Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes

By Adilifu Nama

“A welcome overview of black superheroes and Afrocentric treatments of black-white relations in US superhero comics since the 1960s.” –ImageTexT Journal

Winner, American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation

Super Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented. Adilifu Nama sees the value—and finds new avenues for exploring racial identity—in black superheroes who are often dismissed as sidekicks, imitators of established white heroes, or are accused of having no role outside of blaxploitation film contexts.

Nama examines seminal black comic book superheroes such as Black Panther, Black Lightning, Storm, Luke Cage, Blade, the Falcon, Nubia, and others, some of whom also appear on the small and large screens, as well as how the imaginary black superhero has come to life in the image of President Barack Obama. Super Black explores how black superheroes are a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that express a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity. The book also demonstrates how these figures overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, equality, forgiveness, and ultimately, racial justice.

“A refreshingly nuanced approach . . . Nama complicates the black superhero by also seeing the ways that they put issues of post-colonialism, race, poverty, and identity struggles front and center.” –Rain Taxi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780292742529

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Copyright © 2011 by University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2011

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The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Nama, Adilifu, 1969–

Super black : American pop culture and black superheroes / Adilifu Nama. — 1st ed.

    p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-292-72654-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-292-72674-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-292-73545-3 (e-book)

1. Comic books, strips, etc.—Social aspects—United States. 2. Superheroes. 3. African Americans in literature. 4. African Americans in art. 5. Popular culture—United States. I. Title.

PN6725.N32   2011

700′.452—dc23

2011019004

SUPER BLACK

To my mother Marquetta Suvenia Bivens, the only superhero

I have ever had the privilege of knowing

CONTENTS

COVER

COPYRIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1.   Color Them Black

CHAPTER 2.   Birth of the Cool

CHAPTER 3.   Friends and Lovers

CHAPTER 4.   Attack of the Clones

CHAPTER 5.   For Reel? Black Superheroes Come to Life

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I must thank those who have provided timely advice, steadfast support, and engaged interest during the lengthy and time-consuming process of bringing a book to a conclusion. Thanks go out to Sohail Daulatzai and his brother Yusef for the much-needed, deep discussions about basketball that allowed me to clear my mind for each successive stage of this book. I give much thanks to Casey Kittrell for his humor and professionalism in answering a variety of inquiries and technical riddles. A hearty thank you goes to Victoria Davis for her editorial direction and Laura Griffin for her insightful and clarifying copy-editing. I have to make a special point of recognition for Jim Burr, my sponsoring editor at the University of Texas Press. His commitment, openness, and appreciation of the superhero comic book and film genres were invaluable as the book went from idea, working draft, and final manuscript to done deal. He is a master editorial juggler.

Well-deserved thanks go out to George Huang and his staff over at Comics Factory in Pasadena, California. Sean Jackson pointed me in the right direction, and Kris Zaycher was particularly helpful, with his insights and information that kept me up to date with the mercurial world of comic book characters. In addition, Aaron Johnson and Gene Coty, Jr., facilitated completion of this project with their technical know-how. Lastly, I would be all talk and my ideas a figment of a vivid imagination without my beloved Tamu, Nia, and Nizam. Your cheer, smiles, patience, and reluctant willingness to let me woodshed on the piece made all the difference.

SUPER BLACK

INTRODUCTION

My problem . . . and I’ll speak as a writer now . . . with writing a black character in either the Marvel or DC universe is that he is not a man. He is a symbol.

—DWAYNE McDUFFIE, Comics Journal

Circa 1975, when I was five or six, my father took me to a toy store. I went straight to the section where all the superhero action figures were on display, enclosed in window-boxed packaging. They were eight-inch toys made by the now defunct Mego Corporation. Prior to this moment, superheroes inhabited the television reruns of Filmation’s The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure (1967–1968) and the few comic books I had tucked in the corner of my room. Now I was poised to have a handful of superheroes of my very own and I would be able to dictate the terms, times, and types of superhero adventures I could enjoy. I mentally pleaded with my bladder to stop distracting me long enough to concentrate on prioritizing which superhero figure to choose. I wanted to grab them all right then and there. Since I could not, I examined them all and mentally separated various superhero figures into two groups: my must-haves and my want-to-haves. I made sure to point to the Falcon superhero first, and after he was firmly in my grasp I asked my pops if I could get a few more. His yes gave me the go-ahead to scrutinize several other superhero figures and pick the ones I thought looked best. Aquaman, Captain America, and Spider-Man made the cut. Over time I would later acquire Batman, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the Human Torch, but it was the Falcon that captured my imagination most and cemented my attachment to virtually all things superhero. Why? He was a black man that could fly.

