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

[chocochuy]

Sweet Christmas, mine homeys! That cracker at DC sure was a racist!

[namey]

Neither my face nor palm are big enough. Holy nuts.

[Holy nuts being unrelated to my face or palm.]

[red_menace]

Ah, mid-20th century. Every time I feel bad, you cheer me up by reminding me that I don't live in you.

[chocochuy]

Today all of us have learned several things. One of them is that it was thanks to a racist that we don't see any black people at the future of the DC Universe and the other thing is why we won't see more DC fans in our future.

[cypherfdp]

So you're telling me every African-American, and I guess every African in every country in the world by extension, just said "Fuck this shit" to the rest of the world and sailed to an island, where presumably not a single race, including non-white races, even attempted diplomatic relations or telling them this was the dumbest and most stereotyped fucking plan in the history of the universe?

Reginald Hudlin, is that you?

[blackruzsa]

Oh. How lovely.
:I
Acting like black people, or any sort of ethnicity that aren't Caucasian won't ever do better without white "help". These are some of the things that make me want to be more racist, so I can speak more bluntly about why such things fuck. up. the. world. Those silly white people, such and such.

[saralakali]

Sure, it's easy here in 2011 to say "that's racist". But guys, Tyroc was a hero, the first black hero that I was exposed to. Suddenly, black people weren't all gangsters and thugs usually being used by some white supervillain because they were too naive to see through his (usually) tissue-paper thin plot.

Okay so it's racist, but at the time it opened my eyes just a little bit more than they had been.

[darkknightjrk]

I don't think racist is quite the right word for this--it's in the same realm of the whole "I Am Curious (Black)!" story: like a group of well-meaning but clueless white guys trying to created black heroes and tell stories about racism and getting so silly that it doesn't work as well.

I should also mention that Tyroc's been used in the Legion recently during Levitz's current run and while he didn't have a lot of lines, he wasn't that bad there.

[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."

[jlroberson]

A somewhat fuller account of the racism of Murray Boltinoff that led to the creation of Tyroc, not to mention such things as Vathlo Island(the only place black people lived on Krypton). Scroll to the third item down:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18502_the-5-most-unintentionally-offensive-comic-book-characters.html

Why does Tyroc's costume look stupid? Because Grell--along with Cockrum, no slouch when it came to costume design--made it that way.

"I gave him a silly costume. It was somewhere between Elvis' Las Vegas costume and something you would imagine a pimp on the street corner wearing."

...to sabotage the character, because he was mad at the repulsive backstory editorial had enforced on him.

[chocochuy]

I have a doubt about Marzal (I don't know why but it reminds me of the candy known as "Marzipan", hehehe). If their only population is made of only black people, Wouldn't that mean that the only criminals that live there are black too? Another interesting point to mention is that if the people of Marzal have lived centuries there without any kind of contact with other cultures, Wouldn't they be more intrigued to meet other non-black cultures? I don't mean they have to meet only white people but other cultures.

It would be boring to lack any kind of diversity.

Gotta say..

[steverodgers5]

Nice to see Shooter could see what was wrong with it straight away.

The guy get's a lot of grief for his hard line stances. But every now and again, you could see that the guy stood by the strength of his own convictions.

Wish I could read a modern interview with him to see what he thinks of what the 'big two' are doing now..

[nemryn]

As an antidote and counterbalance to this mess, here's 'Judgement Day'.