Open Journal Montreal

They didn’t call him Captain White America and Peter Parker was never the White Spider-Man, but for some reason, comic book publishers felt the need to emphasize the ethnicity of black superheroes by giving them names like Black Lightning, Black Goliath, Brother Voodoo and The Black Panther. In the 1970s, the two major comic publishers, Marvel and DC, launched a series of superhero genre titles that starred black superheroes in leading roles. The heroes grew out of the popular film genre known as Blaxploitation. These action films featured hyper-masculine and over-sexed black protagonists shooting up white, corrupt cops and mob leaders in an effort to bring down ‘the Man’. Films such as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) and Shaft (1971) are entrenched with the hyper-masculine ideals represented by the Black Power movement and its emphasis on the performance of a Black Macho attitude. The comics of this era borrow their understanding of black masculinity from Blaxploitation films and the Black Macho attitude represented in them; it is important to consider how this understanding is a shift from the previously defined
masculinity of earlier superheroes. It is my intent to explore the re-constitution of superhero masculinity in 1970s mainstream comic books within a newly defined space that includes race.

This analysis focuses on a group of characters featured in the primary texts I assembled during my research period. Comic book research can be challenging; old issues are hard to locate and expensive to purchase. With these constraints, I was still able to obtain 30 comic books. My study focuses primarily on the significant black characters of the 1970s: Luke Cage, Black Lightning, The Black Panther (named prior to the arrival of the black militant group) and Black Goliath. I will also look at the minor characters Brother Voodoo and The Falcon. With the exception of Black Lightning all of these characters were published by Marvel. Though I wanted to study John Stewart, the black Green Lantern, I was unable to find any comics that he starred in.

Luke Cage is the first black hero to star in his own publication. His publication was first titled Luke Cage, Hero for Hire but as of issue #17, was renamed Luke Cage: Power Man and later in issue #50 became Power Man and Iron fist. My analysis covers issues 14, 15, 19, 22, 26, 28-30, 34, 35, 38, 54 plus Marvel Two-In-One issue 13, and Marvel Team-Up issue 75. The Black Panther, the first black superhero, stars in Jungle Action issues 11, 15, as well as The Black Panther issue 5, Marvel Two-In-One issue 40 and Marvel Premiere issue 52. Brother Voodoo appears in Strange Tales issue 171 and 172, and Marvel Two-In-One issue 41. Black Goliath stars in Black Goliath issue 1 and Marvel Two-In-One issue 24. The Falcon appears in a solo adventure in Marvel Premiere issue 49. Finally, Black Lightning issues 1, 5-8,10,11 provide the only material I could find from DC. This analysis focuses on the period from 1972 to 1979 when publications starring black heroes first explode on the scene.

In his book Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics and Their Fans (2001), Jeffery A. Brown completes a similar study regarding the masculinity of black superheroes. His research is thorough, and I will borrow from his argument later in this paper. Our studies differ in subject matter and analytical method. Brown’s focus is the black superheroes of Milestone Comics, a black-owned and black-produced comic line, which began in the 1990s. He also discusses the difference between masculine and feminine in predominately physical terms, but doesn’t give extensive examination to other binary elements that define heroes. My analysis will expose the central elements of the constructed masculinity of superheroes. I structure my study by juxtaposing the masculinity of the original costumed-heroes with the masculinity of black heroes in the 1970s. I link the influences of the Black Macho attitude and Blaxploitation to the construction of black superhero masculinity. Because superhero manhood is constructed with polarized terms, it is necessary to examine the hero with binary characteristics in mind. The binaries that operate to define the white hero have a different dynamic when applied to the black subject. The three central characteristics of the hero are constructed by his relationship with the opposite sex, his body and his morality.

Gender – “Hey Shaft, where you going?”

“To get laid.”

When Superman was born in 1938, he became the first superhero and the model for the superheroes that followed. Like all of the heroes, Superman’s “masculinity is defined by what it is not, namely ‘feminine,’ and by all its associated traits- hard not soft, strong not weak, reserved not emotional, active not passive” (Brown, 168). In the early Superman adventures of 1938, Superman’s manhood is juxtaposed by the feminine Lois Lane. Lois plays the role of the female love interest, who constantly pines for Superman’s companionship. Norma Pecora’s article “Superman/Superboys/Supermen: The Comic Book Hero as Socializing Agent” studies a period of eight years of Superman comics in the 1980s and she finds that masculinity and femininity have not changed
much since Superman’s birth. The two female protagonists of Superman comics, Lois Lane and Lana Lang are both damsels in distress, “in need of rescue by Superman” (Pecora, 70). Although both characters are successful career women they “are presented as incomplete women” (Percora, 70). The author elaborates:

Quite frequently their careers [are] depicted as inadequate…Lana…continually complains about not “having a man” and she longs for Superman to “look at her the way he looks at Lois” (Superman #350, 1980). Lana consoles herself here by saying: “At least I have my work.” Again a few years later we find her thinking of her career as a “substitute for love” (Superman #373, 1982). As proof she eventually offered to give up her career for an alien hero, Vartox (Superman #374, 1982). (Pecora, 70)

The white females of Superman’s world are unsatisfied, incomplete women until they can achieve Superman as their boyfriend or another superhero, like Vartox. Their major dilemmas are solved by Superman who must either rescue or protect the ladies, usually by employing violence. But it is only Superman who saves the day, not his alter ego, Clark Kent.

