In Brightest Day?

[Dwayne McDuffie]

But there's an unintentional side-effect to all this regression that often goes ignored: The piece-by-piece white-washing of the DC Universe.

Before I go any further, I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm not suggesting that creators like Geoff Johns are racist, or that their stories are consciously motivated by racism in any way. I don't think that factors into what they're doing at all; the motivation is one of nostalgia and resistance to change, not race. I don't think the racial consequences of what they're doing even cross their minds, which is an entirely different, and in some ways, more insidious problem.

But it's there, and it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore. And it's particularly prevalent in DC Comics because no other company so relies on legacy characters. There's no other company that has the idea of super-heroic roles being passed from one generation to the next quite so hardwired into it. They've been doing it since 1956, when Barry Allen took the place of Jay Garrick and ushered in the Silver Age. And because most of their popular and enduring characters were created in the early days -- the '30s, '40s and '50s, when the only minority characters were outright racist caricatures like Ebony White and Chop-Chop -- they were white.

As comics progressed, however, more legacy characters were created. Some, like John Stewart, were introduced explicitly to challenge notions of race, while later ones -- Jason Rusch (Firestorm), Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle), and even going back to Kimiyo Hoshi (Dr. Light) and Yolanda Montez (Wildcat) -- were more reflections of changing standards in regards to the media's acceptance of non-white characters.

But now, the idea of a legacy character is being totally subverted. They're not roles that are passed down anymore, they're roles that are passed back up.

Chris Sims has a lot more to say: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/05/06/the-racial-politics-of-regressive-storytelling/ Read it, come back here and discuss....

[SaviorSpyder CJ]

Perfect article. And it shows exactly what the problem is with DC: Instead of appreciating the diverse, interesting characters they have, they'd rather revert back to the good ol' days, and bring back characters that died for a reason.. This explains why I've lost interest in most of their titles, and most of their characters. Call me when you decide to get your act together, Didio.

[0datdude0]

I will say this is dead on about DC being in love with its own past. I think that in the minds of what ever creators are in the majority in the DCU their is an iconic version of most characters and no major lasting changes will come.

I was the biggest Kyle era GL fan out their and I don't think Hal was put back into the spot light because kyle's daddy was mexican american. I think Ron marz did a bang up job from GL 48-123 and then moved on. After that I hung onto the book for another year or so then like a lot of my comic reading friends where getting older and either leaving the habit or like me moving on to less main stream stuff. The fans that where left where the same ones that had been with the book when i got their four or five years before and they wanted Hal back badly.

I think DC is preaching to the converted so to speak. Its a shame because in the long term by doing that the stories just go in circles. I did a long post on this on an old web board I wonder if i can find a copy. Any way it was the reason i stopped reading DC ( i popped back for ms forever ).

I think it has less to do with racism then them wanting to cling to the past like a drowning man to a life raft. Granted that past was hugely racist and they really don't seem to care.

I think its funny that I had to get into manga and indy comics before I could find stories I felt I hadn't read before.

[Bruno Diaz]

Who would you rather read:

Sherlock Holmes, Don Quixote, Fu Manchu, Bertie Wooster, James Bond, Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes Jr., Tar-son, señorito Quijote, Fu Boychu, James Bond Jr. and Robin Hood the second?

Who the hell cares about what happens to mere clothes and pseudonyms? I like the people behind them. I wouldn't even name my kids after me they will be people on their own merits.

Personally, the only legacies guys I like are the ones I met before the originals: Barry, Hal, Ray, Ralph (kinda), John Smith. Same deal with Mr. Terrific II. STAS and JL made me like Wally over Barry, but I do prefer funny people. I have to say that I'd have been eating shit if I had grown up in the early 60s. I'd have think that the new guys were redundant and that the old ones, if anything, only needed new uniforms and more powers. However, I'd have loved the moment Earth-2 poped-up, I'd had ben like (fine, now I just need to focus on stories about E2 characters).

The legacy heroes that tend to bother me the least are the ones that are constantly being prepared, like th Titans and the once that were Young Justice. However, I couldn't care less about Robinson's new league.

I really hate legacies that pop up out of nowhere.

I don't have a strong opinion on Barry Allen, but I couln't care less about Kyle, Jason, Ryan, Jaime, Arthur Joseph or the new Azrael. Renee as the Question is beyond retarded, she's is practical, not an obsessive nut. I've always hated Jason Todd.

If they didn't do any better than their predecessors why sticking to them? By the legacy logic, it would be time to give the next generation, their chance. I'm sure there are plenty of babies, embryos and glimpses on milkmen's eyes ready to take over.

If Arthur, Ronnie, Ted, Ray or Vic need a rest there's no problem, hiatus is way better than poor writing, and it presents a great opportunity to focus on the Milestone characters as well as the likes of Black Lightning, Vixen, Steel, Stewart, Dr. Light, El Diablo, Katana or the Global Guardians, the true DC diversity assets. I don't think Geoff is racist and I don't think giving DCU fans the characters they want is evil or racist, but making every substitute a minority is pretty stupid in many senses. Diversity shouln't be feeding on unsuccessful left overs.

