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Diversity in Comics - Past, Present, and Future

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Diversity in Comics - Past, Present, and Future

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One important resource I found is a HuffPost article detailing what steps comic creators have made to combat racial exclusion in the comic world and what still needs to be done. One of the most important things to consider when assessing the need for increased inclusivity is the history behind White savior comics and how other races have either been excluded, overshadowed, or even stereotyped. As Low asserts, comics are generally overlooked as insignificant and shallow; but, understanding the history and implications behind exclusion in comics, as well as its impact on reinforcing stereotypes, can also lead people to take comics more seriously and push for greater change in that realm.

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Diversity and representation. Many claim it's a recent hot topic, a push from fans and critics alike to portray individuals who aren't simply white. There are some who argue - and in minor instances they may be right - that inclusion is simply a cash grab. But really, it's hard to argue that representing the world at large is anything but a good thing. The Earth's population is so much more than what you see than on shows like Friends and House of Cards. But why is there a push back? Why do some claim inclusion is a bad thing?
A Complicated Diverse History in Comics
This is a loaded question, so it's best to narrow it down to one medium: comic books. Comic books have quite an interesting history with diversity, and the perspective you choose to look through will also give you different results. Generally speaking, there are many who will rightfully say the history of comics, particularly Marvel and DC, are very whitewashed. This is certainly true, and it's evident when you hear fans crying "that's not my Spider-Man" in reference to Miles Morales, the new incarnation of the webslinger instilled into comics in 2011. Miles is half black and half latino, a much different portrayal than the beloved anglo saxon Peter Parker that debuted in 1962.
The X-Men: The Original Diverse Comics Team
But then there is another viewpoint that must not be forgotten. Diversity has a niche in comics, particularly with the X-Men. Known for being a representation for minorities, the X-Men have been the catalyst for diversity in Marvel since their conception. The 1975 team in Giant Size X-Men #1 debuted a plethora of diverse characters, and the 1982 New Mutants gave us even more variety with characters like Sunspot, Mirage, and Karma. While this was only a small faction of Marvel, these were arguably some of the most interesting books by Marvel at the time. Writer Chris Claremont introduced and utilized diversity in such a natural way, a lesson quite a few outlets should pay attention to today.

Of course these two titles weren't perfect in representation. They were a bit stereotypical at times, and the creators of New Mutants - Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod - are white males themselves. In fact, in an interview with ComicsVerse, McLeod admits wishing he had more time to work on the New Mutants so they were less stereotypical. Bob eventually left the book while writer Chris Claremont remained, who wrote the title consistently for over fifty issues.

While Chris Claremont was progressive for his era, the experiences he was depicting in the lives of characters like Warpath and Mirage (who are Native Americans) were not authentic. In the ComicsVerse podcast Episode 68: Marvel's NEW MUTANTS, the team notes the importance to "start a conversation about these cultures and talk about mainstreaming and talk about why there aren't as many brown and black artists." The cast of this podcast go on to discuss the dichotomy of white artists representing other cultures and people of color representing their own culture. While the X-Men and New Mutants were groundbreaking for their time, some of the heroes do tiptoe around being token characters. To put it simply: the stories were educational and beneficial, but they were not perfect.
A Modern Approach to Diversity
And overtime, things have gotten conceivably better in comics. Heroes like Luke Cage and Black Panther have become extremely mainstream. Journalist Ta-nehisi Coates even took over Black Panther after Secret Wars ended, the Marvel event that shook up the entire universe and changed the status quo a bit. Coates brought in fresh air to the medium for a few reasons: he has a more political background in writing, and he's a black man writing about a black character. Black Panther played such a pivotal role in Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and Secret Wars that fans were going to flock to the book no matter who was writing it. It was an excellent move by Marvel to have a person of color writing such a book.

Marvel's determination to hire other non-white male writers continued with the creation of Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel. Kamala, a teenage muslim girl living in Jersey City, has been called by some the new Peter Parker. She's awkward and nerdy yet strong and loving. Writer G. Willow Wilson and editor Sana Amanat, both women of the muslim faith as well, created the character in 2013 and haven't looked back since. The series has been on the New York Times Bestseller list, a true indication that this is high quality material. In an interview with Makers, Amanat starts off by noting "authentic storytelling is powerful." Ms. Marvel works because she's well rounded. She wasn't created to be a token character.
Seeing More Than Whiteness
In another podcast by Comicsverse, titled "Episode 88: Islam and Marvel's Muslim Women," panelists discuss the evolution of Muslim representation in Marvel. Respective X-Men Monet St. Croix and Dust are discussed in great detail, noting their strong characteristics alongside their stereotypes. Naturally, Ms. Marvel is also analyzed, and the podcast should be checked out for more detail. But what's most fascinating is when her ideals and admirers are mentioned. Anika Hossain, a panelist on the podcast, claims Ms. Marvel had such a profound influence on her life as a muslim from Bangladesh living in America: "[Ms. Marvel] made me realize that I don't want to be anyone other than a stronger version of myself, that I don't have to change my color or my values to be an influential figure to the world."

This is coming from a woman who wasn't a big fan of comics before the introduction of Ms. Marvel. But the book was so strong and successful that it made her reach for it. This is the kind of effect that comic fans and creators love to see, and it's an important one. What makes the comic medium so interesting is that it combines words and pictures. You actually see the representation of the character, something a book doesn't exactly do. This allows the opportunity for a kid to say, "hey, this Jersey City girl actually looks like me," or, "oh wow, Spider-Man is black: just like me."

And this is key, not only for individuals to see themselves portrayed in an entertaining medium, but also for others to see multiple cultures represented. When only white males are being shown as the hero, something is wrong. Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz in a speech at Bergen Community College talks heavily about the need to have non-white representation:

"YOU KNOW, VAMPIRES HAVE NO REFLECTIONS IN A MIRROR? THERE'S THIS IDEA THAT MONSTERS DON'T HAVE REFLECTIONS IN A MIRROR. AND WHAT I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT ISN'T THAT MONSTERS DON'T HAVE REFLECTIONS IN A MIRROR. IT'S THAT IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A HUMAN BEING INTO A MONSTER, DENY THEM, AT THE CULTURAL LEVEL, ANY REFLECTION OF THEMSELVES. AND GROWING UP, I FELT LIKE A MONSTER IN SOME WAYS. I DIDN'T SEE MYSELF REFLECTED AT ALL. I WAS LIKE, "YO, IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME? THAT THE WHOLE SOCIETY SEEMS TO THINK THAT PEOPLE LIKE ME DON'T EXIST? AND PART OF WHAT INSPIRED ME, WAS THIS DEEP DESIRE THAT BEFORE I DIED, I WOULD MAKE A COUPLE OF MIRRORS. THAT I WOULD MAKE SOME MIRRORS SO THAT KIDS LIKE ME MIGHT SEEM THEMSELVES REFLECTED BACK AND MIGHT NOT FEEL SO MONSTROUS FOR IT."

When something is considered groundbreaking because it actually has a black character defying stereotypes (looking at you, Jon Stewart from Justice League), we have to look at society, not the television show. Are we okay with this?

I don't think we should be. I look at books like Al Ewing's current run of Ultimates. The lineup is strong: Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Blue Marvel, America, and Spectrum. It's possible you only recognize two or three of these names, which is totally fine. Ewing's cast can appear a bit random depending on your reading history, but it is quite organic. Even better: three characters are female and four are people of color, three of whom are scientists and use said science knowledge in the book itself. They formed pretty organically after Secret Wars, and the chemistry works well. Nothing feels forced, and no character is there just to be there.

Why do I mention Ewing's Ultimates? Because this is what we need to see more of. The days of just having one black character or one Asian character on a team need to be put behind us. It's outrageous, and it isn't representational of real life. When there's just one character who isn't white, this puts an immense amount of pressure and outrageous expectations. The character almost has to be perfect, or else both sides of the diversity argument will point out what is wrong. But when a cast is naturally diverse? It allows more outlets. The focus can remain on their race but also on their character development. And that focus is spread out amongst the cast, as there's less pressure to make that one character perfect. Everything becomes more organic, just like real life.

But, this ideal can't just happen. Why would it ever be that easy?

Comic books are produced by publishers, and those publishers are a business. A business' end goal, no matter how liberal or conservative or whatnot, is to make money. If they know they won't make a profit - or worse, that they'll lose profit - then the venture won't be explored. It sounds like capitalistic greed but it's also capitalistic practicality.

But we need to look at what this means for comics. It means that you need to actually buy the books you like. You need to go out to a comic book shop and pick up Wilson's Ms. Marvel. Or Stohl's The Mighty Captain Marvel. Or DeConnick's Bitch Planet. Or Rivera's America.

When asking ComicsVerse CEO, Justin Gilbert Alba, how the recent outspoken push from fans for diversity in writers and characters affected the industry. He said: "Unfortunately, the push from fans for diversity in creators and characters only represent a loud minority. All too often, comics with diverse characters and creators are cancelled due to sagging sales despite critical acclaim. In regards to Marvel particularly, I applaud their attempts to make comics mirror the people who read them. That isn't to say there isn't a lot more that can't be done, there definitely is. In my opinion, if we want real change in terms of minority representation in comics and comic book creators, there's going to need to be a perfect storm of the right creator, the right characters, organic change, and a great marketing campaign with a definitive push for comics to reach new markets who, maybe, didn't feel fully included in the past."

Did you read Charles Soule's She-Hulk a few years ago? Probably not, because it dropped after twelve issues due to poor sales, despite the book being incredible. Or more recently, Coates' Black Panther & The Crew, which has been slated for early cancellation due to poor sales, despite the first issue receiving high reviews. And if you're more into television and film, just look at Arrested Development. Poor viewership terminated that show despite its universal praise.

I mentioned the above books because they all have such strong diverse characters, a few of whom are people of color. They're amazingly well-written and they have lessons for all walks of life. But I'd argue that many who are calling for these types of books aren't going out and buying them. Just like with voting, people are expressing what they want on social media. However, they're not physically going out to make a difference. Well, here's a plea to do so.

Read up on who's writing what and go out to a local comic shop and pick up a new issue. You'll be contributing to the greater cause in so many ways worth more than $3.99.

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Diversity in Comics: What's Been Done and What Needs to Come

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Diversity and representation. Many claim it's a recent hot topic, a push from fans and critics alike to portray individuals who aren't simply white. There are some who argue - and in minor instances they may be right - that inclusion is simply a cash grab.

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Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics

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Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics

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While the inclusion of characters of all backgrounds should be normalized, the Dwayne McDuffie Award honors comic creators who include main characters with unique, diverse backgrounds which is a step in the direction of normalizing narratives that combat white saviors/white superiority. Creating an award that stresses the importance of including everyone in a superhero or powerful role is one key way to push the idea that everyone should be the 'ideal,' rather than limiting it to majority groups. Like in the Low article, comics are a place for the intersection of all identities and this can be highlighted through the use of a prestigious award.

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The 2020 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics has announced finalists for its sixth annual prize, with the winner to be announced during Black History Month. Continuing as Director of the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics stated"This award, like the man for whom it is named, has proven itself to be a game-changer. As we've all had to contend with the shadow of racism, injustice and intolerance looming over us, it's so important that today we again get to use this award to shine a light on diverse voices and say that they matter."

Dwayne McDuffie's widow, Charlotte (Fullerton) McDuffie, puts this year's award in powerful perspective: "At this staggeringly tumultuous and conversely glorious time, as the first female, the first African-American female, the first South Asian American, African-American female is historically inaugurated as Vice President of The United States of America, this award in my husband's name-which celebrates and spotlights creative work by and about the diversity of humanity that is society-is arguably the most vital thing taking place in the comic book industry today."

Voice actor, returns as Master of Ceremonies, this time online. "After a year that was unprecedented in so many negative ways, I look forward to the chance the DMADs will give us to look back on 2020 and celebrate these wonderful artistic achievements that not only bring us joy, but by their intention and existence, help move us forward as a society."

This award was established in 2014 in honour of Dwayne McDuffie, co-creator of the likes of Milestone Media, Static and Damage Control, as well as writer/producer on Static Shock, Justice League, and Ben-10. The nominees for the sixth annual Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics are:

They Called Us Enemy written by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, illustrated by Harmony Becker.

Excellence written by Brandon Thomas, illustrated by Khary Randolph.

From Truth With Truth written and illustrated by Lawrence Lindell.

Angola Janga: Kingdom of Runaway Slaves written and illustrated by Marcelo D'Salete.

Iyanu: Child of Wonder written by Roye Okupe, illustrated by Godwin Akpan.

Past winners of the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics were:

The 2020 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics' selection committee, led by industry legend, consists of nine prominent comics and animation professionals who personally knew and worked with Dwayne McDuffie and/or have demonstrated a serious commitment to his vision of excellence and inclusiveness on the page and behind the scenes. This year, they are Heidi MacDonald, Will J. Watkins,

Charlotte (Fullerton) McDuffie continues her late husband's legacy through this award and other endeavours made possible in part by The Dwayne McDuffie Fund. You can follow The Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics on , , and .

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.

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Nominees For 2020 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics

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The 2020 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics has announced finalists for its sixth annual prize, with the winner to be announced during Black History Month. Continuing as Director of the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics stated"This award, like the man for whom it is named, has proven itself to be a game-changer.

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As a white person, looking back at my childhood, I never had to look for a celebrity role model that looked like me. They were everywhere: on cereal boxes, TV, magazines, commercials, etc. This had a huge impact on my racial and ethnic identity process. All white people, though we've had vastly different lives, experienced this comfort with society and our place in it, socializing us to behave in the system in which we have power as oppressors. At the end of the Low article, the results of his research are laid out that state that students who were exposed to graphic novels "made connections to their own racial identities" (8). I loved seeing this because the racial and ethnic identity process is so different from that of white people, so it's good that graphic novels provide a better foundation for a healthy relationship with one's identity. This video shows a PBS produced interview with high school students about why representation matters to them, citing their own experiences and how they were affected. This all ties together in a really interesting way.

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Why on-screen representation matters, according to these teens

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Who Gets to Decide if Race is a Problem or Not?

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Who Gets to Decide if Race is a Problem or Not?

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The comic below illustrates the problem I have listed perfectly. In media, we always see white people claiming that race isn't really a problem in the U.S. because it isn't... for them. If you are white, such as myself, you are apart of the privileged group that benefits from the oppression of others. As a culture, we need to stop listening to the privileged when it comes to issues that deal with the oppressed. We will never be able to understand or empathize with them, and that's why committees dedicated to fixing these problems should have a board made up mostly of POC.

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Baby Books Aren't Violence Heavy: Why Graphic Novels Should Be Taken More Seriously

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Baby Books Aren't Violence Heavy: Why Graphic Novels Should Be Taken More Seriously

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I've been meaning to read the graphic novel, Watchmen, for a while, so for the free choice of a comic aspect of this assignment I chose to dive into this hefty book of artistic and literary expression. The first words of the book read "dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach" (Moore and Gibbons). Now, I am no parent, but that does not seem like a book to be read to babies. Low talks about an ELA teacher referring to graphic novels as "baby books" and not allowing her students to them for credit. This stood out to me because, as an ex bored high school student, I think that if a student is engaged with a text why take it from them? I found this article about why it is important to encourage a child's interest in graphic novels. The article explores why children love graphic novels and the benefits they have.

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Are graphic novels really hurting children's reading skills? And should kids just stick to the classics? Experts explain why it's time we end the graphic novel stigma for good.

Each product we feature has been independently selected and reviewed by our editorial team. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.

My 10-year-old's pet-sitting earnings were burning a hole in her pocket, and the only place she wanted-no, "needed to go," she told me-was our local independent bookstore to pick up more graphic novels.

At the store, as she held up her selections, I half-heartedly gestured to the other shelves filled with the kinds of books I read as a child. "How about one of those?" I asked, muttering something about the importance of developing the stamina to read longer books with more words. My daughter opted to do her part to build her growing graphic novel collection instead. She bought three.