The alter ego is central to the early superhero mythos. It is a literal representation of two of the most commonly discussed definitions of masculinity: man/mouse or warrior/wimp. Clark Kent is the prototype:

…Superman is the quintessential male role model. He is a success, he has power and control- he is a man. And throughout the years it has been clear to the reader that Lois Lane is his, if only he would ask. On the other hand, his alter ego, Clark Kent, is presented as a wimp. Weak and mild-mannered, he is incapable of “winning” Lois Lane and is never around when the excitement begins. Kent is easily dismissed, but Superman is to be emulated. (Pecora, 63)

Pecora’s central thesis, that superheroes employ violence as their main strategy for solving conflicts is encouraged by Clark Kent’s sissiness. In Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1, 1938, Clark convinces Lois to go out with him. On the dinner and dancing date, a shady tough cuts in on their dance. Lois, completely appalled yells, “Clark! Are you going to stand for this?” Clark meekly negotiates: “Be reasonable Lois. Dance with the fellow and then we’ll leave right away.” Lois, outraged by Clark and repulsed by the leering goon, causes a scene storming out of the dance hall, but not until she slaps the thug. Under his breath Clark cheers her on, but loudly shouts, “Lois­- -Don’t!” The thug replies by pushing Clark’s face, but Clark refuses to be drawn into a match of fisticuffs. Clark always appear as a weakling, but his refusal to employ violence makes him pathetic and disgusts Lois, the woman he loves. These typical scenarios repeat themselves in the nearly all of the early issues of Superman and Action Comics. For example in Superman #6, Clark is pushed to the ground by a dock-worker. Clark acts uppity and dignified as he cleans himself off. Lois, wildly angry, implores Clark to stand up and fight the man. “Me? Attack him? Er- Only morons resort to physical violence!” Lois responds: “Only Morons- and – Cowards”! Clark is thus castrated and even seems effeminate by his passive behavior. Backing down from a fight, or refusing to employ violence, is emasculating in Superman’s world.

The dynamic between men and women in Superman comics is based on a racially homogenous representation of society. Prior to the 1970s, the representation of blacks in comic books is sparse at best, and it is most often racist or stereotypical. Black people are commonly all but invisible in old comic books. When the black superheroes arrive, the binary between masculinity and femininity must be reconsidered. The black superheroes do not exist in the racial vacuum of Superman’s early days and so the dynamic between black men and black women is not necessarily the same. There is a long and complex history that comes into play. Even though the comic heroes borrow their black masculinity from Blaxploitation, the origins of the Black Macho attitude must be examined in order to understand the dynamic between black men and women in the films and the comics.

I borrow the explanation of the relationship between black men and women from Michele Wallace’s book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, 1978. This reading, although “a monolithic homogenous representation of Black masculinity”, gives some insight to the existing attitudes that influence the Black Power movement (hooks, 78).

Historically denied economic access to the means to support a family, and traditionally subordinated as a patriarch because of it, black men are consistently discussed as a paradox. On the one hand, they can be viewed as the physical ideal of manliness, which I will discuss later, while on the other they are unable to assert themselves as patriarchs. The Black Power movement erupted in the late 1960s and continued into the 1970s with an agenda that included an assertion of black patriarchal power in the household. Years of resentment between black men and women boiled to the surface. This resentment stemmed from slavery, when black women were often elevated from field slave status to house slave, or mistress, and black men were emasculated by white slave masters and rendered unable to fulfill the role of father or provider for his family because his wife, his children and himself were property of the slave master. Resentment grew from the white racist capitalist system that prevented black males from gainful, upward-moving employment, while black women could achieve professional status as nurses or teachers. And it stemmed from the dominant, white family model, which assigned the male as head of the family and treated the women of that family as property. The black male, cut off from the economic means of providing for his family, found it frustrating and difficult to establish a patriarchal family unit, which the dominant, normative model promised. Instead, women held authority; they were paying the bills, raising the family and acting as its head. In the late sixties black men and
white women openly dated. This seemed to epitomize the black man’s resentment for black women. As Michelle Wallace states, using the voice of Daniel Moynihan:

The black woman had gotten out of hand. She was too strong, too hard, too evil, too castrating. She got all the jobs, all the everything. The black man had never had a chance. No wonder he wanted a white woman. He needed a rest. The black woman should be more submissive and, above all, keep her big, black mouth shut. (Wallace, 11)

This quote demonstrates one of the main issues of tension. The black male had been promised a patriarchal family unit, with everything within it as his property, including the woman. The problem was, he couldn’t afford it, and she resisted. Because the black woman was not submissive, nor did she rely on her man to provide for her, she wasn’t what America would define as a ‘woman’. At the same time, the black woman resented the black man for not living up to the American ideal of manhood. He couldn’t get a good job, he couldn’t provide for his family, and he was irresponsible. Black males frequently became entangled in lives of crime, which they turned to in order to generate an income to survive as hustlers.

