Hero Deficit: Comic Books in Decline. Toronto Star, March 18, 2007

[14 of spades]

An article about comics in major media.

 

Hero deficit: Comic books in decline

Mar 18, 2007

by Brad Mackay

http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/193167

 

The superhero comics that kids once knew (and perhaps loved) are in trouble. Notwithstanding Hollywood's recent infatuation with big-budget superhero movies, for much of the past 30 years the monthly comic book adventures of Spider-Man, Batman and their kind have been suffering from shrinking readership and slumping sales.

 

For example, during the heyday of the late 1970s, a bestseller from DC or Marvel Comics, two of the biggest publishers, could expect to sell 300,000 copies. These days a similar title would be fortunate to move more than 50,000.

 

For an industry famous for tales packed full of muscles and melodrama, the situation has prompted an unusual amount of soul searching. The would-be villains are many. Some have blamed the sales slide on cultural upstarts, like video games, manga and the ever-present Internet. Others point to the increased popularity of bookstore-friendly graphic novels, sales of which have recently surpassed traditional comics.

 

But there are those who have begun to ask more complex questions, like how characters that are 40, or even 70, years old can remain relevant in an increasingly diverse society. This raises one of the oldest and most uncomfortable truths about the superhero genre: its surprising dearth of non-white heroes, particularly black ones.

 

Take Marvel Comics, home to such super-powered luminaries as Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine and the Fantastic Four. For more than 40 years, the New York-based company has modelled itself as the more progressive half of a superhero industry dyad, the other half being DC Comics. But on closer inspection, Marvel's catalogue tells a different story. According to their own figures, the Marvel universe contains more than 5,000 characters, yet even a generous count reveals that only 100 or so of these are black – less than two per cent of their fictional population. This pales in comparison to the nearly 14 per cent that the U.S. Census says makes up American society at present (the number is more like 12 if you expand the numbers to include all of North America).

 

The rest of the mainstream industry doesn't fair much better. Of the 300 comics published monthly by Marvel, DC, and a clutch of other companies, only a half-dozen or so titles feature a black hero in a starring role. And according to the industry website Icv2.com, none of these titles – which include the Black Panther, Blade and Spawn – sell well enough to regularly crack the Top 50, which on most months is a realm reserved for an all-star (and all-white) cast of heroes like Spider-Man, Superman and Captain America.

 

Female superheroes, meanwhile, haven't fared much better in the pages of mainstream comics. While there have been many notable super-heroines in comics – including DC's Wonder Woman, who was among the first to debut way back in 1941 – their ranks are far outweighed by the men.

 

But for those working in the estimated $400 million mainstream comic business, the homogeneity of heroes is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

 

Just ask Reginald Hudlin. The writer and director behind such films like House Party and Boomerang and TV shows like Everybody Hates Chris has been frustrated for decades by what he sees as the gross under-representation of black heroes in comics. A comic fan since he was a kid (he owns more than 30,000) and the current writer behind Marvel's Black Panther title, Hudlin is perplexed by how one of the oldest and most "pop" of all popular cultures could remain so whitewashed.

 

"In every other medium, the most successful concept or product is black. Whether it's music, movies, TV shows: out of the top 10, four of them are black," he says from his office at Black Entertainment Television, where he is an executive. "Who are the biggest movie stars? Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy. Only in comics are blacks so under represented. Somehow, in this medium people are so out of touch with popular culture that they don't understand that black culture is popular culture."

 

To understand how this came to be, a brief history lesson is in order. This one starts in the summer of 1938. That's when a fledgling company called National Allied Publications (later to become DC Comics) published the first issue of Action Comics, featuring a rejected newspaper strip about a super-strong bully who could leap "an eighth of a mile." That character was Superman. Co-created by Toronto-born Joe Shuster, he served as a bolt of creative energy in a young medium populated by lacklustre adventure stories.