I'm not the first person to fret over their child's choices in the aisles of our favorite bookstore, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. Amber Brown, assistant general manager, says the shop's booksellers often find themselves easing adults' concerns about kids' love of graphic novels. Parents worry kids won't read anything else or develop the skills to read longer books. In fact the opposite is true. Kids who read graphic novels are move likely to develop a love of reading. But well-meaning teachers steer students away from the picture-filled books, pushing the classics they grew up with instead. "It's getting better as we go on," says Brown, "but we do still get parents and teachers saying, 'But I want them to read real books.'"

Why Kids Love Graphic Novels

Despite their popularity, graphic novels have long carried a stigma. That was sparked, in part, by the once widely read 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, where author Fredric Wertham detailed now refuted evidence that reading comics causes juvenile delinquency.

But authors and readers pressed on, and by the early 2000s, graphic novels were gaining ground. In 2005, Scholastic's Graphix became the first publisher imprint dedicated to children's graphic novels. It now churns out popular series like Bone, Amulet, and The Baby-Sitters Club, which will become a Netflix show.

Pilkey, whose Dog Man series has more than 26 million copies in print since launching in 2016, said the combination of words and pictures explain part of the popularity, but it goes deeper than that. He remembers reading Charlie Brown comics as a kid and feeling drawn to more than just the storylines. "I developed an emotional attachment to the characters I was reading about, especially if pictures were involved," says Pilkey, also the author behind the Captain Underpants series.

While a quick look at book covers with cartoonish characters might indicate these novels cover breezy topics, it's far from the reality. Pilkey's Dog Man books continue a running storyline about a shared custody arrangement. In the autobiographical Guts, Telgemeier dives into mental health issues, describing the experience of a panic attack with words and pictures-an experience kids struggle with more often these days.

At the same time, the books also require a different level of reading comprehension than a traditional novel as kids decipher a story with not just the words, but also the plot captured in the images, says Telgemeier. That's a skill becoming more important in a world where we distill both words and images on our smartphones and other screens.

And it's one reason why kids speed through the books on first read-and then read them over and over again. They're capturing the main points of the story the first time and then diving into all its nuances when they open it up again. "It really puts the reader into the driver's seat," says Telgemeier. "They have to do the work. They have to see and think and wonder and look for clues and become a visual detective to understand the full story."

Why Kids Should Keep Reading Graphic Novels

"It's not that comics are lacking in sophistication," Frazin told a packed room of teachers at a recent talk on how to teach graphic novels. "It's that we teachers are lacking in the practice of seeing the complexity in these texts."

So is it OK if a kid only wants to read graphic novels? Experts say yes.

"It's not what they read, but how they read and how often they read that's going to improve literacy," says Emily Pendergrass, Ph.D., director of the Reading Education Program at Vanderbilt University. Pushing children to read things they don't want to read, she adds, often leads them to not read at all.

The goal, says Dr. Pendergrass, is to raise a child who identifies as a reader and feels confident picking up any book-whether it's a graphic novel, a Shakespeare play, or a biology textbook.

When I asked my 10-year-old if she's a reader, her answer was a resounding, "Yes." Despite misgivings, I've always let her read whatever she wants, and she's proven any of my worries about her reading stamina wrong. She recently finished all 870 pages of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

And then she picked up a graphic novel.

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Why You Should Encourage Your Child's Love of Graphic Novels

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Are graphic novels really hurting children's reading skills? And should kids just stick to the classics? Experts explain why it's time we end the graphic novel stigma for good. Each product we feature has been independently selected and reviewed by our editorial team. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.

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White Saviors and Their Influence on the Superhero Genre and Representation

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White Saviors and Their Influence on the Superhero Genre and Representation

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The white savior complex is a weird phenomena, where white folx would go to third world country, impose their beliefs, take pictures for performative activism, and claim to help the people there. Now, this does not have anything to necessarily do with race in comics, unless you think critically about it. For our entire lives, as a Western country, we have been taught, because of this complex in mainstream media (i.e. The Blindside), that white people are heroes, and are the ones that will save POC. We never see a Black person as a hero, because our culture did not allow it for decades. If that's the case, then of course Black folx would never be represented in comics, because they are never shown as the hero. This is something we should leave in the past, as the article I linked states.

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are-faced and clad in jeans, clutching a rather uncertain-looking black toddler on her hip, Stacey Dooley stands beaming in the dust of a parched African landscape. At first glance you could mistake it for a gap year snapshot, destined to be pinned up somewhere in a student bedroom. Dooley is, of course, one of the breakout stars of this year's Strictly Come Dancing, and the picture was taken in Uganda, where she is making a film for the upcoming Comic Relief. Yet as with so many gap year experiences, it isn't entirely easy to tell who is having the more emotionally rewarding time here: the volunteer who feels privileged to have seen what they've seen, or the children they're actually supposed to be helping.

Which is perhaps why the Labour MP David Lammy touched such a nerve when he responded to the image by tweeting that "the world doesn't need any more white saviours", or western do-gooders flying in, believing they are solving the developing world's problems while blissfully ignorant of the colonial baggage they carry.

It's a row that has been bubbling under for years, the chorus growing louder every other March when Comic Relief rolls around. If it wasn't about Dooley, it could just as easily have been about the singer Ed Sheeran, filmed digging into his own pocket on last year's programme to put a roof over the head of two little boys sleeping rough; or about Madonna adopting children from Malawi; or even the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's desire to take charge of the Thai cave rescue, regardless of the Thai authorities' wishes. It's partly an economic argument about the merits of aid versus trade, charity versus dignity, and of impulsively stepping in to help versus listening first to what people might actually want.

But it's also an increasingly fraught argument about race, and the long shadow cast by colonial history. Celebrity presenters fronting Children in Need in the UK are also often stepping out of privileged lives, and they, too, tactfully avoid exploring the broader political context to the hardship they're talking about. Yet they don't provoke anything like the level of backlash Comic Relief does.

'Ed Sheeran was filmed digging into his own pocket in 2017 to put a roof over the head of two little boys sleeping rough.' Photograph: Freddie Claire/Comic Relief/PA

For some, of course, the very idea of charity is problematic, a fig leaf for covering up political failure. They'd rather the west lifted protectionist trade tariffs, stopped exploiting oil and mineral reserves, opened borders and freed Africa to trade its way to greater prosperity than make a big self-congratulatory show of handing back some aid money.

But whatever the merits of that argument in principle, in practice Donald Trump is currently roaming the globe threatening to start trade wars and Brexit Britain seems to be moving closer to, not further away from, protectionism. When governments pull up drawbridges, giving money is one of the few things ordinary people can still do that makes a difference. The snag is that it's becoming increasingly hard to solicit those donations in a way that doesn't offend someone.

For anyone old enough to remember when Bob Geldof and Bono were practically canonised for Live Aid rather than harangued over their tax arrangements, all this can sound rather exasperatingly petty. The BBC clearly already sees the need to change with the times, having promised last year that it would no longer parachute celebrities into poverty-stricken countries, but would use more experts and African voices. Besides, in order to raise its millions, Comic Relief clearly needs to put more than woke millennial bums on sofas - it has to attract their grandparents too, not to mention people who just wouldn't watch an earnest televised lecture on the structural causes of global poverty.

The irony is that they must have seen in Dooley a rare combination of stardust and the ability to report from, rather than merely be photographed in front of, challenging environments. For while it was Strictly that catapulted her into the big league, she's also a documentary-maker who has presented films on everything from people trafficking to arms dealing, someone used to being behind as well as in front of a camera. Choosing her was presumably meant as a step towards the aims of the campaign group No White Saviors, which in criticising the Dooley picture made it clear it doesn't want to stop white people coming to Africa, merely to stop white people making themselves the hero of the story. What makes that so difficult for some to take is that it isn't just about asking one presenter to take a back seat, but also all those viewers who unconsciously identify with her.

Since all we've got to go on so far is a single publicity shot, it seems frankly premature to judge whether Dooley's film - said to involve people linked to Comic Relief projects telling their stories in their own words - actually fits the No White Saviors criteria or not. Nor did it necessarily help Lammy's critique when Comic Relief let it be known that he hadn't taken up a previous offer to make a film of his choosing with them.

But regardless of who turns out to be grandstanding in this particular case, the broader point is still a fair one, and it's that wherever possible, complex stories should be told by people rather than about them. When Comic Relief first aired, the idea of dropping actors and comedians into situations well outside their usual comfort zone felt genuinely fresh. But a generation on, the sight of celebrities making weepy "personal journeys" towards understanding poverty has begun to feel more and more crass, especially where it overshadows the people whose experiences they're meant to be understanding in the first place. Isn't it high time to step back behind the camera, and let others have a turn in the light?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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'White saviours' belong in the 1980s. Let's keep them there | Gaby Hinsliff

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Whatever Stacey Dooley's report is like, it's clear the subjects of Comic Relief's films don't need celebrities to tell their stories, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff

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"The Panther" is a Way Cooler Name Than "The Black Panther" so Racializing Everything isn't Necessary 

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"The Panther" is a Way Cooler Name Than "The Black Panther" so Racializing Everything isn't Necessary 

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Something that stood out to me while reading the pieces for this week was Yang's commentary on the word Black in the Black Panther's name. He made the point that by including Black as a descriptor in this hero's name it draws the attention directly to their race: that "what makes [the Black Panther] remarkable is neither their superpowers nor their heroism, but their ethnicity” (Yang 3). I had a conversation about this with my brother, and we agreed that The Panther would be an equally cool, if not cooler, name for a superhero that doesn't draw immediate attention to the thing that obviously sets them apart from the rest of the supers. Though Yang called attention to this, he also praised Black Panther as a story and as a source of representation for young POCs. I thought it was interesting to delve into the various aspects of Black Panther's social commentary and potential racist undertones. This article discusses the bounding strides that Black Panther took for Black people, but I also wanted to recognize these sources of micro-racism/aggressions.

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What's remarkable about " Black Panther" is not just that the very act of making a high-budget franchise superhero film with a cast of mainly black actors is so woefully exceptional. It's that, despite the technical requirements of a superhero film (and, no doubt, despite the supervision of Disney's producers), the director, Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the script with Joe Robert Cole, has made a movie that's both personal and audacious. "Black Panther" fuses the imaginary realm of Marvel characters with world history, contemporary politics, and specifically the experience of black people in the United States. Many Marvel releases reflect American political turmoil of the moment, but this film's confrontations with the agonies of the day are unusually complex and resonant.

The film's action follows that of " Captain America: Civil War," from 2016, in which T'Chaka (John Kani), the king of the imaginary African land of Wakanda, is killed in a terrorist attack on a United Nations complex in Vienna. In "Black Panther," T'Chaka's son, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), returns to Wakanda to assume the throne. One of the great virtues and pleasures of "Black Panther" is its coherent and intricate world-building-it delivers a history of Wakanda that feels less like an exposition than like a discovery. The movie's backstory, dispensed in two big sequences, is intensely dramatic in itself. The first of these sequences establishes Wakanda, a landlocked country in eastern Africa, as home to Earth's sole supply of vibranium, the world's strongest metal, which is endowed with a potentially devastating power of its own. Wakanda has isolated itself in order to protect its stores of vibranium-and to protect itself from the invasion or the enticement of would-be colonizers-but its rustic landscapes conceal, with the help of holograms, its mighty technological sophistication. The second backstory reveal takes place in Oakland (Coogler's actual home town), in 1992, where a Wakandan prince, N'Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), is stationed. Witnessing the burdens borne by black Americans, he decides to distribute his country's vibranium and weaponry worldwide, in an effort to aid a revolution against white-dominated powers. N'Jobu's brother T'Chaka, then the King of Wakanda, thwarts the effort, kills N'Jobu, and covers up the plot. But the prince, who is married to an American woman, has a son with him, a young boy who grows up to challenge T'Challa for the Wakandan throne.

But, before that takes place, T'Challa returns home to Wakanda, where-following the long-standing tradition for the country's royal succession-he must accept a challenge from a pretender to the throne in the form of hand-to-hand combat. After T'Challa prevails, he takes his ex-partner, the warrior and humanitarian Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), and the Wakandan general Okoye (Danai Gurira) on a mission to South Korea. Their aim is to prevent the illicit transfer of vibranium, which has been stolen by a young man (Michael B. Jordan) who's playing a long game. His name is Erik Stevens, a.k.a. Killmonger -and he's the son of N'Jobu, the prince who was killed in Oakland. A brilliant student and a former U.S. Special Forces soldier, Erik has been preparing for this moment for all his life. After an explosive series of battles, Erik goes to Wakanda seething with anger and seeking revenge; he challenges T'Challa for the throne, and, after a fierce and bloody fight, which he wins, he demands of the country's despairing guardians to be crowned king.

Killmonger's purpose in taking over Wakanda is more than just revenge, however: he seeks to fulfill his father's self-appointed mission in an even more radical form. Killmonger plans to distribute vibranium to Wakandan "war dogs" embedded in countries around the globe. With their help, Wakanda would overthrow the world's existing governments, correct the historical error and injustice of white domination, redress the oppression of the world's black people, and create a Wakandan empire on which "the sun will never set." In pursuing his mission, Killmonger wields his power cruelly against Wakandans, as well. In response, T'Challa, Nakia, and T'Challa's sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), who is Wakanda's leading scientist, seek, in a quiet but determined plan, to overthrow him.

The symbolic dimensions of "Black Panther" are ample and powerful. Wakanda evokes a prelapsarian Africa, free of Western colonial devastation: the country's resources are unplundered, its chain of tradition is unbroken, its cultural heritage is fully realized, and its technological achievements embody both the country's material and intellectual resources. The blend of classical arts of African origin with high-tech wonders, of warmly vital skyscraper cities of African inspiration (rendered in eye-catching production design by Hannah Beachler), suggests a popular version of Afrofuturism-even if the soundtrack, with its vibrant songs by Kendrick Lamar, doesn't suggest much of Sun Ra's extravagances (it would have been fun to catch a bit of the Wakandan avant-garde).

Coogler, who previously directed " Creed," his 2015 reboot of the "Rocky" series, has a distinctive mode of dramatic inspiration: he catches the existential struggles of life and death in quiet moments of intimate confrontation. That artistry itself is more than just emotional; it both reflects and bitterly criticizes an inescapable aspect of American life. In a flashback, Killmonger recalls a conversation, in Oakland, in which he told his father, N'Jobu, "Everybody dies, it's just life around here." But that, of course, is no way to have to live. Here and elsewhere, Coogler dramatizes, clearly and relentlessly, the air of oppression-constant menace from police violence, from conditions of occupation and degradation-and of intentional cultural and economic deprivation and systematic powerlessness, arising from a pressurized atmosphere of deadly hatred that strips the fullness of life to the starkness of survival.

The temptation of black radicalism, of taking up arms against oppressive white-supremacist powers, is present in "Black Panther." But its heroes, though entirely sympathetic to the needs and demands of the oppressed, reject it, favoring improvement over revenge, a quest for justice over a new round of injustices. They do so not merely out of the goodness of their hearts. Rather, if the heroes of Wakanda reject the revolutionary radicalism of Killmonger, it's because they see it as merely the obverse of the white radicalism that's in real-life power now. (A series of suggestions scattered throughout the movie reinforce that implication all the more.)