Black Power emerged to respond to this tension. Rather than letting their sexuality stay repressed, black males adapted and became that which white America feared most, the image of the violent, phallocentric, hypermasculine “Black Buck”. Groups such as the Black Panthers became known for their tough talk, their public display of firearms and their hard grimaces. Wallace explains the aims of Black Power, and what it meant to her:

According to Stokely Carmichael, Black Power meant “Where black men have a majority, they will attempt to exercise control…where Negroes lack a majority, Black Power means proper representation and sharing of control…” But that wasn’t what Black Power meant to most of us.

To most of us Black Power meant wooly heads, big black fists and stern black faces, gargantuan omnipresent black male organs, big black rifles and foot-long combat boots, tight pants over young muscular asses, dashikis, and broad brown chests; black men looting and rioting in the streets, taking over the country by brute force, arrogant lawlessness and an unquestionable sexual authority granted them as the victims of four hundred years of racism and abuse. The media emphasized this definition. (Wallace, 36)

Glorifying the image of the ‘primitive’ black man, the Black Power movement attempted to appoint the male as head of the family. The Black male was given the role of liberator, not the woman. Phallocentric patriarchy became central to the Black Power ideology. As bell hooks writes, “…the black power movement has, since the 1960s, worked overtime to let sisters know that they should assume a subordinate role to lay the groundwork for an emergent black patriarchy that would elevate the status of black males” (hooks, 79). In an attempt to raise the status of black males, black power assumed a hard line that promoted sexism, homophobia and phallocentricity.

The black power assertion of male patriarchy carries over into the Blaxploitation films. Credited as the first film in genre, Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song, 1971, was a black production made on a shoestring budget. The protagonist of the film, Sweetback, played by Peebles is a ghetto hero who kills two white cops for putting a beating to a black revolutionary named Mu-Mu. The chase story sees Sweetback fleeing from cops and always nearly escaping with help from members of the black community. Some of these helping hands are women who demand sexual favors in return for their assistance. Sweetback, being a live sex performer by occupation, obliges their every wish. According to Donald Bogle, Sweetback was “the most extravagantly sexual hero audiences ever saw” (Bugle, 235). Other films such as Shaft, 1971, Superfly, 1972, The Mack, 1973, and Black Caesar, 1973, continued the representation of the black male as sexually powered, love machine, while black women are often seen as victims, bitches, prostitutes, gold diggers or the black superwoman, epitomized by Pam Grier’s performance in Foxy Brown, 1974, in which she castrates her male foe at the movies end. Huey Newton, Leader of the Black Panthers, supported
Sweetback as a revolutionary hero. In his collection of writings, To Die for the People, 1972, Newton reads the film as a revolutionary text. In his analysis he reaffirms the black power movements macho attitude and the assertion of a patriarchal family unit:

As you look at the women you see that they are strong and beautiful Black women, definitely African in ancestry and symbolic of Mother Africa. The size of some their breasts signifies how Africa is potentially the breadbasket of the world. The women are feeding stew to a small boy who is apparently very hungry, and as he downs it they keep offering more. These women with their large breasts potentially could feed and nourish the world, and if this is so, certainly they have the potential to raise their liberator, for that is what the small boy is, the future of the women, of Black people, liberation. (Newton, 114-5)

The small boy, who is to grow up to become Sweetback, is positioned as liberator. The woman’s role is relegated to a mother, but nothing more; they cannot be the liberators. In Newton’s reading of the film, manhood is achieved in two ways: sex and violence against the white oppressor. He discusses a love scene early in the film:

In the background we hear religious music signifying what is happening and will happen later. First there is
“Wade in the Water,” and we recognize that the boy is being baptized…The music indicates that this is not a sexual scene, this is a very sacred rite. For the boy, who was nourished to health, is now being baptized into manhood; and the act of love, the giving of manhood, is also bestowing upon the boy the characteristics which will deliver him from very difficult situations. (Newton, 116)

Manhood is achieved by sex and his penis is celebrated as his primary tool for leading him through difficult
situations. Newton goes on to explain that Sweetback’s final step into manhood is achieved when he is baptized a second time in the blood of the white cops, whose heads he busts while saving Mu-Mu.

