Comic heroes

SP/PER-MAN: THE QUINTESSENTIAL BLACK MALE HERO

hen I was a young boy—nine, 10 and almost 11 years old—I was crazy for comic books. Batman, Justice League of America, Superman and Legion of Super-Heroes were among my favorites. I loved the DC superheroes for their powers and bright costumes, their selfless, clean-cut heroism and popularity among their peers and elders. These heroes, and their friends and loved ones, lived happy middle-class lives that were interrupted from time to time, in exciting fashion, by the occasional supervillain bent on crime or world domination. This villain was always defeated after a very satisfying battle. The bad guys were often more powerful than the heroes, but the handsome young do-gooders used their honesty, goodness and superior thinking abilities to overcome the evil that drove their foes.

Every story concluded with a tiny box at the lower-right-hand corner of the final frame that read end. The villain was behind bars or banished from our lawful plane of existence, and the hero was walking down a shady lane hand in hand with his best girl.

It goes without saying that all these heroes were white; most of them were male. There were no Greenbergs, Jamals, Garcias or Lings among these wish fulfillments of American white supremacy.

I didn't care about any of that. When I was reading Adven­ture Comics, I was Lightning Lad. I wore his dark-blue cos­tume and cape and used my powers to overcome the bullies

who roamed the playground of my elementary school. As a young black kid, I learned to appropriate the privilege white America wished to hoard.

I was happy with my perfect heroes and unaffected by their race, gender or ethnicity.

That happiness would dissipate with the appearance of one rebel comic book.

In August of 1962 the fledgling publisher Marvel Comics came out with a story in Amazing Fantasy about a new hero it planned to launch in his own comic: the Amazing Spider-Man. After reading that story I was never to go back to the safe and sane heroes of DC Comics.

On the surface Peter Parker was like any other superhero— white and male with a Christian surname. But that was the least of him. The real hero underneath was nothing like the two-dimensional characters of Superman's ilk.

As Spider-Man, Peter Parker was powerful, brilliant, unusu­ally funny and heroic, but differing from his DC counterparts, he was seen by the population in general as a threat, a men­ace and a criminal. He was vilified in the press and hounded by the police, feared by everyday citizens and always on the verge of poverty. His day job, photographer for The Daily Bugle, was to present images of his alter ego that were used to further indict him as a threat to the people of New York.

He was an orphan being raised by an elderly aunt and uncle, but in the first story, through an act of unforgivable

hubris, he indirectly caused the death of his uncle.

In other words, Spider-Man's problems were much like the issues that faced most young black men in America. He was shunned and feared despite his abilities and con­tributions to society. He was misrepresented in the media to such a degree that no one knew or understood or even cared about him. He was an unrecognized soldier in the war against the enemies of our society. The continual harangue against his character and worth made him angry and so even other heroes found him hard to identify with.

Spider-Man sometimes lost battles and had no end of trou­bles with girls. As a high school student, he was beset by bul­lies whom he couldn't fight if he didn't want to be found out. His aunt had heart disease. The villains he fought sometimes won. And in Spider-Man's world, people died, good people died—with regularity. Sometimes the villains he fought had good sides to them or at least relatives who were good.

A knockout punch in Spider-Man's world didn't always make him a winner, and more and more often the end in the last frame was replaced by to be continued.

Spider-Man was, and is, the quintessential black male hero. He perseveres in a world that demonizes and fears him; he contributes to the survival of a nation that would rather forget he ever showed up on these shores. He is the unconscious engine that runs America's culture, as America, in turn, runs from the implications of his existence.