I love comics not only because I want to see action, but because I want to see it being performed by certain characters, which are more than funny clothes and a name.

[Bruno Diaz]

I think the problem is rooted in the fact that the DCU is unsusteinable. The idea that a soft editorial hand or a sequence of many strong ones (unlike Schartz or Giordano) can control an forever ongoing fictional continuity in which the characters age slower than the time passed since their creation is utterly ludicrous. The multiverse was key to make sense out of it and it was destroyed (one of the few Giordano choices I didn't like).

I think the vision of the article author is contradictory and somewhat limited if he thinks "progress". Progress would be creating brand new characters and focusing on them. Why pretend the Batman we are reading now is the concept conceived by Bill Finger and Bob Kane? Because as unrealistic as it is people like to keep imagining further stories of the charactes. So, DCU is actually a toy collection. Unrealistic, but we're all in on it. That's why Kane, Finger, Cole, Gardner and Kirby didn't write deaths for their creations. That's why the JSA was kept alive. If we agreed on such fantasy, why would anyone destroy some figures and put some shit he consider better instead. Wouldn't he be by definition a jerk and a bully? If his concept is so cool and so much "better" couldn't he just create another character and stop messing with stuff some other guys might want to play with? I often think that those who act like that do it out of insecurity that their ideas wouldn't make it completely on their own. And who didn't see it coming? From day one, I knew Kyle, Jason, Ryan, Joseph Arthur and the rest would end up rejected. They have the stigma of popping out of the blue stealing parts of their killed off predecessors, an infallible formula to be hated by some.

Johns is not being regressive, he's only honest about the reason people read those unsustainable fictional universes: they want to play with the toy collection.

If anything, Kyle, Connor, Jason, Ryan, Joseph Arthur and Jaime would only fare better as the Ultimate or All-Star versions of the classic names in the spirit of how Earth-1 was created. (See http://dwaynemcduffie.com.lamphost.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1400.

[Geoff Thorne]

The problem with DC is not legacies. The problem with DC is and has always been racism. Nobody much wants to call it that because it's not politic. All those guys are "nice guys" with a big job and a full plate. They are "doing their best" to meet the needs of a fanbase that is aging, hidebound and, frankly, not a little bit racist.

Yes. Racists. Lots and lots of them. They don't like to call themselves that, nor do they want to be seen that way but, when we look that the things that get them tense and angry, the same little bugaboos pop up time and again.

"Why do we NEED a black guy on the team?"
"If we're going to include a 'minority' hero, it's got to make sense."
"Wait, there's two minorities on this team. Wow. Talk about racism. You guys have an agenda and it's corrupting our comics."
"We have blue people, green people, rock people, bug people. How can you say we're not diverse?"
"We're just trying to get back to basics here, back to when comics were good."
"I hate the whole legacy concept unless it's Wally or maybe Dick."

The legacy aspect of DC should have been the key to its longevity but, instead, it has been used as one more cudgel wielded by myopic, backward-looking spuds who would rather recreate their own childhoods than make good stories for ALL OF US.

Marvel comics only exists because DC has been so traditionally tone deaf about the way the world looks that they left the opening for more "realistic" comics and characters that Stan Lee was happy to fill.

And Marvel is kicking DC's butt on the front of race, gender and ethnicity once again despite the occasional valiant attempt by one isolated creator here and there to make a change.

Looking backwards is not innocent. Scraping off the extremely minor cosmetic changes that have been made to the DCU over the decades is not simple nostalgia. It is, quite literally, a whitewash and it's not even one that's being hidden.

There is nothing, not one word of this "new" article that I, personally, haven't said over and over throughout the last decade and for which I have not been roundly attacked by masses of readers with tiny brains and smaller empathy. As much as I agree with the sentiment of the article, there's not one thing that will change because of it.

They don't want us. They don't like us and they'd rather we sit still, shut up and buy the books they give us and stop whining that there's nobody LIKE us in them. Yeah? I've got about 25 pounds of ass, right here, that they can collectively kiss.

As I said elsewhere, I'm done with DC. I've beaten my head against that wall for over twenty years now with letters to various editors, proposals for new books, post after post in places where the right folks can see them.

They don't care.

They don't care and they're not gonna and I have finally got the effing message.

Done.

[0datdude0]

You make it sound like someone in the DC office is hiding under his desk because the brown people are coming. In fact they are hiding under their desk because the world out side their window is changing and moving on. Both are very very bad things that are unhealthy to say the least, but one implies building a fort from office furniture in an intentional thought out way to keep minorities out of comic the other one just implies they need to get out more as they do not understand how the world works and that change can be a good thing.

No intentional racism imho just some pudgy white guys that aren't letting go of their childhood toys.

[Bruno Diaz]

"Why do we NEED a black guy on the team?"
"If we're going to include a 'minority' hero, it's got to make sense."
"Wait, there's two minorities on this team. Wow. Talk about racism. You guys have an agenda and it's corrupting our comics."
"We have blue people, green people, rock people, bug people. How can you say we're not diverse?"
"We're just trying to get back to basics here, back to when comics were good."
"I hate the whole legacy concept unless it's Wally or maybe Dick."

