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Comic book masculinity and the new black superhero
African American Review, Spring, 1999 by Jeffrey A. Brown
Scott Bukatman has likened the Image hero to Klein's bodybuilders, who value the hypermuscular body for its ability to communicate masculinity without an act - via the obvious overpresence of masculine signifiers. The body's presence becomes, in effect, its own text. Bukatman insightfully notes, "In these postmodern times of emphatic surfaces and lost historicities, origin tales are no longer stressed: the hyperbolically muscular heroes of Image Comics are nothing more or less than what they look like; the marked body has become an undetermined sign as issues of identity recede into the background. Most of these heroes seem to have no secret identities at all, which is just as well [since] some have purple skin and are the size of small neighborhoods" (101). The feminine side of the equation has been so successfully sublimated that it ceases to exist. Even the limited two-dimensional depiction of masculinity that superhero comics have represented ever since Superman emerged in 1938 has now begun to skew toward a more macho, more one-dimensional depiction. If the hypermasculine identity of the masked superhero has traditionally stood as a utilizable, imaginative fantasy masquerade of idealized masculinity, then with the Image style of hero the masquerade has come to be all there is, an entity unto itself. The external trapping of masculinity, the message seems to be, is all one really needs to be a man.
It is in relation to this hypermasculine style of superhero books, either Image's own titles or the many imitations they have inspired, that many readers interpret the Milestone books. Compared to Image, the Milestone comic books offer readers an alternative model of masculinity, a model that is all the more progressive because it is incorporated within the dynamics of contemporary black masculinity.
"A brain . . . and a plan"
If comic book superheroes represent an acceptable, albeit obviously extreme, model of hypermasculinity, and if the black male body is already culturally ascribed as a site of hypermasculinity, then the combination of the two - a black male superhero - runs the risk of being read as an overabundance, and potentially threatening, cluster of masculine signifiers. In fact, prior to the emergence of Milestone, the dominating image of black superheroism was the often embarrassing image of characters inspired by the brief popularity of blaxploitation films in the mid-1970s. Such comic book heroes as Luke Cage, Black Panther, Black Lightning, and Black Goliath emerged during the blaxploitation era and were often characterized in their origins, costumes, street language, and anti-establishment attitudes as more overtly macho than their white-bread counterparts. In many ways the Milestone characters have functioned for fans as a redressing of these earlier stereotypes, providing a much needed alternative to the jive-talking heroes of yesterday, as well as on occasion spoofing the blaxploitation heritage and placing it in an acceptable historical context.
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