Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at some of the issues raised by the new Ultimate Spider-Man and Captain America.By focusing on what the new Spider-Man (see "Marvel Unveils New 'Ultimate Comics' Spider-Man"), making his first appearance this week in Ultimate Comics Fallout #4, was going to look like Marvel got an enormous amount of free publicity. As I put the finishing touches on this column Tuesday night Google had posted 425 news articles on the subject.
I haven't read them all but predictably it's the "black" half of his racial make-up that's been overwhelmingly stressed in the headlines with 'Bi-Racial' coming in a distant third. Strong contenders for my favorite headline include "The New Spider-Man Half-Black, All Hero" from The Indianapolis Star and "Holy Minority Spidey Stand-In Is Black-N-Latino" from the LA Weekly. But the winner so far is "Marvel Comics reveals the new Spider-Man is black--and he could be gay in the future" from the online version of the U.K.'s The Daily Mail.
As always trying to find something original to say about things like this is difficult, but I believe I have found one point of interest that no one else seems to have noticed; the new Spider-Man's civilian name is Miles Morales. His first and last name begin with the same letter, a tired device that I honestly thought had been permanently retired after Gerry Conway came up with Ronnie Raymond in 1978.
In the movie the entire US Armed Forces is integrated. Blow had this to say about that:
"...the racial history of this country is not a thing to be toyed with by Hollywood. There are too many bodies at the bottom of that swamp to skim across it with such indifference. Attention must be shown. Respect must be paid."
I can't disagree with any of that, and without question Americans absolutely have to acknowledge some hard Home Truths about themselves. I'm on record that there are racist stereotypes who can be rehabilitated (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--The Rehabilitation of Whitewash Jones"), but pretending that the past is something other than it was is doing an incredible disservice to everyone.
If I had to guess this racial revisionism wasn't done to further some sort of shadowy political agenda so much as an attempt to avoid offense--and the film is full of them. I suppose Captain America: The First Avenger is a "pro-American" movie but only in the vaguest possible terms. Sure there's a couple of lines about how "we've all got to do our part" and the racially diverse version of The Howling Commandos is without a doubt a call back to the ethnically diverse platoon invariably found in movies made during WWII. But the film lacks a single, sincere declaration of why we're fighting this war (what is known in The Venture Bros. as "a cowboy speech"); that would have been mandatory back then.
Although the Nazi's are present their role has been minimized, probably to avoid invoking offense in those who find it in bad taste to having them reduced to stock cinematic 'bad guys.' I suppose we should all feel grateful that the history of WWII hasn't been altered the way it has in the animated series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes where WWII was apparently fought between America and Hydra. This I can understand but the movie isn't even vaguely anti-Fascist; The Red Skull's world domination plot isn't all that different from one hatched by a Bond villain.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
