Comics have always been “woke”

By P, aka Helianthus.Ho3

So, here’s the thing:

I’m a nerd in the most traditional sense. I’ve been reading comic books and graphic novels since I was old enough to read, and the memories of taking weekend trips to the local secondhand bookstore to buy back-issue “Amazing Spider-Man” magazines with money scraped together from couch-diving and raking yards will forever live in my head as high points of nostalgia. Naturally, as an adult in my twenties now, I’m pretty much a sucker for anything in mainstream media released by Marvel or DC, good or bad.

(Well, maybe not “Fan4Tastic,” but you know…)

 

As it goes without saying, I recently went to go see Shang-Chi, Marvel’s most recent film, which featured a predominantly Asian/Asian-American cast. And as these things often do, it sparked an interesting conversation about diversity and inclusion

(And no, the premise of the conversation wasn’t, “Why is Awkwafina in almost every predominantly AAPI movie?” though that’s definitely one to bookmark for later).

See, within the past decade or so, comic book movies have achieved mainstream success, and they’ve even infiltrated other areas of pop culture in order to maintain relevance among the casual crowd. As such, comic books themselves have also made a comeback, and with the success of Black Panther, Luke Cage, Wonder Woman, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, as well as speculation that the upcoming Eternals will feature the “first” homosexual relationship in a Marvel film, it seems like the comic book community is starting to see an unprecedented amount of diversity, inclusion, and even politics, right?

Well, no. Not really.

We’ll loop back around to that in a bit, but first, it’s important to address something within the nerd community, especially as it pertains to those who read comic books:

See…we can be a bit toxic sometimes. In the comic book community, there’s a specific category of nerd (predominantly white, male, heterosexual, and likely Incel) that hates the idea of what they’d consider “wokeness” in anything comics-related. 

These fanboys hate “legacy characters” (characters that take up their mentors’ mantles after the originals die or retire), but only when those legacy characters aren’t white or white-passing males. Batman can have four different Robins at various times that all resemble each other, despite not being related by blood, but as soon as Batman takes a Black kid under his wing (see: Duke Thomas), or one of the Robins comes out as bisexual (see: Tim Drake), it’s suddenly a “publicity stunt” performed by comic book writers to push shock value.

(Granted, they didn’t handle Tim’s “coming out” very well at all, but that’s beside the point).

 

And let’s not get started on the “it was too political” conversations around the Black Panther movie. Like…do y’allremember the “Panther vs the Klan” storyline??

These fanboys don’t like when previously obscure side-characters are rebranded as women or people of color, and these fanboys definitely don’t like any storylines that can be politicized. 

The irony of all this, of course, is that comic books have always been “woke.”

Putting aside the historical accuracy of whether the dynamic between Professor X and Magneto was actually intended as an analogy for the contrasting ideals of Dr. King and Malcolm X, titles centered around the X-Men have always dealt with the themes of bigotry, political/systemic oppression, and diversity. They also introduced Storm, major comics’ first Black female superhero, in 1975, and showed her a crazy amount of love (and rightfully so; Storm is a G). 

Black Panther first appeared in “Fantastic Four” comics in 1966 (predating, and likely inspiring the name for the Black Panther Party). In his debut, T’Challa invited Marvel’s First Family to Wakanda, a romanticized example of the technological and economic success African nations may have today, if not for the perpetual exploitation of their human and natural “capital” by European and American powers. Black Panther also put the beatdown on the Four, before spitting game at Susan Storm, but I digress.

The narrative surrounding Wakanda being the most technologically and scientifically advanced nation in the world is even more interesting, considering that the idea came from the heads to two white, Jewish men in the sixties.

More along that subject, it’s important to acknowledge that one of Captain America’s first appearances—during the height of WWII—featured Cap catching Hitler in the jaw with a right cross, staying true to the origin of comic books’ political cartoon origins.

So, with all of that being said, where did the gatekeeping, bitter, and involuntarily celibate fanboy and his misconceptions come from?

Well, in all honesty, there are layers to that answer. 

On one hand, as anybody that watches anything on the CW can attest to, performative “wokeness” does exist in certain spaces. We’ve all worked for companies who wanted a “diverse” body of staff, even as all of the executive members and personnel in upper management were white. We’ve gone to schools that had offices for diversity and inclusion that simply existed for the quota (speaking of education, let’s also acknowledge that Affirmative Action has historically benefitted more poor white people than people of color). We all understand that in many spaces, there is an economic incentive associated with surface-level diversity, even if the people that count the money are still largely homogenous (we’re looking at you, NBA, with all two of your Black owners)..

With that being said, it’s important to draw a line between what’s trendy and what’s always been a part of the culture. The modern comic book media landscape is less about the magazines becoming more “woke,” so much as it’s about the institutions around us becoming more performative in their “wokeness,” which inspires an admittedly fair amount of criticism, which may unfairly permeate into other things, like comic media.

If we really want to get meta, let’s talk about how the ‘90s and early 2000s were way more diverse, and nobody whined about it. Aaliyah played the Queen of the Damned, Cree Summer was in like every other cartoon that was on air at the time (seriously, she and Tara Strong narrated my entire childhood), and LGBTQ representation (of varying levels) was introduced via anime cartoons’ airing on mainstream American channels.

The other layer to this, though, which is perhaps more applicable, is that the media we consume often reflects the values of society around us. Seeing a landscape in which Michael B. Jordan is a serious consideration for the titular character in an upcoming Superman movie (Calvin Ellis, though, not Clark Kent), and Anna Diop plays Starfire in that God-awful Titans adaptation might do things to the psyches of those who have never had to worry about issues of identity or representation before 

(even though Calvin Ellis has always canonically been Black, and Starfire has always canonically been modeled after a Black woman and, uh…orange).

These things are indicative of an impending change in society, not because the source material hasn’t always been present, but because society at large wasn’t ready to bring it into the mainstream until now.

The bottom line is that, once again, the media we consume reflects us. This is especially true for comic book characters, and it always has been. The Static Shock episodes of the early 2000s that dealt with racism and school shootings, the “Static Shock” origin comic that looked strangely familiar, for some reason (I’m from Tuskegee, y’all), the “Invincible Iron Man” issues that dealt with alcoholism, and the numerous “Amazing Spider-Man” issues that showcased bullying and poverty are examples of fantastic characters being used in order to reflect and help us cope with the less-than-fantastic world around us. And if characters with diverse backgrounds and narratives can be used to relate to their audiences more easily (again, as they always have been), then why not?

Also, if you’re upset about Tim Drake being bisexual, then you’re a weirdo, because

1. Duh.

2. Tim is literally nobody’s favorite Robin, and there’s no way you care that much about the character outside of using him as an example of the “SJW Agenda” infiltrating comic books.