 

 

 

The success of this ur-superhero spawned a cast of similar DC characters, from Batman and Wonder Woman to the Green Lantern and The Flash. By the 1940s, superhero comics were a certified pop phenomenon, with single issues of Superman selling a million copies and dozens of companies sprouting up to cash in. In this Golden Age, the first black comic book characters mirrored attitudes of the day – simpleminded sidekicks with names like Sunny Boy Sam and Whitewash Jones. One of the companies that emerged during the initial superhero book boom was Timely Comics. It unveiled its first heroes, The Human Torch and The Submariner, in 1939's Marvel Comics No. 1. Timely would eventually take its name from that comic, rebranding itself Marvel Comics in the early 1960s not long before the appearance of another epochal comic title, Fantastic Four No. 1. Written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby, the November 1961 debut of the super-powered team launched a second Silver Age of superhero comics, one in which heroes were flawed, often spending as much time fretting as fighting.

 

From this formula came a series of new superheroes and super anti-heroes, like Spider-Man, the Hulk, Daredevil and Iron Man, who caught on with a new generation looking for a change. But as society continued to progress, comics began to fall into a rut, relying on the same old characters, the majority white, that initially proved so popular.

 

"Comics in the last 30 years have been heavily vested in catering to nostalgia for a fan base," Regina-based cultural historian Jeet Heer said via email. "That is to say, the audience for superhero comics has gotten smaller, older and more intense over the last three decades."

 

As a result, most successful superhero comics continue to have roots in either the Golden Age or the Silver Age. "As it happens, both these time periods were really pre-Civil Rights (or at the very cusp of the civil rights movement), so the comics done in the past didn't really address multicultural or black issues, and the ones being done now that hearken back to the past don't deal with these issues either."

 

In their defence, the mainstream companies have endeavoured to inject a little diversity into their books over the years. Some would argue the results have been less than super. Marvel was the first out of the blocks in the mid-1960s when, inspired by the civil rights movement in the U.S., they unveiled several visible black heroes to their universe. Among the first were Black Panther, the tribal leader of a fictional African country, and Black Goliath, a ghetto-raised scientist who, in a freak lab accident, gains the power to grow by 15 feet.

 

DC didn't really get into the game until the 1970s, when the industry began to take its inspiration from blaxploitation films. Memorably, in 1972 they introduced John Stewart, an architect who becomes an emergency replacement for the Green Lantern of the day, Hal Jordan. By resisting a suggestion to name him Isaiah Washington (a stereotypical slave name), artist Neal Adams struck a blow for diversity at DC.

 

 

Another arrived later that same year, when Marvel introduced Luke Cage (a.k.a. Power Man), the first black superhero to get his own eponymous title. It would also prove to be the longest lasting, running an admirable 125 issues.

 

 

 

The track record of ensuing black superheroes is dominated by disappointment or dismal failure. There were spectacular flops, from DC's multi-racial "Planet DC" line to Spike Lee's best-forgotten "Comics With Spike" line. The mainstream comic industry's pitiable, and even outright embarrassing, track record on diversity comes as no surprise to retailers like Peter Birkemoe.

 

"Everything that these companies do is in complete isolation from true market forces. They are not now, nor have they been for 30 years, part of the mass media," says the co-owner of Toronto's most discerning comic shop, The Beguiling. "Companies run by fans with comics drawn by fans rarely think of catering to anyone but themselves, which unfortunately means comics aimed primarily at adult men who still want to read comics featuring characters suited to children's entertainment."

 

If they're truly unable to recruit younger readers, superhero comics are destined to whither and possibly die within a generation or two. It is entirely possible that our grandchildren will know of Spider-Man or Batman only through other iterations, like Hollywood, cartoons, or video games.

 

Leopold Campbell, a 34-year-old vice-principal and die-hard superhero fan, has an easy solution: write better stories. Campbell, who has been reading comics since he was "a working-class black kid" in Toronto, says comic fans of all colours get hooked on them for one reason, the addictive nature of serialized storylines – many of which involve complex plots and take years to resolve.

 

Most black comics, on the other hand, "are insulting to the intelligence," he says. "The problem is, black characters always have to be protest characters... They're always arguing about something or they're always angry, and it always has to do with race. So they're fixed within one specific subject."