The Blaxploitation genre grows with the popularity of Sweet Sweetback, but the writing and production credits become dominantly white. “Between 1971 and 1975 there were 200 Blaxploitation movies released, most of them God-awful, eighty percent of them written and directed by white men” (Briggs, 27). These white directors would latch on to hypersexual, macho and violent hero construction and reuse it over and over again. Similarly, white writers write the Black superheroes in comic books almost exclusively. With this in mind, it is important to question whether or not the white writers of this time would be aware of the dynamics of the sexual politics between black men and women. Or were they simply emulating what they saw in Blaxploitation films? Regardless, the writers must have been socially aware of the political tensions and would recognize that they must script the relationships between black men and black women differently than those of white men and women. For that reason alone, the primary texts must be observed with an awareness of this difference in order to understand the shift in masculinity from the earlier, white heroes, and the black heroes of this time.

The most dramatic shift in the black superheroes is the change in the duality between warrior and wimp, which is central to the early comic characters. While Clark Kent and Peter Parker are socially rejected, their
costumed-identities, Superman and Spider-Man, are sex symbols to the female supporting characters. The black heroes retain their masculinity in their alter ego form, but at times the black woman challenges their attempts at authority. In these comics, black women are primarily damsels in distress but they are also quite frequently villains, professionals, and of course, vixens. They all possess the stereotypical characteristic of black female sassiness, an attitude used to challenge male authority. Even when they come to him for help, Luke Cage finds dealing with some women more trouble than its worth. For example in Luke Cage: Hero for Hire, #14, Cage is confronted by Mrs. Jenks. After telling her to split, she retorts:

Mrs. Jenks: …I ran to your office for sanctuary and you come on like I was Mati Hari! Well, shove it, Cage! I think I’d prefer a wolf to an ego-tripping bear!

Luke Cage: Whoa! Hold it, Mrs. Jenks! I was jus’ rememberin’ the hassles you put me through every other time I’ve seen you! I thought—

Mrs. Jenks: Forget it, Cage! I know what you thought! Keep your lousy thoughts—and you know what you can do with them!

Even when asking for help, Mrs. Jenks rather not hear a man attempt to assert power. Instead, she prefers to face the consequences of her drunk, lust-driven date, from whom she was escaping. Similarly, Sam Wilson also known as The Falcon, Captain America’s black partner, faces the wrath of his girlfriend, Leila, when he is consumed in thought and is caught not listening. In Marvel Premiere, #49, his girlfriend yells at him and storms out the door without even touching the roast dinner she has just prepared. The scene serves no purpose other than to demonstrate that Sam is troubled by a murder mystery he is attempting to unravel. Sam then flies out the window as the Falcon, escaping from the badgery of his woman, to the hyper-masculated world of superheroing. In issue #6, Black Lightning’s alter ego, Jefferson Pierce, is brought to task by the principal of the school he works at for his “inexcusable treatment of a fellow teacher”. The other teacher turns out to be his ex-wife, Lynn Stewart, whom he argued with in two previous issues (which is explained in an Editor’s note). Even in his profession, the black man cannot challenge the female without facing the discipline of authority.

At its furthest extent, the black woman becomes the cold-hearted villain who craves power. The Black Panther, otherwise known as T’Challa, leader of a fictional African kingdom, faces Princess Zanda in Black Panther, #5. Zanda controls her people with fear and she desires the Panther. She throws herself at him, but says she doesn’t know how to be gentle. “To be gentle means to blend your emotions with those of others!” he responds. She replies, “I can do that—with one such as you!” to which he responds, “Can you?? Can you really give, instead of take!?” The villainess is truly interested only in achieving more power, and to do it she places the Panther under her control by holding his kingdom hostage with a giant, phallic, nuclear missile pointed directly at his kingdom.

In Luke Cage: Power Man, issue #38, Luke’s girlfriend Claire Temple, who is either a nurse or a doctor, yells at him for standing her up the night before, when suddenly Oliver P. Sneagle of the International Revenue Service bursts in the door and serves him with a subpoena for not paying his taxes. Cage is always having money problems, and he can barely pay the overhead on his downtown Harlem office. Luke’s ability to act as a provider is questioned by this emasculating situation that occurs with his woman present to witness. In issue #35, we see Claire paying for Luke’s dinner. Cage’s financial problems echo the problems of the black community and especially the black male community. Claire, a woman with a professional job, must provide for Cage’s well being. Unlike white women of the earlier Superman comics, black women are more active than passive. They are still most commonly damsels in distress, but they are equipped with a sassy attitude that challenges the male’s authority. Instead of the warrior/wimp binary, the black male hero takes on a new binary where his alter ego, although not wimpy or socially clumsy like Clark Kent, lacks patriarchal authority over the woman. He can be emasculated in this position and he longs to escape it by returning to his higher duty as crime fighter.
The Black Body: “It’s Black Goliath! He’s so big and nothing can stop him!”