Having obtained power, the cruel and brutal Killmonger has no intention of relinquishing it-ever. The age-old process of royal succession depends on the use of a blue, glowing "heart-shaped herb" that's cultivated in a quiet corner of the kingdom. Killmonger orders it destroyed, because he intends to be, in effect, the last King of Wakanda. Killmonger is the personification of democratic perversion, an autocrat who's elected according to the rules of the game but who then changes the rules to maintain a stranglehold on power. T'Challa tells him, "Your heart is full of hatred; you're not fit to be a king," and tells Nakia that Killmonger "is a monster of our own making." (There's an element of backstory that I don't want to spoil that explains how literally this is true.) Though T'Challa, Nakia, and Shuri-along with T'Challa and Shuri's mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett)-unhesitatingly exile themselves from their tyrannized homeland and prepare for armed conflict against it, the crux of the drama isn't their allegiance but, ultimately, that of the general Okoye: whether she will remain true to her oath to serve the throne of Wakanda, whoever may occupy it, or whether she'll decide that her love of country requires her to rebel.

In "Black Panther," Coogler isn't just posing a question to black activists; he's posing a challenge to Wakandan officials and institutions. Which is to say, to American officials and institutions, as well. First, the film evokes a moment of crisis, when duty and conscience may make disloyalty to one ruler and his regime a matter of higher loyalty to the country and the state. Second, it raises the question of political process, its inadequacy, its failure. The Wakandan tradition of a physical battle that decides who occupies the throne may have worked just fine for centuries, when the goodwill of all challengers could be assumed, but the system is vulnerable to the manipulation of a strongman whose prime claim to power is strength. It's a system that may have worked once, but in a modern technocracy there are virtues besides the ability to win a hand-to-hand fight that a ruler would need.

There's a tag scene, midway through the end credits of "Black Panther," showing T'Challa addressing the U.N. about Wakanda's new deal: his plan to share his country's knowledge and resources with the world. (He concludes with a line of pointedly current import: "The wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers.") In the inevitable sequel, I wouldn't be surprised if the venerable process of transitions of power-the very essence of Wakanda's institutions-weren't transformed to go hand in hand with the nation's transformed place in the world.

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The Passionate Politics of "Black Panther"

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What's remarkable about " Black Panther" is not just that the very act of making a high-budget franchise superhero film with a cast of mainly black actors is so woefully exceptional.

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Saying "I don't see color" Isn't as "Woke" as You Think It is

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Saying "I don't see color" Isn't as "Woke" as You Think It is

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The comic book industry, like all American media, is reflective of the society that surrounds it. In America's case, systemic injustice and white supremacy are the most significant and present societal undertones. The comic book industry is dominated by white men, something that is rarely talked about. This perpetuates the precedent that is set about not recognizing race because whiteness is the norm. David Low discusses color-blind racism in his article on race and comics. I thought this was really important to recognize because it's indicative of the racist undertones in our society that inevitably spill into our media. This article in Oprah Magazine has interesting commentary on colorblindness and how it fits together in our surrounding societies.

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The idea of a color blind society, while well intentioned, leaves people without the language to discuss race and examine their own bias.

Color blindness relies on the concept that race-based differences don't matter, and ignores the realities of systemic racism.

Below, OprahMag writer Samantha Vincenty talks to sociologists Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Meghan Burke about the problem with color blindness-and how to become anti-racist, instead.

The international protests over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have just begun to spark positive change, pressuring states from Minnesota to California to rethink how they'll fund law enforcement and address police brutality in the future. The long-overdue outcry over the ways Black Americans have been mistreated, underserved, and underpaid has also effectively strong-armed many non-Black people into having tough conversations about race and racial inequality in the U.S.-often, for the very first time in their lives.

Unfortunately, however, I can say firsthand that some people still really don't want to talk about it. At all. They'll be the first to tell you they don't have a racist bone in their body, and they don't care if you're white, black, purple, or blue, etc. In fact, they say, they're "color blind"-meaning, they don't even see race. And that refusal to see it often goes hand-in-hand with an urgent desire to stop discussing racial disparities as soon as possible.

The current Facebook debates amongst my 40-something, overwhelmingly-white former classmates in the Connecticut suburb that I lived in as a teen are, to put it mildly, a roiling cesspool of feelings. Insults are hurled, former crushes de-friended. One woman's patient explanation of how the "redlining" housing policies of the 1930s have had lasting effects on economic inequality is rebuffed with angry insistences that the concept of white privilege is actually "reverse racism."

And then one day, to my pleasant surprise, I saw an article about how 1,100 people in my old hometown gathered for a Black Lives Matter rally on the town green. This peaceful show of support caused several longtime white male residents to absolutely lose their minds...at least online.

The ignorance in some of my former classmates' posts didn't shock me; as a white Latinx woman who doesn't "look Puerto Rican," plenty of people felt safe making ugly remarks in my company throughout the five years I lived there. What did surprise me was how quickly those who identified as color blind became panicked-or even furious-when their neighbors started wondering whether racism had been living in their own backyards (and town greens) this whole time.

To better understand how color blindness connects to bias-and counter-intuitively helps to uphold racism instead of rendering it powerless-I spoke to two people who literally wrote the book on the subject: Sociologists Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of Racism without Racists, and Meghan Burke, author of Colorblind Racism.

The concept of color blindness flourished after the civil rights movement.

"I'm not the first one to say this, but for many white folks, being labeled racist is among their worst fears," Burke says. "And as we're continuing to learn in this country, for many people of color, Black folks in particular, their greatest fear is not surviving an interaction with a police officer. So we're really talking about very different worlds of experience."

Burke says the roots of color blind racism were largely well-intentioned. "It borrows right from that last third of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech, where he says that he wants people to see his kids for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. So I think it's easy for a lot of well-meaning white folks to hear that and say, 'Well, gosh, okay. Yeah. I don't want that to be the primary lens that I use to judge people's character."

Colorblindness denies the lived experiences of other people.

In order to understand how colorblindness winds up denying the lived experiences of other people, Burke continues, "it's also important to get clarity about what is meant by 'racism,' and some of the unintended harm that a colorblind framework can cause." To do that firstrequires a basic understanding of how Americans, and particularly white Americans, think about racism, and the big way sociologists believe that's evolved over the past 150 years.

From the late 1800s to the mid 1960s, the system of racial segregation and oppression known as Jim Crow made it illegal for Black Americans to have the same social and economic rights as white Americans. When we see photos of the Black students who comprised the Little Rock Nine face down hoards of angry white people just to go to school, no one debates what that is: Blatant hate. "The practices of domination were in your face. The ideology was overt," says Bonilla-Silva. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s brought some positive change, he says, those who weren't directly impacted in the years that followed (such as those in suburban white communities) could easily choose to believe that America's big, ugly racist period was a thing of the past.

Pointing to 40 years of data, Bonilla-Silva says that racism instead became embedded in what he calls "now you see it, now you don't-type practices" that are harder to call out-which, conveniently, makes it tougher to pin them squarely on discrimination. Bonilla-Silva uses the example of a realtor who's been told they can't talk about race. If a person of color such as himself tells that realtor, "Hey, I want to live in a mixed neighborhood," the response might be, "Hey, don't talk about that! I don't see race, we're all humans." Instead, " we 'steer' people into different neighborhoods -a Black neighborhood, a Latino neighborhood, a white neighborhood. So you don't need to talk about race to produce racialized outcomes."

"Not seeing" race denies systemic racism.

As everyone is steered into unofficially-segregated parts of a city or town, it can be easy for those in white-majority communities to never think about the laws, zoning, and social policies that promote gaps in education and wealth equality along racial lines-particularly if they're only interacting with those who look like them, and who share similar world views. Burke says the wish to believe that everybody has an equal shot at success is deeply tied to our collective American belief in "individualism," or the habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant. In the individualist way of thinking, problems like poverty and health problems are cast as personal moral failings that can be overcome, not symptoms of a larger broken system.

"If you do the right thing, you'll be successful. If you don't, it's your fault," is how Burke describes that logic. "But then that usually gets into the land of what, I emphasize, are often-imagined cultural differences: 'It's because of people's culture that X, Y, or Z happens.'"

Burke's description echoes what I've been seeing from certain white classmates on my timeline: clumsily vocalized beliefs that people who live in areas with elevated crime rates and lack of access to supermarkets must not mind it that much, or else they'd work harder to move somewhere nicer-such as my classmate's own neighborhood, for example. If someone believes they've solely earned every success in their life through hard work, considering the advantages that may have greased their path upsets that long-held self belief in their own merits. "In the so-called race of life, if one group begins 50 yards ahead, members of that group are more likely to win," says Bonilla-Silva.

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Individualist thinking also often blames anti-Black violence, such as police brutality, on a villainous person-such as Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd. "In that way of thinking, the bigger problem is the bad actor," Bonilla-Silva says. "And yes, there are bad actors and bad cops. But as a system, racism doesn't depend on bad people to remain in place."

He also asserts that even police violence enacted by Black law enforcement, such as the officers arrested for tasing two Atlanta college students during a May protest, doesn't mean the racial politics of police brutality aren't real. "Systemic racism can be enacted and performed by Black bodies and brown bodies," says Bonilla-Silva.

So how can people move away from color blind thinking?

If you're someone who was raised to "not see color," and you'd like to become actively anti-racist instead, first accept that a major shift in thinking won't happen overnight. One objective is to move away from thinking of racism solely as views and acts committed at the individual level, and instead a system of moving parts. Burke says that ongoing self-examination is crucial, and so is believing others' painful life experiences instead of minimizing them to maintain your comfort. "I still honor this process. Trying to do this self interrogation to really think about how I could do better," says Burke. "And I think we have to listen to the voices of Black folks, other people of color, and other marginalized folks broadly in all of our spaces."

You can also dive into the wealth of great podcasts and books about race in America. (Realizing that I don't read enough work by Black authors has been part of my own recent self-examination.) Resist the urge to ask a Black person in your life to explain things, or worse, expect them to soothe any guilt you may be feeling. I recently heard one anti-racism advocate recommended buddying up with a fellow non-Black friend, keeping a text thread for sharing questions and resources to educate each other.

What if you're already on board with doing the work, but want to win your frustrating Facebook "friends" over? (Ahem.) That typically requires a big time investment, Burke says, with a varying payoff. "When I was on it, I tried to thoughtfully engage in the right moment with the right person, with the right issue to say, 'Let's unpack this a little bit.' And sometimes people would say that that was effective for them. But boy, it takes time."

In other words, you need to have ongoing Facebook conversations, not just one. "There's no perfect post, no one answer. It has to be two people who are really having a conversation. And even then, it's what people do after that conversation that matters."

"Every time that someone says, 'I'm color blind,' you have to tell them, "okay, so you have a racially integrated life? You live in a mixed neighborhood? And then they may say, 'well, my neighborhood is...it's just a regular neighborhood,' says Bonilla-Silva. 'You mean white then, again?' And then they just get totally discombobulated, cannot articulate the word. Yeah. And then you keep pressing yet to show that their colorblindness is just a set of rules-because in truth, their lifestyle is often totally white neighborhoods, friends, and associations."

As for me, I'll continue to pipe up on Facebook, in what I now refer to as "the Hometown Dialogues." But talking with Bonilla-Silva and Burke has made me think my limited free time is best spent on more direct action and self-education instead. After all, I was raised to be color blind too, and discarding that way of thinking means continually engaging with Black people and Black culture in highly imperfect ways. I can't do that part for other white people. I can only help us fumble forward together.

"It's like we can't get out of our own way," Burke says. "It's similar to what Robin D'Angelo has talked about in her book, White Fragility. It all becomes this thing where the comforts and the privileges of white folks get protected-instead of Black lives."

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Being Color Blind Doesn't Make You Not Racist-In Fact, It Can Mean the Opposite

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The idea of a color blind society, while well intentioned, leaves people without the language to discuss race and examine their own bias. Color blindness relies on the concept that race-based differences don't matter, and ignores the realities of systemic racism.

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Ms. Marvel, Another Highly Successful Racially Revised Superhero

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Ms. Marvel, Another Highly Successful Racially Revised Superhero

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Similar to the story of the character Miles Morales' inception, the team at Marvel rewrote the originally white superhero Ms. Marvel to be a person of color and refocused the plot to center around questions of identity and belonging. The new Ms. Marvel is a Pakistani-American girl named Kamala Khan and surprisingly, her Islamic faith and the implications that it has on her daily life are featured heavily. The series is massively successful and has been praised for its authenticity, no doubt in part thanks to the fact that one of the creators of the character Kamala Khan was herself a Pakistani-American woman that grew up in New Jersey like the new Ms. Marvel. There is a TV series for this new iteration of Ms. Marvel in the works and it will be streaming on Disney+ when it is released.

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Real Name

Current Alias

Aliases

Bendy Girl,[1] "best girl,"[2] Bigfoot,[3] Big M,[4] Captain Marvel,[5] Carol Danvers,[5] Destined One,[6] Double M,[7] Giant Girl,[8] Junior,[9] Karina Karuso,[10] Mama Kamala,[11] Marv,[12] MM,[13] Ms. Skepta-Marvel,[14] Mystic Marvel,[15] Peter Parker,[16] SlothBaby,[17] Spider-Man,[18] Sword of Saffa,[6] Shield to a Million Children[6]

Editorial Names

Relatives

Affiliation

Base of Operations

Occupation

Student, adventurer, vigilante

Education

Height

Weight

Origin

Place of Birth

Creators

Kamala Khan aka is a Muslim Pakistani-American teenager from New Jersey. She possess latent Inhuman lineage activated by the Terrigen Bomb. When she was exposed to the Terrigen Mist she became a polymorph with the ability to stretch her body in almost any way imaginable. Kamala was a huge fan of superheroes, especially Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel. She went on to become the newest holder of the Ms. Marvel identity.

Kamala was born in Jersey City, the daughter of Yusuf Khan and Muneeba Khan. Her parents and her older brother, Aamir Khan moved to the United States from Karachi, Pakistan. In kindergarten, Kamala met Nakia Bahadir, who went on to become Kamala's best friend. Like Kamala, Nakia was a practicing Muslim and the daughter of immigrants.

Later, when Kamala was entering the second grade, the Khan family met one of her new classmates, Bruno Carrelli. The teacher, Ms. Bartholomew, told the Khans that Bruno's mother had recently lost custody of Bruno and his younger brother Vick. The Carrelli brothers had been sent to live with their grandparents, immigrants from Italy, and their family had been struggling to make ends meet. They had not been able to pay for Bruno's activities, and young Bruno had become something of a pariah. The Khans offered to pay the boy's fees and sent their daughter to play with him. Though reluctant at first, Kamala and Bruno soon formed a close bond over their shared background coming from immigrant families and their love for the animated TV series Tween Mutant Samurai Turtles.

Kamala found solace with her two best friends, Bruno and Nakia, something she sorely needed. Though proud and respectful of her heritage and faith, Kamala always felt different and was often mocked by her other peers for her nerdy interests and strict parents. In addition to her friendship with Nakia and Bruno, Kamala found escape in her love of video games, social media, fan fiction, and above all, superheroes. She devotedly followed the career of Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel who had recently started going by the nom de guerre Captain Marvel.

Undergoing Terrigenesis

One night, hoping to prove herself to be more than the odd duck, Kamala went against her parents' wishes -- and Bruno's -- to go to a party at the Jersey Waterfront; however, her classmates, particularly Zoe Zimmer and Zoe's boyfriend Josh Richardson, kept teasing and ostracizing her. Miserable, Kamala was on her way home when Jersey City was suddenly blanketed in the Terrigen Mists, and Kamala along with it.

Unconscious in her Terrigen cocoon, Kamala saw an unusual vision of three of her favorite super heroes -- Captain America, Iron Man, and, of course, Captain Marvel. The heroes scolded the girl for her disobedience and asked her what she wanted in life. Kamala mused that she wanted to be more like Captain Marvel, who she described as "beautiful and awesome and butt-kicking and less complicated." When the vision ended and Kamala emerged from her Terrigenesis, she was shocked to find that she had literally been transformed into a younger Carol Danvers in her Ms. Marvel costume.

