Bla-tino, Spider-Man and Race in Comics

Thanks to this picture from Grooveland's Tumblr which was led to the Black Super heroines! blog I am now finding out all sorts of interesting things about race and comic books. There are a couple of interesting articles on the subject. One is a interview from GQ about a year ago with John Jennings and Damian Duffy about blacks comic creators, characters, and their place in the comic world.


From this brief article I learned a ton about black comic creators, namely who they are. I honestly had given no thought to the races of the writers and artists of the books I read, but knowing it is important. The background of a writer or artist definitely influences their work and should be viewed through that lens.


This article led me to another longer piece about race in comics. From the website Comics Alliance, Chirs Sims article "Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling", talks more about the appearance and subsequent disappearance of non-white super heroes in the DC universe. Again the lack of racial diversity in comics is called to task.

Finally I was drawn to a more recent article over at Geekscape. This one, "Motives of Race in Comics Unmasked," by Johnathan London deals with the recent Bla-tino Spider-Man in Marvel, and what implications this change of race for a major character means to readers. His article ends with a strange populist, or leftist rant about monetary equality, and how that is the real culprit of our world's problems.

I was just trying to get my learn on about comics, and I did, but i also found a whole slew of great discussion on a really important and multi-layered topic. Check out the articles in the links they are definately worth the read.