I agree with all but the last one. Well kinda, if you'd have used Kyle and Joseph Arthur in that last sencence I'd be a 100% in the same track. There are at least 4 types of legacies to hate without the reason being race:

#1. Protegees, sons and partners introduced logn ago as such. Wally and Dick go along the lines of original titans, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Shilo Norman, and many others that are different because they were trained by the originals since they first appeared. Those are the legitimate legacies.
#2. Those that inherit the name while the originals were still active. Hal, Barry, Ray, Katar, John Smith, Zatanna and Garret Sanfort who didn't replace terminally the originals, who were perfectly alive and active from another world. Wally, John-Kyle-Guy, Ryan and Jason are now kind of in that situation.
#3. Eventual replacements that pop up to take the place of characters that aged and died or retired gradually. Michael Bolt, Sandy Hawkins, Jack Knight, Pieter Cross, Jakeem Thunder, Courtney Whitmore, Beth Chapel. Subcategory: those that take available names like Tim Drake, Mia Dearden, Cassandra Cain, Cassie Sandsmark.
#4. Stigmatized pop up replacements: Kyle Rayner, Jaime Reyes, Ryan Choi, Connor Hawke (well, he's kinda in the middle, he poped up but is Ollie's son), Joseph Arthur, Jason Rusch, who appear out of nowhere after the hero in its prime is killed off for some quick bucks.
#5. Oddball recycled replacements: Renee Montoya, Crispus Allen, Stephanie Brown, Rose Wilson, Bart Allen.

One can hate any or all of those categories and not be a racist as long as they don't make exeptions for white charactes. If you hate Jaime, Ryan and Jason, you can love Hal and Barry, but not Kyle and Joseph arthur without raising some eyebrows. Like wise , it would be odd if you also hate Bolt or John stewart.

I hate category #4, don't care either way for the subcategory of #3, and expect category #1 to take over... in the tong term future or in a catefgory #2 type of situation. I enjoy Dick as Batman... as long as I know Bruce is returning. I normallly like category #2, specially when they exist before my time . For me #5 depends on how much sense it makes, Montoya isn't insane enough to be the Question.

No intentional racism imho just some pudgy white guys that aren't letting go of their childhood toys.

That's ok... as long as you are ok with Batman, Superman, Aquaman, WWand GA among others being over 100 years old or death. Other wise you are just as Geoff Johns, only with different favorite toys.

[Geoff Thorne]

You make it sound like someone in the DC office is hiding under his desk because the brown people are coming. In fact they are hiding under their desk because the world out side their window is changing and moving on. Both are very very bad things that are unhealthy to say the least, but one implies building a fort from office furniture in an intentional thought out way to keep minorities out of comic the other one just implies they need to get out more as they do not understand how the world works and that change can be a good thing.

No intentional racism imho just some pudgy white guys that aren't letting go of their childhood toys.

Wouldn't it be great if I gave a damn?

The distinction you're trying to draw is microscopically thin and the effect of the behavior is identical.

And, just for the record so you don't make this mistake again: these are NOT people who don't get out much. These are sophisticated professionals who control the destinies of commercial properties that net their corporation millions of dollars. These choices they make are not accidents and they are not the result of soft, well-meaning nostalgia. They are CHOOSING every erasure and every omission.

They just don't give a shit if they offend "us" or care that we exist.

So they aren't getting any more of my money.

[Bruno Diaz]

DC's situation is kinda like the Wonder Woman movie thing: it didn't sell fast so movies about women don't sell ans shouldn't be produced. In this case, minority flavored revamps of characters that were not good selling anyway didn't sell; conclusion: so no more books about minorities, keep giving the original poor selling heroes more chances Before the whitewash there was a brown one. DC should forget about doing laundry and just focus on diversity in a similar way to that of Marvel (which, you recognized as a better one). I think a properly sophisticated approach would have been to reduce focus on Ted, Carter, Arthur, Ray, Ronnie and their likes (at least while they are obviously out of ideas for them) and create diversity representation by giving their new Milestone repertoire the type of welcoming the Quality characters got back in the 80s when Giordano introduced them: inclusion in the JLI (BB, C. Atom), ongoings or minis for most of them (Peter Cannon, BB, C. Atom, the Question, Peacemaker), and the Watchmen. I mean major revampings with revisits to their origin stories and exploration of the way they fit in their new home world. We know at least Static is going to make solid sales. If they don't know how to write a white Atom, changing his race is not going to provide much more ideas for the concept.

In a positive way, bigger support for BL, Cyborg and Vixen or introduction of the Super Friends minorities would fall in the lines of the so called Silver Age Renaissance. I really don't see why would any of those characters get less attention than the reborn Silver age characters. The reason has to be racist apathy.

..And then again there's the Milestone Forever thing, some people don't believe it's selling low naturally. I know it sounds too much like a conspiracy theory, but I still don't get why did DC buy those characters in the first place just to store them.