Taken aback, Kamala struggled to gain control of her new powers. After giving herself some time to calm down, Kamala discovered she was now a polymorph and could change her body into virtually anything. As she ran though the neighborhood, she eventually found herself back at the Waterfront, where she saw a drunk Josh Richardson cause Zoe Zimmer to fall into the river. Instinctively, Kamala changed into Ms. Marvel and rescued Zoe by enlarging her arm to pull Zoe to safety. Needless to say, the residents of Jersey City and the local media were fairly surprised by such a sight, and Kamala fled the scene. Upon returning home, Kamala realized that there was more to being like Carol Danvers than looking like her. As horribly as Zoe had treated her, she was glad and proud that she had rescued her. She wanted to continue that, but it seemed unlikely that would happen, as she was promptly grounded by her parents, who had learned from Bruno that she had stolen away to the party without their permission.

Becoming Ms. Marvel

Eventually her punishment ended and while Bruno was working at the neighborhood convenience store, Circle Q, Kamala went to visit him. There she encountered an armed robbery in progress, and abandoning her desire to reconcile with her friend over the circumstances her grounding, Kamala jumped into action in an attempt to stop the burglar, but was shot in the process.

Kamala's initial rescue attempt failed as she was overpowered by Doyle and his robot spiders, and on her arrival back home was met by her upset parents. Her father cheered her up by reminding her how much she meant to them, "perfect the way she is". Kamala took it to heart and spent the next day with Bruno developing her powers and making a costume. She later went back to successfully rescue Vick from Doyle, but earned the Inventor's wrath for her actions, Kamala swore that she would protect Jersey City from him as Ms. Marvel.

The Inventor

After a few more attacks from the Inventor, Kamala went into the sewers to investigate strange noises, where she finally came face to face with the Inventor. As it would turn out, a scientist named Gregory Knox had tried to clone Thomas Alva Edison, but his pet cockatiel had gotten caught in the crossfire, resulting in a monstrous bird-human hybrid. The creature retained Edison's scientific brilliance, and had been using it to terrorize the city with his robots and create some genetically modified alligators, which he sent to attack Ms. Marvel. Luckily, she was saved by Wolverine, who was looking for a runaway student, Julie Harrison. Together, they defeated the Inventor's alligators. They then defeated the megagator that the Inventor created before getting stuck in a machine trap. After they broke out of the trap the Inventor set for them, they found Julie hooked up to a complex array of wires and realized that her body was being used to power the contraption. She gave them a vague warning that she was not the only child that the Inventor had done this to before slipping into a coma. Wolverine figured out that Kamala was part Inhuman and made a call to Medusa informing her of Kamala, telling Medusa that she was special. Medusa sent Lockjaw to aid Kamala and to keep an eye on her.

Kamala quickly took a shine to Lockjaw and brought him home with her. In the meantime, she began to research Julie Harrison and discovered the last post Julie made on Facehead before she disappeared was geotagged not far from Bayonne. After finding out that Lockjaw could teleport, she got him to transport them to the location, an abandoned power plant. They fought one of the inventor's robots and opened it up to find another teenager inside of it, just like Julie. The kid fell into a coma and they took him to the hospital, unaware that the robot left a tracer on Kamala.

She went to school and was in the middle of class when one of the Inventor's biggest robots came and destroyed half the school in search of Ms. Marvel. Kamala couldn't morph into someone else and tried to hide her face as she fought the monster with the aid of Lockjaw. Kamala succumbed to her injuries because she couldn't heal fast enough. Medusa came and teleported Kamala and Bruno to New Attilan where Vinatos healed Kamala. Kamala was then informed of her Inhuman lineage; this came as a shock to the girl. She then decided to go against the Inventor alone, against the wishes of Medusa and Vinatos. She went with Vick and Lockjaw to the Inventor's lair, intending to rescue that the teenagers there were being forced into the machines as power sources. To her surprise, the children were there of their own free will and didn't want to be rescued.

The Inventor had been preying on the teenagers' feelings of worthlessness and convinced them their only use was to use their bodies to power his machines. Soon the Inventor himself showed up and attacked the group, successfully abducting Lockjaw. Ms. Marvel convinced them that they had worth, and was able to mobilize them to join her as she took the fight to the Inventor. When they finally arrived, the Inventor informed them that he already had captured hundreds of teenagers, including Nakia Bahadir.

The Inventor brought out his biggest robot to defeat Ms. Marvel but she shrank and went inside of it to and took control. The Inventor used an electromagnetic pulse to weaken her elasticity and force her out. Fortunately, the newly-freed teenagers came to her aid and saved Lockjaw, but she was still out-powered. Realizing what she must do, Ms. Marvel called Bruno, He in turn called the police, who arrested the Inventor. Nakia and the other abductees were taken to the hospital, and for the first time, Kamala realized that her normal life was a thing of the past.

Crush on Kamran

After a brief incident with Loki at her school's Valentine's Day dance, a brief trip to Manhattan to join forces with Spider-Man, and saving her school from living cafeteria food with the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Kamala began spending more time in New Attilan to learn more about her Inhuman heritage and powers, though she still lived with her family on Grove Street in Jersey City. This worried Medusa, who knew of Kamala's super-heroic activities and feared for the girl's safety.

That night, Kamala and Kamran snuck out together to admire the city. Kamran explained his powers to Kamala; he could shift between his human form and a body made of glowing blue biokinetic energy, and all of his body's natural energy could then be transferred into some other object, causing it to explode. Kamala found his abilities uncomfortably similar to Kaboom's, but she didn't care. The next day, Kamran offered to drive Kamala to school, despite protests from Aamir and Bruno, the latter of whom secretly harbored feelings for Kamala. Their fears were proved to be well-founded when Kamala realized he had no intention of taking her to Coles Academic High School at all; instead, he was a member of the same organization as Kaboom and had kidnapped Kamala to New Attilan.

Kaboom and Kamran introduced Kamala to the leader of the organization, Lineage. Kamran mocked Kamala, telling her that she had this coming and it was her fault it had happened. Lineage offered Kamala a chance to join his coup, but she resisted and secretly contacted Bruno. While her friend came rushing to New Attilan, Kamala defeated Kaboom and called out Kamran for the manipulative bully she now knew he was. Bruno and Ms. Marvel escaped the city together, and Kamala mused about how fortunate she was to have a friend like Bruno.

Last Days of the Universe

Captain Marvel did her best to assure her namesake that the Incursion was under control and urged Ms. Marvel to hold on to hope and keep doing what she knew was right. Carol offered to aid Kamala in finding and rescuing her brother from Kamran. They tracked him to a warehouse on the waterfront, and the two heroines successfully defeated Kaboom, but by the time they found him, Aamir had already been exposed to the Terrigen Mists. Captain and Ms. Marvel confronted Kamran, and realized that whatever Aamir had been exposed to, it hadn't been Terrigen. When Aamir awoke, he discovered he could create a shield of energy around his body, a change he did not find welcome. He stood up to Kamran for Kamala and affirmed that he was proud of who he was. Aamir tried to use his new powers to stop Kamran, but it instantly caused him to lose consciousness.

Realizing that Aamir's condition was temporary, the heroines rushed to the school and got Aamir to a doctor. Before Captain Marvel had to rejoin the other heroes, she gave the girl a gift -- a pendant featuring Carol's signature Hala star and Kamala's lightning bolt with a built-in GPS locator. Carol also gave Kamala some final words of wisdom; there was no chance of anyone stopping the Incursion, not even for Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The world was definitely going to end, but she encouraged Kamala to hold on to hope and keep fighting. As she flew away, she bid her final farewell to Ms. Marvel and told her she was proud of her. Kamala took it to heart and went to see her mother, and finally brought herself to tell her mother about her secret identity as Ms. Marvel. As it would turn out, Muneeba already knew.

Muneeba praised her daughter for her super-heroic endeavors, proud to know that she had raised a righteous child that sought only to help others. While Aamir recovered, Kamala went to speak with her friends. She cleared the air with Nakia that had been growing tenser since she began living her double life, and even managed to make peace with her bully, Zoe Zimmer. Ultimately, Kamala went to see Bruno, and he finally confessed to Kamala how he felt about her. Kamala also confessed that she had been walling off her true feelings, and told him that she wanted to focus on being Ms. Marvel. She told Bruno that she loved him, but asked him not to wait for her. In that moment, the world finally came to an end.

Joining the Avengers

The Multiverse was eventually restored and Kamala awoke in the reborn Prime Marvel Universe. Kamala continued her life more or less as it had been before, including her role as Ms. Marvel. That being said, there were some notable differences -- thanks to a grant from Stark Industries, the science lab at Coles Academic High School had seen a remarkable improvement, and Zoe Zimmer came to join Kamala's group of friends.

One day, a monster appeared and began tearing up the city. Kamala sprang into action as Ms. Marvel. To her bewilderment, she was joined by another hero close to her age -- Nova. Nova was instantly infatuated with her, but she read his attempts at flirting as rude and out of line when they had a monster to defeat, and was particularly unimpressed with the property damage he caused to her neighbors. Amid the bickering, the teenage heroes eventually defeated the creature by shrinking it into the Microverse. Overcome with her own nerves, Ms. Marvel fled. Nova went after her, and, in a last effort to clear the air, unmasked himself and told her his name was Sam. Still uncomfortable by it all, Ms. Marvel turned down the gesture. The teenagers then awkwardly and bitterly parted ways, both relieved by the fact that it was extremely unlikely that they would ever see one another again.

However, Nova and Ms. Marvel did meet again when they both faced off against the space alien Warbringer at the Liberty Science Center in Liberty State Park. Then, to both of their surprise, Warbringer's presence had alerted a host of other heroes -- Captain America, Iron Man, the Vision, Thor, and the new Spider-Man, who was also approximately Nova and Ms. Marvel's age. Warbringer had come to Earth in search of pieces of an ancient artifact that could do unimaginable damage to the world, and managed to escape from the museum with the second-to-last fragment. The improvised array of heroes tracked Warbringer to the Long Island Sound, and working together, they successfully defeated him. Impressed, Iron Man invited that the group join him as the newest lineup of the Avengers, which Ms. Marvel accepted wholeheartedly.

Hope Yards and Interpersonal Turmoil

Ms. Marvel formed a close bond with her teammates Nova and Spider-Man, and as an Avenger she found herself on many adventures. These ranged from battling Equinox and Mister Gryphon, to joining forces with the Avengers Unity Division in Pleasant Hill, and bonding with Nadia, another teenage super heroine who had just taken on the mantle of the Wasp.

Between all of her super-heroic exploits and rising fame as Ms. Marvel; however, Kamala Khan still had a life to live in Jersey City. In fact, it soon became painfully clear that she had been neglecting her civilian life after a barrage of revelations that the rest of her friends and family had accepted as common knowledge -- Bruno had moved on from Kamala and was now dating a girl named Michaela "Mike" Miller; meanwhile, Aamir had found love with a woman named Tyesha Hillman. What's more, a strange gentrification company, Hope Yards Development/Relocation Association, had emerged and, without her consent or even prior knowledge, had begun using Ms. Marvel's likeness in their advertising campaign. This shocked Kamala and extremely displeased Nakia, who went on to become one of Ms. Marvel's sharpest critics, which would remain a strain on the girls' friendship.

Looking for answers, Ms. Marvel went to the Hope Yards headquarters, and it quickly became apparent that this was no ordinary real estate company; in fact, Hope Yards Development/Relocation Association was a backronym for Hydra, and secretly led by Doctor Faustus. Things grew bleaker when Bruno was abducted and placed under his mind control, although before Bruno was captured, he had given Ms. Marvel a mysterious warning -- Mike had the "key to his heart". So Ms. Marvel found Mike Miller and the pair joined forces against Hydra. Mike had the passkey to the private cloud service to which Bruno synced all his data, including any research about how to stop Hydra from overtaking the city. Ms. Marvel came to recognize that Mike genuinely loved Bruno, and realized she respected Mike's resourcefulness, which proved useful in saving Bruno and the entire city. Though the day was saved, Ms. Marvel's reputation had taken a profound beating. When Mike met her again as Kamala, they remained close friends.

Road to the Second Superhuman Civil War

Ms. Marvel's battles ranged from cleaning up the remnants of Hydra's Hope Yards operation to the Moloids beneath New York City alongside Spider-Man and Nova; meanwhile, on top of it all she had to prepare for Aamir's upcoming marriage to Tyesha. Hoping to solve this "problem of plenty", Kamala convinced Bruno to use the enchanted clay golems Loki had given to the school to create replicas of herself. Unfortunately, a series of factors, including a battle with the Canadian Ninja Syndicate, caused the situation to spiral out of Ms. Marvel's control. Realizing her mistakes, Ms. Marvel contacted other heroes to help her. In doing so, she noticed that there was an unusual amount of tension between her mentors Iron Man and Captain Marvel. Still, she decided that it was a non-issue in the long run and proudly attended Tyesha and Aamir's wedding. Tyesha soon after moved in with her in-laws and she and Kamala formed a bond.

Later, Kamala, Josh, Bruno, and Mike represented Coles Academic High School at a tri-state area science competition. This was especially important to Bruno and Kamala, aware that impressing the judges could very well be their only chance at attending college. Inopportunely; however, the team representing New York was led by none other than Miles Morales, also known as Spider-Man. Things grew tense quickly, especially since Miles was still unaware of his friend Ms. Marvel's secret identity. The pair spent the better half of the competition bickering, and when it seemed as though the judges were going to pick Miles's team's portable electricity upcycling plant over the New Jersey team's gravity-resistant water, Bruno became desperate and revealed an unfinished project of his: a pocket-sized nuclear power generator, which promptly exploded and set Madison Square Garden on fire. This forced Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man into action. They were soon after joined by Nova, who had been training not far from their location at the Avengers Hangar. The three saved the day, but the fair had to be called off. Having deciphered that Kamala Khan and Ms. Marvel were one in the same, Miles sought to make amends with her; meanwhile, the teenagers ruminated how often good guys find themselves fighting one another, and the tragedy that inevitably ensues in the process.

Second Superhuman Civil War

Following the incident at Madison Square Garden, things remained in some semblance of normalcy, give or take a narrow escape from Annihilus, as well as battling a rogue extra-dimensional creature alongside the Avengers, Inhumans, X-Men, and others. Ms. Marvel then attended an after party at Stark Tower where the super hero community was introduced to Ulysses Cain, a new Inhuman with powers of precognition.

Soon after Ulysses received an alarming vision of the Hulk on a violent rampage, despite the fact that Bruce Banner, the Hulk's human form, had apparently been cured of his monstrous alter-ego. It was supposed to be a peaceful volunteer mission to guarantee that Dr. Banner was cured, but things went awry when Hawkeye shot and killed Dr. Banner. Ms. Marvel was shocked and horrified that her fellow heroes would let such a thing happen to an innocent man. Nova and Spider-Man, both of whom who unbeknownst to Kamala harbored feelings for her, stood by her and comforted her.

The next day, Kamala was called into action yet again, but to her surprise it was her friend Josh who was arrested because he was going to blow up their high school. Kamala went to Captain Marvel, certain there must be some mistake, but Carol just told her that everything was working perfectly. Between Dr. Banner's fate and this new development, Ms. Marvel began to question her devotion to Captain Marvel. Kamala then showed up at the Cadets' warehouse to find Zoe and Bruno trying to force the Cadets to release Josh. She calmed everyone down, but later her brother Aamir told her Bruno was going to break Josh out anyway. Ms. Marvel rushed to stop him, but it was too late as the invention to breach the door literally blew up in Bruno's face, severely injuring him.

Bruno ultimately lost the use of his left hand and had to go to physical therapy to relearn how to walk. Kamala was heartbroken, feeling she had failed her friend, her values, and her city. She ordered Becky to cease and desist all activities. This ended up in a physical confrontation between Ms. Marvel and Becky, with Captain Marvel forced to step in. It was clear the issue surrounding Ulysses had increased tensions between Ms. Marvel's two most prominent mentors, Captain Marvel and Iron Man, but Carol stood by her conviction that everything was under control. Frustrated, Ms. Marvel took matters into her own hands, and sought the aid of Hijinx to devise a plan.