In the pages of the early comic books, masculinity is defined by opposite physical images. The early superheroes are physically perfect, Nietzschean supermen. Comic books exaggerate the ideal male body by giving it superhuman powers. Superman has incredible strength, super speed, the ability to fly along with a slew of other powers. Some heroes like Batman and Captain America, do not possess superhuman powers, but they are physically trained to the pinnacle of human perfection and do their costumes ever show it. Throughout the early history of comics, often referred to as the Golden Age, the definition of the superhero does not include people of colour. In fact, the first black ‘superhero’ was a young boy named Whitewash who was a member of the teenage group, the Young Allies. He was nothing more than a minstrel stereotype in a zoot suit, who supplied comic relief. In fact, he did very little heroing himself; he was most often abducted and needed to be saved. He was not drawn as a muscular hard-body, that was the standard for comic book heroes. Jeff Brown sees the hyper masculine body as a site of exclusion for cultural others:

The status and the power of the hard male body are only achieved in contrast to those cultural identities
represented as soft and vulnerable…And in the misogynistic, homophobic, and racist view of this ideology, the despised other that masculinity so vigorously reinforced in Western culture is largely focused on white masculinity and is at root a fascist ideology. (Brown, 169)

Brown’s claim is supported by a book by Klaus Theweleit (Male Fantasies, 1977), which depicts two opposite male bodies, one superior and one inferior:

The first was the upstanding, steel-hard, organized, machine-like body, armored by muscles and rigidity marked by a vehement desire to eradicate the softness, the emotional liquidity of the feminine other. But the emasculating (i.e., castrating) criticism of effeminacy was also routinely projected by the dominant onto those marked as other primarily by their cultural or religious backgrounds. [It was]…also projected onto the homosexual, the Jew, and a long list of non-Aryan others. While Nazi Germany may be an extreme example, the underlying rhetoric is far from alien to modern Western culture. (Brown, 169)

The superheroes uses the hard body type, armored in muscle and uses the latter to project on to cultural others and the wimpy alter ego. But as Brown says, the difference is that rather than being seen as effeminate, the black body has been coded as overly masculine. It has been the site of social and political struggle. In Kobena Mercer’s article “Looking for Trouble”, he discusses the stereotypes of the black male body as used by the photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. Mercer outlines the fetishization of the black male body for its physical strength and sexual attributes. Mapplethorpe’s photographs position the viewer in the role of the white spectator who projects his/her fantasies of the black body, and who envies and yet fears the black man’s body for its physical magnificence and sexual might. Mercer and Julien explain this objectification: “The Black subject is objectified into Otherness as the size of the penis signifies a threat to the secure identity of the white male ego and the position of power with whiteness entails in colonial discourse” (Mercer and Julien, 194). The photos also force the viewer to confront their own presumptions about the black subject as a hard bodied savage and animal-like rapist. As Brown says, the black male body “…has been subjected to the burden of racial stereotypes that place him in the symbolic space of being too hard, too physical, too bodily” (Brown, 170).

Donald Bogle calls this image, ‘the Brutal Buck’. Introduced by D. W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, 1915, the Bucks “are always big, baadddd niggers, over-sexed and savage, violent and frenzied as they lust for white flesh” (Bogle, 13). This stereotype of an uncontrolled body that sparks fears in the white establishment is appropriated by the Blaxploitation film genre. Films like Sweet Sweetback , glorify the primitive savage as a revolutionary figure. In Huey Newton’s reading of the film, he sees technology as a tool of the white oppressor but Sweetback will use his physical might to undo his enemy: “He has none of the high-powered technology of the oppressor, but he does have his feet” (Newton, 128). The emphasis on Sweetback’s physical means of escaping situations is seen throughout the movie, as he uses sex, violence and his own feet to outrun and out do the cops. He also uses primitive tools, rather than technological ones to defeat the cops. In one scene Sweetback uses a pool cue like a spear to impale his enemy. Newton rallies the black community to use “the soul-force of the people against the technology of the oppressor” (Newton, 128). The only time technology is positive, is when Sweetback appropriates it: “…when the colored angels began to get down on him he told them, “I got
feet.” This was again symbolizing survival. It was not simply that he had feet, however, he also had the ability to use the technology of the oppressor in his own interest” (Newton, 136). Technology is oppressive until Sweetback uses it in a liberating gesture, while the primitive physicality of the black body is glorified. The Buck masculinity is used as a method to extend power of the black man over the white man. Michelle Wallace discusses the statements of LeRoi Jones, one of the leaders of the Black Power movement. “According to Jones the struggle of black against white was the purity of primitivism against the corruption of technology, the noble savage against the pervert bureaucrats, the super macho against the fags” (Wallace, 63). She quotes Jones from his article “American Sexual Reference: Black Male”:

Most American white men are trained to be fags…they devote their energies to the nonphysical, the
nonrealistic…even their wars move to the stage where whole populations can be destroyed by pushing a
button…the purer white, the more estranged from say, actual physical work…can you, for a second, imagine the average middle class white man able to do somebody harm? Alone? Without the technology that at this moment still has him rule the world? Do you understand the softness of the white man, the weakness… (Wallace, 63)

In this statement, technology is considered oppressive and in opposition to the physical world that the black man inhabits. It also positions the white man as weak, physically inferior and feminine as he uses the word ‘fag’ slanderously. The Black Power movement, the Blaxploitation films, and the black superheroes all glorify the physical, primal power of the Buck.