 

The worst recent example of this was Steel, a 1994 Superman spin-off that featured a black engineer-turned-superhero. "The stories were insulting. [Here's] this guy that's supposed to be highly intelligent and makes weapons for the military, and he's fighting people in the ghetto. It just made no sense." This is especially frustrating for Campbell who runs a book club for boys (many of whom are black) at Toronto's Fisherville Junior High School.

 

"The black students are very much intrigued by the black characters, they want the black heroes. They feel a sense pride and they relate to them... but it's the story that will keep them coming back, and often the problem is the stories aren't great. They'd rather go out and buy a hip-hop CD than go buy a bunch of comics."

 

If anyone is going to take the black superhero out of the ghetto, it just might be Marvel's executive editor, Axel Alonso.

 

A veteran of Marvel and DC, Alonso has championed controversial projects, including a 2003 miniseries that re-imagined the 1950s western hero Rawhide Kid as a leather-clad gay cowboy, and the 2004 series Truth: Red, White and Black. It recounted the untold story of the first Captain America, an African American who endured brutal tests that echoed the real-life Tuskegee syphilis experiments that were conducted starting in the 1930s on a group of American men who were black and poor.

 

 

Both series were praised by many outside of the comic industry, yet Marvel weathered intense – and often racially charged – criticism from fans.

 

 

 

"The comic book industry is a little bit like the music industry before hip-hop," Alonso says. "When hip-hop broke, it was embraced almost 100 per cent by a black and Latino audience, and it took quite a while for it to get the inroads that it did to a white audience. There were some quantum leaps in the music industry as hip-hop found its footing and arguably supplanted rock as the cultural mainstream. Within comics we haven't had that kind of thing yet."

 

To help get there, in 2005 Marvel mounted a high-profile launch of a title starring their marquee black hero, the Black Panther. The series debuted in February – Black History Month – and landed at the No. 27 spot on the monthly bestseller list (above the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man).

 

But in the two years since, sales have dropped 50 per cent and Hudlin has been the target of venomous criticism. One early scene that depicted Black Panther beating Captain America in a fight provoked online critics to accuse him of "shameless race-card playing" and "promoting an exaggerated super Negro."

 

It got so bad last fall that the website Comic Book Resources temporarily suspended all discussion of the comic on its message boards, citing an "unacceptable level of vitriol."

 

"I won't lie," says Alonso. "This is a title that we need to fight to keep alive. I mean, I've yet to see a writer take more hits from the right people than Reggie."

 

He adds that Marvel is committed to keeping the book alive, even if it means ignoring low sales figures.

 

"If we can't have the Black Panther as a major player in the Marvel Universe then we're not doing our job. This isn't affirmative action – it's just the facts. This is a character that we feel has legs, and if it takes an extra commitment to making that be the case, then so be it."

 

Last summer DC Comics unveiled its own diversification gambit that it hopes will win over fans, however calls to DC comics publisher Paul Levitz, seeking further comment were not returned by press time. As part of a larger shake-up of its fictional universe, DC introduced radical reboots of some of its stock superheroes, including an African American version of Firestorm, a Hispanic Blue Beetle, and a new Batwoman, resurrected as a gay socialite. It's not much, but if it convinces even a few kids to put down their PSP or step away from their computer long enough to get lost in a good, old-fashioned, four-colour power fantasy then there may be hope for superhero comics after all.

 

"I like to think," says Alonso, "that there'll always be a place in our universe where a kid can look and see reflected in the mirror an idealized form of themselves."

[Hawkman]

not only are more black characters needed, but more native american, asian, hispanic, etc. and less women who are rail thin with double D's. there needs to be more diversity but also more realism. this isn't going to solve the problem, since the truth is that video games, internet, phones, etc DO take away from comics readership, and have a far bigger affect.

 

another nice thing would be more WRITERS of color writing about characters who are the same race as them. not to say that white guys writing black panther stories doesn't work, but imagine a great african writer (or at least african american) writing some stories or a graphic novel.

[Foolkiller]

The article starts out one way, and then focusses itslef on the black super hero shortage.