Ms. Marvel and Hijinx plotted a fake crime in the junkyard and lured Becky, now calling herself Lockdown, into coming to "stop" them. She and Becky brawled, with the Canadian Ninja Syndicate lending support. Captain Marvel showed up, and Kamala finally told her role model that she could no longer stand with her. Ms. Marvel vowed to protect her city from anything, even if that meant defending it from Captain Marvel. In Carol's eyes, all she could see was that Kamala had betrayed her ethics by joining forces with a criminal. Becky was arrested for her numerous miscarriages of justice, but Kamala had to come to terms with the fact that Carol would likely never forgive her for this. Hoping to find comfort, Kamala rushed to the hospital now that Bruno was on the mend; however, he was too angry with Kamala for what had transpired. He blamed her for his injuries, and these events had caused Bruno to lose all but one of his scholarship opportunities -- a school in the Golden City. Bruno declared in no uncertain terms that he was moving to Wakanda and never wanted to see Kamala again. Devastated, Kamala threw away the pendant Captain Marvel had given her before the incursion.

Still, she fought alongside Iron Man and the other Avengers when it became clear that the issue regarding Ulysses' abilities had divided the entire superhuman community. The battle came to an abrupt halt, however, when Ulysses received another vision of the future. Ms. Marvel was shocked and horrified to see her friend Spider-Man standing on Capitol Hill, having murdered Captain America. Captain Marvel immediately called for Spider-Man's arrest, angering Iron Man's team of heroes. When Captain Marvel was about to follow Spider-Man and Thor, Kamala held her back from going after him. Doctor Strange teleported Iron Man's faction away, and Iron Man instructed Ms. Marvel and Nova to find him. They were accompanied by other heroes close their age, namely Kate Bishop, the time-displaced Cyclops, and Riri Williams. Ms. Marvel and Nova traveled to their friend's home in Brooklyn, where they were discovered by Miles' father, Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately, Miles decided to face destiny head-on and went to Washington, DC, where he was met by Iron Man and Captain Marvel. The two heroes began to brawl over Spider-Man. Ms. Marvel eventually found her friend at his school, Brooklyn Visions Academy, but by then it was too late, and Iron Man was incapacitated.

Forming the Champions

After Spider-Man and Nova quit the Avengers, Kamala also resigned after the Avengers didn't want to help the little people. Together, the three ex-Avengers formed a team called the Champions alongside the new Hulk, the Vision's daughter Vivian ("Viv" for short), and the time-displaced Cyclops. Together, they defeated Pagliacci, stopped Islamic fundamentalists in Sharzhad, freed themselves from the Atlantean Navy, and tried to stop hate crimes in Daly Country caused by Sheriff Studdard. They also participated in the world-wide monster invasion.

The team temporarily broke up following Hydra's conquest of the United States, because Nova, Cyclops, and Kamala were all busy elsewhere. At this time Kamala worked with other Inhumans, fighting to free their kind from internment camps. Meanwhile the remaining three Champions worked with Black Widow, alongside the teenage Falcon, Ironheart, and the new Wasp. After the impostor Steve Rogers was defeated, the Champions reunited. They teamed up with the Avengers to fight the High Evolutionary, only for Viv to sacrifice herself. The team then went on a recruitment drive, bringing in Ironheart, Wasp, Falcon, Patriot, and Red Locust. Riri and Nadia would stay on full time; however, Cyclops quit the team, telling only Kamala in person and leaving her to inform the others.

One day, after Kamala and her friends had just arrived in school, she witnessed Roxxon's Asgardian Dragon wreaking havoc in order to kill the environmentalist, Ailana Kabua. She assembled the Champions and tried to fight it, but Viv went haywire and exploded, destroying Kamala's entire school and gravely injuring some if its students, including Kamala herself who was left in a coma. Because of this tragedy, Senator Geoffrey Patrick passed the Underage Superhuman Welfare Act, or "Kamala's Law" in honour of Kamala. This act outlawed all individuals under the age of 21 from being a superhero, but on a condition to be monitored by an experienced adult superhero.

While things went on, Kamala's friends came to visit her in the hospital. In coma Kamala began dreaming about what had happened to that point, which caused her to finally wake up. Miles was there to comfort her, but she pushed him aside, being outraged that her name was used to outlaw people like her and intended to do things on her own. She eventually sent a message to all young people telling them that the Champions will keep fighting the wrong and wouldn't be deterred. Kamala then held up a meeting between the Champions and other young heroes in a secret location via video where the Champions berated her for speaking in their name without even consulting them. She tried to explain her reasoning, but the meeting was suddenly ambushed by C.R.A.D.L.E., and Kamala witnessed in dismay as her friends tried to escape, while others were sadly apprehended, realizing that someone sold them out.

Kamala is a human with latent Inhuman heritage whose powers were activated by the Terrigen Bomb, causing her to become a polymorph, which grants her the following abilities:

Morphogenetics:[79] Kamala's cells manifest mutable properties due to the fact that she is able to share her mass through time with different versions of herself. On a molecular level, Ms. Marvel time-travels whenever she uses her powers.[80] Kamala can stretch, deform, expand, or compress her entire body or parts thereof into any contiguous shape she can imagine for a variety of uses:

Elongation: Kamala can extend her limbs, torso, or neck to great distances.[22]

Size Alteration: Kamala can adjust her height and stature adding upon her already impressive physical abilities,[citation needed] from shrinking to the size of an action figure,[5] to grow as tall as a building structure.[27][34] With this ability she has also made her body as thin as paper.[35]

Accelerated Healing Factor: Kamala is capable of rapidly healing from injuries such as bullet wounds; however, use of her other powers interrupts the healing process, requiring Kamala to maintain her normal appearance while recovering.[28] Extensive healing also leaves Kamala heavily-fatigued and hungry;[1] although, it appears the more she utilizes her healing ability, the less malleable her cells become, which prevents her from utilizing the full range of her morphogenic abilities.[8]

Appearance Alteration: Kamala possesses the power to alter her physical appearance including her hair and clothing,[23] and could even alter her appearance enough to mimic inanimate objects.[23] Ms. Marvel feared she had lost this ability due to her healing factor reducing the elasticity of her cells,[79] but this power is still present and is used on rare occasions, such as when she impersonated James Rhodes during a conversation with Tony Stark.[81]

Bioluminescence: Kamala's body emits a glowing yellow energy signature when using her morphogenic powers.[5]

Weaknesses

Electromagnetic Pulses: Ms. Marvel's body is vulnerable to EMPs, which can weaken her elasticity.

Overexerted Healing: Overuse of her healing factor temporarily weakens Ms. Marvel's elasticity powers.

Biokinetic Polymer Suit: Invented by Bruno as part of his scholarship application to Rutgers University, when the polymer (or "super snot") is applied to a flexible substance, the substance becomes extremely malleable. The increased elasticity allows Ms. Marvel to focus less on transforming her clothing during her metamorphoses. Unfortunately, the suit is highly susceptible to damage by exposure to water.

Compartment Bracelet: A series of bangles with hollow compartments inside, modified by Bruno into a single bracelet worn on Kamala's left arm to hold her cell phone and other small items. They were originally used by Kamala's great-grandmother Aisha to smuggle money out of Bombay during Partition, and had since been passed down to her daughter and granddaughter, Muneeba.

Locator Pendant: A gift from Captain Marvel during the incursion, this necklace allowed Kamala to signal Carol in an emergency with just the push of a button; however, it was discarded outside of the Jersey City Medical Center as a result of their falling out over the second superhero civil war. It was later rediscovered, but it is unknown if Kamala reclaimed it after repairing her friendship with Carol.

Kamala "totally ships Spider-Marvel", meaning she is a fan of Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Carol Danvers in a possible romantic relationship.

At the time of her first appearance, Kamala was sixteen years old.
However, Kamala was tentatively eighteen years old around the time of Magnificent Ms. Marvel. She was sixteen in her first appearance in Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3) #1. Before and after Secret Wars there is a documented period of eight months respectively. Her brother Aamir married and had a kid named Malik, adding other nine months, who in Magnificent Ms. Marvel #7 was shown to be able to walk, which takes roughly nine to sixteen months for a baby to be able to do.

In Arabic, Kamal means "perfection". Kamala's parents gave her this name because they believed they could not conceive another child.

Kamala is a member of the Forums social media network.

Kamala plays a World of Warcraft-style game called World of Battlecraft where she belongs to a guild known as the Iron Legion.

After briefly switching bodies with him, Peter Parker taught Kamala to use his Web-Shooters and how to web-sling.

Kamala actually has a much darker complexion than most of the Pakistani population due to the fact that prior to the Partition of India in 1947, her family resided in Bombay.

Spider-Man (Miles Morales) doesn't consider Ms. Marvel an enemy; his spider-sense didn't go off when she snuck up on him, despite it often being called a "presence sense."

Kamala becomes a "grinch" at Christmas time, since her family doesn't celebrate it, even though she would like to.

Discover and Discuss

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Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel is a Muslim Pakistani-American teenager from New Jersey.20 She possess latent Inhuman lineage activated by the Terrigen Bomb. When she was exposed to the Terrigen Mist she became a polymorph with the ability to stretch her body in almost any way imaginable.21 Kamala was a huge fan of superheroes, especially Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel.

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The Importance of Black Representation in the Comic Book Landscape

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The Importance of Black Representation in the Comic Book Landscape

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This video talks about the importance of representation in comic books. One of the main reasons is that it gives children of color a person to look up to. I remember, when I was younger and Tiana, the first Black Disney princess came out, one of my Black friends literally cried. I was unable to understand why, but that was because of my privilege. Every single Disney princess looked like me, I could dress up as any of them, but she didn't look like them. For her to finally have someone to relate to and look up to, must have felt amazing. That is why we need more Black representation in superhero franchises, so young Black children have a hero that they can also relate to.

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Manuel Godoy, co-founder, president & author of Black Sands Entertainment, discusses the importance of featuring Black characters in comics, specifically for children of color who may not find those stories in popular comic franchises.

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The Importance of Black Representation in the Comic Book Landscape

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Manuel Godoy, co-founder, president & author of Black Sands Entertainment, discusses the importance of featuring Black characters in comics, specifically for children of color who may not find those stories in popular comic franchises.

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Problematic First Foray of Black Characters into the Comic Book Universe

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Problematic First Foray of Black Characters into the Comic Book Universe

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The first recorded publication of a comic book by a Black team of artists was titled 'All-Negro Comics' and featured both positive depictions of heroic Black protagonists as well as a handful of what would today be considered harmful stereotypes, though notably as the team behind the publication was entirely Black it can be reasonably assumed that they had no malice. The publication was not particularly successful, primarily due to the fact that there was not a very large audience for stories dealing the Black experience at all, let alone in the form of a comic book. The fact that there were no Black voices in comics whatsoever until this publication in 1947 helps to illustrate just how little precedent there is for diversity in comics and how important it is for one to be set.

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All-Negro Comics

All-Negro Comics #1 (June 1947). Cover artist unknown. Clockwise from top left: Lion Man, Snake Oil, Sugarfoot, Bubba, Ace Harlem. Center: The Little Dew Dillies

Publication information

Publisher

All-Negro Comics, Inc.

Format
Anthology

Publication date
1947

No. of issues

1

Main character(s)

Ace Harlem
Lion Man

Creative team

Artist(s)

John Terrell
George J. Evans Jr.

All-Negro Comics, published in 1947, was a single-issue, small-press American comic book that represents the first known comics magazine written and drawn solely by African-American writers and artists.

African-American journalist Orrin Cromwell Evans was "the first black writer to cover general assignments for a mainstream white newspaper in the United States" when he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Record. Evans was a member of the NAACP and a strong proponent of racial equality. After the Record closed in 1947, Evans thought he could use the comic-book medium to further highlight "the splendid history of Negro journalism". Evans partnered with former Record editor Harry T. Saylor, Record sports editor Bill Driscoll, and two others to found the Philadelphia publishing company All-Negro Comics, Inc., with himself as president. In mid-1947, the company published one issue of All-Negro Comics, a 48-page, standard-sized comic book with a typical glossy color cover and newsprint interior. It was copyrighted July 15, 1947, with a June 1947 issue date, and its press run and distribution are unknown. Unlike other comic books of the time, it sold for 15 cents rather than 10 cents.

As writer Tom Christopher described, Evans

...co-created the features in the comic along with the artists, who included his brother, George J. Evans Jr.; two other Philadelphia cartoonists, one of whom was John Terrell, the other named Cooper; and a Baltimore artist who signed his work Cravat. The cartoonists probably wrote their own scripts, and there was further editorial input by Bill Driscoll.

As one cultural historian notes of the era, "[W]hile there were a few heroic images of blacks created by blacks, such as the Jive Gray comic strip and All-Negro Comics, these images did not circulate outside of pre- civil rights segregated black communities."

Evans attempted to publish a second issue but was unable to purchase the newsprint required. One writer believes Evans was blocked from doing so by prejudiced distributors, as well as from competing, white-owned publishers (such as Parents Magazine Press and Fawcett Comics) which began producing their own black-themed titles.

The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, a standard reference, considers the single issue "rare" and notes, "Seldom found in fine or mint condition; many copies have brown pages."

magazine in 1947 called All-Negro Comics "the first to be drawn by Negro artists and peopled entirely by Negro characters." In describing lead feature "Ace Harlem", it said, "The villains were a couple of zoot-suited, jive-talking Negro muggers, whose presence in anyone else's comics might have brought up complaints of racial 'distortion.' Since it was all in the family, Evans thought no Negro readers would mind." The protagonist "Ace Harlem" was an African-American police detective; the characters in the "Lion Man and Bubba" feature were meant to inspire black people's pride in their African heritage.

One-page introductory editorial, "All-Negro Comics: Presenting Another First in Negro History"

"Ace Harlem", a private detective feature drawn by John Terrell

"The Little Dew Dillies", a children's feature starring cherub-like creatures only babies can see and talk to, drawn by Cooper

"Ezekiel's Manhunt", a two-page boy's-adventure text story

"Lion Man and Bubba", starring a college-educated African American sent by the United Nations on a mission to a uranium deposit on Africa's Gold Coast, where he adopted the mischievous orphan Bubba. Drawn by George J. Evans, Jr. (no relation to Caucasian comic-book and comic-strip artist George Evans). One modern-day writer said Lion Man "wore the obligatory leotard costume of the comic hero", though the comic's cover and interior pages depict him in loin cloth.

"Hep Chicks on Parade", spot-illustration gags with highly stylized women wearing exaggerated fashions, signed "Len"

"Lil' Eggie", by Terrell, about henpecked husband Egbert and his wife

"Sugarfoot", a humor feature, drawn by Cravat, starring traveling musicians Sugarfoot and Snake Oil, who try to woo a farmer's daughter. Evans' editorial said the feature's creators hoped "to recapture the almost lost humor of the loveable wandering Negro minstrel of the past."

"Remember - Crime Doesn't Pay, Kids!", a one-page public service announcement and next-issue promo, with Ace Harlem

1. ^ Christopher, Tom (2002). "Orrin C. Evans and the story of All-Negro Comics". TomChristopher.com. Archived from the original on March 7, 2009. Reprinted from Comics Buyer's Guide February 28, 1997, pp. 32, 34, 37-38. Article includes reprinted editorial page "All-Negro Comics: Presenting Another First in Negro History" from All-Negro Comics #1

2. ^ Evans, Orrin C. (June 1947). "'All-Negro Comics': Presenting Another FIRST in Negro History". Foreword to All-Negro Comics #1. Reprinted at Christopher, Tom. "Orrin C. Evans and the Story of All-Negro Comics". TomChristopher.com. Archived from the original on June 15, 2016.

3. ^ "Orrin C. Evans: The First Black Comic Book Publisher". FirstComicsNews.com. February 11, 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-03-06.

