June 21, 2020 – Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76-89 (1970-72) DC Comics; Captain America and the Falcon #169-183 (1974-75); Ms. Marvel #13 (2016) Marvel Comics
It was reading Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics in 1970 that began the development of my political consciousness.
I was nine years old, an affluent white kid in a sheltered, affluent white suburb of Detroit. My parents bought a house in Birmingham, Michigan in 1965 thinking it was the next suburb in the northwestern migration of Detroit Jewish homeowners. But unlike my parents, the other Jewish homebuyers skipped right over Birmingham for West Bloomfield, because of Birmingham’s anti-Semitic recent past: most homes in Birmingham had had exclusive covenants in their deeds even up to the early 1960s, preventing the sale of homes to Jews or Blacks. I was the diversity in my suburb, one of the only Jewish kids in my elementary school.
A bit of a misfit, I loved superhero comics, particularly the great DC superheroes: Superman, Batman, The Flash, and the Justice League of Superheroes. They too were outsiders – mostly orphans and immigrants from other planets – but they were powerful outsiders. That was a seductive fantasy for me.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow was different from any other comic I had read. Green Arrow, like Batman and many other superheroes, had been a rich playboy (a word that didn’t mean anything to the nine-year-old me) using his wealth to fund his crime-fighting. But in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic (let’s abbreviate this as GL/GA, okay?), he had lost his fortune and his penthouse and was living in a small, run-down apartment in a rough part of town (although funny enough, he seemed to always have enough money for his complicated trick arrows). His pal Green Lantern got a mighty power ring from a race of aliens who appointed him as their representative to protect the people of earth. The new GL/GA made explicit what was always implicit: Green Lantern was a cop.
The first issue of this run started with Green Lantern, on his way to visit Green Lantern, coming upon a young hoodlum attacking an older man in suit. Green Lantern saves the older man by using his power ring to ship the hoodlum off to jail. He expects thanks from the neighborhood residents who are watching the altercation, but instead they pelted him with garbage. Green Arrow explains that the man in the suit was a landlord who was evicting all the tenants in the building, including the “hoodlum,” in order to tear down the apartment building to make way for a more profitable parking lot. Green Lantern and Green Arrow get in the first of what will be a series of arguments pitting a reflexive defense of law and order against a self-righteous morality. Their argument is interrupted by what may be the most reprinted panels in comics history:
The two superheroes go on a cross-country journey where they deal with a series of social problems: the oppression of Native Americans, overpopulation (considered a big issue back then), corporate destruction of the environment, and an oppressive judicial system. Green Lantern’s alien bosses appoint an African-American Green Lantern, who the established Caucasian Green Lantern immediately underestimates and dismisses only to later learn to his surprise that an African American superhero can be as smart and effective as he is. Green Arrow learns that his ward and sidekick Speedy is addicted to heroin.
Looked at through my adult eyes today, these comics are at best superficial and at worst extremely problematic. While the two superheroes occasionally recognize their limited understanding of the situation of people of color, they are still comic book superheroes who believe white male superheroes are needed to save the day in the end. I cringed at the way the superheroes talk to Native Americans (calling them “Redskins”) and at that the language that many of the Black characters used, a fake street jive. The African American characters in this comic series are completely unable to code switch when talking to people from a different background.
But to sheltered, unaware nine-year-old me in 1970, these comics were eye- and heart-opening. I didn’t realize there were such problems – I didn’t see evidence of them in Birmingham, Michigan. The privilege of Green Lantern and Green Arrow to see or not to see social problems, to act or not act to resolve those problems, to have the confidence that they are the ones who can solve them – all that is problematic to the adult me in 2020. But back then, I had a similar unexamined white privilege. The idea that we could and should question the social order because it was fundamentally unfair – all that was new and hugely influential to me then.
The socially conscious Green Lantern/Green Arrow ran for two years. It was written by Denny O’Neil, one of the most prolific and respected comic book writers of the 1970s. O’Neil passed away last week. It was his passing that led me to revisit the series. The art was by Neal Adams who was without a doubt the best comic book artist of the 1970s.
A couple years later and a couple of years older, I became enamored of another political mainstream comic, this time from Marvel: Captain America and the Falcon. In 1974, Steve Engelhart – my favorite comic book writer at the time – was faced with a dilemma – how could Captain America respond to Watergate and the changing attitudes people had to their elected leaders and their country. Engelhart created a simplified, comic-book version of Watergate.
A mysterious “Committee to Regain America’s Principles” (an obvious reference to Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, but with an acronym that was never spelled out in the comics) first runs ads against Captain America and then frames him for murder. As people come to doubt their former hero, Captain America learns that the “Secret Empire” – an underground global criminal organization– is behind the attacks on him.
Captain America chases “Number One,” the masked leader of the Secret Empire, into the White House and into the Oval Office, where the leader kills himself once Cap unmasks him. Though we don’t see Number One’s face and though it is not said so explicitly, it is clear that the leader of this global criminal conspiracy is President Richard Nixon.
This series was produced and published in 1974, before Nixon resigned from office.
Captain America is devastated by what he learns, saying “The Government created me in 1941 – created me to act as their agent in protecting our country – and over the years I’ve done my best! I wasn’t perfect – I did things I’m not proud of. But I always tried to serve my country well – and now the government was serving itself….[I’ve] seen everything Captain America fought for become a cynical sham?” He realizes he can’t be Captain America anymore.
Instead, he becomes a new superhero: Nomad, the man without a country. He adopts a new navy-blue uniform with yellow gloves, boots, and a cape which he trips on during his first mission as Nomad, allowing the bad guy to get away. But of course, after a few issues, Nomad realizes that in these troubled times, we need Captain America more than ever. So Nomad retires to become Captain America once again.
Yes, the politics in these stories are facile and limited – comicbooky even. As much as these comics want to question the social order, they end up reinforcing the status quo because they can’t ultimately challenge the superhero ethos that the white man is the savior. But despite these flaws, they did start me asking questions about inequality, about racism, about our obligation to each other, and about what we owe our country and what it owes us. It was asking these kinds of questions that started me on the path that led me to become a community organizer.
A coda: mainstream comics have become much more sophisticated today. The politics that still occasionally appear overtly in comics today are more sophisticated. Today, comics often feature women and people of color superheroes, sometimes written and drawn by women and people of color, or at least people who are actually in real relationships with people of color.
One of my favorite comics is Ms. Marvel, a story of a teenage Muslim girl, the daughter of Pakistani-immigrants. One day, this teenager develops the power to transform her body into any shape. She takes the name and image of her hero, a blond, WASPY-looking Ms. Marvel. But soon, the new Ms. Marvel realizes that she doesn’t want to look white, she wants to stay true to her roots. Ms. Marvel’s powers mimic the tension that the many teens from immigrant families face between wanting to assimilate and wanting to stay connected to their family, their culture, and their religion.
In issue #13, Ms. Marvel confronts gerrymandering designed to elect the “Hydra Hipster” as Mayor so he can gentrify Jersey City. She responds by getting her friends together – organizing! – and going door-to-door to turn out the vote. In the end, the organizing effort leads to unprecedented voter turnout and the defeat of the Hydra Hipster.
Our world may be fucked up beyond repair, but it least there is real progress in the world of superhero comics.