 

To show out of touch I am, I didn't even know (or care) black panther beat captain america. Of course my response to that bit of news is, who gives a krap? Didn't the title hero usually win in his own book? Apparently that spawned a lot of criticism.

 

The truth is, whoever commented make a black super hero who isn't focussed on race first in his stories with tired themes is right.

[BLAM_BLAM_BLAM-migration]

Forgot to mention DC Comics Milestone imprint of the early nineties.

Blood Syndicate, Hardware, Icon, Shadow Cabinet, Static, and Xombi.

[14 of spades]

The article starts out one way, and then focusses itslef on the black super hero shortage.

 

agreed. the title of the thread should be something like:

 

Black Hero Deficit. The Cause for the Decline of the Comic Book?

 

i think it's an article that address well, (1) the issue of black non-representation in comics. it also makes an attempt to show that (2) the non-representation is a cause (the cause) for comic's decreasing popularity.

 

however, i just don't buy argument #2. while poor minority representation IS a factor, i don't agree that it is the major player. there are other greater economic forces at work.

[drsone]

This will probably be long...

 

This article starts off promising then suddenly takes an extreme left turn from logic and straight into politically correct propaganda. Does anyone here really believe the decline of comic book sales is based on the lack of black superheroes? Where are the Asian, Arabic, Jewish, South American, European, etc characters? Does the fact that there are a handful of them count also or no?

 

Maybe I'm way off base here, but doesn't a title/character tend to sell based on the presence, origin, values, and writing of said character? When I go to see a movie, read a book, watch a tv show, listen to music I don't say to myself "Hmm, what skin color does this actor, director, writer, musician have?". I enjoy it based on the excellence of the art form I'm experiencing.

 

This may have been the case in the past, I don't know, but I'm fairly sure that the modern staff and management at Marvel and DC is not trying to keep black characters out of books.

 

Maybe I don't understand this kind of article cause I went to high school in an interesting sort of in-between time, the late 80s/early 90s.

 

I hung out with kids of every color and background. I liked Slayer and I also liked Tribe Called Quest. I skateboarded with black and white kids, I played basketball with black and white kids, I was in a punk band with black kids, I was the dj in a hip hop group with white kids, I dated Kelli whose favorite music was Guns N Roses, and Kristin whose favorite music was Digital Underground, guess their skin color?

 

This whole political correct thing is just absolutely ludicrous to me.

 

Are their racist people? Of course. Are they in the majority? Not in my generation.

 

The fall of comic sales probably has many factors, the biggest being technology. Not lack of a characters with a specific skin color.

 

My rambling two cents.

[Hawkman]

color does factor in somewhat, because many of the friends i grew up with would complain that none of the comic book characters looked liked them, i.e. there as no one to relate to (and for reference sake, i grew up in the hood). my grandfather would take me to the reservation (he was half white, half blackfoot) and i'd get the same thing "are there any native american heroes?"

 

so while this isn't the biggest factor contributing to comic decline by far, it does have an affect.

[codfish]

So the reason comics don't sell is because they are not multicultural? Whatever. There are WAAAAAAAAAAY more reasons for the decline of print runs than multiculturalism.

 

I don't care what colour a comic character is I just care that they are written well that they have something I can relate to. Could there be more race representation? Sure, but comics is not the only place race is not represented very well. Is it what is killing comics? No.

 

Frankly I am mystified that this article was even published since the reporter clearly has no factual evidence to substantiate his claims. Then again isn't The Star one step away from a gossip rag?

[drsone]

color does factor in somewhat, because many of the friends i grew up with would complain that none of the comic book characters looked liked them, i.e. there as no one to relate to (and for reference sake, i grew up in the hood). my grandfather would take me to the reservation (he was half white, half blackfoot) and i'd get the same thing "are there any native american heroes?"

 

so while this isn't the biggest factor contributing to comic decline by far, it does have an affect.

 

That may be a valid point of view that I can't truly know and understand.

