Notwithstanding the avant-garde version of the Mosaic John Stewart, his character is also significant in a very traditional sense. Stewart affirms the Green Lantern mythos. In the DC Comics universe, the Green Lantern Corp exists as an intergalactic force comprised of various types of life forms that patrol and protect various sectors of the cosmos. They are governed by a group of diminutive old men with white hair called the Guardians of the Universe. Most importantly, various Green Lanterns of humanoid and alien forms all work together to serve the general good of all living beings under their overarching organization. In this sense, the Green Lantern Corps offers a model for how racial and ethnic diversity should function in America. Admittedly the type of utopian diversity signaled in the Green Lantern Corps is not completely unique. Most notably the original Star Trek television series, along with subsequent television and film spin-offs, pioneered the type of science fiction multi-species and racial unity suggested in the Green Lantern comic books.26 Similarly, the interspecies makeup of the Green Lantern Corps symbolized a utopian form of cultural pluralism. Yet the intergalactic morality and multi-species membership suggested by the Green Lantern Corps is fully realized in terms of race and is anchored in the real world with the inclusion of a black man in their ranks. In this manner, Stewart’s racial symbolism has remained fairly stable since his mid-1980s manifestation, and the character basically articulates an integrationist, albeit culturally pluralistic, ethos.
The aggressive and strident Black Power identity politics Stewart originally symbolized and the contemplative racial existentialism he embodied in Mosaic have faded into relative obscurity. But the John Stewart character of the comics and animation series has become one of the most traditional and successful symbols of racial diversity, and can be considered a mainstream superhero. A testament to Stewart’s foothold in the mainstream is the fact that several different versions of his toy action figure were made, a difficult test for any black superhero. Nonetheless, the white Green Lantern has mounted a definitive comeback.27 Not only has Hal Jordan regained his power ring in the comic book universe, but a film adaptation of Green Lantern looms on the horizon, which is sure to establish the original white character as the definitive emerald knight.
John Stewart and, to a lesser extent, Black Lightning owe their emergence to the narrative gamble that the Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow title represented. Unfortunately, they were not paired to take on various social issues like their predecessors. Instead, they symbolically engaged broader racial issues on their own. But imagine if John Stewart and Jefferson Pierce had teamed up like O’Neil and Adams’s Green Lantern and Green Arrow of the early 1970s. Stewart and Pierce together in one comic book would read like a superhero version of Chester Himes’s Harlem detective duo Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. John Stewart would symbolize black integration into the mainstream, and his Black Lightning peer would take a more strident position about American race relations, in line with a black nationalistic set of cultural and political talking points. Stewart and Pierce would traverse the American urban landscape fighting bad guys, engaging in deep discussions about the black community, commenting about discrimination in their civilian identity, and arguing over their tastes in music, women, and sports.
Despite existing in separate realms, when John Stewart and Black Lightning are contrasted, a very striking picture still emerges concerning what they communicate about race. Both the black Green Lantern and the campy Black Lightning of the late 1970s were symbolic signposts that respectively masked continuing racial anxieties born of Black Power and affirmative action. In the end, however, John Stewart, the African American Green Lantern, moved significantly away from the overt racial symbolism that Black Lightning continues to articulate. The narrative arc of the former easily dovetails with a post-civil rights sensibility, or possibly a post-racial sensibility, despite that label being carelessly bantered about in the America of today. To the character’s credit, however, the racial transcendence, ascension, and acceptance of John Stewart as a formidable Green Lantern symbolically suggest a desire for the destruction of rigid notions of racial hierarchies in American society. Paradoxically, in the DC Comics universe, such racial transcendence only appeared viable in the far reaches of other galaxies, a setting John Stewart is constantly navigating as a member of the Green Lantern Corps. I suspect, however, if O’Neil and Adams had their way, he would be headed back home to Earth in a hurry.
NOTES
1. Gina Philogene, ed. Racial Identity in Context: The Legacy of Kenneth B. Clark (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004).
2. See William H. Foster III, Looking for a Face Like Mine (Waterbury, CT: Fine Tooth Press, 2005); Jeffrey Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 3–4; and see Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Paladin, 1970), 145–146, for a severe appraisal of the power that comics and film have to promote and inculcate the audience as to the appropriateness of white racial supremacy as a mode of social organization. In his psychoanalytical manifesto on race, Fanon mentions how the superhero figure of Tarzan the Ape Man and various comics function to reinforce real racial hierarchies in the world in which whites repetitively imagine victory over the forces of evil, often represented by blacks and other racial minorities.
3. See Bart Beaty, Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005); and see Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 159–160, for a thorough examination of the power and place of superhero comics in American society and a detailed discussion of Dr. Wertham’s impact on the comic book industry.
4. Wright, Comic Book Nation.
5. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage, 1973); Joseph Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (New York: Free Press, 1960); Shearon A. Lowery and Melvin L. DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communications Research: Media Effects (New York: Longman, 1995).
6. Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 164.
7. Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Simon During, ed. The Cultural Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999), 507–517; Ian Ang, Desperately Seeking the Audience (London: Routledge, 1991).
8. E. Danticat, “Interview with Junot Diaz,” Bomb Magazine #101 (Fall 2007), 88–95.
9. Wright, Comic Book Nation, 224–251.
10. Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow #76 (New York: DC Comics, April 1970).
11. Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow #76 (New York: DC Comics, April 1970).
12. Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams, “A Kind of Loving, a Way of Death,” in The Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow Collection Volume I (New York: DC Comics, 2004), 57–81.
13. Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams, “Ulysses Star Is Still Alive,” in The Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow Collection Volume I, (New York: DC Comics, 2004), 82–104.
14. Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow #87 (New York: DC Comics, January 1971).
15. For a discussion of this trend in American political life that ranges from historical analysis to high theory see: Todd Gitlin, The World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Oakland CA: AK Press, 2006), and Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacles (New York: Knopf, 2009).
16. Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Vintage, 2006).
17. Mike Marqusee, Redemption Songs: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (New York: Verso, 1999).
18. Richard Reynolds: Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 41.
19. Black Lightning #1 (New York: DC Comics, April 1977).
20. Black Lightning #3 (New York: DC Comics
, July 1977). Tobias Whale is an African American albino, but his whiteness has symbolic worth for signifying white authority.
21. Justice League of America #173 (New York: DC Comics, 1979).
22. Black Lightning: Year One #1 (New York: DC Comics, March 2009).
23. Green Lantern #185 (New York: DC Comics, June 1985); Green Lantern #187 (New York: DC Comics, June 1985).
24. Green Lantern #187 (New York: DC Comics, June 1985).
25. Green Lantern: Mosaic #1 (New York: DC Comics, June 1992) and Green Lantern: Mosaic #5 (New York: DC Comics, October 1992).
26. Daniel Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
27. See Green Lantern: Rebirth (New York: DC Comics, 2007) for Hal Jordan’s inspired comeback.
Comic Book Masculinity
JEFFREY BROWN
Reprinted by permission from Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 178–188.
IF COMIC BOOK SUPERHEROES REPRESENT AN ACCEPTABLE, ALBEIT OBVIOUSLY extreme, model of hypermasculinity, and if the black male body is already culturally ascribed as a site of hypermasculinity, then the combination of the two—a black male superhero—runs the risk of being read as an overabundance, a potentially threatening cluster of masculine signifiers. In fact, prior to the emergence of Milestone, the dominating image of black superheroism was the often-embarrassing image of characters inspired by the brief popularity of Blaxploitation films in the mid 1970s. Such comic book heroes as Luke Cage, Black Panther, Black Lightning, and Black Goliath, who emerged during the Blaxploitation era, were often characterized in their origins, costumes, street language, and antiestablishment attitudes as more overtly macho than their white-bread counterparts. In many ways the Milestone characters have functioned for fans as a redressing of these earlier stereotypes, providing a much needed alternative to the jive-talking heroes of yesterday, as well as on occasion spoofing the Blaxploitation heritage and placing it in an acceptable historical context.
Yet, even today, black superheroes seem to oversignify masculinity to the point of being repositioned for the general public as humorous characters. Recently, white comic book superheroes have been seriously and faithfully adapted for such successful feature films as the Batman series (1989, 1992, and 1995), The Mask (1994), and The Crow (1994). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for black superheroes. Instead of the grim, serious neo-noir success of other comic books turned into films, the only black entries in this ever-expanding movie genre have been the comedies Meteor Man (1993) and Blank Man (1994). Rather than legitimate superpowered heroes, Meteor Man and Blank Man, as enacted by Robert Townsend and Damon Wayans, respectively, are bumbling spoofs. Although well-intentioned films, with ultimate true heroism from the comedic protagonists, they are overwritten by the image of the black-costumed hero as a failure, as a buffoon incapable of exercising real power. Even the short-lived television series Mantis (1994), starring Carl Lumbly as a crippled black scientist who fights crime with the aid of his exoskeleton-reinforced Mantis costume, was done on such a low budget that it was considered a comedy for most comic book readers when in fact it was meant as serious science fiction drama.
