The 1970s saw a significant, and long over due, expansion and normalisation of the presence of darker skinned people in various walks of life. New black characters were being introduced by both DC and Marvel. Some were unrealistic, but well-meant while others were more successful. One of those leading the push for more realistic black characters was Neal Adams.
Back then Adams had to fight DC’s production department to introduce more than a single dark skin-shade – he deliberately wanted Green Lantern John Stewart to be darker than the few other dark-skinned characters DC had in their comics at that time. It was an attempt to expand on the canonical monochromatic dark skin-shade and reflect some of the rich tonal variation inherent in real black skin tones.
The 1970s also saw the appearance of a new generation of African supermodels and Iman undoubtedly the most famous. Something I’ve always suspected about Vixen’s origin, but have never been able to confirm, is that Iman was the inspiration for her secret identity. Both are African supermodels. Vixen first appeared in 1981. However, she should have appeared three years earlier, but her own book never saw the light of day (a victim of the infamous DC Implosion). That mean she would have been created just as Iman’s fame was rising.
Colouring (and black characters) in comic books have come a long way since then, but there are a number of “issues” dogging the Justice League comic at the moment. There has been a number of rather unpleasant posts over on the DC’s boards that have suggested that JLA writer Dwayne McDuffie has been trying to pack the JLA with African-American characters. Which is rubbish as Vixen and Black Lightning were introduced onto the modern team by Brad Meltzer and John Stewart has more involvement with the modern League than Hal has had for years.
Recently another issue has recenlty arisen. On the Seeking Avalon blog Willow had taken the colouring in JLA #18 to task and accuses DC of trying to turn Vixen into a white woman. The post was picked up by several bloggers including Newsarama’s blog with the usual round of argueing in the comments that you’d expect for an issue like this.
I went back and pulled out the book in question. And the first thing that is immediately obvious is that this issue is not one purely concerning Vixen. None of the black character are particularly dark, but the colourist is using a very muted palette for all the skin tones. Add various lighting effects and scene tones and its hard to tell what skin colour any character should be.Unfortunately the matter isn’t helped by the range of faces Ed Benes uses in his art. Now I’ll free admit that he can draw beautiful women, the trouble is that they all look like he’s using the same model for every single one of them. So it isn’t that his black women look like his white women, its that all his women look like the same woman. The combination of muted palette and uniform faces means that its hard to tell most of the female characters apart – that black characters are mistaken for white characters is just a symptom of the problem.
Reading the stories I can’t see any systematic racial bias beyond the historical one – the obvious one of the established characters being overwhelmingly white. Could the colouring shown a little more range? Yes. Could Benes show a little more variation in his faces? Yes. Are racial features suppressed by this combination of colouring/art? Yes. Is this a deliberate policy on DC’s part? I believe not. And come on, do any of us really think that McDuffie would be putting up with this if there was something going on?
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