The Many Faces of Superheroes

Aside from being superheroes, what do Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Henry Pym, Bruce Banner, Donald Blake, Peter Parker, Scott Summers, Logan, Bobby Drake, Warren Worthington III, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Kyle Rayner, Wally West, Carter Hall, Arthur Curry, Eel O'Brien, Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Jim Corrigan, Ted Knight, Wesley Dodds and Kent Nelson all have in common?

They're all white, heterosexual males.

They're also among the most prominent and well known superheroes in both the Marvel and DC Universe.

It took a long time before comic book publishers really started to make their characters more ethnically diverse, and at first the attempts to broaden the pool were little more than racial stereotypes.

There were heroines right from the beginning, of course. But the female heroes were drastically outnumbered by the male ones. In the Fantastic Four, we had one female character to counter three men.

The Avengers only had a single female member in their original line-up, and the average person on the street would be hard-pressed to name a superheroine from the DC Universe, other than Wonder Woman, who isn't simply a female counterpart to a better known male hero.

The female characters also were rarely as strong or tough or offensively capable as their male teammates. Sue Storm originally was only able to turn invisible, with her force fields coming later. The Wasp was able to shrink and fly, both useful, but hardly on power with the power of Thor, Iron Man or Giant-Man.

Marvel's X-Men were one of the first places we got to see some diversity in race. The "New X-Men" included heroes from Russia, Germany, Japan and Kenya, and brought in Japanese, Native American and African heroes, who were more than packages of stereotypical behavior. And the numbers grew from there. But for every Storm or Cyborg, we were forced to endure a Black Lightning or Afro-wearing Power Man.

Even today, there is a disproportionate number of white, heterosexual, Christian men in our superheroes. The number of characters who break this mold is slowly growing, but it's a slow process.

Following Infinite Crisis, DC has made a real strong push at diversifying their character base. In the wake of the crisis, Firestorm has become a black man (this actually occurred before Infinite Crisis, but not long before), the Blue Beetle scarab has gone to a Hispanic boy, the Spectre has merged with an African-American Gotham policeman, and the new Batwoman, Kathy Kane, has been announced to be a lesbian.

This last item has attracted an undue amount of attention and controversy in my opinion. The simple fact is that there is a sizable homosexual population in the world, and it was ridiculous that there were so few superheroes in the GLBT community. In the mainstream Marvel and DC Universe, it's difficult to think of a single well-known gay superhero. Northstar just doesn't cut it by himself. Marvel's Ultimate continuity has opened it up a bit more, by making that version of Piotyr Rasputin a homosexual man.

Now, Kathy Kane has the potential to be nothing more than an exploitative way to sell comics with the promise of "hawt lesbian grrlz doin' it". But I have faith in DC's ability to make her an interesting character, who serves as a legitimate member of the superhero community. Sadly, we're another seven weeks away from her debut in 52: Week Eleven, so I guess we'll have to wait until then to judge.

My final thought on it is that comic books are no longer solely aimed at white, heterosexual boys, and the heroes who appear in comic books should be reflective of the population of the world as it really is. I don't suddenly want to see all new heroes be "ethnically diverse", but I'd like to see more heroes cut from that cloth. I'd be annoyed to see characters created simply for the sake of "We need another Hispanic superhero," but there is always room for new superheroes, from any race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.