 

One thing to me is couldn't Spider-Man, Superman, Batman etc have been black? Would it change anything? Not to me, but maybe it would change things for a young black kid, or to apply the whole thing across the board, an Asian Superhero to an Asian kid, an Arabic Superhero to an Arabic kid etc

 

In my personal opnion I've always found with the exception of the Black Panther, that the superheroes who were black weren't as amazing and timeless as say a Spider-Man or a Batman. The fault is not in their skin color, it's in their character, story, background, personality, and the writing. If someone writes and creates a great character, it's a great character, everything else is secondary.

 

I've never really thought about this, but McFarlane writing Spawn as a black man instead of white may have had a big impact that I never realized.

[14 of spades]

the more i think about it, the more absurd his theory seems.

 

it is one thing to write an article about minority under-representation in comics.

 

it is completely another to claim that the under-representation is the cause of fallen readership these last 30 years.

 

i'm not trying to be "insensitive" to the lack of minorities in comics, but he took a catch-phrase title then proceeded to step onto his soapbox to present a civil-rights argument.

 

if he was pro-women's rights, he could have easily argued that the lack of women in comics has led to its downfall.

 

this is not an example of responsible journalism.

[Hawkman]

even though i'm only slightly native american, growing up within an atmosphere of native culture and having spent time on a reservation, i have always had a natural affinity to characters like echo, thunderbird, and warpath, etc. simply because they reminded me of the people i grew up admiring (even if only because they were native american). i think it's hard to see it from a white perspective, but at the same time, i cant stress that this article does put the emphasis of declining sales primarily on lack of diversity. that approach just doesn't compute. obviously, the title should be re written.

[juggernaut]

I was once going to write about this topic and then I decided not to do it. I guess it is time to talk about it!!

 

I agree with the article but I wished they didn't focus so much on black characters but multi-cultural charcters instead. I have been saying this for a long time that modern comics do not relate to children and youth today. They want to see heros from their own culture. This gives children a sense of pride and ownership to what they are reading. As a result, it will make them come back for more!!

[drsone]

Growing up my hero was my father. He taught me so much, he had so much integrity, he loved people and treated the garbage man with the same amount of respect he would give to a doctor. The most important hero in a young person's life should hopefully be someone in their family.

 

Having said that, my "fantasy" heroes when i was a kid were the samurai first and foremost. I used to watch old Kurosawa flicks with my dad on the weekends amongst others and I really indentified with them. That's what I respected and wanted to be. I also found the same thing in Lt. Worf on Star Trek the Next Generation. Maybe that's why I like Usagi yojimbo so much.

 

I also liked Spider-Man, Superman and the Lord of the Rings. My main comic was GI joe at that time. Watched the cartoon every day (we had Mon-Fri reruns) and my favorite characters were Snake Eyes (obv), Spirit, Roadblock and Scarlet.

 

I found (and still do find) native american and japanese culture amazing and totally in line with how I felt. (Klingon too if were counting that.) None of those characters had my skin color, but I related to them, admired them and wanted to be like them. I have a hard time understanding how a kid of any other skin color or culture couldn't find a hero he admired. I do understand how it would be a big deal if they were more mainstream; like you could point to one success that everyone knew about and go "That's me, that's who i am, what I'm about and where I'm from.".

[juggernaut]

even though i'm only slightly native american, growing up within an atmosphere of native culture and having spent time on a reservation, i have always had a natural affinity to characters like echo, thunderbird, and warpath, etc. simply because they reminded me of the people i grew up admiring (even if only because they were native american). i think it's hard to see it from a white perspective, but at the same time, i cant stress that this article does put the emphasis of declining sales primarily on lack of diversity. that approach just doesn't compute. obviously, the title should be re written .

 

I will be the first one to say that the decline of comics has a lot to do with the lack of diversity!! I work with children and youth, and everytime a show them a comic book they ask where is the black, hispanic and asian characters!! And everytime I have give them some lame excuse!!

