Therefore, “images of Black leadership” had to be “consistent with their (white) philosophy of gradualism and tokenism” (White, Cones 44). Superheroes are role models and because of their cultural weight, they can be considered leaders. What Cones and White introduce is the notion of the regulation of representation. White comic book creators not only dictated the Black superhero narrative, but the rate at which those narratives were made
accessible and the number of narratives created. And as Cones and White assert, “language and visual images are powerful tools for shaping public opinion” (34). I would add that not only do language and visual images shape public opinion, but in the case of Black superheroes, they affirm public opinion, rather white public opinion. Cones and White argue that such affirmations can be made because “most Euro-Americans do not have close personal relationships with African American males, they are vulnerable to being influenced by images of Black masculinity in the popular media” (77). This would then mean that Black superheroes are a “manipulation of distorted Black male images” because they are birthed from a distance. The pseudo authentic experience can then be characterized as a distancing project because it is dependent on a removed interpretation of Black masculinity.
The Black superhero origin story is a direct manifestation of a white desire to see the images of Black masculinity that are consistent with images that dominate popular media. This does not necessarily have to come from a place of ill will or intentionality, but it comes from a place of ignorance brought about by distance. White creators were often writing these origin stories from a distance, based solely on what they knew from magazines and their Black friends. Because of this, Black superhero origin stories are narratively constructed to empower the white
dissonance, needing to be guided by a white figure. The origin story is the vehicle to project a white perspective of Black masculinity, serving as a way of navigating through how the presence of Black men changes the American landscape.
Black hero origin stories have the same motivations and intentions as the Superman origin story, to establish the backstory for the superhero and to build a framework for a hero’s longevity in the genre. Even so, the skin color of the Black superhero puts them at a
disadvantage in their pursuit of heroism and moral purity. The next chapter will examine how these ideas play out in the origin stories of various Black superheroes. I will make use of the Algorithm as a basis for understanding how to identify the patterns of Black masculine tropes and offer a reading that will make narrative restrictions comprehensible, showing that the limited narrative language of Black superheroes comes from the limited narrative language of Black men.
III. Exodus to Egypt
“Black superheroes, in America, might not have the luxury to simply be superheroes devoid of ethnic complexities”--Christian Davenport
While the introduction of black heroes was a landmark for black representation, it also signaled new narrative restrictions for black superheroes. DC and Marvel made strides to be racially conscious, giving the black community access to the promised land of the power narrative, but instead many of their characters ushered the black superhero narrative into an Egypt known as the ghetto. With the framework provided by the black hero algorithm and the previous chapters, this chapter is dedicated to a direct examination of the origin stories of multiple black superheroes. While many white authors believed themselves to be progressive figures, allowing black people access to the power narrative, to a new promised land as it were, their heavy reliance on stereotypes actually enslaved black superheroes into narrative limitation, a narrative that has proven to be virtually inescapable.
Instead of conducting a series of character studies, I have chosen to dissect the origin story into what I believe are its core elements. Through this lens I will engage the tropes of black masculinity present in the pseudo-authentic black experience, showing how they narratively constrain black superheroes to a particular demographic.
The subsections of this chapter bring a narrative specificity to the origin story, giving us the chance to explore how each feature of the origin story functions. I believe that the parts that make up the origin story and give the story world the most context are: setting (space), ability (power) and opposition (enemies). These three elements as the skeleton for the Black hero will be useful in the examination of how these storytelling building blocks construct a narrative that
reflects the real world in a way that has a profoundly negative effect on black superheroes, because it transfers the negativity associated with black men in America into the superhero narrative, therefore permitting the lmost constrained and stereotypical stories.
It is also important to note that most black superheroes are introduced as minor characters in another series, often requiring that their origin story be condensed. The heroes examined in this chapter are a mixture of main character heroes and others who are what I see as “shadow heroes”. The notion of the shadow hero is important to not only this chapter, but to the entirety of this paper. A shadow hero is a black hero that has his own origin story, but it is often presented as a subplot to a white hero’s narrative, resulting in the Black hero becoming a sidekick