Like almost all superheroes, black heroes are physically ideal specimens of manhood, as they possess extremely muscular physiques. Most superheroes also have superhuman powers or fantastic abilities that make them powerful and unique in some way. The black heroes often have an overemphasis on ‘savage’ powers and they rarely rely on technology to do their crime fighting. Their powers are often physical strengths, similar to way Sweetback’s masculinity is rooted in his physical prowess. Many heroes have these hyperbolized physical powers, but it seems nearly uniform with black heroes. For example, Superman has some physically rooted powers, such as his super strength and speed, which are simply exaggerations of a human beings natural abilities, but he can also fly, he has x-ray vision, heat vision, he can exhale gusts of freezing air. Spider-Man possesses a sixth sense that warns him of danger. Batman is called the greatest detective in the world and he designs most of his crime-fighting technology himself. The black heroes of the 1970s possess exaggerated abilities that come from the savage or the uncontrollable body of the buck. For example, Luke Cage has steel hard skin that can repel bullets and superhuman strength. Cage’s super strength is played up on the comic covers where he commonly smashes through brick walls, windows, and even buses with his distinctive grimace. His grimacing is so common that one fan’s letter published on the letters page says, “There seems to be slight trend towards making Luke a real mean, tough character. In the first third of issue #12 there are no faces drawn without the real mean, angry look, and only handful after that” (Luke Cage: Hero for Hire #15, 30). In fact, in the same issue that the letter appears in, Cage is not grimacing in only 3 frames of the entire comic. His ultra tough attitude and signature grimace resembles the characteristics of the brutal buck. Black Goliath, is well, a black giant who measures in at nearly 15 feet tall. This character’s physical size plays on the fethisization of the large, muscular black body of the buck or basketball and football players. The Black Panther, although possessing no superhuman abilities, is described in the racially stereotypical terms in issue #5: “With the sleekness of a jungle beast, the Prince of Wakanda stalks both the concrete of the city and the undergrowth of the veldt, for when danger lurks he dons the garb of the savage cat from which he gains his name!” Described as a jungle beast with the garb of a savage cat, he is positioned within the space of the noble savage or the primitive
figure that the Blaxploitation genre glorified. Brother Voodoo, the man who lived twice, has powers rooted in the spirits of voodoo! Whenever the hero uses his powers, the sound of African drums echoes throughout the immediate area. Brother Voodoo’s powers, although not ‘natural’, are linked to the ‘primitive’ cultures and practices in Haiti and Africa.

One of the drawbacks of the glorification of the black body is that it reinforces stereotypes and strategies of
dehumanization that has positioned the black subject “…historically and symbolically…represented as pure body and little mind” (Brown, 173). Luke Cage epitomizes this. Although he is a hero, he isn’t the smartest guy on earth. Throughout his series there is a running joke of the soda machine playing various tricks on him. Although the soda machine possesses comic and crazy characteristics, these jokes are reminiscent of early comic strips that depicted black subjects as confused, bumbling buffoons who could not operate simple machines, as seen in Carolyn Marvin’s article, “When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century”. In an effort to balance the mind/body binary some of the later heroes are constructed to be
extremely intelligent. For example, Black Goliath, aka Bill Foster, is a weapons and technology developer at Stark Enterprises (as in Tony Stark aka Iron Man). Foster takes a serum developed by Hank Pym (aka Giant-Man, Ant-Man and Yellow Jacket) that can increase or decrease the size of any person. Pym’s serum has harmful side effects and only allowed the user to grow to ten feet tall, but Foster perfects the formula, making it safe and more powerful. Although he answers the problem of lack of brains, Black Goliath is only a black copy of an already existing character, both in origin (a scientist who develops a growing formula) and in powers. Black Lightning balances the image of the buck with intelligence most successfully. As Jefferson Pierce he is a high school teacher, as Black Lightning he is a streetwise stud.

The black heroes may seem more macho than the earlier white heroes, but in an all out brawl, my money is on the white guy. Compared to some of the white superheroes, whose powers make them seem godlike, black heroes are just a bunch of sub-super tough guys. According to Christian Davenport’s article “Black is the Color of my Comic Book Character: An Examination of Ethnic Stereotypes,” black heroes have never come close to wielding the same level of power as white heroes. To make a black hero most powerful would be revolutionary, as it would disrupt the racial hierarchy within comic books.