[drsone]

even though i'm only slightly native american, growing up within an atmosphere of native culture and having spent time on a reservation, i have always had a natural affinity to characters like echo, thunderbird, and warpath, etc. simply because they reminded me of the people i grew up admiring (even if only because they were native american). i think it's hard to see it from a white perspective, but at the same time, i cant stress that this article does put the emphasis of declining sales primarily on lack of diversity. that approach just doesn't compute. obviously, the title should be re written .

 

I will be the first one to say that the decline of comics has a lot to do with the lack of diversity!! I work with children and youth, and everytime a show them a comic book they ask where is the black, hispanic and asian characters!! And everytime I have give them some lame excuse!!

 

I'm not up on modern comics, but wouldn't a comic based on the tv show Heroes be perfect? If there isn't a comic of that show yet, there should be, it would certainly be profitable.

(I loooooove that show btw. If only most comics were that good.)

[juggernaut]

even though i'm only slightly native american, growing up within an atmosphere of native culture and having spent time on a reservation, i have always had a natural affinity to characters like echo, thunderbird, and warpath, etc. simply because they reminded me of the people i grew up admiring (even if only because they were native american). i think it's hard to see it from a white perspective, but at the same time, i cant stress that this article does put the emphasis of declining sales primarily on lack of diversity. that approach just doesn't compute. obviously, the title should be re written .

 

I will be the first one to say that the decline of comics has a lot to do with the lack of diversity!! I work with children and youth, and everytime a show them a comic book they ask where is the black, hispanic and asian characters!! And everytime I have give them some lame excuse!!

 

I'm not up on modern comics, but wouldn't a comic based on the tv show Heroes be perfect? If there isn't a comic of that show yet, there should be, it would certainly be profitable.

(I loooooove that show btw. If only most comics were that good.)

 

[Davenport]

What a bunch of hogwash. It just reads like Axel Alonso is po'd because hip-hop influences haven't overtaken superhero comics like it has other youth culture media.

 

If I had to guess at the decline factors for superhero comics I'd go with price, poor craftsmanship, and the distribution monopoly. If kids can't afford the price they're not going to buy. And even if comics were priced right and well written, kids won't buy if they're not readily available where they usually shop for other things.

[drsone]

You know, now that I really think about it (and I guess i never really have as far as comics were concerned) why are none of the X-Men minorities? Wouldn't that have driven the actual point of what the X-Men were about home? They can be mutants but they all are white; where are the latinos, where are the asians...

Now that I think about I can't think of one black X-Man (Storm aside)...

 

Now that I think about it of all the X-Men comics I ever read I can't think of any minority character (Aside from Thunderbird for a few issues) except for when they switched Psylocke from British to Asian (What the hell was that about anyways?) until Bishop was introduced, and I had become too old and too "cool" to read comics by that point anyways.

 

I, as a 29 year old white male, who has had many friends, girlfriends, and business associates who don't share my skin color, and I never saw the difference, am starting to see what you are talking about just a wee bit concerning comics.

 

That was probably the worst run-on sentence ever

[drsone]

Sorry i keep posting here so much, just been thinking alot, will be my last post for the evening.

 

Comics haven't caught up. Heck, Star trek had the formula correct decades ago. If you watch any Star Trek show from any era, there are people of all races and backgrounds working together and none of them are blatently the "Black Guy" or the "Asian Guy" they are simply all crew members and interesting characters who all get interesting episdoes written around them as people at some point.

 

Switching to film, I didn't grow up in the 70s but two of my favorite movies from that decade were The Omega Man and Dawn of the Dead which had multi-cultural characters who were treated as equals to the point were you don't think a thing about race.

 

We have reached a point now in film and literature where all races are equals imo, but comics may be lagging behind I guess.

 

I'm no fan of quotas or political correctness, but it does make me wonder how i have so many characters that I love who are minorities just from genre type films the past 30 years, and I can't really think of any comic character from the last 30 years who is a minority aside from counting the tv show, Heroes.

 

Good night all.

[14 of spades]

i'm not trying to back-track on my posts earlier, but i definitely agree comics have lagged behind general media in terms of getting up to speed, ethnically.

 

that said, i don't agree with this issue being the primary reason why comics have lost readership over the last 30 years.