4. ^ "The Press: Ace Harlem to the Rescue". . July 14, 1947. Archived from the original on April 24, 2010.

5. ^ Christopher spells the artist's surname "Terrell" throughout, except for one instance in which he spells it "Terrill"

6. Carpenter, Stanford W. "Imagining Just Them, Just Us, or a Just Society: Creating Black Characters for the Justice Society of America Comic Book", Chapter 14 in Agorsah, E. Kofi, and G. Tucker Childs, ^ Africa and the African Diaspora: Cultural Adaptation and Resistance (AuthorHouse, 2005), ISBN 978-1-4208-2760-6

7. ^ Overstreet, Robert M. (2007). "All-Negro Comics". The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. 37. Gemstone Publishing / House of Collectibles. p. 411. ISBN 978-0-375-72108-3.

8. ^ Cripps, Thomas. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era , (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 154. ISBN 978-0-19-507669-1

9. ^ "1st African-American Published Comic - All Negro #1- (1947) Comes to Auction". Metropolis Collectibles Inc. / ComicConnect Corp. press release via BlackRadioNetwork.com. February 2009. Archived from the original on July 2, 2011.

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All-Negro Comics All-Negro Comics #1 (June 1947). Cover artist unknown. Clockwise from top left: Lion Man, Snake Oil, Sugarfoot, Bubba, Ace Harlem. Center: The Little Dew Dillies Publication information Publisher All-Negro Comics, Inc. Format Anthology Publication date 1947 No. of issues 1 Main character(s) Ace HarlemLion Man Creative team Artist(s) John TerrellGeorge J.

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Samandal (السمندل), Lebanese Comic Magazine and Publisher that Specializes in Local Artists

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Samandal (السمندل), Lebanese Comic Magazine and Publisher that Specializes in Local Artists

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Samandal is a non-profit organization based in Beirut that publishes magazines as well as compilations of original comics in Arabic by authors of primarily Lebanese origin. Because the medium has been dominated by Westerners for decades, it is very difficult to find any comics written in Arabic and those that are (including these) are written in the stuffy formal dialect that is difficult for children to understand. Interestingly enough, though, because superhero-style comics are not particularly popular in Arabic-speaking countries, the stigma that comic book artists in America have to deal with is not a factor and they seem to be considered just another art form. All of the comics are different, highly stylized, and more sobered and serious than their American counterparts. The artists that contribute to Samandal definitely have a unique concept of what the form of the comic book is suited to. Worth checking out, even if you don't speak Arabic.

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Samandal Comics - Samandal = comics in arabic + french + english

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When discussing this topic, it may be easy to forget children's books. Our first thought goes towards more adult comics, such as things in the Marvel series, however, books designed for children play and crucial role in the development of racial perception and tolerance. As a child, every book I read had only white children, unless the purpose of the book was to discuss racial acceptance, and this makes sense considering the fact I listed. Animals are more prevalent in children books almost more than every POC combined. Native Americans (listed as American Indians, which we know is not proper or correct) don't even hit 1%. Seeing a lack of other races may make exposure for children uncomfortable, especially if they grow up in predominately white neighborhoods.

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Black Panther Comic Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Black Panther Comic Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote the most recent iteration of the Black Panther comic book series. It is called A Nation Under Our Feet and it has received overwhelmingly favorable reviews, especially by older fans of the series (who, as I understand, are generally difficult to please). The premise of this particular series is that unlike in previous renditions of the hero's home  country of Wakanda, this time around, the nation is deeply threatened by a terrorist organization and there is great fear of collapse. The first book was published in 2016 and it reflects the fears that much of the American public (especially members of marginalized communities) had regarding unrest and state decay. Overall, just a good example of good Black representation in comics. Also worth noting that Ta-Nehisi Coates agreeing to write a comic means good things for the public acceptance of comics and graphic novels as legitimate forms of literature!

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black panther: a nation under our feet vol. 1: a nation under our feet book 1 (black panther (2016-2018))

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comics & graphic novels / superheroes (see also fiction / superheroes)

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comics & graphic novels / superheroes (see also fiction / superheroes)

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Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Vol. 1: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1 (Black Panther (2016-2018))

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Amazon.com: Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Vol. 1: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1 (Black Panther (2016-2018)) eBook: Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Lee, Stan, Stelfreeze, Brian, Stelfreeze, Brian, Stelfreeze, Brian, Kirby, Jack, Coates, Ta-Nehisi: Kindle Store

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Amphibia: The Groundbreaking Disney Show that Exemplifies Asian American Voices

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Amphibia: The Groundbreaking Disney Show that Exemplifies Asian American Voices

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Amphibia was created by Asian American artist, Matt Braly, to reflect his childhood in Bangkok, Thailand. The show is about an Asian American girl, Anne Boonchuy, who finds herself in a land of frogs with no way to get home. She must make friends with the frogs and assimilate into their culture, so she can find her way home to her friends and family. It is an extremely funny and heartfelt show that illustrates easy ways to talk to kids about race. The voice of Anne is Brenda Song, who was one of the few Asian American figures I saw on Disney channel growing up, so it is great she is still in the business teaching children about topics such as race. There is not enough Asian American representation in America, so it is crucial to have shows such as Amphibia to teach children of color that they deserve to be in the spotlight, too.

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Official Trailer 🎥 | Amphibia | Disney Channel

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The Importance of Monica Rambeau in WandaVision

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The Importance of Monica Rambeau in WandaVision

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In Marvel's first MCU T.V. Adaption, we follow an agent of S.W.O.R.D. as she tries to uncover the mystery of Westview, and what Wanda is up to. Monica is a character that has been in Marvel for a really, really long time, and it is nice to see her finally added to the canon universe. However, there is a lot of backlash. People are insulting her actress for not being 'good enough', amongst other reasons, and saying things that are literal micro-aggressions. However, Monica in the comics... has always been black. In this article, her actress discusses the importance of representation in the Superhero world.

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Marvel Studios is kicking up the excitement with every new week of WandaVision, bringing intense action and drama in all seven episodes to date. Even while some episodes haven't been as mind-boggling as others, like Episode 7 from this week, Marvel still manages to leave viewers on the edge of their seats, waiting for what's coming.

In "Episode 7" specifically, Marvel Studios took a dive into tributes to present-day sitcoms like The Office and Modern Family while bringing a couple of major character moments that have been building all season. One of these came with Kathryn Hahn's Agnes unveiling herself to be Agatha Harkness (via a catchy musical number, no less) while Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau pushed through the Hex barrier and pushed herself closer to her superhero status.

Speaking to Parris herself, she recently revealed some telling information about her journey to becoming a full-fledged Marvel hero.

MONICA RAMBEAU TRANSFORMS INTO PHOTON

WandaVision

In a recent interview with Variety, WandaVision star Teyonah Parris spoke on some of her experience playing the adult Monica Rambeau, particularly as she gains superpowers and becomes Photon.

When asked what she knew about Monica's transformation in the comics, Parris revealed that she knew about the character mostly because "fans on Twitter had been fan-casting (her) as Monica Rambeau" even before the release of 2019's Captain Marvel.

"Oh, I knew Monica was a superhero before I even got the role because fans on Twitter had been fan-casting me as Monica Rambeau. This is way pre-"Captain Marvel." So I looked her up, just very casually, like, "Oh she's pretty cool. She'll never see the light of day. Moving on!" So that was really my introduction to her, maybe, like five or six years ago when fans started doing that. So when she showed up in "Captain Marvel" as a young girl, I was like, "Ooo! Okay!" But again, I didn't expect that she would become a full grown woman and character in the MCU. So it was a pleasant surprise to learn that not only would I be able to tell this woman's story, but that the world would be able to see another Black female superhero in the MCU."

While discussing what it means to be a Black female superhero in the MCU, giddy with excitement, Parris spoke about what an honor it is to take on this responsibility. She also spoke on how "it's important for young kids of color to see people that look like them" when watching major productions like those from Marvel Studios.

"Absolutely. It's no secret to any of us that it's not often we get to see Black people in the superhero aspects, but particularly Black women. I would say there's been a disproportionate amount of men to women, and that's in everything in life, if we're honest. So being a Black female superhero is really exciting for me because, especially in this context, being in a show where you're in people's homes, I get the opportunity for people to see this Black woman and to empathize with her, to get to know her. They begin to engage with her humanity. And I think that's so important, and it's important for young kids of color to see people that look like them - young Black girls, young Black boys and just everyone - to be able to have that opportunity to see people that look like them, or not, and to get to know who they are, engage with them. That's really an honor."

PARRIS EMBRACING SUPERHERO RESPONSIBILITY

While Teyonah Parris has had quite the successful career before joining the MCU, she has spoken on numerous occasions about how much it means to her to play one of Marvel's new leading heroes. Along with the pure excitement to join such a successful franchise, it seems as though Parris truly feels blessed to be a woman of color taking on such an important role in the franchise as Phase 4 gets underway.

After 2018's Black Panther set the high standard for African-American-led movies, especially within the MCU, fans have looked forward to the MCU's future as they expand on their diversity within the superhero ranks. This is especially satisfying with Monica coming in the very first Phase 4 project released, particularly knowing that she will continue on and play a key role in 2022's Captain Marvel 2 as well.

As for Parris' comments on knowing Monica Rambeau's journey so well, it's quite refreshing seeing somebody so passionate about the source material taking on this big of a role within the MCU.

After seeing Monica as a young child in Captain Marvel, it was a mystery whether the franchise would have her continue along her journey as an adult and fully become Photon. Now that it's a reality, the MCU fandom and stars are already all-in on Monica's progression, and it will be exciting to see where the Disney+ shows and theatrical movies take her.

"Episode 7" of WandaVision is now available to stream on Disney+.

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teyonah parris speaks on how fortunate she is to bring monica rambeau to life in wandavision.

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WandaVision: Monica Rambeau Actress Addresses Superhero Status & Representation In MCU

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Marvel Studios is kicking up the excitement with every new week of WandaVision, bringing intense action and drama in all seven episodes to date. Even while some episodes haven't been as mind-boggling as others, like Episode 7 from this week, Marvel still manages to leave viewers on the edge of their seats, waiting for what's coming.

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The 'Total Drama' Franchise and Race Portrayal

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The 'Total Drama' Franchise and Race Portrayal

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In addition to just including diverse characters in comics and making them superheroes, as Low suggests, their portrayal is also important because it can either reinforce dangerous racial stereotypes or it can showcase characters in a unique light that assigns them agency and power in a situation where stereotypes would limit them. The Total Drama franchise (a cartoon parody of Survivor) is an example of one that has worked to change over the years, which is an example that comic creators can follow. In the original two seasons of the franchise (Total Drama Island and Action), the character Leshawna is the only Black woman in a cast of almost twenty White competitors with different personalities. Although she becomes one of the most strategic and interesting characters in both seasons, she is characterized almost solely by her temper and sass, as well as her close relationship with her cousin, Leshaniqua. The stereotypes placed on Leshawna lead kids to assume her personality is a generalization of Black women. Seasons later, during a parody of The Amazing Race, they began to include a few different Black women with unique personalities and showed children that, just like the White women of the franchise, a person of one race cannot be defined by a set list of traits. Comics can follow this same example by being mindful of character portrayal and not reducing non-White characters to a few stereotypical traits.

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Even though Spongebob is not a comic, the show includes Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy as superheroes and desirable icons in Bikini Bottom. Almost every other character on the show is either an animal or inanimate object, whether it's a sponge, squirrel, computer, plankton, whale, etc.; but, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are both humanized and racialized as white men, reinforcing the exclusion of minority superheroes that is common in comics. The two white men become idolized and reinforce the same idea to children, assessed in Low's article, that a 'proper' superhero only includes majority groups.

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Before this class, comics were an unfamiliar concept to me. I looked up "diversity in comics" in addition to the article to get an idea of what resources were out there and I found this program that is looking for artists and comic creators who want to create comics including characters with diverse backgrounds. This program would help combat the overwhelming presence of white, male superheroes and main characters that Low describes in the article. I think it's important for there to be an outlet to help popularize inclusive comic narratives and this is a step in the right direction.

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Eight exceptional emerging talents will be given the tools to become publishable creators and, starting in May, each begins on a 12-week online mentoring program led by five established graphic novelists.

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Eight exceptional emerging talents will be given the tools to become publishable creators and, starting in May, each begins on a 12-week online mentoring program led by five established graphic novelists.

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Old Racist Looney Toons Rediscovered by Appalled Younger Generation

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Old Racist Looney Toons Rediscovered by Appalled Younger Generation

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Though no medium can be considered particularly safe from racism, one would generally imagine that lighthearted children's cartoons would be fairly free of racist stereotypes. In the last few years as academics and the former children that once watched Looney Toons have reviewed older animations, they have found that the same companies that produced the cartoons that they enjoyed in their childhoods also put out a considerable volume of explicitly racist and damaging cartoons in the 1930s and 40s. The 'Censored Eleven' are a set of animations that were deemed so offensive that no amount of censorship could render the content acceptable for public viewing and they provide insight into how acceptable and normalized overt racism was until very recently. Artists and authors like Gene Luen Yang are working to saturate their respective fields with racially conscious and inclusive content to displace the unbelievable volume of racist works that currently enjoy fame and success in their place.

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The Censored Eleven is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons originally produced and released by Warner Bros. that were withheld from syndication in the United States by United Artists (UA) since 1968. UA owned the distribution rights to the Associated Artists Productions library at that time, and decided to pull these 11 cartoons from broadcast because the use of ethnic stereotypes in the cartoons, specifically African stereotypes, was deemed too offensive for contemporary audiences. The ban has been continued by UA and the successive owners of the pre-August 1948 Looney Tunes/ Merrie Melodies. Since 1968, these shorts have not been officially broadcast on television and have only been exhibited theatrically by Warner Bros. once (in 2010, see below for more details) since their withdrawal. They have turned up, however, on low-cost VHS and DVD collections.

The cartoon output of Warner Bros. during its most active period even sometimes had censorship problems more complex in some respects than those of features. Unlike feature films, which were routinely censored in the script, the animated shorts were passed upon only when completed, which made the producers exceptionally cautious as to restrictions. In 1983, director Chuck Jones commented on the television censorship of the Warner Bros. cartoons: "I don't like to see the films cut at all. [...] They make some cuts that are so arbitrary and stupid, you can't believe it." Independent stations that once ran the syndicated Warner Bros. cartoons never had the same type of censorship as first-run networks such as ABC and CBS did for the cartoons. Some stations even owned syndication rights to "a few they consider[ed] racially stereotypical", but never ran them.

When Ted Turner obtained the rights to the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library from MGM/ UA Entertainment Co. in 1986, he vowed that he would not distribute or air any cartoons from the Censored Eleven. They were the only cartoons in this package not to be featured in the LaserDisc series The Golden Age of Looney Tunes.

The cartoons in the Censored Eleven are:

Friz Freleng directed the largest number of cartoons on the list with four, followed by Tex Avery with three, and Bob Clampett with only two. Rudolf Ising, like Jones, only has one cartoon on the list. Angel Puss is the only cartoon directed by Jones on the list, as well as the only Looney Tunes cartoon on the list. Hittin' the Trail to Hallelujah Land is the only black-and-white short on the list, and the only cartoon to star Piggy. Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears is the only cartoon on this list not to be produced by Leon Schlesinger. It is also the first to be produced by an uncredited Eddie Selzer. All This and Rabbit Stew is the only Bugs Bunny cartoon on the list. The Isle of Pingo Pongo is also the only Elmer Fudd cartoon on the list. The other eight are one-shot cartoons.

Other censored Looney Tunes shorts

Several more cartoons have been removed from circulation since the list was created, but have not been added to the Censored Eleven list. These include numerous World War II-era cartoons involving the Japanese, such as Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips and Tokio Jokio.

