Was a racial slur inadvertently inserted in the recent DC Comics title
Justice League - Generation Lost #4?
I am one long-time reader who is disappointed by DC Comics apparently turning back the clock on the diversity of their characters even though I kind of understand it. It is fear, perhaps, that any lasting change to the formula that basically carried the company over 60 years will meet with disaster. Fear, perhaps based in reality, that nostalgia is all they have going for them and the shrinking fan-base of continuity-addicts snubs with negative consequences financially to the company anything that resembles true progress.
From all the internet press it is clear that DC is very aware of the recent outcry that there is the perception they are relying on the tried, true, nearly antique and primarily Caucasian models of the Golden and Silver Age of comic books. While the retro models of the characters may represent their perceived and steady market-base they are are not truly representative of the diverse population of both the real and fictional worlds. That mentioned, the creative teams and editors of their books should be a little bit more aware of how their products published after the controversy could and would be examined for every perceived slight, hidden message or racial and political agenda. Every beaten woman, murdered Asian, gap-toothed Southerner or jailed Middle-Easterner in their books, movies and games will be picked apart and commented upon by the rational and irrational fans seeking a pattern, proof of a corporate policy of hostility to a diverse populace.
As example, read this scene in
Justice League - Generation Lost #4 (July 2010) which hit the stands this week. Preview images have also been available for public perusal on
various websites for a while.
The comic book industry has as one of its primary tropes word-play in the form of acronyms that are explored to sometimes ridiculous lengths. Indeed, major story arcs and even some titles have been pitched and launched merely by how cool or interesting an acronym can sound. It is a tactic of advertising and can pique the interest of a consumer and creates a brand identity that hopefully a buyer will return to again and again. So it is interesting that an industry that enjoys and even exults in word games can depict an African-American (or decidedly non-Caucasian) scientist involved in a super-powers project designated as
Nanobyte Genetic Enhancement Research.
If you want to put together and sound out the acronym, go ahead, but I suggest you only do it in your head.
I personally am not the most sensitive or observant person and I noticed and made a connection to a word that sounds like a racial slur that denigrates African-Americans and the character, however tenuous, right away. Unless DC states otherwise I have little doubt that the acronym as it appears was merely careless and unfortunate. It would be career suicide and fiscally irresponsible for anyone to try and sneak an intentional slur into any of the popular entertainment media designed for a wide and diverse audience in this era. Of course it is not beyond the realm of possibility as there are a lot of confused, angry and backwards people out in the world.
There is no proof that someone at DC intentionally included a racial epithet into one of their comic books nor am I claiming that they did. However once something is seen you can not un-see it. It does not matter how unintentional or coincidental the word or how it sounds may be. It is there, however inadvertently and the perception of the individual reader is what will likely hold sway. There are websites that just leap on things like this and run with it. That is important because no one can really conclusively say that the acronym was not intentional and that cavalierly killing off the ethnic and obviously brilliant character in the next page was a mere innocent plot device. Take into consideration in the story it was a secret project and some could infer that killing an African-American who was creating a process that could give the disenfranchised super abilities just looks bad even if it is much-ado about nothing.
Helping create a quality product is one of the jobs of an editor and one could expect that the staff of DC, already under scrutiny by some of their customers and critics, would have paid a little bit more attention to the proof-reading. Some will undoubtedly assert the slur was intentional as a clever flip of the finger to those who complained about the back-stepping of diversity in DC comic books. Some will maintain the incident was just an unfortunate and innocent coincidence. Others will claim there is nothing to be found at all.
Regardless, I expect that in the future trade edition of
Justice League - Generation Lost that particular phrase will probably be re-arranged to provide a different result. Given the scene I would submit that an initiative that is all giving super-powers to average people would read better if it was labeled "Project: E.N.R.G.". It would be a lot more fitting if the acronym sounds like "Energy" when spelled out, instead of that other word.
It's no wonder he sleeps alone. This one-pager from Feature Comics #135 was published way back in June 1945, a time when comic books were not for girls!
On the first cover by the time we see our heroine she was already salaciously propositioned and is mulling over her choice. On the second she is wryly, perhaps with amusement, dismissing a wolf. Both covers are iconically lurid but what a difference four years makes in the approach.
Was a racial slur inadvertently inserted in the recent DC Comics title Justice League - Generation Lost #4?
The comic book industry has as one of its primary tropes word-play in the form of acronyms that are explored to sometimes ridiculous lengths. Indeed, major story arcs and even some titles have been pitched and launched merely by how cool or interesting an acronym can sound. It is a tactic of advertising and can pique the interest of a consumer and creates a brand identity that hopefully a buyer will return to again and again. So it is interesting that an industry that enjoys and even exults in word games can depict an African-American (or decidedly non-Caucasian) scientist involved in a super-powers project designated as Nanobyte Genetic Enhancement Research.
Forget subliminal shadows in well-defined musculature. Strips like this is why the Comics Code Authority was created. Yet these funnies served an unintended purpose beyond sales-inspiring titillation, giving the young access to some material that provided, albeit through an unrealistic filter set in place by mostly old men, education in what for the era were proper gender roles and societal expectations.
I don't know which aspect of this gag is worse, Sally loaning her niece out to a camera club or the shutterbug sharing photos of his body parts. Lucky for everybody involved the internet didn't exist back then because this entire scene was a humiliating tragedy in the making. The early camera clubs were kind of creepy.
Wow, the 90s. I hope by focusing in on the torso of Pele the artist was making a point about the pandering hyper-sexualization and blatant sales-grubbing cheesecake art of the era. Then again the creative crew may have defined human nature perfectly. There are basically two options to witnessing a ridiculously attractive demi-godess striding from a churning pool of molten lava and declaring she would destroy the Hawaiian islands with super-volcanoes: One is to run screaming the opposite direction and the other is to plan on how you are going to score with her.
This installment of the Futura Saga from Planet Comics #52 (January 1948) continues the "Magic Sword" story. The cover is another fine example of the Good Girl Art school of marketing so common to the pulps and other popular printed media of the time. The inclusion of the penis-dentata monster and the coloring detail highlighting the "fun zones" of the distressed damsel make the cover noteworthy above and beyond the usual Fiction House covers.
