Student Question | Do We Need More Diverse Superheroes?

Video

L.G.B.T. and Superpowered

It’s a golden age for queer characters in comic books. Some popular figures, like Iceman, have finally come out of the closet. Others are being brought to life as lesbian or transgender.

By AARON BYRD and GEORGE GENE GUSTINES on Publish Date December 23, 2015.
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Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

A few recent Times pieces have featured a new generation of superheroes who are “no longer primarily straight, white and male under their masks,” and include not only the gay characters you see in the video above, but Muslim Ms. Marvel, the female Thor, a Mexican-American Blue Beetle and more.

How do you feel about comics and superheroes, now or when you were younger? What is your reaction to all these new characters?

Do you think we need even more diverse characters, or do you think, as one writer argues, that “the superhero comic’s message has always seemed universal” and creating diverse characters “risks undercutting the genre’s universal appeal”?

In the Op-Ed essay “That Oxymoron, the Asian Comic Superhero,” Umapagan Ampikaipakan writes:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The final page of the first issue of the new Ms. Marvel comic is pitch perfect. A strange mutagenic mist pervades the streets of Jersey City, activating a secret alien gene that triggers a transformation within our teenage protagonist. She punches her way out of a chrysalis to find that she has mutated into another body: The Pakistani-American Muslim Kamala Khan, with her newly minted superpowers, has been transmogrified into a tall, leggy blonde.

It is a fantastic visual gag. And it is the perfect metaphor for the teenage immigrant who is struggling both in her skin and to find her place in America.

But it doesn’t take long — three issues or so — for Kamala to realize that her brown Muslim self is as potent as can be. All she needed to become super, besides a costume and a mask, was a strong sense of individualism, righteousness, a can-do spirit and a purpose. The superhero comic is an inherently egalitarian genre, even though its lead characters are exceptional: After a bout with a radioactive spider or some Terrigen Mist, it could be you or it could be me.

Which is why the recent push by Marvel and DC for greater diversity in comics doesn’t make much sense. Or maybe it does in the United States, where real-life anxieties about race, gender and identity politics are often played out in popular culture. Captain America is black. Thor is a woman. Iceman is gay.

But for some of us non-Americans, the genre doesn’t need to apologize for itself, no matter how quintessentially American it is. The superhero comic is the American dream illustrated, and by definition the American dream must be accessible to all. However monochromatic its characters, the superhero comic’s message has always seemed universal.

… Try to adapt the superhero comic’s conventions to an Asian context and the genre collapses under the weight of traditional Asian values: humility, self-effacement, respect for elders and communal harmony. American comic book heroes also act in the service of the collective good, but they do so, unabashedly, out of a heightened sense of self. How can an Asian superhero take down the bad guy without embarrassing both the bad guy’s family and his own? How do you save the world and save face at the same time? The Asian comic superhero is a contradiction in terms.

We geeks out here in the Asian hinterlands have always readily bought into American ideals because the American comic book makes us believe we can be special, too. The Asian superhero, steeped in our cultural baggage, would only undermine the fantasy.

Students: Read the whole essay and learn about the author’s own childhood superhero team in Kuala Lumpur, then tell us …

— Did you ever have a period in your life where you were obsessed with superheroes? Why do you think you loved them so much? What’s your favorite superhero of all time? (And if you never cared about superheroes, why do you think they left you cold?)

— What do you think about all the diverse new superheroes? Does the world need more? If your favorite artist was inventing a new character, what kind of superhero would you like to see?

— What do you think of the argument this Op-Ed writer makes? Do you agree that the point of superheroes is that they are universal, and therefore creating diverse characters doesn’t matter? Or do you think that diversity will attract a broader audience and help a wider range of people feel a kinship with the characters?


Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. All comments are moderated by Learning Network staff members, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.