Why there were no black people in the future...according to DC

[sigmund_droid]

Hope scans_daily has some outrage left! This is the first part of my two part series on Tyroc









Oh boy. Guess who populates Marzal...the Legion of course treats it like a ghetto.

And now the history of Marzal






Jim Shooter pretty much sums up why I was outraged at this

"...I always wanted to have a character who was African-American (Tyroc), and years later, when they did that, they did it in the worst way possible....instead of just incidentally having a character who happens to be black...they made a big fuss about it. He's a racial separatist....I just found it pathetic and appalling."

Until this time ALL the legionaries were drawn with Caucasian features. When black people ARE introduced they are violent separatists that have to be shown the error of their ways by white people.

This is a controversial topic, sorry if I inadvertently offended anyone. Please let me know if I did.

Comments

[bradhanon]

"Hey, it looks like there are no black people in the future. I can't think of any explanation for that that isn't incredibly fucked up and racist."

"Oh, no, it's nothing bad! It's just that in the future, all the black people live on a special, distant island just for them, and they never leave it!"

"...yeah, that was one of the explanations I considered."

[icon_uk]

I can (if I have to) view like the absence of black people in Sunnydale for much of "Buffy"'s run.

It was commented on in story (a black vampire notices that the town is "not exactly a haven for the brothers") and I always felt that that probably indicated the black folks in the area were a damn sight smarter than the white folk, and they'd got the hell out of town long ago, leaving the white folk stupid enough to hang around a town with a death rate higher than most war zones to their own devices.

LOL!! Off Topic but yeah...

[steverodgers5]

..I remember that line in Buffy.

Absolutely love your explanation for why that might have been the case!

Buffy's so weird. I loved it and all, but I wonder if they meant some kind of message at the end where theye had the 2 demon characters killed off..(Albeit one would return in the sister show) and yet all the main human characters survived the final battle.

And then of course there's Angel's ending where weirdly enough the exact opposite happened, and it was all the humans that got the shaft. (Always wondered if there was something deliberate about that..) Granted Gunn was still around in the last scene, but y'know mortal wounds and all, seemed to suggest that he was pretty much on his last legs there.

It's funny though, I remember once reading that Gunn was originally supposed to die on his way to the rendevous, but they backed out of that as being just tooo bleak. (No idea if it's true or not..)

Hmm, maybe the creaters felt a little bit guilty about it. But man, my heart still breaks for poor Wesley. Kind of bugs me a little that they had that line about Fred's soul being destroyed. All I could think of was, well Buffy went to heaven, thus it's supposed to exist in this world, but if Wesley makes it up there, he's STILL not gonna get to be reunited with Fred!! Which just sucks, beyond the telling of it..

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Wasn't that the same thing with Silver Age Krypton? I just remember looking at something that indicated all the black people lived on their own seperate but equal island (that was naturally destroyed).

Been a few years and I can't remember where I read that, though.

[pyrotwilight]

Oh Vathlo island. How...odd it was. Can't remember what the story was but that was indeed the case.

[jlroberson]

And here's the thing. As the story I link to below mentions, this was Murray Boltinoff's editorial mandate. If there were to be black people in the Legion's future, it had to be this way.

So about this island. Founded by escaped slaves, huh?

Going where that other slaves did NOT escape from going? And from where was that again, Murray?

I mean, what does this imply about EVERY OTHER BLACK POPULATION IN THE WORLD? In North America, in Europe, and, er, in Africa?

As with any ridiculous attempt to keep racist ideas going, it only begs more and more questions even if you take it at its premises. Silver/early Bronze Age DC's like that--it sets up something that becomes either insane or creepy or exactly the opposite of what they intended if you think about it for, well, a second. What you find implied is not unlike how some DC comics tried to be so nonsexual heterosexually, that they ended up looking unintentionally gay, as we all know and love. And so with this. What this implies is a rather frightening genocide took place that none of the Legion seems to know about.

Then we have stuff like "I am Curious--Black" where the ultimate message is that black people shouldn't be so resentful towards WHITES.

And then there's fucking Vathlo Island.

A lot about the late-20th century American middle-age basic-racist psyche in those old DC comics to analyze if someone wanted to. Not of committed racists, more like the kind of racism that was pretty much accepted and common at the time(as much as the sexism of the time was).

PS

[jlroberson]

A tradition continued to this day, when DC will have Africa (during Flashpoint) ruled by apes.