III. Morality: “You Pushers have wrecked the city long enough—Now it’s my turn to wreck you!”

An individual code of morality is central the masculinity of the superhero. Often working outside the law, the heroes operate as vigilantes embarking on person crusades. But many heroes are supported and called upon by authorities. For example, Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon calls for Batman’s help by shining the famous bat-light in the night sky. The code of morality of each hero changes somewhat, but they all fight to protect those in need and the innocent. The vigilante’s mission is so important to him that he feels he must work above the law. This is a macho assertion.

The superhero genre is historically constructed on the eve of World War II. The war, and America’s involvement in it, clearly influences to moral code of the superheroes. Before the U.S. even enter the war, superheroes are charging headfirst into action with the Axis. Captain America is the best example. On the cover of his first issue, Captain America Comics #1, March, 1941, “almost a full year before the Unites States declared war on the Axis…”, Cap slugs Adolf Hitler in the jaw (Wright, 30)! He quickly becomes one of the most popular heroes, raising public morale as he fights the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. Cap comes“…to epitomize… the values and fighting spirit of the national war effort…” (Wright, 36). He is also a prime example of a ideologically constructed hyper-male, embodying American imperial interests. The comic industry responds to World War II by flooding the market with American superheroes who fight the war against the Axis. As we can see, comic books are used as propaganda in the Second World War. In his book Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright explains that, under
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Office of War Information…

…asked the entertainment industry to raise American morale, encourage public cooperation and participation in the war effort, identify the menace of the Axis powers, and inform audiences about the progressive war aims pursued by the United States and its allies, all in ways that cloaked propaganda within the context of good entertainment as much as possible. (Wright, 34-5)

The wartime heroes’ code of morality can be seen as an ideological construction that supports American values. Since the superhero genre is built on wartime heroes, this code becomes the convention. These American values are founded on white ideals of American masculinity and they exclude cultural others.

To foster support for the war effort, and encourage reader sympathy for the ideals of the superhero, the comic industry represented cultural others as evil villains. The Japanese are viciously caricatured in the comics. They are depicted as cruel, “ugly, subhuman creatures” and took on “sinister and sadistic characteristics” (Wright, 45-6). The hundreds of heroes that are created specifically to fight the war are Aryan, American, physically idealistic, and they represent the imperialist values of the time, which excluded cultural and sexual otherness. Blacks are rarely represented in wartime comics and when they are, they are minstrel buffoon stereotypes serving only as comic relief.

When the black heroes burst onto the scene, the values and code of morality that define these heroes has to be distinctly black. And so the white writers turned to Blaxploitation films for their inspiration. The anti-heroes of Blaxploitation defended the black community and the ghetto streets that they lived in by fighting crooked white cops, mobsters and other street criminals. Thus, the black superheroes were given the same duty. Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Black Goliath, and even the Black Panther moved from his kingdom in Africa to fight the good fight in the streets of the American ghettos. The Falcon whose solo story in Marvel Premiere, #49, has nothing to do with the ghetto is depicted on the cover soaring through the streets of a black, urban community. Luke Cage, Black Goliath and Black Lightning each wear costumes that attempt to reflect the fashion, although poorly, of the time so that they will fit in the black community. Or at least that seems to be the only explanation. These ridiculous outfits sport big collars that bare their chests. Cage wears a metal headband. Black Lightning has an afro wig! Cage is stereotyped the most, as he is also equipped with a mouthful of jive slang that he spews throughout the pages. To survive on these mean streets, the heroes have to be smart: street smart that is.

Both the Black Panther and Black Lightning fight the war on crime on two fronts, in the streets as costumed heroes and in the classroom where they educate the black youth of the inner cities. Luke Cage works out of a dingy office on West 42nd Street in Harlem. In fact, it is down right dilapidated. It sure isn’t the Avengers mansion, or the Fantastic Four’s high-tech headquarters. To maintain its ghetto aesthetic, Cage never fixes up the office until issue #56. In fact, in nearly every issue Cage gets in a fight in his office, breaking holes in the walls and floors. It must be tough to pay for repairs on the salary of a Hero for Hire. That’s right, unlike most heroes who fight as good Samaritans, Luke Cage’s hero services are his source of income. He usually slips out of the role as paid mercenary and does the right thing, but he still accepts payment for his efforts. And why not? Being an escaped, wrongfully accused, convict makes it hard to have an income. So Carl Lucas changes his name to Luke Cage and sets up shop. Luke Cage’s story and morality are most closely associated with the Blaxploitation genre. The heroism of Cage is conflated with the survivalist black criminal known as the ghetto ‘hustler’, further compounding his problems with the white legal system. Cage, the first ex-con crime fighter, through illegal means starts his hero for hire business to bring in the bread. As Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien explain, “The figure of the ‘hustler’ is often romantically depicted as a social outsider, whereas in fact this life-style involves an essential investment in the idea that a ‘real’ man must be an active and independent economic agent, an idea which forms the cornerstone of patriarchal capitalism and its ethics of ‘success’” (Mercer and Julien, 114). The hustler figure is glorified in films like Superfly, 1972, as a ghetto hero who attains patriarchal power and the materialistic lifestyle of luxury through various illegal ‘hustles’. Cage’s motives are not as materialistic or self-centered, but he still retains the romance and machismo of the hustler by operating under a false name, without a social insurance card, or the proper license to be a private investigator (As seen in issue #15 and #30). In other words, the Man is always on the lookout for him. In issue #34, Cage’s troubles with the white establishment are compounded by the visit from Oliver P. Sneagle of the IRS who wants to know why Cage hasn’t filed his income tax reports in the last two years.