Many of Milestone’s most popular characters face the difficult task of playing it straight as black superheroes at the same time that they emphasize their intelligence as one of their most significant attributes, all without diminishing the masculine power fantasy so important to fans of the genre. In direct comparison to the typical Image hero, Milestone heroes are much more realistically depicted, both narratively and in portrayal of the muscular male body. “I really like the Milestone titles for what they’re not, namely, Image books,” a thirteen-year-old African American comics fan claimed while organizing his purchases just outside the dealers’ hall of a local comic book convention. “Static and Hardwire and even Icon are a lot more realistic, not so cartoony. I mean … I know they’re comic books but come on, look at those guys [in the Image books]; they’re fucking huge! At least the characters at Milestone look like they could fit through a doorway.” I should point out that some of the readers I have studied related to the Milestone books primarily as an alternative or a variation on the theme of black superheroes as presented in the earlier Blaxploitation-style comics of the 1970s and/or the contemporary Afrocentrist and more politically extreme books personified by the Ania publications. But the reading formation I am primarily concerned with here is the way in which many fans, both black and white, understand the Milestone line as it stands in relation to the dominant Image-style emphasis on hypermasculine/hypermuscular bodies and underdeveloped narratives featuring what one comics dealer called “brainless brawl after brainless brawl.”
What Milestone comic books do is put the mind back in the body, the Clark Kent back in the Superman. Milestone does this so often with black superheroes that this allows them to develop the image of powerful black men as much more than hypermasculine brutes—“tough, but not too tough.” When the conclusion to Milestone’s third crossover event, “The Long Hot Summer,” was published, many of the readers I had spoken with were eager to point out that the surprisingly peaceful resolution to an amusement park riot was indicative of the company’s approach to brains-over-brawn. “Man, just when you thought everything was going to get really, really bloody,” a fan in his early twenties explained. “Wise Son [leader of the Blood Syndicate, Milestone’s multicultural supergang] gets to the park’s communication systems and simply talks people out of hurting each other … basically shames them into being responsible for their actions.”
Likewise, one fan who was a senior university student was able to recall, almost word for word, his favorite bit of dialogue from Hardware #9, a series featuring a black scientific genius who dons his self-constructed superarmor to fight crime. “Hardware is fighting this Alva Technologies-created female version of himself called Technique,” the student recalled, “when he loses his jet pack and is falling from thousands of feet up. He grabs his pack and tries to fix it while falling, thinking, ‘So here’s where I find out if I’m the genius that my IQ tells me that I am.’ When the pack works again, moments before becoming street pizza, he says, and this is a great line, ‘Worked like a charm! Who says those tests are culturally biased?’” One especially enthusiastic and thoughtful black fan in his late teens remarked, “It’s nice to see cool brothers in the comics who can think their way out of a rough spot. You know, Icon’s a lawyer, Hardware’s an all-purpose science supergenius, and Static, well, he’s just a high school kid but he’s the coolest, and I think the smartest, of all them. Yeah, I’d stack Static up against any other superhero any day. He’s the man.” Other readers seemed to agree: “Oh yeah, Static, he’s got the best sense of humor and the thing is everybody thinks he’s just this kid with wimpy lightning powers, but he’s the smart one, always putting down guys bigger than him by being smarter.” As an example of the preferred Milestone brains-over-brawn style, several fans chose one of Static’s earliest adventures as among their favorites.
The story entitled “Pounding the Pavement,” written by Robert L. Washington and Dwayne McDuffie, appeared in the August 1993 issue Static #3. The tale features the first appearance of a powerful new villain, Tarmack, in Milestone’s fictional setting of Dakota City. As the characters in the book point out, Tarmack looks and acts like a black version of the evil, liquid metal T2000 from the popular movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992). Essentially he is a shape-shifting mass of, well, tarmac. Usually configured in the shape of a large and muscular black male body, Tarmack can transform himself into a liquefied state or change his appendages into whatever weapon he desires, including knives, hammers, and anvils. One of Virgil (Static) Hawkins’s friends describes Tarmack as “a six-foot blob of silly putty that turns into Riddock Bowe whenever it wants to.” The problem is that Tarmack has his sights set on making a name for himself as the guy who takes down Static. He firs
t tries to challenge Static to a fight by destroying a local high school hangout. Unfortunately, Static, who was tied up washing dishes at his part-time job in a nearby burger franchise, arrives too late to fight but in time to rescue bystanders trapped in the building’s rubble.
At school the next day, while Virgil is asking his friends to describe Tarmack, word comes out that “the guy who trashed Akkad’s is at the playground calling Static out!” Tarmack taunts Static’s masculinity, calling him a coward unless he shows up to fight. “Static! Are you deaf, or just afraid?” Tarmack bellows while tearing up all the rides at the playground. “Hidin’ behind yo’ ugly momma won’t help boy!” Making up an excuse about having asthma and the excitement being too much for him, Virgil sneaks off to change into his Static costume and returns to confront Tarmack with his usual wit. “Hey, Hatrack,” Static calls, “let’s work this out over coffee, some cappuccino for me… a nice cup of silt for you!’ They proceed to battle for a while with neither gaining the upper hand, then, when Static proves more concerned about the safety of innocent bystanders than with the contest, Tarmack dares Static to show up at a deserted parking lot at midnight in order to decide who’s the toughest.
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