Prometheus 6: Pass the cat o' nine tails

September 12, 2003

Pass the cat o' nine tails

Aaron at Uppity-Negro missed a dinner date declares himself the suckiest suckass in the history of sucking. Having known some suckers that truly excel in sucking, some whose suckage skill are an inspiration to the fine engineers at Hoover Vacuums and make high-class hookers green with envy, I can't say I agree.

Besides, he linked to an interesting email panel discussion on why "Black Books" (being comic books) don't sell.

Some very interesting answers. Bloggers should appreciate the snark factor in Kyle J. Baker's answer:

"Why aren't there more mainstream titles that feature minority characters in prominent roles, and why don't 'black books' sell??

Doesn't the second question answer the first one?"

And I found Alan Grant's answer rather disappointing:

Most comic heroes are minority characters. Batman is in a minority of guys whose parents were murdered before their eyes. Superman is in a minority of babies saved from exploding planets. Lobo is in a minority of maniacs who destroyed their own world. Judge Dredd is in a minority of people dedicated to justice.

I've no idea why 'black books' don't sell. I've heard uncorroborated reports that DC's 'black' line of the 90s folded as much because of editorial profligacy as disappointing sales. I'm pretty sure "black books" sell okay in Africa (Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons began their careers working on Power Man for--I think--a Nigerian publisher)."

The first paragraph is just bullshit, end of story. And as for "editorial profligacy," well, if that means folks didn't care for the most powerful team in the Milestone universe being gang-bangers I'd agree. That's the reason I guessed at myself. Grant has been around long enough to just ask the creators, or even the editorial board at DC Comics, if he were interested.

Many of the other folks referred to racism as being involved in one way or another…Craig Lemon made an excellent observation:

Because all the iconic heroes in existence today (with the exception of Wolverine) were created between the 1930s and the 1960s, when black characters were taboo, or poor caricatures at best (see the early stories of The Spirit to see how even Will Eisner didn't escape this attitude). There have been pitifully few successful superheroes created in the last twenty years, black OR white. So new books with predominantly black casts don't sell...but neither do new books with predominantly white casts...it's not just The Crew that was cancelled recently, but The Eternal too.

And as Professor William H. Foster III noted:

And to answer the second question, actually black books do sell. I just received a message from a long-time African American comic book creator who sells almost exclusively at Black Cultural Fairs and he says he pushed an incredible number of units this past summer. And I have yet to appear at a venue where I am speaking about the history of Blacks in comic books without having a number of people stop me and ask where they can find the titles I spotlighted. My problem has been I can't always readily tell them where to look. Even I have to look very hard to find titles.

Back in the 1990s when Milestone and DC Comics teamed up to produce racially diverse titles, I was told by some of my friends who own comic shops that they weren't sure how to market the titles. So they do sell, it's just that, well, there are some problems to work out.

…which, of course, is related to the belief that "Black books don't sell". I mean, how do you market them? How about as comic books?

But I remember the Milestone line. Every Black kid on Staten Island was after them. I have the entire run, including the DC crossover, in storage. Truth, though, there is a problem in that the image of an extraordinarily powerful Alpha Black person is not something many non-Black folks are interested in reading about. That has to be said.

And the panel noted the lack of Black creators as well. The best example of the problem this creates is the last Power Man series I read. I'm pulling this from memory, so I don't remember the writers involved (something I tended not to pay that much attention to, actually) but I do remember the impact it had on me. I bought the first issue with low expectations. I realized the writer was Black by the dialog…Power Man was pounding on a series of flunkies and said something like, "Step on up, I got something for ya, boyee…" and that "boyee" was like, proper ebonics. They changed the writer a couple of issues in, and at one point Power Man said "All you boyees sumpinsumpinsumpin" and he referred to everyone as "boyee" like it was the only piece of Black slang the writer knew.

Aw, shit. Went straight downhill from there.

And then there was Icon, who in is secret identity was slightly to the right of Rush Limbaugh. In one issue, after finding out his sidekick (who was the person the book was really about) was pregnant, pulled baby-daddy aside for a heart to heart.

Any really righteous person of any race could have written Icon's dialog…but few non-Black people would know that.

This is the real problem with Black characters. The way the industry moves writers from book to book it's just not possible to have a consistently Black character (Christopher Priest's Black Panther being a real exception).

Posted by P6 at September 12, 2003 12:10 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1615

Comments

The Power Man writer was probably Christopher Priest / Jim Owsley.

If I'm wrong about that, it's because, you know, I suck.

Posted by at September 12, 2003 12:55 PM

Man, when you're down on yourself, you don't mess around.

Posted by at September 12, 2003 05:27 PM