With the Falcon I was able to imagine myself as a superhero, rising above my socioeconomic environment, beating the neighborhood bullies, commanding respect from my male peers, and enjoying approval from all of the pretty girls that made me feel so nervous. I later became captivated by another flying black man, the legendary Dr. J (Julius Erving), a basketball player known for defying gravity and for dunking the basketball right in his opponents’ faces. Although I dutifully tried to imitate the moves I had seen Dr. J perform and dedicated virtually all of my free time to watching, playing, and practicing basketball, I never forgot about the Falcon. The Falcon was my first and my favorite flying black superhero.

The image of a black man gliding through the air, compelling attention, awe, and respect, made a lasting impact on my imagination. The Falcon also operated on a broader social level. The image of the Falcon gliding across an urban skyline symbolized the unprecedented access and upward social mobility many African Americans were experiencing in education and professional positions in the wake of hard-earned antidiscrimination laws and affirmative action. In this sense, black superheroes like the Falcon are not only fantastic representations of our dreams, desires, and idealized projections of our selves, they are also a symbolic extension of America’s shifting political ethos and racial landscape.¹

Even though I am, in the popular parlance of the black barbershop, a grown-ass man, I still enjoy seeing superheroes save the day in comics, films, live-action television shows, cartoons, and video games. My enjoyment of superheroes as a mature adult, however, does not take place without some degree of trepidation. When parents see me gleefully poking around a local comic book store alongside their children, or catch me dragging my wife into the latest superhero film, I often detect their scornful glances that betray feelings ranging from mild annoyance to awkward disdain for what they probably perceive as an adult still stuck in adolescence. Nonetheless, I am not deterred by their embarrassment for me because I know that the imaginative realms and representational schemes that black superheroes occupy in comics, cartoons, television, and film express powerful visuals, compelling narratives, and multiple meanings around a range of racial ideas and beliefs circulating in American culture.

Despite the symbolic significance of black superheroes in American popular culture, the topic remains, for the most part, unexamined. Admittedly, there are a few scholarly studies concerning black superheroes, but they are topical or truncated glimpses of the fascinating racial complexity black superheroes articulate. For example, Fredrik Stromberg’s Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History (2003) includes only a handful of black superheroes alongside a wide-ranging pictorial documentation of black comic figures. Richard Reynolds’s Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology (1992) contains just a few paragraphs about black superheroes and even boasts that black superheroes have very little to offer in the way of ideological meaning.² In contrast, Bradford W. Wright’s definitive text Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (2003) addresses the importance of superhero comic books to American culture and aptly touches on race. Yet Wright’s discussion of black superheroes and their cultural significance is subsumed under broader social themes. Consequently, his analysis flattens distinguishing features between black superheroes and has very little to say about what black superheroes articulate concerning the cultural politics of race and blackness in America.

Even the most definitive text to date on the topic, Jeffrey A. Brown’s Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (2001), devotes scant attention and analysis to the cultural work, symbolism, and sociological significance of the mainstream black superheroes that populate DC and Marvel comics. Instead, Brown invests virtually all his analytic efforts in covering the significance of black comic-book company Milestone Comics, negotiating the fickle terrain of a predominantly white comic-book culture, and discussing how racialized notions of hypermasculinity are a signature feature of black superheroes. As a result, the broad scope and social significance of black superheroes across the Marvel and DC Comics universes and in their television and film incarnations is severely diminished. In addition, the full range of cultural work that black superheroes have performed across several decades is completely ignored. In short, the bulk of analysis concerning black superheroes has come to obvious conclusions, is embarrassingly reductive, and neglects to draw deeper connections across significant cultural dynamics, social trends, and historical events. Most often the topic of blackness in the superhero genre compels discussions over the difficulty white audiences might experience identifying with black superheroes or knee-jerk criticisms that frame the genre as racially biased.³

Certainly, comic books featuring heroes like Tarzan, the beneficent white jungle-savior, presented black characters as stereotypically subservient, primitive, or savage. Moreover, such examples make easy fodder for critique and open up a Pandora’s box of vexing sociopsychological questions about racial projection and reader identification with superhero characters that promote racially insensitive images and ideas. Yet by using these issues as a point of analytical departure, the dynamic and rich source of racial meaning presented in the superhero universes of DC Comics, Marvel Comics, television, and film becomes buried beneath a mound of superficial critiques. Either black superheroes are critiqued as updated racial stereotypes from America’s comic-book past, or they are uncritically affixed to the blaxploitation film craze as negative representations of blackness.⁴ What emerges from such nearsighted analysis is an incomplete description of the fascinating and complex ideological give and take that black superheroes have with American culture. In stark contrast, Super Black calls attention to black superheroes as a fascinating racial phenomenon and a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that expresses a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity.