Some cartoons that remain in the release have been heavily edited to remove stereotypical depictions of African Americans, including the Gone With the Wind satire Confederate Honey. is often shorn of a scene in which a blackface Bugs and Elmer sing Camptown Races. Friz Freleng's cartoon September in the Rain features some stereotyped black characters but is not entirely focused on them, so has occasionally reappeared without them. An early Porky Pig cartoon with stereotypical depictions of black people is Porky's Railroad (also 1937).

A number of shorts are rarely shown owing to stereotyping and potentially offensive characterizations of Native Americans. They include The Hardship of Miles Standish (1940), Slightly Daffy (1944), A Feather in His Hare (1948), Nothing But the Tooth (1948), Tom Tom Tomcat (1953), (1960), Hocus Pocus Powwow (1968), and Injun Trouble (1969). The 1946 short is withdrawn from Cartoon Network and Boomerang and is omitted from its app due to the brief sequence showing various male characters suggestively reacts towards a sultry Native stripper.[citation needed ]

As the 20th century came to a close, the Censored Eleven cartoons became better known as several animation historians drew attention to their existence. The publicity these films received from various animation discussion websites eventually led to an article in The New York Times. This is in part due to the advent of the Internet, and the rise of YouTube has brought some of the Censored Eleven to light.

In February 2010, as part of a press release for the first annual TCM Classic Film Festival, it was announced that the Censored Eleven were to receive a special screening sourced from restored 35mm film prints. This special presentation was put together by George Feltenstein, vice president of Warner Bros.' classic film catalog. Film historian Donald Bogle, who has six books published to his credit on the subject of African American stereotypes in film, agreed to host the event for the festival. On April 24, 2010, a total of eight of the Censored Eleven were screened at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood; the three that were not shown at the event were Jungle Jitters, All This and Rabbit Stew and Angel Puss. According to animation historian Jerry Beck, this event was a way for Warner Bros. to test the waters for a potential DVD release of these controversial films, possibly through the Warner Archives collection.

At the New York Comic Con in October 2010, Warner Bros. confirmed that it would be releasing the Censored Eleven completely uncut on DVD through the Warner Archives program sometime in 2011. On December 1, 2010, animation expert Jerry Beck announced on the Shokus Internet Radio call-in talk program Stu's Show that there were plans for a general traditional retail release and not via the Warner Archives. It would be a high-class release featuring all of the Censored Eleven and other rare cartoons restored, with some bonus materials. However, no further news of a DVD release has surfaced since. In 2016, Jerry Beck stated that the transfers had been done, but the DVD release had been delayed indefinitely due to declining sales of previous Looney Tunes Platinum Collection releases. In 2018, according to a user on Shadow and Act who spoke to Beck, the plans to release the cartoons had been scrapped due to changing cultural sensitivities, as well as the poor sales of classic cartoon DVDs.

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The Censored Eleven is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons originally produced and released by Warner Bros. that were withheld from syndication in the United States by United Artists (UA) since 1968.

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The Lovebirds: A Hilarious Action Film to Discuss Race

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The Lovebirds: A Hilarious Action Film to Discuss Race

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The Lovebirds (2020) starring Issa Rae as Leilani and Kumail Nanjiani as Jibran is a film of many genres including romance, action, mystery, social justice, and comedy. The story is about a couple who breaks up, but then hits a person on their way home. The sad part is they wished they had only hit the person because a person posing as a police officer stole their car and killed the man. They were caught in the act by some people passing by and knew that police officers would not believe two people of color. They fled the scene and the entire movie is about how they will solve the mystery themselves while encountering countless struggles that are brought up because of their race. This movie is a perfect starting point to talk about the issue of racism in America. The two make it out safely in the end and find their way in life. The Lovebirds exemplifies the need for more people of color cast as main roles in films. Also, Issae Rae’s novel Awkward Black Girl is a comedic, relatable, and black empowering book that everyone needs to read.

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The Lovebirds: A Hit and Run | Netflix is A Joke

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Sorry to Bother You: A Thrilling Black Empowerment Satire

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Sorry to Bother You: A Thrilling Black Empowerment Satire

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Sorry to Bother You is sadly not a comic, but a film. It still connects greatly to the themes within the readings. Sorry to Bother You (2018) is a satire on living under capitalism in America as a person of color. It is a dark movie that includes several scenes of black trauma, so be aware of that before viewing, but it also shows black empowerment and excellence. The main character, Cassius, finds his way back to the people he loves after being used as a token by white people. This short clip of the film shows the sad truth of how many people of color must force themselves to change to succeed such as using a "white voice." There are scenes that illustrate how uncomfortable talking about race can be as mentioned in Low’s article in the quote “Discussing race and racism as enduring phenomena that affect all facets of American life is a tougher pill for many to swallow” (19), but feelings should never trump lives. Systemic racism kills, so people need to get more comfortable talking about race, and movies like Sorry to Bother You are a great starting point for a discussion on the topic.

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Sorry to Bother You Movie Clip - White Voice (2018) | Movieclips Coming Soon

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This past year, I binged an Amazon Prime show called The Boys. It's about if superheroes existed in contemporary times, but they're all secretly horrible people, owned by a big corporation, and are pawns in the capitalist agenda--ironic coming from Amazon, isn't it. The commentary that it made was super interesting, and kind of difficult to decipher but also extremely important. This article gives a comprehensive review of the social commentary that The Boys was trying to get across. The readings made me think of this show and its commentary, but also it ties into a remimagining of the canon/traditional interpretations of classic ideas or characters: in this case, superheroes.

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Marvel delivers heroes. They may be broken and scarred. They may be damaged and ambivalent. They may even be deft killing machines. But for the most part, Marvel heroes wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that always seems to be the right place. , the new Amazon series based on Garth Ennis and Danrick Robertson's comic book, The Boys offer the antithesis of Marvel or even the darkest sagas from the DC universe.

In The Boys, it seems The Grinch gave out hearts to its heroes, all of whom are selfish, many are vile, all are deeply broken, and the entire enterprise drips of cynicism.

It is hard to decide if the world needs more heroes righting wrongs or a satire on our obsession with fictional heroes in a world where the people who should be heroes clearly are not. The Boys takes the path less traveled.

Given that superheroes are fictional, The Boys ends up being more a commentary on national leadership and capitalism than it does the fictional edifices built on imaginations filled with aspiration, observation, and insight.

The Boys drops into its story during a moment of crisis in the superhero industry headed by Vought, a corporation dedicated to superhero as product. At Vought's helm sits the senior VP of hero management, Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue). Stillwell manipulates everything with the precision of a chess champion until the games starts to look more like Go. Her finely aligned moves end up stretched beyond her own myopic logic with harrowing consequences.

At the core fo this antithesis is an interior antithesis, Starlight, the mostly innocent new superhero. Starlight was raised by a stage mother and thrust into the hero elite (The Seven) with no visible on-boarding. She immediately encounters indignities from peers as she navigates the constraints and expectations of the corporate overlord that makes her mother's misguided love look positively benign. Revelations of truths within truths and a burgeoning relationship with Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) moves her to eventually question the context of her life.

No posh luxuary invites Hughie to find himself. Ealy in the first episode he suffers the loss of his girlfriend at the hands (or feet) of a "supe" ( The Boys negative moniker for superheroes). He starts to break, then shatters. His illusion of superhero greatness explodes as he destroys his collection of posters, figures and exclusives. By accident, and a bit of fate, Hughie finds himself with The Boys, a clandestine faction of ex-this-and-that who cobble themselves together like stray rocks falling into a gravity well. The Boys labor in vengence. Perhaps in justice. Watch and figure out what you want to call it.

Suffice it to say there is a lot of nasty water to go under a lot of decrepit buildings before characters or viewers get any relief from the onslaught of cynicism that wraps The Boys like a cape.

And speaking of capes, Homelander (Anthony Starr) plays the part of superhero's superhero in this play . He was meant to be the best of their best, but he too finds weakness not in fragments of rock from his native home (as Earth is his home), but fragments of deceit that tether him to a belief system that has him flying circles around through show's out of control moral compass.

The Boys draws upon the worst of possible human inclinations. From parents crafting their children in an image that can be sold in pageants, reality television shows and ultimately, to corporations. And the corporations that capitalize on pain and desire, greed and need to maintain their own power. It oozes in the manipulation of science that would make Hitler's Angel of Death, Dr. Mengele smile.

Showrunner Eric Kripke (Supernatural) and producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Preacher) slither between the cracks of the superhero infrastructure and dredge up all the dust and debris, the spilled oil and pools of fictional blood they can find-and they use it all as a magical binding agent to cast a spell over their viewers. It is our world lies just behind the thin veil of photons that inject our eyes with images, our reality that cowers just beyond the reverberation of Dolby 5.1 rumbles.

The Boys offers strong commentary and gritty visuals. It's hard to watch at times, not just for the blook and gore, but for the often too close to reality social insight. Unlike Marvel's Endgame, which left audiences sad but hopeful, The Boys offers little in the way of redemption. Hints in the finale suggest that even those who are loved or saved will still be hurt even after the realization of the pain brought by using great power without responsibility.

Yes, many may look up to superheroes with a little too much reverence for fictional beings. But fresh from San Diego Comic-Con, I find that passion usually fueled by authentic admiration for a character's attributes, or an irreverent, non-threatening play-up of a villain. I had no fear of the Jokers or Penguins, Venoms or Thanoses that strolled around the vendor booths looking for memorabilia that spoke to them. And despite the Disney juggernaut its profit-making ambitions, the films, the filmmakers and the people who inhabit the Marvel costumes do so to tell their version of a morality play. And that those plays explode across galaxies does little to chill their human warmth.

The Boys by contrast brings a cold lens to its subject. It baths viewers in a world that has lost its ambition for good, a world that twists truth to suit narrative-a world that gives in to hate, to bullying, a world that label violence as a solution. A world that places self-interest above all things. The Boys is not a commentary on a superhero culture run amok, but of our general culture that increasingly abandons the ambition to allow regular people to become extraordinary.

The Boys is not a commentary on a superhero culture run amok, but of our general culture that increasingly abandons the ambition to allow regular people to become extraordinary.

About The Boys

Amazon Original Series "The Boys" offers up a dark take on heros that combines celebrity, politics and religion into a volitle mix - the abuse of power pervades.

The Boys include Hughie, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban, "Star Trek"), who recruits him to join in seemingly vigilante justice against the Supes, Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso, "Detroit"), Frenchie (Tomer Capon, "Hostages"), and The Female (Karen Fukuhara, "Suicide Squad").

Simon Pegg ("Mission: Impossible - Fallout") guest stars as Hughie's father.

The Seven Supes include Homelander (Antony Starr, "Banshee"), Starlight (Erin Moriarty, "Captain Fantastic"), Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott, "House of Cards"), A-Train (Jessie T. Usher, "Independence Day: Resurgence"), The Deep (Chace Crawford, "Gossip Girl") and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell, "Supernatural").

The Boys is now available on Amazon Prime Video.

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Review: In The Boys Amazon Unleashes Social Commentary Aimed Not At Supes, But At Us - Best Entertainment Reviews

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Marvel delivers heroes. They may be broken and scarred. They may be damaged and ambivalent. They may even be deft killing machines. But for the most part, Marvel heroes wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that always seems to be the right place.

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An Interesting and Inclusive Take on DC Superheroes

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An Interesting and Inclusive Take on DC Superheroes

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In David Low’s article “Students Contesting “Colormuteness” Through Critical Inquiries into Comics” he discusses the comic Ms. Marvel with three sixth-graders: David, Desiree, and Tyler, and they all mention the lack of people of color in comics. As the three sixth graders continue to talk about this topic, Desiree states, “I’m gonna make different race comic book characters” (Low 25). The artist, Orion Martin, does this with a range of DC superheroes. He changes the story to make race an integrated part of it as stated in Gene Demby’s article “Who Gets to be a Superhero? Race and Identity in Comics” in the quote, “In the new re-imagining, Wolverine, known for "his snarling, predatory aggression" becomes "a stereotype of angry black men.” Martin uses other techniques to include race in his art and it is a great way to reimagine and innovate superheroes.

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The X-Men comic franchise has proven remarkably sturdy in the half-century since its launch. They've spawned dozens of animated series and four major Hollywood films with a fifth due out this summer. A big part of that is due to its central premise - a minority of superpowered humans called mutants are discriminated against by their government and fellow citizens - which has functioned as a sci-fi allegory for everything from the civil rights movement to the AIDS crisis.

"The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants," Chris Claremont, a longtime X-Men writer once said. "So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice."

In many stories, those themes are underlined and circled using language from the real world. The X-Men's leader, Charles Xavier, and Magneto, his nemesis, are on opposite sides of an ideological debate over whether they should try to integrate with humans or not. They're referred to by writers and fans explicitly as analogs to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In the first second X-Men movie, a teenager revealed that he was a mutant to his parents in a scene that was framed as a kind of coming out. ("Have you ever tried...not being a mutant?" his mother asks.)

But an artist named Orion Martin noted that the X-Men comics have skirted around the depiction of the people on the receiving end of much real-life discrimination: the main lineup in the X-Men team has been mostly straight, white dudes. Martin nodded to the work of Neil Shyminsky, an academic who's written about the X-Men's complicated relationship with real-life racism:

[He] argues persuasively that playing out civil rights-related struggles with an all-white cast allows the white male audience of the comics to appropriate the struggles of marginalized peoples ... "While its stated mission is to promote the acceptance of minorities of all kinds, X-Men has not only failed to adequately redress issues of inequality - it actually reinforces inequality."

So Martin decided to reimagine them, recoloring some famous panels so that the main characters are brown - a gimmick that changes the subtext and stakes for the X-people.

In the new re-imagining, Wolverine, known for "his snarling, predatory aggression" becomes "a stereotype of angry black men." My Code Switch teammate Matt Thompson, who didn't have a much previous knowledge of the Emma Frost character, said the contrasting images of the X-Men heroine as black and as white underscored how hypersexualized her portrayal is.

But the remixing also drew attention to the ways that metaphor doesn't work, and some of the other ways race informs comic characterizations and fandom. So we decided to pick the brains of some serious, thoughtful geeks. If you want to read the full unabridged version of our chat, you can find it here. Otherwise, here's the TL;DR synthesis of the discussion:
Race-Bending And Remixing
A theme that came up repeatedly in our conversations was just how often characters are remixed by fans all the time.

Kendra Pettis, who blogs at the popular race and pop culture site Racialicious, says that she's been "race-bending" comic characters in the fan fiction she used to write and when she cosplays. (Pettis is black.)

"When I was starting out in role-playing it helped me identify more with the characters I was writing," Pettis sid. "Jean Grey was easier for me to write as Zoe Saldana than as Famke Janssen. And since there weren't exactly an overwhelming amount of P.O.C. characters to play - I played no fewer than six versions of Synch - race-bending gave me more options if I was looking."

On America Chavez's fan tumblr, she posted pictures of the X-Men mainstay Emma Frost opposite Beyoncé to make the pretty irrefutable point that Beyoncé is essentially Emma Frost. (Or maybe that's backwards.)
Who Gets To Be A Superhero
While fans of color are race-bending comics all the time, there's usually an outcry when that reimagining happens in the official canon or when it happens on the big screen.

The influential comics writer John Byrne notoriously railed against casting the multiracial Jessica Alba as the traditionally blonde, blue-eyed Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four movie:

Personal prejudice: Hispanic and Latino women with blond hair look like hookers to me, no matter how clean or "cute" they are. Somehow those skin tones that look so good with dark, dark hair just don't work for me with lighter shades. Like I said - personal prejudice.

A rumor that Fruitvale Station's Michael B. Jordan might be cast as the Human Torch set many fans' teeth on edge. ("Now is not the time," a writer at the site Comic Book Movie said, arguing that a black Human Torch would "confuse a lot of people.")

