Comic book masculinity and the new black superhero

African American Review, Spring, 1999 by Jeffrey A. Brown

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 can not 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 super-powered 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 exo-skeleton-reinforced Mantis costume, was done on such a low budget that it was considered a comedy by most comic book readers, when in fact it was meant as serious science fiction drama.

Many of Milestone's most popular characters embody the difficult task of playing it straight as black superheroes at the same time that they emphasize the hero's intelligence as one of his most significant attributes, without diminishing the masculine power fantasy so important to fans of the genre. In comparison to the typical Image hero, Milestone heroes are much more realistically depicted, both narratively and in portrayal of the muscular male body: Compare the over-inflated body of Image's Prophet [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED] with the portrait of a relatively skinny Static, Milestone's electricity-wielding teenaged superhero, on the cover of Static #1 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. "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 Hardware 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 relate to the Milestone books primarily as an alternative to 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's emphasis on hypermasculine/hypermuscular bodies and underdeveloped narratives, featuring what one comics dealer called "brainless brawl after brainless brawl."