The superhero archetype is heavily steeped in affirming a division between right and wrong, thus superheroes operate within a moral framework. Moreover, virtually all superheroes are victorious, not because of superior strength or weaponry, but because of moral determination demonstrated by concern for others and notions of justice.⁵ Accordingly, black superheroes are not merely figures that defeat costumed supervillains: they symbolize American racial morality and ethics. They overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, racial equality, racial forgiveness, and, ultimately, racial justice. But black superheroes are not only representative of what is racially right. They are also ripe metaphors for race relations in America, and are often reflective of escalating and declining racial unrest. In this sense, black superheroes in American comic books and, to a lesser extent, in Hollywood films and television are cultural ciphers for accepted wisdom regarding racial justice and the shifting politics of black racial formation in America.

APPROACH

Despite covering a broad body of work and several genres, Super Black does have a limited scope. Accordingly, because enumeration is not analysis, this book does not list or chronicle every black superhero character ever created. Instead Super Black is primarily focused on the black superheroes that populate DC and Marvel comics. This is an obvious and compelling choice, given how DC and Marvel comics have played such a significant and defining role in the construction of the superhero figure and the imprinting of the collective conscious of American society with enduring if not iconic images of numerous superheroes. Undoubtedly, various underground and independent black comic figures could claim credit for offering a varied type of black superhero, but the black superheroes of DC and Marvel comics speak to a broader audience and reach than these alternative outlets, and are the overarching focus of this book.

While the focus of this book—examining signature black representations that populate the superhero universe—is somewhat obvious, my analysis is not so pedestrian. In fact, my book makes a radical break from the authorial-intent approach that is such a prominent part of teasing out what superheroes symbolize, invoke, reflect, and project regarding the historical and cultural import of superheroes in American society. For example, in Comic Book Nation Brad W. Wright states:

while popular culture certainly merits close scrutiny, I believe that there are intellectual pitfalls in analyzing something like comic books too deeply. Therefore, I have confined my reading to meanings that were easily perceived by audiences, clearly intended by producers, or suggestive of broad historical developments and cultural assumptions. There are enough of those meanings to easily fill a book like this without one having to decode anything.⁶

In contrast, Super Black adopts a poststructural approach that is not beholden to the type of authorial intent and intensely surface perceptions that Wright privileges. I view the meaning of any pop-cultural commodity, image, figure, or representation as not being fixed or automatically evident as it first appears. If the meaning of superheroes and the comics, films, and television shows they populate were as evident as Wright suggests, there would be no need for scrutiny or explanation because the subject of analysis would speak for itself. Hence, I reject such a surface and descriptive approach to examining black superheroes. Instead, I have employed a decidedly more interpretative and contextual approach for discussing the cultural work that black superheroes perform in American pop culture.

My approach employs an eclectic synthesis of cultural criticism, historical and cultural contextualization, and a hearty dash of textual analysis intent on yielding information, insights, and connections between text, ideas, and important moments in the cultural history of black superheroes and black racial formation. Most importantly, this book adopts a self-conscious critically celebratory perspective for examining the various expressions of superhero blackness. In other words, the purpose of this book is to reclaim black superheroes from the easily perceived, easily argued, and clichéd assumptions used to examine them that diminish their sociocultural significance and view the cultural work they perform as tired tropes about blackness primarily written by white men. The point is not to uncritically embrace these figures. Rather the mission of my analysis is to steer the discussion away from theoretical dead ends or conversations that lead only in one direction to one conclusion: black superheroes are negative stereotypes. Super Black is a rereading of mainstream black superheroes and the cultural work they have represented across several decades. Accordingly, the following chapters will reveal how these black figures frequently challenged conventional and preconceived notions concerning black racial identity by offering a futuristic and fantastic vision of blackness that transcended and potentially shattered calcified notions of blackness as a racial category and source of cultural meaning.

LAYOUT

Chapter one, Color Them Black, contextualizes the appearance of black superheroes in the broad and sweeping cultural trends of American politics and pop culture during the 1960s and 1970s. The increasing convergence of the popular and the political in American culture is discussed as a significant catalyst for the appearance of black superheroes. In particular, the emergence and popularity of Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams’s Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow comic book series is examined, along with the impact this comic book series had in the way it addressed issues of racial inequality

Reviews for Super Black

[r3dh00d-46076 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Despite some interesting insights about black charcaters within the superhero genre, the book doesn't have a clear argument.