Not only do the black heroes have problems with government authorities; they also have to deal with white superheroes! The code of morality the black heroes fight for sometimes places them in opposition with the dominant white model. The scenario that epitomizes this the best takes place in Black Lightning, #5, when our hero must face the white power of Superman. This conflict is interesting in a few ways. Firstly, it takes place in Suicide Slum, the ghetto of Metropolis (Superman’s city) and the neighborhood Black Lightning protects. Secondly, the fight is between the most powerful and the original superhero, Superman, and DC’s predominant black hero and the only one starring in his own publication at the time. Black Lightning fights vigilantly against Superman, who is wrongfully informed that Lightning is a murderer at large, but in the end the battle is inevitable. Superman easily beats Lighting, even using a finger flick to knock him off a building. Davenport’s assessment that black heroes are only sub-super is demonstrated in this scene. Before Superman can really put the fist of steel to him, a villain surprises the two and subdues Superman. Lighting saves him and they defeat the villain together. But, Superman won’t let Lightning give chase to the fleeing foe:

Superman: …you’re wanted for murder, Lightning and that’s something I can’t

overlook!

Black Lightning: I can’t let you take me, Superman. There’s just too much at stake. Take

a good look at what goes on down there! The streets I grew up in have become infected with a vicious human cancer called the 100 [a powerful crime organization] and it’s malignant as hell! Every day that disease eats away at our city… at another part of our souls. They’re all down there—pushers and pimps and vermin of every size and shape. And you can’t stop them, Superman. They see you coming and they just crawl right back into the gutters until you pass. It takes someone like me to fight them; someone who fights them where they’re strongest. In the gutters.

The message is clear: black crime must be fought by black heroes. Superman is ineffective at dealing with such problems. In other words, he has failed to protect all of the citizens of Metropolis. He has ignored the decaying slums of his city, and has ignored the people of these communities. Black Lightning exposes Superman’s racially biased morality and his failure to recognize it. The masculinity of the black heroes then, encompasses a code of morality that includes an obligation to protect the black community in a better way than has been offered by white agencies prior.

The heroes battle an assortment of criminals and supervillains in their politically charged battle to protect the ghetto streets. But the heroes are not political enough, in the sense that they never attack the system that maintains the economic barriers that suppress the upward movement of black males. Instead, the black heroes often violently beat up on street criminals and hustlers who are illegally attempting to obtain the money needed to live and sustain a family as well as the figure head position within that family. That may be reading too much into the nameless criminals of the stories, who are as often as possible depicted as snarling, mean and evil people. But this simplistic representation of the criminal black buck erases the political struggle and only serves to reinforce the code of morality embodied by the white superheroes. This becomes clear when one counts the abundance of black villains that each hero faces in these primary texts. Like Sweet Sweetback these comics, fail “to explain the social conditions that made the pimp [and the hustler] such an important figure” (Bogle, 236). It also hides the colonial origins that are at the root of black-on-black violence.

Conclusion

The formation of 1970s superhero black masculinity has several parallels to the Black Power movement and the Blaxploitation film genre. There is an emphasis on the establishment of a patriarchal role model. Women are active, rather than passive, and sassy and they often attempt to destabilize masculine attempts at authority. The dynamic between black men and women informs the schizophrenic binary between the hero and his alter ego. The alter ego, although not sexually and socially rejected like his white counterpart, is often badgered or lacks power compared to the woman. These leads to escapist fantasies for the hero whose masculinity is affirmed once he dawns his superhero garbs. The black body of superheroes is borrowed from the Brutal Buck stereotype and the superpowers that they possess are often exaggerated attributes of the brutal buck or savage. White heroes retain a level of power that supercedes black power. Finally, black heroes’ code of morality is based on Blaxpliotation’s representation of the ghetto and the ‘need’, as prescribed by the films, for a black patriarchal hero to clean the streets and protect the black community, not only from crime but from whitey and the Man. Unfortunately, the comics fail to shed
light on the social conditions that create this need and instead leave the role of the black hero far to similar to
that of the white one. The black heroes of the 1970s do succeed at creating a new space in superhero masculinity for race. Unfortunately, that space is the marginalized area of the stereotype.

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[ originally posted on Monday, April 26th, 2004 at 11:15 am and is filed under Everything. ]