At Bleedingcool.com, there’s a completely innocuous puff piece about my upcoming work. Once again, the very mention of race brings out the crazies. In the comments section, responding to the dwindling possibility of my doing a series about the history of black characters in the DCU, we get this:
“I can see the story now: Black evil scientist – who used to be Sivana’s janitor – develops a plague that will kill off every non-Black on the face of the planet. It’s even revealed that he tested it on Michael Jackson, who obviously was “no longer Black” and it still worked! So Obama rounds up all the DCU’s Black heroes to band together and stop this mad scientist before he kills off all the Whiteys, Asians, Amerinds, Hispanics and anyone else who doesn’t like Fried Chicken and Watermelon. Of course, there’ll be a traitor who wants all the honkies wasted, but that’s expected in a miniseries with this kind of social importance!”
Most of the comments are about how the very idea of doing a book about gathering a bunch of black superheroes (NOT what this series is about, but why let that stop us?) is “contrived.” An interesting criticism of a story in a genre where people use their super powers to fight crime. I’m getting afield, back to the topic at hand: Why is it contrived to do a story about an all-black super team, but not contrived to do a story about an all-white super team?
