This updates yesterday’s item about Batgirl’s revised sexual preference. Another New York Times story about the change shows that the complexification of comic book heroes goes way beyond Batgirl. The story says that throughout the $500 million comic book business “an effort is under way to introduce heroes who are not cut from the usual straight white male supercloth. The mix of new concepts, dusted-off code names and existing characters include the new heroes Blue Beetle, a Mexican teenager powered by a mystical scarab and the Great Ten, a government-sponsored Chinese team.”
‘We're trying a lot at the same time,’ said Dan DiDio, DC's vice president and executive editor, ‘but we don't know how it's going to be accepted.’ The concern is understandable given DC's uneven history with introducing minority characters en masse,” concludes the Times. Socionomically, it's also understandable, DC Comics has trouble with such efforts in the past because we've been in a bull market, which invariably reasserted itself and induced a preference for more traditional superhero fare. The timing of past efforts to diversify the qualities of superheroes have all come near important corrections. In 1988, for instance, right after the stock market crash of 1987, DC introduced “The New Guardians," a team that included an aboriginal girl, an Eskimo man and Extrano, an HIV-positive gay man who wanted to be called Auntie, who was dismissed online by a fan as a "limp- wristed caricature."
In 1993, when the economy was still recovering from the decline of 1990, DC printed and distributed the work of Milestone Media, an African-American-owned company specializing in comics with black, Asian, Hispanic and gay heroes. “Some of the titles ran for nearly four years,” but all ceased publication as the bull market pressed on in the late 1990s. At the start of the bear market in 2000 “another batch of international heroes - from Argentina, India, Japan, Turkey and elsewhere - was introduced under the ‘Planet DC’ banner.” But the “champions of justice” failed to catch on.
A more sustained decline in social mood should help a whole batch of off-beat role models soar into the superhero pantheon. The surprising, record high box office success of the latest blockbuster movie, X-Men The Last Stand, is probably the first sign of the potential. The X-Men movie series debuted in July 2000 when the bear market was six months old. It’s back and bigger than ever because as one reviewer noted, “The mutants are more pumped up and angry this time, rather than misunderstood and conflicted.” Ultimately, the downturn in social mood will succeed in establishing a whole realm of non-traditional comic book stars.
In an interesting sidenote, the Times story notes that Marvel “has had more success with two black characters who have been around for a few decades: Black Panther, created in 1966, and Storm, from 1975.” The characters were started in the beginning of middle of the last major bear market in social mood, Cycle IV. “They were married last year.” It should prove a profitable union.
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