"It's the natural result when the industry spends decades prioritizing white male characters - you have white male fans getting twitchy over this sort of casting while accepting white-washing or all-white stories," said Arturo Garcia, the managing editor of Racialicious. (He referenced the novelist Junot Diaz's famous quip that many geeks "will read a book that's one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and [white people] think we're taking over.")

The result is a sense that some demographics in fandom are seen as less authentic and less valuable consumers of geek culture. Paul Dini, one of the architects of DC Comics' wildly successful animated superhero franchises of the last two decades, told Kevin Smith that their recent series, Young Justice, was cancelled not because it didn't have enough viewers, but because too many of those viewers were .

Garcia referenced the novelist Junot Diaz's famous quip that geeks 'will read a book that's one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and [white people] think we're taking over.'

There was a belief among network executives that girls didn't buy as many toys as boys, Dini said. "It's like, 'We don't want the girls because the girls won't buy toys.' ... Boys buy the little spinny tops, they buy the action figures, girls buy princesses, we're not selling princesses.'"

Those calculations about what the audience looks like and should look like almost certainly influence the kind of stories that get told in comics, and which characters get to star in those stories.

"A lot of this has to do with the category of person publishers and filmmakers think of as being familiar [with and] identifying with the characters," Pettis said. "What's the nerd stereotype? The guy who looks like Kevin Smith, or the [brown] girl who's been loyal to the same comic shop for years? There's a worry, subconscious or not, that if white males have no one to identify with that the readership vanishes. No amount of trend-bucking - take Miles Morales, for example - is going to change that."
Minority Themes Can Make Characters Richer
While there are lots of brown superpeople in the fictional universes that these heroes inhabit, they're usually tertiary characters. But their identies open a range of thematic possibilities.

"In the comics, Ra's al Ghul certainly seems shaped by his cultural and ethnic background, but the multifaceted nature of his personality prevents him from being reduced to an easy stereotype," Kanayama said, referring to the Middle Eastern supervillain who has been one of Batman's oldest foes. "He's a father, a leader, a conflicted nemesis/mentor figure, a man who's lived through centuries and seen empires rise and fall."

But Liam Neeson was cast to play him in the blockbuster Batman Begins movie. "All of that could theoretically have been brought out in the movies, and if it had, the studio could have cast a Middle Eastern actor in a role with nuanced, intricate characterization," Kanayama said.

As my Code Switch colleague Matt Thompson noted not long ago, characters of color often bring unintended but fascinating resonances to their stories. He cited George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which came to be seen as subversive critique of 1960s-style American racism:

After Ben - the film's black protagonist, played by Duane Jones - rescues the hapless Barbra from the rampaging horde of zombies, he finds himself trapped on a lot with a group of white folks whose behavior ranges from unhelpful to malevolent. Barbra quickly becomes paralyzed by shock, Tom and Judy get themselves blown up, Karen turns into a zombie and starts munching on folks and then Harry locks Ben out of the house before trying to shoot him. Finally Ben escapes, only to be shot by a white sheriff's deputy. Given the backdrop of 1968, it's hard not to read the movie as a commentary on the trials facing blacks at the time. (Romero has said that the night they finished editing the movie, he heard the news of Martin Luther King's assassination.)

Thereare ways in which mutants of color complicate the mutant-as-minority metaphor, too. There's a moment in the most recent X-Men movie in which Magneto, played by Michael Fassbender, is making his pitch to a group of young mutants, and he makes a fairly on-the-nose allusion to real-life racial discrimination. Almost all the mutants of color and the mutants who are not otherwise obviously human decide to roll with him. The white kids who looked "normal" teamed with Xavier. It was hard to miss the subtext: the people who can't simply "pass" were going to find it harder to be accepted, and so assimilation was a much harder sell. That's a lot of heavy stuff to cram into a scene featuring people in ridiculous leather outfits who can move things with their minds.
How Central Is Race To Characters' Stories

Martin's project meant to explore the implications of race-bending some of the Marvel Universe. So what, if anything, might that fundamentally change about those characters and their stories? Are there white comic characters for whom whiteness might be so central to their stories that they're impervious to race-bending?

Kanayama thought it would be tough to pull off with the comic world's many billionaires - your Batmans and your Iron Mans - because their old-money wealth and privilege might not neatly map onto characters of color.

"The only way I could imagine [Batman] being a person of color would be to remove the element of the Wayne millions and billions and to cast him as a hyper-intelligent, hyper-diligent guy who'd made his way up the socio-economic ladder by himself," she said. "It could work, but it would certainly suck a lot of the power out of almost anything that happens in Wayne Manor - its significance in his stories doesn't come from the fact that that's where Batman lives, but from his family's and ancestors' histories that come with the manor."

But Arturo Garcia, Racialicious' managing editor, didn't think it would be too big a stretch to conjure up a brown Batman. "Set the story in San Diego and you can easily create a [Batman]-like character who's the scion of a rich Tijuana family, learned English as a child, and went to a nice prep school," he said.
Not All Marginalization Is The Same
Some high-profile storylines in the X-Men universe have underlined just how strained the mutant-as-minority metaphor can be. One recurring theme is the requirement that mutants register with the government. But many fans point out that the government does have a security interest in monitoring citizens who can level city blocks by accident. People of color or LGBTQ folks - whose identities are mined for narrative effect in these stories - hardly pose the same societal threat.

In another storyline, a high-profile mutant named Havok - a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes - gives a speech in which he tells the assembled that he doesn't want to be labeled a "mutant." (He refers to it in the comics as the "M word.") He wants to be seen simply as a person. For many readers, it was an assertion that seemed frustratingly tone-deaf:

Even if "mutant" were a slur beyond reclamation, Havok presents no alternative language. The movement away from the terms "negro" and "colored" to identifiers like "African-American" wasn't about rejecting labels. It was about rejecting the labels forced upon you and choosing your own. But when a reporter asks Havok what he wants to be called, he says, "How about Alex?"

The speech leaves us to believe that Havok doesn't want there to be any word that describes his minority identity. He's not saying that he's not just a mutant, but that "mutant" is not among the things he wants to admit to being.

That's not a message of inclusion. That's a message of assimilation. That's a message of erasure.

The comic-hero-as-social-outcast is a cliché at this point. But it allows readers to feel empathy for the main characters. (Because really: who hasn't felt like an outcast at some point?) After Orion Martin explained his artwork, a commenter named Cole Dawson highlighted the ways the mutant metaphor leaves a lot of be desired.

I think the X-Men actually work best as a metaphor for adolescence, in a lot of ways...

The thing is, children really do face oppression in certain ways, so it's not completely ridiculous to link minority status to adolescent status, or adolescent sub-cultures. However, adolescent sub-cultures often glom on to signifiers of other oppressed groups (minorities, the poor) in ways which are fairly unfortunate. And the X-Men have that problem as well.

This is why those explicit Martin Luther King allusions from X-Men writers come with so much baggage. The experiences of different minority or oppressed groups are not neat metaphors for each other. They may resonate with each other but they can't substitute for each other.

The same phenomenon plays out in real-life. People often compare today's civil rights movements with the black civil rights movement, and while there may be similarities and echoes, there are just as many substantial differences. We can look for patterns without drawing equivalences.
If you've read this far, you may as well go and read our whole conversation. And again, we'd like to thank Arturo Garcia, Kendra Pettis, Kelly Kanayama and Alan Yu for talking with us.

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Who Gets To Be A Superhero? Race And Identity In Comics

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast The X-Men comic franchise has proven remarkably sturdy in the half-century since its launch. They've spawned dozens of animated series and four major Hollywood films with a fifth due out this summer.

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A New Age of Diversity in Comics: The Newest DC Superhero, Nubia: Real One

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A New Age of Diversity in Comics: The Newest DC Superhero, Nubia: Real One

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Nubia: Real One is a story about a black girl with extraordinary powers. She is the newest DC superhero as the comic was released yesterday. This comic has already been praised by critics for its authenticity and relatability. This comic shows diversity as it was written by a black author, L.L. McKinney, and drawn by a black artist, Robyn Smith. This comic is on my reading list and I cannot wait to have it in my future classroom. As mentioned in Low’s article and Yang’s speech: stories like Nubia: Real One are so important for students, especially students of color, to read, so they can see people of color as superheroes or leading characters in multiple mediums. Nubia: Real One is a step in the right direction for diversity in comics.

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I'm not even gonna try and approach this in some calm, collected manner, because Nubia would want me to fully embrace the joy I felt when I read this. Nubia Real One is SO good and SO Black, y'all, right down to the way Nubia and her friends talk to each other.

Trying to collect all of my feelings about this new graphic novel from DC is hard because what I really wanna do is lead everyone to the nearest purchase link, tell them to read it, and fangirl for hours about every single detail of this book.

The adorkableness of being a Black teenage girl with a crush. The times in your life where you played matchmaker for your besties because they clearly need to hook up. The moments in the story where my inner art geek delighted in cool shifts in tone, like how Nubia's flashback where she revealed her powers had everything in monotone colors except for her.

The topics that make your heart hurt because they're extremely relatable and you were NOT prepared.

Before I get into everything I wanna start with a huge thank you to writer L. L. McKinney ( A Blade So Black) and artist Robyn Smith (Wash Day and the upcoming The Saddest Angriest Black Girl in Town). As a Black writer who's been told to watch how your characters speak so they can be "understood" (aka: so white readers wouldn't scratch their heads about us) having an entire DC graphic novel with sentences that sound like my community means so much to me. I needed this when I was in college, taking writing classes, and being side-eyed for daring to have my characters drop letters when they speak because I drop my "r's" when I say things like "car" or tell people how I'm finna go to the store.

But it's not just the dialogue that hits me, it's the story itself, and the way that it doesn't try and hold anyone's hand to explain itself. There's no need to explain why there's a Black Trans Lives Matter sign at a protest or go into huge amounts of plot exposition about the animosity between the Black community and the police. It's there because that's how things are, more so than ever after 2020, and there's no moment where the narrative feels the need to give a history lesson or have that annoying knee-jerk reaction to coddle allies while telling this Blackity Black story.

Nubia Real One isn't out here reassuring "good" white folks that they're a-ok, hell, even Wonder Woman herself acknowledges that she will NEVER fully understand what Nubia's going through.

So thank you. Seriously. It's so important to have books like this, ESPECIALLY for Black creatives who I know are waffling on whether or not they can be as Black as they wanna be.

I see you, Black creative wondering whether or not that girl's mama sleeps in a hair bonnet. She does, and that imagery is now in a DC property.

Now let's get into this story.
Spoilers for Nubia Real One.
From the preview images I saw weeks ago and the synopsis, I had an idea of what to expect: Black girl struggling to become the heroine she's meant to be because society has thoughts when it comes to Black women. However, the story wouldn't focus solely on this, and we'd have a balance between Nubia's struggles and her day-to-day life as a teenager with friends who "peer pressure" her into getting out of the house.

I'm delighted to say that this is all true, the story is very much what I thought it was going to be, but there're so many details I wasn't expecting that make it more fulfilling than I ever realized it would be.

Nubia Real One doesn't shy away from the issues that Black girls face, and have always faced, in our society. I expected this. If you're looking for some sort of heroic escapism this book ain't it, but really, that's what makes this story so interesting to me. Sometimes, I do want escapism from the world's nonsense, but other times I'm absolutely in the mood for a story that asks, "How would our society treat a Black girl in the midst of becoming her own kind of Wonder Woman?"

The hard truth to swallow is that folks wouldn't be kind to her, even if they're in need of saving. And really, hero stories have always played with this idea of how ordinary folks would view super-powered beings, how they'd "other" them and have debates on how they should be treated even if all they wanna do is live their lives in peace.

The extra layers we get because of Nubia being a Black girl were enough to make me have to stop and take a breath, because Nubia's main adversaries, when you break it down, are the exact same adversaries Black women have to deal with anyway.

How can we even get to the part where Nubia faces some criminal menace when the very people she wants to protect have it in for her based solely on the fact that she's a Black girl who dares to occupy space? Nubia has to deal with that, first and foremost, because that's something that's gonna get in the way.

Honestly, Nubia is exactly what we're talking about when we say that having a Black character shifts the narrative. The Black experience is gonna be way different in these "hero coming into their own" stories. Sure, the cops might side-eye Wonder Woman, but straight up arresting her because she "fits the description" of some robbers she herself stopped?

It's frustrating. It's heartbreaking. It's absolutely truthful. Nubia can't be that heroine who immediately takes flight because society won't let her, which is why she's told to stay in hiding ... while also encouraged to be herself.

This message right here? Sounds contradictory as hell, but when it's delivered by Nubia's two Black mothers you know it's coming from a level of parental concern that's too painful to describe. It brought me back to conversations with my own mother who constantly applauds my vocalness, but with the increase of Black names trending, footage of their murder shared on social media with zero trigger warnings, she couldn't help but express concern.

And that's just from me being a Black woman, I haven't even touched the fact that I'm a queer woman of color. Nubia does, though, because her mothers are queer Black women, and that intersectionality adds this unspoken extra layer of fear for their child's well-being.

To this day I still remember my mom calling me after the Pulse nightclub shooting and admitting that she worried for my wife and I's safety. We used to travel a lot for work, and while she was happy we were doing a job we loved, she was worried that we could end up in a place where someone would attack us because we have a rainbow flag on the back of our car.

Our mothers are proud of the women we're becoming and how we don't stand for the bullshit, but damn do they wish we didn't HAVE to.

It hits so hard because all of it is clearly calling back to real-life incidents. Whether it touched on my fear of Nubia ending up like Sandra Bland when that cop handcuffed her, the protest of the child who was killed by cops (Tamir Rice was 12), or the fact that the violence that happens in the big protest was purposely incited by an entitled, abusive white boy who was trying to get back at Nubia. This, of course, creates the "protestors cause violence" narrative that we know isn't true, and as someone who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, all I could think of was the George Floyd protests that took place here, how they'd been mostly peaceful, and how others came to purposely incite violence.

And somehow, with all of these topics, Nubia Real One still finds time for friendship, crushes, and Black joy.

I am so in love with Nubia's friend group. Quisha and Jason are such good kids, always there to remind Nubia to get out of her own head. They might be vocal about the need to seek justice for the wrongs against their community, but they're also vocal about how Nubia should totally go to this house party with them before they go their separate ways for the summer. By the way, Nubia, girl, are you really gonna spend your summer WORKING?!

Basically, they have the kind of friendship I remember having with some high school friends where our families just assumed we were gonna be at each other's houses all the time. Even so, those friends always had this annoying habit of identifying a crush and conveniently stepping away so we could be alone, just like Quisha and Jason do. How dare they, lol! Don't leave me alone with my fast beating heart!

And Nubia's crush? Oscar? Short. King. Energy. Nubia might be able to lift an entire ATM over her head, but that doesn't make talking to the guy she likes any easier. He's just as bashful around her, too, so I'm sure if Nubia passed him a note that asked him to check yes or no about going on a date, he'd say yes. I love that, even with everything else going on in Nubia's life, there's still room for her to awkwardly stand in front of her crush and try to make words come out of her mouth. Despite the hardships we face we're more than our struggles.

Yes, society can be an absolute dumpster fire, but there's nothing wrong with having positives to help you navigate through it. Nubia has a solid friend group, a cute boy, and two wonderful mothers who are there to hug her when things aren't going well.

Bottom line? I can't recommend this book enough. This is the kind of thing I'd want to show up in classrooms so Black girls can see a heroine who looks like them, faces the same hurdles as them, addresses the exhaustion of it all, and focuses on the importance of having slushies with friends ... while praying for the ground to swallow you up when your crush smiles at you like that.

(Image: DC Entertainment)
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The Unapologetic Blackness of 'Nubia Real One' | The Mary Sue

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I'm not even gonna try and approach this in some calm, collected manner, because Nubia would want me to fully embrace the joy I felt when I read this. Nubia Real One is SO good and SO Black, y'all, right down to the way Nubia and her friends talk to each other.