestone Comics this week and the character whose initial appearance has struck me the most is the lady above, a frequent character in the title Blood Syndicate, who following the song, is named Brickhouse.
By Blood Syndicate #2 or thereabouts, you learn that she's Puerto Rican not Black, but she's just too juicy for me to not talk about and I don't think we'll stray too far from our area of study. Take a peak at her, she's a big, tough dark-skinned lady with nappy hear and thick lips. Maybe this is just because I'm an African Studies concentrator and she may be Puerto Rican, but the first signifier that popped into my mind was the blackface minstrelsy character Mammy. Bill Foster describes the qualities of the Mammy archetype:
"The 'Mammy' archetype [is] the large, unattractive and non-sexual character. . .In her orignial manifestation she is a bossy, washer woman type who has her hands full trying to keep her lazy, good-for-nothing husband line. She is presented in direct opposition to white woman characters, which are blond, thin, and sexually desirable." (p. 14)
Brickhouse's first appearance is narrated by a skinny white middle class reporter woman who the members of Blood Syndicate have invited to the ghetto to write about their gang and the brutality of the police. To further bring home the point, the leader of the Blood Syndicate, Tech-9, clearly has feelings for the reporter. Juxtapose this with Brickhouse's treatment by her fellow member of Blood Syndicate, Wise Son:
Unlike the classical Mammy archetype, Brickhouse does not allow herself to become defeminized and dehumanized. In her proclamation of "I'm a lady," she echoes Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech. Though Brickhouse is a rock monster who has signifiers that code her as a Mammy, and who as we shall see in coming posts has more than her fair share of emotional problems, unlike the Mammies of blackface minstrelsy, she affirms her own personhood by standing up to sexist attacks.
Looking For A Face Like Mine Bill Foster $9.95 ($6.50 used on Amazon)
This collection of essays and interviews is a really useful resource for someone trying to get their footing in the realm of black comic books. Foster's essays deal with subjects as diverse as black superheroes, portrayal of blacks in underground comics from the '60s, the status of black woman superheroes and black musicians in comics, and African American trading cards. I found the book's ability to point me towards other source materials particularly valuable.
Two recurring arguments through out Foster's essays and interviews are that 1. We still need more diverse superheroes, but we could be doing a lot worse and 2. Despite myths to the contrary, black comics do sell. Both of these arguments are pretty sound, but the book's weakness is that through out many interviews and short articles it repeats them again and again without adding new depth to them.
I would suggest this book to two kinds of folks for two different purposes. 1. If you're a casual reader of comics who wants to have a better sense of how blacks have been portrayed over the years and maybe get some cool titles to look into, then this book is definitely for you. 2. As stated above, this book is useful to someone who wants a stepping off point for becoming more involved in the academic study of black comics but who doesn't know much yet. I would not advise coming to Foster's book looking for a rigorous academic study and criticism of black comic books. The book is less than 90 pages long and is cut up into 14 separate articles and interviews which, as stated above, tend to repeat themselves and as one can assume from their brevity don't delve very deep.
I'm really happy I read the book and get the sense that Dr. Foster is particularly knowledgable on his subject matter. However, it would seem that this particular book was intended for folks (like me) who don't know very much yet about the subject matter.
I started another blog for this project back in September but I lost the password foolishly. I am going to be reposting some of my material from that blog and the material that's been sitting around on my computer for months. As stated in my sidebar this is now a year long project (something I'm very pleased with) and hopefully I'll be more diligent about it in the coming months.
You can look at my original mission statement here.
